get to do specials all week. The place I work at is a corporate kitchen, never thought I'd work in one of those, but it is a very enlightened corporation. From scratch food, daily changing menu, relaxed atmosphere that relies upon personal responsibility...

But usually we get pretty specific recipes as they track all the nutritional information for the employees. But on special...fun time. I much, much, much prefer cooking without recipes. So much more intuition and freedom involved.

Monday: Blackened Pork Loin with Collard Greens (with bacon of course) and cheddar grits

Tuesday: steaks (strip and tenderloin) with Marchand Du Vin aux champignons, Rosemary Roasted Potatoes and Broccoli

Wednesday: Sweet Chili Chicken with peppers and onions, jasmine rice and sauteed sesame spinach

Tomorrow: Greek baked sole with potatoes, onion, tomato, caper, olives, white wine, herbs and lemon

Friday: Not sure yet besides and Indian Curry with Chicken and pickled mustard greens. And as a side special: Fried grits with maple syrup. Leftovers from Monday.

So much more fun to just cook. I miss the real restaurant cooking (a ton of different stuff every day instead of only a few things in huge bulk), but it is really hard to ignore the pay, hours, benefits and atmosphere of the place. And to get the same level in a restaurant...tons, tons more hours. I like my time.

C'est la vie.

Thank goodness for specials week!!!

fun, but time consuming. Learning a new program as I do it...but I will admit that it is exciting to work on a video instead of just pictures. My Love really liked shooting it too. I'm finding that getting used to the program is making it make sense to put up segments of the unfinished video as I go along. Might be a couple of weeks before I'm happy with it at all. I am a film grad after all!

Have to admit, it is more exciting to work on it than I expected it to be. Kind of a strange and fun kinky to get a bit turned on watching yourself...

Definitely looking like Obama has won.

I don't look at it with the same excitement as the last election...a lot of that was simply no more Bush and having an African American President. More relief. Relief that Romney and his dishonest campaign didn't win. Relief that there was not a turn back to the same sort of policies that led to the financial crash at the end of the Bush years in the first place. Relief that that faction of the GOP and their campaign of hate failed, both in the Presidential and Senate races. We can keep climbing out of the hole instead of digging it deeper.

Remember the Onion when Obama first won. It said, "Black man given nation's worst job." Ha!

Whew. Probably will still be endless and effective obstructionism, but at least we won't be going backwards.

A bit of disclosure, I suspect, is due first. I'm not attracted to the notion of anal sex. Not giving it, not receiving it from a guy. Giving a guy a blowjob is something intriguing to me, but anal? Nope. However, the one exception is that I think pegging is a very sexy idea. Letting a woman experience a bit of what guys experience, letting myself experience a little of what women experience, etc. So, I'm trying to work up to it. Not quite the most comfortable thing in the world even with small toys for now. Hoping to get used to it.

Anyways...this thought was brought to my attention. When I first got married, sex was hugely problematic. Due to something that my ex went through which I don't feel she ever fully disclosed to me, she had problems with intercourse for a while. Too tense and that causes problems and all that stuff. The thought brought to my attention: My experience with exploring this myself certainly gives me a greater appreciation of what she went through. Not surprisingly, I got very frustrated at the start of my marriage with my ex. Didn't ever fully get over it to tell the truth. But it certainly gives me greater understanding and greater compassion. That's a great thing to learn even if it comes WAY too late. My experience is that greater compassion leads to greater internal freedom for me, so the more I have the better.

The "no political" zone getting crossed. I'm voting Obama, some of the reasoning:

Really the number one big one for me is...economics. Sure that it would cause a lot of guffaws from many Romney supporters, but I believe Obama has a far stronger economic policy than Romney.

The concentration of wealth in America is astonishing in its growth. The endless calls for tax cuts for the wealthiest as the way to spur economic growth...it has been heeded for a long, long time. How well has it served us? Where's the consistent economic growth that "raises all boats?" How come such a vast majority of any gains produced has been so concentrated in so few hands? Why are wages and benefits not keeping up with overall growth since Nixon?

As the economy becomes more and more concentrated, it also becomes more and more globalized. How much of that wealth gets invested overseas rather than following the principle that the idea is sold to us on which is that it will get invested in the US? Anyone really think that this trend is going to slow down with greater monies to invest and less "punishment" for overseas profits? It is estimated that there is some 21 trillion dollars in off shore accounts. 21 trillion. You can't tell whose money it is by the nature of such accounts and certainly a lot, perhaps a majority, has nothing to do with the US. But still...that's an awful lot more than the national debt and an awful lot of it is certainly held by tax dodging Americans...of the ilk of Mitt Romney.

