Ben's Friends and People He Admires
Dec. 23rd, 2009
12:29 am
Just a small thing~
My new favorite perfume is 'Chanel Allure Sensuelle' after smelling it on a friend a week ago!
It smells very earthy and woodsy, with lots of patchouli, but more like something from an enchanted forest, not too heavy nor "department store" perfumy at all, at least not to my nose.
If you like the sent of patchouli but get tired of comments like, "Oh god, who's wearing patchouli!" or "What the hell smells like a tree in here?!", when you walk into a room then want to shrink into a corner, you might like this better.
You'll still have that earthy tree-root smell and get your woodsy patchouli fix, yet it's a touch more sophisticated!
I highly recommend it.
Now if only I could find something that smells like a balsam Christmas tree without smelling like, well, a Christmas tree! Sometimes I like to wear a balsam/piney woods/fir tree scent, even in July, and get "You smell like a Christmas tree!" comments. Not that it matters really...
If I want to smell like a tree I will.
;)
12:21 am
I know I've posted this poem before, some time ago, but I do love it and this author so.
Twilight on the Snow
~Clark Ashton Smith
Before the hill's high altar bowed,
The trees are Druids, weird and white,
Facing the vision of the light
With ancient lips to silence vowed.
No certain sound the woods aver,
Nor motion save of formless wings—
Filled with phantasmal flutterings,
With thronging gloom and shadow-stir.
Unseen, unheard, amid the dell
Lie all the winds that mantic trees
Have lulled with crystal warlockries
And bound about with Merlin-spell.
http://www.eldritchdark.com/writings/po
Dec. 22nd, 2009
09:47 am - Bad social media behavior
Originally published at Imagine Your Reality. Please leave any comments there.
Success with social media isn’t just learning how to use the technology to communicate with people. As people learn how to use the technology, they may feel they’ve mastered social media, but in truth successfully using social media is more subtle than that. The reality is that social media isn’t the technology we use, but the social behaviors we engage in while using that technology. The technology is the interface, but the success is the social behaviors. The following are some social behaviors that aren’t successful.
Sending mass invites out for your events. I’ve been guilty of this behavior myself, and it’s not a very successful social media behavior. For one thing, if you send mass invites out to everyone what will happen is you will annoy the people that the invite doesn’t apply to and they will be less inclined to interact with you as a result. You will get emails requesting that you take them off your events list.
Posting or tweeting with links to your website, and no other kind of interaction. No one likes being advertised to and when the only message you send out is a tweet or post with a link to your website or blog, people will feel that you are just trying to get them to your website without genuinely engaging them. Your messages will come off as advertisements, which is the least level of engagement possible.
Sending automatic DM’s to people. Sending an automatic direct message, especially with a link comes off as insincere and suggests that you’re trying to get something from your followers. It starts the relationship out on the wrong foot and leads people to feel that you don’t want to get to know them.
Sending the standard, generic invite when you want to connect with someone. When I get an invitation from Linkedin, where the person hasn’t taken time to personalize it and indicate why they want to connect with me, or how they met me, I feel like that person hasn’t made the effort to establish a reason for why I should connect with that person.
Not taking time to acknowledge or respond to people’s efforts to help you. It doesn’t take much to acknowledge someone retweeting you or otherwise helping you out. When you don’t it comes off as rude and inconsiderate of the effort other people made.
These are just a few bad social media behaviors. What are some you’ve observed, or maybe even done yourself?
07:59 am - Tuesday cookie is running late.
Time is like a drug. Too much of it kills you.
Dec. 21st, 2009
05:25 pm - Latest releases from Immanion press
Originally published at Magical Experiments. Please leave any comments there.
Immanion Press/Megalithica Books would like to announce its two newest nonfiction releases! We now have both of these books in stock here at the Green Wolf, so here’s the official announcement.
Women’s Voices in Magic edited by Brandy Williams is a phenomenal collection of essays from female occultists and magicians. People often think of female magical practitioners as mainly witches and neopagans, and the areas of ceremonial and chaos magic as more male-dominated. The essayists in this collection would like to disagree, some politely, some not! We discuss everything from our historical predecessors to the effects pregnancy has on magic, dealing with discrimination by other occultists for our sex, and how we work to change the assumptions that are made about us. Click here for more details, including a list of essays, and ordering info!
As for our other release–chaos magic has been around for a few decades now, and some would argue that it’s long since gone stale, assimilated into a more mainstream, image-oriented form of occultism. Liber 767 vel Boeingus by Josef Karika takes chaos magic back to its exploratory, experimental, and lovingly irreverent roots. Based on the author’s fifteen years of practical experience, and written with a good dose of humor, this text includes a wide variety of ideas for magical practice, from new takes on sigils and servitors and technological magic, to innovative ways to work with memories and dopplegangers. Here’s where you can find more info, and place your order!
