Just look at that beautifully formed magical cauliflower! :-)

Un Russe rencontré à Trois-Rivières

Le magicien qui fait le même show depuis 20 ans, qui nous laisse seulement quelques secondes pour faire des photos. Un vrai magicien réussirait à mettre les photos sur ma carte sans que j’aille a me déplacer pour voir son spectacle.

Cet homme malchanceux qui a acheté deux billet de 6/49 sur le deadline. Un est pour le tirage de cette semaine et l’autre le prochain tirage. Il  gagne le gros lot, 13 millions$$$$$$. Le fuk, les numéro gagnants sont sur le billet pour le tirage le prochain tirage. Le billet gagnant a été vendu 7 secondes passé les coups de 21h. Il poursuit Loto Québec. Good LUCK.

That is why I was pleasantly surprised by the delights that unfolded as I read Stroud's The Amulet of Samarkand, book one in the Bartimaeus Trilogy. Mr Stroud serves up a creative ride where the readers get front row seats into the mind of a summoned djinni, Bartimaeus, and his time in servitude to a budding apprentice wizard, Nathanial.

I prefer to discover the adventure of a good book myself rather then read it in a review, so I won't divulge too much here. I will say that Stroud's cynical humour made me laugh out loud, and his ability to capture the machinations of real world intirigue and political/social climbing, yet portray these machinations in a modern day fantasy setting was impressive. There is also plenty of action and magic to keep even the most hardcore fantasy addict satisfied. I have even been told by those that do like the Harry Potter series that they enjoyed this series as much.

I'm sure you will make your own mind up on that score, but I really enjoyed this book. So if you like your fantasy a bit left of centre I heartily recommend you give this book a look in!

I make no excuses. Many times I hang with a woman as a friend because I am eventually going to fuck her. I have done this for years and fucked most of my women friends. It happens because I make no big deal out of it. Sooner or later they have just wanted to fuck me and we peel off our clothes and fuck.

For the last several months a little emotionally unavailable wench found herself attracted to me for whatever reason. She secretly would have liked to have let herself go and be my lover. To be a huge love of my life...but she will deny this forever to the point of when she read my poetry she said it creeped her out. THIS IS THE SAME POETRY THAT OTHER WOMEN READ AND LOVED, HOPING IT WAS WRITTEN ABOUT THEM...This stupid little girl is sooooo traumatized and so fucked up that all she has become is an emotional shell, a worthless little automaton working in a genetics laboratory for a bunch of scientist globalist assholes, being their grad student slave. Before this I saw her get dumped by her boyfriend whom she wouldn’t admit was her boyfriend. I saw her get into a rebound relationship with a little wispy creep who was nothing more than a wannabe. I saw immaturity. I saw her get strung out bad on librium and almost have a complete nervous breakdown from the distress of her work and the breakups. I have seen her go through the trauma of a broken sexual relationship. It is soooo sad, but I have little compassion. No desire to be an unconditional friend, to be a brother, to be a mentor. I just wanted to fuck her and love her.

...another reason I'm so glad I homeschool... :)

My Drama II class took a field trip (with nice charter buses!) to watch a modern rendition of Shakespeare's Twelfth Night, performed by California's Shakespearean theater in Orinda California. Both Viola and Sebastian were played by the same GUY. I did not really like this idea because, at the end of the play, when Viola and Sebastian were to finally meet, the actor ends up talking to himself (switching voices). I took this as a cheap way of compensating for the fact that they made an unwise decision. But art is art and visions are different according to the director. I respect that.

Saturday was the Birthday of little Kiwi! She turned two. She is the baby who is featured in my post about the "Church Picnic" ( the one in the little swim suit). She is very adorable. At the party, a magician was hired. It was some Filipino guy who was very funny and peformed very kid-friendly tricks that were actually quite impressive! HOW DO THEY DO IT? Well, at the end of the night, while watching Little Einstein with little Kiwi, i upset the tired and grumpy little girl by telling her that the animals featured on the screen were seals. The poor thing thought they were fish and got mad a she screamed "NO"! Still, she is a brilliant and blessed little girl. She knows sign language and is a very convincing little actress!

