Happy Plush Animal Lover's And National Chocolate Day (...Oh Yeah, And My Birthday, Yay!)

Wow, what an honor it is to have three special days all rolled into one, what an honor it is for my birthday to be shared with plush animal lovers and cacoa bean connoisseurs worldwide.



The history of chocolate may still be quite young, but yet sooooooo fecund. In 600 A.D. the Mayans migrated into the northern regions of South America, establishing the earliest known cocoa plantations in the Yucatan. Many have argued that the Mayans had been familiar with cocoa several centuries prior to this date, who have considered it a valuable commodity, used both as a means of payment and as units of calculation. So they took beans from this "cacao" tree and made a drink they called "xocolatl." Aztec Indian legend held that cacao seeds had been brought from Paradise and that wisdom and power came from eating the fruit of the cacao tree. (maybe my #1 endorphin import comes from it, LOL!)



Because chocolate was originally cvonsumed in liquid form (The word "chocolate" is said to derive from the Mayan "xocolatl"; cacao from the Aztec "cacahuatl". The Mexican Indian word "chocolate" comes from the terms choco ("foam") and atl ("water") ) chocolate in its modern term was first noted in 1519 when Spanish explorer Hernando Cortez visited the court of Emperor Montezuma of Mexico. American historian William Hickling's History of the Conquest of Mexico (1838) reports that Montezuma "took no other beverage than the chocolatl, a potation of chocolate, flavored with vanilla and spices, and so prepared as to be reduced to a froth of the consistency of honey, which gradually dissolved in the mouth and was taken cold." The fact that Montezuma consumed his "chocolatl" in goblets before entering his harem led to the belief that it was an aphrodisiac.

Chocolate was introduced to the United States in 1765 when John Hanan brought cocoa beans from the West Indies into Dorchester, Massachusetts, which proliferated with help of Dr. James Baker. The first chocolate factory in the country was established there, and to this day, the rest is history! :)

Scorpios like me just can't resist the seductive sapidity of chocolat! The last Aztec Emperor, Monteczuma certainly thought it was an aphrodisiac, as he is reputed to have drunk it fifty times a day to get his freak on, LOL! When the Spanish Conquistadors took the chocolate drink back to Spain from the new world, its Aphrodisiac myths lived on so it's not surprising that chocolate continued to be associated with love when it spread through Europe. Even the great Latin lover, Casanova consumed Chocolate before bedding his many conquests.



Chocolate does contain two chemical substances called Phenylethylamine and Serotonin (and I'll all about that! :) ) These substances are known as mood lifting agents found naturally in the human brain. They are released by the brain into the human nervous system when we are experiencing feelings of physical love, passion or lust, causing a rapid lifting of mood, a rise in blood pressure and increasing heart rate, inducing feelings of well being, bordering on euphoria we usually associate with being in love.

Eating Chocolate also releases Phenylethylamine and Seratonin into the system which artificially produces those same euphoric effects, plus it gives a substantial energy boost thus increasing stamina, possibly at a critical moment, probably explaining why many think of it as an aphrodisiac, yay! :)



(giggles) I've always been such a softy for plush toy pets as well! :) Guess my small hands have their advantage, like my mom says ever so often, in nurturing and fondling furry little things with a feminine touch! :) I'm soooooo sensitive that every Easter, when the easter bunny would leave me with a box of marshmallow Peeps, to this day, I can never eat them because though I know they're not real living things and just candy shaped chicks, they just look sooooooooo cute and I just feel an immediate sense of grief everytime I look at them as though they're little living peepers! (giggles) I've kept some as pets for about 3 1/2 years now! This Peep Jousting is just like Dark Ages ordeals, I tells you! I demand it be outlawed! Can't you see the mercy and grief behind their 32 calorie faces and carnauba wax eyes, like a dolls eyes? LOL! Peep off, Sacramento, peep off! (shows pouty puppy face)



:) I have a lil' family of Liquid Blue Deady Bears who always are there for me everyday I come home to my lil' doll house-sized crash pad, along with a menagerie of Beanie Bears, my buddy Brer Frog who I rendezvoued with at Splash Mountain a few years back, Gidget the Taco Bell Chihuahua, and Jerry Garcia, who I gifted with some new suave big sunglasses! :) Lookin' sharp, Jerry, you still know the score, sunshine daydreamer!



