The Hermit in the Bunker

Don't let my appearance fool you, I'm pretty much just a hermit in a bunker.

Yesterday my post about air raids made me want to learn more about bunkers and how prevalent they were in the United States during WWII.  Upon further research, I found out an interesting tidbit about a WWII era bunker standing in the salt marshes of Fort Fisher in my home state of North Carolina.  It was the 2^nd most frequented tourist attraction in North Carolina for over 17 years --- but not because of the bunker itself, rather the man who lived in it.

He became quite popular and received more than 100,000 recorded visitors in his 17 years there. He was, in some ways, far ahead of Abby Hoffman and Timmy Leary in his radical, yet “common sense” (as he called them) beliefs.  He tuned in, turned on, and dropped out of mainstream culture way before it was cool.

His lifestyle drew attention from all around the world.  After his family died of typhoid fever, then his wife cruelly left him, he simply left society and chose to live alone in the wilderness. People were intrigued by him, so they turned a hermit into a tourist attraction. I think he was like an animal at the zoo, but many think he was a sagacious teacher. The situation sort of reminds me of Forrest Gump where he attracts a large group of followers while he’s running across the country.  The people follow him hoping he’ll lead them to something, but got dismayed when they realized he didn’t even know where he was going. 

Since he had so many guests, I suppose Mr. Harrill wasn’t really a hermit, but more what I’d like to call a “homebody.”  Only he was a homebody with a message. So I guess I’m a lot like him, except I like to think I’m not a total whack job when he clearly was one.

I’m a pretty social person, but I like the stability and security of being in my home. I guess you’d call me a homebody.  Therefore I like to have house parties and have people over instead of going out too much, but I do go out a lot.  In an ideal world, I’d live at home and then get dressed up at night and entertain guests.  This summer I had an amazing apartment on the Upper West Side in Manhattan, and my favorite thing to do was entertain guests at home and on my rooftop.  Of course, the building had lots of rules about how many people could go on the rooftop at one time, so a lot of time was spent avoiding the doormen.  When I am older, I’m going to have a great big house, preferably close to lots of friends, and I’ll just have a party or social gathering every single night.  That would make me such a happy woman.  

I just hope my surroundings are a little more luxurious than a WWII era bunker in the North Carolina marshlands. It’s sad though, because he was probably killed by a group of rednecks or pranksters.  His body was found buried in sand and covered in wounds, but the official coroner’s report says he died of a heart attack.  No one ever investigated as to whether or not it was murder. 

This is a prelude to a series of pieces I’m going to do on other interesting people in North Carolina. Did you know there is an island of really mean inbred people on the coast called “Crusoe Island?” Rumor has it they put outsiders who wander onto their island in a snake pit.

If you're interested here's a film about the Fort Fisher Hermit. It's actually pretty interesting.

Top Five Worst Diseases. Ever.

I hope I never get any of these. Here's why.

When I was a little kid, I had a sadistic little mind.  Therefore I jumped at the opportunity to check out a book at the public library about the five worst pandemics ever to infect mankind.  This did not serve me as well as I would have thought. Since then, I’ve been pretty paranoid about strange infectious diseases and have always thanked my lucky stars I didn’t have this disease or that one.  I’m not talking about the strange things people are born with, but the diseases that we could catch!  Here is a top five list of the diseases I hope I never get (and you should to).  Let’s all be thankful we don’t have them.

Person dressed up like a bird. Probably with a pocket full of posies, too.

5) Whatever caused the Black Death.   Did you know there is currently a lot of research that postulates the black death wasn’t actually caused by the bubonic plague but a different disease. According to some new mathematical modeling techniques, it appears that the bubonic plague, while present in Europe at the time of the black death, was not nearly prevalent enough to have caused it.  However, did you know that in northern Europe there is a subset of the population that is immune to the HIV? It’s because of mutations caused in their genes passed down the generations since the black death!  One thing is for certain though, whether or not it was bubonic plague that caused the black death, I hope I never ever catch what it was.

Yeah, it's not somewhere you want to go.

4) Leprosy. Ever since I read about leprosy  (now called Hansen’s disease) and getting sent off to leper colonies (Hansen’s Disease Communities) I’ve been uber grateful I do not have leprosy.  Watching Kingdom of Heaven didn’t help this phobia either because after seeing King Baldwin of Jerusalem’s face after he died from leprosy scarred me for life.  I still remember having an argument with my cousin when I was about 10 that God didn’t really give people leprosy to punish them because it was spread through the air (I learned this from my book). She maintained that God indeed gave leprosy to people to punish them because it was in the Bible and if I was bad, I'd get it too... She also believed God planted dinosaur fossils to test the true believer. Needless to say, I got my distrust of authority attitude at a young age.  I’ll expand on this one on a later day, though.

Do you see what happens, Larry?

3) Polio.  Some people with polio ended up living in an iron lung.  That would be a very boring life. Possibly worse than living in a bubble or having locked in syndrome.  You’re also always dependent on people and electricity to survive. I try to never be dependent on anyone else, so being in an iron lung wouldn't match my personality. Not in the slightest.  See the case of this poor woman who died when the electricity at her house failed, and the backup generator didn’t work either.  Her family also was too slow to use the hand pump for the iron lung so she died.  Read more here.

This monkey might give you ebola.

