Author Archives: george

Embrace Your Future

This morning I was out walking on my morning walk. It was an exceptionally nice morning; the weather was cool and clear. The sun is starting to rise a little bit later each day, so the time when I walk is near perfect conditions. Still early in the morning, so it’s very quiet.

I saw a guy (at least I think it was a guy) off in the distance. Part of my walk takes me through a large area where there are many rice fields next to each other. Each are privately owned by the surrounding neighbors, and I think they’ve been in the respective families for quite some time.

As I saw this guy way off in the distance, I couldn’t help but to wonder about him and what he was doing. I think it is really interesting when things like happen.
You’ll be moving along, on whatever path you are traveling on, and something in the distance will pop up. And because it is fairly evident that your paths will eventually cross, you naturally become curious about this, whatever it might be.

Sometimes this isn’t too pleasant. When you see something up ahead, that you will eventually come across, it can cause fear or anxiety. A police car at a traffic stop, a person that doesn’t look very safe, or maybe a hungry tiger waiting to eat you.

You can also look into the future and see things coming up that won’t likely be very pleasant. And the closer you get to them, the more anxious you can become.

I was at a seminar several years ago, and the fellow giving the lecture was explaining that fear and anxiety are largely imaginary. Of course if there really was a tiger waiting for you, that would be different. But more often than not, according to this guy, whatever is causing you anxiety is usually not nearly as bad in real life as it is in your mind.

The trick is to look at approaching events and situations the same way you’d look at some old guy in a rice field you were eventually going to pass by. Based on all my experiences in passing old guys in the street, there is a high probability of safety. Consequently, when you approach something with a high probability of safety, it’s easy to be relaxed and just let things come as they may.

And paradoxically enough, those things that do go bad, and really do create uncomfortable situations, more often than not it is your anxiety that you brought to the situation that did the damage, rather than the situation itself.

The trick is to approach everything with the same, laid back and relaxed attitude of approaching an old man in a rice field. That way you’ll be much more open and likely to see resources that you can leverage to you’re advantage.

Of course, this is much easier said than done. One trick is to simply stop thinking about what might happen in the future and only pay attention to now. A good way to do this is to simply follow your breathing, and pay as close attention as you can to the physical sensations in your body.

Of course, with more practice, this gets easier and easier, and pretty soon you’ll be as cool as cucumber in a bowl of hot sauce in every situation.

How To Change Beliefs To Skyrocket Your Capabilities

If you’ve ever been hampered by a limiting belief about your capabilities, you are in luck. Today I’d like to show you an easy way to gradually shift your beliefs from limitation to enhancement. Although it may take some time, from a couple days to a few weeks, its simple to do, and the results can be absolutely profound.

First, a little bit about how beliefs work. Beliefs are the sum total of labels or meanings that you’ve given to your past experiences. The stronger the emotional response to any past experience, the stronger the belief. For example, if you had to give a speech in third grade, and the teacher corrected you in the middle of it, you likely would have felt pretty bad. Then maybe later, when you had to speak in front of several people in fifth grade, and something else bad happened, like maybe nobody really listened to you, or maybe somebody laughed at you. Then maybe in high school you tried to tell a joke to people that you weren’t really familiar with, and it didn’t go over well.

These experiences will add up to the idea that you suck at public speaking. When you think of public speaking, your brain will quickly reference all the instances in your past, and come back with the belief that you suck at it. This happens in microseconds much quicker than the conscious mind knows.

When you project yourself into the future, you will filter any possible future through this belief. So when you think to maybe giving a best man speech, or giving a presentation at meeting at work, you will likely get nervous because you are projecting your future through this filter.

The good news is that you can easily change this belief. In the example of public speaking you can slowly shift the belief to a positive one where you will not only believe that you are a good public speaker, but you will actually seek out and enjoy opportunities of public speaking.

The easiest way to do this is through journaling. Sit down and start from as far back in your memory as you can go, and recall any positive experience of speaking in front of other people. Describe each experience in as much detail as possible, to the point of reliving it as you are describing it. You can even make stuff up if you want, and add really cool things that happened. (Just make sure to make them plausible, like people clapping, or strangers smiling).

