Lucifer's Light, Dark, And Gray Sided Book by Lucifer Jeremy Damuel White - HTML preview

Lucifer’s Light, Dark, And Gray Sided Book

By Lucifer Jeremy Damuel White

Lucifer’s Light, Dark, And Gray Sided Book

2023 (43 A.C.) Lucifer Jeremy Damuel White

Public Domain

The Lighter Side of Religion

Religion can produce a lot of philanthropists. It leads people into having a true purpose to help the poor, the homeless, and ill. It gives people an immediate social circle to connect with, a brotherly/sisterly place. It provides focus, purpose, meaning, and growth in a prepackaged way. It brings about a larger thing in control which to depend on, to learn and grow with, through a mastery of life. It is a necessary component to life for some, which without there is no real reason to do good or be a good person. It can change criminals into entirely good, civil people. It brings people together with the cause to help. Has been the reason for so many food banks and shelters. It has brought about many establishments that help the homeless. It is in the great hope of living on and as such much meaning to life is added. There is the Buddhist that uses techniques centuries old which still work well to this day. They are taught to do well on little, and the little is greatly magnified unto them. There is the Wiccan of an adorable religion. One entirely harmless, one fun, one easy to get into. Their religion is about candles and spells, altars and a book of shadows. There are many others to choose from too. Whatever fits you best you may just find it. So many variations on any given thing in fact. I have seen myself the impact that religion has had on some. It came across like night and day to me, a person turning their entire life around– religion made them better. And that is a big point to make, that the “proof is in the pudding.” It might sound like a bunch of strange stuff to an outsider but for them it just makes them better and to them they fully understand it all through years upon years of study and practice. So those are the positive things I can say about religion.

This book is about the three sides to any given thing. The lighter side, the darker, and the gray side of things.

The Darker Side of Religion

To be honest that could take up a whole book! Then maybe I have paid more attention to what bad religion can do and has done over its more positive aspects. “No news is good news.” People are more educated towards what is bad because of things like that. Anyone who would delve further into what is good in the world and among people will find a perspective that is unique. But lets go over the darker side of religion:

        

Cults– terrible cults! Drink the poisoned cool-aid  cults. Perverted person cults. Insane leaders cults. Armed armageddon cults. Thinks he is Jesus cults. Wisest man that ever lived cults. Central-figure worship along with it. Deprivation along with it– starvation, endless dedication. It’s terrible.

Led Zeppelin once sang out “you will be a rock  and not your own.” Religion can take away your purpose and means to be yourself. You get lost in it so much that life itself is undervalued. To say the least sometimes, at the worst there are those that commit suicide over it. Then there are those madmen that bomb places over religion. How about the school teacher that scolds a student for not praying with him. The guy that basically thinks prayers are for him in actuality, though he’d never know it. Separation of Church and State is a good thing. But Christians think they can do no wrong and it is their way or the highway. Lots have died in the name of religion. The old witch burning thing but add to that guillotines, rope, and everything else. Add to that torture. They are quite hair splitters in today’s time where all things are horribly blemished to them. Yet to the average and more ordinary person things are not only fine, but have never been better!

The Gray Side of Religion

Should Churches be taxed? Sure many of them are just money grabs but many are also helpful towards communities and to tax those isn’t good. Is TV Church okay? It’s better than nothing isn’t it? It might not be the best choice but at least it is participation in some way. Let's say that you do give. Religion has taught you to give. But what if you only give to your family and friends? Could that be used against you? The gray side would mean getting into your religion with a touch of restraint. To not go too far or too little within it. To find that nice middle spot. It would be reading your Bible or whatever Holy book and not being entirely consumed by it. You would only judge when it is seriously a righteous account of something. The gray side says give to the Church but not every last dime you’ve got. It is a “just don’t drink until you are totally drunk” kind of thing. Lots of sins are curtailed through that gray mechanism. Often sin is only sin when it is in excess. If we are not overdoing it then God does not hate us. If we are then we are only disciplining ourselves in a harsh way.

So shed some shadow over it. It will be much more appealing to you to continue onward doing your best– without undoing your capability by burning yourself out.

The Lighter Side of Drugs

People who are addicted are not criminals. That is what the philanthropists say. The philanthropists are more for a thing called harm reduction. They’d give a clean needle to an addict and a place to be high where they can’t do any harm to themselves or another. Some would say that they should have to go through nothing more than rehab, that over jail or prison. Marijuana was once demonized. That is no more. So many places, areas, states, and so on, are legalizing it. Drugs could be taxed, purified, made safer, and in effect “quarantined.”

The Darker Side of Drugs

Should drugs be made legal? If they are then so many more would start using them. Those lives would be lost to them which would never have been otherwise. People who are addicted to drugs live for their high. They’d pay any price for it. They would sell their own bodies for it, female and male alike. They might risk overdose and die from them. They can produce madness and violent behavior from some. I know– I had a neighbor across the hallway in a hotel that was always pounding on things and yelling at random moments. She was a prostitute as well bringing over anyone she could. If a tenth of the world does drugs then that is a tenth that the world is missing. That is a blank space in the world that could be filled with people who work to make the world a better place. That would serve some kind of purpose and contribute. Because even the most successful person is ruined in a day over addiction.

The Gray Side of Drugs

Drugs can be helpful psychologically. Trust me, I know. I am Schizophrenic but with medication can come across as entirely ordinary. They have helped people with depression. They have helped people through panic attacks (a thing I have experienced myself.) They have helped people with pain to suffer from it no more. While some drugs are no more than a thing to get high off of, many more are produced that make life better for people. They do sometimes come at the cost of addiction. Bad people would seek them out and sell them, even antipsychotics. And while some drugs had a good intention during development unfortunately they turned out to become nothing more than drugs for a high. Drugs can be helpful at the right dose. But any drug taken at an overdose can be harmful, even very deadly. It is a not so much don’t get too drunk thing. If you take too much of whatever– headache pills, cold medicine, it’ll kill you. So we find a kind of gray balance in using them. One’s gray is not another’s gray however. The recommended dose can be exceeded by some, I suppose.

Who can possibly be more gray than the person that only takes it a little? Who can take pain killers for a while then just totally shut them off when the time comes? The same person is very gray indeed when it comes to that moderation mechanism. As for me it is hands off. I have too much of an addictive personality and am sure it would not go well with me. So I have never taken them.

The Lighter Side of Humanity

No doubt we are equipped enough to create wonderful things. We have the right amount of intelligence to take what is in the world and make incredible things out of them. Just look around and see how far we have come. We have accomplished awesome things and have done awesome things. If allowed to keep going on then we will do even more. Just think of how far along we will come in a mere century's time from now. The things we will have by that time are truly unimaginable. For better or worse we have come a long way. We have gone from straw huts to towering skyscrapers. We have gone to flight, even greater than any bird, to the moon. Video games went from highly boxy one screen things to these highly complexed things. AI is getting better and better all the time. And all the while we are striving to do good in the world while helping those in need through our science and technology.

        And we can be very compassionate. Overall we are a good species. There are some madmen, horrible people, but overall we are a gentle species. Nevermind those few in great power who would abuse it. Sooner or later they are charged for war crimes. Science and technology can be built around entertainment much of the time but I would say overall it is being used to make lives better and reduce human suffering.

        Humans have things that stretch far beyond the ordinary mentality of animals. We create music. We grind, brew, and drink coffee. We put together great teams and with great feats make excellent movies. We use language to produce books. We take inner images and turn them into physical representations (paintings.) We make technology that allows us to capture the world in an image. We have done a lot with what we were given, for sure.

The Darker Side of Humanity

A person like me could never know what causes a person to snap and kill others. Such a thing would never enter my mind. Sometimes it isn’t even from breaking in some way, just done in a sort of impulse like it was a natural thing to do and abiding its time in their life. They were always going to do such a thing. The question is sort of “when they decide to.” I do believe that some are demon possessed. You couldn't call them schizophrenic: a person of strange delusions and paranoia. No, the kind I am talking about are psychotic. There is something seriously wrong in their thinking. The demon possessed type are truly out of their minds. With the other horrible things, honestly some of them are unmentionable and incomprehensible.

There are liars and frauds, the power hungry and power abusive, the perverted and murderous, the schemer and all else. It has become a recent occurrence that people are just knocked out who were doing nothing more than standing on a sidewalk. Guy comes up and knocks them out. Person takes too long to get off the bus and is shoved. An old man died that way, and the person that did it was charged with murder (good.) People throw tantrums in a store trashing every little thing making sure to wreck it as much as possible. People shoved onto the subway.

The bad side of humanity comes from faults in the design. Stress, worry, sadness, sickness, fear, death, and so on, are things we have to deal with our whole lives. We have good days. If we are lucky we will not die early. I am 42 years old myself. I can at least say that I have made it halfway through but hopefully for many more years to come. Who knows when life will end though. We can’t even be sure of our own reality. The smart person knows that there is more to life than meets the eye. We live in a system of God’s great design.

We are not perfectly intelligent. We can be lazy, easily stressed out, in ways incapable and unwilling. For being what we are, we can struggle with sleep. For being what we are we cannot simply roam around the earth devouring what we will. We require clothing, not only because of shame but to keep warm. We need things like warmth, a home, while the birds just build nests. We cannot enjoy raw meat, it must be cooked.

        And try as we might we have not beaten the earth and what it can do to us. We cannot stop a great volcano from erupting. We fight viruses in a way that only makes them stronger, with some cures just not there despite many decades of vaccines trying to be discovered.

The Gray Side of Humanity

Sometimes people need to be corrected and need discipline. And, in one foul hit, change their ways. It is justice rendered by the individual. A thing we just cannot depend on the police for, not entirely. It might mean the difference between a person who goes on to murder or a person that simply becomes more gentle, more respectful towards others. A person who disciplines another does not do it to inflict pain. They just do so to make the person act better around others. In issues of crime and legalities this should be taken into mind. Unfortunately that is not common enough. You cannot argue that a person was foul mouthing your spouse or acting pervertedly, so you struck him. After all they pretty much have the right to say whatever they want and “there was no need for violence.”

        When humans get older they become more gray, and as such are more suitable for leadership. Let me explain: in our youth everything is wonderful. Music, movies, events, places, thrill us. Greatly so. Just a swimming pool, a theme park, can be the most incredible of things. We were highly emotional at the time. We were much more impulsive. We were always trying to find out identity, even over silly things, sometimes gang related, or some strange thing like wanting to be a vampire (I confess that was one of mine in my late teens.) We were not so mature. Nature made it that way. For the bird’s babies are kicked out of the nest. Only with humans they are always trying to leave the nest, at a certain point. So in your late teens you are always arguing and such with your parents. It would take into your late twenties, maybe unto your mid thirties, before you have finally reached a point of maturity. You know longer struggle with your identity. And things like that and others things just gray you out. After that your intelligence becomes a front row seat kind of thing, over your emotions. So then the gray side of humanity is that humans become gray. It’s no wonder to me that when I was a child I was Satanic (literally but also with my worldly nature) in my 20s I was very Christian always reading the bible. And now I honestly don’t feel like I need any of that any longer. I will just work with what I have.

        The grayness can also produce greater things from people. If we are depressed and down then we are not going to be doing much but “stuck in the bed.” If we are awake, not depressed or anything, just kind of restless, then we are motivated to go and do something. The grayness is a sort of pre-motivational thing. It is when we are not too excited to not really be getting anything done. The upper level is a place of fun and joy. It is a great place to be. A temporary place. Human beings need change to keep things good. The “season for” type of thing. What was once great food becomes over consumed and no longer enjoyed. The same song too and so on. Then comes the gray. During the gray we are not over excited or indulgent to get things done. It is more suitable as a work state. The lower state is one where you are too bored or stressed out to work. The higher is when you are just enjoying yourself. And it is the middle area of life where you get the best things done.

And I hope you see what I mean by all of this.

The Lighter Side of Life

There are some days that truly shine. There are some days much better than the others. There are a handful of days that just cannot be beat. And there is a bright day that seems like it hasn’t come in ages. Sometimes we get the greatest things out of the blue. Something unexpected comes along that we never thought we would have. Then sometimes things are in the plans and we can look forward to the holidays and our birthday. We can always depend on Friday. My mother used to take me to the store to rent a video game on the weekend while the horrible “school thing” was on pause. I guess even school had its charms in some ways though.

        We have the opportunity in life to do all we can to make our lives better. That means chasing our dreams and getting things done every day. With whatever creative thing we do and work besides, such as a good education. We largely make our lives our own and determine what they will be like. Hopefully we are not too stagnant for that. We have those who don’t like us but maybe it is because they fear us or rate us higher than them, perhaps jealous. But then we have people that really do like us. We always have our family beside us. Hopefully so. Some of us don’t. There’s always a good book, a good movie, good game, good music. A BBQ to have. A party. Something fun and creative to do. Proud building responsibilities to achieve. If life isn’t all that bad then maybe we should be grateful. Few are fortunate enough to become greatly wealthy but at least poorer people can still have some pretty good things. To think that the things of just ten years ago are now so outdated. The least TV of today is the most expensive from just a short time ago, really. I couldn’t afford a thousand dollar ring in a month’s time so I got a $500 ring one month and another $500 ring the next. As far as my hand knows it has $1000 wrapped around it.

        We have so long to get done that which we want to get done in life. So start something you are good at by your mid twenties and continue onward until your last breath. If you have done well you will have made a legacy. You will be remembered at least. Enjoy your time while you have it.

The Darker Side of Life

For some depression abounds. For some cancer comes about. Illness comes about. Some brutal attacks occur. Some go to prison for life. Some in such circumstances as that may go ten years before they hear a song they used to like, or to see a movie they so long ago enjoyed, or go ten years before they will taste BBQ ribs again, if they ever do again period. Just one mistake. Shove a person who badly annoyed you or said something nasty, they fall and bump their head and die, and you are sentenced to jail for life. That is a thing I have seen happen. Riding on an amusement park ride and some freak accident occurs that ends your life. Death is always around the corner.

Some have to do back breaking work just to feed their family and even then it is just not enough. Some lose their homes in a fire and are forced out onto the streets for a while. Some have been on the streets for decades. Some of those are either into drugs or prostitution. So many things can go wrong in life. Certainly some have it worse than others. Among the worst of things there are people in dictatorships which, upon saying one wrong thing, some simple thing they should not have said, are harshly sentenced. Think “1984” by H.G. Wells. Some have parents that think they are dictators– highly abusive. I grew up in a happy family. We went on vacations and honored birthdays and all else. What a sad thing it is though what is done to children sometimes and I would say Jesus is right: they should have their body bound with stones and thrown into the sea.

Then there are things that are bad, just not so morbid like people who just can’t stand you being happy and have to try to ruin your day. The guy that is a jerk and can’t hold his tongue. Disappointments, things you wish would happen which do not. But we should always consider how worse things can be and be happy while we still can. Even if the worst happens we may find ourselves able to endure it.

