Information Overload

My last post has left me feeling very eerie, as did my research over these last few days.

I feel as though I have opened myself up to information that perhaps I am not ready to handle; information that I would have to take in doses, time being the middle man.

This all slightly reverted me back to my childhood. Whenever I had moments where I was afraid of life and infinite knowledge, I needed to have someone with me. You see, I was always afraid of loneliness - a fact that I still cannot rebuke.

I used to trick my brother into staying in the bathroom with me while I took a shower. I tried coming up with all sorts of things to converse about if ever he came in to brush his teeth. I am not sure if he ever realised, but this was all due to fear of being alone. (I never really cared about whatever it was that I coughed up to keep him around.)

My prima esposa almost had to be my big brother on Wednesday night. Perhaps because I overdosed on information and needed a distraction. Still, it has not stopped me from continuing my research.

In fact, I have now opened up conversation on the topic with several other people, including my prima esposa who is now almost as fascinated by it as I am.

What is it, you ask? Well, you'll just have to read my last blog to find out, for I will write about its details no longer.

It's All Esoteric

Sometimes I like to think of myself as a Conspiracy theorist.

I tend to believe in, or rather not completely dismiss, all conspiracy theories and all kinds of esoteric agenda's amongst those in power as long as there is a documentary or well-written and supported article to back it up. Maybe it is because I truly believe that all power corrupts.

Who better to partake in secrecy than those who have the power to keep it that way?

Though I have no intentions of plowing the fields as an investigative journalist, I am leaning more towards being an editor, I still sometimes go out of my way educate myself on certain things that perhaps I should not be so eager to delve into. I am even a bit wary to write about it. Nonetheless, I will. (Typical journalist, no?)

Remember those videos I told you I was introduced to by a friend? Well, I still have not gotten around to watch the last few, and to be honest I believe I have purposely shoved the idea of doing so to the very back of my mind. But today, I was reminded of them and their content by a friend whom I least expected to be wary of it. (Come to think of it, I am not sure I remember how the conversation even came up.)

It all started the night of the MTV Video Music Awards. I am not sure where my head was at when I first watched it, but what I can tell you is that I practically changed the channel after the Michael Jackson tribute.

I cannot say I regret not seeing the entire award show, but I almost feel like I should have at least seen Gaga's performance. From my understanding, she had blood on her? I am not sure how this award show did not get crazy publicity for her performance, other than the diversion of the staged controversy between Kanye West and Taylor Swift.

I know I am super late on writing about this, but forgive me. I just happened upon the article today. Read it with an open mind. Ciao

The 2009 VMAs: The Occult Mega-Ritual

And if that didn't give you goosebumps, or at least something to think about, maybe these will.


Illuminati Part 1

Part 2

Month of Thanksgiving

I am determined to start this month off on a delightful note. I cannot deal with another bad month.

On another topic, I thought I would share with you a delightful piece that made me smile. It is called Notes on Punctuation by Lewis Thomas. (Yes, he is very much amazing.)

Enjoy.

"There are no precise rules about punctuation (Fowler lays out some general advice (as best he can under the complex circumstances of English prose (he points out, for example, that we possess only four stops (the comma, the semicolon, the colon and the period (the question mark and exclamation point are not, strictly speaking, stops; they are indicators of tone (oddly enough, the Greeks employed the semicolon for their question mark (it produces a strange sensation to read a Greek sentence which is a straightforward question: Why weepest thou; (instead of Why weepest thou? (and, of course, there are parentheses (which are surely a kind of punctuation making this whole matter much more complicated by having to count up the left-handed parentheses in order to be sure of closing with the right number (but if the parentheses were left out, with nothing to work with but the stops we would have considerably more flexibility in the deploying of layers of meaning than if we tried to separate all the clauses by physical barriers (and in the latter case, while we might have more precision and exactitude for our meaning, we would lose the essential flavor of language, which is its wonderful ambiguity )))))))))))).

