Too good to let go Wednesday, Jan 30 2008 

Q: “how to fuck yourself without people hear(ing)” A: Noise only results from motion, so when people hear you they’re actually hearing you moving. Assuming a person either isn’t a “screamer” or can control their moans of pleasure the most likely things to be heard are breathing, which for most people will speed up in the throes of passion if nothing else, and of course the actual motions of masturbation. I will propose various situations, their problems, and possible workarounds.

Let me start by saying that the fewer moving parts the better. So obviously this means vibrators that rotate in 3 places and spin beads around inside are a bad choice, regular dildos or solid vibrators that are turned off are better, and your own hands are the ideal unless it takes you a particularly long time to obtain orgasm. If you can get off in 1-3 minutes with a vibrator but it takes you 10-30 minutes manually then it might be worth risking the vibe. Just try to get one that’s quieter, short of being able to view and hear them in action (which some parlors let you do) I have a few guidelines. The weaker the motor the lower the strength and generally the quieter it will be. Also if it’s made of a particularly thick or absorbent/flexible material like some kind of proprietary “jelly” that can dampen noise to some extent. And as I said don’t get one that has a bunch of crap going on like say, The Rabbit Pearl, there’s no way that isn’t noisy as hell. If someone can assure me it’s not then I’ll correct this but there is still no way it makes no noise with all that motion going on. Of course this vibrator talk is aimed at women, but don’t be afraid to get in on the act of insertion too guys. Actually male sex toys are basically reverse dildos where you stick the penis into something and stroke with it, or optionally vibrate, so they aren’t particularly noisy if you don’t turn them on. I understand that the Fleshlight is popular, just don’t think anyone will really think it’s a flashlight for more than a few seconds.

Other than tools the consideration for “less moving parts” also applies to location. If you’ve got a rickety old mattress or unsteady bed frame in an upper level room next to a wall… You can imagine right? Similarly a lot of people don’t realize it but they’ll move their feet and toes in particular during the act. For the most part this really doesn’t make that much noise and you can possibly control your thrashing like you can control your breathing but it’s something to be aware of.

The last general tip is to have some interference noise but this is a double edged sword. If you’re standing next to (or for that matter sitting on) a running washing machine then likely no one will hear you over it, but you won’t hear anyone else either. In our world today people usually have a heater or air conditioner or fan of some sort or another running which just might create enough noise to block out the sounds of “fucking yourself”. So you can wait for these opportunities. Running water is always an option and similarly the most popular place for women to get off in the urban world is in the shower with a shower massager (that’s the one with the tube that you can grab and move wherever, not a simple head with different settings that calls itself a massager). The clever plan of most teen aged boys on the other hand is to “spank while mom is in the shower”. This is actually a pretty effective strategy, while someone is in the shower they’re not going to hear you pounding one out. Mothers be aware of this! Your little boys are in their room beating off every chance they get. Do NOT go in without not only knocking but also waiting to be told to enter. And if your son has suddenly started doing his own laundry all the time it’s because he’s washing the jizz out and doesn’t want you to see it. I think the upcoming generation of girls is getting in on the fun too now that the female orgasm isn’t the taboo it once was but I also think that young ladies have better ways to spend their time. I could be wrong, but in any case it never hurts to give someone a moment and save everyone from trauma or at least bruised feelings of invaded privacy. Another note about any situation where there’s noise, you need to get off as soon as possible to avoid visual discovery rather than the auditory that you’re worried about. This especially applies to the shower as people will wonder if you’re in there for an hour. But whatever you have to do.

As to scenarios, the most common one is that of cohabitation whether with room mates or family. If you live in different rooms it’s not that big of a deal as long as you’re aware of where and what anyone else is up to and how much noise you’re making. This is the time when interference noise is good. In fact you might take any opportunity to create more noise in the rooms of others, like buying fans or noise machines for people as appropriate. Some humidifiers even are a bit noisy, get creative. Depending on the layout of the house (mine has a shitty one) you might be able to run the clothes or dish washer and the clothes dryer and have it mask the noise. This isn’t going to help you much if you’ve got a squeaky bed and
floor and the person you don’t want to hear you is in the room below you though. In that case your best option is to wait until there is a totally pervasive noise or the other(s) are occupied in some way that they won’t hear you. Probably the risk of discovery during masturbation in cohabitation is a large part of the thrill of it.

