Flirtation can be a sexual, emotional, and intellectual mine field rife with cultural mores, standard practices, clichés, and a mix of emotions—fear, anxiety, excitement, levity, stimulation, annoyance, discomfort, shame. Two strangers thrust into a dialogue in which they are both a black box and at least one person might have romantic and/or sexual intentions. As a bartender I watch a
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We’ve probably all confronted this state of mind. Lately it’s been a rather stubborn pest in the back of my brain: anticipation followed by inevitable the disappointment of failure. It seems the imagination is never lacking for better pictures of the world. And yet, I truly believe that this is all a misinterpretation. Weltschmerz is really the consequence of an
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Have you ever sat down to meditate, or maybe just tried to clear your mind only to have some barely audible voice in the back of your head throw off your concentration? Maybe some tiny cynic quietly prods you when you’re trying to sleep, or reminds you of some dreadful reality at the most random of moments. If you’re familiar with this
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I don’t know how to tell this story without sounding like a hipster-Palahniuk-wannabe, so I’m just going to give it to you straight. What I really said was something like this: “Everything that has ever bothered you, everyone that has ever made you angry, all the frustration you have inside of you—I want you to channel all of that and
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Credit: Digitized Sky Survey (DSS), STScI/AURA, Palomar/Caltech, and UKSTU/AAO This is the “Methuselah Star” categorized as 140283. Our current understanding pinpoints its birth to around 14.5 billion years ago (give or take 0.8 billion years) which means it is as old or older then the known universe (we understand the Big Bang to have taken place 13.8 billion years ago). It
Read moreJason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday Movie Review (Director: Adam Marcus, Producer: Sean S. Cunningham, Music: Harry Manfredini, Jason: Kane Hodder) This film opens with flavors from the older films: we’re back at Crystal Lake with a half-naked woman on her own wandering the woods, with classical Friday music cues stirring the tension. While controversial, I really like the look
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“In the province of the mind…there are no limits.” -John C. Lilly This was the conclusion of the late neuroscientist and psychoanalyst John C Lilly more than a half a century ago. In a small summary report written for the National Institute of Mental Health entitled Programming and Metaprogramming in the Human Biocomputer (1966-1967), Lilly offered insight into a five-year-long research project
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I have steadily become convinced that the world in which we imagine ourselves to be is a reflection of a conscious narrative being played out within our own minds. We do not govern the plot of this narrative, we merely narrate the story. Life, therefore, appears as a constant struggle to affect the outcome of this narrative for the better.
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Movie Review: Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan (1989) (Director: Rob Hedden, Music: Fred Mollin, Jason: Kane Hodder) Let me start this review by saying this is a terrible movie. But with a title like “Jason Takes Manhattan,” how could anyone possibly take it seriously? I think we all know what we’re getting into. Immediately the tone of this
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Movie Review: Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood (1988) (Director: John Carl Buechler, Music: Fred Mollin, Jason: Kane Hodder) This movie brings back some of the nostalgia of the original few movies: we’re on the lake, in the woods, and we’re very isolated with a band of partying teenagers. We’re gifted with a fantastic anthology opening spoken by
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phantasmagoric 