BLACKJACK!

Luck.

You know those nights when you just feel like you can do no wrong; when you wake up and the world decides it owes you a favor, or 21?

A couple compadres and I encountered this last night on a small endeavor to Tunica, MS. We did everything from rob the casinos, to drive away laughing at the cops while they had their guns blazing. We were invincible. At one point, Dr. Jones even made the comment, "Yep, I'm going to the moon tonight."

Okay, so the story didn't go exactly like that. We may or may not have just all three won money playing blackjack at the casinos, and I may or may not have really really deserved to get a $200 ticket and got away with a mere warning citation (I still haven't figured out how/why he let me slide). However, Dr. Jones did actually make that comment after I didn't get a ticket. There may have also been a little luck involved. Or was there?

Luck has taken on a funny place in today's society. Your hardcore realists say that there's no such thing as luck. Hard work and determination make luck (these people have never met Matthew Hall). Then, you have your superstitious individuals that will do some of the craziest things humanly possible if they think they can change their luck. Finally, there are people like me. I try to keep things as real as possible, but sometimes things just happen that you can't explain. There's not really anything else to call it, but luck.

Where does luck come from though?

How do people get lucky?

Why do people get lucky?

Is the simple answer to these questions that some people simply set themselves up to get lucky? That either through pure methodology or through an unconscious intuition, some people just repeatedly set themselves up to win? Or is there a deeper, much more complex answer? Do we actually have a complex flow of positive and negative energy flowing throughout the world and the universe that just hasn't been detected yet, and some people just attract more of the positive energy than others?

I'm not really sure I buy into either of the theories I just presented, but I do think the higher power plays some kind of role in people's luck. How much and how little, I'm not sure, but there has to be some explanation unbeknownst to us.

Some times you just have to feel it.

Good luck to everyone.

                        <>< C. T. Gunn

A Blog Created World...

Blogs are ridiculous, slightly pointless, great sources of information that drive the world we live in.

I've recently been doing some marketing for a website (http://www.paretologic-products.com) and working on it's page rank in the major search engines. The typical way to go about this task is to accumulate a large amount of back links to the site you're attempting to promote and wait for Google to index these links. Then after a few months you'll begin to see the results and reap the rewards of all your hard work. Basically it's very very slow in the short run, but very very fast in the long run. Once things take off, they really go.

Well, the most effective ways to build these back links for a product driven website is to either write articles on your topic, while making references to your website, which will hopefully get indexed by the search engines and other people, or leave comment after comment on dofollow blogs that are related to the genre of your product. Ultimately this got me thinking, and it made me realize that blogs technically control the world we live in.

In some form or fashion, practically everyone is influenced by the internet these days, and if you're one of the people that use the internet regularly then you use Google, Yahoo, Bing, or some other search engine to find what you're looking for. Well, when you do this you're viewing the pages that have the highest page rank for the word or phrase that you searched with. Or in other words, you find the websites that get the most traffic and have the most back links to them.

Since blogs are the main source of back links, I feel like one can plainly see that blogs play a large role in driving the search engines and driving our attention on the internet. However, the only reason this works is because you can find a blog on any topic that you type into the search engine. It's really quite amazing. Some of these have been grown out of necessity as a marketing strategy, but most have been created out of pure desire. People from all walks of life willingly lay their thoughts on the line, and allow them to potentially be read, hated, loved, discussed, etc. by people they've never even met.

Believe it, or not.

Blogs drive the internet and influence the world we live in.

I wonder how many people have actually realized this?

                                     <>< C. T. Gunn

P.S. - Merry Christmas to everyone!

The Human Mind Can't Comprehend...

It always seems like I'm writing about things that we, as human beings, can't comprehend. Perhaps that's what makes a true deep thought.

Take time for example. It is yet another illustration of something that was not created by man kind, therefore we can't comprehend it. We use it as a form of regulation, and we literally mold our entire life around it. Everything is driven by time. Think about it. Time controls when we sleep, when we eat, when we work, when we play, etc.

We even use it as a form of measurement. From the minutes and hours in a day, all the way to the months and years of our lives. We've even taught ourselves to gauge things from it. Based off of experience, we can estimate everything from how long it should take to cook breakfast, to how long we should technically live; how early is too early; how late is too late.

I understand that time is technically driven by the sun, moon, stars, and universe as a whole, but that goes back to the age old question of where it all came from. We'll leave that for another post. Maybe this is why ancient civilizations studied the stars so closely, and some even worshiped them. Because they understood that the motion of these large bodies is what drives life forward. Now, they obviously didn't fully understand what they were seeing, but they figured out through experience and repetition that it was something worth paying attention to. Take the Egyptian pyramids, for example. They're laid out in the pattern of Orion's belt. And the Mayan calendar which was formed from studying the stars and is pointing to 2012 as the end of the world (no chance). If they had this down to such a science that they could engineer these huge construction feats, what happened to this science? What happened to this large database of potentially understanding?

Time is just a topic that seems to be a lost topic. The fact is, to try and comprehend a world without time is like trying to turn ourself inside out. Although I suppose it is technically plausible, we would never know if it happened.

