I took Becca to the Men's Wearhouse / K&G Company Christmas Party
this past Sunday held at the Fairmont Hotel in Downtown Dallas.
I used to go to the Fairmont all the time during high school; since
I was attending the Arts Magnet in downtown Dallas,
and because our church's Youth Pastor was working there at the time.
The Fairmont Dallas takes its place as a monument of elegance and grand style. Conveniently located in the upscale Dallas Arts District, The Fairmont Dallas is close to the Financial District, cultural activities and the West End Historic District known for its shopping, lively restaurants and nightlife.
I watched it again this past Friday night at home.
The movie is based on Yu Hua's novel "To Live".
The story begins some time in the 1940s. Xu Fugui (Ge You) is a local rich man's son and compulsive gambler, who loses his family property to a man named Long'er. His behaviour also causes his long-suffering wife Jiazhen (Gong Li) to leave him, along with their daughter, Fengxia and their unborn son, Youqing.
After he loses his entire family fortune, Fugui eventually reunites with his wife and children, but is forced to start a shadow puppet troupe with a partner named Chunsheng to support his family. The Chinese Civil War is occurring at the time, and both Fugui and Chunsheng are forcibly enlisted into the Kuomintang during a performance. After a heavy battle, Fugui and Chunsheng are captured by the forces of the Communist Party of China, where they quickly become entertainers for the troops. Eventually Fugui is able to return home and explain his absence, only to find out that Fengxia has become mute and lost most of her hearing due to a fever...
Gong first came into international prominence through close collaboration with Chinese director Zhang Yimou and is credited with helping bring Chinese cinema to Europe and the United States.
Gong Li was voted the most beautiful woman in China in 2006.
Other credtis: Memoirs of a Geisha Miami Vice Curse of the Golden Flower Hannibal Rising
The Tao Te Ching is fundamental to the PhilosophicalTaoism (Dàojiā道家) and strongly influenced other schools, such as Legalism and Neo-Confucianism. This ancient book is also central in Chinese religion, not only for Religious Taoism (Dàojiào道教) but Chinese Buddhism, which when first introduced into China was largely interpreted through the use of Taoist words and concepts. Many Chinese artists, including poets, painters, calligraphers, and even gardeners have used the Tao Te Ching as a source of inspiration. Its influence has also spread widely outside East Asia, aided by hundreds of translations into Western languages.
Karen's visuals depict appealing and wondrous folk, strong men and women that reflect in physiognomy and ornament the indigenous peoples of the Americas, Asia and Africa, all accompanied by felines of a variety of species. They are rendered in the artist's unmistakable style rich in exotic detail, gorgeous colors and dazzling lighting effects set off by beautifully stylized, complementary backgrounds. The tarot pack contains full-length portraits of fascinating people in elaborate costumes with intricate jewelry and headdresses. The Major Arcana cards are represented by the Diamond Kingdom. The suit of Swords, Wands, Cups and Pentacles are embodied by the Ruby, Emerald, Topaz and Sapphire kingdoms, respectively.
Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly is a New York Times bestsellingnon-fiction book written by AmericanchefAnthony Bourdain.
The book, released in 2000, is both Bourdain's professional memoir and a behind-the-scenes look at restaurant kitchens. He describes in graphic detail the ins and outs of the restaurant trade. The book is remarkable for its insistence in deglamorizing the professional culinary industry. The commercial kitchen is described as an intense, unpleasant and sometimes hazardous place of work staffed by what he describes as "misfits." Bourdain is absolutely insistent that this is no place for hobbyists. Anyone entering this industry will run away screaming, he insists, if they lack almost masochistic, perhaps irrational dedication to cooking.
The book The 50th Law grew out of the friendship and mutual admiration between 50 Cent and Robert Greene. Greene's book The 48 Laws of Power, which has long been a staple in the hip hop world, came to the attention of Fifty, who asked his manager to set up a meeting. Greene has said he was surprised by Fifty's persona and was impressed by his "zen-like calmness" and eye for strategy. The two began to work on a book project that would combine their two worlds.
According to Greene, Fifty is an example of what Machiavelli called a New Prince, a leader who emerges in a time of chaos or turmoil and rewrites the rules.
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Psychotherapist, President of the Italian Society for
Photosynthesis Psychotherapy
and VP of the European Federation of
Photosynthesis Psychotherapy.
"The ego is the worst confidence trickster
we could ever figure, we could ever imagine.
‘Cause you don’t see it."
Dr. Steven C. Hayes, Ph.D.
