So you can do it cheaper......

“Oh, I can make that at home. Why should I pay you ten dollars for it?”

Those words are the bane of every crafter and artist in the universe and then we all gather later and laugh our lower posteriors off at the goober.

It is my sage opinion that craft stores should put on free craft fairs for their customers to sell things and give every one of them at least $50.00 for showing up to exhibit.

Why?

Because you can do it yourself cheaper..... sure you can.

I was musing about that last night as I cussed the company that sold me the earring kits and, as usual, managed to leave a component out of one of the kits. In this case, it was a needed green bicone crystal. Green is the hardest color to come by and I wound up substituting an expensive Swarovski crystal. Someone is getting a deal on pumpkin earrings if they look closely.

There is one important sentence in the jewelry kits; tools not included. They forgot to say; skill not included. They also forgot to mention they leave things out and it is never the cheap part of which they give you an extra one and that if you mess up, well, you now need pieces that aren't in the kit.

So............. Let's look at the real cost of a pair of earring.

First, it takes three tools to make the earrings and one of them is available for under $10.00 dollars, but you have to find El Cheapo with perfectly aligned jaws and it will last about 3 pairs that way you get to buy another El Cheapo. Eventually, if you keep making anything, you will buy the $30.00 tool that works and lasts. So for argument's sake, you just spent $30.00 on tools to make a $10.00 pair of earrings.

Now, you might be getting something made from a kit because that is the easiest way and the cheapest way to buy the parts if you don't want to make at least twenty of an item. Since your crafter buys these kits in quantity to save money, you have to have at least 4 other people who want one of these or you get to throw the kits away. Then again, you might need to make a half dozen to get one half way decent pair of earrings. Kits are notorious for having the cheapest components which means your wires and jump rings are the thickest and the hardest to manipulate which means once again, you really need skill to put them together.

How do I know? Well, there are techniques and the hardest thing to make is a loop. Yes, you read that right. I am talking about the stupid little loops that abound in everything. I finally paid $30.00 for a class because like golf and tennis, you can't learn the technique from Utube or a book. Someone needs to take your hand and wrist and guide you through the process. I know because after years, yes years, of lopsided, wrong sized loops, I almost cried when I made my first perfect one, with my teacher holding my hand every step of the way. A hundred loops later, I can make one on my own! The next fun thing to learn is crimping. I AM NOT GOING THERE!

Oh, and speaking of those free videos..... Have you ever noticed the person is selling you classes, DVD's or books, who is making them? Now why would they tell you the secret on a free Internet video if they expected to sell you something? They figure after you buy the tool, you'll spring for the DVD to learn the real trick.

Now let's consider you are going to copy the artist's design and make your own earrings. You will have at least 3 beads in the earring. They don't come by the bead. You have to buy a whole string and since we buy at gem shows, the minimum purchase is $100.00 to get beads at a minimum of $10.00 a string if they are cheap. The real mineral ones can be $50.00 string or more. Then you need ear wires, T wires, O wires, spacers and jump rings. You don't buy those one at a time even at the craft store and you are looking at $2.49 a package. Now, do you want to do the math?

Better buy that pair from the artist because there is no way you are making them as cheap as they are selling them.

And why should the craft stores give us $50.00 each just to show up with crafts? Because some fool is going to spend $100.00 trying to make the item! That fool is going to be one of you who just read this.

How do you think I got into this business?

Furry Little Time Thieves

I have had a brilliant revelation.

People who wonder why time is moving so slowly don't have cats.

I started before 6 this morning, washing dishes, getting my half a banana and a boiled egg for breakfast, none of which actually required preparation. I made a pot of fresh coffee but the machines do the work.

And...THEN...

I decided it was the perfect day to change the bed.

All I asked was 5 minutes alone with the bed to change the sheets out. The concept of 5 minutes alone is so very foreign to a cat that they thought I had lost my mind and called for Napoleon to come and calm me. Five whole minutes without cat help, who am I kidding???? That simply is not possible. I might do something interesting like find a whole salmon under the mattress. Obviously, I had completely lost my mind.

Finally, after screaming and having things dropped on me and all the pillows knocked down in the floor and discovering the stupid sheets are too small for a standard mattress with a topper I got the job done. I know I have used these sheets before but apparently, I had a lapse of memory or an attack of the shrink fairy who is normally confined to my closet and underwear drawer. I guess she is branching out or has sold a franchise for the linen closet. Times are hard all around. I will have to buy the bigger set of sheets from Costco.

When I finally plopped down on the new bed that Napoleon is luxuriating upon and opened the laptop it is 8 AM.