Today, I came home late because I had just auditioned for the Fall Play. Our director has chosen to do a play called Comic Potential. I won't talk much about but if i do happen to be cast, I'll fill you guys in :).

So this week was fun. I went to church with Winston again. Oh, and during bible study, because the building we use is occasionally rented for parties, we were only supplied with one table, forcing us to squeeze close together for once x) It was actually nice :D

So, there is SOME of my week. So much more actually happened. This includes, shopping with my mom (improving my wardrobe) writing at nikki a birthday letter, making fliers for the first fashion club meeting of the year, ignoring my blog because i am lazy.. and the list goes on.

I'll try and make time to write some more. until then...

Yu-gi-oh. This was my first CCG obsession. It's a bit like MTG (explained later), what with being all about the monsters and the magic. Yu-gi-oh is simple: it's your monster vs their monsters in whatever way possible. Believe me, there are a lot of ways to obliterate the opposing monsters and whittle down the opponent's "life points" (run out of them and you lose), whether it be by magic, traps, special monster abilities, altering the metaphorical monster battle field or a strategic yet personal combination of all three. Anyway, there's much strategy involved.

Pokemon TCG. Pokemon is a bit of an interesting card game. I never really played that much, but it's fun- even though it seems the booster pack designers hate you (one random energy card per booster pack!? That hardly seems fair! Heck, I could be paying 30+ bucks just to get one psychic energy for my deck that needs at least 15 energy cards to survive!). Though I guess the poor souls need the money (hehe, I can't stop laughing after that one). Anyway, the game's goal centers around either wiping out all your opponent's active pokemon (very tough, since they can summon basic pokemon without almost any restriction), or defeating enough of them to where you can grab all of the opponent's "prize cards". This is all done by controlling your active Pokemon, of course (in lieu of the Pokemon games). Overall a fun game, but it never seemed to quite click with me completely.

Magic: the Gathering. This is one awesome game, and my current CCG obsession. I think it deserves the title of "collectable card game" more than any other because one of the main points is to collect the cards, what with many of them being promotional, tokens, extended art, and having a fleshed out rarity system, so that you can show them off to your friends (who might feel the need to kick your butt in a game of theirs due to your gloating- believe me, envy/jealousy is a very... driving force). Writing all that, I forgot to mention how in-depth and fun the game system is. Basically, you use some land cards (much like Pokemon's energy cards), and once you've accumulated enough "Mana" from those, you may summon a creature (or in some cases use one's Mana-costing abilities). This creature may then attack the opponent's Life (like Life Points in Yu-gi-oh, see a trend here?). However, the opponent may choose to block with a creature they summoned the their "zone". That creature is then destroyed, barely scratched or some other after effect. This is where the abilities come in. It's very hard to find a creature without at least one I-am-only-blockable-by-X/Deal X damage to Y/target card gets X/X until Y/so many others (X and Y would be whatever the abilities state) The funny thing is that the abilities of the cards often overlap the actual MTG system's rules. Now, after all that, do you see what I mean by in-depth? I thought so.

(Ratings for each game explained will likely be added later.)

Photo from http://flickr.com/photos/lisa_yarost/; creative commons license.

It was Edain McCoy who first called my attention to it—the link between the current economy and prosperity spells.  I honestly had not noticed.  And maybe that’s a good thing.

I’d just returned from a trip to the Daytona-Orlando area where New Age shop owners talked of the current economy, of how their sales were lagging, of how other stores had reduced their hours to scale down expenses proportionately to their revenue.  I’d made a special side trip to a particular store in the area, but I bought very little—a bottle of a hard-to-find oil to use in Willow Moonlight’s Initiation, some incense like the kind Brian used to burn when he lived with us, a wolf totem magnet for Scorpio, and a fridge sticker for Shannon that says “Jesus Saves, Buddha Recycles.”  I think I broke a $10 bill, which was less than I paid for lunch for  Shannon and me across the street from the store. 

No books, no jewelry, no crystals.  Just small stuff.    There was an uneasy sense of something other than abundance in the store.  These are, by recent standards, not abundant times.

But what WAS selling and selling well was green candles (with gold and silver close behind) and certain oils and incense, patchouli in particular.  These are all associated with drawing money and physical wealth.   