2) Ebola.  You basically hemmorhage all of your organs and tissues that are supposed to be solid and in your body out of your orifices.  I hope I never get this.  Interesting tidbit: Some researchers believe the black death may have been caused by a similar disease to Ebola. Read The Hot Zone for a great book about Ebola!

Word.

1) Zombie Apocalypse disease.  Let’s all hope we don’t get bitten and catch the Zombie infection when the ZA happens. I'm pretty sure I'd survive, though.  I have a killer ZA survival plan...And we all know it’s going to happen.

Ukelele Song

So I’m back in Charlottesville waiting for school to start.  The town makes me sort of lame at life, so instead of blogging about something interesting yesterday I laid on the couch and watched Downton Abbey on netflix.  It’s my new favorite tv show.   However, today I decided to get up and learn a song on my ukelele.  It’s Elvis’s Can’t Help Falling in Love. Hopefully you like it.  My strumming is not that great, but I’ve only been playing the uke for a day or so.  Enjoy!! 

Achtung, Achtung! These pigs gon' eat you.

The other night while walking back to my friend’s apartment in NYC, we began talking about our study abroad experiences and travelling.  Somehow the conversation made it’s way to my semester in Berlin, and my friends requested I post this today. 

My study abroad semester was really just travelling around Europe and having a grand ole time.  However, when I wasn’t frolicking around and singing songs from the Sound of Music all across Europe, I lived with a nice older German couple in a northwest suburb of Berlin.   My study abroad program placed us each with host families instead of forcing us to live in the student housing at the Humboldt built before Mr. Gorbechav tore down his wall.

My house was very nice and my host family even gave me my own apartment with cable tv (the only English channel was MTV and they only played Viva La Bam and the Girls Next Door).  They also gave me a bicycle! I rode that bike everyday to the train station and back through the nice little suburb.  However, there was one opening to the Brandenburg forest I had to pass each night.  Since I lived so far away and was pretty social with my classmates, I never got home when it was light out. I should also note the bike was much too large for me, so I had to jump on it, pedal to my destination and jump off. I couldn't just stop and start as needed.

So one night happy little Eileene is riding her bike through the northern Berlin suburb, humming about the alps, when a bunch of creatures started emerging from the Brandenburg forest.  One, then two, then before I knew it a huge group of creatures walked out of the forest and into the street in front of me. 

At first I thought they were wolves, but then I noticed there were probably not any wolves as big as these things to be found.  They were as large as a car, brown, snorting, and…started running towards me.  Luckily I’m a fast biker, so I took off in the other direction as fast as I could go, biking an extra two miles around the neighborhood to get to my house. I pretty much threw my bike on the porch and ran into the house, sort of like kids did on Are You Afraid of the Dark when they had  just barely made it home before being snatched up by a monster.

If I believed in mythical creatures, I’d have insisted  they were bigfoot and his kids running around.  But I didn’t, so I burst into my host family’s house blabbering in German about these big monsters that popped out of the forest and chased me home.  I barely made it alive, I was sure of it.  My host dad looked all grave and then got really excited telling me about these “wildschweine” that lived in the area and sometimes came out at night. They were both loved and feared by Germans.

So when retelling this story the other night,  my friends demanded I find out the background behind why the wildschweine evoked such fear.  They believed me about the size and ferocity of them, but not that I should have actually feared for my life.  So I started researching the wildschweine on the train ride back to Charlottesville from New York.  While I didn’t find any smoking gun accounts of wild boars eating children and puppies, I did find some pretty interesting information about them and why they’re so prevalent.

Here’s what I found in a news article written just a year after my program ended: “Clemens von Saldern just erected an electric fence on the site of the Berlin Wall. The organic food distributor isn't rebuilding the Iron Curtain -- he's trying to stop wild boar from tearing up his garden.”

Well, according to my host dad, gardens weren’t the only things the wild boar tore up.  Supposedly they’d been known to kill animals and… children. Since I’m not that much larger than most children, I took that to mean they might try to kill me too.  However, there were some super secret Pig Aversion Tactics (PAT) to thwart them. 

My host dad, a former German judge named Klaus, was insistent that I learn a few lessons in protecting myself from the wildschweine should I encounter them again.  Step 1) jump on top of car and make a lot of noise until pig left or until someone (hopefully an adult larger than myself) would hear me and come to my aid.  If there was no car upon which to leap, I should move on to the next step. Step 2) Pull jacket or outerwear up over head, extend arms, and stand on tiptoes making loud noise until pig left.  This was supposed to make me appear larger than the wildschweine and they would be scared of me and run.  This sounded easy enough, and it was!

  The next time the wild boars came out, not only did I jump off my bike and onto a car, I combined step 2 in an advanced PAT and pulled my coat over my head and started hollering at them.  Well, I’m some sort of PAT genius because it worked and they ran the other way.   I never feared the wildschweine again, but I still like to tell the story of me thwarting them like I’m some sort of badass.

Upon further reading today, I learned that the wild boar are so prevalent in Germany because of Nazi Hermann Goerring (Hitler’s number 2 man). He loved the wild boar so much he enacted a hunting edict known as the “Reich Hunting Law” that required hunters to feed wild game enough food to get them through the winter if they intended to hunt and kill them.  That law is still in effect and some hunters feed the wildschweine way too much so unless they’re shot, they pretty much live and breed without hindrance.  Had I known that, I’d have taken up boar hunting as a hobby. My host parents probably would have frowned upon that because they were vegetarians.  They also almost starved me to death with their vegetarian food, but that post is for another day.