Moving on we have the most difficult situation of inhabiting the same room, or even the same bed, as someone else and wanting to masturbate. By muting or fixing your breathing (either follow a 3-5 second rhythm or open your mouth as wide as possible and breath as gently as possible, breathing through the nose makes too much noise) and restricting your motion it can be possible if you’re sure the other person is asleep or occupied. But the best bet has to be to just do it in a situation where no one is around to hear. Depending on how close you are the risk is greater that you’ll be felt rather than seen or even heard. You can try some sort of dampening measures if you want, just remember to thoroughly test everything out before going at it. Remember Murphy’s Law “anything that can go wrong, will”. That doesn’t mean that things are doomed to failure, it just means that you can only move so much before shaking a bunk bed. Animals in general are very sensitive to motion, and therefore noise, so watch out. Maybe fish can’t hear? I’m not sure about that one. But I don’t think they have vocal chords either so that would make sense. Remember that whales and dolphins are mammals. The classification for such is supposedly “live birth” but that seems to be just one phase of things.

Other situations where you might feel like masturbating and don’t want to be discovered are in public for the most part. It’s actually not that hard to avoid discovery as long as you’re covered up and there’s some kind of noise. Although rather than doing anything manually I would recommend some kind of placeable  vibrating sex toy. If you’re daring then your panties just might hold in a vibrator, but it wouldn’t be a bad idea to tape it in place or just buy a specifc unit. There’s all kinds of stuff out there I assure you. And there’s really no way to know whether that person standing or sitting next to you on the bus or train/trolley/subway is getting off since those are all so noisy as to mask out the noise. Look for motion if you’re curious. The person’s behavior might seem strange as well. But hardened exhibitionists like that can be impeccable. Other than transit it’s either school or the workplace for most people. As a general rule of thumb the more people there are present the more variables there are in the situation and the likelier your chance of being discovered. However there’s a certain line where you need enough people that all attention won’t be fixed on you. I’d say between 6-10 is the minimum. Although depending on the setting even if someone notices you they might not say anything. School in particular is not a bad option. People tend to be more interested in what others are doing during work, or more like they’re less interested in what they’re doing so they check out others. The real issue is proximity rather than anything else.

AH! I suppose there are two scenarios I didn’t cover. In front of the computer or tv. I think that incidental visual discovery is a greater concern if you’re in the open but as a general rule of thumb have the volume low or off. This can be suspicious if you usually have the volume up. Quite suspicious. So you can attempt to mask the lack of volume for your activity with something else. On the computer this is a lot easier since you can just have the volume off on the porn and put some music on or whatever else. In front of the tv, if you’ve just got everything stand alone hooked to the tv it’s a problem but if you have a receiver or whatever you can cross the sound cables. Depending on the situation you may or may not need to change them around each session to keep people off track but it varies. This is neither here nor there but on my old one it had two component video inputs but only one corresponding audio input for some inconceivable reason. So I had the sound hooked up from my dvd player even though both it and my PS2 were hooked up. I didn’t mind much since I generally prefer to listen to my own music rather than game music (game music can be good, the problem is the presentation, maybe some day they’ll just keep the background music running even during fights in rpgs, actually they might have done that in FFXII just because of its system… but I still listened to my own music anyway and never finished that game) but that’s how I got the idea. Actually you could possibly be in a similar situation with video capable game units and video units. Back to the computer though, get in the habit of listening to music all the time. This will cover your noises, although again it will cover anyone approaching as well so hurry up about it.

In conclusion, the best way to disguise masturbation is to cultivate some sort of habit that masks it. Always leaving a hand under your desk, running a fan (hell if your computer’s fan is noisy enough it might work), doing laundry at night, taking your shower after your room mate, keeping to yourself, things like that.