Where did the time go?

Ask the cats. They are Time Thieves.

How to Get Unfriended: Basic Advertising

Simple Advertising Rules:

I used to work in advertising and I was very good at my job. I took it seriously and I took seminars in advertising whenever possible. One of the things that still amazes me is how many Pagans, Wiccans and Druids have an advertising background. If we were the evangelic type, we could take over the world. However, at one seminar with the best advertising guru I ever met someone asked what he would consider the first rule of advertising.

1. If you can't write, shut up.
2. If it isn't interesting, shut up.
3. Never let the background overpower the foreground.

I might add to stick to the basic newspaper format: who, what, when, where and why. If you answer those questions be ready to answer the last one: How much? And for the love of all gods and goddess, keep it simple, stupid. The less you say, the more the person you are selling to will fill in the blanks and the better your chance of a sale because they will sell the item to themselves.

Take the woman buying the perfect little black dress. The saleswoman extolled the virtues of the dress for dancing, nightclubs, cocktail parties and how you had to have one. Unfortunately she didn't make the sale because the customer was going to a funeral. If she had stuck to the versatility, construction and durability without being specific, she would have sold the dress.

So, why am I telling you this? I have unfriended some people simply because …...well....I'll make you a $20.00 bet they can never figure out the reason. If you know me, you know I only make sucker bets. Scots hate to lose money. It is because they finally drove me berserk. Never drive a person berserk who has a collection of swords or an unfriend button.

Try to remember that when you are working on the internet and Facebook, most people have a problem with memory, not theirs: their computer's and with download speed. This is why Facebook has an album function for pictures. It also keeps people like me from screaming. If you upload too many pictures one after the other, you overload the memory in people's computers and the nasty little bug called Flashplayer suddenly breaks and every picture and graphic on the page becomes a blank except Facebook's advertising. This means people can't see what they want to see and it also slows their browsing down to a drunken snail crawl.

The main point is, your personal page is not your business page even if your business is you.

Now, on your personal page, I firmly believe you should have anything you want. Upload pictures to yin yang. On your business page, please don't. This is where you should be using the album function like it is the holy grail. Nothing is more boring than 20 pictures of people you don't know, don't care about and have no idea why they are there. If you want to stroke people's egos, put them in an album and title it X Dinner Party. That way, the rest of us are forewarned not to open that album. If you want to showcase your accomplishments, group them by event. Above all else, attach copy to your pictures more than John Doe. Nobody is interested in John Doe unless YOU make John Doe interesting. No one is interested in your event unless you make the event interesting and if you explore the Facebook albums and pictures function, you will find they have actually made it easy to turn your pictures into a story that people will read!

If you are uploading from an event, be prepared to organize those pictures later into an album. But, while you are there, you need something called a narrative. Fifteen pictures entitled 40K run is not going to endear you to anyone. However, “Here I am at the first K on the corner of out breath and cramping just passing the dead snail I was racing,” is interesting. This will keep people reading and looking at the most boring pictures in the world waiting for the story to unfold. This also means the event is not the time to learn how to text. In other words, preparation is 90% of the job.

As to other tips, hey...I'm available for speaking engagements, consultations and seminars. In other words, time is money and I need to eat, too. Always remember, time is money.

Diabetes and the ACA, how they don't mix

One Woman's Journey Through Diabetes and Obamacare

You first question might be, “why should I care?” My answer is simply that $400.00 of YOUR tax dollars are being given to an insurance company every month for me alone. Most of the recipients of ACA policies are getting subsidies because we are the population that were not insurable before Obamacare. We are the out of work, the too old or sick to work and in the states that have refused to expand Medicare. The other reason you should care is you are probably next when your nice, high paying techie job gets shipped overseas or to a Red State where they can get a tax free card and labor at a fraction of the cost they are paying you because the standard of living is so low and everyone is getting food stamps and welfare. With the portability of technology, companies can move their manufacturing, tech and offices several times a year to take advantage of willing politicians who need money for vacations, cars, low interest mortgages, credit cards, fancy dinners, clothes, etc... MEME's on TV so uneducated people vote them back into office.

My little journey began when I got my insurance card and I called my regular Ear, Nose and Throat doctor for an appointment because he was listed on the insurance web site as taking their insurance. Because my regular doctors were listed on the web site, I had signed up of the CIGNA policy through the ACA. What I did not know was there were two grades of policies, normal corporate and ACA. CIGNA was publishing their corporate list of doctors, not their ACA providers. You didn't get to see that list until after you had a card and the Federal Government had crossed their greedy little palms with gold AND you managed to practically hack their site because there is no really easy way to discover who takes your policy and who doesn't. Each doctor of their over 500 has to be individually accessed to find out if they take the ACA policy. That takes hours. Trust me, I know. I've done it.

