In the secular humanist approach, Krampus and the observation of Krampus traditions are pretty much just the antithesis of Santa Claus. On Dec. 5, the eve of the feast day of St. Nick, Austrians celebrate Krampus by running across the city in grotesque masks and generally scaring children. This is an extension of the good-cop, bad-cop theory. St. Nick makes his rounds on Dec. 6 rewarding all the good little children, a task which is made easy since Krampus has been out the night before, punishing pretty much the same children with a good switching.

In other variations on the theme (and there a lot of variations considering what a relatively small geographical area we're talking about here), Krampus is one of Santa's minions, who follows along obediently passing out presents or switches depending on the moral turpitude of the child in question. Presumably, this would make the pointy-eared Krampus kind of the template for Santa's elves in later Rankin-Bass productions, but the jury is still out among the scholarly community on this subject.

Then, all the adults go out and gets drunk, and much hilarity ensues.

The other interpretation of Krampus is more mystical. Under this theory, people dress up in the hideous masks of Krampus in order to scare off evil spirits.

If so, this is in keeping with a pretty universal traditional use of masks in religious ritual; the concept of a fearsome visage that wards off cowardly evil spirits has a lot of pedigree, and not just in the snowy mountains of Germanic Europe where people get a little unbalanced in the winter (remember Krystallnacht?).

In Hindu mythology, Black Makhala fills the Krampus role, while the Japanese wore masks that were supposed to be lions, but frankly look more like Benji.

The Krampus masks benefit from being particularly grotesque, or to be more accurate, stupid-looking. Let's just say Hindus have a better aesthetic sense than Austrians. Krampus masks suffer from the silliness of the whole Christian devil image, but occasionally he's presented as passably scary looking. Especially if you're eight years old.

Oh, did I forget to mention the fucking?

 

http://www.rotten.com/library/occult/deviltry/krampus/

I've always liked the look of a certain boat. The HD-4. I wanted to get people to draw this boat for me because I think it looks so interesting. I only recently found a website about the boat. HD stands for Hope Deferred. Nothing like calling a boat "we'll get it next time."

 

 

With the Renault engines, the top speed was only 54 miles per hour. Nevertheless, the HD-4 performed well, rising easily, accelerating rapidly, taking wave without difficulty, steering well, showing good stability. Bell's proud report to the navy early in 1919, along with the postwar availability of Liberty engines, moved the navy at last to send two 350-horsepower Liberties in July 1919. With these powering its two aerial propellers, the HD-4 on September 9, 1919, set a world's marine speed record of 70.86 miles per hour, a record that stood for ten years. '

The sight alone was exhilarating, and the actual ride even more so. "At fifteen knots you feel the machine rising bodily out of the water," wrote one visitor, "and once up and clear of the drag she drives ahead with an acceleration that makes you grip your seat to keep from being left behind The wind on your face is like the pressure of a giant hand .and an occasional dash of fine spray stings like birdshot. . . . She doesn't seem to heel a degree as she makes the turn. It's unbelievable-it defies the law of physics, but it's true." Bell himself would never ride in her. A newsreel photographer (one of several who showed up at Baddeck in that Jubilant season) got Bell to sit in the cockpit of the moored craft, but Bell insisted on having Baldwin's small son beside him to negate any false imputation of daring. Mabel was furious with herself later for not having gone down to make her husband go for a spin while he was in the boat.

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Sorry, I'm too lazy to put up a picture at this time.

Well with Christmas here I'm going to list the gifts I want and know I won't receive. It's great making a list of gifts showing them to people and then see them point and laugh. What the hell, I'm curious how long it'll take for me to buy these things for myself. Well here goes:

 

1.     Playstation 3 airbrushed front with Motorhead's March Or Die Cover, and on the sides Motorhead's cover of Orgasmatron.

2.     A new chair for my computer. One of those light red eggshell electric wheelchairs that goes 25 km/h. Hey, I'm lazy, ok!!

3.     An all expenses paid trip to Australia, New Zealand, and that small island close to Australia that's selling itself off in order to pay for the citizens luxurious lifestyles. One month.

4.     A six month all expenses paid trip to Asia.

5.     A small house inspired by the HR Giger Bar in Switzerland. The one with the arches and domed ceiling.

6.     And a French waitress to shovel, cook and clean. It's a wish list, hehe.

7.     A Dean Motter poster of Mister X getting out of the sewer great with the caption underneath.

8.     I think it's called the HB-24 or something the hydrodome/hydrofoil made by Alexender Graham Bell, a boat that looks like a plane.

9.     A woman who pretends to think I'm funny/interesting/intelligent, etc. Come on, I'd have to genetically engineer a woman to actually think those things about me!!

10.    To get a person of authority to look at my book script, movie script, and or tv script. Even if it's rejected that's ok. As long as they seriously consider it for 5 min.

