What would happen if I was famous?

A question I can't stop turning over in my mind, ever since I saw footage of Britney Spears beating a photographer with an umbrella, is how I myself would react if I were to become famous.

I think of myself as a 'non conformist by accident', meaning, I'm not trying to be a non conforming person, it just happens.

So, it's a good question to ask, "Would I do that too, if I was famous?"

Would I be like all the other famous people, and get all strung out and wasted on drugs?

If I had a million dollars, would I spend it all on cocaine? Would I crash my BMW into a tree? Would I drive the wrong way down the express way because I was high on Black Tar Heroin?

This is a good question, because you never know.

When Britney Spears had that melt down, and shaved her head, and basically wigged out, for a little while she was my hero.

I was hoping she's stop singing that pop music crap she's famous for and become more like Marilyn Mason, or Trent Resner from 'Nine Inch Nails'.

The best thing about people who go crazy like that is they're legitimate. They're not pretending to be unstable. They are unstable, and there's proof. .

Another option that I would have if I was famous, would be to refuse to become all strung out on drugs, and live a clean, normal existence.

I'll bet that if I was famous, I'd be like Matthew McConnaughey. Matthew McConnaughey lives in a camper by the ocean. He drives to different beaches, and parks his camper there so that he can spend his days surfing.

He only does a movie if funds are low. He also very rarely bathes, and drinks a lot of beer.

I think that if I was famous, I too would live in a camper. I'd learn to surf, and park my camper at the beach. I don't think I'd stop bathing though, and I wouldn't drink beer, because that's not my thing.

If I was famous, I'd go hang out with people like Ram Dass, and live in a Ashram in India. Then, I'd go back home to my camper by the beach all enlightened.

It would be great. I'd make one movie a year.

No one would know that I was famous because I'd be all dirty most of the time. No one would ever recognize me at all. I'd be incognito, wearing clothing I made myself, and churning my own butter and living off the land in different state parks.

I'll bet that's how I'd refuse to conform, if I was famous. By being really weird.

Reality TV

I don't know how much a like reality TV.

There's this show on now, I think it's on the Discovery Channel, where this guy teaches you how to stay alive if you're ever lost in the woods, or you plane crashes, or something.

I watched one episode of this show, at first, it was fascinating.

This guy was out in the middle of some State Park. It was February, and snow was on the ground.

He started the show off by trying to explain how he was going to build a shelter out of snow. He dug a hole, and then manage to construct a sort of snow fort.
He was cold, but he eventually, he got a fire started, too.

He claimed to be relatively cozy in his snow fort.

The day turned into night, and this guy slept in his snow fort. In the morning, he set out to look for some food. He ate some bugs, if I remember correctly, and drank some snow he managed to melt by the warmth of the fire he's built by the snow fort.

It was getting boring, so I changed the channel.

Another time, I saw this guy on TV, and he was panicking because he was lost in a desert, and was desperately trying to find a certain type of moss so that he could eat it for the nutritional value it would provide him with, and also as a way of getting some water.

I don't really like this show, because the whole time I'm watching it; I can't stop thinking about the camera guy.

You know there has to be a whole team of people standing there right next to the guy while he's freaking out about the fact that he's 'lost'.

There's no way the camera people are lost. I don't believe that for on minute. They probably have some camp site all set up only minutes away.

I'll the bet the camera people take a lunch breaks too. They probably walk off a few hundred feet from the guy who's over there eating bugs, and eat a pizza they just ordered.

No one is really 'lost' on these types of shows, and no one is really that
desperate to 'save' themselves.

It's like that show 'Survivor'. On 'Survivor' those people were supposed to be starving and dirty and trying to keep alive in the wilderness. However, it is a true fact that the camera people and crew weren't having any damn problems at all.

This is why I think I would be really happy if I was a camera guy for a reality TV show.

I think it would be great to stand there and eat a slice of pizza while I filmed some guy who was trying to survive off the land for the fourth day, and had been reduced to eating bugs.

I wouldn't be like, 'Dude, just pretend to eat the bug. Later, I'll give you a piece of pizza. We'll share.'

HELL NO. I'd make him eat the bugs while I sniggered.

It would be the same thing with the contestants on 'Survivor'. They could come over and try to beg me for crackers and stuff, but I wouldn't slip them any food. I'd just be like, 'Back off, fool. Go eat your bugs."

While these people would be sleeping in their snow forts, I'd probably be sleeping in some camper. I'd be watching cable TV and eating popcorn.

I don't know why more people aren't out trying to get jobs for 'Reality' TV shows, I think it would be a great job.

Worst Book Ever

Well, I just read the most horrible train wreck of a book ever written.