(giggles) How sweet it is to share my birthday with the likes of the chocolate cavaliers and plush toy proselytes! (sigh) Sometimes I can get real sentimental on birthdays, especially ones like this, because my dad has told me all this week, "So, how does it feel to be the age I was when your mom and I gave birth to you?" (giggles) I guess I've just always like to think of birthdays as just another day in our lives, for I feel if I thought otherwise, it often seems to encourage too much pensiveness, as though I can't decide if my parents were too young and restless when they were young and rushed things, if I am a late-bloomer, or if it's simply that the times have changed and it is natural for people to be motre careful and selective about their lovers and partners nowadays. I still long very much for my first kiss, and want to experience this feeling more than any other feeling in the world, but life is a journey and the journey always matters in the end and I want to spread glitter each and every step I make in each step closer I come to my cute intruder! :)

So, twenty-second birthday, I'm ready, ready to embrace the great wide open! As God is my witness, may these days bring me more blessings than I am predicting! Onward, my legions of hopes!

And thank you all so much for being my friends that have stood up and believed me up to this day. Let me just say that whether you give me a birthday greeting six days before my birthday or six days after my birthday, I am always just as happy. Belated birthday greetings never hurt me one bit, for just knowing someone cares and thinks of me makes me feel warm inside like a Care Bear on a spring picnic! God Bless You All!



Remember these wise words of Franz Kafka: "Youth is happy because it has the ability to see beauty. Anyone who keeps the ability to see beauty never grows old." Keep spreading your light to the world and let live, yay!

(hands complimentary piece of angel-food tea cake just for you)

Love,
Noah Eaton

Nordmeyer's Half Moon Fellow Feeling

Sawadee dawn chow! :) I hope you are enjoying the new features to the new and sandier Serotonin Sandbox! Enjoy making aerial whip backs and full twisting double backs with your brand new, complimentary butterfly cursor, let your day be soused with endorphin hail with the new smiley-face heart drizzles, get your delectable doppler dose with the new sidebar local weather forecast, and finally, get those jazz hands jitterbiggin' and your heels heaving with great upbeat 80's tunes provided via The Flash KXCL FM 103.9 of Yuba City, California (when KBOO has a HTML stream service available I'd love considering to try and stream them, yay!)



Marcel Proust said, "If a little dreaming is dangerous, the cure for it is not to dream less but to dream more, to dream all the time." (giggles) I'm one who has always dreamed big, and it may very well just be the Scorpio in me on a sugar buzz or my little edamame paella I had for late breakfast talking, but when it comes to deams, I'm dangerous, my friend, I'm very, very dangerous! LOL! Just you try putting concrete on this washing machine of dreams; I'm not even the master of my dream's domain as my dreams always influence my way of living! Oh, my papaya even tastes sweeter when my mind's in animation! (giggles)



Speaking of the cream of the crop, Half Moon Bay, California has experienced quite a first in its 32 years of the World Championship Pumpkin Weigh-Off. Joel Holland, a retired firefighter from Puyallup, Washington, last year took first prize at the Weigh-Off with a golden beaute that weighed 1,229 pounds and earned him a purse of $5 a pound (that's a total of $6,145), came back and won once again this year, and guess how much the golden giant weighed that has helped him defend his weigh-in title; the exact same weight. Once again, his 1,229 champion won him the exact same prize of $6,145, measuring 12 feet, 10 inches in circumference. pumpkin. Perhaps this will force the Weigh-Off Academy to consider starting a new division for non-supposed black magic or occultation associated golden goobers? :)

And today's not only a day to cheer on the pumpkin posse, let's hear it for all the women out there who know their soccer! Form into liberty position and let's attack the crowd now!

"We don't need no music,
we don't need no band,
all we need is our girls in green waves,
jammin' in the stands,
woooooooo, jammin' in the stands!"



(giggles) So if you have questions about offside rules in soccer, consult a woman, the men lie like a rug I tells you! According to a survey from a sports bar named Walkabout, 59 percent of women correctly identified the offside law, considered strongly one of the game's hardest to comprehend, as opposed to just 55 percent of men. In addition, 65 percent of women correctly used the title assistant referee, while 40 percent of men wrongly referred to the official as a "linesman." :) Girls sure want and know how to have fun in every sense of the word, go green! :)



:) Finally, cheers for the eight-year old South Dakota girl South Dakota girl Briton Nordmeyer for drafting the tooth fairy to help Hurricane Katrina victims. Officials of the South Dakota Red Cross headquarters in Sioux Falls said she sent her tooth to them, and even said she wanted the tooth fairy to give the money to help victims and families of Katrina instead of leaving change under her pillow. The tooth did unfortunately poke a hole through the envelope and fell out before it reached the headquarters, but her letter made it, and all because of her pure, generous spirit, when word of Briton's generosity spread, a 500-dollar check came in from an anonymous donor. God Bless you, Briton, your soft, big golden heart is truly unmatched, and it is just your spirit that leaves me in tears of joy. Remember if you'd still like to contribute to Katrina victims, perhaps if you were deeply moved and inspired by Briton, you can do so by visiting one of the several links I've provided on the sidebar of this sandbox! :) Let's put on a special cheer for Little Miss Briton, yay! :)



"Y-E-L-L, Y-E-L-L
everybody yell, C'mon (wooo),
Go Endorphin Engineers,!
raise the roof!"

