Life of a Floridian

Episode 1

I went out to read in my hammock today 'cause it was 80 degrees... but it was too cold... so I came inside.

Episode 2

Driving up to the Walmart parking lot in Clermont to get a 360degree fireworks show for New Years Eve.

Episode 3

Went food shopping. Saw people in short shorts and winter coats. Thought nothing of it.

Episode 4

Saw a facebook status about someone up north eating White Castle. Wept softly.

Episode 5

Fuimos de compras. No se puede entender nada de nada a nadie más en la tienda estaba diciendo.

Episode 6

Going out for a walk in January.  Sun tan lotion, bug spray, and a coat.

Episode 7

It's snowing!!  Oh wait... that's pollen...

Episode 8

Sunny and beautiful out.  Dark and pouring rain.  Sunny and beautiful out.  15 minutes have passed.

Episode 9

Seasonal allergies 365 days a year.

Episode 10

Watch a man get into the passenger side of his car and look confounded at the empty space where the steering wheel should be. 

Episode 11

Want to own a home?  You'll either be paying into an HOA every month to cover the cost of a gate that doesn't work and for people to tell you what you can and cannot do with your property... or you're in the ghetto.  If you're not in the ghetto, you will be soon.

Episode 12

Raining in the backyard, sunny in the front.

Episode 13

Native Floridians - people born and raised here - are the minority.

Episode 14

Having The Walt Disney Co. on your resume is not all that impressive considering the majority of the people living here can say, "I used to work for Disney."

Episode 15

Want to make a left out of this parking lot?  NOPE!  Right turn only, U-turn 50 yards ahead.

Episode 16

Speed limit 50.  Traffic light every half mile.

Thoughts Exposed: The Geographic History Edition

*** Why haven't we dug to the center of the Earth yet?  I have a theory that there are intelligent beings living under the oceanic crust of the Earth and the gaseous output of their industry is causing the Earth to expand, thinning our crust, and heating our oceans which, in turn, is heating our atmosphere and causing Global Warming.  I'd really like to save the world by going down there and telling them to stop it.. maybe bring some Green technologies to them as well.

But I don't know where to start digging, what tools to use, what to say to them (my theory leads me to believe that they speak Australian), and what technologies, if any, I should introduce them to.

Any help appreciated, thank you.

And you're welcome!

*** Could a T-Rex digest a waffle, or would it make him sick?

*** If the top never stops spinning, it means he's dreaming.. is it the same with our Earth?

*** Glaciers are alive.  They're kept to the north and south by the God and Goddess El Nino and La Nina.  The God and Goddess use their hispanic heritage to warm the seas and keep the evil glaciers at bay(pun)... but the Glaciers are getting stronger and the God and Goddess are becoming impatient.  The Glaciers advance, threatening a second ice age, then the heat is turned up causing Global Warming.  This is why the scientists are so confused.

*** Did you know that only the half of the moon that faces us has "seas"?  They're empty, of course, and the moon is sad about that, so she's always trying to steal our water.  That's why we have tides.

*** If dinosaurs turned into birds, then dinosaurs were delicious.  That's why they went extinct.

*** If we were to close down every Starbucks on our planet, it would be a very barren place.

*** If God created the Earth, then he created the tectonic plates that we're living on.  That means that we're all little things running around on God's plate.  We can only hope that mankind is on the dessert menu that God looks at, but decides that he's too full or too cheap to order.  Though, if he's too full, he could just order us for dessert to take home... That means mankind's only hope is that God is cheap or can't afford dessert, in which case we should probably stop giving him money...

*** Italy looks like a boot.

*** If Atlantis exists, it is either under the water or buried under a lot of dirt.

*** Rivers always flow towards larger bodies of water.  Well, duh... if they started flowing the other way, then it would become the larger body of water.

*** Time is relative and only exists as we know it here on Earth.  If you leave the Earth, time slows down an awful lot.. so if it takes "39 days" to get to Mars, is that in Earth days or Space days?

*** If Creationism is completely true, don't you think God would have gotten bored after a while and threw in evolution just to keep things interesting?

*** There are some small flowered plants, like the venus fly trap, that eat the meat of insects and even small reptiles and mammals... let's just be thankful that there aren't any trees like that.

*** Stop your bitching, Pluto isn't a planet.  He's a yellow lab.

*** America is a hemisphere, not a country.

*** There once was a raptor from Greece

       Who migrated north of the seas

       There was a bad snow storm

       But his blood was too warm

       And now he's all sorts of deceased

*** The Earth was flat before someone filled it with dirt and water.

-The End-

Today I found a "religion" I had never heard of before. I like it.