Here's a pic of me, and a wildschweine.  I photoshopped it to give you the full effect (you have to click on it and it will get bigger).

Me, scared in Europe (left); wildschweine being ferocious (right).

I want to ride my bicycle. I want to ride my bike.

Sadly my trip to New York City has come to a close. This also means my daily spinning at Soul Cycle has also ended.  Today I rode with the coolest Soul Cycle instructor ever (and my favorite), Lori A. Her classes are awesome and I highly recommend anyone who wants to have the most fun and intense cycling class ever should sign up for one if you’re in the City.  It’s far more intense and challenging than any other spinning or indoor cycling class in New York.

We dance on the bike, we lift weights, we bike in sync; but most of all the instructors encourage riders to be inspired and we remember that what is weighing heavily on us right now probably will not seem so bad tomorrow.  The following may sound whimsical, but it's true. Each class is filled with positive motivation and encouragement to be the best we can be and give the most we can give on the bike at the moment and forget our worries.  Today, Lori encouraged us to pick something to ride for that wasn’t about ourselves and had nothing to do with us and to give a little more effort on the bike for that cause.  It was good to be reminded that there are more important things in the world than what we feel that is pressuring us at the moment.  That’s why I love Soul Cycle; I always leave feeling awesome. 

Every time I visit New York, I make sure to sign up for indoor cycling there on the Upper West Side.  In the four days spent in the city, I have taken seven Soul Cycle classes…I can’t wait to move to the city for good and go everyday! My friend from college encouraged me to start cycling this summer at Soul Cycle and I’m certainly glad I took her advice because I’m now hooked.  Since I began cycling this summer, my fitness level has improved immensely and so has my energy level. 

Here is a picture of Lori and me after class.  She’s awesome. 

SOPA Blackout

http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2012/01/sopa-piracy-costs/

http://americancensorship.org/

FYI, SOPA could end Craigslist and online second-hand markets. Some major supporters of SOPA are manufacturers of electronics equipment and cables. Companies such as Monster are supporting it to keep their products off the second-hand market by shutting down the websites that promote second-hand sales. Sorry this blog post is so short, I'm too busy selling my Monster Beats and cables on CL in protest of SOPA.

I don't think piracy is bad but censorship is definitely bad, and without freedom of information there is no freedom at all.

Do what you love, but do it wisely.

This is the beginning of a three part series on antiquing.  No, it’s not all about antiques, but about cool things I’ve learned while antiquing.  Today I’ll talk about how I got into antiquing and how it is important to do something you love.

As I’ve mentioned earlier in my post on the Aggro Crag, I have a little antiques business as a side hobby.  My life has also gotten better as I’ve incorporated more things in it that are not so single-focused such as just law school or law-related things.

 I’ve always liked antique and vintage things, and my aunt who raised me recently passed away leaving me with a pile of things to get rid of.  I’m never one for getting someone else to do something for me that I can do for myself, so I decided to sell her stuff on my own instead of hiring an auctioneer or estate salesperson.  The problem with this was, her stuff wasn’t very valuable, just a bunch of things she personally liked (such as pig figurines and chicken figurines…).  In order to start a business with this stuff, I was going to have to acquire a few marquee pieces.

So I started going to live auctions in central Virginia, and it has become a great pastime.  I thought I knew a lot about antiques and collectables from watching every single episode of Pawn Stars, Storage Wars, American Pickers, Auction Kings, and Antiques Roadshow. However, I didn’t really learn the trade until I started frequenting auctions. 

Before I started going to live auctions, I had a small money-making side venture where I ordered lots of vintage jewelry off of ebay and picked out the scrap gold and sterling.  Almost every single pack had at least one piece of precious metal in it that I could sell for 10-100x what I paid for the lot.  This was at the height of the gold bubble. Personally I think silver is a better investment than gold, so I sold all of the scrap gold I found for spot price and have kept the silver as an investment.

Buying things at a low price and selling them for a higher price has always been, and always will be one way to make money no matter how the economy is going (just be careful and know when the market is at its peak i.e. why I don't invest in gold). The prices you pay and will be able to sell for are what will fluctuate, not the activity itself.  

However, I guess I only had an edge for a year or so because after I spent a summer neglecting my hobby and working in New York, the prices on the lots shot up and people realized they were tossing gold and silver away for $3-$10 to a hustler. It is no longer profitable to order an entire lot of jewelry on ebay to flip the gold. My jewelry ebay-ing was a lot of fun, but also left me with a ton of vintage and contemporary costume jewelry that was not melt-able metal. At one of my auctions, I found a jewelry display case and now sell jewelry at my stand, too.  It’s proven to be my biggest seller!

My stand is at Rivertown Antiques Mall in Scottsville, Virginia and it’s called “Eileene’s Treasure Trove.”  It’s a really fun side venture because I get to go out actively searching for stuff to flip.

Promoting my antiques stand was not the point of this post, though.  It's to encourage more young adults (and older ones to) to make time to do things you love. Don't put off rewarding and possibly life-changing things today because you think you do not have the time or ability due to some larger commitment such as school or career. It's very possible and very reasonable to do everything you love to do.Taking time away from your primary life activity also helps to make that activity more rewarding as well.

