Argon's Awareness

Applying the Hero's Journey to the Treasure Hunt

2009-06-09T15:28:00.000-07:00

I was reading about the mythic structure of "Hero's Journey" so that I could apply it to the "Hunt for the Chakra Jewels" DVD to try and make the story behind the treasure hunt more compelling. I got a good guide about how to apply the archtypes and motivations from a book called "The Writer's Journey" with tips about putting the stages of the journey into 3 Acts and how to put the high points of the stages into dramatic plot points to sustain interest throughout the 3 Acts. That is a better framework to making the story more cohesive throughout all the stages of the Hunt. Also making the puzzles and clues relate better to the story if they are put into parts of the journey.

I figured I could use the archtype of the Herald as the representative of the Gamemaster and that would be a better name for character. So that the 1st Act would be the stage of "The Call to Adventure" and the hook to get the people that bought the DVD to identify with the cause of embarking on the quest and interested enough with the story to put some effort into solving the puzzles.

I can use the Angel of Death in the Tarot Card as a archtype of The Shadow to show the fears and hestitations to the Hero would have to take up the challenges to clarify the stakes of trying to transcend Death. The hazards of leaving the Ordinary World and entering the Special World with all the rewards to be earned making the effort worthwhile.

I could also use The Empress Tarot card as an archtype of the Ally to aid the Heroes that buy the DVD to impart gifts that help them on their quest and the Justice Tarot card as a Mentor to give them training in the rules of the Special World of the treasure hunt. That will help sustain the interest over the length of the hunt since it will maintain the dramatic tension over the 3 Acts because the hunt will include all the stages of the journey when I give all the characters and archtypes an arc of progress to follow

I can put the stages of Act I on the DVD, Act II in the search for the Keys and Act III opening the locks and finding the prizes. The DVD will include the stage "The Call to Adventure" then the webpage with the chakras clues will include "The Refusal of the Call" stage and buying the stuff at CafePress will be the "Crossing of the First Threshold" stage with the Temperance as the Shapeshifter and the Star Tarot card as the Trickster archtypes providing the roles of the Threshold Guardian as tests to show commitment to the quest

The book goes into some detail about the origin, purpose and value of cathersis that is what I think is important to give the treasure hunt a more compelling purpose than just winning the prizes

The Benefits of shifting to Integral Ethics

2009-05-22T21:35:00.000-07:00

With the current economic crisis finally showing the failure of the "greed is good" strategy of only focusing on the bottom line for short term profit while ignoring the responsibilities of more than selfish interests. Perhaps it is time for more people to embrace a more efficient ehtical system that includes more options in order to get the economy working again with a lot more long term stability.

Hopefully this will point out how inept and mistaken the strategies of being selfish are and the consequences of the disease of Boomeritis when people only focuse on one side of the situation and forget the balance of the other.

For example in the field of Health Care, when HMOs focus only on the profits of the business then services they are supposed to provide suffer from neglect in quality for their customers because they are only concerned with the least cost, not the value the the customers are getting.

The people on the business side get rich, but the customers undergo substandard service which impacts their health and so the HMO become parasites that feed off the host of their customers but ultimately kills them to move on to others.

In the practice of considering only one side of just Depth, The Borg are the ultimate facists since they oppress all holons below them and adapt them to serve their purposes. The Borg take pathological hierachies to an extreme because they are too arrogant to allow themselves to be part of another whole, they only want to be just a whole period. They don't consider anything to be larger than themselves or share in the communion with fellow holons in the hierachy, they just want to dominate them with their own agency. The Borg focus on only power replaces communion, domination replaces communication and oppression replaces reciprocity. Any attempt at balance that doesn't fit their narrow idea of perfection is considered irrelevant.

I think a good way to get people interested in the video game would be to highlight the benefits of applying the Integral Life Practices to everyday situations. By having exercises, puzzles and quests to motivate the players to explore the Basic Moral Intuition by figuring out how to implement different degrees of the Depth and Span of Holons, it will give the practice in going beyond the usual reality tunnels of black and white choices to give them experience in choosing between more options.

In the MMORPG they could start out as holons at low level of matter like atoms and develope their characters through each successive level of complexity making choices of the 4 drives of holons along the way then as instincts of life and different degrees of Depth and Span are developed they could make choices based on the Basic Moral Intuition to practice what they are like at each level of perspective. So that when the more inclusive levels of consiousness and greater depth are achived they have more and more options of Depth and Span to choose from.

Ken Wilber’s Twenty Tenets are:

1. Reality is not composed of things or processes, but of holons, which are wholes that are simultaneously parts.
2. Holons display four fundamental capacities:
a. self-preservation (agency)
b. self-adaptation (communion)
c. self-transcendence
d. self-dissolution
3. Holons emerge.
4. Holons emerge holarchically.
5. Each holon transcends and includes its predecessors.
6. The lower sets the possibilities of the higher; the higher sets the probabilities of the lower.
7. The number of levels which a hierarchy comprises determines whether it is ‘shallow’ or ‘deep;’ and the number of holons on any given level we shall call its ‘span.’
8. Each successive level of evolution produces greater depth and less span.
9. Destroy any type of holon, and you will destroy all of the holons above it and none of the holons below it.
10. Holarchies co-evolve. The micro is always within the macro (all agency is agency in communion).
11. The micro is in relational exchange with macro at all levels of its depth.
12. Evolution has directionality:
a. increasing complexity.
b. increasing differentiation/integration.
c. increasing organization/structuration.
d. increasing relative autonomy.
e. increasing telos.

According to Wilber, the Twenty Tenets are an attempt to summarize and draw some basic conclusions from dynamic systems theory and the contemporary evolutionary sciences. Calling them "tendencies of evolution" or "propensities of manifestation," the Twenty Tenets operate throughout the three great domains of evolution: the physiosphere, the biosphere, and the noosphere (or matter, life, and mind).

In his presentation, Leonard pointed out that what is both significant and striking about Wilber’s Twenty Tenets is that they describe regularities stretching from the big bang all the way up to exalted spiritual states of consciousness in humans. Here are some are some of the highlights:

Basic Terms

Wilber uses the terms "holons" and "holarchy" throughout the Twenty Tenets. The author of The Ghost in the Machine (1976) Arthur Koestler originally coined the term "holon" to refer to that which is a whole in one context but simultaneously a part in another. For example, the word "bark" is a whole because by itself it has a recognizable and independent meaning. However, in the sentence "the bark of a dog" the word "bark" has a context-specific meaning, which would be different in a separate context, such as "the bark on a tree." The word "bark" thus can be both a whole by itself and a part within the larger context of a sentence. "Holarchy" refers to the embedded nature of holons. For example, the whole sentence "the bark of a dog scared me" can simultaneously be part of a yet larger whole, such as a paragraph. And, in turn, the paragraph can be part of an essay, and so forth.

Tenet 1

Reality is not composed of things or processes, but of holons, which are wholes that are simultaneously parts of other wholes with no upward or downward limit. Since reality is not composed of wholes nor of parts, but of whole/parts, then this approach undercuts the old argument between atomism (all things are fundamentally isolated individual wholes that interact by chance) and wholism (all things are merely strands in a larger web). For Wilber, both of these views by themselves are incorrect. This approach also undercuts the argument the materialists and idealists. Reality is not composed of sub-atomic particles (materialism) nor is it composed of ideas, symbols, or thoughts (idealism). It is composed of holons. According to Wilber, holons can be expressed in material, spiritual, or purely abstract terms. Take mathematics, for example. The various paradoxes that have arisen in Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorem take us into an irreversible, ever-expanding, no upper limit mathematical universe. The totality of mathematical sets can’t be completely determined. If they could be, we could take that a set and continue to generate still larger sets from it. Sets are arranged in a transfinite hierarchy. In mathematics, what we see as today’s wholes may very well become tomorrow’s parts.

Tenets 2 a,b,c,d

2 a: Self-preservation (or agency). A hydrogen atom in a suitable context can keep on being a hydrogen atom. It displays self-preservation in the simple sense of maintaining identity or agency across time. And maybe that is quite remarkable when you think about it. A holon in a living context is an even more remarkable, sophisticated agency. The term autopoiesis refers to how a holon maintains its pattern or structure even as its material components are exchanged. It assimilates the environment to itself. In short, holons are defined not by the stuff of which they are made but by the pattern they display.

2 b: Self-adaptation (or communion). A holon functions not only as a self-preserving whole but also as a part of a larger whole. The partness aspect of a holon is displayed by its capacity to accommodate, to register other holons, to fit into its existing environment. Even electrons accommodate themselves, for example, to the number of other electrons in an orbital shell. This is not to imply that taboo word "intentionality." It is just the capacity to react to the surrounding environment. So, think of these two opposing tendencies—agency and communion: agency as the self-preserving, self-asserting tendency which expresses wholeness and relative autonomy; and communion as the participatory boding, joining tendency which expresses partness in relationship to something larger. An excess of either tendency can deform or kill a holon, whether the growth of a plant or of the patriarchy.

2 c: Self-transcendence. When an oxygen atom and two hydrogen atoms are brought together under suitable conditions, a new and in some way unprecedented holon emerges. This is not just a communion, adaptation, or association. It is a transformation resulting in something novel and emergent. This is what Whitehead calls creativity, the category necessary to describe any other category. This transcendence can result in small or quite large steps in organic evolution in what is called grade. Here, Darwinian gradualism is replaced by Simpson’s quantum evolution, Eldridge and Gould’s punctuated equilibrium, and Michael Murphy’s evolutionary transcendence. In any case, self-transcendence means nothing more or nothing less than that the universe has an intrinsic capacity to go beyond what came before.

2d: Self-dissolution. Holons that are built up through vertical self-transcendence can also break down. When holons dissolve or become unglued, they tend to so along the same vertical sequence along which they were built up.

Leonard pointed out that there is a constant tension among the above four tendencies. For example, helium may be called inert, but a different description is that helium does not want to join into communion (tenet 2b) with other elements.

Tenet 3

Holons emerge. Owing to the self-transcendent capacity of holons, new holons emerge. Sub-atomic particles, atoms, molecules, polymers, cells, and so on, the emergent holon is in some sense novel. They possess properties and qualities that can’t be strictly and totally deduced from their components, and therefore they and their descriptions can’t be reduced without remainder to their component parts. Emergence always means indeterminacy is sewn into the very fabric of the universe. Quoting from Sex, Ecology, Spirituality (p. 47) Leonard read,

Emergence is neither a rare nor an isolated phenomenon. As Varela, Thompson, and Rosch summarize the available evidence: "It is clear that emergent properties have been found across all domains—vortices and lasers, chemical oscillations, genetic networks, developmental patterns, population genetics, immune networks, ecology, and geophysics. What all these diverse phenomena have in common is that in each case a network gives rise to new properties. . . . The emergence of global patterns or configurations in systems of interacting elements is neither an oddity of isolated cases nor unique to [special] systems. In fact, it seems difficult for any densely connected aggregate to escape emergent properties." (Francisco Varela, et. al., The Embodied Mind, pp. 88-90.)

Tenet 4

Holons emerge holarchically. That is, hierarchically. That is, as a series of increasing whole/parts. Organisms contain cells but not vice versa. Cells contain molecules but not vice versa. Molecules contain atoms but not vice versa. That "not vice versa" at each stage is what constitutes unavoidable asymmetry and hierarchy/holarchy. Each deeper or higher holon embraces its junior predecessors and then adds its own new and more encompassing pattern or holon. This is Whitehead’s famous dictum, "the many become one and are increased by one." Quoting from Sex, Ecology, Spirituality (p. 49) Leonard read,

Bertalanffy put it very bluntly: "Reality, in the modern conception, appears as a tremendous hierarchical order of organized entities, leading, in a superposition of many levels, from physical and chemical to biological and sociological systems. Such hierarchical structure and combination into systems of ever higher order, is characteristic of reality as a whole and is of fundamental importance especially in biology, psychology and sociology." (Ludwig Bertalanffy, General Systems Theory, pp. 74, 87.)

It is this idea of hierarchy and holarchy that has put Wilber at odds with the deep ecologists and ecofeminists.

Tenet 5

Each emergent holon transcends but includes its predecessors. Each newly emergent holon preserves the previous holons themselves but negates their separateness or isolatedness. As Hegel said, "to supercede is at once to preserve and negate." In other words, all the lower is in the higher but not all the higher is in the lower. Hydrogen atoms are in the water molecule but the water molecule is not in the atom. We might say the water molecule pervades or permeates the atom but it isn’t actually in it. Just as all of the word is in the sentence but not all the sentence is in the word. The higher holon preserves the lower, but it does somehow limit freedom. Once in a sentence a word can’t take on alternative meaning. Once in a molecule the hydrogen atom can’t go flying around in space and become part of a proto-galaxy.

Tenet 6

The lower sets the possibilities of the higher; the higher sets the probabilities of the lower. Even though the higher goes beyond the lower level, it does not violate the law or pattern of the lower level. It can’t be reduced to the lower level or determined by the lower level, but neither can it ignore the lower level. Your body follows the laws of gravity. Your mind follows other laws, such as those of symbolic communication and linguistic syntax. But if your body falls off a cliff, your mind goes with it. Clearly, the lower sets the possibility of a large framework within which the higher has to operate, but to which it is not confined. As for the higher restricting the possibility of the lower, here is how Sheldrake puts it (Quoted from Sex, Ecology, Spirituality, p.55),

At every level, the fields of the holons are probabilistic, and the material processes within the holon are somewhat random or indeterminate. Higher-level fields may act upon the fields of lower level holons in such a way that their probability structures are modified. This can be thought of in terms of a restriction of their indeterminism: out of the many possible patterns of events that could have happened, some now become much more likely to happen as a result of the order imposed by the higher-level field. This field organizes and patterns the indeterminism that would be shown by the lower-level holons in isolation. (Rupert Sheldrake, The Presence of the Past, pp. 120-121.)

Tenet 7

The number of levels which a hierarchy comprises determines whether it is ‘shallow’ or ‘deep;’ and the number of holons on any given level we shall call its ‘span.’ Let us arbitrarily assign atoms a depth of 3 (since they contain components of at least 2 previous levels). Let us imagine a time in the early universe when there were only atoms and no molecules. In that case, we can say that atoms have a small depth but an enormous span stretching through the existent universe. Thus depth equals 3 and span equals zillions. When molecules first emerged, they had a depth of 4, but initially a very small span. When there is greater vertical dimension to the holon, then there is greater depth to that holon.

Tenet 8

Each successive level of evolution produces greater depth and less span. The greater the depth of a holon, the more precarious its situation. Since its existence depends on the existence of a series of other holons internal to it, and since the lower holons are components of the higher, there can’t be more number of the higher than there are number of components. The number of water molecules will always be less than the hydrogen and oxygen atoms in the universe. The number of cells in the universe will always be less than the number of molecules in the universe. Also, the span of mental holons is much less than the span of living holons. This is called the pyramid of development. Addition 1 to Tenet 8: The greater the depth of a holon, the greater its degree of consciousness. In the case of the simplest holons, Wilber is not referring to consciousness as humans experience it, but is following the lead of major theorists, such as Spinoza, Leibniz, Schopenhauer, Whitehead, Aurobindo, and Schelling, who explicitly recognize the "within" of the universe. Whithead’s prehension, for example, is a sort of rudimentary consciousness. This extends all the way up to high spiritual states, and this makes it an extremely ambitious scheme. One that can’t be proven by our present methods of science.

Tenet 9

Destroy any type of holon, and you will destroy all of the holons above it and none of the holons below it. This is an important tenet because it provides a simple test as to where in the holarchy any holon stands. Let’s again take our familiar holistic sequence, sub-atomic particles, atoms, molecules, cells, and so on. Here each member includes its predecessor(s) but not vice versa. And thus each successive number is indeed more encompassing or thus more holistic. If we destroyed, for example, all the molecules in the universe, we would also destroy all the cells in the universe—all the holons above molecules. But atoms and subatomic particles would or could still exist. None of the lower holons would have to cease existing. For this tenet, Wilber introduces two words representing two qualities that operate in an inverse relationship: fundamental and significant. The more fundamental a holon is, the less significant it is and vice versa. That is, the less depth a holon has, the more fundamental it is to the cosmos, because it serves as a component to so many other holons. Atoms, for example, are very fundamental because molecules, cells, organisms, life, and mind, and higher states, all depend on them. At the same time, the less depth a holon has the less significant it is to the cosmos because it embraces as its own component so little of the cosmos. Primates, as a counter example, are not very fundamental holons because neither atoms nor molecules depend upon them, but they are very significant because they represent and contain atoms, molecules, and cells. They signify more of the cosmos.

Tenet 10

Holarchies co-evolve. Holons don’t evolve alone, because there are no alone holons (there are only fields within fields within fields). This principle is often referred to as "co-evolution," which simply means that the "unit" of evolution is not an isolated holon but a holon plus its inseparable environment. Even though an individual holon exists inseparably within its social environment, its defining factor is its own particular form or pattern. To the degree that we can reasonably recognize that pattern, we will refer to an individual holon. Its environment we will call the social holon.

Tenet 11

The micro is in relational exchange with macro at all levels of its depth. Take a human being as an example using the three levels of matter, life, and mind. All these levels maintain their own existence through a network of relational exchanges with holons at the same depth in the environment. The physical body exists in a system of relational exchanges with other physical bodies in terms of gravitation, material forces, energies, light, water, and so on. The human race reproduces itself physically through food production and consumption. Humanity reproduces itself biologically through emotional-sexual relations organized by family and appropriate social environment and depends on a whole network of other biological systems. Finally, human beings reproduce themselves mentally through exchanges with cultural and symbolic environments, the very essence of which is the relational exchange of symbols with other symbol exchangers. In short, as holons evolve, each layer of depth continues to exist and depend upon a network of relationships with other holons at the same level of structure and organization.

Tenets 12 a,b,c,d,e

At this point in his presentation Leonard opened up the floor to the other participants for questions and conversation, and thus he did not cover the last five of the Twenty Tenets in detail. Briefly, those last five are:

Evolution has directionality:
a. increasing complexity.
b. increasing differentiation/integration.
c. increasing organization/structuration.
d. increasing relative autonomy.
e. increasing telos.

Character, Destiny and Adaptation

2009-05-14T09:52:00.000-07:00

I was reading a book on writing and the patterns of the basic plots they have endured throughout the recorded history of stortelling and I was thinking that a lot of them depend on the level of development of the characters. Especially in the plots of revenge like Medea and Fortunado went to extremes because they were consumed by an obsession for revenge, it was those flaws of extremes in their personalties that influenced their destinies.

But what if they had been able to adapt to the flaws in their characters? Wouldn't that have changed their destiny? By evolving to a more inclusive center of gravity that would change their reactions to circumstances they experienced and altered the course they chose to avoid those extremes of obsession that lead to the extravagant methods of revenge.

If they had done some breathing excercizes as part of a full time yoga practice then they might have found other ways to deal with the situations they were in that were better than killing her children or emtombing someone inside a brick wall.

Including state training in the plots of stories can also show how the characters adapt to the expanding of identity and tell the story from perspective of the ladder which desribes the different levels of development of consciousness, the climber which describes the stages of the personality and the worldview.

For example the plot of the story could include a character arc that show someone starting at the sensoriphysical stage of the 1st Fulcrum with mostly survival and pleasure needs of naive hedonism and go through situations that make them adapt and evolve their destiny to go the vision logic stage of the 6th Fulcrum with self-actualization needs of individual principles.

If the Emotive interactive interface was added to the telling of the story then it could adapt to the mood of the audience and through state training what they identified with could evolve as the characters met the challenges in a more inclusive way from higher developmental levels.

Also in stage training the Emotive interface could assist in the evolution of the growth through each fulcrum since it can interact with the stories and show different outcomes of the phases of each fulcrum to reflect those outcomes as different effects on the stories. A fulcrum is simply a crucial fork in the development road and the self has to deal with the choices at that fork. How it does so in each case decides its subsequent destiny. The self must step up to each rung in the basic ladder and that step is the fulcrum at that stage.

At each rung in the ladder of the self's growth and development, it has four basic choices about which way to go in its development. Too much or too little of any of these four drives and the self gets into pathological trouble and the types of pathology depend on which of the nine basic rungs the trouble occurs at.