Bokononism is the religion practiced by many of the characters in Kurt Vonnegut's novel Cat's Cradle.

It is based on the concept of foma, which are defined as harmless untruths. The primary tenet of Bokononism is to "Live by the foma that make you brave and kind and healthy and happy." Many of the sacred texts of Bokononism were written in the form of calypsos. The foundation of Bokononism is that all religion, including Bokononism and all its texts, is formed entirely of lies; however, one who believes and adheres to these lies will at least have peace of mind, and perhaps live a good life.

Here's the wiki:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bokononism

I think I may pick up this book.  It seems interesting enough.

Have you heard?

You know Ted Turner, Bill Gates, Bob Iger, Rockefeller, Rothschild, J.P. Morgan, etc etc, right? They're some of the richest men in the country because they own the biggest corporations and you can look up to them and hear about them and even buy their products, but you will still never be as good as them. We can agree on this, right? That status is pretty much held only for those men and their children who take over for them...

Well, there's one man named Gary who is richer and more powerful than all of them and to this man, they are equal to us! That's how awesome Gary is!! Now, the government has been keeping this man a secret because they don't want you to find out about him.. and they tell you stories through the media about Bill Gates and Steve Jobs to distract you from what's really going on...

How'd I find out, you ask? Well, this other guy by the name of Johnny Castel works for Gary and he was sent out to tell people about his corporation. Now, Gary's corporation is so huge that it sells everything you could ever want or need but, on top of that, if you work for him no matter what age, race, or financial background you come from, when you retire, he'll give you $100,000,000,000 dollars. This is no joke. He believes in equality and that everyone should be able to be rich.. but if everybody is rich, nobody would be so you have to prove that you are a good part of his corporation. It really isn't hard. All you have to do is buy his products instead of those other guys, and they're actually better products because they work forever! If something does happen to break, even if it's entirely your fault, all you have to do is bring it in, tell them what happened, and they'll give you a brand new one absolutely free for as long as you work for him.

But back to this Johnny Castel guy.. he's basically the owner's son and was traveling all over America to tell people about this corporation, but those other rich guys didn't like that... they knew they'd be out of business. They told him to stop, but he didn't want to disappoint his father and he knew how important it is that we find out about this corporation so he didn't. Well, they got a hold of him and they tortured him. He still refused to stop.. so they killed him.

What?? Of course it happened! Why haven't you heard about any of this before, you ask? Well, it happened before you were born and those bad guys are good at keeping secrets from the common people, especially about something they know they made a mistake on... but there's a book about him that you can read and you can still work for Gary and get your $100,000,000,000 when you retire! How can he pay for that? Well, he's tax exempt of course!!

You only have to work for him one day a week and use his products. That's all! If you really want to get in good with him, you can sign over 10% of your paycheck to go towards spreading the word of his company to the rest of the world so that they can be part of this as well! Oh, and be sure to tell your kids about Gary and teach them the skills they'll need to work for Him from the day they're born!

No, you can't meet Him or see Him, not till you retire.. but He's watching you work and live on His surveillance cameras to be sure you're not betraying Him... and you can talk to your local Manager who can talk to Gary through the telephone for you, but trust me, He exists. There's all this proof!!

I trust in Gary. Do you?

An artist's rendering of Gary... See? he exists!

Just a Theory

I've been labeled as elitist for this, but I never said that this was true nor that it is what I really believe in. But, here goes...

Remember when your parents told you the world didn't revolve around you...? What if it did?

As far as you truly know, and I mean really personally know, did the past really happen? All the things you learn in history about the Ancient Romans, or the Renaissance, or the Civil War or the Holocaust... did those things really happen? How do you know?

As far as I'm concerned, I don't know. All I know is what has happened since the moment I was born. All that is real to me is the right here and now. The past is just as obtainable as the future - only through daydreams.

The history that we learn was written by someone else. That someone had to have a perspective. It is not a belief, but a fact that a lot of people thought Hitler was awesome. Someone had to think so. Not just someone, but a lot of someones because he became so powerful. People thought he was the best thing for them. Who's to say they weren't right? If Germany won the war, wouldn't life be different?

I often wonder how World War II is taught in Japan. Do they look at America the same way the Jewish look at Germany? If not, then why? America supposedly put the Japanese in camps and exterminated them like pests the same way the Germans did to the Jews and Cripples and Gays. Is it because history is written by the victorious? Or is it because history was only written for you? Does it really mean something on a personal level?