And remember, if you’re not having fun then it’s not worth it.

They must have done “zettai” in zetsubou sensei right? Wednesday, Jan 23 2008 

I’ll admit it, I fell behind on watching that show and reading the manga because it got a bit stale (it’s really a very pure serialization) after a while. Speaking of which, the song from the new season zoku sayonara zetsubou sensei “kuusou rumba” reminds me way too much of “Dynamite Mambo” (I’ll admit that I had to look up the title of that) from the Geobreeders OVA. I’m pretty sure that the lyrics are rather different though it’s been a while since I’ve heard the latter for all kinds of reasons (that ova is like 10 years old now, yeah 90s anime is downright ancient).

By the way this transpired earlier:

A:”Ali Project does the opening for Shigofumi? Anything that Ali Project is involved in I’m interested in”

B:”Even “Avenger”?”

A:”Well…”

Reuche:”Holy shit I can write dialogue.”

Speaking of shit I recently watched the second Zero no Tsukaima (Zero’s familiar) season/series “futatsuki no kishi” (knight of the two moons). I don’t know why I ever watched the first one but that’s the only reason I watched the second one. Which was simultaneously better and worse. The pace was terrible, most of the episodes were almost totally empty, but there were parts that were pretty funny and it looked better than some other stuff that’s lurking out there. And even though I wished that Kirche and Tabitha had bigger roles, perhaps the series was fresher for introducing new characters and expanding the roles of others like the princess and professor Coleman (was that his name?). I kind of thought that the intense action of the last episode came out of nowhere considering the limpness of the series on the whole. But it had a pretty intense battle scene, the kind of scene where you get curious about who did it, but don’t actually bother to find out. Of course the answer these days is more or less “a computer” anyway I suppose. That kind of puts a damper on that. Well nobody cares about Zero no Tsukaima except people who like it, and those people already know about it. So that said, Saitou reminds me a lot of Ataru (Moroboshi) from Urusei Yatsura. Especially the part where when he pisses Louise (taking Lum’s role in this) off by eying or pawing another girl she sets off an explosion (Lum used an electric shock). Actually that’s a common formula, Ryo and Kaori from City Hunter, Keitaro and Naru from Love Hina… now that I think about it that’s the proverbial “slapped with a stick” isn’t it…. I lived this long and never thought about that one. Maybe I’d better just go lay down now.

Running in the corner Tuesday, Jan 15 2008 

Q:”guitar anime series” A: the only ones I can think of off the top of my head that feature a focus on guitars are Beck and “legend of black heaven”, neither of which I’m sure of the exact name of since I didn’t really watch them. There are a fair amount of series about bands though, probably moreso about manga. I wonder if “nodamme cantabelle” has any guitar playing in it? Somehow I doubt it but you never know. Otherwise other anime with characters that are in bands like Kaikan Phrase and maybe even Nana… Yeah now that I think about it there are probably plenty. But Beck seems to me like it would be the series with the most emphasis on it if the manga is any indication.

Today I write while my beaten up PS2 runs some of the endurance races in GT4 with vastly overpowered cars. When a car doesn’t even look like a car anymore but instead appears to be some sort of food packaging then you know you have a problem. Playing GT4 makes me wonder just how much oil has been wasted on racing since motor vehicles were first invented. I don’t think anyone can calculate the full scope of usage (like punks racing in back streets or practice runs on weekends) but the figure must be staggering. I’d say that racing is a good example of worthless innovation if ever there was one. Even the gran turismo series. I don’t even have anything turned on right now but the PS2, I’m not even bothering to turn the tv on to check the status so I can speed the game up, I’m just walking over to it every once in a while and pressing some buttons on the controller to do so. I am officially no longer even playing the game and so it is officially pointless. This is actually hitting me hard over here. I’ve been playing video games for so long you know, I really don’t know what I’ll do if I stopped playing them… Actually I’d probably write novels, and arguably the reason I never have is that I waste my days playing games.