Financial disasters. Obama did inherit a mess of an economy. Unbelievable financial shenanigans went on by those who are supposed to be the "saviors" of our economy in Romney's book. Trust them to spend money better than the government? No, I don't. I trust them to take that money and do the same sort of thing. Combine this with further capital gains cuts and what do we have?

Where did those recent financial disasters come from? Popping bubbles. How to bubbles form and pop? Usually by the "saviors" of the economy leading to more moderate investors jumping on the bandwagon with them in the next sure fire guarantee investment to get rich, all combined with incredibly weak regulation over the purview of the bubble. The technology bubble. The housing bubble. What's the next one? And the "saviors" often know just the right moment to get out somehow, taking tons of investment profits out right before the crash when everyone else gets screwed. All the way back to Black Tuesday this has been happening in various forms and it will happen again. That game has been fixed for a long time, yet here is another "privatize profit, socialize risk" candidate promising to be yet another savior. Tax cuts for the top, slashing social spending on the bottom while raising deficits that are owned by all strikes me as another form of privatizing profit, socializing risk on a tremendous scale.

The broad stroke economic patters are important, in my estimation. Power and money corrupt. Does so in government, does so in private business. Read about that guy who owns Westgate Resorts? Most profitable they've ever been under Obama, but tells his workers he is likely to have to lay them off if Obama wins reelection. Personal profit motive over the well being of his company perhaps being his driving motivation? Hoping to snatch his money under Romney and run perhaps? Sure doesn't seem like it is really about how well his company is doing...

Cutting taxes on the wealthy, watching those tax burdens spread out to everyone. A tradition since Ronald Reagan and his income tax cuts combined with payroll tax raises since 1980. The Republicans are masters of confusing the tax issue by talking about only income taxes when discussing the progressiveness of the system, talking about all taxes the rest of the time. The money does end up coming from somewhere. I note it in my paycheck all the time. I note that I probably paid a higher percentage of my income in taxes last year that Romney did.

Social Darwinism ala Ayn Rand.

Abortion, contraception, all sorts of civil rights. Another big roll back if Romney gets in. More advancement if Obama is reelected. The Republicans are great at promising economic freedom. They are miserable with social freedoms. Dems just have a horrible time getting that message across, often ceding the issue of "freedom" to Republicans instead of fighting back in a coherent philosophical way. Arguing the minutiae, ignoring the philosophical underpinnings. With all the continuous advances in technology, with all the heightened "war on terror" acts that are used to justify invasions of privacy...social freedom seems to me to be a big issue at this point. Supremes at stake, corporations being recognized as "people." We need someone to protect individual liberty in the social sense, not someone who is not only okay but good with seeing them restricted.

Infrastructure taking more hits. Investments in jobs of the future ignored for convenience of the present. The reason Apple makes stuff in China? Because they can find the engineers they need there. ""Apple had 700,000 factory workers employed in China, [Jobs] said, and that was because it needed 30,000 engineers on-site to support those workers. 'You can't find that many in America to hire,' he said. These factory engineers did not have to be PhDs or geniuses; they simply needed to have basic engineering skills for manufacturing. Tech schools, community colleges or trade schools could train them. 'If you could educate these engineers,' he said, 'we could move more manufacturing plants here.' The argument made a strong impression on the president. Two or three times over the next month he told his aides, 'We've got to find ways to train those 30,000 manufacturing engineers that Jobs told us about.'"

Ah, that's enough. Obama has been far more of a center-left technocrat accomplishing small things rather than a galvanizing force for moving us into the future. A good, slow stabilizing force rather than an FDR risk taking turn around artist. That's far, far better than the alternative. I feel confident that a second 4 year term for Obama will result not only in great upticks over the next few years, but a foundation that could last for decades. Romney will take us back into a mess that another Obama or Clinton will have to dig us out of once again. Much harder to dig out of a long term mess with long term solutions than provide short term relief to immediate messes that end up making long term problems worse which is what I fear we get if we go the other way...

My girl has been on NN with me a lot more through this time on NN...I love it...even though some of the uncomfortable questions that get raised get raised. It's all good even if it doesn't always feel like it at the moment.

Anyways, one of the questions raised concerned fantasizing about the women in the pics that I view. I think when I was on NN before and in a marriage in which it would have been generous to call our sex life infrequent, I did it a lot more. However, reflecting after the question now I realize that it really isn't something that I do much at all. I look at pictures and appreciate them rather than fantasize.