If you do this for a few days, or even a couple weeks, your brain will automatically access these memories whenever the idea of public speaking comes up, and your fears will slowly start to vanish. Pretty soon, you’ll get to a tipping point where the good memories outweigh the bad memories, and you’ll suddenly feel like speaking in front of a huge group of people is as easy as chatting with your best friend on Skype.

This only takes a few minutes every day. The best time is to spend five or ten minutes journaling at night, just before bed. After a couple of weeks you’ll be amazed at how you can dramatically shift your beliefs about your capabilities.

And when you start to do this on a regular basis, and choose a new enhancing belief to reprogram every month, just imagine how powerful you will be a year from now. Pretty much any belief you want you can easily reprogram into yourself. For example:

Good a public speaking
Make money easily
Easy to persuade people
Natural seducer of the opposite sex
Learns quickly and easily
Lose weigh easily

These are just a few examples of things that are absolutely easy to reprogram yourself to believe. It’s simple, and quick and can powerfully enhance your life.

Have fun with this.

Peanut Butter Magic

The other day I was eating a peanut butter sandwich. I don’t eat peanut butter sandwiches much anymore, but I use to eat them all the time as a kid. I even experimented with different ways to make them. Grilled, toasted, microwaved, roasted, I even tried leaving one outside on our backyard deck to see how it would taste after sitting in the sun.

The one I was eating recently was a normal variety wheat bread with some extra chunky peanut butter, nothing special. It was pretty good, and it got me thinking.

I watched this documentary once on how they made peanut butter. (It must have been a night when there was nothing else on TV.) I had always thought that there was some peanut butter continuum between raw peanuts, super chunk, chunky, and creamy peanut butter. I assumed they started with peanuts, and then ground them until they were at whatever level of chunkiness that were required.

But according to the documentary, all peanut butter is first made into creamy peanut butter. Then they add chunks later to make it chunky or super chunky. This completely turned my assumptions about the peanut butter industry upside down. It’s interesting when something that you are completely sure of being true is completely flipped around from the way things really are.

There was once an episode of I Love Lucy where the focus, or the crux of the episode was on a creamy peanut butter sandwich. Ricky had hired a maid to help Lucy out while he was off at work singing Babaloo. He thought he was doing her a great favor, when in reality he was creating an extremely uncomfortable situation.

The metaphorical focal point came of course when the maid made Lucy a peanut butter sandwich. She kept offering it to Lucy; sure that she would enjoy it. Lucy, was of course, too shy to turn her down, and dutifully did her best to eat the sandwich. The sandwich had way too much peanut butter on it, and caused quite a funny scene.

I don’t know if you’ve done a favor for somebody, and you thought you were really helping them when in actuality you were causing them all kinds of grief and frustration. Sometimes it helps to take people at their word they give us a simple “No Thanks.” If Ricky had simply asked Lucy if she wanted a maid, then the whole disaster would have been averted.

I’m sure you know how imposing somebody can be when you are forced to do something, under the guise of somebody else doing you a favor. Not only do you have to go along with what the other person wants you to do, but you have to pretend that you grateful for them. Doing this to others is a sure way to make yourself less popular. Be careful.

Of course, now that I know the secrets of peanut butter, I can fully enjoy my sandwiches. It has given me a whole new paradigm of peanut butter. I can even add my own peanuts to make my own super super super chunk.

The best peanut butter sandwich I ever came up with is peanut butter on toasted sourdough bread, with the outside of the bread buttered with regular butter. It makes for a messy sandwich, but boy is it tasty, especially if you eat it while the bread is still hot, and the peanut butter is slightly melted from the heat.

Skills, Pleasure and Money

Once there was this guy who was a professional auto mechanic. Not just a professional auto mechanic, but he was considered the best in his area. He had built up a huge clientele base through several years of dedicated service. One thing that made him stand out was his brutal honesty.

He usually had a flat fee to inspect a car, and then would lay everything out as clearly and specifically as he could. He wouldn’t make any suggestions, he would merely let his experience and the prices speak for themselves.

For example, if somebody had a problem with their engine starting on cold mornings, he would charge fifty bucks to take a look, and then give a full report. He would say exactly what it would take to get the car fixed to the point of starting ok on a regular basis, at a bare minimum cost, and explain exactly what the chances of and how long this “fix” would last.