But what I wanted to complain about today was magic. This is inspired by the ever worsening Rental Magica (episode 14). This series is just so unbelievably bad it’s a chore to watch it. But just like running GT4 even though I’m not playing it, I watch Rental Magica even though I don’t like it.  Anyway, what I’m saying has been said before, even by myself in this place, but the problem with the idea of magic is that the cause and effect don’t match up. There are theoretically all different kinds of magic but traditionally you’re either invoking/evoking an entity or basically doing chemistry by ritualistically (perhaps pointlessly) combining (most likely inefficiently) things from within nature. Anyway, magic in those senses is at least logical even if it’s not necessarily transparent how things really work (like why the entity you’re calling on exists and can do what it can) or apparent that they do indeed work.

No the problem with magic is the fictional Harry Potter (my favorite whipping boy) sort of magic where you wave or waggle something (a wand, a hand, your penis, both) and maybe say some words and then magic happens. It doesn’t even take 5 minutes to think about why this doesn’t work but low class writers continue to justify it in ways like “you just have to have the magic inside you” and shit like that. If that was really the case we would not be talking about humans anymore, we’d be talking about some kind of mutant that has a different physiology. And we’re not talking about that, that isn’t out there. It is the theory behind ESP and so stated in various sci-fi works related to such, so again at least THAT is logical. But really the problem here is the idea of either making something out of nothing, or dispensing something into nothing (the latter being done all the time in rental magica) which does not happen! I honestly know next to shit about “hard science” but just from living my life I know that much about how the world works.

So that brings up the question of what it would take to make magic work.Basically the answer is science. However it would have to be of a surpassing greed, ambition, and solitude. In a way radio waves are surpassingly magical if you think about it. So perhaps there is some other sort of unseen energy source out there that could in some way be converted by people for the purpose of “magic”. This of course is another theory of magic but I think that the idea that by drawing on the ground in chalk that you can utilize this power is the height of fallacy. Actually it’s more common to try and utilize “the elements” rather than some unknown element. But as I said this is basically chemistry and the problem with the traditional magical elements is that they don’t really exist as singular entities. Other people have broken that kind of thing down but essentially “the earth” is a bunch of minerals, fire and water are chemical reactions, and wind is just cause and effect (temperature differences, exertion of force, etc.). The alternate chinese elements of wood and metal are what they are as well. Now perhaps it really is possible to call upon… I don’t know sodium or oxygen or something, or a whole pile of things, but to vaguely cry “oh earth and wind”… Of course nothing is going to happen.

And to finish that off, like I said you can try and figure out if there are some other entities that can do what you want and whether or not you can get them to do what you want. But that doesn’t really seem like magic, that’s basically personnel recruitment and negotiation. Yeah really magic is just a word to describe a sense of wonder. Oh well eh? oh well.

tabulated capSule Tuesday, Jan 15 2008 

Q:”vegemite okay to eat while pregnant” A: NO! Vegimite isn’t OK for anyone to eat ever. That goes double for Marmite of course. I also recommend avoiding large concentrations of vinegar aside from the usual stuff (drugs).

Well I have once again been defeated by bureaucracy and will not be taking any classes at this time. I’m depressed about this, honestly. I could still take SOMETHING if I wanted to, and surely there would be some kind of point to it, but I just don’t have the motivation to take something I’m not that interested in. Like accounting or computer aided drafting for example.

And so I played Gran Turismo 4 as if I was possessed, going from ~7% completion to past 25 due mostly to unscrupulous usage of the B-spec option. But honestly, what the hell is the point of playing a racing game and just setting up a car and telling the computer to go? Other than passing which the computer is god awful at because your AI uses the same racing lines as the enemy AI, and high speed turns, the B-spec computer is more or less better than I am. Personally my main motivation for using it is the ability to speed up the game, but that begs the question of why either the races aren’t shorter or an option to speed things up during manual play isn’t present.

