Dragonball Z - Abridged

Apparently several anime series have been parodied into "abridged" series. This one from Dragonball Z had my crying my eyes out with laughter :) The voice actors are very up to par.



The Nappa-Vegeta exchange is hilarious, but nothing beats the Grand Elder of Namek.

"Naaaaail. Naaaaaail! ..... I saw a fish."

Wim

Old Spice

And now for some very MANLY commercials:

How To Trick People Into Thinking You're Good-Looking

This is some funny shit :) Although I have to admit, she does look more attractive at the end to me. I guess I can't escape the conditioning either? Still, definetely hilarious.

the Wild Lands

I am creating a new role playing campaign. It's a player-driven exploration game, set a few years after discovery of a new tropical frontier continent.

I took me months of planning, but I'm finally at a point where I can start pitching it to players...
... and the rest will have to come with experience :)

Wim

A Gnome and a Tiefling

After a long period of postponing, I'm once again buried amidst the genesis of a new fantastic world. This time I'm aiming for a role playing game that will be able to be scheduled more freely between people who have rooms to remodel, rugrats to rear, or some other aspect of this strange meta-game they call "Life" to tend to.

Since it dawned to me this is also a nice opportunity to explore the new Dungeons and Dragons 4th edition, I'm exploring the heroes and monsters that inhabits it's worlds.



At first sight I liked the tiefling for yes, hot demoness booty, but you've got to love that gnome. "Who's my minion? Who's my minion?"

Also: the Demogorgon and the Gnome, the Beholder, the Red Dragon

Wim

Play

When an archer shoots for nothing, he has all his skill.
When he shoots for a brass buckle, he is already nervous.
When he shoots for a prize of gold, he goes blind.
He sees two targets, and is out of his mind.

His skill has not changed, but the prize divides him.
He thinks more of winning than of shooting.
And the need to win drains him of power.

  -- Tranxu, Chinese sage

Extremities

This month I've been confronting some old fear. Well, maybe fear is not the correct word. It is something by which I am still afflicted, and that bothers me. These causes are few and far between these days, I want to rid myself of these remnants too.

Let me first say it's been rough. After the initial enthousiasm of having the opportunity to work through a fear wanes, I quickly descended into old patterns. It is amazing not only how much these patterns influence me behaviorally -- my voice dissapears, I feel like I constantly have to swallow, muscles tighten, selfawareness increases -- but also how many many thoughts are present. I meditate daily, but I had forgotten how easily you can mistake your thoughts for reality. And that was indeed what happened, for days on end.

The most frustrating thing to me is having the knowledge that your thoughts are unproductive and self-destructive and that the only action necessary to feel better is to see through that, but not succeeding in that very perception. This knowing but not succeeding further fuels the frustration... and thus it spirals viciously. A recurring pattern for me. The answer to this is that there is no answer. You just accept. It's still a lesson I need repeated it seems....

Now, because of some other emotional issues, I was already experiencing high and lows. What surprised me is how fast it can swing between them (a friend of mine said I had PMS :) ) sometimes switching around in half a day.

Waking today, I felt again cognitively besieged. Well, at that point, the thing is you are not aware of that. Your thoughts are your reality at that point.

The ego can be so tricky. For example if your start thinking that you want to let go of an emotion of fear, you tell yourself that's no use because you will still experience the fear and so you will still experience all the bad consequences. Of course, this in itself is also fear -- the very same one, in fact -- but you don't realize that at that moment.

Another maybe more concrete example, let's say you fear losing the validation of a person. So you tell yourself that you have to stop wanting that validation, because that will make your interaction with the person go a better... which is actually the same motivation, because the fact that you want the interaction to go better, means you need their validation.

Awareness and acceptance. It's always these two. Simple concepts, but sometimes so difficult to implement... (Or is that belief in itself making it difficult for me? :) )

Let's get back to my story. So this morning it was an Italian traffic jam in my mind. I was frantically applying all the mental solutions I knew, to no avail. I sat down and meditated three times as long as I normally do, but I slipped off 95% of the time. I didn't think I succeeded, until I noticed when I left that I still felt scared, but I actually felt good about that. I know that's a good place to be. So I just left myself there.

Now I was going to toilet (always an excellent point for reflection :) ) and I noticed how much more freedom I felt. As soon as I became aware of that I felt such an incredibly intense feeling of peace and freedom, that it was way above my normal happiness -- and I'm already a very happy dude. I breathed it in gratefully with big, long breaths.

But it just blows me off my feet how fast this changed from one extreme of being ripped apart by directionless mind chaos, to the other extreme of utter unbounded bliss. Come on, in two hours, such a swing???

I wonder if this is normal or if my growing experience is just increasing my awareness of subtle changes, as is the case when achieving expertise in a subject. And then they say women have it even more! Poor girls, you have my honest sympathy ;)

Wim

Attracted in 2010

I'm not a big fan of the law of attraction. I think it's a healthy way of thinking, but never got consistent results. But damn this week! Maybe I was doing it wrong..? Maybe I should combine it more with taking action? Because...

...while talking to a friend I realized that even now there are still a handful of people that I still react nervously to. I figured that I will work hem down to nothing in the future and BAM! One of those people reappears right in my face in my life so I can work through that.

...feel numb and bored sitting on my ass all day and want to go out, so I call a friend and BAM! It happens she was just going to party and BAM! A few minutes later another friend calls me and joins us.

... I decided I will play more sports this month and was getting info about squash lessons and BAM! A pro squash player sends me a message offering free lessons.

Wow... What more will follow? :)
Wim