When I say that, I return to the theory that nothing existed before you were born. With your birth, came this new dimension in which you are the only real thing. Everything is what you make it. If you do not know that something exists, does it? For people who are born colorblind, is there such a thing as red or green? How do they know?

If this is the case, then am I suggesting that you can do whatever you wish? If you wanted to fly, you could. If you wanted to breathe under water, survive a fatal crash, or move things with your mind, you could. If you believe whole heartedly and with every single tiny little fiber of your being, you could. Have you ever heard someone say 'you make our own luck'?

But then why can't people fly? Why can't you breathe under water? Because you don't believe you can. Somewhere along in your life, someone told you that you can't. You saw someone on tv or heard about someone who failed at one of these amazing feats or that they cheated to give the illusion that they had accomplished something like this. That one time is in your memory bank somewhere and creates just enough doubt for you to fail.

If we were to experiment on this, we could take a baby the second it's born. Put it somewhere secluded from the rest of humanity. Show it only movies where people can fly. Tell that child that people can fly.. and that the only way they can see their parents is to fly to them, do you think they could? I do... and if they didn't, it would be because that baby is only another part of this dimension created for me, by me. That child's failure to fly would be caused by my disbelief that he or she could do so.

So there is no way to prove this theory, just like there is no way to prove Christianity. You just don't know...

When I was a child, I did not believe in Heaven or Hell. My friends would ask "what do you believe then?" It just never occurred to me that one belief system could be right and all others wrong. I would tell them that I believed that whatever you believe happens when you die, that's what happens. Christians go to Heaven or Hell, Buddhists are reincarnated, and so on and so forth.

Why not? This is your world. This is your dimension. Everything put here is specifically for you and only you to form your personality, beliefs, past, and future. These monks that can become weightless or smash through concrete are here to make you believe that you can do anything. These people who die in wars and plane crashes and amusing stories on the news are here to make you believe that you can't. I am here to tell you this to make you think. In the moments before you die, you will feel an overwhelming feeling of contentment, even if only for a brief moment. Perhaps, in this moment, you will realize that you CAN do anything. Perhaps that is what Heaven really is, or Enlightenment. You can do anything.

The fact is we really just don't know. I do not whole heartedly believe that this theory is true. But I do believe that it could be.

Kind of cool, isn't it?

The Winter Solstice

December is a time of Holidays. Here in America we have the wonderful ability to see many different celebrations of religions and beliefs from all over the world. 



True, the most accepted of these is Christmas, as celebrated by modern Christians, but you can see many different cultures if you are looking for them. I have had the pleasure of researching many different types of religions over the past few years. 



Christmas Past:


It is no secret that I was raised Catholic, attended a religion class at church every Wednesday growing up, and made Communion as well as Confirmation. I have also made it known that I never did feel part of this system. Be that as it may, my Christmas each year was often the same. 

It would start the day after Thanksgiving when all the decorations came up from the basement. Dad would put up the tree and put the lights on it. Mom was in charge of the garland, and all three of us put on the ornaments. Dad, of course, put the angel on the top.



We would listen to Christmas music as we decorated and in the car on our way to anywhere we went. We watched our favorite Christmas shows, especially Santa Claus is Coming to Town, A Charlie Brown Christmas, and The Heat and Snow Misers.

Christmas Eve, we often went out for dinner with Pa and Grandma and sometimes went to the mall just to watch the crazy last-minute shoppers. That night, I was allowed to open one present. This present was from my parents. One year it was pajamas, which began a new tradition. Later on, when I had a job and my own money, Christmas Eve also became the day that I gave my gifts to the family.



Christmas morning I would wake up and immediately go to my parents' bedroom. I would try my best not to look at the tree as I went because I didn't want to see anything that Santa Claus had left for us without them there. Once they were up, we plugged in the tree and began with the stockings. Mine was slightly bigger than my parents'. I would go through my stocking first, then Mom, and then Dad, and finally the pets (Happy, and also Lucy later on). 

Then we came to the presents under the tree. The same order applied. Me, Mom, Dad, and the pets. The rest of the early morning was set aside for playing with our new toys and setting up new gadgets and trying on new clothes.

On the rare occasion that it had snowed the night before, Dad and I would go outside to look for any left over signs of Santa. Now, keep in mind that this was in suburban New York and my parents were not lazy, but not the most motivated either... but still, we would always find Reindeer prints in the snow....



