Thanks giving... thanks for what?

Okay, I sorta didn’t want to post a blog like this at first because it might come across as negative, which is in no sense my intention… quite the opposite actually. So before you get angry keep in mind, best intentions and I am not an American so my view on things is a little different.

Here’s how I get all that’s going on during Thanksgiving and how I as a Dutchman perceive it.

In North America, later the united states, the early colonists gave the original inhabitants hell. Bringing all kinds of nastiness and enforcing their own believe system. Since many of the pioneers were Dutch I claim the right of critical tone here… Anyway, we stole some of their land, killed some of them because they didn’t want to be “educated” and then made them foreigners in their own land. So far I think we all agree on history. But somewhere along the line came a story of sharing food and gaining some understanding, which didn’t stop anyone being all round nasty to the natives in any way BTW.

(pic. A layout of a Dutch (or like a Dutch) slave trader vessel and how to transport as many African slaves as possible)

After a few hundred years people celebrate this whole event by eating turkey, thanking God for stuff and watching American Football and a Parade.

The Netherlands, being responsible for quite a lot of the pioneers has had a lot of things to be proud of in its history. Being responsible for filling a lot of blank space in early seafaring maps, claiming land back from the sea and being a industrial giant internationally while being one of the smallest countries are among them. However being one of the larger slave trader countries, claiming South Africa and instating “Apartheid” (A Dutch word) and being all round nasties all over the globe for quite some time with the VOC (Unites East-Indian Trading Company) are more of the wish-we-hadn’t-done-that category… however…. We don’t celebrate that. Bad time in history no need to celebrate, seems logic right? Which brings me to the part I don’t get, doesn’t having a celebration linked to a part of history you can’t be proud leave a bitter after taste? Or Am I seeing things completely wrong here?

Then there’s the thankful part. I am proud of the things I have achieved in life. Through blood, sweat and tears I have managed to get my life on track and heading in a progressive direction. The job I have, the way I’m raising my son, the house I live in and the relationship I am in, are all things I put effort in, worked for and made sacrifices for. Being thankful implies there’s is someone else to be thankful towards for fixing shit for me… God? I am sorry my dear Christian friends out there, but I don’t buy that and quite frankly neither should you. Ever since we got kicked from Eden we have had to manage on our own, that’s almost the whole point in hits exercise we call life. Everything you have achieved you should be proud of, not thankful for, you did the work, you take the credit.

So celebrating messing with the Injuns, giving the almighty all the creds for all you ever done and heading for a heart attack and high cholesterol by stuffing yourself as well as the turkey to me seems like a weird celebration… explain?

Interesting fact, historically the celebration may very well have been inspired by the Dutch celebration of the Leids Liberation from the Spanjards.

INSANITY WOLF!

Not Really in the mood, so I'll leave you with some insanity wolf pics I generated today with meme generator.... wisdom is found in these words!

I love the sheer brutality of insanity wolf, though I kept it within reasonable limits for this blog...

Don’t know the meme? Look it up: http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/insanity-wolf

A limit on possibillities…and undead monkeys

I don’t mean to be a whiny bitch…. But sometimes it just happens. So here you have a small blog type thingy with little more to read then me complaining about things you can do f**k-all about. In the Netherlands we call this “het is zo’n dag” which translates as, it’s such a day. Roughly the same as “one of those days”.

Around me a lot of things are happening some cool, some less cool but many of them hold interesting possibilities for me. It’s weird though, how having options can be depressing. Let me explain… but before that here is a non-Organ player…

I am good in a lot of things, I can do some drawing and painting, I am an okay poet, sometimes I manage to make music without being too annoying and I am a reasonable mental coach. There are more talents I have, but these are examples for the sake of argument. However… I excel in none of my talents, I am above average in most but exceptional in none. I blame that on there being simply too many options for me. Because, there are many different ways for me to express myself and make use of my talents I have too little time to develop one of them to it’s maximum potential.

Being confronted with this a lot lately I have this terrible feeling of “meh”… so meh.