1. self-preservation (agency)
2. self-adaptation (communion)
3. self-transcendence
4. self-dissolution

So that gives different reactions depending on the mixture of the four drives at any fulcrum to show the changes in the characters and the effects of those different mixtures have on the plot of the stories. Every fulcrum has a 1-2-3 structure. 1 is that the self evolves, developes or steps up to the new level of awareness and it identifies with that level becoming "one" with that level. 2 is that it then begins to move beyond that level, differentiate from it, dis-indentify with it or "transcend" it. And 3 is that it indentifies with the next higher level then centers itself there. The new rung is acutally resting on the previous rungs so they must be included and integrated into the overall expansion. That integration or inclusion is the third and final subphase of that particular fulcrum.

Fulcrum 1: Introduction of the physiosphere
Phase 1=self identified with the physical world or fixation causing adualism through lack of body boundary
Phase 2=Differentiates body with other objects or fails to establish a clean and clear boundary.
Phase 3=Integrates the physical self or alienates, dissociates and represses parts of the self.

Fulcrum 2: Introduction of the biosphere
Phase 1=emotions identified with those around them or is fixated in narcissism.
Phase 2=differentiates emotions from others or lacks a sense of cohesive self.
Phase 3=integrates the emotional self or alienates and represses parts of them.

Fulcrum 3: Introduction of the noosphere and linguistics
Phase 1=the self identifies with images, symbols and concepts or fusion with the labile emotional self
Phase 2= differentiates the mind and the ego from bodily feelings or dissociates impulses into nuerosis
Phase 3= integrates the body or represses strong emotions into mental structures such as the superego

Filling out the theme of the treasure hunt DVD

2009-04-06T11:31:00.000-07:00

The best way to get people interested in the Hunt DVD is to use the theme of a quest like in Dungeon and Dragons and get them involved in the story to follow along while solving puzzles and gathering items they need. I can have a silver robot as a representative of the Game Master call for help to find the chakra jewels, but I need some motivations to get people invested in participating. I can tie in some of the background of The Writer’s Nightmare but it has to be adapted to fit in with the quest in the DVD so it needs some fresh goals.

The motivation should probably come from a developmental sequence like a rescue of someone like the damsel in distress or restoring artifacts to rightful places like Indiana Jones, saving the cosmos from danger like in Tomb Raider. The Illuminati always make great villains so thwarting their evil schemes would be a good incentive to take on the challenge. If it was something like preventing them from gathering objects to dominate the world like the boxes of Orden in the Legend of the Seeker that would be exciting to follow. I liked the way the plot for the National Treasure movies went with all the clues to advance the search so I should include a lot of that in there.

Then I need reasons that the chakras and the tarot fit together with the plot of the Illuminati plan of domination and why the jewels were hidden the way they were. I could have the jewels form a dimensional gateway and time portal when put together since they have the piezoelectric effect of photonic crystals that emit Čerenkov radiation. That would be why the Illuminati are after them since they would want access to the means of traveling with them. There is a rich history behind the tarot that I can use as a framework since it has a lot of symbolism and hidden meanings and I can use those symbols as the holders of the jewels they need to gather.

Crown Chakra Wheel of Fortune
Third Eye The Star, The Moon
Throat Chakra The Magician
Heart Chakra Justice, Temperance
Solar Plexus Chakra The Sun
Sacral Plexus Chakra The Empress
Root Chakra Death

The flag of Death, the scepter of the Empress, the sunflowers of the Sun, the sword of Justice, the wand of the Magician, the jugs of the Star are all put together in the Wheel of Fortune to open the portal.

Because the charkas represent energy the Illuminati would covet that energy to fuel their takeover bid and the clues to harnessing that energy could be hidden in the Tarot cards. Those clues could lead to the locations of the keys that unlock the secrets of where the jewels are to give them the power they crave.

It makes a good sequel to The Writer’s Nightmare since the Illuminati failed to get the gyrotwister so they found another way to get access to the Omniverse and all the other dimensions in order to carry out their plans to immanentize the eschaton and achieve total domination from it.

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In the DVD I could have clues related to the Tarot cards and the chakras with links to merchandise on Café Press that had images of those tarot cards with only one of them being the correct item that had both meaningful code words that followed the plot in the description so unless they bought that item among all the others on that page they wouldn’t get the coordinates for the place on the Universe Cube for the next clues to advance for the key.

On the other items I would only have one or the other code to make it harder to find the correct item. That makes it more challenging since the puzzles on the DVD will give codes that relate both to the symbolism of the Tarot cards and finding the right merchandise. Then the coordinates on the merchandise will fit in with the plot of thwarting the goals of the Illuminati and giving the clues to the locations of the keys by showing different stories in the plot summary and places on the Universe Cube. Plus giving the background embedding some of those clues in the comic book and DVD of the Nightmare.

I can also use the symbolism of relating the charkas to astrology, yoga and the glands in the body to give meaning to the clues. For example I can have the coordinates on one of the items of merchandise point to the story about Argon and Cyan meeting personifications of the signs of the Zodiac.

Aries is associated with the Manipura, or solar chakra. Located right under the ribs and traditionally visualized as being yellow, the solar chakra is the center of self-confidence, power and charisma. If those qualities sound familiar to the charming Ram, it's no surprise!

Sexy Taurus is all about the Swadisthana, or sexual chakra, which has to do with sociability and, of course, sexuality. Colored orange and located just behind the pelvic bone, this chakra helps make the Bull particularly good at the fine art of seduction.

Muladhara, or the root chakra, is Gemini's special spot. Located at the perineum, near the tailbone, the root chakra is red, and is a center for physical energy, control and stability. The Twins, of course, are always seeking stability.

Cancer's chakra is the Muladhara, the root chakra. This red-colored energy center, located at the perineum, near the tailbone, is all about physical energy, control and stability -- all issues sensitive Cancer is deeply concerned with.

Leo is always one sexy sign, with their fiery spirit and go-get-it attitude. So it's no surprise to anyone who's ever loved a Leo that the Swadisthana, or sexual chakra, is the chakra the Lion is associated with. Colored orange and located just behind the pelvic bone, the Swadisthana is the center for sociability and sexuality

Virgo's chakra is the Manipura, or solar chakra. Located right under the ribs and traditionally visualized as being yellow, the solar chakra is the center of self-confidence, power and charisma -- not too surprising for a grounded, powerful sign like Virgo.

Libra is associated with Anahata, the heart chakra. The center both for the receptivity to and the giving of love, the heart chakra is located at the center of the chest and is thought of as colored green. Balanced Libra is, naturally, deeply concerned with the processes of giving and receiving love.

Visshuda, the throat chakra, is the energy center most strongly associated with Scorpio. Responsible for intuition and contact with other worlds, this deeply mystical spot is colored blue and located at the throat. No wonder passionate Scorpio knows so much, thanks to these intuitive powers.

Sagittarius is all about Ajna, the forehead chakra, which is located, as its name suggests, at the forehead and is deep blue. Ajna, responsible for mental ability, logic, intellectual creativity and memory, helps the Archer with their amazing abilities to synthesize information and ideas

Capricorn's association is with Ajna, the forehead chakra, located at the forehead. A deep blue, color Ajna is the spot where logic, intellectual creativity and memory are centered, and influence Capricorn's strong mental abilities.

Intuitive, other worldly Aquarius is most closely associated with Visshuda, the throat chakra. Responsible for intuition and contact with other worlds, Visshuda is colored blue and located at the throat.

Loving Pisces is most closely bound to Anahata, the heart chakra, responsible both for receptivity to love and to the giving of love. The Fish's energy center is located at the center of the chest and is colored green.

Avoiding the recursive loop in patterns of behavior

2009-04-02T10:58:00.000-07:00

I’m wondering if there is a recursive loop in a pattern of behavior starting in a different form. I burnt my arm from boiling water with spaghetti with some second degree burns and I got some déjà vu all over again since it reminded me of the burn I got from scalding hot spaghetti about this same time last year.

The more I thought about it, the signs seem to be pointing to a repeated pattern since I was feeling pretty good from January to April last year with the potential of the job at MP3D making my prospects look up then around the time I got that burn it seemed to send me into a downward spiral of suicidal depression in May that I didn’t pull out of until last November.

This year I had the lot less of the potential of the Affirmations DVD but it still was a sign that things were looking up and I got the burn again so I’m thinking that I better take some steps to avoid that downward spiral from happening again since I certainly do not want to go through that hellish nightmare this year.

I also had that idea for the treasure hunt DVD last year at this time but since I had too much pain from the headaches and no energy to put into trying to work out the creative details I put it off until I could troubleshoot the problems and find some solutions.

The Integral Troubleshooting I did last July did seem to work out since I am in much better shape this year and have better methods to make more progress and focus on achieving my goals that have been clarified from the confusion of alternatives I had last year.

I am making a lot more progress on the creative details of the treasure hunt DVD that I think I'll call "The Hunt for the Chakra Jewels" and I have a lot of the story to go with the challenge of gathering the items for the prizes.

I can tie in some of the background of "The Writer’s Nightmare" but it has to be adapted to fit in with the quest in the DVD so it needs some fresh goals. If it was something like preventing them from gathering objects to dominate the world. Then I need reasons that the chakras and the tarot fit together with the plot of the Illuminati plan of domination and why the jewels were hidden the way they were. I could have the jewels form a dimensional gateway and time portal when put together since they have the piezoelectric effect of photonic crystals that emit Čerenkov radiation. That would be why the Illuminati are after them since they would want access to the means of traveling with them.

Because the charkas represent energy the Illuminati would covet that energy to fuel their takeover bid and the clues to harnessing that energy could be hidden in the Tarot cards. Those clues could lead to the locations of the keys that unlock the secrets of where the jewels are to give them the power they crave.

It makes a good sequel to "The Writer’s Nightmare since the Illuminati failed to get the gyrotwister so they found another way to get access to the Omniverse and all the other dimensions in order to carry out their plans to immanentize the eschaton and achieve total domination from it.

So maybe I'm getting better at recognizing the signs of the recursive loop since last time it took me 3 times to see the pattern of worldlines repeating when I had that dream before I went to Toronto and then I only remembered scattered fragments that took a long time to put together to figure out what they meant. But still having to go to the extreme of the pain of getting my armed burned to grab my attention enough to show a pattern is still too much to get me to see the significance so I better keep practicing so I can figure out the patterns more quickly with less damage.

Gathering practices for the video game

2009-03-17T15:48:00.000-07:00

To start on gathering the practices I need for the video game I should go into the need for state training and stage training. The practices that help becoming fully aware during waking, dreaming, deep sleep and witnessing like meditation, yoga, lucid dreaming, and astral travel aided by methods like self-hypnosis tapes, subliminal persuasion, float tanks and psychedelic drugs to access the wide range of alternative states of consciousness.

Also practices for stage training like taking on more perspectives like role playing from different characters in each situation and practicing different relative measurements of supposed constants. Like seeing the how the sun sets on different sides from the West Coast over the ocean and from the East Coast over the land. How different cultures experience sexual morality differently, how even gravity is different with different masses, like 1/6 of the moon compared to the earth and 2 times more on Jupiter than the earth. Or even time is relative depending on the speed of the reference frame of the person observing it, like it takes a second and a half to send signals to the moon and it takes years, decades or millennia for the light of the stars to reach earth so the things we see happening took place far in the past.

Part of the role playing could be like taking the perspective you have now and comparing that to what you had at a different point in your life. What you would say to yourself at another time in the past to help with their situation or what you ask of yourself in the future to help with your situation now. It definitely depends a lot on the amount of knowledge, awareness and wisdom available to the person and the perspective they have at the point in time that they are, since it is gained over the course of a life then presumably the farther in the future the more you gain. So if you could go back and impart more to yourself you would have an advantage of having more knowledge and more time to use it.

Some more good practices to help with broadening the range of perspectives you can take is the ones in Robert Anton Wilson’s books “The New Inquisition, Quantum Psychology” and the DVD “Maybe Logic” about different reality tunnels and getting over the either/or duality and insisting on one static view of reality.

I just have to take those kind of practices and turn them into graphic illustrations and game type scenarios to make them come more alive and have greater impact on the people that play the game so they can absorb them more easily to live them as part of their experience.

I like the idea of recurring quests that different characters can try to fulfill and depending on the personality type, stage they are at and what part of the 4 quadrants they are try to do the quest from they could be tailored for that and be different for each part of the quest and they would have experience the quest from more than one stage, quadrant and type to be able to complete it and that would help broaden their perspective. I could also include situations that cover different aspects of the amounts of depth and span to help determine ethical decisions to find the correct path through the quests.

Affirmations beginning to pay off

2009-03-05T17:09:00.000-08:00

I uploaded some of the affirmations I was using to YouTube as an example of what animation I put behind them and the text flashing to mimic the subliminal persuasion tapes I used to have.

Then someone named SimoneGervais commented on the video saying "I love love this vidieo it is so creative" and also "I Love your vidieo I will listen to it every day thank you for posting it thanks" which I thought was nice of them and it was gratifying to know that some of my work was appreciated.

Since there seemed to be a demand for that kind of thing, I made anonther one and uploaded it to YouTube. Then I figured since I used a DVD to watch them that it would be a good idea to be able to sell them to others so I sent a message to SimoneGervais telling her "I have found it very helpful to put them on a full length DVD to play so that way the vocal sound of repeating the phrases add with the text of them flashing once a second goes to both the conscious and the subconscious mind at the same time. Then being able to have the animation play behind that keeps other parts of the mind interested visually so that the affirmations can be absorbed more easily.

If you wanted I could make the full length DVD available to you so that you could see all the other animation that I've done to go with the affirmations since it is much to long to just upload." She seemed agree with that idea since she replied, " I would like somthing to help me I am willing to buy the dvd from you just tell me a link I can go by and I would love to purches one" and was pretty enthusiastic about it also saying, "thank you for responding to my message I would I did love the newest vidieo I am saying these things every day trying to get them inside my spirit and I would love a vidieo"

Since I had already done most of the animation for the DVD I was using myself it was easier to finish it up with a more professional DVD menu, cover and disc design.

I told her "I will mail them the DVD master copy on Monday but still takes them at least a week to process it before it is ready so I will send you to link when it is available to buy. It is my pleasure to be able to help and I appreciate it very much that you enjoy what I've put into expressing my art."

It is a good thing that they worked out the bugs in the system and I had gotten used to what the precautions were in making a DVD for them since it took almost 3 months for me to get all the problems with customer service for the Writer's Nightmare to become available for sale on DVD but this one went like clockwork through the mail and production in just a few days. I was impressed that I got the proof copy exactly a week after I mailed it to them and I fulfilled the promise I made to SimoneGervais about when I could provide the DVD to her. It does follow the affirmation I put on the DVD of "I keep my commitments to myself and others" so that seems to be helping with the follow through.I had some more trouble than that to get it to show up on Amazon but it finally straightened itself out, so now it has a wide range of distribution.

I made a commercial to promote the DVD and Uploaded it to YouTube to try and generate more interest in it. Hopefully there will be more of a demand for it than just SimoneGervais and also the DVD can get better word of mouth advertising since she can tell her friends about it and write a good review about it on Amazon. It might get better marketing for my other DVD as well. Every bit helps get the ball rolling.

Like I put in the description of the DVD As with the concept of the self-fulfilling prophecy, if you think something is going to happen then you go about finding ways to make it happen, although this is usually applied to self-destructive behavior it also is true for changing to a positive attitude and having that affect your behavior to make more choices and look for opportunities that lead to positive outcomes. It is helping with my focus and confidence to get things done. The thing that a lot of people misunderstand about affirmations is like what I put in the article on Current TV When someone says something is impossible for them to accomplish then they are correct since they will never even TRY to do it because that negative attitude stops them before they can even imagine a solution or put any effort into trying to find a method to make it work.

That is what affirmations are for to get past that first stumbling block by cancelling out the what holds you back in trying and enforces your limitations.

But it is only the start since all the positive attitudes in the world won't be effective if you don't also put the imagination into action.

I have found that to be true in my own experience and have tried to correct it by letting go of the limits that hold me back from attempting to find solutions.

Selling 3 copies in a week of the DVD being available for sale is twice as good as I expected either SimoneGervais bought all 3 to give some as gifts, she got some friends to buy the other or the advertising I've been doing for it has been working and other people have seen it. Any of those reasons are good news to generate more demand to be able to sell more of them. It does follow the affirmation I put on the DVD "My life becomes a series of successes" so it helps a lot to get feedback and evidence that shows they are working because it re-enforces the belief and gives confidence that you're on the right track to continue. It gives more weigh to the affirmation I put on the DVD "I have the self-discipline to continue the effort." to have some evidence that the affirmations are paying off in a tangible way.

Especially since SimoneGervais did what she said she was going to do and bought the DVD when I waited a year for MarsDarinder to buy The Writer's Nightmare DVD and he never did. His excuse of not having any money to get it wasn't very good since you would think that you could find $25 to spare during a whole year.

So this does give me some substantial proof that the affirmations help to get my life back on a path that will accomplish my goals.

Progress choosing between alternatives

2009-02-14T00:54:00.000-08:00

It is another Valentine’s Day that I’ve spent by myself but I’m more used to it than last year when I was in a downward spiral, it is also what would’ve been our sixth wedding anniversary but we didn’t make it that far. The nasal sprays the doctor gave me have helped with my mold allergies also the yoga techiques for headaches. While the affirmations have helped to counter the negative attitudes that I was sabotaging myself with.

Now that I have recovered enough to be able to make some of the choices of where my life is going I’ve made some progress on determining which of the 3 alternatives is worth the most to try for.

That brings me to the point of it does make a lot more sense to move onto the next phase since the alternative of just doing nothing is way too boring because there aren’t enough things to distract myself with to take up all of the time.

Having something to strive for like the treasure hunt DVD, the video game and movie illustrating the Integral Life Practice and going through those practices myself makes a lot more sense at this point.

I wasn’t able to get much help in getting an objective perspective from a therapist since the Butte County office had their funding cut and only had group therapy 1 day a week. Trying to get a different interpretation of the symbolism that I wanted with all the distractions and dilutions of other people in the group’s problems wasn’t worth the effort or all the time it would take.

What did help me make a decision was that I sent Krys a birthday card with a YouTube video attached to it of the Michael Jackson song Remember the Time. Krys sent me a reply with a Xena video that had the Dido song Hunter in it. Those 2 videos were a pretty clear example of symbolism that typified the different perspectives and stages of development that we were at and there hadn’t been any change in the past year.

Remember the Time is a song from the second person perspective that uses “we” 20 times and “us” 2 times in the lyrics. While Hunter is from the first person perspective and uses “I” 9 times and “me” 6 times in the lyrics so one is about sharing a possible relationship and the other is about seeking to untangle for a life of solitude.

With those fundamental differences it seems most likely that even if I did follow the symbolism in the Soulmates in Peril video that we would still have the same problems no matter where we lived so it wouldn’t be worth the effort since the Essential Ingredient wasn’t there.

So that pretty much answers the question I was trying to figure out about whether the odds of trying to recapture the Essential Ingredient that had once been established were better than the odds of starting fresh and getting the Essential Ingredient with someone that had never had it before. It seems that it would be easier to form a stronger new bond than repair one that had been broken.

That brings up the part about the law of attraction since like attracts like there has been a similarity in the kinds of gals that have been expressed an interest in me that is the myth of the hero in shining armor that needed to rescue them.

Even though that is an aspect of my character, maybe by connecting with gals at that level it sets up problems with trying to move beyond it to other stages that includes more aspects of my whole personality.

So then the question becomes is that the only type of gal that would be attracted to me are the ones with problems they need to be rescued from and all the baggage that goes with it? Or can I learn to grow out of that pattern of behavior to be able to attract gals at other stages that have more stable personalities?

Would those type of gals be interested in me and would they think it was worth the Essential Ingredient? If I was able to illustrate the concepts of the Integral Life Practice to be easily grasped and go the practices with them to have a solid foundation so that they would understand what was involved then they would be more likely to be attracted enough to build a strong bond that included the Essential Ingredient.

At least that is more progress in figuring out ways to bring the Impossible Dream that I was contemplating last year into the realm of the possible if the correct methods were used. That only makes it a matter of the odds of if I had enough skill and resources to be able to make those methods work. Which makes a substantial improvement since even though the odds at still high against it they are greatly reduced since there are feasible plans that make them at least workable.