He would then give another report about how much it would cost to virtually guarantee that this problem would be completely fixed, and how long that would last (usually two or three years, which was the life expectancy of the parts he would replace).

He would then give another report of other problems he found with the car, and what the chances is that they would be a problem, and how likely they would to be happening. Of course he would explain exactly how much this would cost to make sure the problem didn’t happen.

He would, naturally, fix specific problems, to satisfy specific requests. For example, if someone came in saying only that they wanted their timing belt replaced, he would do exactly that.

Because he was so honest and upfront with his costs, he never had any want for business. It wasn’t uncommon to find that you needed to wait a week to have your car even looked at because he had so many customers lined up.

There were several other auto repair businesses in the neighborhood that didn’t do so well. One of the reasons was they because they were always worried about their business, they would sometimes make repairs that weren’t really necessary, or they would rush through and not do a thorough job, making it necessary for some people to come back to get their car repaired. It was no wonder than these other shops didn’t get a whole lot of repeat business from loyal customers.

A lot of people wondered why this guy didn’t branch out, and open up shops that operated on the same principle, as he certainly could. Perhaps it was because he really, honestly enjoyed working on cars so much that he didn’t want to spend time in an office trying to manage multiple businesses and people. He seemed to be extremely happy, and was always quick to remember a customer’s first name when he saw them at the grocery store.

If there is any moral to this story, it’s that if you can combine honesty, a needed skill, and sincere pleasure in performing that skill, you can make a lot of money, and make a lot of people feel satisfied because of your work.

How To Avoid Doctors, Drugs, And Surgery

I remember when I was younger; I used to love to play racquetball. It was my favorite sport, not necessarily the one I was best at, but my favorite nonetheless. When I was in university, my first two years I lived in a dorm which was next to the university sports center, which had several indoor racquetball courts.

My roommate and I used to play frequently, at least a couple times a week. Normally in racquetball, the games are played to fifteen, and you usually play best of three, or five, or sometimes seven if you have the time and the energy.

My friend and I would play one game to one hundred and one. No breaks, no rests, just keep playing until one of us (usually my friend) made it to 101. They usually lasted a couple of hours, and more often than not I had a serious elbow problem that evening. I would usually get a very large icepack and strap it to my elbow with an ace bandage and leave it there when I went to sleep.

Usually, being young and able to bounce back from things like that, when I woke up the next morning the pain was gone, and forgotten (except for the puddle from the melted ice).

Being older now, I really appreciate how much abuse I gave my body when I was younger. I’ve had several cases of achilles tendonitis, and several knee problems. Nothing serious, nothing that I handful of Advils won’t take care of (or at least make bearable) but sometimes I long for the days when I could bounce back from a seriously over worked joint or tendon with only an ice pack.

I thought that I would have to pretty much accept that my body wouldn’t ever bounce back as much as it used to, and that living with joint pain (albeit tolerable) was going to be a normal part of life.

Then, through a chiropractor friend of mine, I found this really good book. It is completely filled with all kinds of stretches and strengthening exercises to rehabilitate (on your own) almost any kind of physical problem.

There is even as section in there in carpal tunnel syndrome. I once had a really severe case of carpal tunnel syndrome, and because at the time I didn’t have any insurance, I wasn’t sure what to do. A friend once had carpal tunnel and went to the doctor, and right off the bat (right off the bat after they checked to make sure she had enough insurance to pay) they schedule her for two surgeries, one for each hand.

In my case, however, I turned to this book, that had a section on several exercises, gripping exercises, hand-flexing exercises, that virtually made my symptoms vanish within a couple weeks. Granted I had to spend about twenty minutes a day on these exercises, but I would much rather do that than have two surgeries, one on each hand.

One of the exercises was to crumple up newspapers. Depending on your strength level, start with a whole newspaper page, or a half, or a quarter, and then grab the corner, and with only one hand, crumple the page into a ball.

Do this ten times a day with each hand. Yes, your hands will get dirty, and yes you’ll end up with a pile of crumpled up newspapers, but you’ll be surprised how much it can get rid of wrist pain and carpal tunnel syndrome rather quickly.