I was actually screamed at in the doctor's office because I had an ACA policy and had to shell out $400.00 with a maybe they will pay for the tests as I was, red faced, finally shoved out the door. They never filed a claim for the tests.

At the gynecologist, I had been told they took the ACA policy. Yes, at this point I had not managed to find out from the CIGNA web site who was who so I was asking the doctors before I made an appointment. I had found a small lump on my breast as needed a mammogram. You need a prescription for one. When I got there, still half scared to death, I was told they didn't take the ACA policy but if I paid for the exam it would be $175.00. If they filed for reimbursement as an out of network provider, CIGNA would demand I pay them $250.00 for the visit. However, they would have the lab bill CIGNA and they would get paid for the PAP smear. I would have to find my own Mammogram facility that took ACA policies. Fortunately, there was one a few blocks away and now out $575.00 that I now had on a credit card, I made certain my hematologist, took ACA policies before I showed up in that office.

Much to my shock as I had been treated pretty much like last week's bad garbage, I was treated nicely there, but it was downhill from that point and this is what you really need to know.

On Friday the 13^th in June, the hematologist's office called hysterical, demanding I get to an emergency room right that moment. The lab they sent my blood to had called frantically. I had a blood sugar level of 500 and was in diabetic ketoacidosis (DKA). By the time I reached the ER, my blood sugar was 650 and I was really in diabetic ketoacidosis. The ER wanted to put me in ICU because they could not stabilize me. I continue to protest as I knew the insurance wasn't covering the ICU and finally when I was out of ketoacidosis around midnight they agreed to place me in a sparsely populated ward where the nurses could check me hourly.

I have back and hip injuries from a car accident 40+ years ago and the mattress was nothing more than a foam topper normally placed on a mattress now residing on a stainless steel table in a plastic cover and to add insult to injury, was designed with multiple little spikes that the sheet settled into when left at rest. I managed to pull three straight back chairs and a couple of pillows together to sleep on. It was either that or the floor and who knows what lurked down there. I was ready to go home the next morning on Saturday and the hospital refused to release me.

It works this way. This is from the Mayo Clinic:

“Seek emergency care if:

• Your blood sugar level is consistently higher than 300 milligrams per deciliter (mg/dL), or 16.7 millimoles per liter (mmol/L)
• You have ketones in your urine and can't reach your doctor for advice
• You have multiple signs and symptoms of diabetic ketoacidosis — excessive thirst or frequent urination, nausea and vomiting, abdominal pain, shortness of breath, fruity-scented breath, confusion

Remember, untreated diabetic ketoacidosis can be fatal.”

My glucose was 650, I had no doctor and I had never been treated for diabetes. The hospital was not risking a lawsuit if I dropped dead. If I signed myself out, they could not give me medication and the doctor estimated I would be dead or in a coma within 24 hours with no medication. Thus, they found an air bed, slightly better than the old bed of nails....by-the-way I have lain on a bed of nails and it is more comfortable than the first bed....13 pillows and I was set to try another night.

In came a kid, okay maybe she was 18 or 19, to give me my dietary training which consisted of a few pages copied off her text book and “there is an app for that.” Don't exceed 15 unit of carbs a day. Okay, what is a unit? Is it a gram? Oh, there's an app for that. Just type in the restaurant's name and bagel and it will tell you. I don't eat out and I'm a vegetarian. This was not going well because I knew more about nutrition than this girl and her app. After she left, in came a doctor, who left her card and told me to come and see her as soon as I was released. Highlight that sentence because it is a scam.

Sunday, I still can not get out of the hospital so I called my husband and told him to bring my laptop as I was really getting bored. By the time he got to the hospital, I was suddenly being released. It was 4:30 PM on SUNDAY and they were phoning the insulin prescription into the pharmacy by my house. The nurse ran in to show me how to inject myself and with me protesting that the pharmacy was closed, they gave me a written prescription at 5 and asked if I was feeling well enough to walk out of the hospital and scattered like rats deserting a sinking ship. George turned to me and said, “What just happened?”

I answered, “they probably just found out the insurance company isn't going to pay.” When I am right, I am right.