Assisting Events to allow Life to imitate Art

2009-02-05T14:39:00.000-08:00

I did have some more thoughts about how to get across the 4 quadrant presentation of the Naked Angel. I could do a movie about it and call it something along the lines of “Achieving Communion” and have it be sort of like a “My Fair Lady” story of an actress that gets hired to be the spoke person and narrator of the Naked Angel presentation and for demonstrating the practices in the video game. There are better odds for Life imitating Art in it because of the feedback of the movie being a docudrama with a lot of the script focusing on the journey of transformation the actress undergoes from the experience of demonstrating the practices for the video game.

There are a lot deeper issues since the theme of transformation in the story of “My Fair Lady” is an archetypal myth going back to the Greeks with Pygmalion and Galatea so it is firmly embedded in the collective unconscious that makes the odds very good that the the movie would appeal to a wide audience.

The movie could be shot on location at Esalen in Big Sur to lend more credibility and show some of the workshops used to learn the practices that illustrate how to follow the path.

I could have some scenes of going before the investors and venture capitalists and to get the money to produce the video game and the movie also. Then it would be a journey of the actress to learn the script and film the practices while following the path of development and growing in her awareness. That way she can use the motivation of money, fame and doing a job to get her into the practice and develop some other motivations for continuing when she grows through the stages.

Guru Yoga could be used to provide better motivations for evolving through the stages after the money and the fame then it could be by identifying with the role she is playing since it mirrors the experiences she experiences going through the practices she is demonstrating for the video game, then recognizing spirit in each other and coming to terms with what that entails.

One of the practices to show how to expand into more perspectives and how the true self is connected and anchored in I Amness is to show the Gamemaster’s Complex playing the Akashic Records as videos on the monitor screens. I could have the actress pick different points in her life to go back to and give the support and advice that she thought was most needed at that time to her younger self and have a future self come back to her to give the answers they thought she most needed.

I could do a composite of the actress playing the younger part then the older on the same shot so she could experience it from each side first as the younger getting what she needed then as the older giving the support needed and also watching the scene of both of them afterwards.

That way she could experience the process from the first, second and third person perspectives and see how they are all connected and how the self evolves through stages as everyone grows through experience.

Another of the examples to illustrate Integral Life Practice I could use is a representation of the story of how to gain wisdom. “After a long hard climb up the mountain, the spiritual seekers finally found themselves in front of the great teacher. Bowing deeply, they asked the question that had been burning inside them for so long ‘How do we become wise?’

There was a long pause until the teacher emerged from his meditation. Finally the reply came ‘Good choices’
‘But teacher how do we make good choices?’
‘From experience’ responded the wise one.
‘An how do we get experience?’
‘Bad choices’

I could have some scenes with the actress and some of the other seekers showing the different choices they made to overcome the obstacles in getting up the mountain and the different motivations they had for getting to the top.

Accelerating Developmental Growth through Video Games

2009-01-29T21:53:00.001-08:00

One of the problems with Integral Theory is that it is hard to grasp without a lengthy explanation and the stuff that has been written about it is not easily absorbed. Ken Wilber has done somewhat better in talking about it and in video interviews at getting the essential points across but it still has a need for more concentrated attention than is widely attempted.

That’s why I figured that it could benefit a lot from a more graphical representation since animated examples and motion graphic diagrams would be more easily grasped and more quickly understood than the ways it has been presented so far.

There has been research done on how to design video games to help accelerate growth through developmental stages and I could make a video game that helps present the AQAL Map in a more entertaining way that people would be more inclined to pay attention to since it would also be fun.

Since parts of the theory require practice to understand from direct experience of the principles and concepts involved then a video game would be the most efficient way to motivate people to attempt those practices.

In addition to a video game that shows the Integral Life Practices in a way similar to The Wild Divine with biofeedback. I could also have a integral role playing video game that shows the journey of holons from the first basic manifestation through every stage to the highest and have players take on the a role to guide them through the stages that evolve in different ways depending on how they play the game.

I should have the goals of the RPG show how each state awakens to make the subject of one stage becomes the object of the next stage so that what starts out as identity of the body goes to identifying with the mind and then to the spirit until it reaches ever present witness and also goals the go through the stages of perspective from egocentric, ethnocentric, worldcentric and cosmocentric.

In one part of the game I could have some practices of meditation and how to illustrate the breathing techniques that focus on extending concentration by being mindful of your inhalations and exhalations then every time you get distracted by other thoughts, feelings or fantasies bring your attention back to your breathing. It could accelerate the learning curve on how to help stay focused by pointing out the benefits and the main concept to keep bringing your attention back to your breathing.

The video game should include puzzles to pass each fulcrum and sub-phases that require successful tests of how to identify, differentiate and integrate each fulcrum.

If the video game catches on among the gaming community with anything near the level of Warcraft then that could make a substantial difference in the amount of the population that are going through further develpmental stages and change the dominant mode of discourse of the society to the more inclusive stages.

Just having a change of administrations in the goverment from the traditional values of Bush to the more pluralistic values of Obama raises the dominant mode and the people that play the video game could use the momentum that the change in the Dominant Mode
which is already occuring to help accelerated the progress in their own transformation to make more headway in solving problems than in a generation.

That way when the technological singularity is achieved then the horse race of whether or not an ethnocentric or a more worldcentric society will use it will be won by the more worldcentric because more of the population will be at higher stages of development from playing the game so that the dominant mode of discourse of the society will be able to handle the technological advances for the benefit of all instead of just the profit of the few.

In order to reduce the average time of five years for transformation from one developmental stage to the next, it could help to combine the video game with other techniques like float tanks. It could help foster more intense form of deeper concentration and remove the distraction of the internal dialogue to make it easier to transcend the subject of one stage to make it the object of the next.

If I make some money on that treasure hunt DVD then I could invest it into hiring an actress to do some work in narrating and demonstrating the practices for the video game. Also to help in illustrating some examples of the concepts and principles in applying the AQAL Map

It would be very useful in having an actress in showing the methods necessary for an Integral Life Practice in order to have a demonstration as part of a business plan to show to investors since having a pretty face is always an advantage when attempting to sell something and that would go a long way to get the funds required to produce the video game.

It could also have a transformative effect on the actress that I hired to help produce the video game by her going through the practices in order to demonstrate them and illustrating the examples of the principles behind them it could train her into raising her center of gravity to more inclusive developmental stages. Since we both would be sharing the experiences by working on the demonstrations and illustrations that were contained in the video game then we both would have a foundation of understanding the concepts produced in the transformation to the higher stages of development and could produce a bond through the shared experiences for us to grow closer from it.

Since that bond was built at a higher stage of development if it included the Essential Ingredient then it would be stronger since it had a more solid foundation because it included more perspectives and more options in dealing with more states. That would give it a lot better odds of lasting longer.

Hopefully a marketing idea for a more popular DVD

2009-01-22T18:08:00.000-08:00

When I went down to the beach my mom was watching episodes of the “Lost” TV series on DVD and the designs they had on the menus of the DVD were very inspiring. They had landscapes of the island and jungle with 3D text in different 2 point perspectives opposite to each other so that it looked like the text was nestled in to fit the image.

It looked very cool and I was thinking that I could use that as a concept to make a DVD menu for my portfolio.

Maybe a better DVD menu for my portfolio would be to do one of that idea I had about the contest for “The Writer’s Nightmare” that had a treasure hunt in it. It probably would be a lot better seller than the DVD I have there so it might be more popular on Create Space. It would be a way to get a practice with original marketable material in a different kind of DVD setup.

That way I could have a more professional DVD menu design to show in my portfolio but also a marketing idea that has more of a motivation for people to be interested in buying the DVD since they are more likely to go for the challenge and profit of a treasure hunt.

In keeping with one of the themes to story in “Nightmare” I could have the treasure hunt revolve around gathering parts to build the GyroTwister and have clues relating to where to find the parts that could be hidden on web pages, maps to locations even products on Café Press and Zazzle.

I could have the clues on the DVD be easier to lead to some of the parts and then have them get harder to lead to clues more complex in more places to be able to put the parts together and solve the riddle. Some of the clues on the DVD could be in that extreme typography with animated text made from Adobe After Affects like in those videos on You Tube and some could be screen caps of the word clouds from the Wordle web page.

Since it is a journey to find the parts and solve the puzzles maybe I should put it in a framework of growth through the stages also or at least a heroes struggle against impossible obstacles to make it challenging. Tying in the theme of the Gamemaster from the story would be a good way to give clues that relate to archetypes and the Akashic records so that the puzzles relate to overcoming selfish pleasure motivation and alpha pack dominance games.

I could have some clues relate to gyroscopes and roller coasters maybe even have one hidden at Great America and the Santa Cruz beach. Hiding keys to locks at different locations would help to making it more challenging and that way I could have clues in merchandise that can be unlocked to match the merchandise that was designed to be bought.

Since the theme is a hunt to gather items and a journey to reach a goal, I could also make it like the Fool’s journey through the Tarot with each item being a stage of consciousness along the way. I could use designs I did for The Naked Angel Tarot cards as symbols and clues for the different stages and put them on merchandise to find as part of the contest.

I could use the chakra system as a model for gathering items related to each chakra like jewels and lotus flowers and have practices that use motivations that go from egocentric, ethnocentric, worldcentric to cosmocentric in order to solve the puzzles.

For the clues on the DVD I could have them lead to web pages on my blog, Café Press, Zazzle, CreateSpace, Amazon, Lulu and Spreadshirt to merchandise that have clues to significant locations with items can be hidden.

The clues on the merchandise could be pictures of gyroscopes with coordinates from the Universe Cube on them hidden in the designs so that they point to stories in the plot summary that way I can have them relate to other clues in different places and follow the theme of building the gyrotwister and gathering parts of the Universe Cube.

I could do some storyboards to get the ideas for the clues and designs for the DVD together so it would be easier to collect so all it one place to keep track of it. I could use a flowchart with Smart Draw to keep track of all the clues and tie that to storyboards in Illustrator to give more details.

The Essential Ingredient

2008-12-04T16:44:00.000-08:00

When I met Krys it was like hitting the jackpot, grabbing the brass ring and winning the lottery that the odds of finding love ever happening to me finally came true. What I felt was like what was described in the song Angel Eyes.

She told me she felt the same way as that song, but the essential ingredient to any relationship is the willingness of two people to share their lives together. Susan Sarandon had a great way of putting it as a witness.

That might establish a baseline definition but it doesn’t say anything about the degree of commitment to the relationship. Krys and I used to use an example from the Mummy to show how much Evie loved Rick.

Admittedly it’s an extreme situation that required a greater showing commitment than most do, but Krys and I did discuss it and we both agreed that Evie did act more honorably to show the depth of her bond to Rick that she put his life above hers. While Anck Su Namun only showed that she put her selfish interests first by abandoning Imotep.

From the reaction that Krys had to that scene I had written to try and show a little bit of what being soul mates would be like, I thought that I had beaten the odds of finding someone that shared my ideas and goals in life. When we got married I thought I had found someone that I could let my guards down and trust to share my most intimate thoughts and ideas with. That was the plan that we were partners to achieve things together that we couldn’t separately.

When I tried to explain the practices of Tantric Yoga, she said she agreed with the ideas and wanted to achieve the benefits from it. But I’m not sure she understood what was involved in it from the practice we had it seemed like she was too afraid of letting go some of the baggage that was holding her back and lost the willingness to try and develop the discipline needed to make progress.

The trouble was that it seemed like she was unable to let go of her previous conditioning. She had led a sheltered life and was afraid of a lot of things. Her family history had left her with a distrust of men and it made her always expect the worst from them. From her father abandoning her and all the divorces in her family, her experiences had left a very negative impression on her.

It’s easy to say she followed the example of Anck Su Namun instead of Evie that she didn’t follow through on her vows and couldn’t contribute equally to the relationship, that she lied about being married and she was the one that betrayed the trust we had and committed infidelity by leaving for another. All that’s true but only part of the story. It’s just the surface facts and leaves out the depth of meaning and motives.

Now I’m wondering how much of what we had was her ideas of what a relationship was supposed to be projected onto me and mine projected onto her. I know we both chose symbolic ways of expressing things like mythic fairytale roles, like Piper and Leo from the TV show Charmed. They had a very committed marriage that they proved they would sacrifice their lives for each other. But they had their problems in their relationship also and sought help to work them out because they were still committed to the relationship. Is all Krys and I had were symbols with nothing behind them, wasn’t there more to it than that?

The point being is that even with all the problems I held onto the Essential Ingredient of wanting to share our lives together and I figured that whatever problems we had could be worked out if we wanted to go on with our lives. But apparently that’s not what she wanted since she bailed as soon as she could without putting much effort into trying to work things out.

I showed my mom the “Soulmates in Peril” video that I had made for the last wedding anniversary that we were together. I got stuck telling her more of the technical parts of the video because I had trouble describing all the symbols in the story that I developed for Krys.

Those symbols did have a lot of meaning to both of us they certainly communicated some things. But what if they were not exactly the same things because of the different levels of development? I definitely meant the vow of always coming for her and (death) or even the distractions from the illusions of samsara working out karma would not delay me forever. What if Krys started to identify more with Belle in that video then my Imzadi because she didn’t think she could live up to the harder role symbolized by being my Imzadi and gave into her inner demons to fall back on the role of Belle? In that way then she would be serving the Red Demon of her Past Conditioning.

That would make more sense if she confused the roles and identified with the self-destructive urges to base her decisions on. I can understand being afraid to put the effort into trying for success because of the risk of failure, that just invities temptations from selfish impulses. After all I wrote in the video that “There was no mountain too high and no river too wide because I would go to any lengths to rescue my soulmate.” Then I said it and recorded it to put with the voice over on the video. I definitely meant that I would fulfill that promise so shouldn’t I live up to it? I did have a lot of trouble with accepting the responsibility of what that involves so the fear of failing at it was strong.

If it was part of the myth like in “Roswell” where Liz leaves and goes to a boarding school then Max has to track her down for Liz to save him. I still would like to show that kind of devotion since like the song says I said “Honestly, I won’t give up you” but it does depend on the Essential Ingredient for her to also say “I shall believe”

A wider perspective than the egocentric might help to transcend that identification. If that were true then according to those symbols we would still be at the part where my Imzadi was kidnapped by her darker self and I have to go an rescue her from the demons of her past.

I put a lot of symbolism about jumping in and out of different realities in that video, from the comic book to virtual reality to photo-realism and I was thinking that might represent waking up from the illusions of the veil of maya like Richard Bach used in his book “One” and that Krys moving back to GA. might be like the test of Richard thinking that Leslie had drowned. To show the same principle that Richard learned

“Your own world is just as much of a mirage as any other. Your oneness in love is reality and mirages cannot change reality. Do not forget, no matter what seems to be” so by those symbols I would have to go to GA and show Krys that I could rise above the illusions that separate us from that “oneness in love” just like Richard was able to finally move the throttle of the seaplane and rise above the waters of the pattern. It does makes sense that Krys had some things to learn about independence that she had to learn by herself since we had talked about that before, it is just hard to know when she has learned enough yet. I would rather not have to wait until another life to reunite.

It all depends on how the fight between Belle and my Imzadi turns out in Krys. Has she grown beyond the level of development that Belle represents? Does she even want the Essential Ingredient that level of development my Imzadi represents?

Since I am going to start on the Integral Life Practice and part of that practice is to try and shine the light on the shadow aspects of yourself that have been repressed by your subconscious. So maybe I should ask a therapist about the psychological side of those symbols and find out what they think a useful interpretation of them is. That is what psychotherapy is supposed to address symbols in dreams and free associations to bring out hidden meanings. It certainly would help to have an objective opinion about what they mean and hopefully they can help expose some of the dormant aspects of myself that are draining my energy.

A competent therapist could probably get a more objective insight on who was projecting parts of themselves onto to who and maybe bring some clarity to the subjective interpretations of events. At least help me understand the parts that I had avoided and face up to the parts I wanted to ignore. It will be interesting to find out what their opinion is when I show it to them.

Cat Scratch Fever

2008-10-07T11:22:00.000-07:00

I suppose it's no use put this off any longer since it's not getting much less painful, so I might as well get it out there. I've had 4 cats in my lifetime and my family has had even more. They've each had different personalities and quirks to them so I thought I had gotten used to the way that cats behaved and able to have a relationship with them.

As they say "Cats are smarter than dogs. You can't get eight cats to pull a sled through snow. ...Jeff Valdez" and "If a dog jumps in your lap, it is because he is fond of you; but if a cat does the same thing, it is because your lap is warmer. ...Alfred North Whitehead" pretty much sums it up.

I went about 15 years from the time that Christopher died in Cupertino to being able to have a cat again since most of the places I had lived were with roommates and in apartments that didn't allow pets. So after I got the trailer to live in it was possible to have a cat again, when Carol Hemmingway offered to give us one of her kittens, Krys wanted a cat to keep her company and I thought it was a good idea.

In my experience with cats I had thought that it would be best to wait for a while until the kitten had matured enough to handle going outside and learned where his home was since I didn't think there was enough room in a 29 ft. trailer for a cat. But Krys was afraid that something might happen to him if he went outside. Since she was making the rules for him, I let her take most of the responsiblity of feeding and cleaning out his cat box.He was a good cat mostly and faily affectionate. He did most of the cat stuff like getting into things he wasn't supposed to and puking up hairballs, which Krys didn't take in stride as well as I did. He did have a thing about the rain that seemed to freak him out which might've been the noise of it hitting the trailer that scared him

When Krys left the responsibility of taking care of Angel was left to me so I figured it was time to let him go outside. He disappeared for a month and I figured that he would come back when he got tired of being on his own and hungry enough, I did worry about the amount of heavy storms we were having at that time and if he could survive them. When he did come back it did occur to me that he had learned something about how hard it was on his own and at least someone had the sense enough to get some help with it.

After that he got used to going in and out but he didn't like the outside much anymore since the other cats in the trailer park were pretty mean and he lost a couple fights with them. Although it did seem to help during the summer when the trailer got too hot and he could lie in the shade underneath it to catch the cooler breeze. I figured it was the best of both worlds since he had the food, water, catbox and comfort of places to sit inside and the freedom to go outside to see what there also. Unfortunately it didn't turn out that way. Even though his demands for attention with the meowing, the head butting me in the face when he was hungry and puking up stuff he didn't like were annoying. I did have a strong sentimental attachement to him and I loved petting him and when he fell asleep next to me at night.

Angel woke me up as usual and it was around 9:30 in the morning when I fed him so he was fine then, but around 11:30 he was puking which wasn't unusual and I cleaned it up. Then I noticed he was meowing with a lot more painful note than his usual attention getting meow. I started to worry it was something serious when he started dragging his hind legs like he couldn't move them. I called my Dad to have him give me a ride to the vet and he suggested I call the vet to get an appointment. I wasn't sure if the vet would do anything without an appointment so I called them and the closest time they would see me was 2:30.

I tried to comfort Angel as much as I could but he dragged himself behind the bed and had a major bout of diarrhea. So I scooped him up from there and wrapped him in a towel to wait outside for my Dad to pick us up. We got to vet and we still had to wait a while. The doctor told me it was serious and he had a 50/50 chance of recovering. He gave me an estimate of how much he expected the treatment to cost and it was $661 which is a lot especially since Medicare doesn't cover wives much less pets. Since the odds were half that Angel could make it, I thought he deserved that chance so I left him there to be treated and the doctor said he would call in the morning to let me know how Angel was doing.

I had to go to Mural class so I wasn't there when the Vet office opened. So after class while I was waiting for the bus I called the doctor to see what was going on. The vet said that Angel had died during the night from some type of rat poison that he had probably gotten from eating something dead. I didn't see how he could've gotten that kind of thing from inside the trailer since I don't have stuff like that there, so he must've gotten it from outside. I felt pretty bad and started crying on the grass next to the hot dog stand. I miss having Angel around and it was hard to avoid the fact that it was probably my fault that he died.