I started my antiques business as a way to do a lot of my hobbies at once, and to also build something out of the loss of my aunt.  It’s been a lot of fun and big challenge.  I have inventory and price lists of all of my items, compiled from hours of researching the market and the items.  

Going to auctions and meeting with the veteran dealers who frequent them has also been helpful.   I’ve learned that older people can be a huge resource and most all of the people I’ve met at auctions seemed very excited to see a young person joining the mix.  

So I’m writing this post to encourage everyone, no matter how busy or stressed, to start doing what you love and adding aspects to your life. I’m not saying to quit your job or quit school, but find a way to make what you like to do a more integral part of your life.  Who knows, it may make you better at the normal things in your life and help you enjoy them more.

I can tell you first hand that my life is much better since I’ve integrated more things into it, not just from antiquing. I lost myself for a while in the beginning of law school because I was adhering to standards set by other people. I stopped thinking creatively and thought that by going against the standard I was somehow a failure.   I believed I had to have the same goals and interests and had to work towards those same goals all the time.  I forgot what really made my life more fulfilling and happy.  Now it’s different.  Everything I want to do, I try it.  I don’t let it become my life, merely one aspect of it.

 Now a lot of people probably thought I was being hair-brained by starting an antiques business while being a full-time law student.  If anything though, it’s made me a better student because I have something else to get excited about instead of having a one track school/party/school/law stuff/school mind.

Make time in your day to do fun stuff and to become more dynamic.  Everyday I try to set a goal for myself. Sometimes I complete them, sometimes I don’t. But usually I’m a better person at the end of the day for trying.

 Since I’ve started antiquing on the side, my life has drastically improved, my personality is what it really is, and I wake up each day excited instead of with dread at the same mundane things. I’ve met new people who’ve given me advice that can be carried into many aspects of my life and for that I’m thankful.

So, do what you love. But do it wisely. 

(Pardon any typos, I'm writing this post during an hour break between spinning and NYC sightseeing).

Changing the world, one pageant at a time.

This idea is going to change the world.

After watching Toddlers and Tiaras last night, I couldn’t stop thinking of ways to make money off of stupid people.  Stupid people are great, really.  They’ll fall for anything and you can pretty much convince them to buy anything.

I kept researching toddler and child beauty pageants and I came across a link to a site that sells you a crown and a title of “state ambassador” for merely $195.  You just send in your picture and they’ll mail you a sash, crown, and title!  It is also very popular.  This is great.  It means there is a huge  market of stupid people who want to just give away $195 for a made up title and a $1.99 crown. 

So I’ve decided I’m opening my own online pageant site.  I think I’m pretty respectable and people will want to be in my pageant.  So I’ll charge $350 (and give them a $3.99 crown) and market my pageant as more high end.  It’ll be a Veblen good in the toddler pageant circuit.   Why would pageant moms want their little princess to have the cheap $195 title and crown, when they can get the $350 title and crown and be so much better than the $195 girls? I'm going to be so rich from this legal fraud.

In the alternative, I might just start a real pageant circuit. I have two ideas for this, the first is just for fun, but the second is to change the world (we all have a do-gooder streak in us). 

Another set of who I believe to be gullible people are those who will pay money for “religious” based consumer goods.  I have always believed someone’s religion is not something that should be profited from, because it leaves a person in a very vulnerable position believing if they throw more money at you they’ll be in a better position spiritually.  However, I do not have a problem with taking money from vapid pageant moms who exploit their children so I might start a religious pageant circuit.  On a side note, almost all of the pageant moms are really fugly yet think they're gorgeous, so I'm pretty sure they're living vicariously through their less fugly child.  Among the criteria for Little Miss Religious Queen would be a “wholesome” image (not glitz and glammed up sexified children), talent in the name of the almighty, and whether or not they have a purity ring. Hahahahaa.  Just for fun, I’d make them memorize and act out bible verses and passages, probably from Leviticus just for kicks and giggles.

If that fails, I will just start a circuit of pageants for girls who are smart and also care about their appearance.  Girls would compete in a series of events similar to a real beauty pageant, but also have a  series of quizzes, play a jeopardy type game, write a book report on something, and other cranial challenges. 

Just like everything in the world, there will be unintended consequences from this. There is one interesting (and world-changing!) byproduct of this pageant idea, though.  Girls who are smart probably come from parents who are smart, and therefore won’t pay my competitive yet outrageously high pageant fee.  However, the dumb parents won't know the difference and will think their little pretty child is smart AND beautiful, and will enroll her and instill upon her the belief that she must win this pageant to be awesome.  That means a bunch of dumb and pretty girls will still want to win the title of Little Miss Smartie Pants.  This will encourage them to read more, improve their knowledge of history and current events, and to try to learn in order to be a winner.  My pageant will be good for American culture because the spawn of vapid, shallow mothers will become educated and more well-rounded.  Accordingly, their values should also change

This will basically cause an opposite scenario to the one posed in Mike Judge’s cult classic, Idiocracy.  Society will get smarter and mankind will be saved.

Anyway, I’m writing this blog post from the train!! I’m currently on the Amtrak heading to New York City to visit my friends, party, and go cycling at Soul-Cycle.  I’m pretty obsessed with indoor cycling and really think I will open my own cycling studio one day when I retire from law! I am taking two back-to-back cycling classes as soon as I get there, then hitting the town.  Here is a picture of me on the train, I love trains!

