Hey Laura May. How was your day? Was it okay?

This is taken from a review of the movie Sylvia.
by
J. Sage Elwell
University of Iowa
Department of Philosphy and Religon

4] Looking into the mythic past, perhaps ancient Mesopotamian cosmogony provides the earliest template for understanding the nature of creativity. It was from Tiamat’s primordial waters of chaos that Marduk fashioned original order, and it was Yahweh who spoke into the chaos of tohu wabohu and fashioned the ordered universe. Perhaps it could thus be said that it is the nature of creativity to wrest order out of chaos. This ordering of chaos by creativity is imbued with deeply religious significance. Creativity is the primal act of the gods, it is the means by which significances and purposes are drawn out of the waters of senselessness and how islands of meaning are made.

[5] There is then indeed a certain madness, a certain chaos, underpinning the very nature of creativity. Creativity requires some form of chaos from which to fashion order; for there to be order, there must first be non-order. Within the artist this primordial chaos might be equated to emotional or psychological imbroglio. The order that the artist draws out of this chaos is her artistic creation--a world of meaning fabricated in words and images. Such creative activity has deeply religious connotations as the anchoring of existential significances by the artist. In her work she implicitly mimics the creation of the universe as she gives order to the swirling waters of her psyche fashioning poetry from the eddies of emotions.

-auspicious mandala
 

aus‧pi‧cious[aw-spish-uhs]
–adjective
1. promising success; propitious; opportune; favorable: an auspicious occasion.
2. favored by fortune; prosperous; fortunate.


chi also ch'i or Qi or qi
n.
The vital force believed in Taoism and other Chinese thought to be inherent in all things. The unimpeded circulation of chi and a balance of its negative and positive forms in the body are held to be essential to good health in traditional Chinese medicine.

By JORDAN ROBERTSON (Associated Press Writer)Associated Press
July 19, 2006

SAN FRANCISCO - The waves were flat at Ocean Beach, but Brian Bennett paddled out anyway. For Bennett, a surfer of 20 years, it didn't matter that he might not catch a single wave on this crisp sunny afternoon with no other surfers in sight. Surfing is what the 34-year-old ad salesman does for exercise.
"It's good to feel the electricity in the water," he said. "It's like taking a couple energy drinks. I'm up, I'm alert, and I'm a happier person."
It's not just the meditative mind trip that gets surfers in the water. Some die-hards are loath to admit it, but the sport's health benefits are many.


Sinewy shoulders. Washboard abs. Improved cardiovascular health.
Dedicated surfers accidentally build physiques that health-club acolytes would trade their memberships for.
For most surfers, though, the reason for surfing is surfing itself, said Dr. Mark Renneker, an associate professor of family and community medicine at the University of California, San Francisco. The 54-year-old Renneker should know; he's a renowned big-wave rider himself.
"It's not a sport to them at all - it's a way of life," he said. "It's salubrious up the wazoo. You can't find anything that makes you as healthy."
Renneker frequently recommends surfing to non-surfers to treat high blood pressure, repetitive strain injuries and chemical addictions.
But the biggest benefit, he said, is cardiovascular.
Renneker said a surfer's heart rate can recover from intense activity as quickly as that of a triathlete, because of the focus on controlled breathing. He says asthmatics have also experienced improved respiratory functioning, and the sport's meditative effects can reduce stress even in the most anxious patients.
"It really is leaving the world, as it were, on land, and losing yourself in the rhythms of the ocean," he said. "And that has been the draw of surfing since the beginning. And then to have a really physical training ... to really progress you have to surf three times a week."
But it can also be dangerous.
Lance Harriman, 36, a surfer of nearly three decades and a San Francisco physical therapist, said top riders often limp into his practice with blown-out knees, shoulders and ankles.
Poor paddling technique can cause upper-body strain, and the water can be unforgiving to joints on big-wave wipeouts, Harriman said.
Many longtime surfers suffer from a shared malady: so-called "surfer's ear" that develops when bone grows in the ear canal from repeated wind and water irritation, especially in colder climates. The surgery involves removing the bone.
But surfers are usually ferociously eager to get back on their boards.
"The fiends take this seriously," Harriman said. "You dangle the carrot in front of them - and that's getting back in the water - and they work hard. Sometimes too hard."
Harriman said many injuries can be prevented by simple stretching and strengthening exercises and attention to proper technique. Offseason cross-training for underused lower-body muscles also helps.
But some longtime surfers scoff at the idea of injecting traditional sports training into a soulful, spur-of-the-moment passion.
Big-wave riders have always trained with breath-holding and strengthening exercises to survive tumbles from tall waves, but surfing's full-body workout is usually adequate for most others, said Bob Wise, 58, owner of Wise Surfboards in San Francisco.
"I can tell a guy's been surfing a lot when he walks through the door," he said. "They don't have much leg muscle usually ... But they're broad in the shoulders. They're lean. You can't eat that much when you're out on the water three or four hours a day. You can just tell."
Wise has tried yoga to loosen a back stiffened from years of surfing and water-skiing.
But the "best part about it was when it was over," he said, adding that he doubts younger surfers will ever stop to stretch as they're charging toward the beach.
"The kids aren't going to accept that. They're not into serenity," Wise said. "You paddle out and you don't have to worry about North Korea firing missiles for an hour. You've got your own thing going. You've got a wave to catch."