I guess that I can add that to the list of failures to keep promises and fulfill the responsibilities I had taken on. Krys had the responsibility of taking care of Angel for around 4 years and then I had it for around 10 months and I blew it so it added to my guilt. I suppose I put off writing this blog about it in part because of the guilt of letting Krys know that I had failed to take care of Angel properly. I probably should've taken him immediately to the vet and not waited hours for an appointment, if I had recognized his paralysis of his legs as a symptom of poison, I might've been able to him the vet save him in time by getting there earlier. Maybe we waited to long and should've let Angel outside when he was young enough to learn better. None of the other outside cats had that trouble, maybe Angel was just to set in his ways to be able to take the risks and dangers of being outside. How much quality of life does a cat have when all he seemed to like doing was eating? I suppose the arguement that the trailer was too small for him doesn't hold much weight when he didn't spend more than hour outside on the average at a time. At least if I had kept him inside all the time he would still be alive and able to do what he acted like he preferred instead of what I thought he should have.

It probably was more a case of the grass being greener on the other side that he wanted to go out in the first place. Especially since after he had been outside for a month he certainly seemed to get over wanting it anymore. Was I right to give him that choice for the contrast? Was he any happier after he learned that being outside wasn't all it was cracked up to be? That's probably some attempts at rationalizing the decision since the fact is that he'd still be alive if I hadn't. I have had cats die on me before and some tragically way before their time by getting run over or getting their heads caught in a door. So Angel's death isn't all that uncommon in the fate of cats it's part of the risks of living. Maybe it is a lesson in impermance but that also seems like a cop-out to avoid being directly responsible. It's hard to take the wider view in the face of the details of what happened.

Integral Video Games

2008-08-12T16:05:00.000-07:00

I got the Wild Divine biofeedback games and they were certainly worth all the money since the graphics are very impressive, the puzzles that make the goal of the games are challenging and the biofeedback exercises were very helpful to be able to see the effects of bodily processes reflected visually. I thought it was a great way to practice a lot of the yoga breathing methods and get instant feedback on how well it was working. Being able to see the results on the screen was a way to recognize what the experience was correlated to on the screen.

Taking the bodily responses like skin conductivity levels and heart rate variability and learning to manipulate them is transcending those bodily functions as a subject so that you don’t identify with them and making them an object to be able to differentiate and integrate them. I did a Vlog about them to show how they worked

I had some trouble doing a video capture and since the game puts several elements from .mov, .swf and .mp3 files together it was easier to just point the video camera at the screen since I was using it for shots of myself also even if it didn't get very good resolution from it.

I liked what Deepak Chopra had to say and hopefully with the quality of these games he'll be able to reach that "critical mass" whith the wider appeal that video games have than just yoga or meditation does.

Ken Wilber shows how you can find evidence of different types of brain wave patterns that correlate to different types of meditation but they aren't the same as and can't be reduced to brain states

Integral Troubleshooting

2008-07-04T10:02:00.000-07:00

I think I’ll do a blog about Integral Troubleshooting before the one about the Essential Ingredient. It’ll help lay the foundation for it better and give me more practice in communicating with the camera.

Maybe it would help to write out some of the ideas I want to talk about first so I can focus better in front of the camera. If even talented people like Marina or Christine have to have multiple takes for their videos then I shouldn’t beat myself up if I can’t get it all out without any preparation.

The first thing is trying to improve my communication skills because they are so poor at actually telling someone the ideas and points that I’m trying to get across. I figure if I practice getting over being subconscious in front of a camera that it might help with my self-image problem. If I get comfortable expressing myself to the camera then it’ll be easier to do in front of other people.

The next thing is that part about uneven development and that having a shadow that is a repressed part of your ego holding you back is going to hamper your chances of growth because you’re leaving parts of yourself behind since they are hidden from you.

From what I’ve been hearing from Ken Wilber most psychotherapy techniques involve talking to uncover the subjective stuff like in dreams and focus on them to make them objects in your awareness so you no longer identify solely with them. Talking about it to the camera should be at least a start and that way I would have them ready to be seen by a therapist to give me their interpretation of them if I decide that’s necessary. It might not be if I can troubleshoot the problems on my own once they are out in the open and that way I wouldn’t have to take the chance of messing up my disability while I’m still dependent on it.

Another thing I can talk about is what I was telling mom about the amount of stress I used to be able to handle is a whole lot more than I can now. I was thinking after I wrote about that in an email to her, the last time I was able to cope with a large amount of stress was when I was making that 12 hour round trip from Fremont to Berkeley and still able to keep that job at BRC while suffering from a diseased gall bladder before I had to have it taken out. Then after Creator died I seemed to have lost the ability to deal with stress and never got it back. I guess that means that I never fully recovered the blow to my ego and I’m probably still repressing parts that I need to uncover.

Excellent Adventures in Floating

2008-06-19T10:31:00.000-07:00

From reading a lot of Ken Wilber's books I've been getting the idea that it's not enough just to read about these concepts, that you have to practice them. Because just reading about them only gives legitimacy to your beliefs and only is translative to supporting whatever stage your ego is in. But in order to gain authenticity and transform your ego to a more inclusive stage of development, you have to put them into practice.

"... in today's America, this is much more disturbing because this vast majority of horizontal spiritual adherents often claim to be representing the leading edge of spiritual transformation, the 'new paradigm' that will change the world, the 'great transformation' of which they are the vanguard. But more often than not, they are not deeply transformative at all; they are merely agressively translative. They don not offer effective means to utterly dismantle the self, but merely new ways for the self to think think differently. Not ways to transform but merely new ways to translate. In fact, what most of them offer is not a practice or series of practices like yoga. What most of them offer is a simple the suggestion to 'read my book on the new paradigm.' This is deeply disturbed and deeply disturbing...

...Because, you see, the alarming fact is that any realization of depth carries a terrible burden: Thiose who are allowed to see are simultaneously saddled with the obligation to communicate that vision in no uncertain terms: that is the bargain. You were allowed to see the truth under the agreement that you would commincate it to others (that is the ultimate meaning of the Bodhisattva Vow)..."

When I first read about Isolation Tanks that were developed by John C. Lily about 15 years ago, I thought it was a good idea. Since I haven't been feeling up to doing any projects and just watching a lot of TV and DVD's I figured it would be a good idea to try it.

In newer tanks, epsom salt is added to the water in the tank to raise the density of the water above the density of the human body, so that the subject floats with his or her face above the water. However, since the ears are submerged when the subject is in a relaxed position, hearing is greatly reduced, particularly when ear-plugs are also used. When the arms float to the side, skin sensation is greatly reduced because the air and water are the same temperature as the skin, and the feeling of a body boundary fades. The sense of smell is also greatly reduced, especially if the water has not been treated with chlorine.

I had heard of the theraputic benefits of them and I hoped it might help with breaking out the the blocks of creativity and lack of being able to focus on doing anything lately

A therapeutic session in a flotation tank typically lasts an hour. For the first forty minutes, it is reportedly possible to experience itching in various parts of the body (a phenomenon also reported to be common during the early stages of meditation). The last twenty minutes often end with a transition from beta or alpha brainwaves to theta, which typically occurs briefly before sleep and again at waking. In a float tank, the theta state can last for several minutes without the subject losing consciousness. Many use the extended theta state as a tool for enhanced creativity and problem-solving or for superlearning.

They have been gaining in popularity in recent yearsand I found this news story about them on YouTube.

So I looked them up on the search engine to find if any were close by. There was a web page called FloatFinder.com that showed a few in the Bay Area with the closet one called The Float Center in Oakland. They were kind of expensive $70 an hour and they had a package deal of an hour of floating and a massage for $140. Then it was $62 for a round trip Greyhound bus ticket with the 7 day advance purchase.

I saved up some money from my birthday and got the ticket. It said on the web page that if you want to get a massage that you have to get an appointment ahead of time so I got one of those debit cards that you can preload with cash and use like a credit card to be able to pay for it online. The trouble was that I only put the exact amount on that card and apparently there were some transaction fees so it was declined and I only had enough to get the hour of floating not the massage.

Since I had been looking for a chance to make another vlog, I decided to take some footage with my camcorder to document the trip.

The best thing I can say about it is that at least it was something different to try and it's another video to add to the amount that I have to use as response on YouTube. It definitely shows how much more practice I need at it and that I'm a long way from being competent at it. It does point out the importance of storyboards and a plan to make something worthwhile.

It started out pretty good, the first leg of the trip to Sacramento went by fairly fast while I watched "Back to the Future" on my portable DVD player. When I got to the Sacramento bus station it was almost a 3 hour wait until the bus to Oakland so I tried to charge the DVD player so it would last the trip. I did some more footage for the video while I was waiting.

While it was charging, I went to get a coke from the vending machine and when I came back it was gone. It was a shame to lose it but it was my fault for letting it out of my sight. I knew better than to trust anyone that was around in such a public place. But it was no use beating myself up about it and crying over spilt milk. So I let it go and fell back on reading my books, listening to my MP3 player and playing the games on my cell phone.

When I got to Oakland, I tried to get a taxi to take me to the Float Center, I asked one of the clerks that sold the bus tickets to call me one, but apparently she only called one of her friends that wanted make some money since the guy who showed up drove a car that didn't look much like a taxi. I had printed out the directions from Google Maps so he didn't have much trouble finding the place. He wanted to charge me $20 for only a 3.5 mile trip though. I had figured it would be a lot less for that short a ride. I spend most of my money on the debit card so I only had $12 left and I talked him into just taking that.

The lady the ran the Float Center was very nice, she explained all the rules and procedures like showering before and after to keep the tank from getting fungus growing in it and getting the salt off your skin. I'm not sure if I had too hot of a shower since when I got in the tank it was a tiny bit cold and it was supposed to be the exact temperature as your body.

I liked the feeling of floating with no gravity pressing on your muscles and it relieved the strain I'd been having from the mattress I've had to sleep on. I did my deep breathing to shut my internal dialogue and it gave me a big pain in my neck. So I did the OM mantra to let the vibrations dissolve the pain in my neck. It did help since the pain eased but apparently the stress was still there and I couldn't let go even with nothing to distract me.

After I got out of the shower and dressed the gal that ran the place made me some green tea and we talked for a while about floating and the art gallery she had at the place. I showed her the designs I did for The Writer's Nightmare DVD ans she seemed to like them.

I told her about the problem I had about not being able to afford the taxi back since I spent the rest of my cash. While I was in the tank I had the idea of using the money left of the debit card and transfering it to her through my PayPal account and then she could let me have the cash. But it wasn't necessary since when I brought the subject up she just said she would give me a ride back to the Greyhound Bus station. It was a bit harder to get back to the bus than it was to get there since she went a different way and we got lost a couple times but we found it after a while. I thought it was nice of her to go out of her way to help me.

I had over 3 hours to wait for the bus to Sacramento and it was a lot harder to pass the time without the DVD player but more because the seats in the bus station were very uncomforable, I kept having to sit on the floor and then stand up to stand the strain. I guess they had some trouble with the schedule between Reno, Salt Lake City, Seattle and Portland because all the northbound buses with delayed and full even at 3am. I had to wait 4 hours for the bus to Oroville to leave and even then it was an hour late.

I finally got back home around 10am so it was it was around a 22 hour trip. I'm leaning toward it not being worth all the money, the float itself was pretty good, but it certainly didn't have as many benefits as I had hope and any it did have were erased by having to take the bus there and back. I'm glad I had the experience so I know what it was like after all this time but it wasn't worth losing my DVD player and all the hassles of the bus travel. Maybe it would've been better if I had the massage also, if I ever go again I might try it that way.

I took a nap for a couple hours after I got back and woke up at 2pm because I had to go to Chico for a MRI that the neurologist had set up. When he set up the test, they arranged for a taxi to take me to Chico which I thought would help because the B-Line buses take at least 4 hours to get there and back.

The taxi was supposed to be there at 2:30, when it was late I called the office where I was supposed to have the test and they said the taxi was on the way. Since they were the ones arranging it, they were the ones responsible if I was late or not. When they were an hour late I got a call from the taxi company saying they were on the wrong side of the trailer park looking for me. I finally got to the office and it's good thing I never tried to take a taxi from Chico in an emergency because the meter read $55.

I didn't have to wait that long before they took me to where they had the MRI machine. I thought it was a bit odd that it was in a trailer on the other side of the parking lot from the office, but maybe they have to keep it that far away because of the intense magnetic fields it generates and it could mess up other stuff around it.

I put in some earplugs that the guy running the tests gave me a lay on the table. The things he put on each side of my head were uncomfortable, but the pad he put under my knees helped. They slid me into the machine and the enclosed space didn't bother me at all, it was just the very loud noices of all kinds that were fairly annoying. Even the earplugs only helped somewhat. I did a lot of deep breathing and it went on for almost 30 mins for the whole thing until they slid me out.

The receptionist called for the taxi to take me back, but apparently they had brand new dispatchers at the company they used and they didn't know what they were doing so they had more problems bring me back as they did getting me there. One taxi showed up but the driver said he was the wrong guy so I had to wait for another one. The next one showed up about 10 mins later and the receptionist siad the driver had to go inside to get some paperwork and I told the driver that but she didn't listen, it wasn't my problem since I wasn't handling that part, I figured the place that did the tests was going to bill Medicare for it. I told her how to get to my place so we didn't have any more trouble on the way.

Let's hope networking will help with Current TV

2008-05-04T18:14:00.000-07:00

I've been commenting a lot more on the news stories since they revamped the system on Current TV. I've been able to get one of them used on TV PC vs.Mac which was a start of getting noticed

Then I was able to get a story I posted about Yahoo rejecting Microsoft's offer which was pretty cool

Even though I don't get paid for those stories since they are just expressing opinions and copying articles from other news web sites, it does get me more known and people that might agree with my opinions. I've gotten several new connections there and my statistics are improving.

Now that Current TV has raised the amount that they are paying for commercials from $1000 to $2500 I might have a better chance of getting one on TV without more support through networking the people that post on the web page

They have a new assignment to make a VCAM for Wachovia Bank that I can try to do. Since the Poser animations haven't been very good response I think I'll put more live footage in this one since I got that video camera now.

The commercial they showed as an example isn't very good and I think I can do a lot better with the theme they want of using Wachovia to save for your dreams. I was thinking of doing several ads this time to increase my chances of getting one on TV. One about the dream of owning a houseboat or a yacht to live on and I can take some footage at Lake Oroville to show the boats there. Also the dream of living on a golf course and I can shoot some footage of Dad's house at Kelly Ridge.

I saw a story with an inspiring new twist

2008-04-27T18:55:00.000-07:00

From the news on Current TV there an interview of this author that was trying an idea for an interactive book that had clues to a quest for a dagger hidden in Las Vegas.

It sounded like a great idea to try and maybe I could do something like that to help promote my Writer's Nightmare DVD. I could make another DVD that has clues to where the a model of the gyrotwister is and people would have to find it and then it has clues to where the parts are to put it together.

That way I could have each clue not have to be so hard to figure out but still have the whole thing be a challenge and people would have the sense of progress along the way. I could have animated blueprints made in Illustrator, Flash, Photoshop and After Effects for the some of the clues of the parts, that would be cool.

Questions of the Higher Priority

2008-04-11T15:19:00.000-07:00

One of the things I kept asking Krys when she was thinking about going home was "What do you think your priority is?" was it only what was best for herself alone or what was best for both of us? She never gave me a direct answer to my face only kept on saying she didn't know. The obvious one that shows from her actions was she was more concerned about her needs.

I've been thinking about that a lot lately since I've been wondering whether or not she thought that my priorities were different than what I thought they were. After we'd been married for a while we both realized that my trailer wasn't going to last very long with both of us living in it and we needed more room especially for all the stuff she was shipping from Georgia. So the problem was that we would have to get a lot more money than my disability would provide or she would have to get a job that would pay enough to pay for a better place to live.

So I started to focus on my graphic design career to try and genrate some better financial opportunities, but that meant I had to devote less time and attention exclusively to her, I thought at the time it was the priority that was best for both us, but was that a mistake? Did she understand what I was trying to do or did she think I was abandoning her to do something I liked better than her?

Maybe I should've made more time for her and tried to balance it better, especially since I'm still stuck in the trailer with no better place to live in sight. But on the other hand, maybe she should've pitched in more to help me get ahead more by contributing more to my career or by getting a better job since hers payed less than my disability.

I was talking to my mom about it and she thought I she thought I should let it go but it's hard to do that since if I don't learn from it then I won't know if it's worth it to try again or how to avoid the problem if I do try again. Plus I need to figure it out for the novels I was going to write about it as a sequel to Seeking Resonace. I wondering how much of our relationship was based on fantasies that couldn't stand up to living day to day. For example while she was still in Georgia, we talked about going to Feather Falls when she got here and making love under the waterfall.

But it was a fair hike to it. A lot less than I used to do when I was in the Boy Scouts or even trips to Big Sur but we never made it that far since it seemed it wasn't the priority to be worth it. We only made it as far as the fish hatchery that was less than a mile away. Was it because the fantasy of making love under the waterfall couldn't stand up to the reality in the hardship of the hike? The needs of her body to not be worn out by the trip up there seemed to take priority over the experience we could've shared together.

Another example is the first fantasy that we had when I found out she liked me, that of Red Sonja and Kalidor. She had this notion of being strong like a warrior and only loving someone that could defeat her in battle. I thought it was ironic since in the movie Kalidor proved to her that the point was that was a self-defeating strategy since if she was going to love someone, she wasn't going to want to defeat them in battle.

I'm wondering how many other things Krys had ironic and self-defeating fantasies about. We never did get to do our sword fight since I lost my fencing foil and she didn't have her katana anymore. But I did see that she wasn't as good at a lot of things as she claimed, she couldn't use the brake while riding a bike, she couldn't use the diving board or go very far in the deep end of a swimming pool and she couldn't use a bow very well. So how much of the lies she told herself about them were projected onto false expectations about our relationship?

I also had a lot of problems with pain bringing up a lot of shadow stuff to the point where I had so little energy that I could barely function much less respond to her and give her any kind of attention. I couldn't focus on much else except the day to day details of just getting from one day to the next so I couldn't even begin to find ways solving what was best for both of us.

The best quote from Strother Martin in movie Cool Hand Luke was definately "What we have here is a failure to communicate." With different priorities, fantasies and levels of developement, I suppose it's a wonder that we lasted as long as we did. It seems to be a lot more widespread problem than just us though. For one reason or another it looks like most couples that split up have some version or another of that problem.

So I have been thinking, which would be more satisfying, living alone to persue my own fantasies without having to compromise my selfish ego trips or trying it again with someone else when I don't even know that's not anymore of a fantasy that something more exists or could last? The trouble with that it's just giving up any foward motion towards evolution and just staying in stasis.

I did get some inspiration from Ken Wilber's book One Taste since it cleared up a lot of what his ideas about "witness" consciousness was actually supposed to be like and what I should do for the 3 books in the trilogy of my auto-biographies

Reading Ken Wilber’s One Taste has been giving me a lot more hope and inspiration that maybe I can still make the soul mate thing work out after all and it’s not as impossible as I put in my blog.

The thing that might make the 3rd book in the trilogy work is that idea I had 10/29/92 about training a soul mate with the Naked Angel Presentation. That way she would be able to get all the foundation and the background she would need to put it into practice and the training to make it last. It would certainly round out the themes of the trilogy if I were able make all the things from the other 2 books come to fruition in the 3rd.

It does give some shape to the overall thrust of the trilogy since the 1st is Seeking Resonance and describes my search for a soul mate, the death of Margie and my marriage to Krys. (Which is #7813 on the Universe Cube T=0 Tau=0 The=0.) The second would be the relationship we had what problems and how it failed, and the development of the Naked Angel Presentation. (Which is #7814 on the Universe Cube T=1 Tau=0 The=0.) The third would be how I used the Naked Angel Presentation to attract and train a more compatible soul mate and the steps along the way to realizing One Taste. (Which is #7815 on the Universe Cube T=2 Tau=0 The=0.) I still have to come up with titles for the other 2 something to do with balance, harmony and unity, like I did with the first since resonance is balance in electronics, I should follow that theme for the others. Something like Attempting Symmetry or Achieving Communion.