:) A cheerleader is a dreamer that never gives up. We're athletes by nature, cheerleaders by choice, and wow can Briton arabesque! :) Put your choice into animation, you fuzzy-lipped sweetcheeks! :)

Love,
Noah Eaton
(Mistletoe Angel)
(Emmanuel Endorphin)

ESP Chivaree

Last Wednesday, when editing The California Report for KBOO's Evening newscast, I finally got to hear about a remarkable Californian who will be taking the wondrous science of music into the future; Elaine Chew, who is currently working her heart out to answer one question which not only musicians, but all you stereo-blaring aficionados out there: "Why does music bring pleasure to the human ear?"



Elaine Chew is a senior investigator at the University of Southern California’s Integrated Media Systems Center, a professor in the field of engineering and, you guessed it, an accomplished concert pianist (she started playing piano in Singapore when she was six), who believes music is the ideal domain in which to study communication, creativity, human perception and cognition, and has become the supreme inspiration behind all her work and research.

Elaine is currently working on this amazing new project called ESP, or Expression Synthesis Project, a computer screen hooked up to a toy-like steering wheel with the two standard pedals, gas and brake, where anyone can get behind the wheel and in "performance rendering", her invention aims to provide a compelling metaphor for expressive performance, and to let the ears explain the music rather than math.



In ESP, the user drives a car on a virtual road that represents the music with its twists and turns, including some of the most complex numbers like Johannes Brahms' Hungarian Dance #5, and makes decisions on how to cruise control everywhere the meandering road travels, and every decision the driver makes affects in real-time the rendering of the piece. In the end, the pedals and wheel provide a visual interface for controlling the car dynamics and musical expression, while the display portrays a first person view of the road and dashboard from the driver's seat. And, Elaine hopes, this will help reproduce with math and computers part of what happens when our very precious minds listen to the sonorous music you know and love, even why we find some melodies more beautiful than others! :)

In simple terms, this experiment is just like a videogame, only it allows even those without any musical knowledge whatsoever to create expressive renderings of existing music, and allows expert musicians to experiment with expressive choice without having to first master the notes of the piece. :) She's already performed this miracle device at various public demonstrations, yay! :)



:) In other words, if I wanted to jog over 2,000 miles south to southern California and asked Elaine Chew, "Hey, Elaine, can I take Antonio Vivaldi's Spring Concerto in E-Minor for a spin, he always makes fast company behind the wheel when the equinox comes around!", she'll plug it right in and I can pop proverbial wheelies' down that floriferous, proverbial U.S 66! :) Pass that conductor's baton, my friend, I'm no cat in a room full of rocking chairs, y'know! :)

:) Some even believe her research could eventually create a piece of technology that can listen to a tune you have stuck in your head, interpret each of the notes, and tell you exactly what the song is and play it back to you! :) (giggles) Look out, everyone, cause soon my original recording "Weather Girl" will be a top-requested humdinger interpreter! :)



Gioacchino Antonio Rossini once boldly proclaimed to his loyal followers, "Give me a laundry list and I'll set it to music." Look forward, mis amigos; you won't even have to go to Fester Fizz's Spume of the Moment coin laundry anymore to make melodies of the mischievious fettuccini melisma in your mind! :) Ain't nothin' we need here but the spin cycle! :)



Au revoir to washing clothes on the last day of your lives, musicians, Christmas is coming early this year! :)

Love,
Noah Eaton
(Mistletoe Angel)
(Emmanuel Endorphin)

Proliferating The Last Best Hope

Two weeks from today, the United Nations will be celebrating its 60th birthday in existence. Recently, the United Nations has been having a bittersweet experience, and I don't agree with everything in how this long-living organization has been running, but I am indeed saddened and exhausted from all the antagonism toward the U.N, particularly with the Oil For Food scandal, as I believe in my heart the United Nations has done more for the good of humanity than any other major organization in history.