Should I drop out of law school to start a children's pageant circuit? Yes.

Tonight I had a huge dinner with a friend and am now being lazy and watching TV.  But I’m not watching just anything, I’m watching Toddlers and Tiaras! It’s the best document of human error and self-delusion I’ve ever seen. It’s even better than the Real Housewives of New Jersey. Still, it's inspired me to start researching toddler beauty pageants, even though they're mired in controversy. There's a lot of money to be made in the children's pageant circuit.

The mothers (and shockingly sometimes the dads too) on the show are horrible and go to all sorts of extremes to make their daughters look better.  Several moms spray tan their children and hire photo re-touchers to make their pictures look more flawless (obviously b/c they’re too challenged to do it themselves.).  It’s terrible, really. The moms encourage their toddlers to be shallow and judge themselves based on their appearance and sexual appeal than on their merits or depth. 

One little Hawaiian girl was adorable, though. She said “I’m not nervous because I like my face and my hair, too.” Touche, little girl.  Touche. But that was before her mom started giving her loads of Mountain Dew and candy to make her more hyper for the pageant… She probably won’t like the way she looks when all that sugar makes her a little fatty in a couple of years.

However, I love watching stuff like this. It makes me happy to have intelligence and thankful I wasn’t put in pageants when I was a little kid.  It’s such a good portrayal of the shallowness in our society.  It also makes me want to start a pageant organization.  I’ve always been entrepreneurial and am always looking for a way to make some money. 

One good way would be to organize some pageants for children or a “Pageant Agency” that makes all the pageant arrangements like a travel agency.  One mom spent $7,150 on just ONE of her daughter’s pageants. The pageant organizers are the smart ones here, easily making more dough than a lawyer.  Law school is clearly a waste of my time when the real money to be made is in the toddler pageant circuit.  Pagenat fees are upwards of $1000 per kid, and the only prizes they give out are like a $1000 savings bond or a $1000 scholarship to one out of every hundred or so contestants.  These people are idiots. So long, suckers. I’m starting a pageant circuit.

Just for fun, here's a pic of me showing the face I would make if I were forced to do a toddler pageant as a child.

 

Top Five Stupid Things People Believe, Part 1.

Today, I got to be the guest blogger on a popular blog called, “The Kooz Top Five.”  Here is the post I did only I added some pictures.  I’m going to start a periodic series of posts myself on Stupid Things People Believe so I thought this was probably the best place to start.  Please enjoy and check out The Kooz Top Five here.

The Top Five Stupid Things People Actually Believe about the Government

Everyone knows the government has secrets the rest of us can’t ever know, but some people go a little further in their distrust of the government.  There are a large number of people who think the establishment is controlled by all sorts of nefarious leaders (and creatures).  They obviously have more faith in the government than I do because I’m pretty sure our leaders are not nearly as cool or capable as these conspiracy theories assume.  If they were, I’d trust them a whole lot more myself.  Here are the Top-Five stupid things people actually believe about the government.  I follow each one with a link to the theory’s all-sorts of crazy Internet source.  

5 - Fluoride. That fluoride in your drinking water? Well it’s not to make your teeth all nice and pretty for your lover.  It’s really the government’s way to enslave the population.

There is a conspiracy theory that Flouride in the public water systems is used as mind control, or population control, or to make us all slaves to the man. Some believe it makes citizens more likely to be subjugated, develop schizophrenia, or to become ill.  Read more about it here. 

4 - Government mind-control.  Your resistance is futile. Not only are they poisoning our water, but a lot of people believe they control our minds through subliminal messages in the TV. I’m almost certain this is not true because I’ve tried using subliminal messages to get better at life and they DON’T WORK; I totally wasted my $1.99 on iTunes!  This conspiracy theory also assumes the government is a lot cooler than it actually is and that the population is a lot harder to control than it actually is.  In reality, you can pretty much convince the masses to believe anything without subliminal messages or drugging their water. Read more about it here.

3 - Aliens and nukes. The government’s nuclear weapons sites are being visited by UFOs. These UFOs are disarming the weapons by causing the systems to lose contact with control and the UFOs also cut the power to the weapons. I can’t really explain this better than the UK Daily Mail can, so read more of the crazy here.

2 - New World Order.   You thought the New World Order was a professional wrestling group? Wrong. There is a New World Order of super elite people operating as a shadow government. They are the evil masterminds behind every world war, major event, and they control the media and the entertainment industry. Lady Gaga is their minion. They also caused the recession because they control the economy. They hang out at places like, “Bohemian Grove” in California and participate in orgies and occult rituals. After that they go to something called the Bildeberg Hotel in the Netherlands where they plot more ways to take over the world.  They are also behind the aforementioned water fluoridation so they can more easily control the masses… Read more here.

1 - Reptoids.  Believe it or not, there are a lot of people who actually think the following is true.  There is a secret race of reptiles controlling the world.  Yep, that’s right. People really and truly believe some lizards came down from space eons ago and they control the human population.  These lizards take on human form during the day and then shed their skins at night to show their true reptilian form. That New World Order I just told you about, well obviously they’re all lizard people.  You think that nice man in the Oval Office is a human? Nope, at night he shape-shifts into a lizard and so does his wife. You think Prince William and Kate Middleton are sweet newlywed couple? You’re wrong, they are Lizards.

This website even calls the political reptilians out by name here.  Time even has a take on the conspiracy.