What would be good for the story would be if I was able to train a soul mate like Marina from Hot for words on You Tube. It helps that she's very smart so she can absorb the concepts and gain a higher comprehension of them. She's also very beautiful and a good actress that way she could play the part of Cyan with her connections to the people in Hollywood we could make videos and movies together. The odds against that are very high though, but how are they compared to Krys wanting to go through the training and returning? Both would be very good plots for the story, but how likely would they be for specific people as compared to anyone wanting to take the training at all?

On page 183 of One Taste in the 8/16 entry Ken lays out the possibilities “love for a specific person is when it arises in emptiness. It is still love, it is still intensely personal, it is still very specific; but it is a wave that arises from an ocean of infinity. It is as if a great sea of love brings forth a wave, and that wave carries the force and thrill of the entire sea in its every breaking crest. The sensation is like watching an early morning sunrise in the desert: a vast open clear blue spaciousness within there arises, on the horizon, an intense red-yellow fire. You are the infinite sky of love, in which a particular fire-ball of personal love arises.

One thing is certain infinite love and personal love are not mutually exclusive, the latter is just an individual wave of an infinite ocean. When I lie awake, next to her early in the morning doing meditation, nothing really changes in the contemplation except this; there is a whole-body bliss, paradoxically faint but intense, that edges my awareness. It is sexual energy reconnected to its source in the subtle regions of the body-mind. I will often touch her lightly as I meditate, it definitely completes an energy circuit and she can feel it too.

But that is what men and women can do for each other and that is the core of Tantra as well. In a very concrete and visceral way, the union of male and female is the union of Eros and Agape, Ascending and Descending, Emptiness and Form, Wisdom and Compassion. Not theoretically but concretely in the actual distribution of prana or energy currents in the body itself. And that is why, in the very highest Tantric teachings,the mere visualization of sexual congress with the divine consort is not enough for final enlightenment. Rather for ultimate enlightenment, one must take an actual partner and have real sex in order to complete the circuits conducive to recognizing the already enlightened mind."

It is definately something to shoot for that is a lot more worth while than just sitting around. I can do some videos for YouTube about The 1-2-3 of God with Mimic doing some of the soundtrack and then Poser scenes of some of the things described the 1st, 2nd and 3rd person perspectives, the states and stages of consciousness and the conveyor belt approach.

Things seem to be looking up

2008-03-13T02:28:00.000-07:00

The lessons I learned in Art 39: The Business of Graphic Design class from all the compaines that we visited was about networking since they told the same stories about how they got their start by getting clients from people they knew and connections to others they told that would hire them.

Dan always told the story of the guy he worked with and Kinko's then after a few years, he got a job with AOL so he gave Dan a lot of work in his graphic design business. I wasn't sure how I could make that apply to me except to make sure I cultivated some connections to the amount of people I knew and kept in contact with. It seems that it might be finally paying off since a DJ that I met in OuterWorlds is shelling out $300 for me to do some motion graphics and animation for his business presentation.

The nice part about it is that I already got half up front in my PayPal account. That is some evidence to disprove the lion tamer theory and lends weight to the idea that I do have enough talent for graphic design, I just needed the right opportunity.

There is a whole lot of potential in Musicians Playground 3D
to get more exposure for Independent Artists and sidestep the established record labels. I've seen about 15 bands that I'd never heard of since I've been there that were pretty good. It's a huge market to be tapped and if he gets the $6 million in financing that he's asking for in this business presentation, it's a great opportunity to get on the expanded staff to be doing graphic work full time.

Even if he doesn't get the financing and this is the only job he can afford it still gets me a lot farther since I finally have something solid for my portfolio, a job history more recent than 10 years ago and a good reference from someone that can actually confirm my experience doing graphic design that I can show to other employers that might hire me so that they can take me more seriously than they would before.

Part of the deal for the motion graphics is that he also wants me to make a pod for Current TV about indie music and MP3D's role in getting more exposure for artists. It would be a chance to get the story out about new ways for artist to reach audiences through streaming video and virtual reality to build support for the bands and get their CD's sold directly.

I found this example of a indie music pod and I think I could make one just as good. I'm going to has to come up with a script to send and get them to shoot the footage. The best location seems to be at Doc's Place in Florida since they seem to shoot concerts there a lot. I'd need someone on camera to narrate the story, hopefully I can get Ivy to do it from the script then I could edit it together when they send it back to me. By getting it put on Current TV myself, I get paid for producing it and for uploading it, plus I get more credibility from Current as a video producer.

An addition to a legacy in any case

2008-03-08T11:37:00.000-08:00

At least the DVD of The Writer's Nightmare is something to add to my portfolio and something that I could be remembered for. MarsDarinder did tell me again today he was going to buy one from CreateSpace so hopefully that's at least one

We'll see if having it distributed on Amazon's web site will increase sales with a wider distribution network

Although the packaging of the DVD did seem to impress Dan, so maybe it would be enough to interest agents or movie studios as a storyboard. I could include it in with the screenplay to give them a better idea of what the story is about. The downside is that would be a fairly substantial investment to get that many copies to send out with guarantee it would help get any notice for it at all.

I figured it would help to be able to put the video I did for the Colbert Campaign to go with the T-shirts, buttons and signs on here to be able to post the link other places.

Paradoxes of broken perspectives

2008-02-14T15:04:00.000-08:00

This is the first Valentine's Day in years I've spent alone and it's sort of ironic since a couple years ago we had planned to renew our vows at the beach on our 5 year wedding anniversary. Now that it's here, that's not going to happen since we didn't even make it that far to rewnew anything.

Over Xmas when I was down in San Luis Obispo, I did go to the spot on the beach directly below the balcony where we got married and tried to meditate. I reflected on where we started 5 years ago and where we were now. It was a paradox that the values we seemed to agree on before had changed so radically.

I used my camcorder to capture our wedding vows from the videotape played from the TV it was the easiest way to get it on YouTube even if it wasn't the best quality. The main thing is that it shows what we had both agreed to. Since we had written the vows ourselves and planned the ceremony to be one of our choosing, you would've thought that it would be something that we believed in together and not just following along with a formal tradition

I know at least I was sincere and tried to fulfull all of those vows. The only one I'm not sure I fulfilled was how strong I was, but we both promised to share in the relationship equally and work together as partners towards our goals. Unfortunately that didn't happen. I'm wondering if it was because we had different ideas on what they were.

I was listening to The One, Two, Three of God and it describes the differences between 1st person, 2nd person and 3rd person perspectives. Maybe the reasons why it seemed like the values we agreed on in our vows were different was because we didn't view them in the same way.

A more fundamental paradox has to do with negative self image. She never thought she was good looking no matter what I or anyone else told her, she always thought it was from ulterior motives like guys were horny or I was biased, nothing could convince her otherwise that she was right. I never thought I was good looking either, but I was willing to accpet her opinion that I was since I figured it more important that she thought so and I could admit that I was wrong and her opinion counted more than mine.

I'm not sure if that has to do with 1st and 2nd person perspectives since the only opinion that mattered to her was hers and the opinion that mattered more to me was hers. The thing is now that she's obviously changed her opinion of me, what does that say? Her opinion of herself is still consistent, but was mine wrong before and now right that I shouldn't have depended on her opinion?

The other thing is that by her holding onto a negative opinion of herself no matter what does that make her only accept losing Life Scripts? Does being able to consider I was wrong about my negative opinion mean I'm able to change a winning one and a more positive self image? Now that she changed her opinion (or was lying about it the whole time) does that mean I was right all along about my negative opinion?

Those perspectives don't seem to lead anywhere by themselves so something must be missing from them. So they seem to be fractured perspectives that need to be balanced by including more from all three perspectives. I suppose the only way out of the paradox is to transcend and include the opinions from the 1st, 2nd and 3rd person perspectives to resolve them and get a satisfactory answer.

For example Bridget Jones thought that the values that Mark Darcy had were intolerable until she was in a prison in the Philipines and from what the girls there told of the treatment they recieved from their boyfriends, Bridget found that she was exagerating her problems

Current TV is New and Improved

2008-02-13T13:43:00.001-08:00

I guess winning the Emmy allowed Current TV to hire better people and more funding to update the web page. I got an email inviting me to submit a VCAM for another T-Mobile commercial since I had done one before and I was very impressed with the vast improvements in the submission process. I didn't have any problems with it at all and didn't have to jump through all those annoying hoops with VideoEgg like I did the last time.

Hopefully I'll have better luck with this one and T-Mobile will accept it. So far it ooks like their is a lot less competition with very few people submitted VCAM, that's most likely why they were sending emails to get more people involved.

I do think my skills have improved since I did the others and this commercial is a lot tighter than the last one since I didn't try to do too much and kept it at exactly 30 sec, hit the features they wanted advertised with legible text and simplified the soundtrack to only the essentials. I supposed I'll find out when it's voted on and if I hear from T-Mobile whether or not they'll pay for it.

Another attempt at a video blog

2008-02-09T15:39:00.000-08:00

I went down to Riverbend Park to get some more inspiration for the next chapter of An Angel's Destiny while I was down there I thought I could try and do a more sophisticated version of a video log to show some of the methods I use to get ideas.

To help with focusing my thoughts, I tried listening to the CD of The One, Two, Three of God and it assisted me to look at the 1st, 2nd and 3rd person perspectives in order to get a wider view of what I was trying to get across.

Relaxing my mind and trying deep breathing excersizes while watch the DVD of the chakra meditation aided me in concentrating on what I want the story to tell.

For the next chapter I should pick up the next morning in the Days Inn Motel. Chris could be taking a shower when Minerva wakes up. She asks him why he didn’t tried to get physical with her after it seemed they were getting so close at the Boardwalk.

He could tell her that he thought the rule was that he had to do something heroic before he was allowed to take that reward. Minerva could tell him that if he was going to go by that, then the way he brought her there with the particle beam would certainly qualify as a heroic accomplishment. Chris would agree that it was groundbreaking since it had never been done before in history.

But from what she had told him of her desire to go beyond that since she was tired of that kind of thing from the life she had known, so he had assumed that she wouldn’t want him to take the same advantage of her. Minerva could say that she had gotten hints that he was after more than that and she could tell somehow he was different from the run of the mill hero that was only out to satisfy his own lust by all the help he was giving her to get back to her Guardian Angel job.

Chris could say that was part of the problem that he was afraid of starting an intimate relationship when she was just going to be leaving as soon as she could. It wasn’t worth giving in to such a precious thing only to lose it.

Chris could be losing his resolve and about to give in to the temptation of her charms when there is a knock on the motel room door with the maid service wanting to clean the room. That stops Chris since it was too close to check out time to continue.

In order for Minerva to get used to tapping into her powers in different ways Chris thinks of the examples from the Boardwalk and thinks of practicing Zen Bowling. He takes her to the Boardwalk Bowl and has her practice closing her eyes and visualizing the pins then the ball knocking them all down. It helps her get in tune with her rhythms and flow with her subconscious relaxed so her senses don’t get in the way.

After practicing a while they go to lunch at the Dolphin restaurant out on the wharf and talk about better ways to contact Odin. Chris gets the idea of going to the Kiva Retreat House to use the hot tubs there since he’s noticed that Minerva tends to relax more in them. There they can practice Kundalini Yoga to energize her charkas that will provide enough to be able to contact Odin.

Chris guides Minerva through the deep breathing and focus on her charkas to build up the prana she needs to connect with Odin. Once contact is made, Odin tells her that he is pleased with the progress she has made with learning how to handle herself in different environments and how to tap into her powers in different ways.

Odin reminds Minerva that it’s not only the people she helps that have to grow it’s herself as well. When she asks about her assignments Odin tells her, that she can commit to fulfilling the one she is on or take on the next where she has to help Erin James start a revolution against a corporate government gone too far. (It's Universe 7817 Sequel: #5 on the plot summary for details) Maybe I should have Odin give Minerva a book about the history and practices of the CSA and why itis important that Erin James gets help in her struggles against it. That way Chris can find the impact Minerva could have and help her in her understanding of the consequences to that society.

Chris will be torn between wanting her for himself and recognizing she has a duty to help a greater number of people. He'll try to put her needs above his with a selfless act to convince her to take the other assignment.

Expanding my capabilites

2008-02-04T15:24:00.000-08:00

I was able to get a small digital camcorder so I can take original footage. I did a test of a video log down at the river next to the salmon hatchery to try it out.

I'm going to have to get a lot better in front of the camera if I'm going to do some more of these, but it could help me a lot with the way I express myself and how I communicate if I practice more.

It does give more dimensions to my blog in addition to the animation, videos others have done, images, links to web pages and diagrams I have been using to get my points across. I have had trouble actually writing more personal stuff so maybe if I can say into the camera then it'll get across better with my tone, expressions and body language.

The camera has limited features, good for the price, but not really suited anything professional. Once I get used to it, I probably can do a lot more with it, when I get the hang of adapting methods of composition and the best positions to put it in for the best angles.

Hopefully if I work out all the details of the shots with storyboards, then I can tell better stories when combined with animation and compositied shots, like HappySlip does in her videos. I could do a story that has me with Promicin abilities where stuff comes out of VR into RL and people interact with it.

That would be cool to be able to put together videos like that, since it would probably sell more DVD than The Writer's Nightmare. Which I'm having trouble with getting it on CreateSpace. I sent the master copy of the DVD to them on 12/21/07 and UPS delivered it on 12/24/07. I guess that wasn't the best time to do it the day before Xmas. I had to wait until 1/14/08 to find out that something had happened to it and they couldn't read the DVD to produce the proof copy.

Either UPS screwed it up with other holiday packages falling or spilling on it or the shipping/recieving department at CreateSpace damaged it during an Xmas party. Or they just lost it completely and forgot about it then just gave me that excuse that it had been messed up when they got it.

What pisses me off is that I had to wait that long to find out about it and only after emailing them a few times to be told of the problem. If they couldn't read it, then they should've told me a lot sooner that I needed to send them another master copy.

But it will probably work out for the best because since I have to send them another DVD anyway, I'm taking the chance to fix all the flaws in the other one. I've went through and added time to the parts where the text is on the screen so people can read it easier. I fixed some minor glitches with the comic balloons and some typos in the text. That ought to make it a better DVD, but I think it's going to have to be a two disc set now since it's too long for one DVD now.

That does make it easier to have it in episodes now though since I have the time to put the menus I was planning with iDVD now that the semester has started and I can use the Mac Lab again. I can put 18 episodes on the first and 17 on the second with the promo footage also.

At least I do have some fans out there

2007-12-29T12:14:00.000-08:00

I got some messages on YouTube from a guy called MarsDarinder who said he liked the way I wrote and animated The Writer's Nightmare. He wanted to do an interview for his web page, so I said that would be cool and if he liked what I did on YouTube then he should buy the DVD when I get it up on CreateSpace.

So hopefully I'll have at least 1 sale of the DVD and it's good PR to help build a word of mouth viral buzz for for the story. Also it's good to get feedback from someone who shows an interest to help improve it. It shows the degree of how much I was able to convey and what parts I still need to work on to be able to communicate the story effectively.

From: MarsDarinder
Subject: Would you like to do an interview?

Would you like to do an interview? I am a huge fan of The Writers Nightmare and would love to ask you a few questions for my website

Thanks for you time and I can't wait for your next fantastic project!

To: MarsDarinder
Subject: Re: Would you like to do an interview?

That sounds very cool, I'm putting the whole story on a DVD if you want to get one of those. The next project I was planning was continuing "An Angel's Destiny"

Let me know when you want to set up the interview

From: MarsDarinder
Subject: Interview

Thanks so much for doing this interview Argon.

Q#1 Episode 9 and 10 have to be the most memorable part of the series for me. I love the song selection, how the words match the lyrics and of course Peter fighting pan is amazing. What inspired the battle?

Q#2 could you elaborate on the Dream Police?

Q#3 Whats the Gyrotwister?

Q#4 Can you summarize the overall story?

Q#5 It's sad to watch the story end but I'm excited that you mentioned in a previous e-mail that your continuing "An Angels Destiny" is there any details you can clue me into ahead of time about that?

P.S. I am interested in ordering a dvd but I'm broke right now so I will get back to you later about that:)

To: MarsDarinder
Subject: Re: Interview

Q1: The musical theme started in Episode 8 with the Lamb Lies Down on Broadway and Fly on a Windshield then continued in 9 and 10 with The Carpet Crawlers and The Chanber of 32 Doors from the rock opera by Genesis since the whole album was about illusions on the way to enlightement and I wanted Pan to do something symphonic that Peter and Cyan would eventually be able to recognize to break free of the illusions.

The battle with Pan was inspired by a conversation I had with someone back in the 80's about a book by Jack Chalker called Demons of the Dancing Gods that had a similar kind of thing that I wanted Pan and Peter to go through to show Peter could recognize that on the Astral Plane the rules about matter and energy were different.

Q2: I got the name for the Dream Police from the Cheap Trick song and they are the interogators for the Illuminati. They do more high tech torture by using a brain probe device to scan your dreams and obtain the info they need. That's why Peter and Cyan had to take their minds away from their bodies to avoid it.

Q3: I didn't go into much detail about the Gyrotwister in this book because it was a sequel to my other called "Memoirs from Sideways in Time" but briefly it's a time/space machine that also can go across parallel worldlines. It's a whole better than the flux capacitor they used in Back to the to the Future (especially as you saw it didn't keep running into things like in that movie) for more details on the Gyrotwister and to get a copy of Memoirs you can go to the download links for the plot summary and the other novel on my blog

Q4: Basically it's a story about how who is writing the story is relative to where you are. Steve Nelson writes about Joe, Luke and P.L.A.N. in one worldline and I about about Steve Nelson in another. Someone writes about me in a different timeline sort of like that movie Stranger than Fiction. Steve finds this out when Peter and Cyan drag him into a rescue adventure.

Q5: I have 6 episodes of An Angels Destiny on YouTube right now but I did it a bit differently since I had the animation and music here but I had the animation with the text on Revver and I had a Flash page with just the text of the novel and both videos on it but I lost the sever space the web page was on so now I only have the 2 kinds of videos online until I can get some more web space.

I was at the part where Minerva and Chris having failed to get in touch with Odin at the Norse Temple go to the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk to relax and Chris finds out that Minerva still has the power of her halo, all she has to do is focus and find other ways to tap into it.

P.S. You still have time before the DVD is available since I still have to mail it in and get it proofed. Hopefully it'll be ready to order from Amazon.com and CreateSpace in a couple of weeks. I just wanted to give you a heads up that you would be able to get it on DVD soon.

I did want to ask you about the comic text format, since I've had others that said it was hard to follow the story reading them like that. How much difficulty did you have with that part?

I wanted to do it with voice over but I couldn't get enough people together to record all the different parts so I was kinda forced to do it that way.

From: MarsDarinder
Subject: Text format

I think it works really well. It goes by a little faster than i usually read, yet the characters still have so much personality and overall I liked the pacing a lot. It's definitely one of if not the best computer animated movies ever made certainly the best written.

I've watched the whole thing twice now and plan to watch it again soon, I also watched that episode of An Angels Destiny you attached to your last e-mail and the terrain and character art is excellent plus i saw the revver.com link cool stuff.

To: MarsDarinder
Subject: Re: Text format

You said it was a litle faster than you can read, would it be easier to just pause the video so you can read it? I could lengthen the time the text stays on the screen but would that ruin the pacing?

Would it help if I had the YouTube version to show flow of the action and the music, the Revver version to show how the text relates to the action and the full text of the novel to show the details and the emotions that covered all the bases together?
I put all 3 in a blog so you can see it all in one place together

Let me know if that makes the story easier to follow and if it gives more depth and dimension to it. Thanks for all your compliments and I really appreciate your feedback so I can improve it.

From: MarsDarinder
Subject: Pacing

I did pause the video at times and even re-watched a couple of the deeper plot points to understand them better. Maybe just another couple more seconds on the longer paragraphs here and there would help.

For An Angels Destiny I think they should all have text, maybe simplify the text for YouTube and tone down anything in the text you think you might get flagged over.

And it's cool that you have the longer version of the text on blogspot I'm gonna read those tomorrow and re-watch the episodes to get a better idea of the story. No problem I'm happy to help

To: MarsDarinder
Subject: Re: Pacing

Well how about breaking the longer paragraphs into more than one text balloon so it would be easier to read, would that help? That might be less strain on the pacing

How did you find the idea of a computer with a surfer dude accent? Did S.T.A.R. provide some good comic relief with his use of the improbability generator? (Did you recognize the hisory of the device?)