This woman kept a diary of her life working in different brothels, and then somehow, she got it published.

I got the book for 50 cents at the discount bookstore, so I guess I should have known it was going to be terrible. Although it's true that I didn't realize at the time that it would also be so disturbing.

I never knew life could be so bad if you worked in a really run down brothel.

For instance, all I knew before about brothels before came from that TV show on Showtime; I think it is, called, 'The Bunny Ranch' or something like that.

I guess the Bunny Ranch is an upscale brothel, and not a run down, nasty brothel.

Brothels can get bad, I guess.

This woman worked in all the run down brothels in Nevada.

The types of brothels this woman worked at were all in little trailers, surrounded by barbwire fencing and set way back in some deserted area.

I guess as a prostitute, you're not really supposed to go into town. So, you have to pay some person to buy you groceries and things. It kind of makes the prostitutes 'shut in', if you know what I mean.

Some brothels will pay for your room and board, but other brothels wont.

I guess it's actually kind of expensive live in some brothels.

This lady worked in all the bad brothels, and also in a few okay brothels, but definitely for sure not in any of the more upscale brothels.

From her diary, it sounded a bit like she was some kind of a captive animal. For instance, every few days or so, they would let the prostitutes out to stand in the yard to get some air.

They were let out for about 20 minutes or so, and then brought right back in.

They weren't supposed to do drugs, and they had a doctor come to the brothel to check the women for sexually transmitted diseases, like, once a week.

It was the worst book I think I've ever read.

The woman in the book says that working in a brothel is much safer than working the streets though, so I guess in some ways, it was a step up for her.

However, since the prostitutes weren't allowed to leave the brothel, she said disturbing things about how she would cut pictures out of the phone book to make pretty posters for her walls. And that she made a dress once out of a string of beads she'd found and an old pillow case.

It was horrible.

The worst part of the whole thing though, I think, was that hookers working in a brothel will sometimes try to get out of paying the Madam by hiding money in certain orifices.

So before they can leave the brothel, they all had to bend over, and be checked to see if they had money stashed in in different parts of their bodies.

I'm not making this up.

The last chapter of the book focused on how hard it was to live outside the brothel. She mentioned like, 60 times that she thought she needed a therapist.

I'm pretty damn sure she needs a therapist too.

I mean, there's gotta be a better job opportunities out there for her. There just has to be.

I found Ram Dass on MySpace!

I can't even believe it. I found Ram Dass! He's my MySpace friend! It's amazing!

For people who don't know who Ram Dass is, he's this Stanford trained psychologist who worked at Harvard and did all the fascinating LSD studies with Dr. Timothy Leary.

He spent a ton of his years in research high off LSD.

He even piloted his own plane down to Mexico to buy magic mushrooms .

How cool is that?

He and Leary experimented on subjects to see what the effects of LSD were on humans. Which has to be THE coolest job EVER.

It would be fun to interview people who thought they were like, a glass of orange juice.

Can you imagine telling people what you did for a living, if you were Ram Dass?

"Hi, I work for Harvard. I'm doing some research. It's very important."

"What kinds of research do you do sir?"

"I trip on acid to see what it does to my brain. I'm experimenting on myself. But I also experiment on other people too. I got a grant. It's from the government."

Ram Dass is awesome. Later he was rescued from his chronic drug use by Hindu spiritual masters who introduced him to yoga and mantras and meditation.

He concluded that drugs created false states of enlightenment, and that true enlightenment can only come from meditation and yoga and juice fasts.

I read about that when I was a kid, and so that's the real reason why I never wanted to do drugs.

They claim that if you're enlightened, it's like you're high all the time. But if you do drugs, you create a false state of enlightenment that pulls you closer to God, only to drop you down even further away once you come down from your high.

That's pretty much what Ram Dass says.

Burn out is spiritual death. And that's the truth.

Ram Dass is awesome.

Ram Dass is the coolest guy ever.

To think he is famous for spreading the word about LSD, and later for spreading the word about true enlightenment.

You gotta love Ram Dass.

He was even fired from Harvard for giving psychedelic drugs to undergraduate students.

Who does that? That's awesome.

It would have been cool to know which professor it was you needed to go to in order to get the acid.

Ram Dass is the coolest guy ever.

I sent him a message. He didn't reply back, but I was just like, "You're Ram Dass! You're famous. I read about you! Oh My God! It's Ram Dass!"

The Perfect Crime

I don't advocate crimes. I'm not a criminal, and even if I was, I'd probably be a bank embezzler, or something cool like that.
However, I have been watching a "Forensic Files" marathon on TV, so I'd like to point a few things out to the killers of the world, and ask a few questions.

