Living like a Crucian

I still haven't figgered out how to get out of the blender 🙂

Shrunk to that size, the glass would be about as thick as my body so I can't imagine there'd be much chance of breaking it. The blades would be formidable hunks of steel at that size. Little chance of breaking them off and using them. I don't wear enough clothes to tie them all together, toss them out the top, and hope to snag the handle. I'm too old to put my hands against one side, my feet against the other, and try to scale it. That's just a quick path back to the blades. I'd be long dead before I could pee enough to float to the top. That leaves me with just screaming like hell hoping for succor from a benevolent giant and hoping they don't just slam down the lid while yelling, "GOTCHA!"

I'm not going to get the job, am I?

Here is what a Goldman Sachs interviewer wants to hear. Small insects such as ants can carry objects which are many times their own weight, and grasshoppers can jump to heights that are many multiples of their own height. That's because of the Square-Cube Law, which states that as you are shrunk in size, your muscular strength would decrease by the square of the scale, while your mass would decrease by the cube of the scale. Thus, the ratio of your muscular strength to your mass would increase substantially. If you are shrunk to the size of the pencil, you'd have so much strength relative to your weight, that you would be able to jump out of the blender.

Ha! I knew that!

...retreats to read up on the Square-Cube Law while waiting in the unemployment line...

Day 7 (continued).

Got to the beach near Frederiksted. I don't know where the best beaches are yet, so I chose the closest to me. Here it is:

If someone asks, "what color is the ocean on Cape Cod?", I'd say, without hesitation, "Black".
If someone asks, "what color is the ocean on STX?", I'd say, "it has millions of colors".

When I settled on the beach and looked at the ocean, my nihilistic self put up a brick wall between my eyes and my brain. It wanted me to deny that such a beauty can exist. I had to demolish it, brick by brick.

Mango Pale Ale! Love that beer! The balance is just right. Well done, Virgin Islanders!

Tried to capture a special, "panoramic" pic of the ocean, but it didn't come out quite right. You can see the stitches on the pic. I gotta learn to move the camera slow and steady. What I was trying to show was the curvature of the horizon. When on the beach, if you try to follow that curvature and mentally extrapolate it to visualize how big the planet Earth is, it may appear much smaller than its actual size.

Mango Pale Ale! Love that beer! The balance is just right. Well done, Virgin Islanders!

Not bad you mean for a beer that is made in Maine.

Not bad you mean for a beer that is made in Maine.

I didn't look at the bottle, but here it says St. John Brewers.

brewed and bottled in Portland Maine and stated on the label. At their pub on St John they may brew small batches for consumption on premise on tap -- but the mass production and bottling is contracted out to a brewery in the state of Maine.

You may also come across Blackbeards Ale -- from the Virgin Islands Brewing Company -- brewed and bottled in Wisconsin.
I do applaud the effort by these companies to increase our Virgin Island name recognition by utilizing off island sources but the subtle inference that it is a USVI product is an inconvenient confusion.

Day 7 (continued).

Got to the beach near Frederiksted. I don't know where the best beaches are yet, so I chose the closest to me. Here it is:

If someone asks, "what color is the ocean on Cape Cod?", I'd say, without hesitation, "Black".
If someone asks, "what color is the ocean on STX?", I'd say, "it has millions of colors".

When I settled on the beach and looked at the ocean, my nihilistic self put up a brick wall between my eyes and my brain. It wanted me to deny that such a beauty can exist. I had to demolish it, brick by brick.

I see you've found our beach club.

CD

Day 8.

I ran out of edible items in my cottage, so I took my second trip to Plaza Extra. Driving on the left is one of the best things that STX has in its arsenal of attractions. The appeal of driving on the left is that you feel like a criminal, yet it's perfectly legal. It's like playing the Grand Theft Auto. On the continent, when I want to feel like a criminal, I give a false name when I am asked for it while making a restaurant reservation. That's a very cheap thrill, compared to driving on the left.

When driving on the left, the most important thing is to not let yourself slip in the "auto-pilot" mode, to which you get used on the continent. You have to think, especially when making the right turn. If you let yourself slip to the "auto-pilot", you would find yourself on the right side of the road, and a vehicular homicide would occur. You would be convicted and sent to serve time in Golden Grove Adult Correctional and Detention Facility. The good thing about it is that it's right here, on STX. The bad thing about it is that it's an ugly place: filthy, drug-infested, and violent. Golden Grove is so ugly, that in 2011 the U.S. Justice department sought to take over the Golden Grove operations. To get the sense of the drama, read this. If you can't read, just take my word: you don't want to end up in Golden Grove. Not everything that is called "gold" glitters.