01:25 pm - panthea-con
So I will be at panethea-con. Lupa and I will be hosting the Immanion press author panel again this year and I may or may not be teaching a class on Space/Time magic. Yes, I said may or may not, because while P-con did accept it, I've also made a special request in regards to it that I'm waiting to hear back on. Can't say anything about it now.
11:10 am - How you can prepare your business for the new year
Originally published at Imagine Your Reality. Please leave any comments there.
2010 is just around the bend and in the midst of all the holiday merriment it can be easy to forget the necessity of preparing your business for the 2010 year until after the holidays are done, but you don’t want to wait that long. The following tips will help you prepare for the next year, while still enjoying the end of this year.
First and foremost, spend some time defining your goals for the next year. What is it you want to accomplish with your business? Be specific as possible with your goals. Then define the actions you need to take with the same amount of specificity. Are there areas of your business that you want to improve on?
Second, Take some time to organize your finances for 2009. Make sure your receipts are put into chronological order and grouped into specific categories so you can make it easy to determine your deductions for taxes, but also so that if the IRS contacts you, the receipts are easy to deal with in the case of an audit.
Third, Spend some time assessing your business and what it accomplished over the course of 2009. Did you reach all your goals? Were there some things you could’ve done differently? What did you learn that you can apply to the coming year?
These are a just few things you can do to prep for 2010, while also learning from 2009. Take some time to do these tips and you will find that 2010 will be a great start.
10:59 am - Monday cookie realizes why he loses track of time.
Knowledge = Power = Energy = Matter = Mass. A library is just a genteel black hole that can read
10:58 am - A couple of links
First: the humor. Epic Win FTW! - like I can has cheeseburger, only odd stuff that people have done that is humorous in a great way and leaving you wishing you'd thought of it first.
http://epicwinftw.com/
Second: Primarily for Brian in Ireland. A mag you may be aware of, but definitely sounds like folks you might want to hit up for an article or two.
http://www.permaculture.co.uk/main2.htm
Dec. 20th, 2009
07:29 am - Disclaimer
"The views expressed on this web-log are mine alone and do not necessarily reflect the views of my employer."
Booger!
![[mood icon]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/mood/niaha/kitty/ankangryg.gif){kind=small}
annoyedDec. 19th, 2009
01:30 am - Group time vs Individual Time
Originally published at Magical Experiments. Please leave any comments there.
I got into a really interesting metaphysical tonight with my friends about group time vs individual time. I was describing to them some of my paratheatre work with time and we got to talking about the difference between Western time, which is monochronic and this very scheduled and linear with one thing happening at a time and polychronic time where lots of things could be happening at the same time and its very non-linear with little in the way of scheduling.
Then I began thinking about group time, time which is created when a group starts meeting and working together. It’s a kind of sacred time in its own way. When I interact with a group, the experience of time changes quite a bit because of the group interaction, but also because I’m no longer in individual time, time spent with just myself. And I notice with group time it is different because with interaction of other people, the sense of time changes. It feels like the moment lasts longer, instead of with individual time, where the awareness of time is based more on solo activity and when those activities are finished.
It’s an interesting realization and it speaks to some degree to the efficacy of group time, because everyone participating in a group is also participating in the experience of time in that group. The contribution of each person’s awareness of time creates the experience of group time an consequentlly can alter the awareness of the flow of time.
Dec. 18th, 2009
02:07 pm - Developing your goals for 2010
Originally published at Imagine Your Reality. Please leave any comments there.
It’s the holiday season and now might seem like a good time take a rest from your business, but before you go to lots of holiday parties and drink lots of eggnog, take a moment to think about defining your business goals for the first quarter of 2010. Yes, only the first quarter, because realistically a lot will change in three months for you.
When I talk about goals, I’m not talking about new years resolutions which are vague and abstract. I’m talking about a defined end result and an action that helps you achieve that end result. I’m talking about picking out specific business activities that your business engages in and defining actions that helps you reach end goals for each of those activities. A business activity could be networking, marketing, social media, customer service, etc. You will ideally know what your business activities are.
For each business activity, first rate your level of satisfaction with that area. a 1 indicates you have a lot of work to do and a 7 indicates that you are doing just about everything you can and its working great.
After determining the level of satisfaction, you’ll next want to think about where you would like to be with that business activity in 3 months. What would the end results be. An end result needs to be measurable so you should have an idea of what results you would like to accomplish.
Next you need to determine what action you will take to help you achieve that end result. The action needs to be targeted and specific to the business activity.
Here’s a goal I have for the next three months
Business Activity: Services and Products
End result: I want my clients to be able to sign up for classes without me having to email them.
Action: Learn how to use auto-responders and integrate them into my website and event announcements.
A specific result and a specific action. Now apply that same approach to your goals. Of course setting goals is wonderful…following through is another matter, so make sure you can follow through by not just writing the goal, but putting it somewhere you can see it everyday.