The Gray Side of Life

A day not bad but not really good either. You might not have your favorite drink but at least you have one. You may have a decent movie to watch on such a day. Not really one all that memorable but good enough. Work that day was so so. It is very much a tuesday. The week has not freshly started. Is not halfway over. Friday is almost enough there but feels hard to grasp onto. A Tuesday. Looks like it is going to rain. You can’t tell if it is going to rain but it looks that way. So you take an umbrella with you and carry it the whole way, but rain never comes and you could have just as well left that at home. You get a letter. Not from the person you most wanted a letter from but from a lesser friend. At least that’s something. With how the temperature is you can’t seem to tell if you need a sweater or not. So you go back and forth rolling up the sleeves. You slept decently the night before. Wasn’t a full rest. Wasn’t one insubstantial either.

The Lighter Side of Morality

There have been some too-minor disputes over whether “holding in your emotions” really causes them to erupt later like it is a volcano that builds up magma or something. Some say that “venting out” your emotions only teaches you to be angry. I can tell you of my own accord that things like that do make me more angry, and over sexual as well. When I hold feelings back they stay back. They do not quarrel with me to be let free. They are simply reduced while I have instead taught myself things like holding my tongue. That is self discipline. Not a psychologically harmful thing for me, not at all. In today's age such morality is looked down upon. It is sort of disliked and thrown out of the window whenever it comes up. People want the freedom to do whatever they want to. They also know that the more controversial they are the better they will do. So they abuse that by being as grotesque as possible. But I say that controversy has become a cheap thing. An every person’s thing. A thing that is quickly losing all meaning.

        Morality means being honest and as a result, trustworthy. At its best society will not have to operate on lies because of it. People can just be believed and given more consideration that way. Morality curtails perversion which is all too easily come by because of certain internet things. It means not being disrespectful towards others. It means being civil. When things do go wrong in society a moral person will not sue another for millions of dollars. That is not a solution for everyone. That only destroys the entity set up to secure peace. Morality is the doctor that does not invent problems for his patient in order to get money from him and nothing else. Morality is about fulfilling your responsibilities and living a good productive life.

The Darker Side of Morality

Morality can go too far. It can create laws that devastate a person over menial things. In some places that can be as simple as how you dress. Or what you believe if it contends with a state that has dictated what is allowed and not allowed. In such an instance simply owning a banned book will dispel you. There is that witch burning thing we all go back to in understanding these things. There was a day and age when morality was so strictly implemented that to go against it would lead to your execution, even torture. These days the power behind such people has become harmless in some areas, some nations. But they are eager and willing to stand on the corner of a street and proclaim the errors and evil of trivial sins.

Morality can take the fun out of things. Like with laws that don’t let you gamble or drink alcohol or smoke pot. Because of some people that don’t know when to stop, all must pay.  For the longest time certain religions restricted art. At one time all music in their nations was Dorian. They objected to even a simple organ being used in their churches. The bad guy slipped in. It seems to me to be so obvious, such a natural result, that music and other things would become Satanic. If that is the one thing that isn’t allowed. Knowing that such people cannot hold onto such power forever, if you’d asked me I would have said that was the perfect recipe for causing it to happen.

The Gray Side of Morality

Here is a case where the gray side shines. It brings about perfect morality, principles, and such things. It is about moderation and moderation makes just about anything harmless. Consider it wisdom on one hand and fun on the other. It is drinking but not too much. It is enjoying a good meal but not eating too much. It is to appropriate your time better towards what you do, and not so much as to cause stress. That’s how I clean. People say that is the best way to clean: to do a little here and a little there. After all it is when the mess piles up that it becomes difficult, all at once. I like the example of the person who buys a scratcher. They don’t gamble so much as to make it a costly thing, not at all. But they buy a few scratchers every month. While the odds start out small that they will win big, the odds decrease over time. So it is a sort of investment. A few years pass, maybe ten, and suddenly they get that big bucks ticket.

        It is well known that moderation makes what would be bad into something that can be managed and rendered harmless. One person lays in bed all day and another just takes a nap once a day. One of them is depressed while another is just resting a bit. People who overwork are not working well, they lose functionality. It is the “slow but steady pace.” A person in a marathon is not going to run as hard as they can for very long, they’d just exhaust themselves.

        And so the simple formula: you can do just about whatever you want to without worry, without need for any concern, so long as it is in balance and moderation.  

The Lighter Side of Science and Technology

Science and tech has been doing amazing things. And we thought TVs and radios were cool. What started out as a static energy magic trick quickly evolved into what it would become. Little new components added over time. Newly made discoveries over its most effective use. And we have become masters with it. We are blessed on this Earth with so many resources. Its  better use has been to improve lives and diminish suffering. There is no telling how far it will go. I always say that only it can create a utopia for us. No social mechanism ever has. But science and tech can accomplish those things needed for one. Such as the ability to very quickly and produce little homes– places for the homeless, and on top of that very cheap energy for all. So like 3D printers and drones doing human work in making them. They say that robotics and androids would take jobs. They say so in a negative way. And while it is so they also assume that their money will go along with it. But things like that would make things much cheaper and enable a thing like universal basic income (guaranteed income) where everyone is allotted a monthly income. That and resources opening up. Maybe someday they will have the tech to electronically discover where any given metal is. Right there, twenty feet into the ground, according to drones flying overhead.

Science and technology can reduce crime. There is another thing that people contend with sometimes. AI cameras seeing you and knowing exactly who you are. They say it invades privacy. Privacy of one’s face? Such cameras could also identify crime– would know what crime is when it sees it. Then it identifies and apprehends the culprit. Can see where a person goes from point A to point B. That would stop a lot of heinous acts. It will also reduce crime in the way that people have all they need. If people have food and good things– if they have all they need, then they will not rob them from others.

Things have a way of multiplying when it comes to it. They no longer merely add a new thing to another but begin to greatly branch out. As such that one thing equals five. We are only one step away from major changes. Such as creating solid energy, rapid food production by whatever means– even instant food, cheap (veritably free) energy, and even something like a far better battery would do a lot of good.

In a time of CDs I once thought that the new music format would come on credit card sized things. I never knew that it would be the micro SD card. A card so small, the size of a thumbnail not only holding music but entire movies. I remember playing my PlayStation and was surprised I could save 15 files. Was a little amazed by that since the Super Nintendo only gave you three save files. And powering up my PlayStation to play Final Fantasy 8 and the astonishment I felt. Now we are at the PlayStation 5 currently and the power of that is so far reaching, so far evolved. I remember when cell phones were these small flip devices that could at best show basic internet text in a cumbersome way. Yet I felt a bit proud having a phone where I could read Bram Stoker’s Dracula. And I remember Windows 95. How the best thing you could do with it is play a primitive DOS game or use the Word Processor. Now as far as book writing goes I went from paper to a mechanical typewriter, to an electronic typewriter, from Word to Docs, now able to share my work. I used to be into music writing and when music notation software came out I was right on board finally able to hear my music played by an “orchestra” and not just from my hand at the piano.

And maybe best of all is the internet. The thing that has greatly expanded our knowledge, created markets for the exact things we want, in abundance, and connected us like nothing before it.

So needless to say I have a lot of positive opinions about science and technology.

The Darker Side of Science and Technology

People use it to create drugs and those drugs are becoming both more potent and cheap at the same time. Another bad thing is a perverted person’s use of tech, such as with small cameras. God forbid anything is ever invented that sees through clothing or walls. Technology has led to guns. These days, plastic guns are made on a 3D printer. And has created the atom bomb which the whole world has to worry about now. Some say that the internet has us “zombified.” That perhaps we should be doing more than flipping around video sites all the time.

        Would androids take over the earth, enslaving us? I would say probably not. But who knows. Their intelligence could potentially be far greater than our own. Would they have the emotions needed to care though? If they are without things like hate, jealousy, even an ego, then how would they be motivated to? Then again maybe some will come about that do have emotions and an ego.

        Then there is global warming, the consequence of fossil fuels. That could someday be a serious problem.

        It is said that the human touch is lost due to technology that automates everything. There is far less of a human touch to any given thing. Things are factory produced by machines. Less work is required for any given thing. Maybe we have lost a spiritual side to life too. I would strongly argue that we have. People used to have nothing else to do but to gaze up to the nighttime sky full of awe and wonder. Enjoyment of life was beside a fire with such elaborate cooking behind it, and live music from a friend with a stringed instrument. Unless you were taken on vacations with your family to wooded areas, mountainous ones, the river, the best parts of Earth, then that whole spiritual aspect to life was never there.

        

The Gray Side of Science and Technology

Technology has spoiled us. I can speak from my own experience on that. I used to have to tape music videos on a VCR if I was ever going to see it again, when I wanted to. I went a decade that way mostly pulling from MTV or VH1, or what sparse CDs I had. I greatly desired my music videos as a result. When I was able to download music I did so all the time and for a while greatly enjoyed them. Now they are just songs heard again, again, and again. I heard a joke once in a cartoon. “Digital cable! 500 channels with nothing to watch!” That’s kind of true. When I had just a basic TV in the antenna days we only had a handful of channels but whatever was on TV we really enjoyed. Ever notice how if you just watch any given show long enough you really get into it? Besides, we had things like Saturday morning cartoons.

        And they say that the loss of video game magazines is a poor loss. It was so nice to not know something until that time of the month when magazines were issued. Whatever new thing was coming out, tricks and codes we couldn’t get otherwise, news we’d never expected, were all in its pages. But now all that information is cheap. We know what is going on at any given time. I used to like commercials for new video games. These days I just quickly skip the ad like I do for any other one.

        The same can be said of ROMS and emulators. That is, all of the old games on a PC, whatever you want. I got burnt out on those in no time. These days I’d never cheat. Cheating just spoils its value so I would rather get a mini system with pre-installed games. It is like that with music videos and me. If it is random music I enjoy it more– like on Vevo, for Roku. Otherwise I am like “nah, not this one, or that one,” over and over again. I wonder what the younger generation thinks of music now that anything and everything is at their fingertips? It seems like newer music would have lost some value. MTV and VH1 throughout the 90s would only play new music. Fortunately enough things have a way of going back to their old forms after they have evolved for some time. Such as games and movies. With movies people are going back to old ideas, old storylines, older characters, remaking it all. This is sometimes good, but sometimes a travesty.

        The gray side says that we can do less. It says we can do what we want to. It says that things are always fair, always average. It makes all things blend together. It has made what was once an awesome thing into something average. It has a tendency to do that. I have this 43 inch TV. Flatscreen, HD, ect., ect., something I never could have dreamt of having. Even after inflation I paid more for a much lesser CRT TV back when. At first looking up at this new TV it was impressive. Now? It is just as every day as a smaller TV would make me feel. You could compare it to something like your first cigarette or your first high. They say that what goes up must come down but what about the middle? You are in the middle.

        Now whatever a person makes is more dull. What was once a great feat to create has become simple to make through technology, like using a 3D printer. Even movies use notation software sometimes for their “orchestra” as they are convincing enough. And such things produce such music that would take a lot of education to have made in the past. Now AI is generating images based on text. Like a pumpkin head on horse under a full moon– then drawn! In fact one such painting by an AI one at a competition recently, much to the dismay of the other participants. And AI is beating us at chess, as worse, the game Go.

The Lighter Side of Any Day

There are days of leisure. Days where you can just watch a movie, play a video game or enjoy yourself in other ways. If you cleaned your house or room well then you can enjoy that with nothing more needed to be done. Some days you can sleep in and slowly go about enjoying a do nothing day. There are days when you have a paycheck to get cash from and places to go to spend it. There are days that come as shopping therapy for a person. Then there are holidays to enjoy with family and friends. The day when your birthday comes and you receive a present or the same with Christmas. And even if you don’t celebrate holidays then you could still appreciate it in some way or another. For me on Halloween I like to collect certain things they only sell at that time. Such as plastic pumpkin buckets and those pencils with black cats/ bats/ skeletons and bright orange erasers.

        There might be a day for you when a personal project is completed. Those days for me are after a long bout of writing coming to a completion. They could be of whatever little creative thing you have started and finished. Once it is done it is always done in cases like that. They will then truly be given life and exist on their own. Like finishing a really well put together song or even an album. There is the day after everything was taken care of. You had just got your groceries for the week and that is behind you for a little while. Or you have cleaned yourself, your clothes, your room, and can go the rest of the day happily clean.

        There is vacation time. A time when you get to enjoy the outdoors. Or maybe a theme park. Or a large lake or wherever else. Or it might just be a day that a good movie has come out and you go see it. You could spend months not caring for whatever movie was released but then suddenly something really catches your eye and you are eager to watch it. The same might go for a new book release. An author at last made a new book for their series. Or a video game or console coming out on a certain day.

        And who knows, we might be blessed with the unexpected. A call we were waiting on. Achieving something. A bad thing that turned out to be good after all. Sudden fortune perhaps. Or finally getting something we have been waiting on.

        If you are like me, I enjoy my waking moment. I do not like having to lay down for the night. I am totally able to when my body tells me to. I know sleep is necessary and I know I should take a rest. But I am always eager to get up and continue doing what I do. My first cup of iced tea, first cup of coffee, first cigarette, and so on, is really good to have. For me the best part of the day is the start. I have heard people saying the same, and others saying they prefer the afternoon or the night. For me it is the morning.

The Darker Side of Any Day

Unfortunately we are going to suffer loss in our lives. We will have loved ones that pass on. And I can think of nothing so heart breaking in a person’s life. There are days of personal illness, like having gotten sick or finding yourself in pain. Might be a few days of a toothache for a person. We forget how miserable those things are until we have them again. It stops us from being able to enjoy anything, wears us out, and makes us feel miserable. We might have times in our lives where we just don’t have any food. I am addicted to iced tea and go crazy without it. I am really sensitive towards not having certain things. For some a day can be depressing enough. Then one bad stroke of something just makes it totally worse. A whole world can be brought upside down from certain things happening such as a beloved person who dies young. They’d barely started life really. I have the strongest sympathy for a person who loses a loved one due to some evil person. To have someone they love taken from them like that deserves only the strictest of punishments.

        There are the things that are not so horrible but just sort of ruin a person’s day, or are just unpleasant, such as overdue responsibilities, or a boss who has been a bit too strict lately. The loss of a job is a bad thing. Days when you do have food, just nothing really good, because it is the end of the week. It is Sunday and Monday is looming over you: back to school or back to work. Your long vacation is about to come to an end and it won’t be until a year before you can go on another. Maybe you have found a movie you thought you’d like but it turns out bad and you are kind of stuck in the theater until it is over. Or maybe you have gotten ripped off by something that wasn’t what it said it was. One time I had a good meal lined up and the grocery store clerk forgot to put something in my bag that I bought (could even have been on purpose) so I got home and it was missing. Worse than that: I got a gold ring once and when I got it home I noticed a slit down its middle in one place. It really looked like that was a faulty molding process or something but I just couldn’t be sure of that. Did the clerk sabotage my ring? My $500 ring? I in fact take the paranoid side sometimes, too often.

The Gray Side of Any Day

There is some entertainment to it. Maybe good enough to zombie you out. Days of little thoughts and little cares. Things are just well enough to pay no mind. Maybe it is Thursday. Thursday is almost Friday. Friday is about to be there so that makes you happy. Meanwhile there may be just a little more to do but it comes by more easily than normal. You haven’t gotten your check in the mail yet but that means you can stay home another day. Work stuff was at a medium that day. Not too easy and boring but not too difficult and stressful. The weather was moderate. Not too cold nor too hot but in between. It was a morning where you weren’t in bed too long before you decided to get up. After all you knew that the day was for you, without anything too important to do: a gray day. A day that is all your own. Not a difficult time at all: free time.