 

Hmm, Playstation 3 exists, airbrushed ones don't. Eggshell chairs exist, red wheelchair ones don't. Yup, I'm a hard guy to buy for...If I ever get close to getting any of the things on this list I'll post it here.

K Fed: I love you. I miss you. I need you pay check. I mean Britney Spears. I haven't completed my first album yet. :(

Okay, I have a DVD player in my computer so I can make back ups of my files. I have a DVD player

with surround sound. I have a DVD player that can play movies from around the world. I have 3 DVD

players. I'm thinking of getting the Playstation 3, I believe that's a Blu-ray DVD player. Will I also have

to have a HD DVD player? I mean seriously, how many DVD players will I have to get? Will there be a

universal DVD player that can play all the different formats? Why do I need so many DVD players?

 

http://www.foundlocally.com/Regina/Dining/BarScene.htm 

 

If anyone has ever been to Regina please have a laugh!! A pic of the Blarney Stone on a site that's

supposed to be about live events and such in this city!!! Man, how many years ago did the Blarney

Stone die? Five years? Six years? Is Foxey Whatever still around? I really hate looking for sites on

this city when I find things like this. Come on, someone create a better place to find out what's

happening in this city!! http://www.foundlocally.com/Regina/Entertainment/index.htm Another link

from the site showing off Henry the 2nd restaurant. That was a beautiful place with great food!!

It died countless years ago. Wow!! The movie stuff is current, though.

 

Images of the city. http://www.foundlocally.com/Regina/Images/default.asp?Page=2&Search=

See how many of these pictures still look the same, no Blarney Stone. Now it's Johnny Foxes I

think. No old look for the Copper Kettle, and no Eaton's. Hehe, these are all old photos, like

going back in time!

Well it's Halloween night, hehe. Man driving home from the university I could
barely see the road through the blowing snow. I guess most kiddies will be
getting dressed up in winter jackets rather than costumes, hehe. You'd
think costume manufacturers would make costumes big enough for winter
clothes...Unless of course the costume manufacturers are expecting global
warming to be here by now. I'm in the middle of Canada, in the land of no
time change. I wonder if that's why the Asians like it here, a little something
of home? Hehe, I kid. As Nov.11th approaches I heard that during WWII
the Japanese were taken away from their homes and put into terrible houses
and were ridiculed and abused on a daily basis. The story goes that that didn't

happen here in Saskatchewan, because it's thought that living here is torture

enough, hehe.

 

Well, I do enjoy the little story about Abe and her yellow box turtle in her photo shoot. I should say her mishandling of it I guess, but here's something that's on the Mainichi site that made me laugh a little bit as well. Aah, no one will actually hit the link to Mainichi, allegedly Abe took a turtle 59 meters to a beach to keep it off the road. The turtle is on the extinction list and is a fresh water turtle and she took it too the salt water ocean. 50 meters. Now I don't know how fast a turtle moves, or about the tide in the area, but it should be easy to see if it actually died on the beach or whether it just went back into the forest to its pond or whatever. I mean it's not like she's the Croc Hunter and knows about every animal that's going to be hit by a car on the road...

 

Copyright- Clean Movie Wrong

 

SALT LAKE CITY -- Sanitizing movies on DVD or VHS tape violates federal copyright laws, and several companies that scrub films must turn over their inventory to Hollywood studios, an appeals judge ruled.

Editing movies to delete objectionable language, sex and violence is an "illegitimate business" that hurts Hollywood studios and directors who own the movie rights, said U.S District Judge Richard P. Matsch in a decision released Thursday in Denver.

"Their (studios and directors) objective . . . is to stop the infringement because of its irreparable injury to the creative artistic expression in the copyrighted movies," the judge wrote. "There is a public interest in providing such protection."

Matsch ordered the companies named in the suit, including CleanFlicks, Play It Clean Video and CleanFilms, to stop "producing, manufacturing, creating" and renting edited movies. The businesses also must turn over their inventory to the movie studios within five days of the ruling.

"We're disappointed," CleanFlicks chief executive Ray Lines said. "This is a typical case of David vs. Goliath, but in this case, Hollywood rewrote the ending. We're going to continue to fight."

CleanFlicks produces and distributes sanitized copies of Hollywood films on DVD by burning edited versions of movies onto blank discs. The scrubbed films are sold over the Internet and to video stores.

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While I can clearly see how allowing kids see movies with huge edits might be nice but...First you can't take someone elses stuff and sanitze it. A company can make a legit clean version for kids to stay within the legal rights of copyright, but again sanitizing movies is just stupid. A movie no longer flows and information might be left out to explain what's going on. Kids simply shouldn't watch adult movies.

http://spaces.msn.com/csprissler/ Check out this blog for a more cleaned up version of Valentine's Day, the stuff with a hat being passed out so every guy gets a gal to eat next to and strike up a conversation with. I wish that this old Roman tradition would resurrect itself for Valenetine's Day.