Clinical Therapist, Foundation Professor at UNR
President & Founder of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy
And the single biggest con is…”I am you.”
Clinical Psychologist
Freud Memorial Professor of Psychotherapy at UCL
The problem is that the ego hides in the last place that
you’d ever look -within itself.
In creating this
imaginary external enemy,
it usually made a real enemy for ourselves,
and that
becomes a real danger to the ego,
but that’s also the ego’s creation.
In that sense, you
could say that 100 percent of our
external enemies are of our own creation.
Founder of the Conscious Living Foundation
Author of "Journey into Now"
It disguises its
thoughts as your thoughts, its feelings as your feelings.
You think its you. People have no clue
that they’re imprisoned.
They don’t know that there is an ego. They don’t know
the distinction.
Andrew Samuels, Ph.D.
Professor of Analytical Psychology,
University of Essex, UK
People’s needs to
protect their own egos knows no bounds.
They will lie, cheat, steal, kill, do
whatever it takes,
to maintain what we call ego boundaries.
Psychiatrist
Physician, Researcher, Lecturer
At first it’s
difficult for the mind to accept that there’s some -something
beyond itself,
that there’s something of greater value and greater capacity for discerning
truth than itself.
*Deepak Chopra, M.D.
Chairman and co-founder of the Chopra Center
for Well-Being, Author
In religion the ego
manifests as the devil.
And of course, no one realizes how smart the ego is
because it created the devil so you could blame someone else.
In creating this
imaginary external enemy,
it usually made a real enemy for ourselves,
and that
becomes a real danger to the ego,
but that’s also the ego’s creation.
There is
no such thing as an external enemy,
no matter what that voice in your head is
telling you.
All perception of an enemy is a projection of the ego as the enemy.
Dr. Obadiah S. Harris, Ph.D.
President of the Philosophical Research Society and Author
Your greatest enemy, is your own inner perception,
is your own ignorance, is
your own ego.
-The Ego Has Landed - Guy Ritchie
(Revolver 2008)
The film stars Jason Statham as Jake Green, Ray Liotta as Dorothy Macha, and André Benjamin (a.k.a. "André 3000") as Avi. It centers on a revenge-seeking confidence trickster whose weapon is a universal formula that guarantees victory to its user, when applied to any game or confidence trick. This is the third feature film by Ritchie which is centered on crime and professional criminals.
The Bhagavad Gita (Sanskrit भगवद्गीता, Bhagavad Gītā, "Song of God") is one of the most important Hindu scriptures. It is revered as a sacred scripture of Hinduism, and considered as one of the most important philosophical classics of the world.
"Do without attachment the work you have to do.
Surrending all action to ME, freeing yourself from longing and
selfishness, fight - unperturbed by grief." (Bhagavad-Gita)
Once all claims on work have been renounced, including
whether it will succeed in its intent, the karma yogi's actions
no longer swell the ego.
People usually approach work in terms of its consequences
for their empirical selves --the pay or acclaim it will bring.
This inflates the ego. It thickens its insulation and thereby
its isolation.
The Way to God Through Work
Huston Smith
The World's Religions
While going through my journal entries last night, I saw that my original thesis idea was on theego as an adversary throughout the world's religions. Realizing this, I've decided to write my research paper using this point as the basis and also revising the submitted thesis.
Although you've already signed off on it, there were revisions I wanted to make anyway; and so I'm emailing you the present approach to the subject and will submit it tonight based on my initial point of view.
This is the revamped thesis:
A common source of contention in all world’s religions, is the selfishly-centered perspective of the individual ego personality.
The ego, is a psychological component in everyone that functions as a sense of self (me), separate from others, and its commitment to the preservation of personal concerns of the individual life.
Religion is always ultimately, a call to life lead by a will or ideal beyond our own.
All religious pursuit points to and is primarily concerned with transcendence of the self, be it personal or impersonally.
It is a paradox that a sense of selfish concern and defense is a prerequisite for a successful religious and spiritual adherence.
Yet, I will show that it is this very egotistical component of the psyche that serves to undermine the best efforts of the God-seeker.
Personified as the Accuser (causing disobedience) in Judaism, Satan (causing sin/separation) in Christianity, Shaitan/Iblis (causing forgetfulness) in Islam, Anarchy in Confucianism, Pain in Hinduism, Mara (causing suffering) in Buddhism and the failure to comprehend attunement/wholeness in Taoism, it is nothing more than our very own externally projected adversarial egos …a common religious enemy.