Plaza Extra is a well-run business. I'm particularly impressed with the customer service. The employees are very friendly, and my questions were answered in a polite and professional manner. However, as someone mentioned, the managers carry 9 mm pistols, so make sure to not cross certain boundaries when doing business in Plaza Extra, unless you can outgun the managers. The size of the supermarket and the diversity of the items are on par with a continental supermarket. Here is how it looks like:

When you live in a white 'hood for prolonged periods of time, you are institutionalized into thinking in certain shapes, sizes, and colors. For example, I lived among the whites for so long, that I forgot that babies come in all colors. In Marketing-101, the first thing you learn is that white babies like the diapers which feature a white baby, and black babies like the diapers which feature a black baby. The diapers are, of course, the same. However, babies are irrational, and it pays to exploit the human nature:

The expression "There is a sucker born every minute" refers to the babies. It's easy to take advantage of them. When people grow up, they lose their baby-like naivete, and it becomes progressively more difficult to impose standards on them, especially if you live on the island. For example, the black people of STX like to listen to country music. That's because a) STX is very rural and conducive to this specific genre, and b) there are not enough of the continental blacks to explain to the native blacks that the country music is "white".

Just like the diapers, country music is color-agnostic. It's simply the music of the people who coexist peacefully with roosters, horses, WAPA, and the Puerto Ricans screech owls. In my current state of mind, I am more of a death rock fan, such as this:

http://youtu.be/VhQK-6iI7cI?t=1m26s

I like death rock because am not irie. However, the more limin' I do, the more of a country music fan I become.

you know, it just occurred to me -- if TRW weren't dead, I'd say that Wanderer and TRW were the same person.

Made me think of Troy as well. Sigh. TRW with out the dark side.

Made me think of Troy as well. Sigh. TRW with out the dark side.

Who is TRW? I'd like to meet him/her.

Go to the top of the page and do a search on stx today, comments. Make sure you click all dates. Start at the beginning on that thread and you will meet trw. He's dead but if you read the whole thread you will get to know him a bit. I don't think the two of you are at all alike but there is something in how you write that made me think of him.

I just tried to search the stx today, comments and it did not come up. Maybe it has been removed. Try searching for trw all dates.

Day 8 (continued).

I go to the beach. The Sun is below the horizon, and it's dark.

People are afraid of darkness. In the darkness, you don't have enough time to spot a predator and to react accordingly. Small children are afraid of monsters. Adults are afraid of sexual predators.

I am not afraid of darkness. I defeated my fear of darkness and the fear of everything else a long time ago. I made peace with monsters and sexual predators. When you defeat fear, you obtain clarity. Clarity must be defeated, too, because just like fear, clarity is your enemy. When you obtain clarity, it blinds you. You think you know everything, and that makes you weak. To obtain power, you must defeat clarity.

Caribbean sea after sunset:

I move to the ocean. It's very warm. The current is away from the shore, and to the right. There is a sound of live music from the restaurant on the beach. I swim away from the shore, slowly. One quarter of the mile from the shore, the sound of music subsides. In the darkness, the surface of the Caribbean Sea looks like liquid metal. I let the water touch my lips and tongue. It's gentle. The sea is almost still. The swimming is effortless. I flip to my back, and let the salty water hold me. I see stars. They are dispersed, with great distances between them. My head is submerged in the water, and all I hear is the sound of the sea. I float. Then, I feel a lump in my throat, and I feel the tears. I am crying, and I don't know why.

I come home, and poor myself a glass of Crucian Rum. Straight, on the rocks. I don't understand this business of mixing in with Coke. That tastes like sh*t. I drink half a glass. Crying intensifies. It's day 8, the most remarkable thus far.

Stop imagining it?
Swan

if you already know the exercise, ruining it is no fun for anyone 😛

I'm sorry, LF. I sincerely knew of no such exercise. It just seemed logical. Accept my apology please.
Swan

I think you're brilliant, Swan. I would've thought along the same "crap my pants" response as Jamison did. smiley face.

The answer is: stop imagining it.