Later in the morning, we would head over to Pa and Grandma's house where we met with my Uncle Danny, Aunt Terry, and my cousins Nick and Emily. There, we ate bagels and watched the Disney Christmas Parade, opened more gifts, and took a family picture.

These are the Christmases I will remember from my childhood.



Christmas Present:


Nowadays our Christmases are much smaller. After Jeremy and I were married, we decided to break up Thanksgiving and Christmas between our families. The first year we spent Thanksgiving at home and traveled to New York for Christmas which was celebrated at my cousin Jill's home with her husband, Paul. There, we talked about our lives over the past year, ate baked ziti and steak, and played the Dictionary Game. 
The Dictionary Game may sound boring, but it is everything to the contrary; especially with my intelligent, sarcastic, and brutally unforgiving family. 

The following year we spent Thanksgiving with my family in New York and Christmas with Jeremy's where we drove down to his Grandmother's house for a big meal and gifts.

This year will, again, be very different. We do have a small, silver, fiber-optic, terribly commercial, twenty-dollar Christmas tree with equally small, matching bulbs. We have stockings, but gifts very rarely go in them. On Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, we will call our families and put them on speakerphone as we open our gifts and they open theirs.



As far as gifts for each other go, we know what we're getting. I do not have a car and therefore, cannot shop without Jeremy there. We make deals and arrangements so we end up with no surprises for each other. 

This is the extent of our celebrations. I do not fret over it. I look at it as a neutral time; an in-between of the somewhat Christian traditions of mine and Jeremy's childhoods and the traditions we will create for our own family someday...



Christmas Future:


I can't tell what my Decembers will look like in the future. But I can paint a picture of what I would like them to be about.

As I had said originally, December is a time of many Holidays. Why is that? I am not an Athiest, I do certainly believe in something. The Earth, to be exact, and the Sun as well. 

In very ancient days, in the Northern Hemisphere, December 21st was, and still is, the shortest day of the year with the longest night. This is the Winter Solstice. Solstice is a Greek contraction based on the words 'sol', meaning 'sun', and 'sistere', meaning 'stand-still'. It was in these ancient days when the scholars would track the pattern of the sun as it went lower and lower in the sky and was visible for less and less time with each passing day. 

They had feared that, based on this movement, the sun would disappear entirely. These people knew that they needed the sun in all things. Along with the Earth, it provided life by helping plants grow, giving warmth, and also giving light. But, on the Winter Solstice, December 21st, the sun came to a stand-still. 



It remained still for three days until, on December 25th, a new Sun was "Born" (Or "Son of the Virgin Queen of Winter", depending on the region. This version is a bit more familiar to us today in another religion). This means that the sun was now getting slightly higher in the sky, and visible longer each day which, of course, called for celebration! A Yule Log would be lit on fire, and entire groups of people (most of which were related at some point), would gather around, sing, eat, drink, light candles from the flames of the Yule Log throughout the nights, and also brings gifts and well wishes in the inevitable Spring that was approaching.



The Yule Log typically burned for eight days and the celebrations lasted until the flames had burned out (This tradition is also kept alive by another religious holiday during this time of year). All together, from the standing still of the Sun to the last embers of the Yule Log, the Holiday lasted 12 days (Although partridges in pear trees were not given as gifts every one of these days).


If you don't think that is cool, I don't know what is. And it is this, very true, history that I choose to celebrate.

Now, how to celebrate it?



First and foremost, the celebrations must last twelve days, and I plan on doing something regarding the holiday on each one of these days. A few days will be spent decorating. Ancient decorations during this time included wreaths of Holly or Ivy. The long, dark nights made these ancient people weary of evil things like Sprites or Ghosts, but these beings would get caught in the prickly, pointy Ivy and Holly leaves hung upon the doors of homes. 

Trees were often hung upside down, in hopes of fooling the Sun into going the opposite way. Its these decorations that we'll put up first.



On luckier years, family will be able to come in to celebrate with us and decorate too. On December 25th, we'll light up a Yule Log. I'm not sure if we'll be able to keep it burning for 8 days straight, but we will certainly light it each night. We'll also exchange gifts, eat home-cooked meals, sing songs, and play games each night until December 31st.

On this night, we'll count down until the New Year begins here in America and discuss our plans for the coming, warmer months only to see how many of the resolutions were fulfilled by this time again the following December!



If you like my future December celebratory plans, please know that you are more than welcome to join us!! Friends are just Family that you get to choose.

But whatever Holiday you celebrate with your families, or choose to celebrate on your own, have a very, very happy one this year!!!!