First the good and then the bad.

I had an amazing 36 hours in Orlando with some wizard friends. We spent all day lying in the sun, using the wizards tools and processing. I had a chance to see many old friends from all over the world and give big bear hugs and cop the feel of all those wizards gathered in one place together. it was perfect.

observations:
The tools are getting easier and easier to use. AND I am noticing that they are feeling somehow more impactful (this word does not exist but I just added it to my dictionary because it should), even though they are getting easier to use. Becoming effortless. More: this new year’s annual psychic reading [this time with the infamous Echo Bodine] was very subtle, but very powerful. It has had a very strong effect on me. have been feeling like a butterfly lately. As if I have wings. More: spoke today over lunch how easy wizards and Avatar techniques are in general now that it has been ten years or so that we have been practicing the art/craft of it. whereas when we were younger Avatars first starting out and we processed it was always pretty dramatic and traumatic and scary sometimes, never knew what was lurking underneath, in our subconscious or however you want to term that. always a little scared of what we may discover about who we were or what we were all about or about past transgressions we had committed or whatever. But now after so many years most of that stuff has been cleared up so now its just really light and easy and there is no fear. Just fun to explore who we are with others... more: there is nothing more cleansing and clearing that I have found than these simple yet sublime tools that are all wrapped up in the Avatar materials. It is an amazing body of knowledge and set of techniques. Powerful stuff.

O.k. onto the bad. The course this year is being held at a place called the Coronado springs resort in Disney world. a totally man-made fake plastic place. how bad is it? well lets just say it must be over a thousand acres of just totally man made fake stuff. manmade lakes trees perfect landscaping pictures of Mickey mouse everywhere. absolutely dreadful. They serve cappuccino in plastic cups. They serve orange juice in paper soda cups that have a picture of Disney world on one side and the coca cola logo on the other. This is hell on earth.

Walt Disney world is the supreme example of the fake plastic America that is so hideous to foreigners when they think of this great country. More than any other cheesy fake American corporation in the world today and God knows we have plenty of them, more than coca cola, more than McDonalds, more than Budweiser, Disney is the red horned devil of American corporate greed, idiocy, and fakeness. In every way they promote a sincere lack of concern for quality and authenticity.

The window that doesn’t open. seriously the windows in the room do not open here. the lady at the front desk who says ‘no we don't have that’ about a DVD player to loan you. over a thousand acres of property and she wouldn’t even make a few calls to get us a DVD player to let us rent because “I'm sorry sir, we don't have that.” The mini bar that is empty so you are forced to use their cheesy fake Disney world convenience store with over priced everything. the telephone that charges you for one phone call “AT&T operator assisted DAY rates PLUS 55% surcharge per minute...” The coffee in the room with only one sugar and one fake non-dairy creamer for a whole pot. the room service that stops at 11 o'clock at night so you cannot get any food past eleven because you are miles from any other store. It goes on and on. They have no problem being nice, the staff here... all very nice ‘employees.’ But their hands are completely tied by all these corporate rules that strictly limit their service to drop dead awful beyond comparison to anything in the real world.

They have this food court type restaurant here has all these little kiosks that sell food supposedly from different countries, just like their hideous artificial worlds in epcot center. and the food is all the same. Its like eating at a food court in the local mall. just really crappy soggy artificial non-life-sustaining garbage dressed up and pawned off as real food. And its all super Disney-expensive. From one day of eating this crap I have a stomach ache and diarrhea. I feel like scooping out my diarrhea from the toilet and throwing it on the floor of the hotel room with a little note on it that reads “this is how your food makes me feel. Really enjoyed it. thanks.”

The line at the food court. Asking for a vegetable. The guy behind the counter tells me that there are no vegetables... “I am not a sheep” I scream. “Get me out of this fucking line with all these sheep and get me a goddamned vegetable!”
How do you call this place a resort and yet its only eleven o'clock at night. I just got off phone and we are in the middle of nowhere twenty miles from the nearest store and you have nothing here I can eat. nothing? We have some vending machines downstairs sir. it took everything I had in me to stop myself from grabbing her by the neck with one hand and punching her in the face with the other.

People going to see china in some fake theme park in the middle of some super cheap swamp land in the middle of fucking nowhere in Florida. that's epcot.

Like with epcot. Only in fucking America. So now you have all these millions of Americans going to epcot to visit other countries. Just like Vegas. What a fucking fake ass sewer this place is. I mean if you want to see the eifel tower go to fucking France people!

Disney just simply blows. It is so artificial and new and without anything real or historical or authentic that I find myself disgusted and insulted to be around it.

If it weren't for companies going public and this intense need to make more and more money for its shareholders, American companies could focus more on actually providing real service and quality to consumers. But our world has turned into vending machines filled with fake plastic snack foods and fast food restaurants filled with non-foods that make people fat who then feel the need to take poisonous diet drugs.
 
Hotels in America rape their customers to use their phone. have you ever noticed that? why not have a hotel that just says ‘look, we’re people just like you. we know you don't want to be charged ten dollars to make a two minute phone call...’ where the hell is that?