I not only believe it’s important to give the U.N credit for their accomplishments this past half a century, I believe it’s patriotic to be pro-U.N. Think back to 1999, for example. The 1999 regular budget of the UN amounted to $1.26 billion, of which the US share is about 25 percent or $300 million (the US share of the world economy is also about 25 percent). And it is that regular budget that funds UN activities, staff, and the basics, but does not cover peacekeeping operations or the cost of running specialized UN agencies. When you sum it all up, the entire UN program, including peacekeeping and specialized agencies, runs on about $10 billion a year, and two-thirds of the finances come from voluntary contributions from the member states.



We’ve got the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), the World Food Programme (WFP), the office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), the International Labour Organisation (ILO), the United Nations Industrial Development Organisation (UNIDO), the International Maritime Organisation (IMO), the World Health Organisation (WHO), the UN's Children's FUND (UNICEF), the list goes on and on and on. And it can overwhelm anyone at first sight and lead to the interpretation that it’d take trillions of dollars to keep it all afloat.

But look at it this way. The US federal government collected and disburses then about 180 times what the U.N budget is. ($1.8 trillion) without even counting what the states themselves spend. Vermont and South Dakota had the two smallest budgets that year but still each had one of $2 billion. The entire UN budget is equal to that of the New York police department, the budget for UN worldwide human rights activities is smaller than that of the Zürich Opera House, and the cost of UN peacekeeping, below $1 billion in 1998, is less than two-tenth of one percent of world military spending (probably much lower than that now)



I’d certainly be impressed if I were you, anyone reading this should be. $10 billion really isn’t a lot in real terms, and I believe so much has been accomplished on a soft budget. Smallpox is virtually gone all over the world. Peaceful diplomatic solutions for co-existence, democracy, literacy programs, and sustainability just a few of the many benefits of this grand organization. The promotion of fair international trade. About half of the vaccines in the world are purchased by UNICEF.

The United Nations was founded right here in America, on October 24, 1945 in San Francisco. America itself is the mother to this enduring organization, and it needs to go back to its roots. Go back to the sense of that first meeting "The Establishment of a Commission to Deal with the Problems Raised by the Discovery of Atomic Energy" and use this same common sense in finding non-violent ways to stopping nuclear proliferation, something which I believe hasn't been taken as seriously as it should. Embrace the ethics of human rights in the fullest form, one of the cornerstones since the beginning for the UN. Its creation was largely influenced by World War II atrocities, after all, and I feel we need to once again embrace the "Universal Declration of Human Rights" ideals in assuring these tragedies don't repeat themselves. All at once, something must be done as well about the genocide in Sudan as well, etc as that also violates human rights.



The United States has long been a mother to this organization, nurturing it and letting it grow to fulfill the needs of many. Indeed anyone can admit, like any organization, it could have done more at times, we could disagree or question their motives sometimes, and sometimes just couldn’t mediate a conflict. We’re human after all, and it is just up to us to accept he imperfections sometimes and just get up and keep the community alive to hope for a strong second wind. And I believe the U.N does just that round the clock, in ensuring help is on the way.

I don’t agree with the U.N on everything, and wish they could be doing more in resolving the Israel-Palestine conflict, Kashmir and Sudan. But I don’t believe I should be expected to agree with any organization on anything. You just have to look at all the good aside from their struggles. Indonesia became an independent nation largely due to their diplomacy. They stabilized the Dominican Republic in the mid-60’s. Cyprus has been peaceful since they got involved in 1974. Namibia became independent under their help. And East Timor finally achieved their independence about three years ago after decades of carnage and strife, thanks to the calling of internatonial pressure called upon by the U.N.



They formed the United Nations Decade for Women in 1975 in Mexico to see to it women are recognized and paid for all the unwaged work they do in every level of the government and at home, and through extensive lobbying in supporting their rights to child benefits, childcare, pensions, etc. the governments decided to measure and value unwaged work for them.

On November 20, 1989, the United Nations gathered in forming the "Convention on the Rights of the Child" in setting goals and standards for improving the health and education of children in underdeveloped nations worldwide, which was signed by 109 countries and attended by more than 70 world leaders. One major finding during the convention was that 14 million children under the age of five die each year from malnutrition or a variety of diseases, most of them preventable. They planned to reduce child mortality by a third and to reduce malnutrition by as much as half. Sixty countries succeeded in reducing child mortality by one-third. Though they didn't reduce malnutrition by one-third, they still made very significant progress by reducing malnutrition globally for children under five from 177 million in 1990 to 150 million in 2000, where they reported malnutrition levels falling from 23 to 16 percent in East Asia and the Pacific. Access to safe drinking water improved from 77 to 82 percent in that same time-frame. They also had goals to reduce the gender gap in schools worldwide. They split it in half, with huge progress made in South Asia. They said they would work to eradicate polio and guinea-worm infection once and for all. In 1988, polio was endemic in 125 countries, now, it's only endemic in 10 countries, while guinea-worm infections and other diseases have seemingly vanished from many regions of the world.