When times get harder financially, people deal in the same way they deal with any difficulties--and for spiritual people, that includes prayers, rituals, and spells. 

For most, they are not growing their money but growing the state of worry. I’ve been doing reasonably well with focusing on prosperity and all the wonderful things I do have, with a few exceptions.  The last time I caught myself worrying about small change, someone broke into my car in my garage and stole the loose change that Aislinn and I had been saving for a  special trip.  

There’s nothing like dating someone whose financial assets are significantly less to start to see your own wealth through someone else’s eyes and realize how much you really do have, especially when you’ve been comparing yourself unfavorably to financially successful friends who earn mid-six-figure incomes.   So I am focusing on the fact that I live comfortably and have all I need and enough to share with the people I love.  I am still careful with my money, but I’m also happy and aware of what it does for me.  It’s better for my blood pressure than fretting about rising taxes, rising expenses, rising bile.  

When fear of the economy becomes rampant—and for many, it is—there comes a desperation with every match set to the wick of a green candle dressed in patchouli oil and inscribed with symbols for wealth.  That desperation becomes part of the energy that is increased, and any gains are small ones.  Instead, I think it’s best to begin a prosperity ritual with a few moments of enjoyable consideration of all the things we do have and let that energy of “having it already” start to spread.   It’s often referred to as a gratitude list, but regardless of the buzzwords, it still works because counting your blessings gets you into the right “mood” to be prosperous.

So I've been meaning to write this post since the prerelease, but with one thing and another, it didn't get done. So me, Adam and Garrett went to Sioux Falls on PR weekend to try out our luck at Shards Sealed and (probably just me) hitting on the Legion Events girl. One worked out better than the other. After me and Adam were the 26th and 27th person to sign up, we ended up not having to wait very long at all for the second pod to start. Here's the deck I opened:

The first thing I noticed about this pool is that it has an Empyrial Archangel, which is one of the sexiest limited cards I've seen in a while. It seems to play well, too. the second thing I noticed is that it has friggin 2 o-rings and roughly one million other ways to remove creatures. Seeing this, I looked through the deck for tough, hard to remove creatures, since the combination of a ton of removal and hard-to-remove creatures is my very favorite and most productive theme for a sealed deck of all time. Happily, I got lucky in that department, too, with Waveskimmer Aven, Bull Cerodon, and Yoked Plowbeast. Oh, and with all of those beefy spells, Manaplasm is looking pretty darn good also. So, my pool looked good and I was going to get to play the new version of my favorite sealed deck. Awesome. Here's the deck I built:

Creatures: 1 Bull Cerodon 1 Cloudheath Drake 1 Druid of the Anima 1 Elvish Visionary 1 Empyrial Archangel 1 Manaplasm 1 Qasali Ambusher 2 Waveskimmer Aven 1 Yoked Plowbeast

Spells: 2 Call to Heel 1 Gift of the Gargantuan 1 Naya Charm 1 Resounding Roar 1 Resounding Silence 2 Resounding Thunder 1 Soul’s Fire 2 Oblivion Ring 1 Obelisk of Bant 1 Obelisk of Naya

Lands: 2 Jund Panorama 1 Bant Panorama 1 Island 2 Mountain 7 Forest 4 Plains

The thing I absolutely love about this deck is that it doesn't have any filler at all. Each card is in there because I wanted it to be. It doesn't play any early drops that don't replace themselves or accelerate into the huge beasts, and it has 4 friggin resounding supercyclers, so basically the plan is to get up to 8 mana and win.

Round 1 vs Brooke

Brooke was kind of cute, and as a rule cute girls aren't good at magic. Luckily, Brooke wasn't much of an exception to that rule. Unluckily, her boyfriend was seated next to us. Anyhow, both games followed the plan as my big dorks trumped her small dorks and then I hit 8 mana and won.

Round 2 vs Bleeker

Bleeker's a good kid, and I didn't especially like that we were paired so soon after I got lucky with swans against him just the night before. I got to 8 mana and won. I'm pretty sure he was the first victim of Empyrial Archangel in South Dakota. You're #1, you're #1!