        It could even be an eye of the hurricane kind of thing. Where in spite things are bad all around they are not with you. You just live in a cheap hotel and live a cheap life where people do not really have any reason at all to harm you, and you have nothing that could be taken. They look at your place and say to themselves it is just not worth it. At the same time you do not live totally poorly. Certainly not too rich either. Just a middle person. What you do have though you enjoy in full and have gratitude towards. There is no instance of taking things for granted found in you. You are a gray person.

        For you there is a little kingdom in the world, known as your room. It might be a small average place but for you a kingdom/Queendom indeed. A place with all of your things. A place where you are free to be whatever it is you want to be, doing what you wish to do, and nothing more. You don’t have an enormous amount of family and friends to deal with. Your’s is a small circle. A humble life. A good one, never too much to deal with, never too much to be without.

        Gray sided chores are more like a “little at a time” thing. It is more like a slow but steady pace sort of thing. In that way things do not pile up until they can no longer be ignored. In fact it is a good practice to decidedly do less yet do it more often. It kind of imparts a feeling of “that wasn't so bad.” It makes tending to things more habitual as a result, more of an instinct than a prerogative. If we don’t over indulge in things we will enjoy them more. A good diet tactic might be to enjoy your food more, to eat it more slowly. They say that eating slowly makes you full faster.

        Gray sided things can make life better for you overall. It is not the brightest excitement as this book will find it in “the lighter side” but it has its place. Sometimes it has a greater and more worthy place than the lighter side does. That is something that depends on the individual.

The Lighter Side of Pleasure

If the objective of mediation is to clear your mind of invasive  thoughts then a good movie is good therapy. It can be an engrossing thing where you serve as a witness to what transpires. It is totally real and true to you all the while. The same goes for video games. When I was young I was too much into video games to cause any harm. I really loved them. Just sat in my room for long hours enjoying them. In my youth they were the greatest of things. Music can be highly pleasurable too. It can cascade your mind with proud thoughts. It can serve as a visualization tool. It can rouse you emotionally. Then some prefer books and are taken away by them. The younger you are the more you enjoy them, the more you are sensitive and believing towards them. I remember on certain days in my youth The Wonderful World of Disney would play a movie on regular TV. Joy like that just kind of fades away. Look at a kitten compared to an adult cat. They have new found life, such a wonderful thing, a new experience from the void.

Pleasure early on is not a thing questioned like it is when we are older. We don’t worry about diabetes when we are kids eating sugary cereal and getting as much sugar as possible. As a teen I didn’t worry about tobacco. I was far too young to be killed by it. You can eat more without obesity. Kids just get more exercise with the normal things they do. Then you get older and start to realize that life will not go on forever and you need to tend to your health. What a bummer!

It is a good practice to enjoy your food. It is a good practice to be engaged with what you do. It is important to have faith and hope too. Let’s not doubt something that is more than likely going to happen. Let’s look forward with all surety that things will turn out as expected if we don’t have doubt that is reasonable. So let's be excited with what's to come. Let’s not over think that things will go wrong if they are not likely to. I have found that if anything does go wrong then I can deal with it more when it happens than I can if it is all just a bunch of bad speculation.

Pleasure with responsibility is a-ok. You can say it’s an art form. You can say it’s a talent. To be able to consume something, just not too much, and not the more harmful things. People really do exist that only smoke a few cigarettes a day. Three, maybe four. And people that eat good food– like fast food, yet exercise and are healthy all around. They aren’t compulsive towards it.

The Darker Side of Pleasure

Sexual perversion has been the worst bane on human existence from the beginning. What’s worse is that it is taught to be entirely natural and should be entirely free. It is said that repressing it leads to mental problems. As long as you are not fearful of hell or something like that over it then that’s not so and in fact people can control their feelings and behavior and should.

        It’s drinking too much, drugs, over gambling, and certain things that ruin not only your life but the lives around you. A drunkard can be very mean and unpredictable. A person on drugs.. I lived right across from someone who was into drugs and prostitution. She would erratically bang on the walls and on my door yelling in madness. I see people crumpled over on the sidewalk high and oblivious to life. To get high they are more than willing to rob someone or commit burglary. I lived in a type of group home where people like that would take the meat from the freezer and sell it. I’ve never taken them. I paid attention to early education and came to fear it, and fortunately had parents that never used them, and lived in a small town where it wasn’t really around.

        The pleasure of the sadist has ruined many lives and destroyed lives in the worst possible manner. They are cultivated in gangs. All around the worst things can be found: drugs, prostitution, robbery, and ill gotten gain. Due to just some “natural” pleasure they do the worst things imaginable. Some of them are so cold hearted that a person like me could never comprehend it, looking into their horrible evil faces.

        I am one of a rare kind that can talk about pleasure coming from schizophrenia. My symptoms of it lead to great euphoria that didn’t come from drugs, just from the way my brain acted. For example through grandiosity and an ego without limits. To believe the whole world was watching me. Believing that I would become a King, that even God gave music to me, and Satan. It made me entirely uninhibited. Made me think like a child. Made me act childish. Made me think of things that could bring deep personal meaning from a simple music lyric. It all came together to bring me such euphoria that I was deeply lost in music. It was all the more engaging in a dream-like way since I simply never slept while unmedicated.

        

The Gray Side of Pleasure

Booming with excitement– I’d say excitement is a cousin to anxiety. To be waiting on hands and knees for something, unable to think of other things, is a type of anxiety. I used to count the hours down and then the minutes, and even the seconds for when my money came in. Then I would go shopping at three in the morning in the all night store. Now it is a thing I do the next day. I don’t even get around to checking my mail until later in the afternoon. Am I better for it? Yeah I would say I prefer it this way. The thing is, that money meant so much to me that I would sell and pawn my things just to have more. I would never think to do that any more. I am fine to wait on the next batch of money. I have become gray towards it.

         I Don’t care for sugar to begin with anymore. I often buy a box of candy that I thought I would enjoy but don’t. Same goes for soda. I can’t believe I used to drink a 24 pack of it in a week's time. I can barely drink three a day now and not enjoy them at that. I was also chubby in my early 20s. Food was a thing I had to have all day long. My appetite is far too low and my desire for food is too, these days. I am more of a late afternoon eater but otherwise have a simple shake at most. I smoke a lot early in the day but practically none in the later half.

I can handle myself more rationally. Christmas used to be so bitter sweet. More accurately, Christmas Eve, where I just couldn’t sleep. The night before my birthday too. The last day of school. The weekend. I awaited them so much that I could not think of other things.

        When I was younger my hormones were out of control but as I have “grayed” my sex drive has diminished. It has so much in fact that I simply don’t care to date anymore. It has probably diminished quicker than usual because I have been like that for some time now. I have matured too, at last. For so long I had a bad attitude. One that would make me leave my home for another if I didn’t like the neighbors. One where I couldn’t hold my tongue. One where I was too sensitive towards insults, insults that were probably not even there most of the time. Now, whatever it is, I am perfectly able to ignore it. To just accept it as a part of life and as I am not a person to get into fights, to just let it go. I know that I have to carry myself the right way if I am not going to either go to jail or lose my housing. I love my housing. I must have done something right in my life. As such I don’t regret my past. My past brought me here to California. I lived in the poorest of places in such a poor state (New Mexico) when I just purchased a bus ticket and came to San Francisco. It was the best decision I ever made and now I live in a wonderful hotel here.

        In my age my happiness is now more intellectual. I do not so happily receive money. It is more a thing where I am relieved. Relieved that a thing is done, accomplished, over the grandness of getting something.

        I take pleasure in those more one-shot games. I call them “leisurely” video games. The games that you play and win within a short time such as Tetris, racing games, sports games, gambling games, fishing games, and so on. What is humorous to me is that these games are often called “shovel ware” and come the cheapest.

        My emotions have grayed out. While some brim with excitement for me– that I have received something, that they are able to help me in that kind of way, I have to pretend to care. I feel like I have to pretend to be gracious and excited over it. It is a thing that is at least easier on me. That I don’t over-hope. That I don’t become devastated if something does go wrong. I do not “count my chickens before they hatch,” either. My pleasures are intellectual. The movies I watch are more intellectually engaging than thrilling. Knowing that my family might enjoy what I give them more than what I’d get myself, I am happy to be that uncle who sends gifts again and again, or that brother, or son. I have pleasure for others more than for myself.

        If there is any bad side to all of this it is in my loss of interest for music and music videos. I used to identify with them in a proud way. They used to be about me, so to speak. So I used to share my mix tapes, mix CDs, and maybe digital files later. I would watch them again and again fully enjoying them but those days are long gone. So much so that I find even listening to them sort of tedious and pointless.. Meaningless.

The Lighter Side of Giving

There are two types of homeless people. Let’s just say the right kind and wrong kind to give to. The right kind is the person who really is mentally ill. The right kind is the humble person who would not use that money on drugs. The wrong kind is the person who would go right to the drug dealer. Is not a mentally ill person. Just a person I dare to say “lazy” with a bad habit. I can attest that I was mentally ill during my homeless period, beaten up by madness, yet too proud to beg. Money was precious to me. Not so much one dollar which at best bought a small bag of peanuts. But some people gave me 5, maybe 10, and on rare occasions $20. With as much as I like iced tea at that time in my life a cup of it was a precious thing for me.

        Now that I have a home and money and everything I enjoy sending my family gifts. You either live in a family that does or doesn’t. From what I can tell most do share gifts at times, more or less. And in starting your own family I encourage it. It can be the happiest part of your children’s lives. As I often say, things matter much more to children than they do adults. It goes beyond just giving. Holidays like Christmas set an entire mood with movies and special things behind them. You know, the tree, stockings, eggnog, and so on.

        What charity would you give to? There are many to choose from. There are charities to help with just about every problem. And while so many others are helping as well, even a little money each month can be a good help. I personally think that science and technology should be funded if it solves human problems and reduces human suffering. That is a permanent solution, not a temporary one. It’s too bad that the government doesn’t fund science and technology more. They are always treating the problem instead of curing it. For example, funding artificial intelligence (crime detecting cameras), means to much cheaper energy, driverless vehicles (DWI preventative), drones, robotics, and 3D printers (fast and cheap home production for the homeless), and lung cancer cures (for smokers.) You’d think they’d at least work to make vaping safe if it isn’t already. But instead they utterly demonize it and rile people up against it.

        There is a cool thing I like about giving toys, especially action figures. That is in hand me downs, collectors, and resellers. When I see toys and video games up for sale at a flea market or online I wonder about its history. At one time this was probably a birthday gift or something. And how far it traveled. How far it traveled because of you. The action figure you bought someone has had a long life going from place to place, in one hand to another. It may even be valuable to a person. Just what s/he was looking for and eager to buy. 35 years later and a HeMan toy is still traveling from place to place or perhaps has finally found its final home. What someone paid $10 for has been resold so many times that it has earned over $100. It might even travel across the ocean in its time.

The Darker Side of Giving

I’ll not be taken by a con artist. I’ll not be taken by a cult like lecture from any person. No phone scam or email scam is going to get my money. I have witnessed first hand that it just nearly happened to my friend. Some con artist told him that he won the lottery in another state and if he were to send such an amount then he can process it and send him the winnings. My friend was left speechless by it and I could see he was brimming with excitement. Me and his father had to talk him out of it and explain what was going on. The sad thing is, this is a guy that is always giving to people. He’d deserve such a thing more than anyone. I think my most clever con was hearing from a “female soldier” in the Middle East. Much to her astonishment she found a briefcase full of money. She needed someone to sneak it out of the country, however. She just couldn’t take it on a plane or whatever. Fears for it being found. So she says to me she just needs my bank account number to put the money into, of which I could have a large sum for myself. These are pretty clever people with nothing better to do.

        I won’t be taken by a hustler either. The kind that just refuse to spend their own money on anything. They have a lucrative career conning their friends and strangers passing by. I learned to say no. Which at first was hard and kind of left me feeling self conscious in a weird way. But that got easier, easier enough to say no each and every time. It used to drive me crazy how often I would be asked for things and how in the past I allowed myself to be inclined towards it. But these people have just as much money as I do. A guy used to ask me to use my lighter. I thought if I just gave him a cheap lighter he would leave me alone for a couple of weeks. But no, I later found out he was selling them and trading them for things.

        Such people live in a constant give and take environment. You could say they share the same purse or wallet. One part of the month they are paying back and another they are going around taking. Or more like they are always asking around. Some of them say they’ll pay you back but they don't. Some make big promises they later find to be unfair. They want your lesser thing. They aren’t about to be without their better things. So for a part of the month they eat better food than you. You just get the lesser stuff since it means that you can have it all month long. But they quickly run out of money and try to take your cheaper stuff, which they should have been buying in the first place.

        Christian philanthropy was good and all in its time but the times have changed. Now we are in a sort of environment where poor people think they are special and deserve things as Christianity has made them come to be regarded that way. I do draw a line between those who are genuinely distrat and those that make a living off of begging. But for the sake of the strong in society it is important that the weak do not run all over them. Let’s face it, it is a devour/consumed world. It always was. The ant prepares for winter. The grasshopper does not. And when things go bad the grasshopper goes right to the ant.

The Gray Side of Giving

I remember that while homeless I was given a lukewarm bottle of water sometimes. And a little better but not by much, a lukewarm can of soda. I’m sorry but ‘where’s the ice? The coldness of it?’ I was given a dollar bill. Not to be ungrateful but the reality is that a dollar isn’t going to get me anything. I got caught in the rain once and really wanted to attend a Church service. After that there was a nice meal. But they sort of scolded me in the front saying I couldn’t go in that way. They said I couldn’t go in for the meal either, and just gave me a sack lunch of a peanut butter sandwich and two cookies.

        Ida slept in a shelter if it wasn’t in such an awful part of town. There is an incredibly long line too while people go in one by one. For what? A bed? What’s wrong with a bench or something? A place where other homeless gather (a camp?) But that is their fake solution. I say fake because it isn’t really one but it gains the public's support and they know it. It is a thing around just to appease the public about what is being done with the homeless. If they don’t sleep in a shelter then that is their own problem. In fact if they refuse to go to one then they are vagrants of something. Even punishable as such.

        As for me, what I truly needed was medication and mental health treatment. Schizophrenia is a very bad condition but thankfully easy to treat. The difference is night at day. Delusions or none, paranoia or none, hallucinations or none. But unfortunately you cannot “force” someone into treatment. While you are crazy you don’t know you are. To you those really weird things you believe are all true. I in fact thought that doctors transpired to lobotomize me with pills and take away my “truth.” Which was in a grandiose way the world was talking to me and observing me while I was destined to become King. Ida not have been homeless for a month if I was just treated. So to my point.. California has taken steps to place mentally ill homeless people into treatment “against their will” as some call it. They can be found and helped and the more of that the better. If a homeless person is crazy it is likely due to one of two things: drugs or Schizophrenia, and sometimes both.