The United Nations has played a significant role in improving standards of living all throughout the world. They deserve our thanks, so I tip my hat to them for a job well done. And I do insist those critical of the U.N on a unilateral level to take the time to look at the big picture and recognize all the many bridges that have formed between communities worldwide, which all find dependence and trust in this great organization. And I believe that’s an outstanding form of patriotism in not just loving your country, but loving the world community.

It was our President John F. Kennedy who said in 1961, "The United Nations, our last best hope in an age where the instruments of war have far outpaced the instruments of peace..."



And indeed I feel the instruments of war continue to be proliferated across the globe with further isolation, prejudice and irresponsibility. I for one believe the instruments of war and peace are not alike. Only unconditional love for not just your country, but the world, can proliferate the instruments of peace universally in the end. I just find something’s incredibly wrong when our military and defense budget is growing by billions while Medicaid and other domestic programs are losing billions. The basic qualities of life are being defunded, and it is time we have that fact come to everyone’s attention before more negligence arises.



In closing statements, I’d like to share this dream I believe in which is read from Page 58, The Miracle, Joy and Art of Living: My Testament to Life, Volume 1:



"I dream that all governments will join their minds and hearts
to manage this beautiful Earth and its precious humanity
in peace, justice and happiness,
That all religions will join
in a global spirituality,
That all people will become
a caring family,
That all scientists will join
in a united, ethical science,
That all corporations will unite
in a global cooperative
to preserve nature and all humanity.
I believe that once and for ever,
we will eliminate all wars,
violence and armaments
from this miraculous planet.
I dream that the incredible and
growing distance between rich and poor,
between and inside nations
will be eliminated as a blemish
to the miracle of life.
I dream that we will stop the destruction
of our miraculous, so richly endowed planetary home.
I dream that we will eliminate all lies, corruption and
immoral advertisements
for purely monetary purposes.
I dream that we will all live
simple, frugal lives in order
not to waste unduly the precious
resources of our planet.
I dream that each decade and centennial
will be celebrated as a great
world wide thanksgiving for our successes.
I dream that we will succeed in making our planet
the ultimate success of God,
of the mysterious forces of the
universe of which each of us
is a miraculous, cosmic unit.
I dream that the United Nations will
declare a yearly World Thanksgiving Day
Dear brothers and sisters,
dear children, youth, adults and elderly,
dear spirits of all the departed
let us join forces in fulfilling
God's loving destiny intended
for all of humanity."

Love,
Noah Eaton
(Mistletoe Angel)
(Emmanuel Endorphin)

Pocket Rocket Bebop

Holy Nut Flush! Recently I have become infatuated, virtually indoctrinated into the world of poker, from Texas Hold 'Em to Lowball, from the classic cowboy demeanor of Doyle Brunson to the slick-wrist twists of Chris "Jesus" Ferguson to the holographic evil eye poise of Raymer the Fossilman.



I have always enjoyed poker, but never really took deep heart into the game until I saw the 2003 World Series of Poker on ESPN with my dad. The hea was on; Dan Harrington had just been eliminated from third place in the Main Event, with Sammy Farha and Chris Moneymaker going heads-up in what would become the most memorable match-up in WSOP history. After a half-hour of tug-and-war with their hands, Moneymaker was about to pull off a one-two knockout punch.

The first punch would become what is now known famously as "the bluff of the century". Moneymaker was dealt 4-7, both spades, while Sam Farha got a K-9. The flop comes 2-9-6, with the 6 being a spade. Moneymaker had nothing while Farha had the top pair. Farha betted and Moneymaker called. Then the turn was the 8 of spades. That gave Moneymaker a flush draw and an open ended straight draw. Farha betted and Moneymaker made a huge raise, which Farha called. Finally, the river was a harmless 3 of hearts. Moneymaker had nothing, and Farha checked. Knowing Moneymaker had nothing, he realized the only way he could beat Farha was to attempt to bluff him. So he went all-in, knowing he could not win the hand and putting his entire fate on the line. Sam Farha knew in his gut that Moneymaker was bluffing, even saying "Missed your flush, huh?", but in the end, Farha's head overruled his gut and it was that very moment that served as the dramatic turning point of the championship.



