February 3rd, 2010

Brushing hair. It’s fluffy. Not my preferred look. Comes from washing it today. Wearing a light purple top, and a pair of loose brown pants. It doesn’t look as bad as I thought.

Dad’s busy moving around, he’s going over after mass. Me too. I’m not a catholic.

Pick my way through the mess in the room. Scrawl down some ideas. Gotta make this one work… nothing else has. Climb into the armchair with the footrest permanently up. Cross legs, hunch forward, sip water.

Look up photos of old TVs, they’re all the ones with the buttons on the side, not the bottom. And I can’t remember what colours they use for those stripes at the end of videos. It’s been so long since I saw it.

Do I have time to put one of the old videos in the player? We still have the old duel player.

Father’s watching TV. He’s in his collared blue polo shirt with his long beige trousers. One leg hooked over the arm of the large leather chair. He wants to watch the end of shortland street. Something about a kid with autism and a girl being an activist. I want to pretend I don’t know who at least one of the characters is. And I’m surprised because I don’t recognise the new girl. Or the kid.

It’s over. I put in the tape. There’s three remotes. The tv is silver, it weighs as much as I do. There’s only one set of batteries. Switch them back and forth, hit the right buttons, swear at the tv. Get the stripes, notice that they include colours i didn’t expect, like pale yellow, two kinds of blue, realise it must be because the TV is so wide, the last one I saw the stripes on was half it’s width. Run to get cellphone to take picture. It’s gone when I get back. Can’t get it back. Stupid thing.

Time to go over. I can hear the voices.

Read the rest of this entry »

  • Share/Bookmark

A guide to laying out your blog posts and webpages

January 26th, 2010

The way you lay out your content is more important than you’d think. It allows you to highlight the important parts of your post, order it, and makes it much more attractive to the eye. A series of long paragraphs with no headings, lists with no bullet points, and so on are not only intimidating but downright off putting to visitors and potential customers. These are some simple tips to tidy up your content.

Read the rest of this entry »

  • Share/Bookmark

3 Steps to improving your day (#5)

January 22nd, 2010
  1. Dig out some art stuff. Paints, colouring pencils, glitter, whatever you’ve got lying around
  2. Start making a picture, or maybe a sculpture, something like that, focus on tapping into your emotions, whatever’s on your mind, write stuff if you want, slap paint on any old how, whatever works for you.
  3. Focus not on creating anything specific, just trust your hands and your gut and see where it leads. You aren’t aiming to make a masterpiece, you’re giving your soul a channel. The art could be in the movement of your hands, in the feeling you get from finger painting, it could be in the in the finished product. The point is to focus on finding it and unwinding. Whatever it comes out like, be proud of yourself, it takes courage to express yourself, and sometimes it doesn’t make sense. Self expression is incredibly important, and you’re doing this just for you, so enjoy it.
  • Share/Bookmark

Simple Pleasures

January 22nd, 2010

Small pleasures are good for us. Little bubbles of soul food amidst the day. They help moderate stress, improve our overall health and tend to make us a little nicer, they can also provide us with the odd little insight.

Animals

Kidnapping the cat for a cuddle always makes me feel better. Sitting with the rabbits for a few minutes and watching them demolish silverbeet and kale is surprisingly calming – and I’ve known people who were uninterested in rabbits before to have found just watching them very interesting and relaxing. A cuddle with my horses is always beneficial, and anyone who has a horse will know how good they smell.

Read the rest of this entry »

  • Share/Bookmark

The benefits of generosity for small/online businesses

January 21st, 2010

Tokens of goodwill have always been among the building blocks of relationships, they have preceded diplomatic relations between world powers, built trust between strangers, saved many a man from the couch after a miscalculation regarding how the wife would take certain jokes about her weight.

The free gift with purchase has been a long standing tradition of the infomercial and product launch world. Free samples are employed regularly by companies the world over.

So how do we harness this when we’re on a budget? That’s the big thing, money is tight for everyone. What a lot of us forget is that what we have to give needn’t cost us money.

Read the rest of this entry »

  • Share/Bookmark

6 ways to relax and recharge at work

January 16th, 2010

In todays (dare I say it) fast paced world, too many people work too many hours, skip lunch, skip dinner, skip breakfast and probably skip sleep in between. Work follows you home like a large angry dog that holds the keys to your livelihood, and somehow we become quivering, electrified balls of stress.

Yeah, that sucks.

There’s lots of great information out there about the reasons for lowering your stress levels, from a personal and a business perspective – you need fewer sick days, you’re more productive, easier to work with, deal with customers and other associates better, your homelife and your health improves and your significant other doesn’t recoil in horror when a pale zombie crawls into bed at 2am, and spends the night screaming that the Jipson account was done two weeks ago, damnit.

The most effective way to lower your stress levels would be an already lifestyle change, eat right, exercise, work a little less, segment your time and leave work outside of certain places, however that’s something that you’ll have to decide to do as and when you’re ready/having enough heart attacks.