We had to find an all night pharmacy. Walgreens doesn't take ACA insurance so we had to go to CVS. The original CVS that had the prescriptions phoned in to, marked them filled so the second one could not use the insurance and I had to pay $277.00 to get the bottle of Lantus from them with the promise I would get the money back. Yeah, sure....I have not only paid for that bottle but $150.00+ dollars copayment for a bottle I never got. I was too sick to argue as my glucose was no where near normal or controlled.

Monday, I got to play run to pharmacies as it turns out the pharmacy that marked the prescriptions filled, didn't even have the medicine to fill them and I had to return to the all night pharmacy across town and that is where I paid for the same medication twice while getting it once. Not only that but now it was Monday and CIGNA was balking at the bill. I had to have their meter instead of the cheap one from the hospital and close to 10% of this brand's test strips and even lances are defective. At a dollar a test strip and only being able to get exactly the number ordered for exactly the number of tests for 30 days, that leaves me without tests for 2.5 days.

Tuesday my blood sugar exceeded 200, normal is below a 100, and I called the doctor on the sheet I received from the hospital and whose card I had. The only person I could reach was the physician's assistant and she told me to come in and get a sample bottle of insulin or she would phone in a prescription for short acting insulin and I could discontinue the one pill I was taking. This bottle of pills was close to $200.00 in copayment and I had taken one of the 30. Growl....but I got two bottles of insulin and a couple of packages of needles and really important badly copied piece of paper to write my 4 times a day readings on. I should call on Friday for an appointment. Waiting at home in the mailbox was the letter from CIGNA stating they were denying the whole claim as my condition was not life threatening. Please read the quoted part from the Mayo Clinic again. This is a doctor signing the denial. The hospital appealed and on Wednesday I got a letter stating they would pay for 23 hours of observation but every item of care I received in the ER would be individually reviewed and the other 2 days of care and stay were denied. Remember here that the hospital refused to release me.

I waited until Friday and called the specialist with my little piece of nice filled out paper and I was told I really wasn't a patient and they had only given me the insulin as a courtesy to the hospital, the doctor was on vacation and to call my primary care physician and get a referral. I didn't have a primary. I just got insurance. I haven't been able to afford a doctor in three years, however, my hematologist had recommended someone and I called them.

In the mean time, I am running out of syringes because the insurance only covered a couple of bags based on 28 days of one injection a day and now I am getting 4 injections a day. Back to the pharmacy, where I have had such fantastic experiences, and I get to buy 2 bags out of pocket but not worry, my prescription of syringes was going to paid for on the 5^th of July. I show up on the 5^th of July and they deny anyone ever said that. However, at home I find the print out from the pharmacy and clearly printed is to return on the 5^th of July. By that time, I had bought another 6 bags of needles, full retail and I guess I should consider myself lucky they let me buy them.

I couldn't get a doctor's appointment until August and I frantically explained the situation to the General Practitioner's . No problem, they set me up with a physician's assistant who was very helpful the next week in showing me how to adjust the Lantus, which is a long acting form of insulin, but when it came to the pills or the short acting, they were not comfortable dealing with a new diabetic. That was easily understood. They are general practitioners, not specialists. So, I left with my referral thinking I had met all the requirements to see the specialist.

After I lost it on hold and George had to finally take over because I was almost out of insulin, he spent all afternoon finally getting the specialist's physician's assistant to phone in the substitute for Lantus CIGNA was willing to pay for and for the pills and the 2^nd insulin and more needles and you can call back in 2 months and MAYBE get an appointment. I was livid.

So I wasn't surprised when I spoke with a second doctor who suggested I go to the specialist's office and refuse to leave until I saw the doctor. As he put it, you don't have your diabetes under control and you have no way of even knowing if it is under control. You have not seen a doctor since you were released on the 15^th of June. It is the 16^th of July. You have no real training in how to take care of yourself. This doctor is never giving you an appointment because of the ACA insurance. You have to force them to see you.

Yup, I can't think of better medical care I can get than the kind you have to stage a sit in at the doctor's office to get. Perhaps holding a gun to the doctor's head would work better. Of course, she is on permanent vacation so my options would be the receptionist or maybe physician's assistant.

It works this way. To get the government money which happens to be YOUR TAXES, the insurance company has to demonstrate that they have X number of doctors in every specialty based on the population of your area. So, they sign doctors up and put them on the web site as accepting new patients. However, since the GOP/Tea Party gutted the ACA before they voted for it, there is no way to punish the anyone if no one ever bothers to see a patient and no way to actually check. I'm sure the bought doctors get something in return like free vacations/seminars in 5 star resorts in the Bahamas or Mexico, low interest loans, free samples of medications they shouldn't have if they need a boost to get through the day (remember I worked for a psychiatrist for 10 years and saw all the addicts with MD's and wondered how they got the drugs. You can't write yourself a prescription for a narcotic) and plenty of perks. Whatever they are giving them is a drop in bucket compared to what they are getting from the Federal Government in subsidies that YOU are paying for. I'm paying good chunk of change out of my pocket to the point I am considering dropping the policy and paying the fines. It may work out cheaper.