        I guess George Lucas had a choice and he went with the big payoff. He sold Star Wars. It was worth an incredible amount. Later he’d be seen with regret over what was being done with it and his inability to even contribute. He didn’t have to sell his soul. He could have placed it in the public domain. If he had, just imagine where Star Wars would be. Every channel would provide it or show it far more often. Toy companies would be making toys for the franchise left and right. Video games of all sorts made, and books. New stories altogether, new movies all together. All sorts of things, flooding the market for an indefinite amount of time. In short: Star Wars would have been everywhere. And isn’t that something to celebrate and enjoy more than the money he received? If it was me I would have placed it in the public domain. But he sold his soul to Disney.

        I may have wanted a Nintendo Entertainment System in its day more than anything else. And I did get them. But I really did enjoy the cheaper Atari System and basic computer software at the time surprisingly much. Such as the Apple version of Organ Trail. Just such simple graphics appealed to my childhood wonder. I even had a lot of fun on the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles LCD game from Konami. My mother used to buy us rubber balls to play with. Flying a kite was great fun. Little cheap action figures were really fun. My parents used to get us a few toys every night we stayed at a friend or family member's house. My point is that a little can go a long way and don’t worry too much about disappointing your child with what you give them. That is, unless they are spoiled.

The Lighter Side of Relationships

For some, getting married and starting a family is an important thing, and becomes more important with age, as with how long it takes. Without it life is too lonely for them. They need someone to talk to, to watch movies with, date, and eventually form a family with. Some of them might choose to not have children at first but change their minds later. Some might say just one kid, and wind up with four. At first a relationship is at its best. Everything is still fresh and it is the beginning of something great, hopefully a long lasting love. They have something to brag about. They show off their spouse. And might soon enough bring more to the family, that is, grandchildren, nieces, and nephews.

        Although I was never married nor ever had kids, by choice, the family I was born into is very important to me. We share certain interests, certain movies, and used to play video games together. Into my mid twenties I was playing guitar hero with my siblings. Although my siblings moved on I am still in touch with them. I send all of my family gifts. Nice gifts. And get things in return such as Easter, my birthday, and Christmas.

        Me and my brother used to walk certain nights to a gas station a 15 minute walk away just to get coffee, or some other drink and a snack that I paid for. We were always watching movies and shows together, staying up late while doing so. We once nearly beat an arcade machine (Terminator 2) putting over $20 into it. As I got older I didn’t slip away from my family. Family often does, going their own way, but I didn’t.

        I did have girlfriends in my younger years. In fact one of them moved in with me when I was just 17. She was nearly 18 herself. What I enjoyed was watching movies together in our bed. Falling asleep to our favorite music. Going places. And just living and loving each other.

        For some a relationship comes from Church or a religious group. For some it is a coven– a nice idea, one where the power of magic is amplified. For some that is Wicca, a cute religion about having a crystal in your pocket. Something I wouldn’t do as it might be taken as crack. Some have their closest relationship with Jesus. His words guide their entire lives and can indeed brighten their days.

The Darker Side of Relationships

I have more bad to say about relationships than good. There came a time when I decided I would not pursue any at all. I looked into it to see what it was. I found it is bondage. It is an obligation. A responsibility. One that takes away your money. Something that controls the direction of your life. It is a person or two, or more, to take care of until they are 18. I have a jealous personality as well which isn’t any good. And the arguments, the bickering, that sometimes come and go, lead me to the choice of not getting into relationships. Call mine a selfish choice, but the best choice for me.

        I sort of consider my books to be my children. They say what I want them to. They are made just as I would have them made. They do live on, even beyond me, hopefully far beyond me. And hopefully some day in the next life I can still observe their effects over humanity.

        I do get tempted sometimes to get into a relationship. Such as with someone who shows interest in me, which happens from time to time. Having been in group homes and things like that there were times when I was around gals all the time. Some of them liked me. In a mental hospital a woman told me her husband couldn’t please her. Once a gal climbed right on top of me. But my greater nature kicked in and I didn’t do anything with them. For me not being in a relationship is kind of instinctual. It’s not in me. I am very much an asexual person.

        At most I might have a cat. And I have had hamsters before but those are just kind of boring as pets, they don’t live long, and never really get close to you. However, I can’t have any pets where I live.

        There are harmful relationships too. Ones which are abusive. Ones which must be disjointed by a civil society. There are gangs doing their dirty work as well. It actively brings in people they can abuse through drugs and prostitution. They all lead to the same hole where they belong. Unfortunately they just resurface and have been a bane on this world from the beginning.

The Gray Side of Relationships

I guess if I have any relationships it is with my readers even if I am never likely to see them (prefering to be alone) and just have to assume they exist. The word relationship to me means “to relate to” That might not quite be its literal definition but that is the one I use. I know that there are people out there just like me. Who likes the same things and all that. Instead of seeking them out I realize that if they are at all like me then they’d rather be alone too.

        Some have sorts of relationships with their movies, music, or products. Like the Nintendo fan. A thing that was especially so in its earlier days. Where a kid wanted all on offer, not just games but toys, cards, shirts, magazines, and so on. I had a pseudo relationship with the characters in certain Final Fantasy games. How thoroughly I took it real too. I felt emotions through them while playing the game from start to finish. Directors who made the movies that inspired me the most had an important impact on my life whether they know it or not. As for music some of it was like a Satanic anthem for me back in my most Satanic years, that of my teenage years. I would come to appreciate every genre however. My identity was closely felt through music videos when I was younger. Songs were once about me in ridiculous detail, something I just cannot lead myself to believe is true any longer, or ever was. I like to think that the singer is the preacher, the drummer is the marcher, and the guitarist is to rouse.

Maybe a relationship with a therapist is a gray thing. They know you more than your own family or your best friends sometimes. But they aren’t your friends or family. Sure they are friendly. Agreeable and everything. But as soon as you leave the door their next patient comes in and all the while they have their own lives to live apart from you.

Having a relationship with a pet is a gray thing. The pet cannot possibly comprehend things the way you do as a human. It is an okay relationship but humans need humans.

The Lighter Side of Gaming

Gaming can keep you out of trouble. It is a no victim hobby. It is a harmless hobby. The retro gaming and modern gaming community is a nice one to be a part of. For us there are conventions we can go to and find whatever was out there in the past, always discovering new things and finding things we didn’t know existed (like a treasure hunt.) Our collections are valuable as well. They sell for much better prices over anything else you might collect. There are the especially valuable items, the “holy grails” we might at best just be able to see at some convention.

        The creativity of the gamer can be their income. Not just for playing video games and streaming them (which is a job for many on social media) but going over their history, just rating them, maybe flipping through an old gaming magazine. There is a lot to our entertainment. There are top ten videos, worst ten, reviews, ratings, play throughs, speed running, walkthroughs, history, new things to reveal, glitches to showcase, and much more. These types of videos did not exist before the internet. But now that it does it makes up a large part of it.

        If you are into gaming then there is a treasure trove of things to find. To say the least! There are lots of games, so many per system, so many consoles from various past companies, products too like tumblers, shirts, and all else. There are video game magazines. There are the modded things, made to play any game or just given an HDMI socket. There are clone systems as well which can play an old game it is designed after. There are lots of things that can be found.

        It is an entirely innocent community. It is one that does no harm. It is a community that plays, collects, shares, and trades games and gaming products. There are competitions, famous speedrunners, and top gaming channels as our celebrities. A religion might be self-sacrificial, a gang can lead to prison, but all a gamer is doing is playing her or his games at home and sharing what they think of them.

        It can even be a person’s job. There are people who get paid lots of money through advertising on their game streaming/elaboration channels.

        It is a thing that stirs every emotion. Sometimes exciting, other times sad, sometimes nerve racking, and depending on the game a very immersive and emotional experience.

The Darker Side of Gaming

These days anything goes but there was a time when realistic and heavy violence in video games was considered a problem. So they brought ratings to them like they did with movies. There are people more sensitive than others. That will naturally act out on what they see. Not many I would say. Then there are people like me who had no time for school work, addicted to my game. Arcades were at first considered bad places for kids to be. Early on (NES days) parents were concerned about the effect of gaming and some would prohibit their children from playing them. Then the next gen system would come out and parents who paid so much for their first system were having to pay for the next. That used to be an issue among parents as well. Some kids experienced seizures due to games.

        For a time the worst video games were lazily being made. Things were being released too quickly without enough development and it ruined the game market. That was known as the 1983 video game crash. That was something dealt with by Nintendo in setting up rules that maintain the quality of games. There were the disputes with Nintendo licensing. Tengen was releasing games without one and lost in court against Nintendo, causing them to have to stop. The Game Genie however won against Nintendo.

        Bootleg games, systems and illegally duplicated software was always a problem. But it would not become so easy and rampant as it did due to the internet. Due to emulators and ROMS. Rom hacks too, and people just freely make new versions of whatever game they want to. Someone or another always finds a way to hack a system and give it free games, as downloaded via online onto an SD card.

        And the most flimsy cheapest plastic most promising boot leg system is always around to take your money. These flash carts too that say they have a thousand games on them, or something like a million, where so many are just repeats and so many are just very poorly made hacks.

The Gray Side of Gaming

As it comes to getting into the market, some things will just not do so well. Many won’t go beyond a couple of years from their start. You could be convinced that it will do well. That what you put a lot of money into will do well. But then before you know it, it is gone, and only a few games have been made for it. Some you can be more certain of than others. The big names, the ones that had been big names for some time. But “buyer beware.”

        What are the gray games? I would say that “leisurely” games are the gray games. Those which do not take a lot of time to beat and in fact can be beaten in one session. That means sports games, racing games, casino games, fishing/ hunting games, and things like wrestling games. If you want to delve further into it: it is a game where you are both hero and villain. It is a game where heavy duality is present. You could say it is a Satanic game with Christian elements. While Final Fantasy is always ripped on by Churches it is true that it is a Holy war the characters wage. With other things “gray” means “both, balance, medium, duality, dualism, and things in between two extremes.”

        The NES and SNES were gray! I don’t think it is a color that has been used for a console in some time. Although black and white has been used more, as of recently.

        I guess you could say that playing a medium and balanced amount without overdoing it is “gray gameplay.”

        In the old days we didn’t know what we were getting. As kids we based it a lot on the box art. It is even more true for video games that you shouldn’t judge a book based on its cover. But if the game was redeemable at all we deemed it, even enjoyed it, despite it being bad. Hopefully though it won't ruin our weekend. Getting a Mario educational game I was expecting to be just as good as the others in the franchise. It was often a “if I can just figure this out” sort of thing. You wouldn’t even know what to do in the game or how. The RPG fits into this well. My first RPG was Dragon Warrior for the NES. I hadn’t a clue on how to play it. I knew nothing of HP and MP, spells, and the kind of exploration it required. Equipping party members, or stat raises, I didn’t know what any of that was. I wouldn’t come to learn it all until Final Fantasy 2 (2 USA/ was 4 in Japan.)

You’d always get the average lot in renting a game, especially if you were getting them on the weekend like I did. The good ones were taken. The really good ones were only in the more expensive rental places. I sure slobbered over Super Mario Bros. 3 everytime I passed by the one place in town renting it out. They had a big sign of course and it was all the talk back then. It seems though I was always left with the medium best games. Sometimes the worst of something but I wouldn’t be fooled twice.

        For some a video game is great and for others it is awful. That is sometimes true and truer among certain games. There are games we can all agree are terrible. Then there are games that people denounce left and right while someone else really enjoys it. Sure there are people who like RPG games and those who don’t. But sometimes it is not so clear cut. Sometimes it is a game that both like the genre of but one will say it is a terrible disappointment while the other says it is the best in its franchise. I perk up when I hear someone sincerely say they dislike a game that nearly everyone else appraises. Even games most would put in their top tens but there is a rare instance that someone says they hate it and they mean it. They aren’t trying to be different in taste, they just don’t agree with the popular opinion of it. So really what’s one person’s treasure is another’s trash.

The Lighter Side of Electronics

Electronics provide comfort that could not be had without it. To be warm via an electric heater, to have our property protected at night, even just having ice when we want it or to easily brew coffee. Electronics have allowed for that. Imagine a driverless vehicle. More than just that– a driverless RV. To be able to travel wherever you want to go, nearby, or quite some ways away in an automated way. Naturally after that size is going to matter the most. The ability to just sit around and move more freely as you wish. It is on the near horizon, I predict. We used to be lost and hopeless in some instances of getting a flat tire or running out of gas. Now we have a cell phone to help us. With cell phones we can talk across the country for a cheap price. We can pull up information on whatever we want to with the internet. Knowledge is easily gotten, improved, and used. People learn more and learn faster as a result.

        They only become better and cheaper. Believe me, the TV I use today was simply not possible to even have been made when I was younger. In my early twenties I bought a 32 inch CRT TV from my uncle for $300. The thing weighed like it was a brick. The cost to ship that thing to the store must have been high. Now I have a 43” TV and yet can afford an even larger one if I wanted. This one cost me $280. Now they are coming out with AR (augmented reality) glasses which are supposed to make holographic images appear, only in eyeglass form. It is said to appear like the same thing, just done differently. As well as that they can simulate TVs that are over 100 inches long.

        When I was growing up a SNES system was $200. Games, about $60. Pac Man used to take an entire arcade cabinet to operate. Then Nintendo came out with the SNES mini which had 21 games on it– 21 of the best. Putting the past cost that would have been (even games on sale, we will say $50 each) that would have cost $1,250. The whole thing was $60 or something like that. Only took up a tiny bit of space as well. So things get cheaper and better. What does that say about inflation? Isn’t that a sort of anti-inflation? I have things that the wealthiest person even thirty years ago could have never had. There was a time when just having electricity showed your wealth. Or a fridge, a phone, a TV, or some basic thing we all have these days.

        When vaping came out they had commercials on TV. Before long however they were labeled as a tobacco product and not allowed to have commercials. In fact for a short time anyone of any age could buy them. Yet from what I hear they are much less harmful than tobacco and possibly harmless (so long as they are made the right way which usually just means are not black market products.) I would have switched to vaping myself but they were outlawed where I live. Makes me kind of feel like I was done wrong.

The Darker Side of Electronics  

I do not agree at all that porn should be available online. It has made people more perverted than they’d ever have been without it. There is a rise in sex crimes and sexual things have just become too normalized in general. I would fully support its removal. People should have better things for their life then access to this would allow.

        There is an argument that maybe live music is better. Maybe a campfire or fireplace is better. Maybe the handmade is better. Maybe taking care of nature is, and maybe fire cooked food is better than what we just microwave.  

        With humans and science things can be used for evil or for good. Someone created a gun that can be produced at home in an easy way on a 3D printer. Some people just can’t wait to get their hands on a gun and are willing to use it at any moment, entirely irregardless of the law. Maybe the future holds laser guns or something far worse than bullets.

        There are means to duplicate music, movies, and video games which, though illegal, is done so often by so many that it is impossible to stop. It is like a cat that has too many mice to deal with. Or it is like a fly. You are always trying to swat them away but they can maneuver around so damn good. They are bold people too sometimes. They just make a new version of someone else’s game altogether, such as Zelda. Or they sell ROMS on Ebay that come in a memory card. In one instance of this the guy was claiming he had a copy of every game on the card (thousands of games) so he was allowed to do so.