Round 3 vs Shawn Karber

Shawn Had a ridiculous deck with Broodmate Dragon, Flameblast Dragon, and a ton of little aggressive dorks as is his constant limited wont. We split the first two games due to mana screw and I drew all of the removal in my deck the third game and cycled all 4 supercyclers, winning the game with 2 cards left in my library. He did his characteristic analysis of every match he loses against me including careful insight into the nature of luck.

Round 4 vs Nick Gau

I've played Nick quite a lot and I kind of end up playing dream spoiler for him a lot, the last time being at the Watertown GPT. He’s a good player and I respect him, but he doesn’t seem to be on his best game against me. He couldn’t handle my fifteen billion removal spells and died to shrouded angel destruction both games.

This format rules, and there are a lot of PTQs in the area this season, so let’s all get building and see if we can get someone Q’d.

]]> http://siewyik.wordpress.com/?p=23 Tue, 07 Oct 2008 20:16:09 +0000 siewyik http://siewyik.ca.wordpress.com/2008/10/08/mathemagic/ When mathematics combines with magic

Of all the series that got fansubbed till now this one is definitely my favourite. A highschool kid who has a special power (to nullify all other powers) meets a little (also quite abusive) girl, a nun, which carries magic books. The nun doesn't seem to have any special powers till now (besides "carrying" the books with her), so I am very curious how they will win the battles with the many magicians who want to steal the magic books.

Other thing to not, the story takes place in "School city". A whole city with millions of students from primary(?) school till university. Nice tad of comedy in it as well.

You know the kind, you've seen them before but this time they come in a different package.  Well, she was going through one of those.  Then she said, "But I'm happy to report a huge breakthrough!" 

This morning while walking through the Vermont woods she discovered that the situation she thought was destroying her was actually providing an enormous window for joy and magic.  Imagine that!

Now imagine this-- every situation in your life is showing you something.  Every event, every person, every action in your life is a window for the highest and best to come through.  If you aren't getting what you want out of life- if life is mirroring something other than what you thought you wanted- take another look.  What miraculous and beneficial joy is life actually offering you instead? 

Maybe what you thought you wanted wasn't the best you could have.  Maybe circumstances haven't been going your way because you've been shooting too low.  Maybe it's not that you just want your bills paid, it's that you want to live in richness and beauty.  Perhaps what you really needed was space for more magic to come in, and not another predetermined situation. 

Think about it-- and discover again, what joy the circumstances in your life are truly offering you.

Learning Magic Tricks

There are a lot of resources that we can get if we want to learn more about magic tricks and by learning it we need to put an extended amount of time and we need to also put our dedication into it as well. Magic tricks is an interesting subject so learning it can really be rewarding, here are some resources that you can look at if you want to learn magic tricks:

Books – Well, they say it is the most effective resource for magic tricks, it is kind of old school but every magician have read a book or two, so when you hear the saying “every trick in the book” well that just says a lot about the books. Magicians always look for the books in the book store or library to learn a thing or two about magic. Books are still a valid resource for anything magic.

DVD/VCD video Tutorials – Well in our world now, there are a lot of things that comes into trends and now everything is well documented in videos. Whether its cooking tutorials, graphic designs, basketball drills, etc. everything is in VCDs and DVDs so with that being said, magic tricks can also be learned by buying this tutorials, although some might argue that most of these tutorials are just from the books, it is still great to see a visual of the tricks so that it can be learned fast.

Internet Websites – There are some quality websites that can be your friend with learning magic tricks, there are some streaming videos, article tips and others that can really be helpful to you. Learning magic tricks can be hard but as long as you’re learning the tricks from a website or you’ll get a walkthrough and you can interact with people through forums as well.

There are a lot of ways to learn magic, you just have to be patient with it when you are on the verge of learning because, for magic tricks, patience is still a virtue you should remember that.

Jron Magcale
http://magichutonline.com

La semana que viene contaremos nuevamente con la visita de nuestro amigo Pac que viene a ampliar lo que nos estuvo adelantando la ultima vez de wargames.