Then came the final knockout punch. Chris Moneymaker got a 5d, 4s, while Farha picked up a Jh, 10d. Farha raised $100,000 and Chris called. The flop came Js, 5s, 4c. Moneymaker earned a two-pair while Farha had only one-pair. Absolutely confident, Moneymaker check-raised $275,000, and Farha moved all-in. Moneymaker called. The turn brought only 8d, being of no help to either player, but then the river gave Moneymaker a 4 of hearts, which gave him the full house AND the WSOP championship! :)

I was fascinated by that final game, and ever since I have never missed a single episode of the World Series of Poker. I just find poker to not merely be a game; it is an excellent exercise to help you balance your left and right brainpower. It helps influence your decision-making skills, understand balance and when sometimes you’ve got to be rational, while other times you just have to be playful. And, most importantly, poker helps you learn a lot about people, for we all are unique, therefore we all play our hands differently as well. There’s personality behind every hand, and you’d be surprised how many times I successfully identified ones astrological sign by how they play their cards! (giggles) They’re really not that difficult to figure out! ;)

No more than two months ago, I finally started getting into the on-line poker scene, in which I have become instantly victorious, up over $17,000 in play chips since starting. (and that is NOT no-linit!) I have no intention to become a professional gambler, as I have always believed that gambling too much money, especially if you’re raising a family, is selfish, for your family and kids should ALWAYS come first and to risk it all with the strong possibility always there you can lose it all, like with someone’s flush beating your straight or someone’s straight flush beating your four of a kind, has just always upsetted me. I believe it is OK to gamble small increments of money every once in a while, and I will gamble a tiny bit of real money soon, but I really want to appreciate poker for the love of the game, and not get twisted up in the avarice like a pile of nappy blankets over you on a cold winter day in Duluth, Minnesota and scream in that you just can’t deal with that kind of claustrophobia! (giggles) Nope, I’m just a gypsy who loves his game! :)



My dream heads-up match would have to be either against Chris “Jesus” Ferguson, Erik Seidel (I love his sense of humor yet relaxed aggressive demeanor at the table), Antonio Esfandiari the Poker Magician, or, if it is possible, Faye Valentine, the Lady Luck in tight yellow hotpants of “Cowboy Bebop”! :)



I have a bigger crush on Faye Valentine than any other animated female character! :) She was actually born 80 years before when she makes her first appearance on “Cowboy Bebop”, at 23 years of age, after being crygenically frozen for that long following a shuttle crash. Then, when the company that restored her asked for a fee in return, she ran away and has since been living her life trying to pay off the massive debt in a series of adventures through time and space. I just find her a very inspiring, sexy heroine who, despite being thrown in a situation she never wanted to be incarcerated in, handles herself so very well, and that’s a sexy attitude to have in life.





Her birthday is on August 14, which makes her a Leo, who I’ve always found Leos to be magnetic personality types. She has type B blood (in Japan there is a common superstition that ones blood type is an indicator of a person's personality), which means she is a curious person and is interested in everything, is able to manage her many interests or loved ones are the ones that are really important, the ones they should hold on to, and has the image of being bright and cheerful, full of energy and enthusiasm, but some people think she is really quite different on the inside, explaining why she often on her own, gambling and stealing money to get by. We all need to get by, and I’d sure love to draw dead for her if I could to help her complete her quest to pay the debt completely! :)



Hey, we’re reaching the end of this post, so if you don't know who the sucker at the table is by now…….it’s me! Ohhhhhh mercy, I’ve been livin’ on the river too much, haven’t I? Easy come, easy go.

Love,
Noah Eaton
(Mistletoe Angel)
(Emmanuel Endorphin)

What Is That In Your Hare?

And so yesterday, to critical acclaim (96% positive reviews according to Rotten Tomatoes), Aardman's Oscar-winning clay-animated "Wallace & Gromit" shorts made their first ever surfacing to a major motion picture release, "Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit", already being heralded by creator Nick Park as "the first vegetarian horror movie ever.", created almost entirely by painstaking frame stop-motion film jujitsu, which five years to finish, including an 18-month shooting schedule, an epic task for an 85-minute film.



The movie centers around the plot of Oscar-glorified heroes Wallace and Gromit, who have revved up a company called Anti-Pesto, working to keep rabbits from pillaging gardens of all those excited about winning the 517th annual Giant Vegetable Competition. By request of Lady Tottington, an ecologically-minded local who wants the rabbits removed in a humane manner, Wallace and Gromit get to work lickety-split, getting gearloose with inventions like the Bun-Vac 6000 (they use it to suck them up and bring them home as pets) and the Min-O-Matic to keep the rabbits from ruining the festival while not leaving one scratch on their furry manes!