        

The Gray Side of Electronics

Surely we don’t live in caves anymore. The argument remains that we should get out and get some sunshine, maybe go to the park. We have lost a lot but we have gained a lot. We have email. While a handwritten letter is a thing someone could appreciate more and is a more personal thing to begin with, people email so much that the post office suffers the loss. Our things might not be hand made but at least they are better quality– in the sense of machines doing what humans cannot. Cheaper things come from that too. You can get a big TV but it isn’t before long that it is just like any other. At first you might be impressed by the screen size but before long it just isn’t impressive any more. Having whatever game you want just makes things where you find it hard to choose what to play or to stick with a game when there is so much more out there. We lost 2D graphics for a while and just about altogether lost random battles/turn based fighting in RPG games. We lost the physical versions of games too, coming with manuals, and have lost video game magazines. Yet we can find whatever information we want on them. Reviews long before we even receive them. We used to eagerly await the new magazine and see what codes we could find for our games. Now those secrets are no longer secrets, in any way.

        Are AI cameras good or bad? The kind that “invades privacy” but are able to spot a criminal– seeing where they are at, someone who possibly committed a heinous crime, who needs to be punished. AI cameras could do that. Some people complain that such a thing invades privacy, is a “1984” (H.G. Wells) sort of thing. I personally don’t understand the reasoning. We are always being recorded. It isn’t like it will be in our homes or something.

        Are androids going to take our jobs or annihilate our race? Who knows. But they could do the work for us and take our places in all things so well, in an automated no rest/tiring sort of way that it could bring about universal basic income (guaranteed income) for all. We could still work after that but it would be work done for ourselves, just what we want to do, instead of being some clerk or laborer or something.

The Lighter Side of Mentalities

Blessed be the person who takes school seriously. Who is not out at that time in their life causing harm or getting into trouble. Who would refrain from alcohol or drugs. Who would not enter into a gang. And as long as they continue to work on the education at hand they could find themselves in a good job with good pay. They are the blameless. They are the ones that know that these people in their school are not going to be their friends forever. The person who doesn’t take school seriously however will find themselves suddenly needing a job when they come of age. Not a good job either, just a regular one. That is the mentality, the perspective of, the student.

        Some are more individualistic than others. Some are people who only do good as such. They don’t bother others. They don’t come down on others for some nonsense reason. While it is known of bad people that just by bumping into them they become angry at you. There is the person that generally lives alone except for their family. Popular things of the day do not shape and form them. They come up with their own opinions without bias. They do not do foolish things. They might even live a lifetime without going to prison or even jail.

The Darker Side of Mentalities

Some people are engrossed in the ways of music. Like gangster rap. Their minds are small. They are largely hedonistic. Often animal-like. They wander around without a purpose beyond pleasure. There is the zombie type among them. They can’t really think for themselves. They don't have that capacity. Rather they roam together and live and feed off of each other as a dangerous herd would. Like an animal they can only live off of what is already there. Without a hand working for it in any way, without effort, it is a found and eaten thing, even if that means taking, defrauding, begging for, or stealing it. Their urine is dark because hydration doesn’t come to mind. They subsist off of sugary drinks. They become diabetic because of it, but do not care at all to diet healthily enough to avoid it. Likewise sexual pleasure brings them the worst of STDs, even sharing needles and whores without safeguards.

        They are the ones that leave vile messes in the bathroom. Remember, they are animal-like. It is the animal-like mentality that they have. If they could they would just drop their load wherever and whenever and sometimes do. They could be on the subway laying down like it was a bed and piss all over the floor.

        Then there is the psychopathic kind. They won’t stop until they are caught. Some just do so randomly. Others enjoy the process and conditions to it. The best thing you can do is to not go out at night, lock your doors well, and do not go to strange empty places. They have abandoned all fears of imprisonment and even the death penalty long ago. They have made up their minds and will not stop until they are caught. Some do the most horrible things imaginable.

The Gray Side of Mentalities

        

It is having an open mind. In finding a way of thinking that is not biased or conditioned by others. It’s being non sided mostly. It is applying the best moderation and “ averageration ” you can. It is the privilege to not take sides. To not act out on causes. To not hold a sign for another. To not worry about the future of who and what you are but are not, really. Rather it is being an individual who only has problems which are directed right towards them. Otherwise we don’t really care about protests or side taking which take up time and can even do us harm. We have better things in life to focus on than that.

        We will not leave out an option simply because it doesn’t fit into our side. We are not made by a type. We are not formed by Republicans or Democrats. We instead find ourselves in a way of our own. The right truth for us is our own truth. We are not bound by rules and customs to the type. As such we have an advantage which the other so foolishly forbids.

        WIth gray sidedness it is only wrong if it is wrong. It is a no promises thing. Is not born of attachment. There is the crystal rule I made: just do things the best way they are done. It is a pick and choose concept. Harmful abundance is avoided by the gray, who practice moderation. By concept it is a level headed thing.

The Lighter Side of The Past

There was a time when people looked at the nighttime sky and were filled with wonder. The world was viewed as a child would view it. We as a species have grown up and no longer looked long into the sky wondering what it was that was above us. What it was filled with. A place of gods, deities, magic, and even food could fill a person with awe. They didn’t know exactly what the Earth was full of and were always finding new things. New metals, new plants, species, and new places, great lakes, things far away that they were yet to know anything about.

        Life used to be laid out for you. These days work is usually being a clerk at a store if you don’t have an education. In the past things had to be done by hand. The working of metal, farming, making blankets, wool, being a scribe without even a typewriter, kept people occupied. It gave a person a purpose, a skill to learn and evolve over a lifetime. Life could be predictable that way. I am sure that rest came easier for them too.

And things were handmade. It is a selling point these days “hand made.” While machines produce most of the things we have today.

Every frontier was open. Imagine the time when electricity came about. That was a thing that started with fake magic done with static electricity (like a spark lighting a candle.) They found a way to store it (a battery.) It was a field that was still fresh with so much to be learned about it. Over time they made radios, records, TV, lightbulbs, motors, and so on. It must have been the most interesting new thing for so many. Even going into the early days of the home computer, that was still an open market thing. One where some would become the richest people in the world having started out creating them in their garages. Then for video games the same, a brand new thing with which to be engaged in and hopefully profit from. Like a new toy for a human being.

There were the days of the inventors. Now though, what we value most simply cannot be created in our homes. How is a person going to make a smartphone or something like that in their home? The internet itself has been well established already by what are now major companies.

        They had more time to study and I would argue they learned a lot more than a modern day scholar would, except that they knew less to begin with. Take a classical composer however, who wrote complicated and long duration music for a full orchestra. I know personally that it is a difficult thing.

The Darker Side of The Past

Laws were incredibly harsh at the time. A person could be tortured for no real reason at all. There were people inventing new and worse ways of executing people. Past humans could be very savage.

        They were riddled with diseases that they had no way of curing. They thought cutting you and allowing you to bleed was a cure (blood letting of course.) They didn’t even know it was caused by things like being unsanitary. They knew nothing of microscopic organisms. They were filthy. They had no choice. Probably more often than not they stank and that was a thing someone had to deal with. They didn’t have plumbing or showers like we do, and could not pop their clothes into a washer.

        They often starved unless they were in the upper class and in those days the lower class was truly a lower class. Sometimes they had to eat horses or random birds caught in a glue trap. Eating varment was not beyond them. And they had little means to preserve food save with salt and fermentation. No cold drinks unless they had an ice house or were in certain geographies. Things like spice, you know, cinnamon in a bottle, cost an arm and a leg.

        The temperature was difficult to control and the weather was difficult to predict. An awful thing can spur up out of nowhere leaving them defenseless.

        They didn’t have entertainment the way that we do. They didn’t have digital music, movies, video games, or anything really beyond live music.

        Things were more laborious at the time. There were simply too many responsibilities since most things had to be done by hand.

        Traveling and communication was not an easy thing to come by. If your family moved even a hundred miles away it might be a rare occasion to see them.

        It was a time where people were quite savage. With slavery, torture, harsh prison, prison labor, happenstance executions, genocide, wars, corruption, dictatorships, emperors and Kings, unlike the conditions we have today– depending on where you live in the world, anyway. In America and other democratic nations such things are unthinkable.

The Gray Side of The Past

Things become less appealing over time. At the start of a thing it is quite wonderful. I remember the days of Nintendo and the NES, perhaps through the SNES as well, but mostly the NES days, they made me a fan. You could get video game cards. All the kids loved them. The picture of their favorite character, with more games to learn about on the system. Things apart from games appearing on backpacks and clothing, cups, and whatever else. But Mario can only do so much before he has done it all and lost his way. Magazines, renting video games, boxed games with a manual, is a magic that has been lost. So things have “faded to gray.” That is no high that we may ever get again. People can still play an old video game and appreciate it– but not in every way. See, when I was playing Final Fantasy the whole thing astonished me, the newness of it and the really good graphics. Now when a person plays it there are things equal to it and the graphics just cannot be appreciated as much. Back then the graphics of Final Fantasy 6 astonished us.

It is like on a cold day how the bed and blankets are most comforting. It is like how you yearn for something you cannot have. At least you are feeling something. At least you have a thing to strive towards. Then when you do get it you will think the world of it, until it has become just another thing in your collection. Humans have a golden touch. They must turn everything into gold. They must evolve every little thing, enhancing it, adding to it, improving it. It is a restless thing. Yet people turn back to the past for its own sake. They start buying vinyl and cassette tapes again. They start to make games that are a compilation of old games. They redo movies, giving it a sequel after thirty years, and such things. And old technology is finally returned to and improved, as only we could do.

There was a time when our generation was the greatest of them. When only our time (as teenagers and young adults) mattered. The past generation tells us that they had better things, better conditions, while we doubt them entirely. Then our turn comes when the new thing arrives. We kind of quickly find that what they are doing is strange, unfamiliar. We are teenagers becoming adults and one by one our siblings are getting married and creating a family. Our parents become grandparents. Then Christmas comes when we have to celebrate it without them. “For all things there is a season, and a purpose for everything under heaven.”

When I write to my family they prefer a handwritten letter. They don’t text me and I don’t text them for any such session of quick back and forth typing. My family still has a backyard fire and enjoys it while listening to music. My mother used to like things lit with kerosene lamps. It wasn’t a party for them. Just a time to talk in the dark, only lit by one. I grew up watching the old shows of the 1960s and 1970s. My mother would have them on throughout the day and I enjoyed them too. Whatever old show existed I probably watched most of it. Once you get a thousand movies on internet TV you find it hard to find just what you want– you find it hard to make up your mind.

Internet and things make knowledge a commonly shared thing without much leaving its domain. There are old books about lost knowledge. Good knowledge. Knowledge that you cannot find elsewhere. Such as psychology, philosophy, theories, magic, and certain creative things. They are in books that people have abandoned and care nothing of. But the person who does find them and learns from them is at an advantage.

The Lighter Side of Shopping

Shopping can be good therapy. When payday is coming along then it is time to decide what you are going to buy. Things that you need, sure, but hopefully something you really want as well. Over time life just gives you more and more and what began as a small collection became a large one. Hopeful it is not all pawned away. I used to hawk my things left and rate when I was much younger– in my twenties. I hardly had anything because in a weird way I always wanted more money even though that leads you to losing everything. You won’t catch me selling my things anymore though, that was a habit I totally broke.

        It gets you out of the house. If you are like me then it is about the only thing that does. Sometimes I have a carefully made budget. Sometimes I don’t want a budget. I just want to window shop and decide what to buy when I see it, not as it is seen on paper. Sometimes it isn’t anything beyond how I feel about something, my intuition over it. Such as a snow globe. One I really like when I see it. I hadn’t had any intention at all to buy one, but I did.

        Do you spend about an hour in the department store? It’s fun to figure out just what you will get. But the biggest reward for me is when I am back at home and can kind of reflect on what I got and how helpful and useful it will be. It puts me in a happy meditative state. It is like gratitude therapy that so many practice.

        It is nice when things are on sale. It is nice when you go into the store thinking that sometimes it costs a certain amount and turns out to cost a fraction of the cost. It is nice to find new stores, new places to shop, even if we keep our main one for most of the time. Thrift stores, pawn shops, department stores, clothing, jewelry stores, or to just get food. I try not to spend too much on fast food though since once you eat it it is gone.

        Bookstores are a nice place to go. With how many are out there and how many books they contain you never know what you will find. There aren’t a lot of spoilers involving it either when you compare that to looking for a movie or something. You are sure to see all sorts of books you didn’t see until you looked in a bookstore for one.

        But the best new things are the technology behind them. Amazon shows you where the driver is via tracking. You know the moment the driver gets to the door. You know the hour or so before that time. Shows right on your phone! The leisureliness of shopping online is also something nice. So is the vast selection we have now that we can buy online. No matter how picky our tastes are, we can find what we are looking for.

The Darker Side of Shopping

One of my least liked things is the crowds. To have to maneuver around them constantly. And I feel self conscious when I am looking for what I need and a person is right there in the same spot also looking. Sometimes I just leave and come back a little later just to undo that. Apparently some people don’t have a problem at all with it and will get a foot from you while looking in your spot. Being careful not to bump into people and their cart is actually a problem for me. I have a phobia for this sort of thing because of things that happened in my past.

        Long lines. The cheapest grocery store in town has a horrible line in it. You can be there for nearly an hour waiting. At first that is fine. But apart from staring at your phone and pretending there is nothing there to wait for, there’s nothing you can do. I have never been able to use my phone in a way like that however. I don’t know why. You could say that cheap stores come at a hidden price: waiting in line forever. The truth is I would pay 5 or 10 dollars just to skip that part.

        I hate it when I get home and find out that the price they advertised wasn’t the price it sold for. When I am looking at the cost screen while they are scanning things in I feel a little like I don’t trust them, that I put that across. I am after all a polite person. One enough to make sure he pays the right amount (doesn’t underchange) because God forbid I accidentally steal something that way.

        Just getting out of the house can be a task. I make sure I get back before it is dark– a few hours before that time, given how bad crime is. My friend got his jaw broken while he was being robbed. Believe me I am a little nervous when it comes to carrying something expensive home like a big screen TV that has “Samsung” neatly written on it. But I figured if I got the smaller TV then it would more likely be taken. It would have weighed much less and had been much easier to grab and run off with.

        I get jipped sometimes when buying something online. It turns out to be much smaller than the impression it gave. You think after that ‘that’s why it was so cheap!’ And you get what you pay for. Some sites– those which have individuals selling you things, sometimes lie about the nation they are shipping from. So you unknowingly bought something from a far away land that takes months to arrive. Or they just have something shipped from Amazon to you and make a little profit for themselves.

        For me there is a worry if it’ll ever get to my house at all. I always have at least a little doubt. Always think that the order may have gone wrong. But for all I can count it has only happened a few times in my life where either something was stolen or just lost in the mail. It nearly never happens. There was one time when I was defrauded. The guy somehow made tracking look like it arrived but it didn’t. I wouldn’t have believed it if others were not saying the same thing happened to them in the reviews. I didn’t look at his reviews when I ordered it though maybe I should have.