Another fantastic way I’ve found to remove pain without the need for drugs or surgery is finding a really good acupuncturist. Unfortunately, this can be hard to do depending on where you live. I found an acupuncturist who had a really good reputation, and he helped me several times with tendonitis, and even blood pressure.

When you can step back and avoid the automatic reaction to “see a doctor” you’ll be surprised how many natural remedies you can find. And especially in today’s raging debate about health care, with everybody trying to stay profitable, it can be easy to find these things.

Of course, if you have a serious medical problem, you should always see your doctor first. There is a place for western style medicine, and even surgery, if you really need it.

I’ve had my appendix taken out, and if I thought I could relieve my appendicitis by exercise or acupuncture, I might not be here today. But for joint pain, tendonitis pain, ligament pain, there is a lot more available to you that doctors, drugs, and surgery.

The Mystery of Your Inherent Personal Power

If anyone had realized earlier in life how much that you can understand about things now, you would inevitably have changed the course of your life, so that by now you can really understand the power of this idea. Is asking questions like this not the easiest way to overcome obstacles?

Should you not understand the power of asking the right questions, realize that the Socratic method, a several thousand-year-old logical process, does exactly that. And the new ideas that you can come up with in regards to this can only show you the range of new possibilities available to you.

And when you come to the conclusion that this is a powerful method of introspection, you can easily leave all doubt behind as you embrace this new way of thinking.

And what is as powerful as continuously enhancing your thinking process so that you overcome all kinds of new opportunities? Because again and again you can realize the power that comes with being able to do this.

And when you start to do this on a regular basis, you will even have more ideas that can do things you never thought possible. It can become virtually automatic.

It’s amazing how much this can literally transform what you think is possible. When you really allow these ideas to sink it, you can be sure that you will be head and shoulders above the rest of the people out there.

Before doing this, it might be a good idea to identify the things in life that you’d like to keep, because invariably it becomes something that will change many things, and you want to make sure you don’t forget and inadvertently get rid of some of the little things that give you so much pleasure.

Luckily, more and more people are starting to discover just how incredibly powerful this is, because the more you understand the nature of this, the easier it will become for you to understand how you can do this.

And what is most surprising about this method is how incredibly easy it is to do on a regular basis. The more you realize this, the easier it gets. Its is likely your unique personal history and specific applications of those memories that you have that will make this the most beneficial for you.

And how does knowing how much you have at your fingertips make you feel comfortable realizing that anything you do can really powerful enhance your life?

Because when you fully embrace this new mind technology, you might be surprised to learn that it was something you knew all along, but I’m sure that many of you already know this. Many find that the first thing they discover is how easy this becomes with practice, because most of it you already know anyways.

And people that have fully embraced know the truth: Once you accept these ideas, there is no going back to mediocrity.

How The Church Became a Powerful Force In Europe

This morning I came across an old man that I see sometimes when I’m out walking. Usually he doesn’t say anything, he merely grunts, or sometimes nods his head a small fraction of an inch.

This morning, however, he was different. He stopped and said good morning, and his body posture indicated he wanted to speak to me. So I naturally acquiesced, realizing the opportunity to speak a perhaps wise old timer. Maybe he was going to let me in on some of the secrets of life only available after several decades of successful living.

“You walk every morning, huh?” He said.
I nodded.
“How far?” he asked.
I replied that I wasn’t sure, but judging by the time, perhaps three or four kilometers.
“That’s good. You’ll live a long time.” He then described the neighborhood that I live in, telling me about the people that live here.

My neighborhood is surrounded by small, privately maintained rice fields, and apparently they have been in the family for at least two or three generations. Land is expensive, and usually a son will get married and then live with his parents, and eventually inherit the land.

It’s an interesting way to pass on wealth, through family bloodlines. Back in the old old days, it was important to from alliances with several families, and marriages were very strategic, in order to protect land ownership. Nowadays it doesn’t seem to be that way anymore, even here in Japan. Most people when they grow up don’t wish to inherit their families rice field. They’d rather move to Tokyo to get an office job.