Like the banks here in the states that tell you that when you make a deposit it will be available the following business day but in actuality they hold your money till the following day between midnight and seven am. That's their idea of the next business day. it’s a lie. A total flat out lie. Since when is midnight two days later ‘the next business day?’ its not. Its just a scam that Americans allow banks to perpetrate on them. I'm saying to this lady at the bank over the phone when she finally admits that midnight two days later is not ‘the next business day’ “aren't you fucking sick of it yourself? I mean, I know you work there and that's your bread and butter but aren't you just sick of fucking lying all day to everyone just because some fucking suit whose getting paid a hundred million dollars a year is forcing you to tell these lies? I mean, who else is going to speak up for us? someone has to stop this crap...”

Like all the companies sending their customer support jobs overseas... I've already bitched about that enough. But give me a fucking break. If you're an American company have an American in America answer your fucking customer service calls. period.

Today we were eating these luden’s cough drops. And we looked on the package and they were called ‘honey licorice’ but when you read the ingredients there is no honey and no licorice in the cough drops at all. just sugar and artificial flavoring and coloring. What the fuck is that? when the fuck did we allow that to happen?
 
This is just another example of corporate America fucking the people to make the extra buck. Constant examples in our faces now. I'm not going to say its all shit in America, because we have plenty of great things here still, but its getting to be a lot of shit. shit is everywhere now in America. We are slowly getting covered in shit.

O.k. for the sake of being fair and positive lets quick off the top of our heads brainstorm products trends and services that are not your typical-all-American-no-value-or-quality-take-advantage-of-the-consumer-bullshit as we have come to expect: Song airlines is a good example of this --- actually trying to please the customer and provide a quality good and service and make money for their company. They call themselves a budget airline, so there's no first class; they don't serve peanuts or pretzels with their drinks but they do offer food for sale. We can’t feed you for free sir because we offer really low prices but you are more than welcome to look at our menu and I'll bring you something if you want to pay for it, she tells me. and I was more than happy to do so. Honored in fact because the damn ticket didn't cost me more than a c note. so why not give them money for some food if I was hungry. Better than southwest or America west who just put you on a five hour trip across the country and offer you nothing to eat but peanuts. Song airlines also offers your free TV. 24 channels of it. and trivia games you can play with other passengers... [remind me to get to that later...] they don't have an after-flight clean up crew as most carriers do so the flight attendants must do all that because as soon as they land in one city new passengers are going to board to go back to that same city they just left. Little money saving things like that. but over all a damn good experience. Now that's what America’s all about when its doing it right. this is just good old American entrepreneurship at its finest.

What else? well fucking Starbucks for sure. Think about Starbucks for a second. Can you see it in your mind already? Can you smell it? can you taste that mocha or latte or machiatto or coffee? You betcha. They do it right. imagine a four dollar fucking cup of coffee. Who ever would have thought it possible? Well, they did and they're doing it right. the customer service is excellent. You always feel special and well treated going in there and you always leave with a damn nice tasting cup of whatever suits you. o.k. so they have to up the quality on those cold stale lumps of starch they call pastries and deserts. But over all that's some good fucking American entrepreneurism where everyone wins. [well.. perhaps not the South American coffee growers who are forced to sell their hard earned labor for pennies on the dollar because of the monopoly that American coffee companies now have... but that's another story...]

Lets talk about everyone's favorite arch-enemy, forgive the pun, McDonalds. But if it weren't for the fact that their food is almost categorically poison and that they are destroying the worlds rainforests faster than you can say ‘pass the oxygen mask,’ McDonalds is a damn fine example of going the extra mile to please the customer. Hey, that's why we love them, and hate to hate them. they just do a really good job at what they do. I'll be the first to admit that I love a big mac now and then. at least their not blatantly and flagrantly ripping us off and fucking us up the ass like the banks in America are doing. They're trying to serve as best they can and it shows. They just need to up the nutrition and health ante a bit more and figure out a way to stop destroying all of our precious forests. And for gods sake give us another option besides those fucking French fries. Get creative people.

Anyway, I'm tired. Need to sleep. I'm sure there are plenty of other great examples. Apple is certainly one of them and so is Dell. But you get the point. Just didn't want to leave this on a bad note. I love America and I love our free enterprise capitalist spirit. We just need to demand more from some of the companies that are out there taking advantage of us and taking us for granted as consumers. If you ask me Mickey mouse should come clean and stop raking us over the coals or he should just fucking die and make room for someone who cares.

[trivia games....yes  played the trivia game on song airlines and I consistently ranked number five or six out of ten. Which means that I don't know half as much as I think I do and all the studying I do is rather worthless... study your ass off and still be an idiot. the longer I live the less I believe in learning and studying. Can’t take it with you when you die, and evidently, can’t even use it to win at trivial pursuit on an airplane.]

Current read: the declaration of independence and the constitution of the United States. Had attempted to read both of these documents several times since I was a young person. Just never managed to get past the first few sentences without becoming bored or distracted. Tonight I read the declaration a few times over on the plane. Its actually a rather short document and an easy read if you can just stay focused on it.