Meanwhile, these GOP/Tea Bag doctors think they are making off like bandits with no regard for how many people's deaths they cause and as a plus think they are gutting Obamacare which they have been sold a bill of goods is going to put them in the poor house where the rest of us now live. The only people making out like bandits are the insurance CEO's who will be getting billion dollar bonuses and perks this year from all the money the ACA just dumped in their pocket and they are used to killing people so no biggie on their conscience if they actually have one. Oh, don't forget the GOP/Tea Party politicians drunk on power and/or booze who will be reaping those huge campaign contributions which are again, a drop in the bucket compared to the money the insurance CEO's are getting. The politicians never could do math, anyway.
My claims are still denied and here is the treatment protocal for my diabetes just in case you think everyone including was over reacting:
'

Medical Treatment

• Fluid replacement and insulin administration intravenously (IV) are the primary and most critical initial treatments for diabetic ketoacidosis. These therapies together reverse dehydration, lower blood acid levels, and restore normal sugar and electrolyte balance. Fluids must be administered wisely - not at an excessive rate or total volume due to the risk of brain swelling (cerebral edema). Potassium is typically added to IV fluids to correct total body depletion of this important electrolyte.
• Insulin must not be delayed and must be given promptly as a continuous infusion (not as a bolus - a large dose given rapidly) to stop further ketone formation and to stabilize tissue function by driving available potassium back inside the body's cells. Once blood glucose levels have fallen below 300mg/dL, glucose may be co-administered with ongoing insulin administration to avoid the development of hypoglycemia (low blood sugar).
• People diagnosed with diabetic ketoacidosis are usually admitted into the hospital for treatment and may be admitted to the intensive care unit.>

The New Pattern of my Life: Darning the Pillow

My new mornings and days.....

I'm not complaining, just adapting. It is sort of like you would decide on a new exercise routine or new job. Adjustments have to made and old habits discharged.

Habits are not a bad thing, though they get a bad reputation. Habits can have two functions depending on the type of person you are. My professor and mentor used to say there are two types of people: watch dogs and bird dogs. Watch dogs bark at everything new and retreat to their dog houses to hide if the new thing gets too close or they attack and try to kill it. Bird dogs are always out hunting for new things. You may send them out to retrieve a bird but there is no guarantee they will return with your bird or even with a bird. They just delight in bringing something new home to examine and use. Unfortunately for society, there are a thousand watch dogs to every bird dog. The actions of both dogs are based on habit it is just how they interpret and use the habit that differs. The Watch Dog uses the habit, its house, to hide from anything new. The Bird Dog uses the habit, its owner and retrieving pattern to seek out new things to learn. It works the same way with magic. At first every little thing must be coordinated and learned painstakingly and then it becomes rote and done instantly.

That was something I learned this morning to my amazement. All night I have derided the cats for tracking litter into the bed. When I got up this morning, I had the stuff attached to my leg and it was almost impossible to remove. The situation has been getting worse all weekend until this morning I thought I was in the kitty pan. In the bathroom with strong glasses on, now that I no longer have 20/20 vision due to the diabetes, I saw the pieces were strangely uniform in size and shape and prone to static electricity. This is why I couldn't get them off my leg. Now this was strange because litter is neither. I was ready to kill a cat when I discovered a few minutes later my favorite pillow, the little heart one that is the perfect size to prop my leg up at night, was bleeding microbeads due to several cat holes.

This presents a new problem as there is no way I can see to thread a needle. Then I remembered seeing a sewing kit on my nightstand when I cleaned up with what I thought were prethreaded needles. Thank you what ever hotel (It has an H on it so I am thinking Hilton) that put these in the rooms and Neutrogena for making them. (I don't make it a habit of staying at expensive hotels as I can't afford to travel any more, but back when I was working in psychiatry, I had to travel and take classes to keep my licenses up to date.) These prethreaded needles should be available in the craft store. It came with basic colors of thread, about two feet and lovely sharp needles. I set about darning the pillow which had a total of 4 holes in it.