In the interest of full-disclosure though, here is a Cracked.com list of seven conspiracy theories that actually did turn out to be true... so you never know really.

Check out the Kooz Top 5, it's a great blog!

Do you have it...? The best investment of them all.

Sometimes I like to look on ebay for rare items of great beauty.  Antique jewelry, ancient artifacts, shoes, and…pieces of glory from our youth. 

That’s how I happened to see a piece of the Aggro Crag on ebay this past summer, selling for a mere $1499.  Many may look at that price tag and say, WTF? Who would pay $1499 for someone else’s trophy?  Well, right now I’m kicking myself because I didn’t buy it.  

If you don’t know what the Aggro-Crag is and you grew up in America during the 1990s, quite frankly you should be ashamed of yourself or go punch your parents in the face for depriving you of such an important piece of American culture. Really.  However, I know not everyone is as culturally well rounded as the average 1990s child, so I’ll explain.

During the illustrious ‘90s every child wanted to get a piece of the Aggro-crag. This is a true fact.  It was the Bugati Veyron Super Sport of any and all prizes that could ever be won.  The difficulty it took to obtain a piece could not be surpassed.

First you had to go to Nickelodeon Studios—filmed live from Universal Studios in Orlando Florida—and then be lucky enough to make it on their game show Guts (only 126 episodes ever aired. Ever.)!  Then you had to perform feats of strength and skill then make it to the top of the biggest behemoth of an obstacle of all time, the Aggro Crag. That’s not all, though. You also had to make it to the top before the two other contestants did.  If you were the strongest, the bravest, and the most awesome contestant that day, you had glory beyond imagination and took home a piece of the Aggro-Crag.

Now, I’ve been lucky in life in that I’ve never really been a jealous person or covetous at all, but sometimes I wish I were one of the 126 brave souls to have taken home a piece of the Aggro-Crag. When I say sometimes, I mean every goddamned day. When I’m the boss, if a man came into my office with no resume and simply flung his piece of the Crag on my desk , I’d hire him on the spot. In fact, I’d give him my job.  The blood, sweat, and tears that went into getting a piece of that treacherous rock mean more than a half-dozen Ivy League degrees. That’s how much we all want a piece of the Aggro-Crag.

Hundreds of thousands  (probably millions) of kids who grew up during the 1990s watched Nickelodeon and watched Guts.  All of them had at least a fleeting moment when they too wanted to make it to the top of that mountain.

It was the only item unattainable by all children rich and poor.  Neither Kevin McCallister nor Richie Rich himself could have even gotten a piece for Christmas. Host Mike O’Malley filled all of our little heads with delusions of grandeur asking, “do you have it?” If only we could get on the show, we could maybe, just maybe get a piece of the Aggro Crag.  And if we couldn’t make it to the top, then at least we hoped for a chance to hold or touch a piece of it.

This brings me back to the title of this post and why I’m kicking myself now because I didn’t buy the piece of the Crag. Quite simply, it’s because it’s going to be worth about a million dollars or so in about 20 years.  As our generation ages and becomes successful with money to burn, we’re going to want to spend that money on the things from our youth that brought us joy and that we wanted really badly. 

As a side hobby, I have an antiques business, and one set of antiques worth quite a bit of money nowadays are toys from the 1950s-70s.  This is because the collectors are at the age when they have lots of money and now want to return to the innocence of their childhoods and own either the toys they had loved and lost, or the toys they wanted yet couldn’t afford.  

See, our generation is different.  All of the toys we wanted were mass-produced in Asia out of plastic so they’ll still be floating around in abundance when we’re middle aged or old and gray.  The things of longing we’re going to want to spend our hard earned money on will be those items of great rarity that all wanted, but few ever got.  

If there were thousands of pieces of the Aggro-Crag, I’d postulate the going rate for a piece to a collector in 20 or so years would be in the low thousands of dollars range following current antique prices and trends.  However, there are only 126 of them. To put this into perspective, there are a whopping 540 Stradivarious violins currently accounted for.  You have to at least expect some of those 126 pieces were lost or destroyed as all things are, too. That makes them all the more rare and all the more valuable. Far more than 126 Crag-coveters are going to be worth millions of dollars, too.

So while the rest of us are sitting around watching our 401ks grow and playing the stock market, those with a piece of the Aggro-crag will be laughing all the way to the bank, several times because everyone is going to want what they have. That is why I should have bought that piece on ebay for $1499 this past summer.

Two Skills One Should Acquire in Case of Locked-In Syndrome

 There are two important things you need to know in case you ever fall victim to something called, “Locked in Syndrome.”

What is Locked-In Syndrome, you may ask? Well it’s the unfortunate situation where a person due to an accident, stroke, overdose, etc is paralyzed. He also loses his ability to communicate. The worst thing, though, is the mind is fully functional and aware during this time. The person who has Locked-In is basically a prisoner in his or her own body without sight, hearing, smell, or an ability to speak or move. The only thing they can really do is blink their eyes or breathe.