Temperal schizo… or how to cope with Chronological split personality syndrome

Yes I know schizophrenia has nothing to do with multiple personality disorder… still I used the popular misconception to produce a remark with humorous intent.

Today I realized something, I am not the same person I was ten years ago. Now this may strike you as rather logical but there’s a thing to it. Normally I always see myself as more or less the same timeless person. I don’t really feel different then I did when I was eighteen, or six or whatever age. And I certainly don’t feel thirty five! But today I realized that the guy I was before made decisions, had thoughts and did things the guy I am today would never do. I have changed so substantially I hardly recognize the people I have been through the years. So much so that I actually regard parts of who I was as a different person now. I may be weird that way, but look at yourself, is this not true for so many people?

Hell I have been Sidney’s in the past I would definitely not like today.

BTW, the pic might look it spans some years but it is actually two years of pics.

Dead guinea pigs and such…

So here I was this morning riding my bike to work, listening to the radio…. When all of a sudden the music faded away and did not come back. It cost me about a whole minute before I remembered that that was what happened when I got an incoming call (listening to music on my phone these days). Off course I missed the call by now, but since calling someone 7:20 in the morning is usually not done I decided to check who it was so I knew who to yell at.

It was my ex’s phone number. Now my ex and I aren’t the best of friends anymore so I didn’t really feel like calling back, but since calling that early was kinda weird I figured it must be important. So I called back.

What I got on the other side of the line was my son crying, his guinea pig Bruno (I think he was called) had died. For an eleven year old this is off course an awful event, so I spent the rest of my bikeride comforting him. I even explained to him that the creature could not have died of having been carried to school by his mum, my ex, how noble of me not to put the blame on my ex. After having explained the impracticality of burying the animal in my garden (we live above a carpark, so our garden is about a foot deep and frequently visited buy adventurous feline’s) we decided it was best to “bury” the creature in the green waste bin since that way he was being restored to nature.

All that even before I logged in at work….

So RIP Bruno (right?)

Not a good day…

Not a good day…

Now I won’t go into (much) detail, but today is not a good day. When personal shit, work related shit come together with having actual problems with shit, my stomach is telling me my diet should consist of less hamburger and more vegetable through the subtle medium of splatterpoo, life becomes increasingly less fun.

Now don’t get me wrong I can manage a lot of stress, I have managed a lot of stress in the past, but since a few years I have been diagnosed with diabetes and stress has the annoying effect of raising your bloodsugar, a quick BS raise causes me to get rather moody, impatient and takes a lot of energy from me, which in turn makes cope with stress in a less productive way. I am still learning how to cope with this downward spiral without having to simply ignore stuff until it blows up. Overestimating my stress handling capabilities has proven a serious handicap in this, my utter lack of discipline the second most serious handicap.

So what to do… well I will actually pick up the one thing I always advice others, my tarot deck… A month ago I would have told you I rarely read for myself if at all nowadays because I don’t “need” it. But today, I do. So here’s to you mister Waite! (probably gonna draw the Tower, The Devil, Death and Ten of Swords).

BTW Have you checked out NLGaming yet, my new gaming blog?
http://nlgaming.blogspot.com/





***UPDATE***





So here's the spread I did:



Appearantly I have been a fool, or I have reacted without having full knowlegde of the situation. I may be cautious but I am trying to combine aspects that don't match well. I am obviously picking fights with the wrong women and I should expect harmony but time for judgement is comming near. In short off course.

With regards to my questions actually a very intersting spread... which I will kepp to myself... which means the whole thing you just read will have absolutely no vallue for you whatsoever.

Sorry... but hey, no tower right?! That's good...

Ladies Night… yeah baby!

Okay, how about that, I will be an attraction on Heerhugowaard’s movie Theatre’s Ladies Night… how much awesomeness can one little Tarot reader contain?

Seriously though, 14 December I will be doing tarot readings during the theatre’s ladies night. I have no idea whatsoever of what to expect except for probably being the only one with y chromosomes there. Still, it is another good opportunity to train my short reading skills since most of my regular readings run up to 45 or 50 minutes instead of the intended 20 to 30 minutes. On the world summer festival a few months ago I did manage to slim the 15 minute readings down to 20 minutes instead of half an hour or more so I am getting there!