It has been at least fifteen years since I hand darned anything. The first knot was awkward and the first stitches. Then I fell into a familiar, rote pattern. The little pillow was darned in no time without me even thinking about what I was doing. It must be the thousandth thing I have darned in my life and now it is as easy a breathing again, even with a decade break from darning.

Hence my new life will be a little hard to learn but eventually it will be a pattern, a jumping off point for the rest of my day. I awake and instead of grabbing the cup of Joe, I have to grab the test kit and test myself. Then I weigh myself and then I inject the insulin and take the pill. Then and only then can I have my infusion of coffee, now with a powdered whitener instead of the sugar laden organic milk. My PA suggests in case of a hypoglycemic attack to drink 8 ounces of milk because the sugar hits instantly and protein will carry you and maintain the sugar level for a couple of hours. All these years, I thought orange juice was the way to go but it just provides the sugar high and then you drop like a rock. I am learning.

I guess even an old Bird Dog can learn new tricks. Actually I think I am a cat because ordered to retrieve, I am more likely to give you the finger and go do what I want to......well, not any more....

One Writer's Story

Someone, whom I would truly like to have as a friend, is very upset today and ready to throw in the towel where writing is concerned today as his work was completely stolen by a radio host and read over the air with no credit, payment or anything. It must be the internet. It must be Facebook. Sorry my friends, it is neither.

I started writing pretty much from the moment I learned to read so I have a bit of experience going here. My first 'professional' offer came from a nationwide metaphysical magazine. There was not payment because back in the 70's everyone operating in this “New Age” field was on a shoestring that frequently broke. It was a themed issue and I was asked to write an article on hypnosis because I was a licensed hypnotherapist working in the medical field. I would give a little credit to the magazine theme.

When you outright steal a person's work, you really shouldn't send them a copy of it. Imagine my surprise when I found direct quotes from my article interspersed throughout the magazine as though they were written by the editor. As to my article, two rather poor paragraphs were taken out of context and printed on a tear away insert for which I was actually given credit. Since they were taken out of context, they made little sense and they actually came from a section on Biofeedback rather than hypnosis causing them to make even less sense. This was 25 years ago and there was no internet and no computers.

When I mentioned it to other people the answer was...why would the publisher and editor of a nationwide magazine steal YOUR work???

I learned that day to get payment up front and the next editor that needed a freebie got the heave ho.

Then there was the six months I spent hand typing and compiling a Tarot course. I also copyrighted it and the copyright was on the bottom of each page. Back then you had to pay money to copyright something and fill out forms. If I must say so myself, it was a masterpiece of a beginning course on Tarot. I intended to turn it into a book. I charged $50.00 for the course and it was worth it or you could pay $10.00 a class for 6 classes. My very first class, I had a retired Doctor take the course. As soon as we finished the course, he took my course, cut the copyright off the bottom, went to Office Depot and copied it. Then he began teaching it at the yoga center a couple of miles away for $5.00 making certain I would not attract any students to my course. One of my students was also a student at the yoga center and he was angry. He stormed to office with my course in hand and confronted the owner of the yoga center. It was obvious the copyright had been cut from the bottom of the pages because back then, if the paper you copied wasn't 8.5 x 11; the missing piece copied as a gray/black area.

So what was the great spiritual answer? Why would a retired, independently wealthy Doctor steal a course from a poor witch across town? He didn't need the money. He was just teaching for fun. I must have stolen his work. My student attempted to prevail with the black line across the page as proof. Finally, he came to me, disheartened, and wanted to know what to do. I suggested he attend the next class, stand up and ask the Doctor to give him a Tarot reading right then. It should be no problem if the course was in fact his. He was thrown out of the yoga center, but the point was not lost on the rest of the class. Once again, the yoga center was hoping to make money off the doctor and I was poor collateral damage, just like the editor knew I didn't have the money to sue her.

Then again, what goes around, comes around. Someone then stole the course from the Doctor and began teaching it for free at another store taking all his students. I decided never to teach Tarot again.

My friend had her entire book copied on a copier (they didn't even bother to retype it) by a company and handed out to thousands of phone psychics to read over the phone. It was, like my course, a key word Tarot book, so you could actually do a layout and just flip through the book and get a full reading. She, however, was a retired executive with lot's of money and the ability to fly to Switzerland and sue them because that is where copyright infringement cases were tried back then. She won, but they simply went out business and she got nothing.

Other friends have had their products copied or the over runs from manufacturing their products, sold on the open market. One friend found her product selling in stores for the wholesale price because when she had it manufactured in China to get the cost down, the manufacturer just made lots of extras and then sold them to stores for the same price he sold them to her. Thus everyone was selling them at the wholesale price she was trying to get. It happens to everyone who sends a product overseas for manufacture. You must make your money on the first offering because the second one finds someone undercutting your price.

