Thursday, April 10, 2008

Heal Thyself

I seem convinced I have an allergic reaction to the chemicals used for tanning leather, and some food allergies too, that I have never considered to be allergic reactions before. I bought some leather sandals that were made in China last year. I really liked them. They were probably the best made sandals I've ever owned, and i was looking forward to wearing them again this summer. That's not gonna happen. I just took those sandals out to my trash burning pile, and they're going up in smoke. They may or may not be responsible for the lesions I have on my feet. But, the descriptions I've read suggest they are the problem.

Last Spring I had the same problem break out on my second toe on both feet. There was a little of it on my big toe also. When the same thing happened this Spring and when I heard some people whining about their allergic reaction to pollens, I suddenly realized that might be what was going on with my toes. It still might be somewhat responsible, but I kept searching for more specific symptoms that described what I was experiencing, and the leather chemical reaction popped up when I searched for "allergies + feet". I stopped wearing the sandals immediately, and now the lesions on my toes seem to be healing, and the redness on my big toes is gone.

It's weird to think I might have serendipitously run across the real source of these lesions. They didn't respond to any of the external salves and treatments I used. They didn't heal up all summer. I'm thinking it was only because I stopped wearing the sandals when it got cold that the lesions healed up. I think this reaction happened to me internally too. My kidneys started getting a little sore around the same time my toes broke out, and that soreness is pretty much gone away too. I'm still gonna be careful about my diet. I may be allergic to wheat glutin too. Rainey's gonna tell me "I told you so." I oughta listen to that man more often.

Wednesday, April 09, 2008

The game of Sudoku amazes me. It lets a liberal arts major like me think in some simplistic way about numbers without using those numbers as mere symbol. Using numbers has always been more like work than play to me. I've done it when I had to. More than once I've made a living manipulating numbers in a very strict-time manner. Sudoku is just a game.

The reason I'm carrying on about Sudoku is that I just paid $20 for the license to legally install a stand alone software program that does nothing but generate some practically infinite number of Easy, Medium, and Hard Sudoku.

I had my own way with online Sudoku sites and the Flash games that abound around the internet. Those sorts of places seem to come and go, most of them never really get too hard to solve. But, I generally like to play the game, and had my eye out for a greater challenge. When I saw a review of this Sudoku game called Latin Squares, and it had a Demo for downloading so I could look it over.

I did download the Demo and really liked the way the game is laid out. It's a little gaudy and is way over the top with the neon colors, but it works in a very simple manner like no other Sudoku game before.

If you are familiar with the Sudoku classical layout it's four squares filled nine smaller squares that altogether make up one big square that is the classical Sudoku game board form. Each of the four sections of the big square has nine smaller squares inside each the quarter sections. Three squares across and three squares downward and one square in the middle to make nine. So, you end up with nine numbers inside each of the nine squares in each of the four quarters of the big square Sudoku game board. Right?

The game starts out with a limited group of random numbers placed in each of the nine squares spread across all four sub-squares of the big square. Each of the four sub-squares have nine cubes inside it, and only the numbers one through nine are possible in each of the four squares. The goal is to have all thirty-six of the smaller squares contain one of the nine numbers so that there can only one of each of the nine numbers in any of the smaller squares in all four quarters either vertically or horizontally. To win you have to figure out which numbers go where. The game gets exponentially more difficult when fewer original numbers are given.

What makes the Latin Squares game so easy to play that I'm willing to forgive all the gaudy, jukebox-like flashing lights and being forced to respond to more Yes/No dialog boxes than I like, is the simple way I can point and click the numbers on and off with one mouse click. Other Sudoku games are much more complicated to get such a simple thing done.

No quick decisions are necessary in Sudoku. There is usually a timer in the computer versions of the game. Playing Sudoku is slower moving and more contemplative than action games. Each move has to work out with every other square in the thirty-six square game board or it's just no-bones-about-it wrong. Inside each of the nine squares are a second set of nine marker numbers lined up inside each square in the same way the larger squares are in the four large squares.

