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Timothy S. McTaggart's Archived Blogs Jan-Mar 07

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I'm in the midst of migrating these web pages and I'm about to either rip my hair out or practice martial arts on the computer. More later if I haven't been hauled off yet.

Although I said the previous blog would be my last blog in my web space on members.cox.net, I'm trying a test blog here to see if I can still post them before I have to move. Thank you.

If you saw the bit of artwork at the top of my home page, you will know I'm a little irked at the new cable company SuddenLink which bought out Cox. With two days notice (!!!) via some card in the mail, I get to migrate all this stuff from the members.cox.net area to some similar place with SuddenLink. No wait, I did also get a recorded message from them TODAY on the answer machine about the same thing. So I finally got hold of a technician this afternoon after going through the voice menu from hell and repeating sales pitch on all the great crap SuddenLink wants us to subscribe to. Bleah!! Between that and these sanguine female voices assuring me that I am getting exceptional service (uh huh), I began to consider moving to West Central Wireless' Net Jet if the apartment folks will let me put up an antenna. When I did finally get hold of a technician, I gave him an earful. I also asked him if or when we get to migrate our E-mail addresses over, since I suspected that was also coming. Turns out the E-mail address change happens in the same timeframe, the end of this month! So these clowns have a bit of work to do if they expect to get back into my good graces. So this will probably be my last post on this blog under the members.cox.net area. Where will we be after that? That is the question. You can probably do a yahoo search for my name and the word 'blogs' and eventually find out where this drivel will end up. If SuddenLink (SuddenFink?...) manages to make amends, I'll move this over to their members area, if not, hello WCW! (since I already have my cell phone account with them and they've had mostly good service). Stay tuned.

For those of you who followed the link in my E-mail to a "18 Jan 07" blog entry containing my review of this controversial DVD movie called "The Secret", I obviously missed by a month. My how time flies. Subject blog is actually in my 18 Feb 07 entry, immediately below this one (these blogs are reverse chronological) so just scroll down. Now on to the subject at hand. Last week our Afghan gems collector, Mr. Gary Bowersox ( http://www.gems-afghan.com ) was scheduled to be here in San Angelo at a local jewelry store. He comes by here this time of year and I normally drop by to say salaam aleikum and get the latest and greatest on his most recent visit to Afghanistan. This apparently wasn't meant to be this time as Gary was injured in a vehicle accident the Sunday before. It didn't exactly make my Monday when I called the jewelry store asking about his schedule and found out what had happened. He's been in the hospital a little more than a week and had just underwent surgery. It sounds like a bit of a recovery like at least a few months, but the last report I heard was that the doc was expecting a 100% recovery. Sounds like his normal tour with his gems through many cities is on hold for awhile. So far I've not seen any word about this on his website (at aforementioned link). Today I called and actually got to talk to Gary and his wife for a few minutes, and I wished Gary all the best for a speedy recovery. I'll post as I find out more.

