TurquoiseB wrote:
I've been thinking lately about the time we all
waste here, especially me. And about how I can
turn that around. So what I came up with is a
technique I haven't been practicing enough lately
call Tantric inversions. That's where you take a
stimulus that normally draws you back into an old,
tired samskaric pattern, and instead of going
there, you use the stimulus as a *reminder* to do
the opposite of that samskaric pattern.
In my case, one of my obvious samskaric patterns
is that I allow Judy to suck me into her endless
arguments and wind up writing too much here, instead
of writing the film reviews and book chapters I'm
supposed to be working on this summer. So my new
plan is to let Judy's seemingly endless reservoir
of bile *inspire* me instead of getting under my
skin. Every time she slams me here on FFL, what
I'm going to try to do is *instead* of doing what
she wants me to do (that is, waste my time and my
life the way she's wasted hers), I'll just sit down
and write another film review, or a section of the
book.
Somehow I think I have a long summer's writing
ahead of me. :-) It'll be an interesting experiment.
Judy will keep slamming me, because that is just
what she does, and if I keep to this plan, the more
she slams me, the more salable writing I'll produce.
And that will get under her skin more than anything
I could possibly say in response. Life is good.
As Bhairitu can tell you, one of the reasons we
like the Tantric path is that it's fun.
So do you find that you've become a movie addict since you're gotten a
home theater? They tend to do that. I've been thinking of starting an
Entertainment Anonymous organization because of it. I find it
interesting how many spiritual people I know that watch lots of
movies. Even my guru has a DVR for Dish Network so he can watch Indian
and movies comedies on the Z channel. But he also likes to watch
western films especially horror films because we produce multitudes more
of tantric themed movies compared to Bollywood. Bollywood has been
trying to do more horror and supernatural films recently but what I've
seen has been pretty lame. I've also tipped him to a lot of the Tartan
Video catalog that has a lot of Thai, Hong Kong, Chinese, and Japanese
supernatural movies most that make Hollywood pale in shame they are so
well done. In fact Hollywood is producing their versions of these
movies including The Pulse which releases in a couple of weeks.
Mom and pop video rental stores have practically disappeared in the US
more due to Netflix probably than Blockbuster and Hollywood Video. Up
until a couple years ago I made a Friday pilgrimage to a friend's store
to pick up the latest DVDs that interested me. He didn't pay any
attention to street dates and put new titles out on Friday instead of
the following Tuesday. He got lots of interesting foreign and
independent films. But as he says he got tired of selling buggy
whips and has moved into making them instead. When the last local mom
and pop closed last fall I opened an account at Hollywood Video mainly
because they don't ban un-rated films and also get an interesting
selection of foreign and independent films. But at the same time they
initiated a new program where for a flat fee of $15 a month you can rent
up to 3 videos at once either from the library (older films) or MVP
stickered new releases. Quite a savings if you are willing to wait a
few weeks for the blockbusters to go MVP (for $30 a month you can rent
anything but I didn't need to run my entertainment bill up that
much).I also don't have to watch what Netflix has to send me but can
pick by my moods. As it is I've considering cutting back my take out
from 3 to 2 as it is hard to watch that many films even over 5 evenings
(and I need to make good use of my $65 a month Comca$t bill).
Sidenote: HV is next to a Citgo station so I filled up on $2.99 gas in
honor of Hugo Chavez's birthday yesterday when picking up some new movies.
Speaking of Comca$t the treat of the summer has been an 8 episode Steven
King series of short stories on TNT. Comca$t has them free in HDTV
OnDemand. There have been episodes with William Hurt, Bill Macy and
other notable folks. Some have been pretty good and the HD picture
quality has been excellent. You'll probably have to wait for the DVD (I
assume you've got an upscaling DVD player).
I also need to literally get off my butt and watch less video and make
more. Yesterday I did that by shooting some new video for my guru's
site. These will be posted as Flash videos and we plan to do an
extended version available on DVD and eventually HD-DVD since I shoot
these days in HD (I now have my eye on the new Canon prosumer HD cameras
that were announced this week).
One final note on ad nauseum online arguments. I often just drop a
thread after a few posts and don't feel compelled to have the last
word. The reason is that