So, you think is just you? Think again. You know Cannon, the big manufacturer of towels. Every once in a while something goes wrong and stuff fails quality control. It goes in the dumpster and to the dump. Well, that is what they thought was happening. It turned out their towels were being sold by the garbage men, shipped to Florida and sold in the linen outlets. They were none the wiser for over a year until I called to complain about some towels I bought that just kept bleeding on me every time I showered. If the outlet had been smart, they would have taken them back, but they left an angry customer to call the manufacturer or maybe they didn't know Canon puts a serial number on the tags. They are no longer in business.

Bottom line: I don't care what it is, it will be stolen simply because the number of hacks outnumber the number of talents. All you can hope for is a little credit because you sure aren't getting any money and if you pin your financial hope on a product, the odds are you won't be eating next month. That is reality. Even if you have the money to fight them, you are probably going to get nothing. Learn to live with it and join the club or get out of the business.

Yes, it still makes me angry and that doesn't do me a bit of good. It doesn't hurt them in least. In my old age, I have learned anger doesn't work for me. So, I don't even bother with copyrights or trademarks or patents. I figure sooner or later karma will get them.

Which leads me to the last group of thieves. They stole a product from a nice guy and even managed to win a prize and get on national TV with it. Then, they actually had to make one and demonstrate it. All the time they were doing the TV bit and were the big stars, he never said a single word because he knew the product they stole from him didn't, couldn't work. They couldn't build one from his mockup. They had to admit on national TV they had stolen the product and it didn't work. Karma is a bitch and sometimes she has puppies. And sometimes the nice guy gets the last laugh.

So dear hacks, steal away. If you actually manage to improve my product, I will steal it back. Fair is fair. And to those who steal people's artwork or writing, you might have to prove your expertise and that can become a really big problem if you have none. Not only that, but the more well known a person becomes, the more people begin to recognize their work. Every writer has a style and voice. Every painter has a brushstroke. Every photographer an angle. In the end, people will see you for exactly what you are: a thief and a hack and a really poor copy.

Beware the Big Con Game

Typically when you breed animals for show or for function, you are aware the majority of animals you produce are of no real value to your program. Only a small percentage will have the qualities you are seeking and those must be isolated and bred together to produce the ideal you are seeking. In order for this to work you have to do two things. You have to produce a huge number of animals in order to get enough to create a breeding population for the quality you seek and be aware that even within that population you will not produce 100% of the type you seek, only a small percentage because the qualities you seek tend to be recessive and not dominant or the entire population of animals would already conform to the quality you seek. The second thing you need is a way to dispose of the unwanted animals with what you consider to be inferior traits as early as you can possibly identify the one with the wanted characteristics. You also have to have a method to isolate out of that huge quantity of unwanted animals the ones that may produce offspring with the qualities you want or half breeds. If you do not infuse the pure type animals with an occasional genetic payload of the half breeds, the type you want will degenerate into a something incapable of survival or use.

Keep those facts of animal breeding in mind, in the forefront of your mind. It is a breeding program and a business plan. If you are breeding for egg laying chickens, the first thing you do is kill all the male chickens as they are unnecessary for egg laying. That is a breeding and business plan.

Now, let us look at the Abrahamic Religions of Judaism, Christianity and Islam and their legacy. At the same time, let's look at the once a week school shootings.

First of all, why shoot children? There isn't much sport or even thrill in killing something that can neither fight you, hide from you or seriously harm you. To put it bluntly, they can always make more.

The reason is simple. Until age 19-21, you have no value. Your rights are restricted. You are at the mercy of those older than you. You have not proven you can do anything. In the 50's they actually thought that prior to 6 months, babies couldn't even recognize their mothers so it was perfectly alright for the right to leave the baby with a nanny and return 6 months later to pick it up when it was less of an animal. Then you only needed minimal contact until it was 6 or 7 years old. Yes, that was in the psychological and medical text books. Now, we know a baby bonds with the mother within hours after birth, though in many hospitals, mostly religiously based, it is still normal procedure to separate mother and baby until both a cleaned, sanitized and rested for the introduction that may or may not create a bond at that point.

The child killers are really only manifesting the religious values they have been taught. Children are worthless until they become adults at an arbitrary age and we sort them into function. Which get sent to college because they are deemed intelligent, which are useful for breeding only, which are laborers and which do we kill in wars. The trick is to develop better and better sorting systems that the majority of people cannot see because of the misery they live in and that system tends to be economic.