In or out of context it’s an amazing collection of ideas and sentiments. The last paragraph is a grand climactic finale and tends to take your breath away when these men decisively state for the first time ever “that these united colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent states; that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the state of great Britain is and ought to be totally dissolved.” You get shivers reading it for the first time...

Many things come to mind as each sentence unfolds. One is immediately struck by the founders’ intelligence, by their courage to attempt such a rebellion, by how tired they were of the grievances outlined in the first two thirds of their declaration and how willing they were to voice it, by how well thought-out their plan was, and how well they enumerated it in this simple document. Reading it for the first time all the way through and understanding it for the first time I found it very meaningful as an American.

Of course as a non American and just human, one isn't so apt to start gushing and getting all gaga. After all, this wasn't the first time a country declared itself independent from another larger one that had control over it. in fact this wasn't even the first time a country declared itself independent from Great Britain. But as Americans lets just forget about all that like we do with so much of history and just try to focus on the big difference between us and everyone else that came before us, and that's that we actually won our independence by fighting till the last man was standing. Again, let us also forget that we were pretty much getting our asses kicked for years till the French finally meandered in after much begging and pleading and whining and dining from good old Ben Franklin... thank God for the French in this instance. And thank God for Ben Franklin.

Current circumstances lead one to observe how little of history the majority of American’s know. if there is anything that Americans are really really good at besides spending more money than they earn or becoming fat or thinking they are the only country in the world, it is how amazing they are at not knowing a damn thing about history. There is a still a semi-strong anti-French sentiment in America due to the French not supporting our current administrations attempt at its best imperialist impersonation by invading the country of Iraq. Mainly in the red states one notices... these are the states that don't go to France and don't plan on it, because we can now buy French toast and French fries right here in America. So why bother. But its amazing nonetheless how few Americans know that just two hundred years ago it was England we were fighting, not Iraq. And it was the French who came in to save our asses from the Brits. Of course now the tables have turned and the British government will do just about anything we ask them to short of blowing the president, but I bet that's not too far off and I'm sure some Hollywood production company is already planning a reality show around it.

These kind of declarations are long gone in this day and age now that the United States of America has taken over the position once held by great Britain as the great big bad bully of the rest of the world. I don't see any chance of other countries following suit anytime soon and declaring their own declaration of independence. At least not without prior written permission from the United States. this is a funny thing. we watched the Chinese people try to do it in the late eighties and instead of coming in to help them as the French did for us, we instead partnered up in business with the Chinese government so our American businesses could make more money. so now pretty much everything we own here in America is made in communist-fascist china. After reading our own declaration of independence one cannot help but laugh at the irony. Rwanda is another example of this. Venezuela another. Chechnya another one.

I will add reluctantly that what we are seeing in Iraq could end up being a noble venture in the long run. I firmly believe that if we have the guts and the commitment to stick it out through to the bitter end that we just may truly liberate that people. now whether they really want that or not is another matter. It wasn't as if they were asking for us to come in. they weren't taking to the streets and rebelling against their government like we have been seeing in Venezuela or Chechnya the last few years. but we went in because we saw their country as a threat to our own safety. At least that's what were told. And after all these beheadings... well... who the hell knows at this point.

I guess in the end, after all is said and done and all the bodies are counted, we will have to wait and decide for ourselves, each of us as American citizens, if our killing close to two-hundred thousand of their people will be justification for liberating the people that will remain. Either way, hopefully, we, our country, our land, well, o.k., the land we stole from the people who lived before we arrived, will be safer. That's the hope. That's the dream I guess.

Another other thing strikes one very strongly when reading the American declaration of independence is this one paragraph that they wrote in there about the king of England attempting to turn us against ourselves and trying to get “the inhabitants” of “our frontiers” --- the native people who we were stealing the land from – to attack us. it’s a very powerful paragraph. The founders had no choice in creating this blatant contradiction inherent in this sentence if they were to include this grievance in their declaration. They actually use the term “inhabitants” meaning the native people – in “our frontiers.” Makes no sense really does it... I mean, from an objective perspective, pretend we aren't from here, that we aren't Americans now, and that we are just reading this like its from some other planet... how the hell are they “our frontiers” if there are already “inhabitants” on these “frontiers” who had lived here for tens of thousands of years before us? these were never ‘our frontiers’ and they never will be. Crazy stuff.

America was certainly blessed by the noble goals and the morals of life liberty and the pursuit of happiness espoused by our founding fathers. No arguing in that. But I believe that at best it was and still is a double edged sword. One that may come back to get us one day. we were cursed by these same founding fathers’ inability or refusal to acknowledge that there were people already living here and that on the one hand as we were trying to free ourselves from the tyranny of great Britain we were committing the same tyranny upon the native peoples of this very land and at the same time enslaving and committing innumerable atrocities upon the African people we were bringing over here by the hundreds of thousands to do our work for us so we didn't have to do it ourselves.

Now I, being a strong believer in karma... well ... you get the picture... makes you wonder doesn’t it... the red in old glory’s red white and blue certainly must signify the blood of the millions of Indians and blacks that we killed in order to create this country that we are currently calling America and occupying. And I wonder from a karmic perspective how long this is really going to last before its payback time...