Por otro lado en breve estaremos contando con nuestro propio dominio y todo el cambio de maquillaje necesario para que el blog tenga la pinta que se merece ;)

Agradecemos a todos que nos sigan escuchando todos los fines de semana y por internet.

Les dejo el ultimo programa emitido ^^

Buena Semana para todos =)

Sayonara!

[Audio http://blip.tv/file/get/Bishoujosenshi-ProgramaN5DeGuerrerosDelUniverso893.MP3]

Como siempre, para descargar has click en el link de descarga =)
Programa 04-10-08.MP3 - Bishoujo Senshi

I know it may seem strange that with my large-scale illusion show to be saying this, but simplicity and a minimalist approach is the best way to go about producing a performance. 

I mean this in a technical way (putting together components) as opposed to a performance aspect. Many times, I lay out what I want to accomplish when organizing a performance or training program and ask myself: "What is the most efficient way to do this?" And in this question lies the answer. I crystallize everything to the essential and do not become obsessive. I am, by nature, an over-achiever as opposed to a perfectionist.

I try to produce things in the moment and do not worry if something unnecessary is perfect. I know what the audience sees and what matters most in producing a magic routine. It's not to say, though, that I never tweak a bit - or try alot. I'm always revamping routines. Likewise, I do not make my show staff jump through any unnecessary hoops when I train them. I think another good phrase that sums up how I produce magic is: "don't make things harder than they need to be." I always run this idea through my head when I begin to obsess over a routine.

Some food for thought, Sammy   

No, it's not Kansas anymore, Dorothy.

Do your deer in the headlights impression and then harden the f up. (Thanks to Razzbuffnik for posting this hilarious video by Australian, Ronnie Johns, months ago)

No, it's not Kansas anymore-- it's Cumberland, Rhode Island.  They have straw men in the fields who don't talk or walk.

There is no wizard, but there is magic here.

Somewhere.

I'm busy hardening the f up right at the moment but I'll let you know when I find it.

©Pat Coakley 2008

PHOTOGRAPHS CANNOT BE USED WITHOUT WRITTEN PERMISSION

I know that there are four types of people in the world. I know everyone fits into one of them. I might not know how, or why, but I know they do and I also know what I am and why.

I'm the kind of person who wakes up in the morning thinking of love. I'm quick to gain consciousness, I do very easily, but there is that moment between waking and sleep. My dreams are fantasy, wishful thinking, nightmare. My reality is school, and thinking, and logic. That instant before I wake, I don't realize that people die. For a moment I think I, myself, am dead, and all those wonderful things people say about their dead to make themselves feel better are true. I believe in magic in my dreams. I believe that people are good at heart, and there is no such thing as evil except the absence of love. That's why I wake up thinking of love. Because that's what I want to believe in.

Sometimes I think I'm a cynic. I recognize that my life is not my own, and never has been. But that's logic, and the mind has no need for logic like it does for faith.

That's the second kind of person. The person who wakes up from dreaming about the past, what is rather than what might or could still be. And after that moment of sleepiness fades they are thinking their thoughts with reason rather than abandon. Imagination.

I read a book once; fiction, about faeries. A lot of people would scoff at wanting to believe in such things, but really they're just as true as anything else. But that's another story. In this book, it explained that people who grow up in this world learn to filter out such things as magic. From the beginning, the only notions they ever learn are in books, and no one gives credence to books in the "real" world. There are the people who develop that filter. And the people who don't. The dreamers.

My friend told me that most adults lose sight of their dreams because they've lived too long. Most of them don't hold faith that the inexplicable even exists because either science or peer pressure has taught them that everything is logical.

I wonder, then, if it can also be the other way around. I know it must be rare, but can someone who grew up a cynic fall into their dreams? Like a trapdoor of sorts. A tearing down of the wall. That's the fourth kind of person, after those who lose sight. Those who are born blind only to see for the first time.

I live in a world where dragons are people and people are made of magic. Sometimes I see this world, like ideas in the form of scenes rushing through my head and isn't it beautiful, the imagination. It is the world of artists and writers, and dreamers and those with too much hope or no hope at all. A refuge, a haven, a shelter for the battered and hungry. Some find religion. It's right down the street, but that's not where these doors lead.