 

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"I'm not as think as you drunk I am."

"Life's like a toilet, it's what you put into it."

 

Wish I could remember who said these things.

The conflict, which Cohen and others have tried to keep out of public view, has left him virtually broke -- he's had to take out a mortgage on his house to pay legal costs -- and facing a multi-million-dollar tax bill. But the artist, who is soon to release a new album with his collaborator -- and current girlfriend -- Anjani Thomas, is today remarkably calm about the potentially embarrassing conflict. Still, when he discovered last fall that his retirement funds, which he had thought amounted to more than $5 million (all figures U.S.), had been reduced to $150,000, he wasn't so sanguine. "I was devastated," Cohen says. "You know, God gave me a strong inner core, so I wasn't shattered. But I was deeply concerned."

 

 

"Face up to it, Neal," the email continues, "and square your shoulders: You were the trusted guardian of my assets, and you let them slip away . . . Restore what you lost, and sleep well." In his sign-off, Cohen delivered as much a piece of advice as his own philosophy: "Put this behind you and it will dissolve." There's an irony here, that a man who has struggled much of his life to distance himself from the material world now, at 70, finds himself in an intense battle with it. Still, he's not defeated. "This has propelled us into incessant work," he says of himself and Thomas. He exudes optimism about their new CD. "It's one of the best albums I've heard." It's not closing time quite yet.

With CHARLIE GILLIS and BRIAN D. JOHNSON

 

**********************************************

 

Yeah, I guess Leonard Cohen kinda fits the Bill Murray definition of hero. I wonder what the heck happened to Lynch sounds like she's got some serious problems that millions of dollars just can't fix.

Yeah, I know. Quoting from a porn site is probably only something I would do, heehe. I got this from www.suicidegirls.com BM is some guy named Bill Murray, ever heard of him, hehe.

DRE: Were you surprised when Lost in Translation became such a phenomenon?

BM: That’s a good question. Why did that film get so much attention? The film is so interesting because it shows a personal decision we all have to make sometime. It’s when you bump into someone that’s not your mate, husband or wife and something happens between you. How do you behave in that situation? I read a definition this year that a hero is someone that does something they don’t want to do. The thing is that Bob Harris really wanted someone to make him feel. Nothing happened between him and that girl which made him a hero, a different kind of hero. It’s the kind that everyone can be. Not everyone can be Indiana Jones or a Ghostbuster but everyone can make the decision to do that thing they want to do.

*******************************

A HERO IS SOMEONE THAT DOES SOMETHING THEY DON'T WANT TO DO.

EVERYONE CAN MAKE THE DECISION TO DO THAT THING THEY WANT TO DO.

 

I wish I could remember what it was that I wanted to do. A long time ago I had dreams and ambitions. Then I learned something about denying gratification, taking time to get the money, the education, instead of going hugely in debt. After awhile I was good at getting the money, and I forgot about the education, I forgot what the destination was and my motives for getting there.

What if you realized that the world was limitless? That you could get anything that you want, and nothing could hold you back no culture, no topic being taboo? Instead of wanting to sit around and be entertained to find a way to entertain yourself, or create something to be experienced by the world. Focus on your friends.

Is there a way to live without capitalism?

 

Hmmm, I want to throw this into my insect story, just not sure how as of yet. The Woman With The Insects is absolutely a woman into magic...But how and what's her desire?

*********************

Friday the thirteenth

 

I started wondering if my stories have some sort of weak set of magic recently. And I guess they do. I like to play with the supernatural in my stories. They're pretty close to reality, but separate. My Harry Pot-Head series has the character Imaxeyes who is definately not a normal character. My story called Wayne's Monster deals with a duel personality of a character who want to do the right thing, but doesn't know which is the best way. The quick way as Beatnick Batman, or the arduous way of Bruce Wayne. My Lady With The Insects On is another story of magic is she dead or alive?

Not This Macho is a story that I really wish to continue with in between semesters it's about a girl who has twelve months to live. It's getting close to eleven now. This story is one of my harder ones because it runs along reality in an odd way and I'm not sure how it will end or continue. It's about a guy who wishes to be a boyfriend to a girl who has one year to live. He lets her go and be with her friends and family. He releases her. When she dies will he let her soul go and float to the heavens or will he keep it for himself? When she's gone will any girl make him feel the way she made him feel? Would it be selfish to maybe even marry her and take her on a honeymoon? Would it be selfish to try to take her aside at all?  Of course the main character is a jerk who can't express himself which makes him undesirable to most women. Or maybe I'm wrong.

 

Magic is trying to create something from within yourself and sharing it with the world. Creating a world of your own for others to visit. At least that's what I got out of that radio program, but perhaps I gleam too much, or perhaps I'm short-sighted and miss the big picture.