I was reading an interesting book about land and wealth and families, and how it had a dramatic effect on the evolution of religion in Europe. Rich and powerful families would own lots of land, and do their best to keep it in the family. Quite often the most powerful landowners were often the same people that were in the government, so if you didn’t own land, you were pretty much at the mercy of those that did.

Marriages were strictly controlled, and the power and wealth of the time was effectively kept in the hands of the few. But when the Church became more and more popular, an interesting struggle began.

On the one hand, you had kings and monarchs that could protect their wealth and power through bloodlines, and marriages selected to keep the wealth in the family. Strategic marriages were extremely common in those times, and often times you had marriages between cousins to maintain the family power.

On the other hand, you had the Church. The Church had no method like bloodlines or arranged marriages to maintain its power. But eventually, the church became the de facto governing power in much of Europe.

This happened through the development of moral laws, primary to control the sexual behaviors of people. By controlling the sexual behavior of people, the church basically controlled those arranged marriages that he kings and nobles used to protect their bloodlines. The church enforced all kinds of moral laws regarding whom you could marry, effectively limiting the power of the monarchs to choose their own bloodlines.

Soon the church was dictating through its enforced moral laws, which families were marrying who.

An interesting way this happened stems from the idea of the “first son.” Generally, the first-born son was the inheritor of the father’s wealth, and the second son was generally left to the good graces of the first son, which generally weren’t very much.

So another interesting thing happened which gave the Church even more power. The groups, which entered into the monastery, or priesthood, and soon became the group that was dictating moral law to the rest of society, were these second sons.

The second sons that were being shut out of the family fortune, were collectively entering the church to create moral laws to diminish the wealth and power of individual families, and increase the wealth the and power of the church.

And that is how the Catholic Church quickly became the most powerful force in Europe. By effectively controlling the sexual behavior of others.

Beware of GPS Systems That Lead You Astray

Once upon a time, there was this guy. He was a normal, every day guy, and the kind you usually run into in the grocery store, or at the cleaners picking up your shirts. The kind of guy who you see on a regular basis, but if you saw him outside of the usual places, like say if you saw him at the ice skating rink, you wouldn’t likely get anything other than a vague, “that guy looks familiar” feeling.

That was the kind of guy that this guy was. He had a decent job, he made decent money, and he lived in a decent neighborhood, in a decent apartment. He dated some decent girls, and most of his dates went pretty decently, meaning that he never got to second base.

If you are wondering where I’m going with this, that only means that you are starting to find this interesting, and perhaps a little upsetting at the same time, the reasons of which shall likely be explained soon.

So anyways, something very peculiar happened to this guy. He had one of those GPS navigators in his car. It didn’t come factory installed; he had it put in after the fact. Of course, he was smart enough to know that you should never get something like that done at the dealership, because everybody knows they charge way too much for things like that.

Anyways, he really liked the sound of the voice on his GPS. She always sounded so soothing, and so comforting. Warning him of upcoming on ramps and off ramps. He would sometimes drive by himself and pretend that he had a woman with him in the car.

But that’s when the creepy stuff started happening. Pretty soon he noticed that his navigation system was taking him on longer and more roundabout ways to get to where he wanted to go. At first he thought it was just a glitch in the software, but it kept happening with more and more consistency.

Pretty soon, his GPS was leading him way out in the boonies where he’d never been before. Every time he tried switching off his GPS, she would politely ask him not to do it. It was as if she was starting to read his mind.

Pretty soon he just gave up. He listened to her, and went where she told him, without question. And the more he obeyed her, the further and further she took him from his destination. Sometimes he would end up completely lost, and became completely dependent on her to take him back home.

Because he was late several times for work, he quickly lost his job. And with his job gone, he lost his apartment, as he couldn’t afford the rent. All he did was drive around and listen to her sweet, soothing voice take him wherever she thought he should go. And he obeyed unquestioningly.

Pretty soon he was receiving messages from her on how to get loose change, and a few odd dollars here and there so he could pay for gas, and some food. Because he was living in his car, he began to listen to her direction twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. Pretty soon he felt completely alone and vulnerable every time he left his car.

People would see him standing on the side of the road, mumbling incoherently as he got out of his car. He would wander off into the city, and come back with enough money to buy another weeks worth of gas and food. Then he would climb back in his car, and she would tell him where to drive, so that they could be alone together.