Listen to me now children, the future of video games isn’t increase interaction such as that to be had on Nintendo’s current generation of systems, but rather decreased interaction like B-spec mode or the battle system (which annoyed the hell out of me so much in one of the secret dungeons that I quit playing the game even though I could have just walked out of said dungeon and actually beaten the game instead) in Final Fantasy XII. Can you even really call that “playing” anymore? I guess if you’re entertained still then that’s fine but I must go back to my recent statement that GT is one of the levels of hell. Don’t get me started on the continually broken rally races/mode/system or how fruitless the endurance events are… *sigh…

I was going to say “what the hell am I doing” but actually I know quite well. And unfortunately I also know the answers to “what I will be doing from now on” and “what I should be doing” and “what I want to do”. And lo all I can do is listen to the bad music from Initial D and clutch my controller with broken hands (at least B-spec gives me a chance to rest them a bit) while driving ever deeper into the darkness. Did I ever write final thoughts on “Higurashi” or not anyway? I’ll check that later.

Strumming A Dead Guitar Sunday, Jan 13 2008 

I can actually imagine a circumstance where that would be a relevant title, although it still wouldn’t be proper english unless you added context. Maybe. I have no idea what I’m talking about.

So WinAmp is creeping the hell out of me. Or maybe life is just creeping me out in general. I suppose that I’m in the mood to be creeped out after watching creepy things but still.  Well let me just throw this out there so I can get back to letting things disturb me.

I finished watching Darker than Black 黒の契約者 which was a 25 episode tv series. I think that if I say anything other than that I liked the series but it confused me then I will also confuse the issue. However the 25th episode, this one scene in particular, it really made me think of Evangelion. I’m not entirely certain that the series didn’t have various similarities but in truth it says more about me that I thought of Evangelion than it does about any similarity. And… I’m not sure whether the story, the series, is really supposed to be over. The series was from Bones who was one of the main forces behind the anime version of Full Metal Alchemist, and solely because that series had a movie sequel it makes me wonder if this one will. Maybe it’s more likely to have a handful of DVD only episodes like Wolfs Rain did? Although that again was an exception to the general Bones series where the series is just over… isn’t it? Now that I say that I’m not so sure but that’s really an unrelated matter… isn’t it? hmmmmmm……. Perhaps I’ve just inadvertently discovered a glaring flaw in series produced by BONES even though their works are generally among my favored ones. That being, they can’t ever get things finished properly in a normal tv run. Well forgetting about BONES I’m just about ready to call Darker Than Black the best anime series of 2007 almost by default. I’ll give that one some thought before laying it down though.

Moving on I watched Demon Prince Enma 鬼公子炎魔 (kikoushi enma) which was a 4 episode OVA series based on an old (children’s?) series by Go Nagai which was recently reimagined. I’m fairly sure the way that went was that first the series was included in Violence Jack in the form of the protagonists showing up as evil adults, then the anime was planned, and somewhere along the line to coincide with that a new manga sprang up which I think is actually done by someone other than Nagai. Anyway the series is a bit interesting but it’s what’s responsible for creeping me out today in the first place. That said even though I didn’t get a particular impression from the first couple of episodes even though the series could technically be considered part of the “horror” genre, the third one flips the series over and gets really weird and the 4th finishes things off. However I must complain that the titular character is only barely in the series. And the animation is kind of awkward. In the first place you’ve got 2d models (mostly the characters) of debatable quality and then mixed in you have shoddy 3d rendering for a lot of the backgrounds and some of the objects. The third episode in particular put me in mind of shoddy looking old PlayStation games. In my memory there’s no room for pixelation, but I’m sure that the Resident Evil and Final Fantasy games did in fact have it in spades. Actually this is kind of spoiling things a bit but what “Enma” ended out really reminding me of was the novel House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski. Which is really ironic because while watching the show I was thinking to myself that house of leaves is the only fiction that had scared me in a long time and then it started to go that way… Which again made absolutely no fucking sense. The anime that I was most reminded by in this series was Boogiepop Phantom, right down to how in that series the titular Boogiepop barely shows up just like Enma is barely in this series. They really had the same sort of feel which I’m at a loss to describe. “transitive” was the first word to come to mind but that can’t be, “divergent” also came to mind but while that describes the series since it diverges from what you’d have expected going in, it’s not the word that describes the feel the series had. Well, you can check it out for yourself if you like that kind of thing. I wouldn’t recommend this series in general though, only if you’re a Dynamic Productions or occult/horror fan. Final words: at least it’s short (actually the episodes are almost double length compared to tv episodes so…)