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

I just saw a movie by Igmar Bergman called Wild Strawberries. I highly recommend.
Below is the wikepdia expert on the film



Wild Strawberries (film)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Smultronstället

Directed by
Ingmar Bergman
Produced by
Allan Ekelund
Written by
Ingmar Bergman
Starring
Victor Sjöström,Bibi Andersson,Ingrid Thulin,Gunnar Björnstrand
Cinematography
Gunnar Fischer
Editing by
Oscar Rosander
Distributed by
Svensk Filmindustri
Release date
December 26, 1957 June 22, 1959
Running time
91 min.
Language
Swedish
multronstället (Wild Strawberries, lit. The Wild Strawberry Patch) is a 1957 film written and directed by Ingmar Bergman. Victor Sjöström stars as a medical doctor and professor who is forced by nightmares, daydreams, his old age, and his impending death to reevaluate his life on a drive with his daughter-in-law to receive an honorary degree. The film contains many themes and devices which later became known as Bergman's artistic trademarks. The cast includes Bergman regulars Bibi Andersson, Ingrid Thulin and Gunnar Björnstrand. Max von Sydow also appears in a small part.
The film was nominated for an Academy Award for Writing Original Screenplay. Many film critics and film scholars consider the film to be one of Bergman's best, despite having been made relatively early in his career.
The Seventh Seal, also considered one of Bergman's best films by many film critics/scholars, was also released in 1957, making it a year of prodigious output for Ingmar Bergman.
Woody Allen's 1997 film Deconstructing Harry is loosely based upon Bergman's Wild Strawberries. Woody Allen is a well-known fan of Bergman's films and many consider Deconstructing Harry as his personal homage to Wild Strawberries.
Ingmar Bergman wrote the screenplay for Wild Strawberries while he was in the hospital.

Giveaway newspaper war erupts in Denmark
New freebie tab hits streets; three more to launch within year
JASMINA NIELSEN

Associated Press

COPENHAGEN -- A free newspaper hit the streets of Copenhagen yesterday, the first salvo in an emerging war among free dailies in Denmark. At least three others are expected to be launched this year.

Hawkers started handing out copies of the tabloid Dato at key traffic points in the Danish capital, and copies will also be distributed directly to homes in Denmark's major cities starting today.

The newspaper, which means "date" in Danish, is being published by Berlingske Officin AS, which also publishes several other newspapers including one of Europe's oldest dailies, Berlingske Tidende. Berlingske Officin's parent company has agreed to be bought by Mecom Group PLC, a media investment company in Britain.

Rival media company JP/Politikens Hus AS plans to launch its own free newspaper, 24timer, today while Metro International SA will introduce a free afternoon newspaper next week in addition to the free metroXpress daily it already distributes in the morning. In addition to metroXpress, Denmark already has another free daily newspaper called Urban.

The battle lines formed earlier this year when Icelandic conglomerate 365 Media Scandinavia shocked the Danish media industry by announcing it would issue a free newspaper, Nyhedsavisen, to some 500,000 homes in Denmark.

Danish media companies scrambled to meet the challenge with free papers of their own. Nyhedsavisen was left at the back of the pack with a yet-to-be-determined launch date some time later this year.

Media analyst Malene Birkebaek Hubertz said some of the newspapers were likely to fold because there's not enough advertising money to sustain all of them.

Birkebaek Hubertz said the new free newspapers would have to conquer at least half of the newspaper advertising market to survive, since that is their only source of revenue. Danish newspapers sell about 3.1 billion kroner ($598-million) worth of advertising a year, according to Dansk Oplagskontrol, which surveys circulations.

The fact that many of the free newspapers will be distributed to homes has also raised concerns that they will compete with subscription dailies, which already are seeing dwindling circulation.

Read more of this story at:

GLOBE&MAILBusiness

Oshkosh, Wisconsin is famous, sort of.
We hold the world's biggest aircraft convention every year (EAA)
We are the namesake to the famous kids clothing company, OshKosh B'Gosh.
and we have the most police per capita of any US city!<--this is a rumor, but if you lived here you would probably think it is true.

I've been living in Oshkosh for most of my life. Yeah, we have a few defining features such as a very recognizable name but Oshkosh is very much the average mid-western town. Yes, Oshkosh too suffers from a lack of social diversity in race, wealth and political ideology. We have a Walmart, several chain restaurants, a small downtown economy. But deep within the heart of Oshkosh, the city holds a secret that makes us very different from many average mid-western towns.