First of all if you're gonna 'get' somebody, it seems obvious to me that you'd better not leave any sort of DNA evidence behind. What this means is, is that if you don't want to get caught, you'd better wax your whole body, including your eyebrows and eyelashes, and shave your head too. You don't want to leave any hair behind.

And don't smoke cigarettes and leave them on the ground. And don't ever spit out you gum. One guy got caught for murder because they matched his chewing gum to the groves on his back teeth.

Another thing is, don't touch anything. If you're gonna be a criminal, you either have to do away with your finger prints in some way, perhaps surgically or maybe even with a strong acid or something, or else at least wear gloves.

And don't wear any clothing. All crimes should be committed in the nude due to the fact that forensic scientists can match pretty much any small bit of thread they may find to your clothes, or your victim's clothes. So I say, if you wanna commit a crime, go naked.

Some idiot on one of those shows went around killing people, but forgot that since he worked in a machine shop he had little metal shavings all over himself, and so he left little metal shavings all over his victims.

It took them like a week to track that moron down.

Another thing too, that I'd like to ask these criminals, is why do they drive around in their own car while engaging in criminal activities?

You can bet your boots that if I was gonna be part of any crime, I sure as hell would have a borrowed vehicle. Preferable a borrowed vehicle from someone who I didn't know.

It would be a friend of a friend of a friend's care, for sure.

And even if a criminal has no other option but to take their own car, why does their car have their real license plate on it?

Here's another question for you, if you're going to kill your husband or your wife, WHY would you do it only a few weeks after you've taken out a huge life insurance policy on them? What the hell are these people thinking? You have to at least try not to look like a suspect.

It is way too common that some person will take a life insurance policy out on their spouse, and then not even a week later, their spouse will die 'accidentally'.

Like hello stupid, at least wait for the ink to dry on the insurance policy before you hire the hit man.

Why are these people so stupid?

And why are people always trying to 'get rid of the body'? IT NEVER WORKS.

I say, just leave the body there and get the hell out of the place. I mean come on, these idiots move the body and then there's fibers from the carpet in the car all over the body. Or they get blood all over the seat.

What, are you stupid?

And one more thing, for the love of God, don't confess your crime to ANYONE. Don't brag about it either.

If you have to tell someone, sit down and give your dog a graphic account of what you did. Don't tell people. People will tell the cops.

And why keep the murder weapon? What's the point of keeping the knife? One guy left the knife he killed someone with ON TOP OF HIS REFRIGERATOR AND IT WAS STILL BLOODY.

Why would anyone do that?

And why do criminals think that if they clean up the blood with regular cleaning products, that the blood is 'gone'?

It's not gone, their gonna shine a light on the floor and every place that glows is where the blood was, you moron.

You have to at least try to get the iron out.

Further more, if the cops come and ask you if you were involved in a crime, don't deny it, but then go into graphic detail about what you would have done had you done it, WHICH IS EXACTLY THE SAME AS WHAT ACTUALLY HAPPENED.

Criminals are some of the stupidest people ever. Don't get me wrong, I'm sure there are some very intelligent ones out there, but on the whole, they're a bunch of idiots.
6:10 PM - 7 Comments - 1 Kudos - Add Comment - Edit - Remo

On Writing

I was reading an article in 'Psychology Today', about how the urge to write is now classified as an honest to God mental illness.

I can't remember what they call the disorder, but it's a real condition and a lot of people suffer from it.
Apparently, if you have the disorder badly enough, you can even get medication to help you control your writing problem.

The article quoted one woman who had to get up in the middle of the night to write things. She'd wake up, and the compulsion to write would be so strong, she'd write on her bedroom walls, or all over her arms and legs.

I'm not that bad, but I do lay awake at night composing different blog entries in my head.

Sometimes I'll get up to write them, and sometimes I'll make myself fall asleep and then have weird dreams.

My writing problem is a bad one, but I feel better since I switched to typing on the computer. Back when all I had was a journal to write in, my thumb was giving me great pain due to, I think, some sort of thumb arthritis caused by holding my pen.

I also have a permanent lump on my ring finger from holding a pen.

For a while I was writing so much that I had to take a few days off from it because I was developing a shooting pain from my wrist to my elbow.

So I find that typing is much better than writing with a pen.

I feel sorry for all the great poets and writers from the past because I'll bet they all had really messed up hands and arms.

The way a peson writes though is different depending on what medium they use.

Writing with pen and paper is far more personal than typing.

This blog isn't like my journal, of course. It's really more of a weird article/commentary thing I've got going on. Every now and then I'll toss in a personal story or two, but for the most part I'm just rambling.