This one may get a little personal to share blogwise, but here goes. I went and watched a DVD of a film called "The Secret" at a local church yesterday evening. It's a documentary (may need quotes around that word) made last year, directed by Drew Heriot. I had heard about it earlier in the week and had even gone out and checked reviews on the web. Seems most of the reviewers either loved or hated it. One reviewer of the latter cagegory even went as far as to assign the 'snake oil' label. So with curiosity thus piqued, I opted to go see it. This may have been out of pure cussedness on my part since I was also being told by someone not to waste my time. Score one for my cussedness though. I did carry a decided grain of salt as I went in to watch this. To sum it up, this DVD was a hodgepodge. Some parts reeked of infomercial with grand production value, and some parts were of genuine metaphysical, spiritual and practical use. The use of mental imaging to achieve material wealth (such as the envisioning of big houses, cars, obese prosperity etc) is well and fine, but at best misdirected in my humble opinion. I don't think that's why I'm here, at least. So my grain of salt was well justified in some places. "The Secret" was punctuated with humorous bits in many places, like the sudden appearance of a trumpeting elephant in someone's living room right after this person had just contemplated a photo of an elephant. That was to illustrate the concept that all thoughts are real and can develop into real things, mind being the builder. Unfortunately for this person, the elephant also left some very real dung. So, given the dung and all, I am somewhat literate with the metaphysical and quantum physics concepts that were presented, and I think this film was attempting to present them to a more mainstream audience. There was lots of production value as well as a somewhat repetitive cinematic orchestral score which made dialogue hard to hear in places. Some parts of this film were downright hokey, which inspired laughter from most of us. But as I said, some good points were raised which in my case helped to blow the dust off things I'd studied a few years back. One of these points I'd nearly forgotten was that if we are presented with something bad, that we don't spend overt amounts of energy on it, even in trying to get rid of it, as this merely lends energy and empowerment to this bad thing. Think of a hypochondriac's lot. Another case in point on an institutional level would be the devil and the Baptist church's attempts to eradicate same. Or on an even more grandiose scale, our "War on Terror"; this is serving well to encourage the terrorists. The film profiles several success stories though. So, to repeat, the main message is that "mind is the builder" and that we must persist on what we want to build with it. We are told that we need to start with a vision of what we want to do, where we want to be in life and so forth. So this leaves me with my task at hand, since I have not really defined much of this vision (what do I want to do when I grow up, if you will). I have defined some parts, such as my involvement with music, and that has gone well. To a lesser extent, I have defined what I want career wise and I do have a good job, but it could stand some improvement. Regarding relationships, I have not really defined what I want, so a significant other and I have stagnated as a result. Over all, I have work to do to find this life vision, and I need to do that before I can continue. Despite the numerous shortcomings of "The Secret", it has served to bring that back to front and center for me. It's now up to me for the next step.

The Funky Munky played a great gig at Little River Club a couple of Fridays ago. We are definitely picking up a following. It's good to have a gig like that and see the crowd enjoying the music. Kind of what it's all about to me. The crowd is getting to know our repertoire and we were getting a response at the beginning of several songs. Probably topping the night for me was when we played Purple Rain (which Heather sang) which sounded really great. I don't get goose bumps often, either playing or watching gigs, but that one elicited some. Standing ovation at the end of the song too. Now I'm thinking about Prince singing that one during the halftime show of a very wet super bowl last night. I wonder if they tried to color the rain purple. It was good to see the Colts win that one, especially given the oafishness of Chicago fans. I don't hold any regard for all these Chicago fans that failed to condemn this stupid sign someone brought to their playoff game with New Orleans. This sign read: "Finishing what Katrina Started". That's not funny even for my warped sense of humor. Okay, on to other damaged things, such as the aforementioned gate. Dad and I replaced it yesterday, but didn't get all the automatic gate opener stuff reinstalled yet. Last note here, the horrible... I mean horror movie "Hoboken Hollow" opened Friday at some place in Austin, called the Galaxy Theater. Am still waiting to see if it makes it up here. More later.

Once again it has been over a month since my last blog, and I just now archived the stuff from the previous quarter. Obviously not a big priority with me for the moment, with apologies extended to all (?) my loyal readers. So I didn't have any blogs on our water outrage (outage) here in San Angelo when a large pipe burst last month. I had low pressure for a couple days and then about one day of no water, after which it returned with normal pressure. Same drill as when I have plumbing outages in Menard (due to frozen or otherwise broken pipes) but I wasn't expecting to have to do that here. The city is going to be busy for awhile sorting that one out. Okay, next topic. Although I turned off the Christmas lights on my Menard house a couple weeks ago, I finally took them down today. While in Menard, I also examined the remains of the highway gate at the parents' ranch. Subject gate lost in an encounter with a rear quarter panel of a pickup truck when the fancy gate opener attempted to close the gate prematurely. I got the thing straightened out and hung back up on the hinges, but it's too bent up to reconnect to the gate opener. So that's a project for the next weekend or so, weather permitting. The Funky Munky has been going well. We played our New Year's gig at Bentwood again and this time didn't have the electricity go off in mid song. Our fearless leader is expecting big things to happen with the band in the New Year. One thing already, I understand that we have top billing one night at the riverstage this spring for San Angelo's revived Fiesta Del Concho (I don't remember what they call it now). I think we'll need to get in some practices. Then there's the weather. For some reason it decided to be wintertime for most of last week. It actually snowed about an inch here (and nearly 5 inches at the parents' ranch). More snow is forecasted. So watch this space for more snow (are we sure that's what this is? -I thought it was brown) and other things. Later.

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