THE ADVERSARIAL EGO
A Common Religious Enemy (A Major Religious Enemy)
QIAN MECHALITH
My recreation, my preference, my cure from all Platonism has always been Thucydides. Thucydides and, perhaps, Machiavelli's Principe are most closely related to myself by the unconditional will not to gull oneself and to see reason in reality-not in "reason," still less in "morality."
One must follow him line by line and read no less clearly between the lines: there are few thinkers who say so much between the lines. With him the culture of the Sophists, by which I mean the culture of the realists, reaches its perfect expression... Thucydides: the great sum, the last revelation of that strong, severe, hard factuality which was instinctive with the older Hellenes.
In the end, it is courage in the face of reality that distinguishes a man like Thucydides from Plato: Plato is a coward before reality, consequently he flees into the ideal; Thucydides has control of himself, consequently he also maintains control of things.
Thucydides: Greek historian and author of the History of the Pelloponneisan War, which recounts the 5th century BC war between Sparta and Athens to the year 411 BC Thucydides has been dubbed the father of "scientific history" due to his strict standards of evidence-gathering and analysis in terms of cause and effect without reference to intervention by the gods, as outlined in his introduction to his work.
He has also been called the father of the school of political realism, which views the relations between nations as based on might rather than right. His classical text is still studied at advanced military colleges worldwide, and the Melian dialogue remains a seminal work of international relations theory. More generally, Thucydides showed an interest in developing an understanding of human nature to explain behavior in such crises as plague, genocide (as practiced against the Melians), and civil war.
"It is a general rule of human nature that people despise those who treat them well, and look up to those who make no concessions."
"But, the bravest are surely those who have the clearest vision of what is before them, glory and danger alike, and yet notwithstanding, go out to meet it."
Raizo is a world's deadliest Special Forces Ninja Assassin. Orphaned as a child, he is raised by the Ozunu Clan (The Black Sand Clan), which is believed by the world to be a myth. When the only love he has known, Kiriko is executed by the Clan for betrayal, Raizo begins to harbor a resentment towards the Clan. When his first official mission is completed, he is told to execute one of his fellow members for the same reasons Kiriko was killed. He rebels against them, nearly dying in the process, and goes into hiding and seeking revenge on his former family. Meanwhile, Mika Coretti is a Europol agent who investigates money linked to a long line of political murders and finds that it traces back to the clan. She defies her superior, Ryan Maslow and uncovers agency files to find out more. The Ozunu, finding out about the investigation, attempts to assassinate her, but she is rescued by Raizo. Now being pursued in Berlin, Raizo and Mika must find a way to take down the Ozunu Clan permanently and stay alive from the shadowy warriors from which there is no place to hide.
James McTeigue: Assistant director of the Matrix trilogy, Star Wars II: Attack of The Clones, and he made his directorial debut in the 2006 film V for Vendetta. Jeong "Rain" Ji-hoon: Often known simply as Rain, is a South Korean pop singer, dancer, model, actor, businessperson, and designer. Naomie Melanie Harris: an English screen actress known for her starring role as Selena in 28 Days Later and her supporting turn asTia Dalma (Calypso) in the second and third Pirates of the Carribean movies.
LORD SHO KOSUGI: a Japanese martial artist with training in shinto-jinen style karate who gained popularity as an actor during the 1980s, usually playing a ninja.
So I have this rule about movies:
If there's no black people in the movie,
I don't rent it, buy it, or go to see it.
I'll buy a movie if there's at least 1 black person in a lead role; or, if there are no African-American actors, give me a Latino, Asian, or some other person of color that I can identify with. If it's an all white cast -forget it.
I don't finance a colorless world-view of things for nobody. That being said, if the movie falls into one of my interests, I don't care who's in the movie. What I'm talking about is funding a target audience for entertainment that does not included me -or those that look like me -or the larger community of people of color.
So I said all that to say, that if I knew that Naomie Harris
was the co-lead in Ninja Assassin, I would've been there opening day!
Are you kidding me? Ninjutsu! And Naomie as the co-lead!
And the asian hero in the movie isn't depicted in some culturally
typical and/or unempowered way. Hours before seeing it, I read that it was a Joel Silver & Wachowski Bros. production.
Now why is it that the Wachowski Brothers are
the only white guys in the film industry who consistently include
Black people prominently in their movies??
Let me tell ya this, ...they get MY money because they do.
When was the last time you saw a Black or Latino family
featured on the Learning Channel?
Are there no working class people of color with multiples???,
or Dwarfism??
-PEEP GAME PEOPLE
AN EMANATION FROM HERO MECHALITH http://heromechalithmillennium.blogspot.com/ www.mechalithmillennium.com