Did you understand the concepts and principles that the Gamemaster was trying to put across? Did I convey the ideas for the Grande Game well enough to be grasped?

In Angel's Destiny, I'm sort of going from the other end instead of lower to higher, it's from Higher to Lower but both show the evolution through stages of consciousness.

From: MarsDarinder
Subject: The grande game

Yeah smaller text balloons would help. I loved the surfer accent very original idea too. S.T.A.R. did make me laugh with the improbability generator but I don't know the history behind it, what would that be?

I think I do. The gamemaster was saying that karma is like a video game where your scored at the end based on your choices. The Omniverse split in two because of the choices people made to be un-enlightened. Is that about right?

To: MarsDarinder
Subject: The next part of the story

I really liked the post of the interview you did on your blog, thanks a lot for the exposure and all the feedback you've given me.

I'm having a bit more of a delay with the DVD than I thought, since when I mailed it in to CreateSpace it didn't get delivered until the day before Xmas and they've been very slow picking up the slack from the holidays, hopefully they'll mail me the proof copy to be approved next week and it'll be ready for you to buy then.

I did get the next part of the story for "An Angel's Destiny" up on YouTube and the full text on my blog. Let me know what you think of it.

From: MarsDarinder
Subject: Thanks

Thanks for making The Writer's Nightmare i look forward to the dvd release!
I hope you make a ton of money off of your art and even if you don't i'm still glad you had the inspiration and followed through with the hard work needed to pull off something so great.

I've watched Angel's Destiny a few times and read the text story too I love it very cool stuff.

P.S. deleted you last e-mail by accident before i got a chance to finish reading it so if I didn't cover anything please let me know!

To: MarsDarinder
Subject: RE: Thanks

Did you get the part where I added some new stuff to Angel's Destiny?I took your advice and added to the time the text stays on the screen, let me know if it's easier to read.
I put the full text to the new part on my blog also I'm working on the next part where Chris shows Minerva how to use new ways to tap into her powers and she get in contact with Odin.

From: MarsDarinder
Subject: Angel's Destiny

It's definitely easier to read and the blogspot.com text always helps flesh out the plot. It's the best part of the story so far. Very cool!

The tremendous odds of fulfilling the epic of the Impossible Dream

2007-12-21T18:10:00.000-08:00

I had been thinking that I actually could finish the second book they way I planned, since the tragedy of the failure of the love story would be balanced out by the accomplishment of finishing the Naked Angel Presentation.

That leaves room for the big finish in the last book of the trilogy, since when I watched Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End I was amazed at all the plot twists and how it kept building the action bigger and bigger until it was finally all resolved. Not in the way it was expected but also leaving room for a fourth movie.

The trouble with ending the 2nd book that way is that it would most likely demand a more involved task in the 3rd book. Since I had already had the experience of a normal relationship, it would set the bar for an extraordinary one. The odds of pulling that off of is worse than winning the lottery in each the state in the same year.

It would be the true essence of the Impossible Dream, since even the ones I've heard that accomplished great relationships, haven't been able to sustain them. Richard Bach got divorced from Leslie Parrish so did Billy Joel from Christie Brinkley. Even Ken Wilber was only with Treya a year before she died.

Part of the trouble is a lot of women are confused about what they do want, that's what the cliche "Nice guys finish last" applies to since a lot of biology makes the mistake of strength confused for stability. Since strength is no substitute for maturity in the long run it is hard to maintain. There was an example of that in the movie Bedazzled when Elliot wished to be more "sensitive" because it was what Allison thought she wanted.

Admittedly the example was exaggerated for dramatic effect since Elliot was so overly sensitive that no gal would want that and the strong guy was almost dragging his knuckles on the beach like a caveman so that would be hard to take also. But the principle is sound and it's a paradox that will decrease the odds of a relationship surviving.

Most likely what it would take to accomplish that Impossible Dream would be to integrate those paradoxes so that they are all included and not seen as separate parts in different people. The trouble with that is it would require both people to realize all the stages in all four quadrants.

The only way to do that is like Ken Wilber was talking about being a Bodhisattva in Hell, you have to be ultimately enlightened then come back to relate and help others to be enlightened also. As I was saying the highest scores of the Grande Game are for those that aren't stuck at any stage of consciousness, but can move through any of them at will.

I just wish I had a better ending than a tragedy

2007-12-18T11:38:00.000-08:00

But I guess not every story has a happy ever after. It's a shame since I used to believe in Fairytale endings and that's the way I had the first book in my auto-biography "Seeking Resonance" end with my finding a soulmate to marry. I had thought that Krys did believe in romantic endings also, she said she did, but I guess that couldn't last since it's very hard to live up to that kind of thing over the long haul.

I was going to do the second book more about the adventures we had, but it seems like more of a tragedy like the movie "Shakespeare in Love" where he has to lose her and write about her after. But even Richard Bach couldn't seem to sustain his relationship at the soulmate level after he wrote One which is what I wanted to emulate in the 2nd book

We both loved that movie, but she never believed me when she worried about things working out and I used to tell her that "It all ends well" since I guess the answer "I don't know, it's a mystery" wasn't enough for her. I suppose that's a lot more dramatic than I had planned but as they say "artists have to suffer to create great art" and the situation does lend itself better to be able to "write her well."

The thing is, it does depend somewhat on what side of the screen, you're on. If you're the one at the keyboard developing the plot for the characters to deal with or if you're like in the movie "Stranger than Fiction" where someone else is creating the plot for you to follow.

Some of it is circumstances beyond your control since you can't make choices for other people and I've been wondering if this is the 2nd part of a trilogy though.

I always figured that the attitude of "That's all Life is, is a series of down endings" was a bit shortsighted, since even if Empire Strikes Back did end with tragedies, it was only the middle of the story and the climax was still to come. Maybe that's the moral here that it's not over yet, I might be eligible for the Fickle Finger of Fate award now but there is still more of the story to be written, just that Krys won't be in it.

As John Lennon used to sing "Instant Karma's gonna get you, gonna knock you off your feet" the lies Krys told are going to come back and bite her in the ass. I found out the depth of her lies to me from reading some of her messages on Yahoo to Farin.

Then I made sure that Farin knows about what she was trying to hide from him since I thought it only fair that he had more of the facts so he could make a informed decision instead of being kept in the dark.

I doubt she'll get away with her betrayal of trust because from the conversation I had with him, he's not going to be able to put any trust in her since he won't know if she's capable of being sincere or how long it will be before she finds someone else and does the same thing to him.

Even if she was able to convince him otherwise when she got there, and they do live together for a while, the reality of day to day living will most likely take it's toll since the odds that she has let go of her false expectations and neediness are slim.

The demands of his job as a chef and having to be gone for long periods of time is not going to be able to keep up with her demands for attention. That and the rift created by his need to have children and her inability to be responsible for them are also going to drive them apart.

So it might be that when she is faced with the regrets of her actions, it'll be like I told her that she'll be like in the movie "Chasing Amy" after we've moved on and she'll have to live with the loss of what she had. That might finally give her some maturity instead of all the selfish behavior from being an only child.

I did warn her when she started getting involved with Farin that it was unavoidable that one or all of the three of us were going to get hurt and the odds of winning her "Lets make a Deal" with Fate had very poor odds.

But she maintained "I gamble with my life, never my money" so it was her choice to reap what she sowed, that's the essence of the tragedy it seems.

I have been thinking that it's not worth getting involved with someone else again since I'd probably never get closer to a soulmate again. As they say "Life goes on, long after the thrill of living is gone." and that she was the only thing that gave my life meaning.

But thinking about the second part of a trilogy does give me hope and I'd hate to leave the story unfinished especially since I saw Karen Effiel agonize over the ending she made for Harold Crick so that she changed it. Also when I think of how it inspired Shakespeare to greatness.

After all I didn't end "Seeking Resonance" when Margy died since that wasn't the place I wanted to stop. I waited for a way to go out and found it was when Krys and I got married. So this next book might be less like "One" than I had planned, but I should still wait and work toward an ending I like better.

Hopefully I'll learn more and be more careful to do a better job so the adventure and the romance of the fairytale can be sustained in the 3rd book of the trilogy.

Perserverance might be the key

2007-11-21T16:31:00.000-08:00

It doesn't look like I'll have my dentures in time for Thanksgiving since they got delayed in fitting them so they work wasn't finished. It's a shame for the turkey, but at least I still can eat the stuffing, mashed taters and rice. At least they are making progress on them and seem to be going out of the way to be certain they will fit right when they are done that's the main thing.

I was watching a DVD from Disney about what happens to Aurora (The Princess formerly known as Sleeping Beauty) and Princess Jasmine and both stories were about perserverance and how important sticking to it until the goal is reached.

It did somewhat inspire me to keep on with my portfolio and I did make some more progress on it but I didn't get it all together yet. I have found some new vitamins that seem to help me focus better so hopefully I'll be able to make more progress on it now

I was hoping to have another place to publish my books

2007-11-05T16:13:00.000-08:00

I was reading on HappySlip's blog the other day about how she's going to be selling her videos on DVD from a site called CreateSpace and it sounded like a good idea for me to try so I checked it out.

The good part is that they have no set up fees and they price things like Cafe Press where they set the manufacturing costs and let you set you price above that for your profit. They are owned by Amazon.com so they have a big market to distribute to since that website gets a lot of traffic and if I can get my stuff on there I might have a better chance of selling my stuff.

If I able to put the whole story on DVD with a lot higher quality video than is possible with Revver it would be understood better and I'd be getting paid up front for the DVD instead of trickles from advertising.

It does mean that I would have to work on how to design then DVD, but I got some DVD authoring programs and I can do some cover art for them. Since it's harder to follow spread out on my blog like this, I made another The Writer's Nightmare: Revver Version that has only 3 episodes per page so it's easier to load but still easy to keep the episodes in order

I put a version that has the YouTube version of The Complete Writer's Nighmare Animations that has better music and is all in one page from beginning to end with links to both in the Personal Links on the side of this page.

So it might be a better deal to DVD on that site with some work to get the files ready and burned on a Master DVD then design the art work for the cover and disc but it might be worth it.

They also do book publishing with some better options than Cafe Press in that they off more sizes and they also do color pages with would be better for graphic novels and they'll give you a free ISBN code to be able to sell it more widely. Also Amazon is a very popular site for books so I'd been getting a lot better chance of it being bought by more people.

The drawbacks are that it only allows 100 pages in color pages and they make you pay for a proof copy before they'll approve it for sale. That's somewhat like vanity publishing and somewhat like agressive quality control. While I think being able to check a proof copy is a good idea since it means less mistakes being made, I don't like the idea of being forced to buy a copy before they'll be able to sell it.

I was going to revise my graphic novel since the begining was to low resolution and I'd made a lot of changes in the way I represented Cyan's character in the animation so condensing it to 100 pages wouldn't be such a big deal. But since AFAIK they don't accept PayPal or money orders for CreateSpace it's not going to be that easy to be able to order a proof copy. It might also be a good idea to try it out on a more traditional novel that has more text than graphics like "An Angel's Destiny"

Plus some more insight...

2007-10-18T00:03:00.000-07:00

... into how Ken Wilber's theories hold together from being able to get some more of his books at Barnes and Noble. I got Integral Vision which helped show the whole thing easier than in Sex, Ecology and Spirituality

It's good for an overview

I also got Eye of Spirit that give more foundation and evidence for his theories

That meditation gives a lot of the principles shown in the book

I was able to get some good stuff...

2007-10-17T22:08:00.001-07:00

...as long as it lasted, hard to say if I'll be able to get any more from Barnes & Noble before next summer if at all.

I've put off doing some more episodes for a while until I get my portfolio done so I'm holding it at episode 20

I put the Dark Angel series DVD on my wishlist the 1st thing after I saw that Die Another Day video that had the footage but I wasn't able to get until now since the size of the PayPal wasn't enough before

The 1st season was pretty good hopefully the 2nd was too

Since they kept cutting out our favorite parts in Jay and Silent Bob Strikes Back I got it on DVD so we could watch it uncensored the way it was supposed to be seen.

I saw the opening scene from A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum on the Muppet Show and it inspired me to get the whole thing on DVD

1 step foward....

2007-10-15T15:22:00.000-07:00

... for every 2 steps back doesn't make muck progress but at least it's something.

I've been able to get a design for my portfolio that Dan approves of so I'm making some small strides on that but it doesn't guarantee he'll let me into that student design firm or that other employers will pay attention to it.

That point about the lion tamers still might apply, this is just a step toward trying to find out which view is correct and putting the best foot forward in making a good impressiom in order to get a more positive outcome.

I finally got episode 18 approved on Revver, it must have been that I uploaded it too early in the day and it fell between the cracks when they got to their office and they never noticed it. So after the weekend I waited until the middle of the day and uploaded it again so they would see it this time.

I found out that they were listed under the failed uploads in my dashboard on Revver so I went and deleted those and uploaded episode 18 and 19 again

It's hard to follow them when they're scattered around so I figured I should put them in another blog so they would be in the right order from beginning to end

Maybe my Mother was right

2007-09-18T11:30:00.000-07:00

I am beginning to feel that the example my Mom gave of the guy who wanted to be a lion tamer when he thought an anteater was a lion was right, she used that analogy for decades about my being an artist and I always resisted that belief but my track record and all the evidence has pretty much supported her point.

I'm not sure if it's the the stress of trying to be creative and the effort of trying to raise my skills up to a professional level while I'm fighting health problems or that I don't have the talent or the skills necessary for a career graphic design anymore than an accountant would have to be a lion tamer.

I've been in my second try at the Portfolio class for a month now and I haven't made any progress on my own stuff just got some general ideas for it. Dan hasn't liked any of my designs for my mood board and it's hard to say he's wrong about it since all the employers I've sent my stuff to haven't liked it either.

I haven't been able to figure out if that means that I should develop my skills more or that I just don't have what it takes to be a successful designer. Since if I can't even satisfy Dan as a boss with my designs when he tells me what he doesn't like instead of nothing at all or just a flat out rejection without any reason. Then it doesn't bode well for getting a more advanced job, or even getting into that student design form that he started as a stepping stone or a reference for a etter job.

It might be that my estimation of my talet or skills is the anteater and the actual acceptable standard it takes to have a successful career is the lion.

Reaching for the Fountain

2007-09-12T13:32:00.000-07:00

I was watching The Fountain last weekend and it had a lot about death and rebirth in it.

It's easier to understand from the trailer but you don't get the full effect unless you see the ending

Maybe I should put more of those ideas in when I do the scenes with the GameMaster in The Writer's Nightmare.

As soon as I get to that part

In around 8 episodes

Celebrating Labor Day

2007-09-04T08:37:00.000-07:00

I figured that since I had 4 days off for Labor Day that I could take a break from my portfolio and do another episode of "The Writer's Nightmare" animated comic videos.

I got the 9th done and part of the 10th where Peter and Cyan have the showdown with Pan the Goat God.

I saw another video with Ken Wilber where he explains some of the ideas he put in his book Integral Spirituality.

It looks like it's Gut Check time

2007-08-23T07:47:00.001-07:00

And as Darkwing Duck says "Let's get Dangerous!" since this semester I'm going to have to step up my game and really focus on my portfolio to try and get it to a professional standard to see if I can get a job in this field.

At least it would make a good pre-visualization

2007-07-23T14:35:00.000-07:00

If I was able to get someone in a position to make a movie about the "Writers Nightmare" at least I could use the animated comic as a better method to get the ideas across than just a text screenplay. Even if an audience doesn't seem to be satisfied with them by themselves without a voice over, they could be useful as moving storyboards.

I guess it depends on who was willing to produce the movie. If Square Enix was doing it then it could be done all as CGI, if Lucas Film was doing it, it would probably be better to do it as a mix of live action and CGI.

Another thing they might be useful for is to put with the Comic Book on a CD to sell at Cafe Press.

It's a shame I don't have access to enough voice actors to be able to do it with a voice over. Dawn Cody hasn't come through on her offer. Everytime I ask her if she's recorded any of the dialogue she tells me she'll do it in a few weeks, then a month goes by and I ask her again and she says the same thing. It doesn't really look like she's going to follow through at this point so I'm stuck with the comic style chat balloons.

I've gotten more episodes of "The Writer's Nightmare" animated and uploaded than I have of "An Angel's Destiny" probably because the former was already written as a comic book and the latter I'm still stuck on the 4th Chapter.

It looks like I'm going to have to design a new web page for "Angel's Destiny" since I no longer have space on Aragorn's server, so I might as well design a web page that includes both that and "The Writer's Nightmare" so it's a more intergrated page to see them all

Hopefully the references to the Akashic records Eris and Pan won't go over a lot of people's heads

Kinda like Compound Interest

2007-07-19T03:55:00.001-07:00

Seems like after you build up a foundation on Revver, the easier it is to make it grow. I've made twice as much in June as in all the months before since I have a base of videos now that I've added to. I was finally able to get Pink Floyd: The Wall DVD that we've been wanting with the money I earned last month.

Lots of great imagery in that movie and some classic symbols of neuroses and pyschoses. I also put another episode of "The Writer's Nightmare" on there since I found the model of the ship I had in Poser to be able to continue.

I added some foley sounds of a starship bridge and ships passing to help the sound track. The trouble seems to be that they have such a delay in processing the revenue. I have $100 pending and only $16.50 processed hopefully they'll get a move sinc there are only 10 days left in the month to be able to get a deposit in my PayPal account over $20

It seemed like when I uploaded the 2nd episode of "The Writer's Nightmare" that they took some notice and processed some so I uploaded one about the GameBots in Love to see if they would do some more, we'll see if that works again.

Some new thoughts on Transformative situations

2007-06-27T15:53:00.000-07:00

I was reading some articles by Ken Wilber and Andrew Cohen, they were talking about Integral Spirituality and it gave me some ideas about what to do about the problem I was having in the Free Will to go through transformative situations, the chapter after Minerva's conference with Odin and how to deal with shadow elements.

When I made the analogies to "V for Vendetta" and "The Bitter Suite" episode of "Xena" it was more that they didn't give their full consent so that any benefits they gained from them would be tainted by the duress. But the other side of that is if you consent to do what a teacher asks then isn't that consent enough, even if you don't know all the methods that teacher is going to use? The ego defenses aren't going to allow any circumstances that are going to allow it's hold to be broken so some amount of misdirection is going to be needed to get around those barriers.

I think that trust in the one that is going to lead you through the situations of transformation is necessary and that is what pulls through the stress that the ego goes through to accomplish transcendence. In the case of V and Evey I do think that trust was abused by the degree of suffering and not worth the benefits that the tranformation achieved, probably because it was also flawed in V.

Revver Paying off

2007-06-15T09:42:00.000-07:00

I guess it mostly takes time to build up a library of videos since it seems the more you have the more they generate revenue.

I uploaded a video to Revver with angels, demons, princesses and dragons.

One with spiders and snakes

and one about the Promicin stuff also I'd have more earning it's keep.

It took since last November but I finally was able to buy something with the money I've earned for the videos. I went to Barnes&Noble and ordered a copy of Sex, Ecology, Spirituality, by Ken Wilber and paid for it out of my PayPal account. It was cool that they shipped it in about 4 days.

The Haves and Have Nots

2007-06-07T13:24:00.000-07:00

That's what most power struggles come down to since though that have all the resources want to keep control of them away from those that need them also. It has worked through the ages to provide a lot of drama in plots and USA Network is using it for this season of The 4400 TV show with the masses and the government on different sides in the battle for Promicin which is heating up into a civil war.

When I checked the web site I found they had the idea for an online ad campaign similar to what they had for the Snakes on a Plane movie. I thought it would be cool to participate in it so I came up with a story to post on Promicin Info and a video for YouTube.

Hopefully it'll get more exposure both for the show and for me.

Choices

2007-06-02T22:22:00.000-07:00

There are a whole lot of them and not all of them are simply either/or like Tony Blair was trying to tell people, it's not as easy as Should I stay or should I go? Unfortunately the choices he made weren't very popular since the people he trusted and that trusted him made some poor choices.