The human mind just can't comprehend it.

Take a second to think about it...

                                 <>< C. T. Gunn

Learning is Bitter Sweet

They say that the only time you're really learning about yourself is when things are going badly for you, when things are miserable, and when you're happy you're technically just floating in existence. I suppose this is why studying tends to carry the astigmatism of being a miserable activity.

However, it's not uncommon to hear people say, and I fit in this category, "I love to learn." But does this mean that people like this enjoy being miserable; that we enjoy being unhappy? I don't think so. I think that maybe, subconsciously, we understand that the only way we will ever know happiness is to know misery; that we can't have one without the other.

Something I find myself doing, and I don't think I'm alone in this, is dwelling more on the bad moments in life. Now, I'm not saying that I just think about all the terrible things that happen to me in life. What I'm saying is that, the bad events that happen, I tend to spend more time thinking about them. I'll run the particular event through my head over and over, studying every part and every angle of it. I'm learning. I'm learning what not to do next time; what to do better next time; the correct steps to take next time. I think about happy times, but not like I do the bad ones. I don't catch myself running them through my head like I do the others.

How much is too much though? How do you know when you've thought about things too much? How do you know when you haven't thought enough. I mean thought is a relaxing sip of hydrochloric acid. Sometimes I wish there was a guide on it instead of it just being left to pure intuition.

The undying fact is that learning is bitter sweet. You have to have the miserable times to be able to accomplish and enjoy the happy ones. I don't like the system. Unfortunately it's the only one we'll ever be able to comprehend or use.

It's the sour that makes the sweet that much sweeter.

                        <>< C. T. Gunn

"The End" Is Better Left To Chance?

What is an ending?

What is a beginning?

How much control should we have over either?

They do say that every ending is just the start of a new beginning. So, is an ending technically defined as meaning that the climax is over? Then, the beginning is just whatever follows the climax being over?  Although this is sometimes hard for us to wrap our mind around, it is true. For example, when someone's life is over, here on earth, it signifies the beginning of mourning, but what is the new beginning for the person that has just passed? I know it's technically the beginning of life after death; the beginning of their judgment day. I don't really know what that means though.

Maybe that's one of the beautiful perks of life, we just don't know. Some argue that it's just too stressful and they'd just rather know already. I'll agree that it does cause the emotion of stress, but think of all the other great emotions we would never have if it weren't for unpredictability. Think how unfulfilling achieving a personal goal would be without unpredictability. The fact is people want unpredictability.

But how much unpredictability is too much? Take sports for example. The only reason sports are so popular are because the outcome and the events that take place during the game or race are never known. However, we always know almost the exact start time and the approximate ending time of a game or race.

The only thing for certain in life is uncertainty, but how much uncertainty do you want in your life? How much structure do you want/need? How do we control either?

Life. The World. Events. Beginnings. Ends. Where would we be without them?

               <>< C. T. Gunn

  

I really hate that it feels so right...

Sleep.

In the design of man kind, who thought it would be a good idea to require sleep?

Now don't get me wrong. I enjoy those nights that I get to sleep 12 hours straight just as much as anyone. Why did our designer require our bodies to have it though. I know it's hard to fathom due to a part of our lives revolving around when we have to sleep, but think about how productive this world would be if no one had to sleep.

However, this brings up a number of logistical questions. Would we then be required to work 16+ hours a day instead of 8? I mean if people are awake 40% more of the time in a world with no sleep, then we're going to need more money since we'd have that extra time to spend it. Would the work day become the work night so that people could do what they wanted in the day. Would the meaning of "Open 24 hours" take on a new meaning? Would our bodies still need caffeine, or just need food every so often since we technically aren't fighting to stay awake anymore?

Was sleep built into our being not only to allow our bodies to rebuild themselves, but to guard us against ourselves as a whole. If no one ever had to sleep would we progress even faster to then end of the world? Would the stories of Revelation come that much quicker? Is there a deeper meaning to sleep?

Why do we have to sleep?

                         <>< C. T. Gunn

Thought is a relaxing sip of hydrochloric acid...

What is thought?

Where does it come from?

Where does it go?

Thought seems to be what makes this world go round. It's what allows us to develop who we are and create the world we surround ourselves with. It allows us to remember where we parked when we leave the store. It allows us to contemplate what we think about that attractive co-worker. It allows us to develop opinions. It can be concentrated. It can be thrown about loosely. Some people do it too much, and some do it too little. It allows us to do so many things that I can't even think of them all right now.

But what is thought? Where does it come from? Where does it go? We can't hold thought. We can't throw it around like we can a baseball. We're told it's just a form of energy. But is there a way to control this energy, or is this what we're doing when we think? Is thought simply like air? We know it's there and we can feel it; we just don't know how to control it?

Is this inability to control thought the reason for all the problems in the world? Is it ultimately going to be the cause of our demise instead of our happiness. Does anyone have a thought about these questions I've asked?

What is this thing called thought?

Where does it come from?

Where does it go?

Just a thought about thought...


                    <>< C. T. Gunn