        Memberships and on credit can get you into trouble. Like a gym membership. One you were totally sure of at the time and were eager to sign a three year contract but a few months do not go by before you regret it. There used to be these music CD things where you can get five for free if you agree to buy more (which are mailed to you, and if you don’t return them then you have to pay for them– CDs that nobody wants, too.) Fortunately however I was just a minor when I got them and you can’t hold a minor to a contract.

The Gray Side of Shopping

The gray way of shopping is to go in without a budget. To decide what to buy when you are in the store. And to add to that effect– to go to a few different stores, not just the one you normally do. It is to wander down those streets in town that contain the little stores and might mean to go to a place you haven’t yet.

        It is also buying something apart from your norm (as with brand and type) instead buying something new for newness sake. You might even find that there is a better brand.. Of pens, of bags, shoes, or whatever else.

        Then there is the person who flips things or restores things. Some people buy video games as cheaply as possible (such as at a flea market or at a second hand store) and sell some of them while keeping a few for themselves. In that way it is a free collection and is something I have actually witnessed to be true. Then there are those guys that load up on the newest game system and sell them online, as the demand for them outweighs their production. Restoring things and also just improving them in some way (what the business calls “added value”) is a job for some.

        Buy the things that nobody else wants. Make a collection that never existed before you. For me it was 1980s DEL REY published books. I was once at the library trying to surmise just what type of book I like the most (according to publisher and decade) and found those to be most pleasing. Heechee Rendezvous especially. The gray buyer buys for themselves paying no mind to what falls before or after him/her.  

        The gray person should buy what they lack. They should buy things for a better whole. They should compensate for what they need to. So if you are a very budgeted person when it comes to buying food– just what you can afford always, then try to get a good meal at a restaurant just once for its own sake. If your clothing is becoming old then buy a new set. Buy something you know that you need which you have been denying yourself. Look into things that are not balanced appropriately. Treat yourself sometimes. Sometimes go in with a budget and other times do not. Add variety to everything and give yourself the best of both worlds.

The Lighter Side of Creating Things

We have so many tools. I remember ten years ago I really wanted to make my own video game system. I had so few choices on what materials to use and had no clue on how to do it. I just knew it was something I wanted to do. Now there are these micro computers– the Raspberry Pi or Arduino, software for making games, even new NES games, and 3D printers for creating whatever plastic parts you wish to. People make game systems all the time based on these.

        There was a time when you could only hear the music you could play yourself or have another play for you. Given that most of us do not have an orchestra, those who write music can’t get a total grasp of how it sounds. We have notation software these days to fill in that gap.

        Some like a garden. Some like roses in them or lilies. Some like to grow food. Some are into woodworking. I’ve had family that were into that and even competent carpenters. They had some good machinery to work with and knew how to use it, making desks, improving walls, building new rooms, and so on. Looks appealing to me. Actually seeing a person good at anything makes me want to be able to do it myself, even sewing. I was briefly into leather work at one time. It is simple enough. Conditioning the leather, stamping it if you want, punching holes, binding things together and such.

        The Internet helps us with whatever we want to do. We can have books created, clothing created, all sorts of various things created for us according to what we want. We can share what we create, like our music. If we are into electronics then we can easily find just the right parts we want to work with. It is a true blessing that didn’t exist in my earlier life.

The Darker Side of Creating

The pyramids. They were constructed by slaves. It’s hard to believe there was a time when the Roman Colosseum was built to serve the purpose of sheer blood sports. Doesn’t that reveal the true nature of Man? The military grows ever stronger. Its weapons become more deadly. Unto something like the Death Star if that is possible, a planet killer. Hopefully those who guard the dignity of human life have the greatest power. That a thing like chemical warfare is simply not tolerated. We depend on that position being upheld.

        

The Gray Side of Creating

Once you become a pro things become intuitive, natural, and instinctual. What was once a difficult thing to trudge through becomes second nature. Doubts may be long gone by that point. You just produce rapidly, and in fact can make good things quickly. After all, if you put in the time to think things through then you become smarter at it. Your ego helps you along. It is good to have faith in yourself and to accept praise over what you have created.

        After so long of receiving esteem however, the effect of it runs a bit dry. When at first you are famous it means everything to you. But as surely as things become too common to differentiate how things were before, it is now just an existence of yours and nothing else.

        Ever notice how acting becomes much better per show as the show goes on. How people change over time. The characters too. How strange things were at the start of the series while the actors were coming into their skin? The script itself was trying to figure itself out. What’s the best running gag to have? Where is this character going? What’s their mentality all about? What makes them the right person for this show? Then after some time things kind of fall into place. The earlier part of the series comes across as trying too hard. Like they had to have the perfect joke or setting or something.

The Lighter Side of Crimes

Talking about white collar stuff. Littering and minor offenses. Do you know how many people ride the bus in San Francisco without paying? It might take months before these people board to check to see if you paid. If you didn’t then you receive a fine right there on the spot. You could get really confident that it isn't going to happen. Then out of nowhere it does. Similarly you never know if that bottle you throw on the ground is going to get you a ticket. Who knows when there is a cop just a little aways you didn’t see. It is like smoking by the bus stop. Sooner or later.. That is why I don’t do those things.

I think that laws can become a bit convoluted and “picky” or you could say “nit picking.” That is an entire principle of its own. Convolution affects a great deal of things negatively.

Fortunately if the only bad thing you do is just a minor thing that only gets you a fine or misdemeanor then you will only have a fine or are in and out of jail in no time. Bad place to be. But while you might land a month in the place just remember there are people who have done things to be sent there for a lifetime. I’m speaking of America though. There are those in nations where trivial things would bring about harsh punishment, unfortunately. Even as awful as prison labor over a minor crime.

The Darker Side of Crimes

There are evil people out there. There are murderers, robbers, rapists, and the insane. They don’t have any regard for human life. When I was a boy my mother told me to never take a ride from someone I do not know. What a horrible thing in the world that a mother has to tell their child that. These are people truly hell bound. The person that decides to shoot dead the homeless they encounter. Or the person that decides to nearly beat someone to death with their fists. Or who won’t rest until they are. For no reason beyond the hate in their hearts. The overwhelmingly selfish and hate they have for others– for no reason, leading them to beat up another, kill, or even torture them.

The Gray Side of Crimes

Some laws and rules are unreasonable.. By some. Some bad and irresponsible people take away the rights of those who are  responsible. Some just don't want to be treated as children. They might be risking their own self but have found that acceptable. Some are just trying to get to work even though something happened with their license. There is the “harm reduction” thing. That is a thing where the medical community gives out needles for people doing drugs so that they don’t get infected with something.

        It has been long enough known that weed is not as nightmarish as it was made to appear in the days before it was banned. It is not addictive. It does not cause overdose. I guess in an extreme measure it might be– am not sure to say. I believe however that the legalization that has been occurring with it is rightly so. Especially in times as stressful as these. It was the same story with alcohol many years ago during prohibition. People would not accept that it was illegal and turned the tides on that one forever.

        Prescription drugs– some denounce them as evil, others require them. Some are just wanting to get high off them. Others really need them. As for me, I need antipsychotics. Those in a medical sense, not that I am “psychotic” as it is typically known by people vs the public. But it is for my schizophrenic condition. Taking it is like night and day. No more delusions, paranoia, voices, grandiosity, and in my case no more acting like a child, one entirely uninhibited. Antipsychotics are not a thing taken for pleasure. No, just the opposite. They’ll make you feel like shit. It took me years to get used to Clozapine and I’m not sure that I entirely am yet.

        But there was a time when even caffeine was on the chopping block to be illegal and is still demonized by some. Personally I do not feel the effects that so many attribute to it.

        While record companies are supporting murder based music (through a gang, a Satanic cult or whatever) and such immorality, they do so greatly frown upon you for stealing their music. It’s like this: “go out and kill,” while on the other hand, “never pirate our music!”

        I guess revenge sometimes has its place. If a person’s loved one is heartlessly taken from them then I can see the justification of it. Unfortunately the law may not agree. Too bad we cannot have our own hand in the murderer’s punishment. Our way, the hard way, against them, slaying the murderer of one of our cherished family members. Justice ain't quite justice without that. But alas, their punishment must be clean and humane.

The Lighter Side of Music

Were it not for music we would not have invented the things we did. I don’t think so. Surely not as much of it. CDs were made just for that. We didn’t invent them for something else. Back to records too and mini discs and cassettes and so on. Music had a great part in what we have invented.

        Music can make you happy. Can be used to dance to. Is an integral part of a celebration. Whether that celebration is just in a festive outdoor setting or to set the Christmas mood. Every Halloween I listen to Slayer’s song South of Heaven at midnight. It is a tradition that goes back to my teen years. For me heavy metal like Slayer, Morbid Angel, and Danzig used to give me a “dark” emotion. It was an emotion I felt while listening to it which felt abominable. I’m a far cry away from those days but would take them back if I could. Actually I listen to pop music more than anything else these days.

        I used to enjoy classical music. I still sort of do. Not Beethoven so much. More like Nobuo Uematsu, the Final Fantasy composer. The best classical music comes from movies and video games. For a while Classical music was a train wreck. It was the worst ever in its time, entirely fallen out of place. But video game composers brought it to a quality never before seen.

        Pachabel’s Canon in D, Vivaldi’s Seasons, Beethoven’s 9th Symphony, Bach’s Toccata and Fugue,   to name just a few, are all timeless works. Very respectable. Very enjoyable to this day. There was a time when Classical music wasn’t random pounding on the keys or the pulling of any string. It became that way in the 1900s. Ironically that was perfect for movie scores. This music that had no direction at all and was just a huge mess of sounds fit perfectly into movies, especially in tense scenes. Some however were beautifully composed, by contrast. Such as the soundtrack to Willow by James Horner or much of what John Williams has done.

        We have seen new iterations again and again due to the internet and music software. Some of them are video game music covers (think Castlevania Bloody Tears .) Some are orchestral rearrangements such as from Zelda: Hyrule Castle  or Final Fantasy. I have even seen a guy in a Church playing the Castle music from Super Mario World. Don’t let the fun and cheer of Mario World mislead you: that is some hardcore goth.

        It is easy to learn to read and write music. Playing or singing it is the difficult thing. Unless you are working out harmony and counterpoint required of large orchestration (anything beyond a quartet I would say) then making music is not a difficult thing to get into. Then you can find a band, hopefully, and do your best to make the best.

The Darker Side of Music

Music can be a bad influence. The very design of gangs, perversion, and violent people. That is not so difficult to surmise although some are worse affected than others. I don’t want to point fingers but Heavy Metal made me a bit psychotic when I was a young teenager. Then in the early 90s I had my mind on gangs due to gangster rap. Fortunately maturity took it out of me. Music can be a powerful motivating factor. It can set mindsets for people. It can be their strongest compass. Like an anthem. And it can be a poor influence on people. Music can have a poor influence on kids and turn what should be villainous into heroic things.

The Gray Side of Music

        

With many genres blending together you could call the result “gray.” It is a thing we see more and more of. Pop music with rap. Pop music with metal. Orchestral music thrown into popular music. Ordinary singing mixed in with death metal vocals. People are not feeling so confined within a genre anymore while they are making music. We have made a major step towards bringing it all together. Music that was once hard to get ahold of is now more. New styles only have so far to continue. The result is a blending together of former things.

        Nowadays anyone can be a musician. Not everyone can be a good one, however. But even bad ones are aided by modern technology. Elements of a music studio can be easily enough created within one’s room. Music duplication is about costless as so many sites let you post your music for free. Digital duplication is quick, easy, and cheap. In the future, famous musicians will become that way just by luckily catching on. Maybe by that time music will be for music’s sake.

        I would call these gray: Metal that is in between two extremes, such as Dio. Bubble Gum Pop such as Aqua, which is childish music with adult themes. Christian Metal. While I have always been told by people that classical music is “relaxing” there is music out there like the soundtrack to Bram Stoker’s Dracula (the one composed by Oliver Stone.) It’s like video games. They are not only for kids. Then there is some music that just simply defies all genres. They are out of place in their time. That is what usually starts a brand new form. Like heavy metal becoming grunge/ 90s Alternative music.

        How about Guitar Hero? And the other video game musician things: Rock Band, Karaoke, Dance Dance Revolution, and still others. I really enjoyed Rock Band when it was a thing. You can get good at it fast and go from there. It is much easier than mastering the real guitar. You don’t have a real audience. Maybe some family or friends you play it with. But it is just as exciting. In fact it comes without the difficulty of performing live. For a moment there you feel like a real pro while playing it. You might even get to the point where you play the more difficult songs without a single mistake.

The Lighter Side of History

Humankind was given extraordinary resources. The whole Earth is our own and everything in it is ours to learn from and grow. We have grown into a species truly not animals anymore, becoming ever more godlike. With us when things start rolling they sure start rolling. There is no stopping new things coming about left and right with just a few key discoveries. I would say we earned our place in the universe. I think it is a good thing that we have done so on our own. Without a second intelligent species to be equally responsible for it all. What we have done and made is our own.

        One can only imagine what a different world would contain. What their coffee bean would be. What their equivalent of tea would even be. What different things grew there in some far away isolated world. I would say we have a pretty damn good lot here. To think that in the beginning we didn’t even know what was poisonous or not. Now we so intricately know the chemical makeup of any given thing. We have learned a lot over time.. Over a long time. We are blessed to live in the time we do. So fortunate not to have suffered living in the past.

        And the future is even brighter. I believe that science and technology will lead us to a utopia. One where human problems are solved. Where we have defeated sickness and illness. Have fixed hunger, where a food supply is definite for every living person. Where people are no more homeless as homes are easily built: by robotics, AI, 3D printers, and drones. That the time will come when we are scientifically immortal, even not so far away from now.

The Darker Side of History

I think it can be argued that philanthropy was not a thing in the past. Except for certain Christians, I should say. They’d punish people the worst way possible. The crime, eh, what does that matter? They invented torture and execution devices to serve that purpose. They thought that slavery was a good thing to have. They thought about buying them, carefully choosing them, without any sense of morality telling them that maybe that was wrong. Up until today’s time slavery was around and acceptable. Must have been really boring back then. Must have been a time where 80 percent of the population still stank because of lack of hygiene back when. Nothing to do beyond a book and dinner party.

        Work was laborious back then. It required a human hand. It was a day-long affair. Hunger was a much worse problem. Some had to resort to eating their horses. Disease was a problem without a single solution. They didn’t know that getting close to a diseased corpse would get them sick. They thought it was spirits or something causing it. Doctors couldn’t even be called doctors by today’s standards. Blood letting is no real science.

        You would do what the rulership told you to do and not question its validity or purpose in any manner. If they wanted you to go off to war then you did. And war was a normal part of human existence, a natural part of it.

The Lighter Side of Competition

Competition can motivate you to do better. Being competitive can bring you to higher places in life. Trying to be the best brand can bring importance and value to your product. Working hard can make you a valuable employee. Aiming to do better than what was before you can evolve what you represent. It is all about progress.

        

The Darker Side of Competition

There is a story long forgotten now (especially by younger people who probably never heard it) where an ice skater was losing to someone else. She would be on top were it not for her. So she hired some guy to break her knee caps. You sometimes find those instances where loss was taken that badly.