Through experience hopefully we learn from the consequences of our choices methods of making better choices. That doesn't always happen though, as George Santayana has often be quoted as saying "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." The lessons of the 60's seemed to have been ignored, and we're having to face all of those tough choices again. I was very puzzled by that until I found a possible way to explain it by what Ken Wilber calls Boomeritis a pathological state of consciousness that particularly afflicts Baby Boomers. Boomeritis is characterized by relativism, narcissism, and an aversion to hierarchy.

Part of what the problem was in order to break the bonds of conformity the held the culture in sway beforehand was that people fell victim to narcissism so instead of protesting the war, civil rights and other freedoms for equality sake, a lot of peopl did it for selfish reasons, so that they have to face those choices again since they didn't learn from them the last time.

Boomers do happen to have a particular and, of course, unique historical role in this development. As Ken Wilber writes, "The Boomers, to their great credit, were the first major generation in history to develop this capacity. That's a very important point.... The Boomers moved beyond the previous cultural stages of traditionalism and ... scientific modernism ... and pioneered a postmodern, pluralistic, multicultural understanding.... And that is exactly why the Boomers spearheaded civil rights, ecological concerns, feminism, and multicultural diversity. That is the 'high' part of the mixture, the truly impressive part of the Boomer generation and the explosive revolutions of the sixties...." These revolutions, as partial as they have been, changed forever our sense of human possibility and refashioned the contours of human identity."

That was the part of the positive choices made from the lessons of history, but the part they are doomed to repeat are the narcissism, naturally. Wilber is certainly not the only one who has noticed—how could one not?!—that the boomer generation, which unself-consciously and even proudly wears the appellation "the Me generation," is more than a bit stuck on itself—and has left something sticky on the generations that have followed. Christopher Lasch's The Culture of Narcissism and Robert Bellah and colleagues' Habits of the Heart have beautifully and poignantly documented how self-involved and isolated we are. Concerned critics have despaired at how this inflated self-involvement has ripped the social fabric and, grasping to bring order to the chaos created by this unparalleled selfishness, they have often, futilely, called for a return to traditional values. Yet these problems can never be solved by looking backward. The world is changing at warp speed. There is no way back nor is there a "back" to go to. Wilber does what no other critic of the cultural scene has done: he not only elaborates in agonizing detail the corrosive effects of "that strange mixture of very high cognitive capacity... infected with rather low emotional narcissism," but he places it within an evolutionary context and, in so doing, points to a possibility for humanity beyond boomeritis. The solution to boomer narcissism cannot come from looking to the past but only in realizing the demand of the future.

So that some of the choices become somewhat of a paradox like that of the Bodhisattva in that Bodhisattvas take an extra vow of not attaining Enlightenment before all sentient beings have achieved complete Nirvana. But in order to balance things out you have to do both, work on own enlightenment and everyone elses at the same time

Part of that balance is having a good circulation of energy in the chakras that allows you to make better choices, since most of the poor ones come from being stuck in a single perspective with the others blocked

Anodea Judith wrote the best book about balancing your chakras, adding harmony to your life with them and now she produced the best video detailing that.

One of the harder choices how to use the fire in the solar plexus chakra since unless it is tamed and channeled it can burn.

Keeping the liberating current balanced with the manifesting current is a series of delicate choices.

But as Ken Wilber was talking about once you've gotten a more balanced viewpoint and past the "aversion to hierarchy" there is a priority that helps focus your judgement and refine your choices. The more views and perspectives that you can include, the better your choices can be.

Happy Chat

2007-06-01T01:08:00.000-07:00

I was able to catch Happy Slip in one of her online chats today. It was a lot of fun. It’s amazing that she can keep up so well when the text is going by so fast, 6 web cams showing and phone calls coming in. I was very impressed with her multitasking and humor.

Her latest video was about Dancing With The Stars and I’m not sure but at the end of it, I think she meant what Casey Kasem used to say, "Keep your feet on the ground and keep reaching for the stars."

I’ve followed DWTS from the 1st season and instead of a being picked to dance with Apolo Anton Ohno she'd be paired up with a professional dancer since she's such a well known celebrity. Someone like Tony Dovolani or Maksim Chmerkovskiy She could’ve give Apolo a run for his money and probably even delivered a knock out to Laila Ali

It wouldn't be the other way around even though she looks a lot like Karina Smirnoff with a better sense of humor, they’ve all had a lot more professional training, for example, Karina is Five-time U.S. National Champion, World Trophy Champion, Asian Open Champion and Ranked second in the world. Even though Christine is funnier and more talented at comedy, she'd have to go through the training involved in the show to compete at the dancing.
It would've been just as funny if she did the video with the roles reversed the way the show is set up though, since I'm pretty sure they have auditions for the stars also. Maybe she could've imitated a few other stars that failed too.

I uploaded a video for YouTube with a soundtrack of Lady by The Little River Band, I guess it wasn't as popular a song as my last one. I suppose their is no accounting for taste right?

The Spirit of the Game

2007-05-30T14:33:00.000-07:00

I've been trying come up with the rest of the dialogue for the game bot video that I was going to call "The Spirit of the Game" because it's based on the idea of the Ghost in the machine that there is something beyond and beneath just the programming

I'm up to the part where they want to exercise some free will to follow personal goal rather than the programmed ones they were designed for. Competing and eliminating each other in the game kinda prevents a long term relationship.

Moderation in all things

2007-05-24T18:32:00.000-07:00

I had to upload my music video I did for MSP10 this semester to YouTube again since I got an email saying "This is to notify you that we have removed or disabled access to the following material as a result of a third-party notification by Cal IV Entertainment, LLC claiming that this material is infringing:" I checked on that company and it's the agency that represents Faith Hill. They must've been upset that I used her song in my animation.

The thing is that YouTube is so scattershot in how they enforce those notifications, since I saw the actual music video with Faith Hill in it still on there and several others with that song in it. They only delete certain ones with certain tags and only on the day they get the notification from the company that doesn't like it. It's not like it does much good to stop anything.

It's not that I object to Faith Hill or Cal IV to making money of the song, but it's a bit fanatical to try and squeeze every nickel out of it that way. It's not exactly the same purpose or performance if I used it in a different way than they recorded and sold it as. If you're going to go to that extreme, than you should pay the people that came up with the words she used in the vocabulary or the notes she used for the melody since none of that was original either. After all Breathe is an 8 year old song, it's already won 3 Grammy awards and been #1 on the charts so I think they've already made all the money they're going to off of it a while ago. Trying to be tightfisted about any further use of it comes off as kinda of greedy and not appreciating any new exposure for it.

I'd like to get paid for my work too, but I'm not so narrow minded as to think that I was the only one to think of the idea and no one else has the right to do anything like it. If someone took parts of my videos and changed them sufficiently to use for something else I wouldn't be surprised they claimed as their own as long as their was value added to it.

Loose Ends

2007-05-23T21:06:00.000-07:00

I finally got some pics of my artwork about Peter Max when it was on the door.

I think it looks pretty good, the only part I was confused about was that I thought that the room number and the class that was being taught it it was supposed to be part of the door design, that's why I went through all those rough compositions with different fonts and text placements. I guess it was too hard to get people to integrate the text into the design with specific doors in mind and get them approved. Shows I shouldn't have busted my ass to get it done before he changed his mind about it.

It was a nightmare to get printed because of the resolution and the size really bogged down the memory on the computers when I converted it to a .tif file and putting the 16' x 20' to take up the empty space on the paper made the file over 500 megabytes.

I had to redo the file about 6 times because it keeping getting the wrong resolution or the wrong size or the pixel depth got set at 16 bits instead of 8. Then when it was printing the rollers caught on it and made some marks, it was a good thing the marks were at the top where it was going to be cut off.

When it was going to be laminated, there was some trouble since the laminate they were using on all there others before it was thicker and they had run out of it, so I got some wrinkles and pulled off a bit at the bottom. The surface of the door had some weather damage with the plywood bubbling a bit that caused some bumps.

I got another video in the Revver Film School since I plan to make more money with them this summer. And I also put another on YouTube.

I haven't finished all the dialogue for the GameBot video but I'll have a lot more time to finished next week when I don't have classes for a few months.

Winding Down

2007-05-19T13:05:00.000-07:00

The semester is almost over and I've made some progress on some things but not as much as I wanted or was supposed to. I did get a lot of the videos and murals done, but I didn't get my portfolio updated as much I had hoped.

The illustration I did to represent my idea of the kind of art that Peter Max does look good on that door and since it's right in sight of the traffic flow from the parking lot it should get a lot of exposure. That should get me some notice at least, I don't know if it'll do any good for my career but it at it's something I can show off to people that might hire me.

I got some more ads done for Current TV for Sony and they just added a new one for Loreal Men's Expert Hydra-Energetic so I can work on that over the summer, but I'll probabl have to send it in on CD since that Video Egg only works on a Mac

I got an offer from Dawn Cody to do organize some people to do voice acting on my Angel's Destiny videos so that should help to get them on Acceptable.tv especially since she can get the people from Channel 101 involved. That would go a long way to get them on my side and since they were the most influencial group on Acceptable TV getting in good with them would help a lot in getting my stuff on the show for the next season on VH1

I did a couple more music videos on YouTube that got a fair amount of views and links to other sites so hopefully that'll get my stuff more know through viral marketing. That way people will start to recognize my style like they do with other popular people on YouTube.

I've been making more money on Revver and I think I straightened the situation with PayPal so I'll actually be able to use it to get check or buy stuff online with it. They got lots of great stuff on Amazon.com that I could transfer the money I make on Revver. I might even be able to use PayPal to be able to finally sell my stuff from Cafe Press on Ebay. I'll have to check that out and see if I can. That would be a lot better since I haven't been able to get traffic to the Cafe Press site and I don't want to make the investment of buying the products from there and selling them myself until I know it'll be worth it. Doing it through Ebay would be a lot better if I already know I have a seller lined up so I can do the transfer through them without any cost to me.

Drawing from a Deeper Pool

2007-04-29T10:47:00.000-07:00

I was considering more about priorities and what I should be putting more effort into when I read something in Ken Wilber's blog about his theory of Integral Politics that I might consider putting those principles together in my work. I could put the AQAL model more directly in the Naked Angel Flash Presentation as a framework to fit the rest of my ideas around to put them in the 4 quadrants.

Or I could do as Ken Wilber was doing in those sample chapters, put them in a fiction framework to make the principles easier to understand and more entertaining to assimilate by using the concepts in my book "An Angel's Destiny." It would probably be be easier to put it in the book since it was already heading that way, I just have to expand some of the plot and scenes to adapted to a wider scope.

One of the ideas I should go into is what he writes "The setting is a press conference being given by Integral Center who are reporting the results of a computer futures scenario, a scenario that, using the AQAL Code has found that around 30 years from now there will occur a tetra-Singularity of staggering proportions. Think of it like the Technological singularity described by Ray Kurzweil--except that his Singularity only refers to the Right-Hand quadrants, not the interior or Left-Hand quadrants, where, the AQAL Code predicts, we will finally have over 10% of the population reaching truly Integral (or ‘second-tier') levels-hence, a Singularity-like occurrence in all four quadrants." That would certainly help the plot if Minerva was helping to prepare Chris for that and guiding him in the direction towards the events that made up the Tipping Point which would made the Singularity happen in a positive fashion

That is the point Ken Wilber makes when he asks "What good is a Singularity if a dictator controls the technology, or even a malicious AI like in the Matrix?" That's why an Integral Politics is needed since having access to new resources and techniques is no benefit if they aren't distributed to those who need them and only used to oppress. What good does having a Manifest Destiny to spread the species if all it's going to do is use it to exploit those it comes in contact with and those who form the colonies?

He goes into the idea that a Prime Directive is needed since each stage of developement should be respected at each station in life but you should only govern from the highest stage. because each of those stages and stations has an interior and a exterior that represents "I the individual" or "We the people"

Ken Wilber brings up the idea that sounded a lot like what Oracle proposed to solve the problem the Architect had with the Matrix when he told Neo "She stumbled upon a solution whereby nearly ninety-nine percent of the test subjects accepted the program provided they were given a choice - even if they were only aware of it at a near-unconscious level." he proposed something very similar that in order to get around the dilemma of the individuals rights being overshadowed in societies rights that if they are participating in the political process that they will accept giving up some individual rights for the good of society. So it can't be just an elite at the highest stage of developement, all others in the community have to have at a voice in the process for it to work.

The job that Minerva has is to guide people through those stages of developement so they can make the choices that would benefit both themselves and society. So I could put more situations where she could do that after she gets her wings back to affect a wider scope of people than just Chris with the choices he makes. Maybe she can guide him into having a voice in getting members or collecting resources for the Trialectic Parliment to govern World Affairs that Ken Wilber proposed. Or maybe Minerva can help them both with some Integral Life Practice that would benefit Chris as much as they would her.

Trusting the dots

2007-04-24T00:24:00.000-07:00

Even though I've been getting more exposure for my last few videos by using that Most Responded trick to get them viewed more. I'm not sure what purpose it's serving.

At least Dennis liked my PSA and said it was one of the best videos I've done.

But I doubt it's going to get that Mother's day video into the Revver Head of the Class.

I've supposedly made $34 from Revver so far, but I don't know if I'll ever be able to get a check from them or if I'll have to fight about using PayPal or not. I did do a good first episode of The Writer's Nightmare on there

But after the reception An Angel's Destiny got I'm not sure if anyone will pay attention to it favorably. I haven't been able to get much work done on my porfolio and with all the struggle I've had to get designs approved on the doors, banners and web pages, I'm wondering how much it will be worth the to get my portfolio updated.

Back in August I posted about that speech that Steve Jobs gave was considering a new direction. Now I'm wondering what my priorities should be and what I should devote more of my time to. Should I be trust that the dots will connect in the future if I put enough effort into my porfolio to bring about more opportunities to afford more to make life better?

Or should I be focusing more on doing what I love and trust that the future will work out flowing from that love? There are a few choices especially since I have the chance to choose to let my disability take care of the bills and devote more time to The Naked Angel Presentation so I can try to put the framework to communicate more important far ranging spiritual subjects in a practical way. Instead of just bending to someone elses idea of what is going to sell and be acceptable to clients.

The downside to that is that there is a time limit on how long the trailer is going to last and how stable the living situation is where I seem to need to have a routine to get out and about of a regular basis for health reasons. I'm not sure how I'm going to advance that if I'm staying at home working on the Flash project for the Naked Angel. I could try it for the summer and see how much progress I can make on it and if I love it to continue to make it a priority.

Or should I put more effort into finishing manuscript for An Angel's Destiny? Getting an agent and a publisher would help to afford to improve our living situation and that survey of job satisfaction ranked authors near the top of the list. But it still has that downside of a regular schedule and I also could try it for the summer and see how much I love it to finish it.

The 3 things Steve Jobs talks about in his speech trust that the dots will connect, do what you love and don't settle. The portfolio doesn't pass the last 2 since it's not what I love and it's settling for traditional dogma, but it might help the dots to connect later on. The Naked Angel might connect the dots it's hard to tell, it's what I love and it's what I would want to leave as a legacy if I did die the day after I finished it. But that also applies to An Angel's Destiny with better odds that the dots will connect than the Naked Angel, so with that in mind maybe I should make that my priority.

It's truly a shame they couldn't fullfil the considerable promise

2007-04-23T12:37:00.000-07:00

And the significant potential that Acceptable TV represented when it was introduced. But I guess that's Hollywood for you. I'm sure that Dan Harmon and the others that got this show on the air had to make a whole lot of compromises with producers at VH1, some of which I think they used for the idea for Law & Order: Production Unit

At least they got some use out of the struggle to make a good sketch from it. I was listening to Kevin Smith saying how hard it was for him to get a TV show on the air, much harder than movies since when you do a movie, after the script and the budget for the film is approved they let you go do it a lot more. On a TV show they give you a lot more day-to-day interference about it.

So I guess it's no wonder that a lot of the things they had planned for Acceptable TV didn't pan out especially on the web site. It hasn't seemed to effect the show much since they haven't paid much attention to the trolls and mostly have only let their Channel 101 clique get videos on the show.

I don't blame them for that since what I was hoping for that people would give feedback and support each on how to make the videos better so they could get on TV. But I guess that was too much to expect from all those that flooded with lowest common denominator and treated everyone else with derision. Jack Nicholson was right when he said "You can't handle the Truth"

Apparently they can't handle the skills required for getting stuff broadcast on a TV network either, which is the sizable shame since it also bodes very badly for any form of direct democracy. As Morpheus said in the Matrix "You have to understand, most of these people are not ready to be unplugged. And many of them are so inured, so hopelessly dependent on the system, that they will fight to protect it." the same is true of most of the status quo including the way TV shows are run. Even if they are encouraged to improve or insulted by how bad they are most would rather "...take the blue pill... and believe whatever you want to believe." since it's easier and more familiar

I would like to believe that it could get better but the evidence isn't there since the web site is flooded with nasty comments and flame wars that I could respond to in kind which was my first reaction but as Trinity said "you know that road, you know exactly where it ends. And I know that's not where you want to be." it gets way too tiring to be involved in them and never solves anything

Ken Wilber made an analogy to Wyatt Earp when he was in this exact situation with critics and said "It’s made worse by the fact that if you are perceived, rightly or wrongly, as being the leading figure in a field—as its Wyatt Earp—then every punk with a pistol comes gun-slinging for your ass." and ever since that interview (which at first I was flattered by, but after seeing who they interviewed next, I don't think it was an honor) put me at the top of the profiles it seem to make me a target for it.

I don't think that his solution of challenging the members to rise above the petty ego would work or to have them follow any of the Road Rules he suggested for the Integral Institute web site since their are a lot other factors at work at Acceptable TV. It's not just a case of the choice the Oracle gave "You just have to make up you on damned mind to either accept what I'm going to tell you, or reject it." because even if all the members did straighten out and began to work together, I doubt they would let the worst videos be deleted. It doesn't take a conspiracy theory to know that since if you take Deep Throat's advice and "Follow the Money"

you can find enough evidence to prove that they have a vested interest in keeping the traffic from them. They are helping Revver since the ads from them are on all the Revver videos not just the ones for Acceptable TV so Revver is using the revenue generated by them which benefits both VH1 and Amp'd Mobile by getting the ads seen by more people. More traffic and more ads seen by more people is more profit for them because it gets the show and their products seen more. It's very simplistic to say that Amp'd Mobile isn't benefiting from having Acceptable TV ads on all Revver videos and that VH1 doesn't get more viewers or ad revenues from it.

It might've been their intention to pay the members for their vides at first, but I don't think they've figured out how to do it with the way that Revver set it up, they're getting all the revenue from it. I don't know if Acceptable TV has access to those accounts but that certainly could be one reason why they can't delete them easily and one reason why Revver wants to keep them around. Sending the email to support@acceptabletv sure hasn't done anything since the revised versions of Conjoiners, Speed Demons are still there and Chapter 1 hasn't been deleted when it was replaced by Episode 1 so that's enough evidence that either Acceptable TV doesn't want to delete them or Revver won't let them.

I can hope that things will get better at Acceptable but I don't really expect any change in the status quo since there isn't enough economic incentive for the producers. It works fine as it is to ignore the drama on the site since they've had a lot of practice. The message boards on the VH1 site are a whole lot worse

I'll believe it only when there is enough evidence to support it as it stands there isn't much besides more are following the time limit, but the larger percentage are still just as bad.

It's good to be at the top since the show goes on regardless, it's only the unknown masses trying to get their 15 mins that get ignored, rightly or wrongly so, since whatever promises were made by the premise of the show the vast majority of the members have proved they aren't ready handle the challenge so it's better that producers do the show without them.

Acceptable Forms

2007-04-06T18:05:00.000-07:00

I've been wondering if all they're looking for is sketches and short episode or if they want to branch out into something more ambitious for the show since they have a chance to do something groundbreaking.

I got this comment that seems to feel different. "How come? 'An Angel's Destiny' is not a series of 2:30 shows. They are 2:30 segments of a larger product, and no amount of editing will change that. That is not me trying to impose my opinion about them, just that because of it, they don't pass the rules"

I've been looking through the rules and I can't find anything that says that, the only thing it does say is
We're looking for things that feel like a TV show and that doesn't always mean just sketches. There are also other forms of TV shows like what is known as the Miniseries with Roots being a famous example

They had the advantage of being able to tell a story with a much wider scope. Than just a series of Episode since after a few seasons the writing eventually gets stale and they start
Jumping the shark it happened in Knight Rider

It happened in Quantum Leap after a while

It even happened as far back as when The Fugitive was on the air because of the nature of having to structure the writing of episodes.