This is done very systematically by making them think that first off, they can get out of their current state and secondly that there is always someone worse off than them that they can look down upon. Remember the eat your meal, there are starving children in Asia? That fell apart when better communication systems showed the children in Asia weren't starving. To keep people breeding, the promise has been that life will be better for your children which also says, life is not getting better for you if you are smart enough figure out the other half of the sentence.

Unfortunately, the smart ones figured that out and stopped or restricted their breeding. This put a wrench in the business plan. Thus, it was necessary to come up with the superior man manifesto where anyone with a few of the desired characteristics was given certain advantages from birth and encouraged to breed. And, the middle class was born.

It worked too well and the middle class was overtaking the ruling class quickly and starting to...oh my god....give things to the undesirable lower classes and even thinking those people might have a right to life. The solution is easy. Cut the upper middle class off from the rest of the population by convincing them that the rest of the population is going to take the little carrot you let them have because after all, they are superior.

Just look at the religious structure. Originally only the priest class could read so only they knew what the Holy Book said and hence, they could interpret or even rewrite the book as it benefited them. I mean, it is way better to be a well fed and sheltered priest than a starving peasant even if you know that your “God” steals the resources from the peasants to feed you because the peasants are nothing but animals. Then the priests gave power to a few select peasants making them the rulers by directive from God because the fewer people who know what the real business plan is, the better for you to work behind the scenes and not be found out. That created the concept of middle management.

Oddly or really rather sensibly, prior to the Toady Abraham who created the base religion for the big 3 of today, most primitive religions operated on the simple principle that it was best not to attract the attention of the GOD. Attracting attention meant the GOD was going to use you for something and the payoff never equaled the sacrifice unless you got a quick death and they knew that was the least possible outcome. These primitive people seemed to be fully aware that the GOD was a psychopathic egotistical manipulative creature that delighted in torturing them for fun and games. Abraham thought he was smarter and more manipulative and would secure the place for all his children in the future.

Do you recognize that last sentence from the original business plan??? You should because one thing primitive man knew was that he wasn't beating the GOD. GOD had the superior weapons, technology and perhaps intelligence and he wasn't going to win, so he hid well.

However, one thing GOD knew was that eventually it would breed a human capable of seeing through the business plan because the success of using the humans to do the work they didn't want to do was getting one almost as smart as them but stupid enough to accept the structure they set up and work for little or nothing. Do recognize today's business structures?

I do believe they have succeeded in that by convincing people that your reward is in after death. That has to be the best con I have ever seen. Stop and think about it. Would you buy a house, work all your life making payments on it and never even be able to see it much let alone live in it, so you could get the deed after you die? That is the promise of Christianity and Islam. The only glimpse you even have of this world you are paying for is a street paved in gold in a world in which there is no money because everyone has everything they need. You really might want to think about that.

So what do these religions give you? They create a structure in which only you are getting the mythical reward after death, of course. They create payment for those who manage to convince others to believe in this but those others are not quite as good as you because you found it first. You do realize that this is an illegal pyramid scheme in business. You also are given the right to kill anyone who doesn't agree because they are subhuman (even though they sure look just like you) and taking resources from you but you have the right to take all their resources.

Put in the perspective of a business plan, it makes perfect sense. Put in the perspective of a loving GOD , none of it makes any sense. Put in the perspective that we are all humans sharing a planet and just trying to live and be happy, it REALLY makes no sense at all.

Answer the following questions, honestly, if you still aren't convinced you have been had.

1. What makes a CEO worth a hundred thousand times more than the worker who actually makes the product the CEO sells to him and his family?
2. Why does one person's worth depend on their appearance?
3. Since we are all within a small percentage genetically identical to the next guy, why is a blond female worth more than a brunette in most cultures?
4. Why would a male be worth more than a female when in reality they are a defective female with one less piece of DNA?
5. Why would you accept payment you have never seen in a world you have never seen that depends on dying to get?
6. Do the same rules that were created for survival a 1000 years ago apply today or for that matter, the rules for raising a baby in the 50's verses today's knowledge?

Then why are you buying into the same doctrine of a 1000 years ago???? Isn't it time to stop waiting for some GOD to direct you and take matters into your own hands to create a real paradise on this planet in this time for yourself rather a promise of maybe something better for your child?

The song is very, very wrong. You are not going to live forever because someone remembers your name. You are still, very, very dead, feeling nothing and getting nothing. This moment, not a maybe future, is all you have and you had better make the most of it.