If I play Sudoku on paper I like to have a professional grade gum eraser to use because i make so many mistakes the nub of an eraser on a No. 2 pencil ain't gwine cut it.

On the computer an eraser is not needed. I can't see the small numbers inside the squares unless I highlight them with the cursor. If I left-click on one of the small numbers it immediately becomes a big number that represents the larger square. If I right-click on one of the smaller number it remains the same size, but it remains highlighted to remind me that specific number of the nine possible numbers has a better chance than the others of being THE number.

Winning a difficult Sudoku game is all it takes to make me feel like Einstein. It must be my genes and the luck of the draw. Some people spend millions and never get the thrill I get from an odd computer game. Granted, it's a cheap thrill, but for only $20 I can make them cheap thrills add up fast.

What's so cool about this game and the reason I paid their asking price is the intelligent way the developer/s allows the player to review their options, and execute their decisions without a hassle, and then undo it easily if their original decision doesn't work out.

Wasting what little life I have left away playing computer games is insignificant compared to the time I waste away capturing drifting thoughts by writing them down in words. It's pretty obvious I don't always choose the precise term to fit in the precise place it needs to be, but it's ever so much fun when I consider that many people don't even have my very limited options.

Monday, April 07, 2008

I've done some reading in the past. I appear to get more out of discovering the world through the auspices of my own docetic spirit than wading through other people's baggage or even my own. After I publish my blog each day, I never read what I wrote in the archives. It's too embarrassing.

Some smart aleck once told me I was a specious sort of person, and the expression on his face when he said that made it seem like I was being accused of not measuring up to his expectations. I looked up the term "specious" in an old unabridged dictionary I had laying around, and it's definition of specious confirmed for all time that I wasn't receiving a compliment by this fellow.

It was the next definition underneath specious that drew my attention. That entry was entitled "specious present". Even the old dictionary called it an archaic expression. Usually employed by philosophers to indicate the eternal now. That didn't compute at first. Respectable philosophers associating the term specious with the eternal now? Sure enough, reading the rest of the entry confirmed I'd read it right. How could that be?

The answer was revealed in the next description. Certain philosophers concluded that the present must be treated as if it's ongoing value is somewhat specious. Specious in the sense of being plausible, but not convincing. If any possibility arrives from the future that is so convincing you follow it into the past, you've abandoned the immediacy of now.

Contrarily, it concluded, if you get enticed by the possibilities of the future before they reveal their true nature in the cauldron of the present, you're counting yo' chickens before they hatch.

"Do this, don't do that, can't you read the signs?"
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Sunday, April 06, 2008

To reach enlightenment via meditation is to amicably attain an inspired state of hopelessness and feel satisfied in that enough is enow.

It a hopeless cause to argue the positive aspect of hopelessness. In meditation, it is hope that diverts one's attention to industry and away from the nothingness of nevermind. Hope is about stuff that matters. Matter is wot covers you up six-foot under when you croak. Who needs things to matter? Nincompoops?

One cannot aspire to the state of ecstagony using hope as a vehicle. That's the polar opposite of what one does when they practice mediating nothingness with the hope of individuation. One can't hope and stay in the specious present at the same time. That's why once the immediacy of Now! is attained unheroically, one must abandon hope. Don't you read the signs. "Abandon hope all ye who enter here."

Which begs this question: How can one cling to somethingness when nothingness is all that's left when the chance is gone? It's not like nothingness stops consciousness from claiming Is-ness as it's ground-of-being... is it? Are consciousness and somethingness the same sheepish concept in wolf's clothing? There's nothing to either one of them. Consciousness don't seem able to ex-is without constantly inculcating denial.


The Great Pretender

Ooh Ooh yes I'm the great pretender (ooh ooh)
Just laughing and gay like a clown (ooh ooh)
I seem to be what I'm not (you see)
I'm wearing my heart like a crown
Pretending that you're still around

~ The Drifters

http://www.links2love.com/love_lyrics_134.htm
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