I don't usually even know what I'm going to write about until I sit down and start writing. Sometimes I even surprise myself.

I don't ever edit any of these blog posting either. This is Barbie writing at her worst.

I don't really know if I'm any good at writing, but I do enjoy writing a great deal.

I was kind of feeling bad that I've been doing nothing but sitting around and posting to my blog, but I think maybe it has been really good for me.

For instance, the more I realize how much I like writing, the more I think I should go and see if I can get into Grad school for Journalism.

I know that you haven't got to go to school to be a journalist, but you can get some great internships if you go that route, and the most important thing to have as a journalist is work experience.

It's how you get a great job writing a humor column.

I told my mom my plan and she told me that she always thought I'd grow up to write a humor column, like Dave Berry.

Mark Twain even started out as a Journalist. It's what inspired his book, "Innocence Abroad."

He wrote it because he was working as a travel journalist at the time.

The trouble with me and Mark Twain, though, is that I once read in a biography about Mark Twain that a psychic had told him that he would either be a famous lawyer, or a famous writer.

I was young when I read that, so I've had it in my head for a long time that a person could either go into law or else write books. I guess I thought that writing energy was the same as legal energy, that's really where my law school idea came from.

I also thought I might enjoy law school too, because there is a lot of writing and research involved, and I love to write and to research different topics, of course.

John Grisham started out as a lawyer. If I remember correctly, he hated it and was miserable. He would pass the time he had to spend each day on the train to work writing legal thrillers on his lap top computer, all while dreaming of becoming a famous writer.

I guess law doesn't really sound all that appealing. . . . . . .according to John Grisham, being a lawyer sucked.

I'll bet that I'd enjoy j school much more than I would law school.

Depressed

Well, I'm depressed. A realization has finally stuck me down.

See, when I was a kid, I used to be firmly under the impression that everyone has a destiny. I read a book by Rollo May called, 'Freedom and Destiny' and in his book he claims that every person has to get though their subconscious programming—their old pain and limiting beliefs, to break through and then begin to manifest their destiny.

I interpreted it at the time as working through your karma in order to eventually reach your dharma.

However, I was sitting on the sofa last night, and it occurred to me that some people's destinies are to get sick and die.

Look at Ann Frank. Her destiny was to become the voice of the Jewish people who were murdered in the holocaust. She ended up a historical figure, a person who represents all of the innocent people who were killed for no real reason in Nazi death camps.

She still died of typhus in a concentration camp though. She probably has no idea that she's 'Ann Frank'—the little girl who lived in the attic.

Then, I was reading in a book called 'Light Emerging' by Barbara Ann Brennan, in which she says that free will is actually a real thing, and that the amount of happiness you will experience in life is contingent upon the amount you are able to align your free will with divine will.

When I first read that, I was like, well hell, I'll just have to start meditating, and then I will know what my 'higher purpose' or 'plan' is. I've got no problem being willing to align myself to divine will.

I'm easy going, man. If God called me and told me to go off and do something, I'd do it.

However, it has just occurred to me that divine will, or 'God's plan' for you, could be bad. It hasn't got to be good.

Divine will could be that you die in a horrible way. You could become a statistic.

Look at all the people living in Africa who are starving to death right now. Is that divine will? Not all of those people could possibly be that far off their 'divine plan'. I mean, there's millions of people right now who are starving to death.

At least some of those millions of starving people are probably living the life they intended to live.

I think maybe life isn't so much a matter of growing up to be something. I'll bet it's more of a becoming. If you're supposed to learn patience, or forgiveness, or something like that, than technically speaking if you have a horrible life, or bad things happen to you, God could be behind that 100%.

Not only that, but there are no guarantees that you will grow up to be something, or even that you will be happy.

You could work through your karma, make it to your Dharma, and then find out that your Dharma is just to 'exist'.

Not everyone is destined for greatness. Some people probably aren't destined for anything.

There are probably some bums right now living on the street who have accomplished the goal of 'Divine will' or whatever.

Their destiny was to live on the street, with nothing at all. Maybe to learn humility, or faith, but either way, they are living the life God intended for them.

I read in a book by Carolyn Myss about some woman named 'Peace Pilgrim' who just started walking. She walked and she walked, with no goal or destination. She had no money, and no food. She just had faith in God.

She told a story once about fining a box to sleep in one night that had a blanket and a pillow in it. She seemed to think that it was a sign that God provided for her.

'Peace Pilgrim' was, evidently, following her life's 'plan' and manifesting her ultimate destiny. Which was walking, I guess.

I find this to be incredibly depressing. I don't think I was supposed to find that story so depressing, but I did.