Everything was fun until he got pulled over. It seemed that either he or she (whatever she was) neglected to renew his registration. Normally, this would have been a regular stop, with a warning from the police officer to renew his registration.

But because he hadn’t shaved or showered in several days, he was more than a little suspicious to the police. When he mumbled completely incomprehensibly to the police, they asked him to step out of his car. When he started asking his car for permission, they knew something was wrong.

Naturally, they took him in for questioning, and because of his completely deranged description of how he came to be like he was, they deemed him a menace to himself and to society. They locked him up in the psychiatric ward, where he remains to this very day.

His car, however, is another story. When they interrogated him, he said some interesting things which made the police want to search his car further. When they went out to the impound yard, the car was gone.

And they haven’t found it since.

How To Win At The Racetrack Every Single Time

And now for something completely different.

I know of a method, that I recalled for some reason this morning while I was out on my daily walk, which is a near guaranteed method to make money at the racetrack. I say near guaranteed because if you don’t actually make money, you won’t actually lose that much.

But the best part, for me at least, is that with this method you will be in almost every single race. Meaning that you will have a shot at winning right down to the wire in seven or eight out of ten races. Which makes going to the races really exciting. If you are kind of person that likes to study the Daily Racing From, and base your predictions on the past history of each horse and jockey combination, or whatever other handicapping system you use, then this method is definitely not for you.

However, if only occasionally go to the track, or are going to Vegas or anywhere else that has a sports book, and would like to dabble a little bit, and have a lot of fun doing so, then this system is for you.

It works like this. First you must understand the basics of betting the races. The simplest bests are to win, to place, or to show. Win is first place (duh) place is second and show is third. You’ll win more money, and less frequently if you bet to win than to place or show, but betting to place or show you’ll win more often, but win less each time.

Most people only bet to win, which is fine. You pick a horse, say number three, and you say “number three to win in the seventh,” which means you are betting on horse number three to come in first place in the seventh race.

You can spend all day choosing horses based on their names, the color of their outfit, (or whatever you call it that horses wear) and how they at you. Many do this and have plenty of fun. Unfortunately, you usually lose, and what’s even worse, watching the race isn’t much fun because your horse usually is way behind before the race is halfway over.

This method I’m about to show you is a highly systemized way to pick horses, so that you’ll be in the race all the way to the finish.

First, you need to understand what an exacta is. An exacta is when you choose two horses, and choose one to win, and the other to place, or you pick one horse to come in first, and the other horse to come in second. This is much more difficult, and it pays out much more money that just a win.

If you choose to horses at random every race, you will almost never choose correctly beaus there are simply so many different combinations you could choose from.

What you could do is bet what’s called an “exacta box” which means you choose two or three horses, and then bet every combination possible of them coming in first and second. For example, if you chose an exacta box on three horses, numbers, 2, 4, and 6, you would betting all of the following combinations (1st,2nd):

2,4
4,2
2,6,
6,2
4,6
6,4

Or six different combinations for three horses. For two horses, there would of course only be two combinations, and for four horses, there would be twelve combinations.

Even though it’s one bet, (exacta box) you have to pay for each combination. So an exacta box for horses, 2,4,6 would cost you six times whatever amount you wanted to bet. So a two-dollar exacta box on 2,4,6 would cost you twelve dollars.

So how do you pick your three horses? Easy. Get a sports page, or buy a racing form. There should be a page where they have three “experts” whose job it is to study all the relevant statistics and make an educated guess on which horse will win each particular race. Usually they have three “experts” give their opinion for each race.

All you do is choose those three horses, one from each “expert” for you exacta box for each race.

That way, in almost every single race you will have a solid chance of winning your bet, making for an exciting day at the races.

Keep in mind, that these “experts” usually pick the favorites. Meaning that everybody else is betting on them to win, so if they do win, you won’t win much. (Kind of like in “Bruce Almighty” when everybody won the lotto, they each got three dollars or something).

So what might happen is you’ll bet a two dollar exacta box on three horses, pay twelve dollars, and you might only win ten. Sometimes you’ll win a bit more, sometimes you’ll get lucky and one of the “experts” will pick semi-long shot.