It clicked something into place regarding my tastes in pictures. I like the artistic. I like pictures that evoke emotions beyond lustful. I like full body pics in which the whole body becomes part of the entire composition of the pic. I like lighting that adds to the mood of the pic far more than lighting that seems to serve only to make clear every detail. I blogged on here a bit earlier about perhaps consciously trying to venture into somewhat dirtier comments, but it hasn't happened. While it is somewhat in my nature to do so, it is definitely buried under a respectful tone in which I wish to compliment the poster rather than objectify them. I wish to express my appreciation for the photo rather than fantasize about what I would do.

A lot of people seem to go the other direction. Show me the naughty parts as close and clear as possible. "Just show me the money!" sort of approach. My speculation as to why is simply that it lends itself to fantasy more easily. "Look at that wet hole, I'd love to stick what I've got in my hand in there right now...I'll pretend I'm doing it while I look at it." Or whatever the case may be. I really don't come across many close up pics that I actually appreciate. They really stand out when they do because it is beyond the norm to me. Not the easiest subject in the world to turn into a aesthetically pleasing, powerful pic in my opinion.

When I look at comments on different pics, it seems to be somewhat the case...lots of views and comments on close-ups, not much on artistic. And the comments on close-ups are much different than on artistic, much more graphic and action orientated, much more objectifying.

It's all good. I try not to be so naive or arrogant as to claim that something is inherently better simply because I like it anymore. It just explains a bit to me about me.

I think all of that, really focusing on whether we are using sex selfishly or not rather than if the nature of sex is selfish or not, is part of why it always somewhat disturbs me when pics are posted with titles like, "pics of my wife/girlfriend/slut for you to enjoy." Especially when it is presented as, "they don't know." I grant that I don't know the circumstances of those postings...maybe it is a kink shared between wife and hubby...but it places selfishness rather than sharing into my perception of the pic.

Once upon a time I would have had a hugely hard time thinking that the two were reconcilable. Earlier in my life, the whole notion of spirituality for me was tied up with asceticism. That spirituality meant giving things up; that it meant self-denial. When I started upon my spiritual journey, certainly part of the fear involved in so doing was giving up on my sexual nature. A scary proposition!!!

I think the door first started opening on the possibility that such notions could be wrong involving that train of thought started with hallucinogens. I had incredibly powerful spiritual moments on hallucinogens even at the time that I denied spirituality in real life. They did not lead me to accept or consider spirituality as a path other than some sort of humanism...but I certainly didn't intend to live up to the tenants that I came up with. I wouldn't have been able to anyways. Another side with hallucinogens that grasped me was tripping at Grateful Dead shows. Those journeys led to a sort of connection with what was going on around me and with the people around me that I hadn't experienced. A glimpse into the notion that spirituality could involve people instead of separation from people into an internal state.

Certainly I considered there to be something pure about sexuality and sexual expression, but old ideas got in the way of considering that it could have anything to do with spirituality. The program I try to follow certainly helped in this area. It includes this statement:

"Now about sex. Many of us needed an overhauling there. But above all, we tried to be sensible on this question. It's so easy to get way off the track. Here we find human opinions running to extremes - absurd extremes, perhaps. One set of voices cry that sex is a lust of our lower nature, a base necessity of procreation. Then we have the voices who cry for sex and more sex; who bewail the institution of marriage; who think that most of the troubles of the race are traceable to sex causes. They think we do not have enough of it, or that it isn't the right kind. They see its significance everywhere. One school would allow man no flavor for his fare and the other would have us all on a straight pepper diet. We want to stay out of this controversy. We do not want to be the arbiter of anyone's sex conduct. We all have sex problems. We'd hardly be human if we didn't. What can we do about them?
We reviewed our own conduct over the years past. Where had we been selfish, dishonest, or inconsiderate? Whom had we hurt? Did we unjustifiably arouse jealousy, suspicion or bitterness? Where were we at fault, what should we have done instead? We got this all down on paper and looked at it.
In this way we tried to shape a sane and sound ideal for our future sex life. We subjected each relation to this test - was it selfish or not? We asked God to mold our ideals and help us to live up to them. We remembered always that our sex powers were God-given and therefore good, neither to be used lightly or selfishly nor to be despised and loathed."

I was clearly caught in the trap of looking at sex from the absurd extremes.