The first time I ever thought about Locked-in syndrome was when I was a child and just happened to watch a music video countdown when Metallica’s One video came on.  Those of you who are familiar with the song know it is an anti-war song and the end tells how a landmine in a war “has taken my sight, Taken my speech, Taken my hearing, Taken my arms, Taken my legs, Taken my soul.”  In the music video there are doctors standing around a patient without arms or legs, but he is somehow sending out Morse Code.  The code is asking for the doctors to kill him, please.  I was sort of traumatized by this video ever since and have always hoped I don’t ever end up in a similar situation.  Watch it here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EzgGTTtR0kc

I thought about this video again today.  So looked it up and watched it, and learned that the patient in the video would classify as “locked-in,” thus prompting me to research Locked-In syndrome.  Learning the condition made me want to figure out things a Locked-in person could do with all of that spare time.

On the bright side, I learned that Locked-in is pretty uncommon. It will more than likely never affect anyone ever unless he is gravely injured or has a massive stroke. Nevertheless, it is not hard to be fully prepared for this uncommon situation and learn the skills required.

The only two skills one would really need to know are communicating via Morse Code and Lucid Dreaming.  Assuming all of your medical needs will be taken care of, the only thing a Locked-In patient must worry about is how to communicate and what to do in his spare time.   Of course, both are pretty cool skills to have in non-Locked-in life as well.

Morse code is relatively simple to learn.  I just did it this morning.  It is basically a series of long and short dits and long dahs that each correspond to a letter.  I’ve been spelling things out all morning after memorizing the dit dah combos and then putting them together into words.

Until today, the only Morse code I knew was the international distress signal, SOS. I learned that in college when I was an avid hiker.  SOS is probably the easiest Morse code signal to learn and perhaps the most important.  It is three short dits corresponding with an S, three long dahs which are O, and then three short dits  (S) again. It can be communicated through light, sound, blinking, tapping, honking, etc. S would sound like, dit-dit-dit and O would be dah-dah-dah.   Each dah lasts as long as three dits when communicating via Morse code. 

All morning I have been walking around my house dit dah-ing away at the Morse code alphabet.  For example, my name spelled E-I-L-E-E-N-E is dit Dit-dit Dit-duh-dit-dit dit dit duh-dit dit.  Each “e” is merely one dit.

So if you are ever trapped as a prisoner in your own body, the easiest and only way for you to communicate is through blinking or breathing Morse code.  Upon further research I found that it is the primary means of communication that doctors have with their patients who are Locked-in.  Some patients actually lead a very engaging life and have careers, all because they know Morse code. Learn it here: http://www.learnmorsecode.com/

In fact there is a former major league soccer player who has been “locked-in” for years, but has a job as a soccer recruiter who watches soccer players on film. He then communicates his impressions of the players to coaches via Morse code.  They decide whether or not to recruit the players based on his impressions.

Learning how to lucid dream is the second important skill one should obtain in order to lead a pleasant life while Locked-in.

Another line in One by Metallica is “Can’t tell if this is true or a dream.” Which brings me to my next skill one needs to know before falling victim to Locked-in syndrome.  That would be Lucid Dreaming.

Knowing how to lucid dream is crucial in case you are ever locked-in.  It’s really the patient’s only means of entertainment should he also be blinded by the condition.  Minds are fickle things and if you know what you are doing, you can just go on a magical adventure in your head for the duration you are Locked-In.  Most Locked-In patients are stuck for life, so knowing how to properly lucid dream is like having a free pass to do whatever the heck you want—in your head.   

Lucid dreaming occurs when your mind is fully aware during your dream.  A lucid dream can go on and on and on.  A locked-in person can dream that he or she is out in the real world doing fun things and their bodies will actually feel as though they are doing them in their dream-like state.

I can actually imagine what the locked-in patient must feel like. For the past couple of years, I’ve had something called “sleep paralysis” very occasionally.  It is a phenomenon where you lay down to go to sleep but sometimes your body falls asleep before your mind, so your body is paralyzed but your mind is fully awake. 

The first time it happened to me I was terrified but after a while, I was able to will my body awake after not knowing what the heck was going on.  I looked it up, and learned what it was and that it is sort of common.  A few months later sleep paralysis happened again, then again.

 After a while, I stopped getting scared of it and decided to just have fun when it occurred. When I did, I started having the most vivid dreams during which I was fully aware.  When the body cannot perceive anything externally yet the mind is fully functioning, it will begin to create senses of its own.  It is actually quite fun.  

Lucid dreaming is pretty cool to do, and a lot of people spend tons of money to learn lucid dreaming. Some pay special institutes to train them in how to do it or to place them in a “sensory deprivation” chamber, which induces a lucid dream.  There is one such place quite close to UVA called the Monroe Institute. 

If you are like I am and try to learn things on your own the hard-knock way, it is very easy to learn lucid dreaming. There are various online tutorial which are pretty accurate, or you can happen to figure it out during sleep paralysis like I did.  You can also make your own “poor man’s version” of a sensory deprivation chamber using the Ganzfeld method.  This poor man’s version uses ping-pong balls, white noise, and blankets to simulate a sensory deprivation state. Learn it here: http://mindhacks.com/2008/11/17/ganzfeld-hallucinations/

You cut a ping pong ball in half, cover each eye with one, pop on some headphones playing white noise, and cover yourself with a blanket or sit in a heated room.  After sitting still for about 30 minutes, the experimenter will start to create images and impressions in his mind because there are none being perceived externally.  Note, I have never tried this but it is renowned by researchers and lucid dreamers alike for its results.

Lucid dreaming can be a great way for people to go on a sort of vacation in their mind if there is not a way to have one in real life.