The most I ever made betting this system in one day, while betting only two-dollar exactas, was around three hundred dollars. I hit eight exactas that day.

Most of the time, you’ll break even, or make enough to pay for your hot dogs and beers that you drink while your at the track. It’s a great way to make good bets without putting too much thought into them, freeing you to enjoy those hot dogs and beer and your friends, while astounding them with your secret knowledge of how to beat the track.

Remember, racing form, (or sports page) three experts, three horses per race, and one exacta box on those three horses.

If you want to get tricky, you can increase your bet if you win a bunch in a row, going from two dollars to three dollars to four dollars, etc (remember each race cost six times your bet for a three horse exacta box). Just be sure to lower your bet down to two or even one dollar if you go a couple races without winning anything.

Have fun, and let us know how it worked out for you.

Embrace Your Wickedness And Dominate All That Is

Once upon a time there was a little cat. A little too old to be called a kitten, but not quite a full-fledged cat. Kind of on the border between kitten-hood and cat-hood, whatever that means. He was still trying to figure out the difference between hunting for his own food, and chasing for the simple pleasure of it.

He was not a domestic kitten; he was what some people would call feral or wildcat. He lived in a fairly suburban neighborhood, and if he were lucky, people would give him scraps, but as he was getting older and older, and les and less cute, that was happening less and less frequently.

Before it was easy, he’d see a mouse, and chase it only for fun. Most of he time he wouldn’t kill it, because then it would stop running away, and it wouldn’t be fun to chase it any more. During those times he never chased out of hunger, because there was always a kind neighborhood kid who would put out a bowl of milk for the cute kitten.

The first time he had gone for three days without any food. The way it happened was kind of automatic, instinctual. He was chasing a mouse for fun, (or so he thought) and when he got close to it, something clicked inside him, and he immediately devoured the little rodent. While he was eating it he felt incredibly proud and adult like. He had chased down and killed his first meal all on his own.

But soon after that, he found another bowl of milk. He wasn’t sure if it was for him, or for another cat, but there it was. Free food. So, of course he ate it. And somebody saw him, and thought he looked cute. They even took pictures of him, and put out more milk the next morning.

Pretty soon, he had forgotten all about the mouse that he’d caught, and how good it’d made him feel. He soon fell back into the lazy habit of trying to look as cute as possible in order to secure a bowl of milk.

That was over four days ago.

His stomach was emptier that it had ever been. And how something completely strange happened when he saw the movements of a mouse out of the corner of is eyes. Instead of getting that playful feeling of, well, cat and mouse, he felt something completely different and unexpected.

Fear.

What if he didn’t catch the mouse? Before, when he was only chasing for fun, it didn’t really matter if the mouse got away. It’s not like it was important.

But now, what if he chased the mouse, and he couldn’t catch it? Would he go hungry? He might even starve to death. If the neighborhood kids saw him chasing and eating a mouse, they certainly wouldn’t think he was cute, and the free bowls of milk would stop for sure.

He saw two mice, and because he hesitated the mice quickly scurried away before he could even get into proper hunting position.

His fur was getting dirty, and he was starting to get skinny. He was becoming more and more weak with every day. The children and old ladies who gave him free milk were now terrified of him; certain he was carrying some kind of horrible disease.

He had all but given up hope, when he saw a very ferocious, very lean and strong looking alley cat. One that he was almost afraid to make eye contact with, for fear of being killed on the spot.

“How long has it been?” The alley cat asked.
“Six days.” The young cat replied.

“How many kills?”
“One.”
“Accident?” the old cat asked.
“Yea. I was just playing, and then before I knew it, I was eating.”
“Yea. That happened to me to the first time.”
“Really?” the young cat perked up. Maybe there was hope after all.

“Yea. Then like you, I went a while without catching anything. I was afraid. Like you probably are. Then something just snapped. I had a moment of clarity when I realized that if I don’t kill, I won’t eat. Embrace your wickedness. You will be a much more skillful hunter if you chase for the kill, rather than chasing for fun.”

“But what if I fail?”

“If you don’t hunt, you already have. By hunting, you’ve absolutely nothing to lose, and everything to gain.”

Very soon thereafter, this young cat became a killing machine, and dominated his neighborhood.