The Gray Side of Competition

Some are just natural talents. It’s like in The Karate Kid where Daniel catches a fly with chopsticks on the first try. Something that annoyed his teacher, Mr. Miyagi. Or the story of Vegeta and Goku. Vegeta trains harder than anyone ever did. Just sheerly for pride. To be the best. But Goku was always better than him, in a natural way. Naturally Vegeta finds that unbearable.

        Some just settle on being second best. Second best is great. It isn’t as great as the very best but what can one expect? It is just that way. You could say that McDonald's is naturally the best. You can say the same of Apple. No amount of clever commercials will ever change that. Coca-Cola remains the top soft drink. These days you can say the same about the internet. YouTube is so heavily evolved and full of content that none could ever hope to match it. As a result, what you want to achieve exactly has its limitations.

The Lighter Side of Companies and Brands

We are attached to certain companies. We are attached to certain brands. Some of us will spill a lot of extra money on our favorite brand. Others will settle for what is cheaper. Some will buy the best body wash while others will just get the generic brand.

Growing up, Nintendo was my universe. The same was so with just about every kid. I can’t remember one that didn’t have one video game system or another. Someone at least had an Atari 2600. But Nintendo was a fan based sort of thing. It had its heroes– Mario, Zelda, books and magazines, toys, cartoons (we really loved Captain N.) Disney had the same effect on kids. I remember The Wonderful World of Disney. While much of what was on regular TV at the time was regular, that brought a special kind of entertainment. These companies earned their place in the hearts of children.

Some companies are not-for-profit that help people. Of course we know what these are, and they do not need any explanation. Some companies that do make money donate a lot of it. Sometimes those behind great companies are great donors, such as Bill Gates.

The Darker Side of Companies

Some companies will come down on you hard if they feel like their properties were violated. Some will ward off all speculation that their product is harmful, causes cancer, until the very end. They will not let go of their product until they are forced to. Some companies have workers make their things in foreign nations which constitute veritable slavery.. Just to cut costs. Some strip the land of its resources. Some harm the planet itself, even in ways that should not be acceptable. They will fight tooth and nail to continue making the things they do. And some companies use animals to test their products, a very grotesque thing to do– cage up an animal just so a person can have their neat things.

        There was a dispute that TV was bad for children. That perspective went away until video games. Then that perspective went away until Mortal Kombat which in no time flat caused the ratings system for games. Another thing disliked was sugary breakfast cereal commercials that ran during Saturday morning cartoons. All I can say is that video games added a great thing to my life. Sugary breakfast cereal was great, and I did not become diabetic from it either. I don’t think that video games are a far stone throw away from getting involved in a book. Both are just aids to the imagination.

        Vaping though– well it would have been a good replacement for me but it was made illegal in my area. Those fools ruined that choice for me. They made their vaping products look like candy. Candy with colorful images and things like that and yes they were obviously marketing it towards children. Why not? They did the same thing with cigarettes back in the day, “a boy is not a man unless he smokes these,” type of thing.

The Gray Side of Companies         

Aspirin is Aspirin. There is no “superior” type of Aspirin. Companies however will make it look like theirs is better, however. Peanut Butter is peanut butter unless it is that kind that has a pool of peanut oil on top and doesn’t contain sugar. Energy drinks do not boost energy. Not apart from caffeine. These things they add to it is just snake oil. The effect is psychosomatic. That is a psychosomatic thing easily come by: it is easy to convince yourself that your energy level is elevated. Your head fools your heart, telling it that it is racing. That’s all that that is. There is lots of snake oil stuff. Supplements, miracle pills that are somehow not FDA approved to do anything, make up most of it.

        Sometimes we are left with a thing that isn’t bad, but isn’t the best either. Most video game systems have a decent library behind them. They have at least a handful of games that are good. In modern times I see people saying how bad a system the 3DO was. I really enjoyed it though. There was a racing game I liked on the system. Compared to anything else of the time the graphics were amazing. Way of the Warrior was great too, fighting to the music of Rob Zombie that could not have been possible on another system. I call it nostalgic-ignorance. Unless you were there at the time and tried it you shouldn’t assume what it was like.

        Free software! When a new thing is made in the world of software of course people are going to try and profit from it. They may have been the ones that invented it. But before long it is made by someone or another who provides it for free. Maybe including advertising with it. Maybe just as a beloved project by an individual. Placed into open source. Or for whatever reason. It’s like internet TV. One week I am really wanting to see an old favorite movie, for free, but it is not available. Then the next week there it is. Some of them might take a long time to come up for free but eventually will, so you just have to be patient.

        Buy things to make things to sell things. Try a 3D printer. Come up with a great concept. Something fairly priced and unique. Choose to take a long time at it. Or choose to make something super fast. Have shirts printed out. Risk a copyright problem if that is your thing. Get a printer that is good at making stickers, which you sell. Consider the things that most do not. While most people go in the “most” direction, go in the different direction making something there is a higher demand for. Maybe things that most people don’t even know are easily made. More than ever a home can be a person’s workshop.

The Lighter Side of Choices

College is a great choice to make. Getting through a good education will give you a good job in life with lots of money. It is the surest route to get a lot of money out of life and a career only available to those who do. That is an excellent choice.

        Maybe you are in a rut. Maybe you are even depressed. I know that cleaning helps, getting into the shower, keeping myself out of bed, only allowing one nap a day, and just doing something different than normal improves my feelings. You must make the choice of continuing forward and accepting things the way they are if they cannot be changed.

        Choosing a hobby is an important choice to make if you have not already. That is if you want a hobby or have the time for one. Some choices include: wood working, artistry, making music, writing, sewing, programming, drawing, maybe you are into the occult, or into making jewelry.

        Choosing a thing to collect is a good choice to make. It gives you a focus. It gives you determination. A thing to look forward to. A certainty. That could be Atari 2600 or Gameboy games, whatever form of video game or video gaming thing, a series of books, a franchise of books like Star Trek, toys like HeMan, old electronics, you name it.

        We have obligations to fulfill in life. We all have responsibilities. We can either get up in the morning to go to work or choose not to. The same goes for school. It can be tough too, staying dedicated. We have to shower. If we don’t we will put off odor that we aren’t even aware of. We have to clean our place. If we don’t it will just become more and more dirty, becoming a disaster. Dishes pile up, things are hoarded, trash over fills the can, if we never clean. We have to wash our clothes. Otherwise the stains get worse and worse. These are the things that we must do.

The Darker Side of Choices

Choosing drugs is never a good choice. Addictions can come quickly and strong, and overpower your life. They bitterly enslave some. It is better to not even take any of them even once. The only way to be sure it will never happen or be able to go anywhere is to not allow it to start in the first place. Unfortunately it is all too easy to get caught up in the ways of teenagers and young adults, who aspire to be like their peers and go along with them. People who do drugs like others to do them as well. When they introduce a new person to them they feel like they are leading them to a present.. A surprise. Maybe the more that others do the better they feel.

        Choosing to do a heinous act will do you no good. More than likely the person that does will be caught. There is no secret buried that is impossible to uncover. Even before they are caught a dark cloud looms overhead, one that will not go away until the day they have their answer. They will not cease worrying until they are brought to light. One foul misstep can cause a person to lose their freedom. It has happened before that a person was shoved just a little too hard, causing them to fall and bust their head open. People have even died that way.

The Gray Side of Choices

That’s about taking things in small doses. It is about meeting things half way. It’s an education that isn’t too easy but not too difficult either. It is what makes you well rounded over all. To see both sides of any matter. Perfect gray is not a perfect shade. Perfect balance is seldomly weighed exactly the same. We find what just the right amount for us is and that is different from person to person. Some people can take things more, things that might be stressful for somebody else, or too much for them, or some such thing. Some people really can smoke just three cigarettes a day while another chain smokes. Then some are naturally good at things that others cannot wrap their heads around. Natural talent is a good way to go. Choose to learn about what you are naturally good at to begin with.

        We are shadows and shadows are difficult to pigeon hole. We don’t mind blending in. We do not make a spectacle of ourselves. We are not sided minded. As a result we can save ourselves from a lot of difficulty and trouble, trouble that a group would bring us and expect us to fight for. Unless things come knocking at the front door, we don’t care.

        We look for the halfway point. We look for the medium. What is not too cheap but what is not too expensive either? What amount is not too diluted but what amount is not too strong either? When does work get too stressful but then when do we become too undoing? Are we overdoing anything? Are we not doing enough? These are the questions that the gray person is always asking.

The Lighter Side of Home

Home is where the heart is! I know that when I am out doing whatever I just love it when I am done and can walk through those doors again. I have my internet TV here. I have my writing to attend to. I have my things I drink, coffee, tea, and soda. I have the temperature where I want it. On cold days I am warm inside. I can lay down if I want to. I can do whatever I want to. The best thing is there is not a soul around to bother me. I am a very be-alone person.

        I think that the whole thing is pretty neat. Everyone deserves their own little space. I never agreed with my parents who insisted I didn’t lock my door. If I had a child I would never require that of them. A person’s small place in the world. It is a big world after all so why shouldn’t every person be given at least a small place of their own. A place with their own things. A place that they have made themselves placing in it their favorite things.

        They say to go out and enjoy the park and some sunshine. But we don’t live in caves anymore. I could have understood the reasoning by that mentality if we did or if we lived in the early 1900s or something. But now look at the amazing things we have in store. A good and large TV has become a very affordable thing. Entertainment over all has never been better nor more easily accessed. Software too, video games, food storage– refrigerators, and microwaves to cook with, or electric stoves, cooling and heating, things allowing us to be creative, they are all found within one’s home. So what’s wrong with being in a place that’s best and well suited for us?

        Things are in fact becoming what I call an Isosociety or Isociety . That is “isolated society.” A condition in which people do not wish to leave home any more and they don’t have to. As things are delivered. As things inside are just too good to forsake. As even drones deliver our things. We can even have these little workshops within our homes. That is all becoming so more and more.

The Darker Side of Home

Mark my words, I had a very nightmarish neighbor at one time. Not so long ago. She was on drugs and into prostitution. She was out of her mind as well. She was always banging on things. She pounded on my door a few times. Once pretty early in the morning. Always yelling, cussing. A nightmare and I will probably live the rest of my life without having such a bad neighbor again. That will be the one in life that was the worst, no question. I heard the staff for this place ask if she knew what the eviction process was like or some such question. Then a few weeks later I noticed a sign on her door. I heard drilling too and didn’t know what that was all about. The sign was an eviction notice. Not long after she came home and ripped it off. Turns out they changed her locks. My hell was over after that.

I have lived in every kind of home you can imagine. I have lived in ordinary houses. I have lived in trailers. Apartments, shacks, homeless, military base, mental hospital, jail, friend’s homes, group homes, boarding care, hotels, shelters, with roommates, in a co-op, RVs, in a car, and the plurals are really there.

It’s no good having to be around people all the time like in a group home. In those places you share a room with someone. Some can tolerate that more than others, but it was really bad on me. To always have to be around others too even when I am just trying to get something in the kitchen. Homelessness was bad because of the cold weather. I used to practically have no clothing and would just sort of roll up in a frigid ball at night. RVs are too tightly confined and a car certainly is. Sometimes I had bad landlords. I was a recruit at one time but was found to be schizo and released. There is this “fire watch” thing. I don’t know why they call it that but basically you are woken up in the middle of the night to do a lot of work. Mental hospitals may not be as bad as you think. That is, unless you are in the criminal section. That section where people come in from jail to have their incompetence dealt with.

The Gray Side of Home

For some people a home isn’t even really a home. They might sleep there and store their things there but they are always out doing things. I had a friend that would stay at wallmart on a bench “people watching” for an hour at a time. If he didn’t have anything to do he would look around for a few bucks to go buy a hat at GoodWill. He was always riding his bike places as well, just to get around. He said he got that way because of jail. That he could no longer stand the feeling of being confined.

Home isn’t a free thing. It is the most important thing to pay for in fact. Who knows what disaster may ever occur. A house fire, it being run down so much you have to move, rent going too high for you to afford. It can be a conditional thing that you cannot predict what bad may happen. But a person should always live for today and not worry about tomorrow. It’s like what Jesus said: it is enough that you deal with the worry of today. Tomorrow has enough of its own worries. I can speak for myself when I say that I have done a lot of wandering around in my life. I have lived in places you could barely call a home. I have lived in fields and slept on sidewalks. At the time it wasn’t so bad, especially after I moved to San Francisco. Yet I hate to think it would ever happen again.

The Lighter Side of Psychology

Everyone gets angry but some do more than others. Some people are constantly angry. It isn’t a pleasant emotion. I hate how it feels so much that I would just rather choose not to feel it. It is sort of like pain. It bugs you. If someone is going to be rude and hateful as though that is their normal behavior then I don’t worry about them. They will have to deal with someone some time or another about it and it isn’t going to be me. I know the certain road that some go down and it never ends well.

I can actually say that I’ve never been depressed or can even grasp what it feels like. So I guess I did something right with my psychology. I get bored. Spats of anxiety, brief moments of tension, and have experienced panic attacks. A panic attack is like overwhelming dread. Sensing doom so badly that it breaks your mind. But I like to think that “what goes up must come down.” Your mind has a way of keeping itself together and bringing it back together if it falls apart.

Thank goodness for me and other Schizophrenic people that there is medicine for it. Effective medication at that. Not medicine that makes you high or sedated. More like miracle pills that take away your delusions, paranoia, hallucinations, and grandiosity. People no longer think they are Napoleon after they get on them. The government is not hunting them down trying to assassinate them.          

The Darker Side of Psychology

I think that sometimes modern psychology goes out of its way to make people delicate around others. Down to the way they speak, something that might be microscopically rude is taken out of their language and behavior. For example they discourage the word “you” because it sounds like an accusation. I think that it diminishes strength and causes people to dance around their problems with others. I would say that getting along with others isn’t rocket science. That our own intuition should tell us how to act.

        There is the psychology of anarchy, of hedonism, of animal mentality, that is growing into a worse problem. There are people who just do not think things through– they are in fact unable to. They do not function correctly. They have not built a better mind. They were made and kept dim witted by devices such as music. They would take any excuse they can get to behave the way they do– to steal and kill. They live off of pleasure. The right mind lives off of purpose, of responsibility. But they live off of fast food, drugs, parties, sex, over powering the weak, off of fraud, the easy way, and make a mess wherever they go.

The Gray Side of Psychology

At one time all I needed was medication to get my life back together. I wandered around for years getting crazier and crazier. I didn’t need to be punished but that is what always brought me back into treatment. Doing some dumb and crazy thing, getting arrested, then sent to the mental hospital because I was clearly psychotic. There is a new law that I support. It is more controversial than it should be. It is that homeless people are put into treatment. They are sent to a mental hospital. It is being called “forced treatment” by some but it has my full support.

        I lived in group homes for awhile but at least they were homes. When I was in the first one I was in I was still not fully stabilized. As a result I wandered off again and became homeless again. It wasn’t until I was in Napa State Hospital for over a year that I became stabilized enough to deal with being in a group home. I had made homelessness my life in a way. I had come to not only expect it but to appreciate it in a strange way. I had to be put on Clozaril while they were doing their best to make me competent, and so be tried. But I was given a conservator that had my charges dropped. And now I am a model citizen through and through.