A message to tourist: If you come to Oshkosh, don't take the road less traveled. Because if you take the road less traveled most likely you will hit a pothole. or several.

A former aquaintance once told me about his uncle who was a former city official of Platteville. I think the uncle was the former city planner or manager or something. All I remember from this distant conversation is the person telling me about how his uncle was discusted with the condition of the streets of Oshkosh and how they are probably the worst he had ever seen in a city our size. (Oshkosh is over 60,000 people).

I live in downtown Oshkosh and unfortunately I have to pay the city each month to park in the parking lot near my apartment. One day, when I was paying for my parking tickets at city hall I asked the cashier about just where the revenue from the parking tickets goes to. She told me the money went towards upkeep of city parking lots and streets. HAH!! Oshkosh has some of the worst streets I've very seen in a city our size. I once knocked out hte exhaust on my car driving over a crater sized pothole near UW-Oshkosh. Oshkosh also seems to have some of the most strict parking restrictions for our size. Now, I know that in bigger cities like Madison, parking is obviously more expensive and strict, but I see this as being a reflection of its much larger population.

Downtown Oshkosh is not the land of booming businesses yet the parking is VERY strict. The parking lot near the convention centre, I would estimate is empty about 80 percent of the year yet most of the parking spaces have meters on them. The whole city of Oshkosh has an ordinance that cars can not park on city streets between the hours of 2 am and 5 am EVEN in the summer. The city of Oshkosh collects hundreds of thousands of dollars in revenue from parking tickets each year. Yes, this is undoubtedly an estimation but if you go to the city hall cashier's office you'll see a stack of hundreds of parking tickets waiting to be tabulated. Considering most parking tickets are $10 each, well you can do the math. So I guess my main question lies, If Oshkosh maintains such a strict parking ordinance..... the city must be collecting a large revenue from parking tickets.

Since Oshkosh so many streets in poor condition WHERE IS THE MONEY GOING?


Click HERE for more on this topic.

New hobby: reading
I'm posting this because it's on my list of books to buy.

My favorite form of traveling is anti-tourism.
I did some traveling like this in the Dominican Republic though I found it difficult because I had a lack of money and I didn't speak spanish. (so I had to resort to speaking German or French and looking away when little kids were begging for money). Wisconsin Public Radio recently featured Kalder on To The Best of Our Knowledge.

Lost Cosmonaut by Daniel Kalder

The anti-tourist does not visit places that are in any way desirable. The anti-tourist eschews comfort. The anti-tourist embraces hunger and hallucinations and shit hotels . . . The anti-tourist loves truth, but he is also partial to lies. Especially his own.
Lost Cosmonaut documents Daniel Kalder's travels in the bizarre and mysterious worlds of Russia's ethnic republics. Obsessed with a quest he never fully understands, Kalder boldly goes where no man has gone before: in the deserts of Kalmykia, he stumbles upon a city dedicated to chess and a forgotten tribe of Mongols; in Mari El, home to Europe's last pagan nation, he meets the Chief Druid and participates in an ancient rite; while in the black industrial badlands of Udmurtia, Kalder looks for Mikhail Kalashnikov, inventor of the AK47, and accidentally becomes a TV star.
Profane yet wise, utterly honest and yet full of lies, Lost Cosmonaut is an eye-opening, blackly comic tour of the most alien planet in our cosmos: Earth.

After a 14-hour work day I got to get up and shoot a triathalon at 7 a.m. I also shot the last day of the Winnebago County fair and UWO football practice. I am in desperate need of a massage.

The Oshkosh triathalon had an excellent attendance considering it is only in its second year. I love sitting by the finish line of races because people will scream and cheer runners to push it hard all the way until the finish. I used to get embarassed by telling my friends that I run but running is such a mental sport.

An example could be what I saw today.

A man screams at a woman who is on the race course. The finish line is about 100 meters away and she is walking and looks like she has nearly given up. The man yells at the woman "Finish the race!! The end is right there!! Don't Walk--Run!!!"
To the stereotypical artsy anti-athlete, I'm sure this could be interpreted as some type oc cruel fascist act, like, how dare a guy yell at a woman and tell her she should "try harder". The woman continues to walk and the man keeps on persisting that she should finish the race as hard as she started. He even goes out of his way to give her a little pat on the back to nudge her along. Guess what. She laughed, picked up her pace, and ran to the finish line. The body's strength lies so much in the mind. The persitence and support of others only makes it stronger.

I love running

Hmm What are they doing here?
Fishing. A shot where people weren't staring at me
Have you ever stared at a computer so long that your eyes literally start to get bloodshot?
It's 8:30pm and I've been working since 7:30am. Yes, that is over 12 hours.
My head is ready to crash into the keyboard so I need to keep active.
I'm posting some photos of my work day. The photos I'm posting also aren't going to run.