So, when the rabbits can’t fight the moonlight, they mutate into monstrous were-rabbits with hatchet teeth and hollow ears. Time to get to work...except there’s one small, tiny, yea big, lilliputian obstacle standing in their way for nonviolent response to these scary hares; Lady Tottington’s suitor, Victor Quartermaine, looks the other way in terms of conflict resolution, vowing to attack anything that Kingdom Comes under his oath of fortune hunter.



What makes the film particularly intriguing is how they sugarcoat it with your quintessential horror movie tropes; spoofing all your favorites, especially "The Wolf Man", and all the usual characters and suspects tnat keep the rising conflict coming and denouement delayed, including the spurning policeman and the mad horror geek! Awwwwww, we do take those characters for granted ever so much, don’t we? So here’s to the other characters who keep classic horror movie cliches in line!



Yep, everything is jjjjjjjuuusssttttt in vogue, isn’t it? Whaaaaaaa......no......I guess over the Atlantic in Dorset, in the communties of Portland and Weymouth, the collywobbles are in fashion!



Over on that island off the southwest coast of the U.K, posters there are not featuring the word "rabbit" because of a 100-year old local superstition that rabbit burrows often caused land slips and, on one occasion, killed a crane operator because the ground beneath him collapsed. Since those incidents, local residents will not even say the word rabbit, instead referring to "furry things" or "underground mutton", convinced that the floppy eared, fuzzy, pink-eyed munchkins will bring them bad luck. And so, they’re settling with the tagline, "Something bunny is going on" instead. We’ll have none of that R-word swearing now, ya hear?



Hey, Fiver, tell me it isn’t true, tell me that Watership Down isn’t just another underground warren conspiracy endeavor! (giggles)



"I waaaaarrrrrnnnned you, but did you listen to me? Oh, no, you knnnnneeewww, didn't you? Oh, it's just a harmless little bbbbbbunny, isn't it?"

(giggles) No, we’re cool, Hazel! Whether you do have a vicious strike a mile wide is beyond me, lil fuzzy-wuzzie! Peace!

Love,
Noah Eaton
(Mistletoe Angel)
(Emmanuel Endorphin)

Believe The Nostalgia Of The Future

I just wanted to take a moment to share the thoughts I had in reading the latter half of "The Ecology of War and Peace", which has really influenced me and helped me to see the ecologies of war and peace in a much more complete way. Again, I just wanted to share some tame thoughts.



The very first thing that struck me in reading the latter half of “The Ecology of War and Peace” was how war is indeed ironic, yet often it is not a synonym that is attached to the concept. Ever since I was 11 years old I may have been isolated from politics and wanting nothing to do with them, but it wasn’t difficult for me to feel that war is the ultimate mistake and tragedy of mankind, and seeing how it goes on and on and more wars follow and spawn out of it, I indeed find myself to this day bewildered by the mindset of war, and though I didn’t think of the adjective "ironic" to war then, I had always believed war is contradictory to what it claims to promise.



This thought basically ties back into what I was talking about last week, in my belief that those who currently insist, as Reagen believed during his presidency when proposing a $1.5 trillion Pentagon build-up and insisting in defense of the proposal, "Defense is not a budget issue." that these billions being funneled into the Department of Defense and other military sects HAVE to be for the sake of "national defense", are merely dangerously cynical. I can’t help but believe that many proponents of these foreign policies truly do recognize the irony, but stay the course under two conditions challenging the architects of an ecology of peace; 1) they look to where long efforts of diplomatic negotiations have failed, including Northern Ireland and Southeast Asia and display them as a backdrop projection in assumption they commonly don’t work, and 2) the small handful of dissenters among a unanimously large peaceful protest/dissent body on the left which resort to violent forms of protest and exploit the values held by the architects of the peace ecology, which give the impression to mainstream America of "false irony" to what the pro-peace, anti-war activists truly believe at large.

War is mankind’s greatest irony, in my opinion. There continue to be ongoing foreign efforts to protect modest amounts of cheap oil, yet "a U.S-made F-16 fighter warplane burns more fuel in an hour than the average U.S car does in one year." (Hastings 97). Modern-day war proponents claim that the deadly deed is being done to liberate citizens in struggling parts of the world from tyranny, yet the most innocent are the ones most at risk in losing their sovereignties, integrities and cultural identities and traditions in result of global oligarchy, which inevitably results in ethnic wars and "promotes an increasing disintegration of the basic warp and woof of social fabric." (Hastings 91). And other claims around those lines.