The commas are the most useful and usable of all the stops. It is highly important to put them in place as you go along. If you try to come back after doing a paragraph and stick them in the various spots that tempt you you will discover that they tend to swarm like minnows in all sorts of crevices whose existence you hadn't realized and before you know it the whole long sentence becomes immobilized and lashed up squirming in commas. Better to use them sparingly, and with affection, precisely when the need for each one arises, nicely, by itself.

I have grown fond of semicolons in recent years. The semicolon tells you that there is still some question about the preceding full sentence; something needs to be added; it reminds you sometimes of the Greek usage. It is almost always a greater pleasure to come across a semicolon than a period. The period tells you that that is that; if you didn't get all the meaning you wanted or expected, anyway you got all the writer intended to parcel out and now you have to move along. But with a semicolon there you get a pleasant little feeling of expectancy; there is more to come; to read on; it will get clearer.

Colons are a lot less attractive for several reasons: firstly, they give you the feeling of being rather ordered around, or at least having your nose pointed in a direction you might not be inclined to take if left to yourself, and, secondly, you suspect you're in for one of those sentences that will be labeling the points to be made: firstly, secondly and so forth, with the implication that you haven't sense enough to keep track of a sequence of notions without having them numbered. Also, many writers use this system loosely and incompletely, starting out with number one and number two as though counting off on their fingers but then going on and on without the succession of labels you've been led to expect, leaving you floundering about searching for the ninethly or seventeenthly that ought to be there but isn't.

Exclamation points are the most irritating of all. Look! they say, look at what I just said! How amazing is my thought! It is like being forced to watch someone else's small child jumping up and down crazily in the center of the living room shouting to attract attention. If a sentence really has something of importance to say, something quite remarkable, it doesn't need a mark to point it out. And if it is really, after all, a banal sentence needing more zing, the exclamation point simply emphasizes its banality!

Quotation marks should be used honestly and sparingly, when there is a genuine quotation at hand, and it is necessary to be very rigorous about the words enclosed by the marks. If something is to be quoted, the exact words must be used. If part of it must be left out because of space limitations, it is good manners to insert three dots to indicate the omission, but it is unethical to do this if it means connecting two thoughts which the original author did not intend to have tied together. Above all, quotation marks should not be used for ideas that you'd like to disown, things in the air so to speak. Nor should they be put in place around clichés; if you want to use a cliché you must take full responsibility for it yourself and not try to fob it off on anon., or on society. The most objectionable misuse of quotation marks, but one which illustrates the danger of misuse in ordinary prose, is seen in advertising, especially in advertisements for small restaurants, for example "just around the corner," or "a good place to eat." No single, identifiable, citable person ever really said, for the record, "just around the corner," much less "a good place to eat," least likely of all for restaurants of the type that use this type of prose.

The dash is a handy device, informal and essentially playful, telling you that you're about to take off on a different tack but still in some way connected with the present course - only you have to remember that the dash is there, and either put a second dash at the end of the notion to let the reader know that he's back on course, or else end the sentence, as here, with a period.

The greatest danger in punctuation is for poetry. Here it is necessary to be as economical and parsimonious with commas and periods as with the words themselves, and any marks that seem to carry their own subtle meanings, like dashes and little rows of periods, even semicolons and question marks, should be left out altogether rather than inserted to clog up the thing with ambiguity. A single exclamation point in a poem, no matter what else the poem has to say, is enough to destroy the whole work.

The things I like best in T.S. Eliot's poetry, especially in the Four Quartets, are the semicolons. You cannot hear them, but they are there, laying out the connections between the images and the ideas. Sometimes you get a glimpse of a semicolon coming, a few lines farther on, and it is like climbing a steep path through woods and seeing a wooden bench just at a bend in the road ahead, a place where you can expect to sit for a moment, catching your breath.

Commas can't do this sort of thing; they can only tell you how the different parts of a complicated thought are to be fitted together, but you can't sit, not even to take a breath, just because of a comma,"