And so I will go back to musing on being creeped out. Maybe I should go play a Persona game or something…

Liturgy Saturday, Jan 12 2008 

After playing Gran Turismo 4 for hours on end I am now convinced that Gran Turismo is one of the layers of hell. Likewise the developers are all going to hell, if they’re not already there. And listening to Initial D music while playing the game does make you faster. I eventually had to stop playing because I couldn’t see or hold down the accelerator all the way.

Having played all the Gran Turismo games so far, will I buy a PS3 when GT5 comes out? I honestly can not say. As it happens the US PS2 I have came bundled with GT3, so if there was a similar PS3 bundle available…

The Loneliest Thing In The World Friday, Jan 11 2008 

The loneliest thing in the world is not wasting words.

- ~ ~ ~

come on laugh me crazy boy Friday, Jan 11 2008 

(where the hell do I come up with these titles? probably the same place that the  lyrics for the songs used in Initial D sprang out of)

Since I enjoyed the series Darker Than Black 黒の契約者 (that’s actually the full title as displayed in the show (kuro no keiyakusha, black contractor)) so much I quit watching it after 10 episodes so that I could save the rest for another time. That time is today as it turns out but… what the hell was up with the start of the second opening animation sequence that they started using (well technically the show has a cold opening and then goes to the song after a couple of minutes) in episode 15? Not to mention how lousy the song was. I wondered if as some kind of bad joke the feed had switched to Initial D for a moment… man my new washing machine makes terrible sounds. I guess that’s what 1,000 RPMs sounds like huh? I think it gives me migraines, honestly.

I suppose I should have waited to write this at least until I was finished watching the sequence in question, let alone the rest of the series. Let me say that I generally recommend watching a series in its entirety if possible. The same goes for reading one. However it is a bit off to wait half a year as I did, honestly I hardly remembered what was going on in the show but fortunately that doesn’t matter in this case. Of course the big downside to watching a show all at once is if it has recap episodes. I don’t think that “Darker” does but I seem to recall Gundam Wing for example having two. Fucking TWO of them. So saying I wonder if the current trend of less than 26 episodes a series for anime has to do with not including recap episodes? If I’m not mistaken a lot of shows simply didn’t air an episode during the Japanese New Year’s holiday which is traditionally the time for a recap (Golden Week possibly being the other one, I hadn’t considered that until now). I can only applaud that decision, it would seem to me like a waste of money even to crop clips together if no one will watch it. But maybe some people like recaps, the worlds are made of all sorts after all.

-The recap hater… No seriously the worst is when you read a novel series and they recap things in every installment. What a waste of paper, especially now. In the past motivated people might have browsed the old books, but these days I imagine that people just check summaries online. Yeah really that washing machine, if the old one hadn’t broken you’d hardly know there was an improvement. I’m not kidding when I say that the thing is moving my whole house. Unless it’s just moving my brain that is.

Perish Friday, Jan 11 2008 

I’m only going to say this once. Rental Magica レンタルマギカ is the perfect example of what NOT to do with an anime series. It’s not a bad example of what not to do with narrative, pacing, and plot as well.

Drive with me right out of here Tuesday, Jan 8 2008 

Q: “how do you spell dragonforce in Japanese” A: ドラゴンフォース (all katakana “doragonfo-su”) However the proper title for the group which you might call the dragon force that was composed of the protagonists of the game is “the 8 warriors of the holy dragon” or something like that, the original japanese was 聖竜の八戦士 (seiryu no ha(chi?)senshi). Don’t hold me to the latter since I can’t really translate japanese into english but the point was that there are 8 warriors (senshi) who used the power of the holy dragon which was named something like Harzgeldt or whatever in that game. The titular dragons in dragon force always remind me of the holy and dark dragons in Record of Lodoss War. That might not be a coincidence, but could be merely circumstantial. I mean are you going to have a holy dragon squaring off with a wind dragon? And why would the most powerful dragon be the water dragon? See what I mean.