        I did have one thing that made Schizophrenia a good thing, in a bad way’s side effect you could say. I sometimes had extreme feelings of euphoria. After all, my grandiosity made me think that I was the leader of planet Earth. My ego was as high as it could possibly be (besides sometimes paranoid thoughts.) I thought even God was sharing music with me. I thought that every last lyric in a song was about me. I was childish too, free of inhibition. That is a less common symptom of being Schizophrenic, not even well known, but there: being childish. Things like that caused a great euphoria in me.

        Gray psychology can be called “soft toned.” It is being anchored in the world in a sound and aware state. The Earth after all is a middle thing. It is familiar to us according to what we are, being gray. Therefore our use of it is superior. Our design compliments it well. We are not misplaced. We are in a world that is most suited for us. We have learned to enjoy life in a way that does not harm others.

The Lighter Side of Help

There is nothing worse than being homeless in the rain. To be drenched in wet clothes all because a business deliberately keeps roofs away from the outside of their buildings. I remember times of getting $10 from a stranger. A dollar didn’t make any difference. I might get a small bag of peanuts with that. But something like $10 was great. I got a soda, usually a cheap notebook and pens, maybe a lighter, sometimes batteries for my pocket radio. The good thing about pocket radios is that batteries in them last about two weeks. Still having an extra two in my pocket was a valuable thing as I didn’t know exactly when I was going to get more. I never begged while I was homeless. I’d rather eat from the trash. It became such a natural habit for me too. Sometimes a person would see me doing it and give me money.

The Darker Side of Help

I have a very clear example of that in my own life. I live in an SRO. That is a hotel for mentally ill people. In a city like San Francisco they are available for people like me: that is, the Schizophrenic. It is a strange place. Due to certain things like the nature of the people here this isn’t just a hotel. They have a standard of care for us that gets in the way of the quality of my life. Once a month they inspect our rooms for cleanliness. They call it “pest control.” If they want to, they can say it isn’t clean enough. Then a few days later we get a note saying that the room will be cleaned. Which is fine, except for two things. One, my room is clean enough. And two, they literally take eight hours to clean.. This little room of mine. Saying that my room is clean isn’t just something I am saying either. In an effort to cut down on that eight hours and be cut a break I spent eight hours myself cleaning it all up. I went as far as to scrub the walls. They didn’t care about any of that though. I basically just gave them a day off while they pretended to do things here. I heard the worker on the phone for quite awhile. Then on thirty minute breaks here and there. This is a fraud that they are doing. I had to be gone for a full eight hours. I went to the bay awhile, an IHOP, then a store and came home only having depleted three hours. They acted like it shouldn’t bother me just to be out of my room for that long. They get paid quite a bit for this nonsense! For that reason I am not going to clean it anymore. I will just leave it clean enough to tolerate. I think the best thing to do is to not clean anymore. I will set aside money so that I can go out to eat, go to some other place or another, go see a movie, be gone for a day, which is all in turning a bad thing into a good thing. I do love the bay.

        There is a whole point to be made about this in other ways… giving people help that they do not need. I try to take the help that I need and no more. I pay my way on the bus for example when I could get free rides through a disability card. So many people spend all of their food stamps on junk food. You’d be surprised how many low income people are obese. Some in fact sell their food stamps or the food gotten from it. Usually big bags of candy. There are homeless people who genuinely need it then there are those that make a living off of it. I am a philanthropic person where it counts. Actually it is for that reason that I detest lazy people who would take from those that really need it, as if it is going to them it is not going to the other.. The deserving.

Forced to get by is a lost virtue. To be forced to get by is considered a bad thing from those that do not meet someone the whole way. Strength has never been so poorly encouraged.  

The Gray Side of Help

California has made it where the homeless can be put into mental health treatment whether they want it or not. The problem with my Schizophrenia is that when I am unmedicated I think my delusions are true. I think doctors are wanting to do horrible things to me, like lobotomize me, literally and with pills. That they would “take the truth away from me,” not knowing my mind is built around falsehoods. I would have benefited from such a thing just a few years ago. While I was crazy as hell wandering the streets, yelling at people, with things obviously wrong with me. So many like me do not get into mental health treatment until they are arrested for one thing or another. From jail to a mental hospital. I was in one for nearly two years under such a condition as that.

        For every person who ends up getting a degree with assistance there are many that do not.

        My parents didn’t expect even the least of chores out of us. We never even had to wash our own dishes. Every little mess our parents cleaned. That’s good in a way. It is bad that we were not taught to work. My mother was overworked by her parents. I think that is the reason why we were not expected to do much. At the same time we got just a little allowance. That has a double effect towards making money valuable to us. We grew up right but we generally do not like to work.

        There should be a balance in some cases. If you help a friend (especially if it wasn’t easy) then your friend should help you out sometime as well, if you need it.

The Lighter Side of Destiny/ Your Future

If you don’t do anything that would put you into prison then at least you have that going for you. If you have money saved in case a disaster occurs then that’s good too. A plan B might just be needed someday. If you don’t smoke or drink then that is good as well. And if you don’t do drugs then many times greater. Those that made that choice to take drugs may have just been kids at the time who didn’t grasp how much control it would take over their lives, and that is unfortunate. I have always thought ‘if I don’t do it once I will never do it twice.. Or thrice.” A good future awaits anyone who gets a good education, one with a degree wisely chosen, without doubt it can be obtained by that person. It makes a great difference. The kind of difference that separates the mediocre from the well established.

        Pipe dreams are for the young. The thing is, that some pipe dreams do come true. That is one of the bigger rewards, isn’t it? That while all of your family and friends were doubting you you found your way as a talented musician, artist, inventor, or some such thing. Even famous enough to be seen on TV again and again. I say that it is at least worth a shot. It is like the song Landslide. That was a song made by Fleetwood Mac when they were just about to give up.

The Darker Side of Destiny/ Your Future

I have gone through the worst of things for sure. The littlest thing was not mine, yet my tastes were simple. I would have been happy enough with tobacco, tea, and some entertainment. But I was free. I was without any type of fear or worry of losing what I had. I had nothing. Over the years I found myself in an excellent home. I have all I could need. I have more than I have ever had. I fear losing my things. I fear some awful circumstance of being lied about and sent to jail (an actual phobia of mine.) I have such strange fears. Like bumping into someone, hurting them as a result, and going to jail over it. Or crossing the road wrong and causing a crash. I am better off facing my fears and accepting a lesser life if it must be. It is actually a big reason why I write so much. My books can help my future, no matter what that future is. What I do not, while I am able, will always be. I can even be online when I am not, in a sense.

        Maybe I should appreciate my ability to go from bottom to top in the way that I have. I know I can always get it back. I do not do anything nor would do anything that would put me into prison. That is a good thing going for anyone. Some people run from the law for ten years. I would never do anything that would lead me to run from anything. There are some that are eventually caught. Little do they know that a detective is about to figure out every little thing they have done. Must be a miserable lot for such people knowing that at any time the law might be busting down their door to arrest them.

        I have made it as far as I have. About halfway, at least nearly halfway, as far as age goes. I lasted as long as I have without being murdered or slain, without cancer, and so on. Unfortunately some cannot say the same. It is always a thing to consider. That going out on that one wrong day would cost someone their life. They put themselves into the wrong place at the wrong time. If only they hadn’t gone out to get milk that day! If only they closed and locked their windows. If only they didn’t get out on the road while there was a drunk driver who just decided to do the same..

        Do be a bit careful when it comes to where you are and when.

        

The Gray Side of Destiny/ Your Future

Be sure, God shows us things sometimes. Like a last time to see a friend, a crossroads, or a warning against a poor choice you are about to make. God is a guiding light throughout our lives. He has laid out the plan for our lives. He has also given us free will. I do believe in the afterlife. I am a firm believer of the afterlife. Quite honestly I find it unfathomable that I exist. I cannot imagine such a power being lost. It is the power of all powers to exist.

        Hopefully our lives will be at least a little better than average. Hopefully we will have made a good thing for ourselves during our time here. Who's to say what the future holds? It could be quite remarkable for all we know. In a year’s time we may have come across something like never before. The start of something special. “Maybe something interesting will happen.” The words seem cursed sometimes. There is always something around the corner to at least entertain us a bit. Round a few and the world itself may change, brought together by one thing. More so than ever before, given technology. A good thing doesn’t last long however, and we await the next. The next thing is something we simply cannot predict. Ever a storm of a new color.

        Becoming an adult can be a worrisome time. A time when it is time to leave the nest, to get a job, to at once be responsible, to either sink or float. Some might choose to join the military. Some may have the resources needed to enter into education. Some have to settle for lesser jobs. Some just might end up homeless. And we can never be totally sure that the job is kept, or the house or apartment, unfortunately. Even people who created great companies may someday face bankruptcy. Even the best actors may someday lose all parts and end up bagging groceries. It happens. Even Kings can be brought low.

The Lighter Side of Vacation and Holidays

My father once said that if a kid is to grow up well then they need good things, like from vacationing and from holidays. For a child it is thrilling to go to an amusement park, out to a movie in the theater, to the woods and mountains, great lakes on a boat, and so on. I had no lack of them growing up. We did things all year long, pretty much. The church I attended had a really well put together Christmas celebration. Gave out Halloween stuff as well. My father was a Christian but it never got in the way of prohibiting certain things from me like hardcore action movies and Halloween things. The school I went to had a whole carnival thing for us at the time. On May Day we wrapped a ribbon around a tall pole in a sort of dancing around in and out, weaving. Going to the skating rink was a lot of fun. I was really good at zipping around at full speed. Any time there was an arcade then that was a big bonus. Certain church groups I was in sent us all over, even to the mountains of Colorado at one time where I climbed Pikes Peak. For some reason I called it “The Devil’s Peak.” That was when I was just eight years old. My mother would cook my favorite meal on my birthday and prepare whatever cake I wanted, which was red velvet cake, which, for some reason, I called Devil’s Food Cake.

        We were always counting forth the days. Christmas can be a most wonderful time when it comes to special programming on TV, the music, and spirit in general. Choosing a costume and gathering candy was great. There was usually a new game system to be gotten. For us that started with the NES, then the SNES, the N64, then Playstation. And I enjoyed Super Mario World so much that my thumbs became sore. There is actually a video of me wearing a glove because of that.

        

The Darker Side of Vacation and Holidays

I had to give everyone a valentines day card in elementary school. I don’t know what the teachers and my parents were thinking. Do you know how embarrassing it is to have to give the boys love cards for a heterosexual kid? I always tried to get the most generic cards I could. These love cards were actually on sale for kids on valentines day.

        Driving for hours is not easy for a kid. For a kid every moment was more pronounced. I didn’t have a light grasp on time. Besides, I was looking forward to actually getting there. In some cases the drive went on for more than a day. It might have been much easier on me if I had some of the things that everyone has these days. Like a smartphone. But imagine me sitting in the back of a car with a portable CD player and that was it. Well, a Gameboy too at least. Probably drank a bit more than I should have a few times as well, most eager to get to the restroom on the next stop.

        Some don’t get anything at all on any holliday and I pity them. Parents can just be cheap and uncaring like that sometimes.

        For whatever reason I was the only one who could not sleep on Christmas eve or the day before my birthday. I might have slept a couple of hours at best on those nights. I feel like Christmas and things meant more to me than my family. I enjoyed life more than my siblings in general. My brother would make fun of video game things, like Street Fighter 2, jokingly saying “Sonic Boom!” and swinging his arms together. He was younger than me, too, so it wasn’t like he was too old for it.

        The mountains are good and all but I believe that is where my phobia of beasts comes from. A lot of my nightmares are about a bear or tiger in the distance. Besides there are the mosquitos and little scorpions, snakes, and other things that you will see while going up and around mountains. Among the worst things that happened to me was after climbing a mountain with my siblings my outdoor sandals tore apart. So I was barefoot. It was in a more desert area with a sticker patch field. Fortunately my siblings got to my parents quickly enough and they brought me some shoes. Kids can get lost easily too so there is that to be mindful of.

The Gray Side of Vacation and Holidays

Parting is such sweet sorrow. After days or a week being gone in some wonderful place there is a time to get back home and proceed with normal life again. Christmas and Spring break is good up until it is about to end. Then we go back to school or our work. Which for me, was kind of a depressing thing.

        There is something worse– that in our older age we no longer find these thrilling. I used to wonder why my parents had little interest in the things we would do at these times. I am sure the mountains and forests were a peaceful setting for them. But overall it was a thing done for their children. I never saw them eager to get on a roller coaster. My mother would sleep during a movie at the theater. She’d even bring a pillow! My father did enjoy fishing at the lakes and going off on the boats. I am sure they found the exploratorium entertaining enough. But we get older and hopefully take our turn in making our children happy. I have no family (by choice) but am ever happy to send over gifts to my whole family, including my nieces and nephews.

Part Two: Lucifer’s Light, Dark, And Gray Sided Notebook

Concluded.

About my other books:

I have written over 50 books. I cover certain things that no other has before but are things that I just naturally want to have written. For example, I have books for all new video game ideas. I have books that instruct game makers in creating the best games they can. I have a lot of experience to have done so. Most of the things that I watch are about video games and that has been the case for a long time now. Those are books under my name Adam Jeremy Capps. They include: The Game Maker’s Bible, The New Video Game Idea Book, Making A Great Video Game, and New Video Game Ideas. I have a video game idea book under my name Lucifer Jeremy White as well: My Antichrist Game or Movie. That book is largely about the concept for a video game in which you strive to become the Antichrist. It also has a lot of information on making a Satanic video game in general.

I have covered the topic of Christian Satanism many times. They are books under the names of Lucifer Jeremy White and Lucifer Damuel  White. Sometimes they are more easily found under Lucifer White. They include: Christian Satanism And The Herald of Satanic Waters, Christian Satanism and Christian Satanic Doctrine, Becoming a Christian Satanist And A Map For A Christian Satanist, Mastering Christian Satanism And The Gray Book Of Satanic Christianity, The Christian Satanic Bible, Another Christian Satanic Bible, Christian Satanic Books 1-5, The Christian Satanic Book: An Introduction To Christian Satanism, The Christian Satanist, Christianity, Satanism, And Christian Satanism, and  Alien Messages For A Christian Satanist.

Then I have written books solely about Satanism. Those include: The Satanic Book and Satanic Living, Satanic Poems 1-310, Branches Of The Satanic Tree, Lessons Of Demonic Magic, Lucifer’s Notebook (of which there are five currently) , Lucifer’s Satanic Bible, and Book Of The Satanist.

I have made books about five far away worlds called my “Five Planets” series. They are under Lucifer Jeremy White. They include four books called The Books Of The Five Planets, and another called Introduction To The Five Planets.

I have created a Bible called The Bible of Mother Aeon. Have briefly gone over some other things as well such as Godism (which mostly is made up of what is called “futurism.”) That makes up the bulk of my work but you might even find some others here and there. Remember: they are all free (as ebooks) and in the public domain!