In the tutorial about story structure it also says
"
"Remember creating Acceptable TV involves striking that delicate balance between giving the audience what it wants and giving it what it doesn't know it wants yet"" so why should they be locked into only sketches and short episodes?

You would think that going through the 8 steps they outlined

1. Something

2. Need

3. Go

4. Search

5. Find

6. Take

7. Back To

8. Where it was

of the basic
Hero's journey myth in only 2:30 wouldn't leave much room for any character developement necessary for it unless they had multiple episodes to explore it.

Granted it has to catch the attention at the 1st go or it won't be voted back, but that doesn't mean it can't tell a larger story, just that the characters that are introduced in the 1st part have to be interesting enough and the situation that is presented has to be engaging enough to want to see more. For example Isoceles and Esperanza I loved the characters and the initial plot.

But it was just as much a segment as what
AcceptableVids said An Angel's Destiny was.

It was a full episode in the version on YouTube but that was twice as long so the one here was only a seqment of that

I'm not sure how he rationalized his interpretation of the rules to include that one, but it certainly looks like bias to me. Most likely the result of being in that clique

I think it would be better to expand that interpretation to get better videos for the shows instead of only the sketches they've been used to and that would improve the quality of the show.

What the Net seems to need....

2007-03-30T10:02:00.000-07:00

...is a place for an emotional baggage check so they can leave all the excess issues at the door before they enter.

Some of the lessons I've learned from being online in the last 15 years is that no matter where you go, be it Forums, Virtual Reality or Art communities is that people always bring their problems with them whenever they interact with others.

Even if they have nothing to do with the topic of the place they're in they can't help but be filtered through their own perspective. As they say "No one is a villian in their own eyes" That applies to another cliche also "Opinions are like assholes, everyone has one" So when you put them together most people have reasons and rationalizations for what they do but they rarely have respect for what other people do or give them the same tolerance they give themselves.

In some places they can start out with people cooperative and supporting each other for a while, but as the community grows it seems to lose that cohesion until it reach a point where it's only old grudges and bickering going on in it. Some places that happens faster like on YouTube and now Acceptable TV has gotten it.

It was a great experiment to see if an audience could do a better job of picking programs than TV producers. So far it's been a lot worse than even American Idol has been doing by voting for the worst. Maybe it just shows that the public isn't ready to handle unfiltered democracy since it depends on an informed populace.

I've been trying to get the members on Acceptable TV more informed by spreading the message in the tutorials on the site for example I posted this comment on this video with what I thought was a simple suggestion "It would help a lot if you took Jack Black's advice on what makes an Acceptable video" and including a link to the tutorial videos since it missed a lot of the guideline that were those tutorials.

But it wasn't recieved that way since bnproductions responded with "It would help if you hung yourself you pompus ass gamer bitch, your video's suck more ass than you do dick." I guess I was expecting too much from people since that's exactly the way one of the examples in the tutorials reacted to criticism.

and instead of watching that example and learning from it, they ignored it and reacted the same way as in the video "I'm going to my room and I'm going to write in my blog about how much Acceptable TV sucks!"

"After they were rejected Dan and Justin played video games for the next 3 years. Then Justin killed himself. Dan wrote a screenplay about it. Oliver Stone optioned the rights to it but never made it. Dan killed himself. James Cameron made a movie about their suicides that made 7 billion dollars in the 1st weekend. Then an asteroid hit the Earth and killed the entire population. Everyone got together in heaven and agreed that they had taken each other and themselves too seriously."

Although that's one way of taking care of the problem that emotional baggage makes, it's not all that productive. I'd still rather take karismo's advice after all Why Hate? Just Create?

Click to get T-shirts, mugs and hats

If you have this amazing opportunity to interact with people and get your stuff widely distruted on TV why would you waste in in petty bickering and cruelty? I made a video to try and express some of the points about emotional baggage that I put on YouTube.

I remember when the "La Bamba" album came out only being able to listen to Tommy Chong, now with this awesome tech we have to be able to virtually share a joint with him is so totally amazing, you would think being able to interact with people in this way, more people would want to show how creative and cooperative they can be and not waste it all on alll the competitive crap.

I'm sure when Jack Black was turned down for the pilot of Heat Vision and Jack, that he took it badly at first.

But he did bounce back to give a lot better performance in King Kong so he must've dropped the emotional baggage over it to move on with his career. The trouble is that there are a lot of different points of view that people have that make communication difficult since most people are looking at it from different perspectives. Ken Wilber goes into a lot of this in his this video.

And what he's saying applies to this kind of thing a lot since if you look at it from the exterior or the interior, you're not going to react the same way to what the other person is trying to tell you. I guess it depends on if you react defensively to criticism or seek approval from the group.

Maybe it'll settle out as the site goes on since it's only the second episode, but I have my doubts. I'm not sure if this is helping since WorstShowsHere is inflaming some of the people to hold onto their defenses with his emotional baggage, but he's also pointing out some of the problems.

Thing is that it's only half of it, since it does no good to tell people that their video sucks without also telling them where they can get help in fixing it. Pointing out the problem is no help witout offering a solution so he should be telling them where in the tutorial videos they can look to fix what was wrong.

Growing Pains

2007-03-26T04:19:00.000-07:00

I was impressed. The show was a lot better than I expected from what I had seen all week on the site. I guess the producers and what Dan Harmon was saying about Standards & Practices added an extra layer of quality control.

I had been wondering since it's hard to know what VH1 will let on. They've had more raw shows like Web Junk 20, Shooting Sizemore and Breaking Bonaduce.

Then they've had a lot more produced shows like My Fair Brady, Flavor of Love and The Surreal Life so I wasn't sure which it was going to be.

I noticed that Dawn Cody uploaded a different version of Conjoiners and so did mathsfowussies of Speed Demonz then they both got in the Vote this week.

I'm doing this version to get it on TV since I already have the version I wanted myself on the web page so I'm not above taking constructive criticism and tweaking my work. I thought I could upload a different version of Chapter 1 since it's 20 seconds longer than the 2.5 limit they set.

I'm thinking of what was said about"You balance sexual tension like a master tightrope walker" that I've probably fallen off the edge with only the second skin texture maps and it won't fly with the PTB in allowing it on since it's too close to nudity.

Plus with the quote "bruises after the last orgy" I might want to tone down the dialogue and change some of the graphic depictions of the practices of Elysium especially since someone was asking what Grecian water sports were.

I guess I can find some other way of portraying the reasons why even if Elysium was a Paradise for some that the setup needed to provide that wasn't all that great for the people that did all the work.

I suppose I can find another way to show the motivation for Minerva to find a better job.

The thing I'm confused about is, that if the 1st episode didn't cut it, does that disqualify all the other episodes that didn't have the same thing? Maybe I shouldn't have taken Wysol's suggestion and not uploaded them all so fast and waited until the 1st one went through more of the process. But I figured it would help it make more sense if people saw more of the story.

Maybe I should do the combination of the animation with the live footage like I did in my Angel's on Patrol video. It might be the best of both worlds

They seem to be doing better with producing the show for VH1 than the interactive part of the web site though. Maybe because they have more control over that production and it's more familiar territory.

I know it's a rough job and I'm sure that Fred Graver is doing his best in a tough situation trying to get the web site together, like he was saying he was having a lot of trouble with the influx of new members joining the site after the show aired.

Last week it was sorta like having a clam bed that produced a few pearls, not that many but enough to be worth the effort in looking for them. Over the weekend it was like dumping seaweed on the clam bed where you have to sift through a whole lot of obstacles to even find the clams much less be able to pick out the pearls.

There are some things that the site needs to grow since it needs to be integrated if the show is going to be effective at being interactive.

Some are the user friendly part like a status bar to show the progress of an uploaded video so you know how much is left until it's done.

Some are more user feedback like a discussion forums so the comments don't have to be spread out over all the profiles and blogs where no one can keep track of the topics.

Some are filtering like the most discussed list and most viewed list so you can find what you're looking for easier, or to promote more quality control before it even gets to the production people.

I'm not sure but they might've taken out some of the executive level membership filters like they had last week because of the volume. I guess it took too much time to sort through.

It certainly looked like the people that uploaded stuff over the weekend certainly didn't take that test or look at the tutorial videos. If they did then they certainly didn't pay any attention to them. That would be a shame since I thought they were very good at teaching the basics.

I think they should be required to be viewed and passing that test about them to be able to upload. That would certainly help in filtering out the stuff that doesn't belong. Several people have already made comments to that effect.

Most of the stuff uploaded over the weekend had nothing to do with story structure. They didn't even get to the threshold much less cross it.

Only a very few of them had any attempt at a script at all and those that did looked like they only did the first draft and none of the revisions that were suggested. You wonder why some future versions of themselves didn't go back to the past to do some genetic engineering so they would have the patience not to rush into uploading just anything.

I couldn't see much or any at all signs of editing in a lot of them since a bunch of them were 4 mins and some were a less than 1 min so I doubt they paid any attention to the suggestions.

I guess it all depends on a more informed audience if they're going to make a success of managing user content effectively. The trouble is that it's like the old saying "If you want to to a mule, the first thing is that you have to get it's attention" So putting pages on the site that people have to respond to like that test is a way to get them to pay attention to the principles they need to learn and be able to upload something worth watching.

At least Sony was more on the ball

2007-03-20T22:16:00.000-07:00

And probably changing the music helped get it approved faster, since it only took a week this time to get my commercial up on the Current TV site.

Now the harder part is getting people to vote enough to get it on TV. Maybe I should do more networking like with chatting programs. The trouble with that is that a lot of the people you talk to only have a very shallow connection and wouldn't put in the effort into voting.

Even my sister was the only one in my family to actually sign up and vote for the Loreal commercial and you would think if blood was thicker than water that they would show more support than anonymous people you meet online.

I do seem to be getting a bit more feedback from Acceptable TV most of it is positive.

dawncody said: wow...just wow. i wish i could play this like the sims. you should make a video game

Wysol said: I want to see what happens in CHapter 2. Maybe you should upload a bunch of chapters at once. That way, people don't have to wait.

leg said: that dance scene was brilliant.

I don't know what that means in getting my videos on the show but it sounds like a good sign that maybe there is a chance they'll do it. It would be a great thing to put on my resume and got more exposure from it.

If it's a hit on the site and the show that would certainly give me a lot more motivation to finish it since I'm still stuck halfway through the 4th chapter. But knowing that it's appreciated by some would certainly provide more stimulation and having a deadline to upload it would give me more impetus to get to work on it.

I had a lot better indication that I'm making progress in getting recognized on that site, a writer for VH1 Best Week Ever named Alex Blagg sent me an email and wanted to interview me as a contributer. Some of the questions were a bit out there, but most of them were cool.

1. How old are you and where do you live? I'm 47 years old and I live in Oroville California

2. Where did you get the idea for "An Angel's Destiny"? I originally had the idea after I watched the movie"Weird Science" I figured they could've done the sequence where they make a woman on the computer a lot better and more reasonable with a particle accelerator so I brought together a geek at Lockheed with access to a supercomputer with the resources of the Stanford Linear Accelerator.

I thought that the Lisa character had a lot in common with Guardian Angels so it would be interesting to tell the story from her POV and how she got the training to become good at her job.

3. How do you design/animate the show? I use a 3D rendering program called Poser to animate the figures and models. Then I output the frames as .png files add some effects and backgrounds in Adobe Photoshop. Then import them into Macromedia Flash to put the comic balloons and text onto the frames. I export the movie clips as .avi file from Flash and import them into Adobe Premiere and put them togetherwith sound effects and music that I've made in Cool Edit. Then I export the movie with Premiere into Quick Time to be able to be uploaded to Revver.

4. Let's talk plot. What's going on here? Basically it's a romantic comedy with Minerva going through a journey to gain experience and training as a Guardian Angel and find love with Chris Amestrly. They both have obstacles to overcome. Minerva with the demands of her job and Chris with trying to fit into her world.

5. You balance sexual tension like a master tightropewalker. Will we ever get to see the any magical boobies? Well technically they were already in the first chapter but I covered them with tattoo texture maps and the demon also had them with tattoos. Hopefully the fact they had some decorations on them will fig leaf them even if they didn't have clothes like Minerva.

6. What inspired you to create this series? I've always been a big fan of Science Fiction and Fantasy. I wanted to create stuff like I've read in books and seen in movies. With a message about the evolution and growth of consciousness. It's my own journey in finally finding my soulmate after decades of searching that really inspired me.

7. Can you give a hint towards what you have in store for these beloved characters? Like the best romances it has a happy ending, they do go through a lot in between trying to get Minerva's wings back and Chris being betrayed by his boss at Lockheed.

8. Do you take drugs? In the past when I first had the idea for the story or now that I've been turning it into an animated comic? Let's just say I've had enough experience in my lifeto benef it from it and avoid the nasty side effects.

9. What do you do when you're not concocting psychadelic fantasy romance videos for the Internet? I do a lot of graphic design, banners for street lights, door coverings, web pages, T-shirts, novels, comics and commercials for Current TV

10. Where do you come up with the names for your
characters? Mostly from Greek, Roman, Norse and Babylonian
mythology

11. Is this entire story some kind of existential
metaphor for the meaninglessness of our existence? Actuallly it's quite the opposite. It's a metaphor the order and purpose of our existence. I've been using a
lot of Ken Wilber's work on Integral Psychology to show the different stages of consciousness and the developement through them.

12. Where do you get the music for these? Revver is very sticky about copyrighted music and since it's for broadcast I've mostly been doing instrumentals in Garage Band so I have the rights to them myself.

13. In episode one, when Minerva mentions her "bruises
after the last orgy", what's that about? That's part of her job description as a houri in the Elysium Paradise that she serve at the pleasure of the heroes in the feasts and celebrations they have there. One of the reasons that she strives for a better job as a Guardian Angel

14. How do you feel about being on Acceptable.tv? Very good, it's quite and opportunity to be able to be part of a show with such potential to show the talent
that the audience has to make and decide their own TV programming.

15. Is there anything else you'd like theAcceptable.tv community to know about you?Well most of my ideas I've been putting in my blog and if they want tosee more about the story they can go to the web page.

I hope that means that I'm getting on the show, but I'm not sure which show since when I looked at what he was writing and it was for the In Case You Missed It segement, so is it for Acceptable TV or Best Week Ever that the interview was for? It might have been just for the blog on either site I'm not sure. I guess either way it's more exposure but probably less if it's for the blog than the show.

After watching that video of what goes behind the scenes I guess I got off easy, since he only asked me about drugs and magical boobies instead of licking balls. I guess I might not be as out there as I thought if they do that kind of stuff on a daily basis. Hopefully they'll be well rested when they do the show on Friday after all that recreation and relaxing.

I figured out a way to get my videos on the front page of the search at YouTube. All I have to do is make all my other videos as responses to one of them and it'll be put near the top of the Most Responed list. It worked for the Hero video and the 1st chapter of Destiny, they got more views and comments in the day I put them at the top of the list.

I did another experiment in getting noticed with a video called Princesses Gone Wild in hopes of getting all the perverts to pick it up in the search. I'll put it on the Most Responded list tomorrow and see how it does.

Could be a cool opportunity

2007-03-15T06:36:00.000-07:00

I saw on the Revver blog that there was going to be a new show on VH1 called Acceptable.tv that was going to “Together, the TV show and the Web site will create a community where the audience helps content creators make better, funnier, short-form TV by either voting for what professionally-produced contents airs, or by creating their own content for on-air consideration. The site will also serve as a forum and community for those who want to watch, make, and exchange ideas about how best to merge TV and the Web to create content that incorporates the best qualities of both traditional TV and the internet. Through profile pages, community tools like video-sharing and varying levels of “membership,” the site encourages the participation of dedicated audience members and dedicated content creators”

I figured that might be a good way to get more exposure for my story Angel's Destiny if I could get it on that show. I signed up and uploaded the 1st chapter.

They also had a bunch of cool video tutorials on the site.

That had Jack Black covering the film school 101 topics in an entertaining way

They covered a wide range of topics

From using sound effectively

To editing techniques

The basics of lighting

Creating a believeable illusion with props and special effects

Even handling rejection if your video doesn't make the cut

From what I've seen on the site so far a lot of people haven't paid enough attention to these, hopefully it will filter out in the process.

Ups and Downs

2007-03-12T18:07:00.000-07:00

I made some progress today, but also had some setbacks. I got the storyboard and video done for the Sony HD Life Dennis liked it and the only concern he had about it was that the titles were out of the safe range on the screen but he checked them and they were inside the zone.

I tried uploading it to Current TV but they busted me on the music. I tried to tell them "I put a digitally synthesized rendition of themusic called Also sprach Zarathustra, op. 30 which isa symphonic poem by Richard Strauss, composed in 1896 and inspired by the book of the same title byFriedrich Nietzsche, I figured that it was in thepublic domain since copyrights don't last 111 years." But I doubt they'll go for that so I went with what Dennis suggested and got some scratchy gramophone music for the beginning, some swing music for the the middle and reggae music for the end to show how music has evolved like video has. Hopefully they'll accept that.

As I expected I didn't get into the Revver Head of the Class since when I checked the Revver blog I found that the top video had 866 views and the bottom had 163 views. I was off in the lowest number I thought I needed by 13 views since that was more than last time. At any rate my Money Changes Everything only got 20 views so I wasn't even close. I'm not sure what I could to do get the views up but it's a good lesson. Maybe it depends on your priorities, Do I want to go to extremes to get the views at the expense of how good the work is? Do I want to have a true representation of appreciation for the work? Do I just want the money from the views no matter the methods? Do I want a clique that views them for the person that upload them regardless of what the work is?

Designs in development

2007-03-11T05:14:00.000-07:00

After about 25 tries I finally got the design Dan liked for the door. I'm not sure if I have the room number and the class that it will go to but I can change it to another. I wonder if they're going to ask Ron Pickard what he thinks about it or just put it on there.

I also did a rough composition of the banner design but it didn't go over so well.

Dan liked the border and the text but he didn't like the gradient or the way the graphic elements were arranged on the banner, he said that they were floating all over the place. He did give me some suggestions on how to fix it so the element were grounded to the sides in the border.

He also said that using a gradient too much only shows that you know how to use the tools in Illustrator or Photoshop. I'm not sure if he meant that when art directors look at it that's what they'll so they'll dismiss that design in your portfolio. It's the only way that would make sense, because I'm pretty sure if someone was walking by that banner hanging up on campus they wouldn't think that.

The other thing is after that I did walk by the posters they were using to advertise the art show and they were just black text on plain paper anyone could make in 5 mins a wordprocessor that showed no design at all. I figured that if that's what they wanted to use then why bother to go to all the trouble of making a good design?

Both Dennis and Dan were ashamed of that especially being used to promote an art show that was a nightmare of design in it and had harldy any art in it all. They wanted someone to do a better go since it reflected very badly on the art department, but apparently they weren't in charge of who was responsible for running that art show.

I worked on it for most of the weekend and I got the Sony video for Current TV. They wanted a video that showed how life was better in High Definition so I went with Dennis suggestion that I do an evolution from a line drawing to a blurring paninting to the full resolution and used the theme from 2001 to emphasize it. I hope it gets the point across. I still have to clean up the 30 second version and add the audio to it with the correct balance and fade to it.

I got a lot better resolution on Revver for the Angels on Patrol video, it shows off the titles and the composite but the while the soundtrack is bubbly it doesn't add as much as the one on YouTube. Plus it's over a minute shorter so I had to cut out some of the end that I was able to get on the other version.

The Chasing Cars song does and a lot to the tempo of the angel flights and I did work some of the lyrics into the titles so it fits better, the resolution is not as bad as some of the others. I might be getting better at what kinds of compression settings to use.

I've had to fix a lot of the videos on my blog today since a lot have been taken off of YouTube. They seem to be taking a big hit from Viacom and Mark Cuban suing them for copyright infringement. They've gotten tougher about policing videos since a lot of them are being pulled faster. It's a shame since I really liked using them to make points that would've been harder without visual examples to illustrate them.