Simply in analyzing the infrastructure of these contradictions, we can indeed "use" this infrastructure and with mental feng shui reveal the contradictions in promoting this ecology of peace. Despite the pitchblende of cynicism lodged deep in the hearts and minds of many of our elected leaders, I am deeply optimistic we can architect this ecology of peace. Reasonably, it will be a long and thorough process to achieve the fullest promise of an ecology of peace, for peace is not myopic, it’s a permanence, a way of being. Hearing these words can make anyone feel as though it’s too much to handle, but many selfless demonstrations and projects in recent memory have sinewed my optimistic belief that the single most important ingredient in making the pilot light of peace blink, faith, is alive and kicking! :)



I absolutely agreed when Hastings said at the beginning of Section 4 that a "too-often-overlooked, element of building an immunological response to violence and the despair attending it is the relief of laughter, the appreciation of the absurd." (Hastings 100). My grandmother always told me as a boy a proverb that still glares deep in my heart and influences every fiber of my being; it was Jean Houston who said, "At the height of laughter, the universe is flung into a kaleidoscope of new possibilities." I couldn’t agree with what she said more, and indeed I can understand how many would find it unlikely that solving these cynicisms of the world begin with laughter. In my experience on the streets, where I have often protested with others, it does sadden me to see some protesters wearing all-black, with charcoal shavings smeared on their cheeks and nose, with their faces staring down at the concrete as they walk, self-reserved, unwilling to have a conversation and when they do speak, they speak angry slogans even at those marching with them.



I believe it is out of this same behavior that another breed of cynicism is created, which is unhealthy for this ecology and only delays the full potential of the peace movement. Anger and urgency are absolutely essential in providing the impulse, the spiking horse of this ecology, but I’ve long believed that it must be disciplined and fused into positive energy in order to make good use of it. This notion has influenced me particularly from the lyrical genius of Bruce Cockburn, who has for decades eloquently vented the frustrations of society in his music from "Call It Democracy" to "If I Had A Rocket Launcher", has also always been an optimist, and a recent February 2005 interview he ran with David Barsamian of The Progressive has influenced my behavior of approaching society to this day:



"We all grow up with anger. It’s part of the human condition. But what do you do with that? It seems obvious to me that you’ve got to use it for something, but you have to separate it from your ego. Once you tie anger and ego together then you’re a monster, at least a latent one. So you have to be able to separate those things before you are going to be able to do anything useful with your anger. And you have to be able to sit back and say, yeah, I’m really mad about this but I’m only one of 10,000 people who might be mad about that particular thing and everyone has a slightly different take on it. We can all benefit from hearing each other’s takes on these things. Anger is energy, and you’ve got to find a place to put it that works for you."



I believe you’ve got to be angry, you’ve got to be upset, but, most importantly, you’ve got to convert it into positive energy. Indeed our most admired cultural icons had that integrity, from Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. to Mother Teresa, and I believe we must carry on that sort of example for the pillars of this ecology of peace to weather any storm of lassitude that could crush the spirit of the undisciplined conscious spirit.

We must treat the desire not as a material means, or even a lifetime commitment, but as the way of life that Dr. Kenneth Kaunda of Zambia’s Kaunda Institute for Peace and Democracy calls for. Indeed "the courage and intense training and organization that are always a potential in the nonviolent movements, coupled with good conflict resolution techniques, are the best bet to save our sweet home, Mother Earth." (Hastings 117). In providing the case for a "practical ecology" (Hastings 120) we can indeed prevail. From the long-powerful non-nuclear influence in the Southeast Pacific that has become the "South Pacific Nuclear Free Zone" to the mass popular appeal of millions of conscious citizens worldwide in the Abolition 2000 campaign, their spirit and enthusiasm reinforces my optimistic demeanor, and proud hope that indeed, as King pondered, "a new spirit is rising among us."



The Chicago Tribune once wrote, "Optimists are nostalgic about the future." Indeed I feel I have long lived and breathed with the ecofeminist soul that many often feel is long dead, and I believe with this foundation of courage, this spirit can come back to dance with us all. Let us embrace one another, achieve fullest diversity in weaving our dreams for a peaceful future together in the thaumaturgic tapestry of community, and become the very stewards of peace we’re born to be.

"Si pacem, si pacem!"

Love,
Noah Eaton
(Mistletoe Angel)
(Emmanuel Endorphin)