![[mood icon]](http://i20.photobucket.com/albums/b247/s1ren/Mood%20Themes/amused.jpg)
amused10:44 am
New default icon is an excerpt from a photo taken of me two years ago by ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}
lorrieofthelake , which is probably my favorite photo of me, ever (she did the photoshop effects herself). It looks like an album cover shot, to me, hehe. This is what I'd look like if I were actually beautiful, LOL. Lorrie rocks with that camera :)
10:07 am - Tis the season to go crazy.
Have you ever considered that Chuck Norris has perhaps taken one too many roundhouse kicks to the head? I mean that seriously. I don't know which is sadder, the crazy that has been coming out of his mouth this past year or that the media is reporting it. Let's have a rundown shall we?
Said that if Texas seceeds from the Union (remember that), he'd be happy to serve as first President of the Republic of Texas. uh-huh.
Then was telling the Tea-partiers to desecrate the flag by staining it with tea or using only the "old Glory" flag (the one with the 13 stars, because those other 37 states don't count). If they didn't feel comfortable staining their own flag, they could buy one from him.
Now? Calling Obamacare, "Herodcare". Saying "What would have happened if Mother Mary had been covered by Obamacare? What if that young, poor and uninsured teenage woman had been provided the federal funds (via Obamacare) and facilities (via Planned Parenthood, etc.) to avoid the ridicule, ostracizing, persecution and possible stoning because of her out-of-wedlock pregnancy?"
Well first off, I think we could have avoided the Crusades....but that's neither here nor there. What strikes me is that these are the same people who would have ridiculing, ostracizing, and persecuting the young poor, uninsured, pregnant, unwed teen. Hell, they would be the first ones looking around for rocks. Since we're theorizing, if Mary and Joseph had insurance Jesus could have been born in a proper facility and not a manger. Following Chuck's logic through to conclusion, even if said poor uninsured teenage woman received an Annunciation from the angel Gabriel himself, she would still be hellbent on aborting the Son of God. Ah...inconsistant and insane. Such a wonderful coctail.
How soon til we see Chuck running for office?
09:21 am - Friday cookie has tears in his beer.
"Oh, you hate your job? Why didn't you say so? There's a support group for that. It's called EVERYBODY, and they meet at the bar." -Drew Carey
Dec. 17th, 2009
10:20 pm - Some musings on time
Originally published at Magical Experiments. Please leave any comments there.
First, the latest issue of Rending the Veil is available. I’ve read a few of the articles and it looks good.
I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about some of my recent work with time, particularly the concept of being present in the future without focusing on the future. In some cultures that standard of time is actually part of their perception of it, but in Western culture, there is an emphasis on the future and on sharply regulating time. Edward Hall provides excellent examples of this in the Dance of Life, and I’ve found his observations to be sound.
I’ll admit I’ve struggled with just being present in the moment. It’s such a foreign experience of time that it feels counter-intuitive, yet I also know it offers something valuable to me, because it allows me to work with a different understanding of time. And the moments when I can get into that place of just being present has its own value because I’m much more aware of the possibilities in those moments than I previously was. I’ve realized that the tendency to focus on the future, to fixate on it, can become an obsession, and is one that many people indulge in without fully appreciating that reality.
I do think there’s value in being able to focus on the future and on desired goals you want to achieve, but I’ve also come to realize there’s value in being in the moment and being open to what is available to you. Too often that can be ignored because of a focus on the future. My challenge has been to be more aware of the moment I’m in. Sometimes it’s worked and other times, not so much, but undoing the cultural perspective on time that’s been held for over 30 years of my life is pretty challenging, so I’m not expecting over night success. Just trying it is more important than anything else, because I’m being open to the experience.
11:15 am - Nobody likes an infomercial
Originally published at Imagine Your Reality. Please leave any comments there.
One of the common mistakes I see on different social networking sites is a tendency toward sending out a stream of advertisements, in what is often a vain hope of attracting business. The reason it’s vain is that every single tweet is driven toward a goal of getting a sale as opposed to providing genuine and useful information. It should be obvious that social networks aren’t sales platforms, but many businesses try to treat them that way.
The reason this occurs is fairly simple. They are too busy thinking of the bottom line, of trying to make money, to consider the process by how that actually occurs. Instead businesses use social networks without a clear understanding of what the technology allows them to do. In fact, the tendency is ultimately to focus on the technology, without recognizing what the technology does: Namely connect us closer to other people.
Nobody likes an infomercial, so when put your status updates and tweets out there, spend a moment reading what you wrote and ask yourself, from the perspective of a reader, whether you would actually be interested in the message, whether it would actually speak to you. If it doesn’t for you, why would it for anyone else?
Look through your last thirty or so tweets and then ask yourself how many responses either on twitter or on your website you got from those tweets. If there’s no traffic and no responses then you have to question whether the activity is really productive. In fact, it isn’t productive if you aren’t getting a response.
Spending time looking at what you’ve written can help you determine if you are treating your audience like people, or like sales numbers. Can you guess how your audience would prefer to be treated?
10:42 am - Thursday cookie has been hanging around at Home Depot
Tools, of course, can be the subtlest of traps.
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