It doesn't work very well in written form, it is suppose to be an oral exercise the purpose of which is to show us how our mind can make "tigers" out of nothing, how we very often are not living in the present, but mostly the past or future and how living in "the now" is so powerful (and the only place you can actually make changes to your situation).

and other philosophical stuff...

Swan nailed it

The late nights are lovely. It's 75 degrees Fahrenheit. No humidity. I am on the porch. It's my favorite spot to be. There is a concept of a "home" key in the theory of musical harmony. The home key is where you return to, after the turbulence and the drama of the melodic line. The listeners want you to return to that key, and when you play it, they feel "at home". The porch is my home key. I spend a lot of time here. Liming. Listening. Drinking Crucian Rum. Smoking. Thinking. Not thinking. My host tells me that she got this place for $30K, because it was a bank foreclosure. The cottage was on fire. She had this place rebuilt, and this is how the porch came into its existence. There was no porch before. Maybe that is why the cottage was burnt down. It wanted to be something else.

My host says that she is a happy camper on STX. I am a camper in transition. The gradation between the sorrow and tranquility takes you through all the colors of the spectrum that exist in between. The color of sorrow is purple. The color of tranquility is turquoise. In between the two, the color landscape is hilly. I am analytically inclined, so I am trying to find the most optimal way to get to the turquoise by applying what's known as the "steepest gradient ascend" algorithm. That's a mistake, of course. I must follow the heart. The right path is the path that has a heart.

Sometimes it is good to balance heart with logic. Purple--------------------------------------turquoise. Take a rest in the middle of the hilly color landscape.

When driving on the left, the most important thing is to not let yourself slip in the "auto-pilot" mode, to which you get used on the continent. You have to think, especially when making the right turn. If you let yourself slip to the "auto-pilot", you would find yourself on the right side of the road, and a vehicular homicide would occur.

Heh, I learned how to drive on STT. I actually did that up in MA during a vacation. Thankfully, my friend yelled at me for being on the wrong side of the road.

I enjoy your writing style. Very simple. I write the same way. Are you staying west?

I enjoy your writing style. Very simple. I write the same way. Are you staying west?

Thanks, Jamison. Yes, I am near Frederiksted.

Day 8 (continued).

Strange things happen on the island. As I was ready to leave Plaza Extra, I turned on my Garmin, and it responded with this:

The thing is, it was not that hot. Maybe middle 80's. In North Carolina, sometimes we get upper 90's. What made my Garmin worried?

Some 20 years ago, the scientists conducted the following experiment. Deep in the woods, they placed an apparatus that consisted of a container, and the electronic mechanism which was programmed to open the door of the container at random, for brief periods of time. In the container, food was placed. As the wild animals discovered the container, they gathered around. They could not get to the food, so they waited, starring. It was found that the algorithm which determined when the container's door open was affected by the presence of animals. The electronic components responded to the field created by he hungry animals.

Baruch Spinoza, a Dutch philosopher in the late 17th century, is known for saying "Nothing in nature is random". That appears to explain the unexpected result of the woods experiment. However, as we shall see later, Spinoza's dictum is valid only on a local scale.

What is better, to be a Christian or a Muslim? A heterosexual or homosexual? Adolph Hitler or Mother Theresa? Software engineer or a musician? Live in North Carolina or on STX? Fight a war or make peace? Vote for a Republican or a Democrat? In computer science, there is a class of of problems which are seemingly as diverse as the questions posed above. They are called "NP-complete" problems. The fascinating thing about it is that there is a proof that if you are able to solve just one of these problems, you would be able to solve them all. That is, all of them have the same solution. The NP-complete problems, just like the "human" problems that I posed above, remain unsolved. What if the "human" problems are also NP-complete, in a sense that if you could solve one of them, you would be able to solve them all?

The solution is found in the intent with which the Universe was created. If only you understood the intent, you'd be able to answer all the questions which tormented the human mind for eternity. Why does anything exist at all? It seems that the path of the least resistance is for non-existence. Nothingness. Why would the Universe go to so much effort and trouble to have itself created, expanded, and populated with human life? It required an truly astronomical amount of energy. Wouldn't it be much simpler and more logical for things to not exist? The answer to this question will be coming tomorrow. Today, I am mentally exhausted.

Mother Teresa was not that good of a person:

Mother Teresa Humanitarian Image A 'Myth,' New Study Says

Actually it's immigrants from St. Lucia and Dominica who like country music.