More on ladies night soon! Like… what the fuck will I wear?

Here is another Tarot beginners tip...

Here is another Tarot beginners tip.

Other noobilisious Tarot lessons:

http://nltarot.blogspot.com/2010/10/tarot-noobz-take-this-from-me-i-know.html

http://nltarot.blogspot.com/2010/10/so-there-was-this-poem.html

http://nltarot.blogspot.com/2010/10/what-tarot-deck-is-best-starter-decks.html

I was thinking about how I was neglecting the whole tarot-noob guidance thing I had going here, sorry I will pick it up again today.

So here are some bits of strategy for getting a better grasp on your deck and reading in general. Many seem to obvious, but I’ll post ‘em anyway.

No mater what others tell you, read the little white booklet that comes with the deck. Keep it in the toilet for instance to read through when you’re taking a… well you know, when you’re knitting a brown sweater. Though it is far from complete, the catchphrases are useful and the general meaning is usually correct.

Try reading for others as much as possible, even when you still have to look up every card, try reading for friends and family. Keep the subjects simple and objective. The feedback you get will help you make sense of the cards in a way a reading for yourself simply can’t.

Don’t be afraid to try different decks. Most decks cost somewhere around 10 to 30 euros which in most countries is less then people pay for gas every few days. SO it’s not that big an investment, and it really pays of to have a deck that you can relate to.

Okay I do really value a bit of mysticism when working with tarot but don’t let yourself get distracted by so called rules like: Don’t let others use your deck, a tarot deck has to be given to you, you can’t use a second hand deck, only deal with your left hand, you cannot ask money for a reading, you cannot do a reading and more strange rules like that.

So there you have it… feeling ready to start reading at parties yet?

Thus ends this lesson….

New Blog, game type thingy, go check it out there's free stuff.

As of today I will try to manage two blogs… this one you are on right now and this one: http://nlgaming.blogspot.com/ .

As I’ve announced earlier I will be doing a blog on computer games in which I will even be giving away games from my own stash. Well the day is here, so check it out and spread the word.

I will use this blog for Tarot based articles and for venting any thoughts about life the universe and everything… in general and the other blog will be used for game-related stuff specifically. No doubt you are thinking the new blog will e the most interesting, you are off course wrong. Since this blog will be more personal this is the one to watch and the gaming blog is the one to advertise due to the giveaways and for the helping me get rich concept behind it all.

Seriously though, I will try to keep both blogs interesting… ;-)

Since this blog has not yet reached the 30 followers I so desired before doing the giveaway I am starting to get worried about your advertising skills. So... being the cool guy I am I will try and see if I can revise my rules a bit, more on that soon. Now go read the gaming blog...

Riding my bike in meditation or A blowjob by the Goddess…

I was riding my bike to work this morning with the wind in my back, force nine or something which means I really didn’t have to paddle to move. This, I can tell you, was a good way to start my work day, especially after having spend most of the morning on the toilet wondering why fluids were coming out the wrong end. Well the whole “being blown to work” experience got me all meditative and theological and I decided to attribute this bonus to my Goddess. My goddess was obviously flirting with me. That’s the awesome thing about my deity you know, we are kind of close that way, I feel it is perfectly fine to flirt with my Goddess. Off course the current unhappy state of my bowels is Gods fault, I love manipulating my believes.

So the weekend is slowly drawing near and I feel terrible… I hope you all have a better time then me…

Signing off for the week,

Sidney

PS: “Yes… the gameblog plans are still there, it just takes some time to actually start it up…. I’m lazy…”

Sniffles….

I’ve got a cold… and it sucks bigtime. The problem with a cold is that you are not really sick… you can actually function to a certain extend. With nose spray, cough drops, aspirin and lots of hot coffee you can even pass for human. So you can’t really skip work because you’re not sick enough and people don’t see you as sick because you “only have a cold”. Which makes you feel twice as awful really.

Concentrating on writing a blog while having a cold is no picnic either….