So, in the meantime, here are a few ideas to help lower your stress levels during your work day.

Read the rest of this entry »

  • Share/Bookmark

Super Seconds

January 16th, 2010

Testing out a new comic ideas – written with Tom Ryder.

Not shaded yet but we’d appreciate comments before we decide whether to continue it.

page1 721x1024 Super Seconds

  • Share/Bookmark

24 Million slaves in the world today

January 12th, 2010

24 million slaves in the world today, more than double the number of slaves before the american civil war.

http://www.ijm.org

http://gracehavenhouse.org/

http://www.sharedhope.org/

If you have a few dollars to spare, please consider donating, or if you don’t, just spread the word like this, or take one of the steps listed on the website.

  • Share/Bookmark

On related news, Rave and I are going to hell.

January 12th, 2010

preview 300x154 On related news, Rave and I are going to hell.

rave made me! Fullview for full sacreligious goodness.

Unda says:

you know the thing behind god in that is meant to be the human brain

an allusion to god being in the mind and your brain

cool huh?

Rave the Conqueror says:

 heh, cool

 god looks like a pimp in that

 with his arm around the chicks

 and they’re all naked

Unda says:

-_-

now he just needs the hat

Rave the Conqueror says:

 we have to do that.

 just put a hat with a feather in it on him

Unda says:

on a side note. best vandalism ever

Rave the Conqueror says:

 we’re going to hell anyway

why not?

  • Share/Bookmark

January 5th, 2010

This is a topic where I would like to be able to write from the heart. The trouble isthat my heart doesn’t speak in words, and pinning the emotions running through it into an understandable form would be like cataloging a kalaidescope. Each tiny piece of the overall image is vivid and alive, constantly changing the shape of the whole.

This is always, in a way, about thought and mindset. I would like to sat it is about moving on, or letting go, byt I think those are the wrong words, with the wrong connotations.

Really, I guess this is about how when you cut a major branch from a tree, the scar never totally dissapears, and for a long time, the tree will mourn. But it will thrive again.

The trouble with humans, is that our thoughts get in the way of our ability to mourn, and eventually, to heal.

When you lose a loved on, it is like losing a limb. A part of your life you interact with as naturally as breathing is no longer there, a part of the foundations of your life are gone, and everything teeters. And so we greive.

The trouble is, we often can’t stop grieving.

We cling to ‘what if’, and to ‘if only’, and ‘if I had just…’. We seek to lay blame, we try to convince ourselves it’s all a dream, because life just can’t carry on like this. The sun cannot keep rising on a world that does not include the missing piece. How could it?

And so we bleed.

And we don’t stop.

A big sticking point in my life has been how to move on from the greif, how to let go of the guilt, and the aching, hollow space in my chest. The thing is, I was always afraid that I would be doing the ones I’ve lost an injustice, that I was betraying them, by even considering that like could carry on without them.

The thing that frightens us about the words moving on, is that it’s the final nail in the coffin long after the funeral, it’s that last part of you that gives up the fight, and makes it real. We hold onto the greif because we feel it’s all we have left of them, and if we leave that behind, we leave them behind. To us, the world shouldn’t ever be right without the ones we have lost. The sun should not rise when it cannot shine upon them.

There’s a long standing theory that talks about how energy and matter can never be destroyed, they merely change. Every atom, well, over the course of time, be part of everything Once we were all stars, we were all trees and rivers, once we were the colours of the dawn.

The theory can tested in less tangible ways too. All the things I am, all the things I do, are the product of the life I have led, the never ending chain of cause and effect that culminates in the present moment, and my past includes, more strongly that I can describe, my loved ones. If no one had taught me to read I would not be writing this, and no one could have taught me had the alphabet not been invented. The things I do as a result of things done for me continue to ripple outwards to others and to the future, touching more and more lives every second.

Memory plays a big role in the echoes of feeling. The love, trust, the laughter and all the tears, whisper through us every moment of our lives, and their echoes whisper through everyone around us and every onward. The physical elements pale in comparison to this. The body that died or left was never the important part. It’s the heart and the mind and the soul – these exist in more than three dimensions and like all forms of energy, they can never be destroyed. A thousand years from now, some one will smile because of a long chain of events and the echoes of laughter and memory will be intertwined all along it. Love can change shape, but it never dies.

Whatever you believe about heaven, or reincarnation, or nothing at all – they aren’t gone. How could they ever be when everything that was important about them is all around us? When it whispers across the world in a thousand effects. When you smile at the memories, when their atoms light the night sky as stars. They’re in you too, in tangible and intangible ways. In the air you breath, in the story you tell.

Moving on and letting go don’t mean letting go of them, it means freeing what they have changed from pain and sadness, welcoming them into a world where they still bring joy. You can never leave them behind, or forget them, they’re as much a part of the future as you are. In the most literal sense, they are all around, and you will never be without them.

  • Share/Bookmark