Well that’s not why I’m here. I just got done reading “the four agreements” by Don Miguel Ruiz and I wanted to say a few things about that. Yes I have been reading a lot of self-help books lately (this, The Alchemist, the Why Cafe, The Precious Present…. I would reccomend all but the alchemist therein, if you’re in the mood for that kind of thing, but they’re all saying about the same thing anyway), and as a matter of fact I’ve read a different book every day this year so far, but as it finally occurred to me while glancing at the back of the book “is there anything more wonderful than being able to help yourself?”. Don’t kid yourself into thinking that you don’t need help if you’re pissing around here. However where to look, and how you can help yourself, are things that only you can determine. As I found out the hard way, of course, and assuredly you will have to as well, should you look. Anyway I think I liked this book because it was more self-centered, which I think makes it more honest and relevant. There were quips about god and destiny but they weren’t the point. The point was dealing with all the shit you’ve heaped on over the years, the lies we live, and breaking free.

There is a saying that the fewer words used to express wisdom, the deeper it is. And that you only dilute, complicate, and ultimately lose sight of that wisdom by trying to elaborate on it. This is something I believe. In fact in some of my earlier entries I lamented my inability to leave off after a sentence or two precisely for this reason. I’m mentioning this because in the four agreements, in the american version I was reading anyway, it actually says what these four agreements are on the flap of the book. For some perhaps that’s all that would be necessary, and glancing at them I dreaded to actually read the thing for fear of how diluted the message would be and how confused I would leave. But this was not the case. And in fact I have found a new ideal. Enumerable pieces of wisdom, in a row. To be sure there was a lot of opinion thrown out in the book, and hypothetical examples and memoirs of personal experiences which are always below ideal. But for the most part, Ruiz was always saying something and I felt like I left the book enriched.

Unlike with the tenants of “the alchemist” I am not in the mood to break down the four agreements but… Well the reason for that is that I don’t feel like they need to be broken down. I could give my opinions on them if anyone cared but I basically agreed with what Ruiz was saying that the first one was the most important and that the other 3 were just parts of that. I would further say that I agree with them because I’d already thought such things myself for various reasons. But for me they were not conclusions, they are not my way of life, they were just philosophies stowed away in the trunk of my mind. Now though, who knows. I’m sick of life the way it is, and even though I don’t believe that the four agreements are truly possible to hold to, that’s kind of the point, and I doubt one would be worse off in the long run for attempting to be true to them.

Well I don’t think that it’s possible to say a word to someone without biasing them so I guess there’s no point in worrying about that last comment (impossible), but if you wish you could take it as an example of what the book is recommending that one should avoid. I will once again say that I do not like the number 4. This is entirely because it’s believed to be the unluckiest number in japanese since the main way to pronounce it and death are the same (shi). I don’t think that death is unlucky for me, but the connotation of bad luck does not leave my mind and of course I make every excuse to justify the veracity (I dig out a word from some musty corner of my brain only to wonder if I’m using it the right way) of it. Such is the human monster, so did we reach this point. Maybe. It’s always good to end a pronouncement with maybe just in case you don’t really want it to be true.

Remember; the truth isn’t what’s important, your truth is what’s important. And it’s precisely because freedom is the damned hardest thing to get, the loneliest thing in the whole wide world, that it’s the most vital accomplishment a person could ever strive for.

It amuses me that the four agreements are on wikiquotes http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Don_Miguel_Ruiz I don’t recommend checking out the official website for a variety of reasons, although they’re probably the same reason I try to avoid reading “spoilers”, but the choice is up to you: http://www.miguelruiz.com/ .

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