Every day I wake up and I pack my bag for school. I walk out the door and test the air, and I look around for all the things I know will never exist. But I look. Just in case. And even when I never meet an elf, or talk to an owl or start fires with a flick of my fingers, I go to sleep dreaming those dreams and that is my world.

However while describing fate and magic using linear equations today I realized how far I've come, and how big of a fraud I am. I have absolutely no idea whether the math I'm using is right, illustrating parallel fates using slope-intercept form for parallel lines which states that as long as two lines have the same slopes and different y intercepts they will be parallel. So for example y=x+2 and y=x-2 are parallel since the slope m of both is assumed to be 1.  Yes you heard it here first kids, y sub1 = x +2 is the equation that represents fate if fate is linear.

I can't be the only one who ever thought of illustrating with this kind of example can I? Maybe you cool kids who can do polymetric graphing or whatever the hell it is like to represent fate in 3-D?

"It is nearer the truth to say that Gnosticism expresses a specific religious experience, an experience that does not lend itself to the language of theology or philosophy, but which is instead closely affinitized to, and expresses itself through, the medium of myth. Indeed, one finds that most Gnostic scriptures take the forms of myths. The term “myth” should not here be taken to mean “stories that are not true”, but rather, that the truths embodied in these myths are of a different order from the dogmas of theology or the statements of philosophy." [1]

...the truths embodied in these myths. While I do not subscribe to any religion, I think this phrase explains the worth I see in them. I wanted to carry over the same type of view into my own story. It is a myth and there are memes of thought within it that explain my views in much the same way a religious text could.

Gnosticism as a religion probably sprung up in conquered cities and lands as an attempt to reconcile contradictory ideas where the ruling religion was made dominant over the lesser, more local beliefs. Being an amalgamation of various schools of thought it allows for many interpretations, and as explained above, the scriptures written were intended to be vessels for eternal memes. It sheds the weight of theology and instead concentrates on the truths of higher realms and presences.

To look at this in a more secular light; even science is guided by intuition. Current quantum physics is now so far advanced that some of our theories cannot be tested with the available technology. But that doesn't stop scientists who are confident that they are getting closer than ever to outlining a universal theory of everything. Science is on the brink of better understanding things such as the Big Bang, dark fields of matter, and hidden dimensions within string theory, mostly by using our skills of reason and logic and building upon rules that we can know and test.

I wanted to incorporate some of these patterns of reality into my own story. The magic system in my book is based along the lines of gnosis. Like any good religion, the story behind Gnosticism is chocked full of good themes, characters, plot lines and areas of contemplation. So I stole some of them and used them in the flexible way they are presented to tell a story.

Here is a very rough synopsis of Gnostic myth. If this doesn't sound like the plot to a science fiction story then I don't know what does:

The Highest God emanated into numerous lesser gods called Aeons, who were created in male/female pairs. Together, the Aeons made up the entire pleroma of the Divine First. But when one Aeon named Sophia emanated without her male counterpart, the Demiurge was born. The Demiurge then went on to create a world in his image, either ignorant of or in spite of the Monad. That world that was created is the physical world that we live in and know. Some of us humans have the ability to connect with the larger spiritual world through the internal knowledge we have left over from the original first move. These gifted ones are able to transcend the physical and have direct contact with the spiritual, resulting in a reconnection with the Monad and a state of enlightenment.

The Gnostics were fond of saying, "faith is for the many, knowledge is for the few". What they didn't mean was that knowledge was to be withheld from the populous (remember the uppermost definition of what gnosis meant to the Greeks), but that that most of the populous would never be capable of true transcendence.

Again, I carry this idea over into my own story and make this divine intuition my "magic". It is not available to all, and purports to give an air of mystery and power granted by gods. Perfect fantasy stuff.

Later on I want to look at some of the similarities between Gnosticism and other religions. Also look at it within the realms of science and general quantum theories so as to give a little more insight on how these same memes of eternal truth cross over into other parts of our knowledge and understanding of the world. Perhaps be more specific as to how some of these themes cross over and take root in my own tale.

If you want a more thorough description on the Gnostic world view, I suggest you go here or just go here and keep reading.

[1] The Gnosis Archive