What is so freeing about this to me focuses on meditating on "our sex powers were God-given and therefore good." I like sex. I like some kinds of porn a lot, especially the sort of honest sharing porn that gives something internally to both the maker and viewer of it besides money. The sort of porn that often graces us on NN. Probably like that to levels that most don't...on the extreme side of things. But..God-given and good. Neither to be used selfishly or lightly nor despised and loathed. Throughout this part of the book, it is clearly focused on avoiding selfishness, not avoiding sex. Fully being able to embrace this idea, that it is indeed good at least through my and my God's eyes even if not through societies eyes because it is a gift...a gift that was given to everyone for enjoyment and enhancement of life. For spiritual sharing of the gift.

Remember one of the first times I did this prayer and meditation meeting in which we simply write down what pops into our heads. One of the things that I wrote down was, "I like boobies" and there was nothing wrong with that nor was there anything wrong with sharing that in a spiritual setting.

I thank my God that my God approves of sex!!!

A topic suggested to me by My Love.

I certainly have a sort of "public image" that I put forth. I think that most of us do. I feel that there is nothing dishonest about it, it is just a matter of what parts of me I show in those realms. A quote that I heard that I really appreciate is that if you go out and public and try to find someone who feels like you do (at least when tending towards negative thoughts) you will never find anyone who looks like you feel. Because of that "public image" that we spend our lives creating and perfecting and protecting.

Family, work, recovery circles, generally out in public...I carry an image of seriousness edged with dry wit. Getting things done, being responsible, taking all matters seriously...all the while showing that there is a rebellious side underneath. I have a very non-traditional haircut that is somewhat polarizing. When asked why, my usual response is "to unnerve normal people." I don't think that is too far from the truth. Not enough to create any sort of unsettling response (a non-threatening hairstyle rather than hairstyles that tend to promote a threatening image), but one that raises questions. "This guy can look like that and still approach life effectively" sort of thing. I remember a comment about it from someone at a wedding once: "Business in front, party in the back." Kind of the idea. Casual dress, lots of it non-traditional as well. Sometimes nice but non-traditional (Nehru shirts, normal but unusual colored pants, etc) sometimes just non-traditional casual...lots of hippie stuff.

On NN...much different. Can show the sexual side much more freely. The flirtatious side. Never any real need to be truly serious even though oft times thoughtful on unimportant topics that strike my interest.

I guess part of this started with a thought that I was very, very shy in my younger years and still certainly am to an above average degree. Flirting was certainly not my cup of tea unless drinking. Wasn't even really something I could do unless I was drinking. This led to a pondering thought about how many people on here were possibly of a similar vein and part of the attraction to NN can be to interact in a way different than they do in the real world while still being based upon honest sides of their character...get a sort of freedom that first drinking and then NN has offered at various times to me...

"If you could have your ideal size..."

At some point yesterday, I was brought back again to a statement by John D Rockefeller. Uber rich man who could have brought the East Coast. He was asked by a reporter about the fact that even though he was that wealthy, yet he kept seeking ways to make more money. Ended up with the question, "Mr. Rockefeller, I just want to know...in your estimation, how much money is enough money?"

Rockefeller paused and answered, "Well, the right amount of money is just a little bit more."

If they had plastic surgery to increase size, a magic pill that worked, exercises, etc...can you imagine how out of control it would be?

One of the biggest things I try to keep an eye out for is that "just a little bit more" deal. Once I decided to sit down and figure out just exactly what my selfish will was directed towards. The answer I came up with was, "MORE!!! BETTER!!! NOW!!!"

Whatever I choose to take a look at: Job, car, women, flowers, stars at night, personal abilities, penis size, etc, my unrestrained selfish will towards those things can be simplified down to, "MORE!!! BETTER!!! NOW!!!" The grass is always greener on the other side of the fence sort of thing.

A common misconception I have found in trying to help others through difficulties is that there is a focus on, "If I just had a little bit more money, my life would be vastly improved." Spent a lot of time with a lot of people, some living on the street, some living in nice houses, one very rich guy. All of them have this feeling. To me, the key to financial security does not lie in having more money. The key to financial security is, in my opinion, the ability to separate needs from wants. Got my needs met? I'm okay. Okay is great!

So long as I am living on the basis of "More!!! Better!!! Now!!!" satisfaction and internal comfort are impossible because no matter what I have, it is not more, better nor immediate. Bunch of 18 year old boys, hugely common joke theme of "it's so big" or "yours is so small"...the new normal would quickly rise past the foot mark...and thicker than soda cans that some guys seem to like to hold up against themselves...