A locked-in patient can do it on his own and very easily because his senses will already be deprived. 

So friends, knowing Morse code is important and so is Lucid dreaming. Especially if you ever find yourself with “Locked-in Syndrome.”

The world won’t really end this year, it’s only 1715. Duh.

Today, I noticed a pretty significant hurdle in my plans to write something or try something new everyday for a year.  The Mayan Calendar, dum dum dum.  Supposedly the world will end on December 21^st, 2012, a mere 15 days before my 27^th birthday! Just ask any old person and they’ll tell you “people have been saying the world is going to end all my life.”

In all likelihood 12/21/2012 will pass without any cataclysmic event. Just like all those other apocalyptic prophecies.  I'm talking about Hale Bop, Y2K, and, oh yeah, remember the rapture last year? 

So I started thinking about something I read on Cracked a year or so ago about a little known theory positing the middle ages didn’t actually happen. If that is the case, it means we have an extra 297 years to party like it's 1999.

If you actually believe something cataclysmic will occur at the end of the Mayan Calendar, you may be able to rest assuredly tonight. There is something called “The Phantom Time Theory” developed by German Conspiracy Theorist Heribert Illig and scientist Dr. Hans-Ulrich Niemitz. Take that, Mayans.

Illig and Niemitz believe it is actually the year 1715 and the Middle Ages were merely the product of either misinterpretation, ego-centricity on the part of the Holy Roman emperors, or just plain made up by bored historians and chronologists.  Notably though, they believe most documents we believe to be from the medieval times are actually outright forgeries or misdated.  This is a pretty western-centric theory, but here is the reasoning behind it.

Since I’ve always believed our conception of time is really just a social construct and someone had to determine what was what or when was when, I started reading more about the theory this morning.  It turns out, there are actually some respected historians and chronologists who believe that our primary sources and modern scientific dating techniques really could be wrong or have been interpreted erroneously, concluding that our current conception of dates and events are less than accurate.

 For example a rather respected Russian mathematician named Anatoly Fomenko believes, “Archaeological, dendrochronological, paleographical and carbon methods of dating of ancient sources and artifacts are both non-exact and contradictory, therefore there is not a single piece of firm written evidence or artifact that could be reliably and independently dated earlier than the XI century.”   Fomenko bases his theory on statistical correlations from primary sources, zodiac dating, and reviewing the mathematical and astronomical premises behind historical chronology.  

Astronomically, the Gregorian calendar we know now could be correct as recordings or lunar eclipse and comet sightings have been dated with much accuracy.  However, Fomenko and Illig also believe these lunar year projections are inaccurately recorded as well.  Radiocarbon dating also seems to disprove Fomenko and Illig, which each of them say is inaccurate too, so it is sort of a roundabout. 

Nothing is certain in life and plans change all the time.  At the end of the day though, one thing is for sure; if the Mayans were right, we had better all start hoping Fomenko, et al. are too!

Gratitude is underrated

Today I turned 26 years old. That's young, but it's actually kind of old. I remember thinking today that I'm not nearly as creative as I was as a child, and I never really elaborate on any of my novel thoughts or random musings in an intellectual way as I did in the past. When I think of something particularly interesting (or so I like to think) I adapt it to a facebook status but never really elaborate on it or give reasoning behind it. When I was a child I used to lie in bed and make out scenes from the shadows my night light cast on the ceiling from my bedroom furniture lines; I wondered if there had been other sentient life on planet earth before mankind as we know it existed; I wondered if Abraham had really been a selfish bastard when he was going to kill his helpless boy merely to avoid pissing off his God before I knew who Kierkegaard was. Now I don't really lay around and think of those things any more, and I realized that today. So I decided that once a day while I'm 26, I'm going to sit down and actually think through whatever random thought crosses my mind. I'm also going to attempt to do one new thing per day (we'll see how long this lasts) while I'm 26.

Let's start with why I think happiness is excellence is a good title for this blog.  I like it because throughout my life, I've kept a positive attitude no matter what came my way trying to be grateful for the great things I had in my life instead of dwelling on the things I did not. People who know me well know what the things I do not have are, and also know that I do not let their absence affect me and appreciate those I have and those I had and lost.  This has made all of the difference.  No matter what happens in life, things will always get better and that has proven to be true for as long as I can remember.  Right now, I'm probably the happiest I've ever been. Everyone is excellent if they're happy with what they have and who they are. We spend so much time pursuing an idea of excellence that we forget the wonderful things in our lives at the moment. Gratitude is underrated.

Second, I sat down and tried to think of my favorite things if I were taking a survey in some generic magazine geared towards 20-somethings. Below are the answers I'd give to the hypothetical questions I hope I would be answering. I did not really learn that much about myself except that I have different taste in music.

Favorite Albums:
1) Paranoid by Black Sabbath

2) Natty Dread by Bob Marley

3)Nirvana’s Unplugged in New York

4) Jagged Little Pill (still a product of the 90s)

5)Illmatic by Nas

The last 5 books I read

1)   Superfreakonomics

2)   The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins

3)   Beyond the Paleo Diet

4)   Deep Survival

5)   The Hot Zone

Interesting things I did this year:
1) Started playing banjo
2) Started antiquing
3) Invented something
4) Wrote a Rock Opera
5) Sold my childhood home

Favorite Color: Green

Favorite food: any type of rare beef

Favorite form of exercise: indoor cycling