Monthly Archives: January 2006

Promo Time

So my life just keeps changing, sometimes for the worse, sometimes for the better. I don't know which way it spun today, but what can I say and do but try and make the best of it. As I mentioned on ModBlog, tomorrow I lug four hundred pounds (yes, really) across three countries and get “home” at midnight. It's not really home, but at the same time, Toronto is always home because I lived there for so long and have so many friends there. And really, right now that's very important to me.

In any case, I wanted to mention Shawn Porter's second annual Scar Wars (hello, lawsuit) event. Like last year, he's got two excellent shirts that he's selling to raise funds (update: err, sorry, the first one is for sale, the second one is the staff shirt; click for details). Check them out:

The event is February 10th to the 12th in Los Angeles and as I understand it there are still spaces available if you want to have work done by some of the best scarification artists in the world. You can click here for the BME events page, or visit scarwars.net for more information. There's also a gallery of work (and shenanigans) from last year's Scar Wars convention on BME.

Well, I suppose I'll talk to you all next on Saturday.

The end is nigh?

I wanted to briefly expand on the Lovelock Gaia-death article that I linked a few days ago. I support a literal and unified Gaia theory, meaning that I believe that the Earth is a singular lifeform and that we are all small pieces of that life form. I believe that we are not men, but are in fact the Nephilim — the combined seed of the sons of God (microbial life) and the daughters of men (complex multi-cellular life — including plants).

I also believe that for the first time in the history of this planet, that alliance between “God” (the singular microbial ecosystem) and “man” (creatures which we falsely perceive as individuals) is severely threatened. Let me expand on what must at first seem rather whacky by quickly running through a quick set of facts and observations:

  • The surfacing and die-off of deep water animals like the coelacanth strongly implies a serious imbalance in the deep ocean ecosystem, an ecosystem we know very little about — and combined with over-fishing the oceans are already severely crippled.
  • The ocean is at this point polluted enough that there are many places far from land where you can't swim without emerging covered in plastic. These are persistent (ie. they don't break down) substances that are often hormonally active. The ocean fuels the land, and this planet is 2/3 ocean. Destroy it and we destroy the rest.
  • Our freshwater ecosystems are also severely depleted and polluted; so much so that many people believe that water wars will far outshadow any upcoming and ongoing wars for oil.
  • Food preservation techniques like root cellars and other low-tech methods that kept humans alive through the winters until fifty to a hundred years ago no longer work in many cases. Food rots much faster. That is, the microbial ecosystem — another one that we know almost nothing about — is either failing or radically changing, and incredibly quickly.
  • Microbial biomass makes up the majority of life on the planet.
  • If you look at the cells in the “human” body, the vast majority (over 90%) do not contain human DNA; they are microbial symbiotes. Most of what we are is not human. These microbes predate humanity and sometimes live between hosts. If you want to come up with a physical explanation for the soul and the paranormal, this is it.
  • This microbial life has persistent memory (using, as far as we know, chemical signalling that is being deeply damaged by pollution) that interacts with our own memory and nervous system. Interpret the meaning of that as you wish; soul, intelligent design, even past lives can be drawn from this without having to resort to the supernatural.
  • With artificial hormones in plastics, medicines, pesticides, and so on, we are rapidly altering and sterilizing both our human and microbial selves.

I could go on, but the point is that the parts of the Earth's biosystem, whatever level of interconnectedness you buy into, is either changing quickly and radically or is outright failing. Global warming in and of itself is inconsequential in comparison to this shift.

Even without the energy and population crisis that we are currently facing, things look quite grim. The combined effect of killing the microbial life in ourselves, in the soil, in the ocean, and in the air, is in effect killing God and killing our souls. I mean that in an entirely non-spiritual and non-supernatural way. I don't believe you need to have “blind faith” or religion to have an omnipresent entity — these tiny beings are the singular life force that holds the planet together and binds us all to each other. Without them it is difficult to say exactly what we are or what we mean.

Tecate Girls

It's no secret that beer companies love using sexy girls in their commercials. Many beer companies like Budweiser and Tecate actually have “branded” girls to promote their beer as well… But I was thinking that Tecate is actually the only company that I can think of to actually put it right on the can? I certainly can't think of any other examples…

Meh… I should really spend my time thinking about things that are more productive.

JuanKi wrote to tell me that the Venezuelan beer Polar does the same, but in color… Gotta love Latin America's priorities! (Seriously, Tecate girls are way hotter than Bud girls)…

I've also gotten messages about Old Milwaukee Tall cans, Tennents, and a few others.

Narnia

When newspapers were talking about a hardcore push by Christians to go see Chronicles of Narnia, as well as boycotts by atheists, I thought it was all a little bit silly… Sure, CS Lewis was a Christian, but he always maintained that Narnia was just a fantasy tale. Well, I finally had a chance to actually see the movie yesterday, and I kind of have to agree with the “this is a Christian movie” theory as I watched it echo Biblical stories and even quote scripture on a regular basis… Maybe I know the Bible better than I should, but I think a movie is being a little obvious about its real intentions when I can say, “hey, that's Matthew 5 they're quoting”, point out which Narnia characters are which Biblical characters, and so on?

Mi Vida Loca

With my recent tattoo proving to be generally good advice that I'm doing my best to follow, I seem to be on the cusp of a series of major life changes (some good, some bad) that will neccessitate me to turn both palms toward my face on a regular basis. That said, I had a very nice day today playing with Nefarious and then going to the beach with her and Michael and Dorian where we ate and talked tech on an upcoming megaproject. I think I'm going to have to add another employee (a la Phil) to BME's roster within a few weeks but first there is some other chaos to sort out.

Well, I'm off to bug Rachel and if she doesn't want to be bugged, it's either video editing time or finishing roughing out a new magnetic implants article. Smell ya later.