Muslim Marriage Counseling

This will be the first in a probably short series of posts on the Islamic "faith", culminating in a post honoring my buddy Emmet.

Growing up in NYC, I was exposed to a whole range of different experiences. You get to see all kinds of clothes, hair, and make-up; hear different languages while you are walking down the streets; witness deviant lifestyles of the Wealthy and Demented and oddities never before imagined; hearken to rants derived from The Twilight Zone and religious fanaticism. You also get to pick up a myriad of literature and information. Over the years, I have collected these "treasures" in a black three-ring binder, both before and after moving to California.

Riding the subway daily for school, and general transportation around the city, subjected me to a whole nether world of aberrant freakishness. Oh the stories I can tell, and will tell.... Suffice it to say that I never ran into any CHUD, but there are many exploits and tales of underground madness in the Big Apple.

While there will undoubtedly be future posts with more about Subterranean Strangeness and further revelations from the Binder of Bizarre, this one just happens to be a collision of the two.

In order to get a real feel for this one, imagine the following:

You're riding the IRT (the green line) between lunch-time and the evening rush hour. The train cars are fairly empty and along comes a guy wearing his Nation of Islam uniform
complete with kufi. He's passing out flyers and asking all to praise Allah. Draped over him is one of those old-timey sandwich boards with the wording of the flyer he's handing out printed in huge type on it, front and back.

This is copied verbatim from the original.

I absolve myself of all credit for this one.

ISLAMIC CULTURAL PROGRAM
FREE MARRIAGE COUNSELING

UNDERSTANDING YOUR WOMAN

Brothers don't ever put your penis, in your woman's mouth because this spoils your woman. When you put your penis, in your woman's mouth or in her rectum, you are misusing your woman, And what you are doing to her is: you are starting your woman out on A Sexual Habit. And you are not conscious of what you are doing to her.

This is what causes all of our young people's marriages to go sour. This is the reason that all of our young people start fussing and fighting like cats and dogs six months to A year after their mirriage.

Now, the reason that all of our people's marriage start messing up in about 3 to 6 months is because, It takes about 3 to 6 months before that mess, that you shoots in her mouth, begins to take affect on her brain.

Now, it mess you up to, but, it messes your woman up Quicker then it mess you up, because she's got the thing in her mouth, and she gets the full load every time, and you are licking A hole, so you are missing most of yours so that's why it messes her up Quicker then it mess you up.

And the affects that this mess have on your woman is: it clogs up the love current in her brain, and she don't have any feelings for you any more. And the more of this mess she eats the less feelings she have for you.

And it works the same way on you, as it works on her. You see, when you eat this mess, It makes you hard headed, and rebellius, and cold blooded, It kills the love in you, It makes you selfish, and small minded, and you can't reason with your woman any more, because all she can think of is, sex sex sex, just like A sissy. And, that's why all the arguements start.

If that young man knew, that when he starts putting his penis, in his woman's mouth that, that was the beginning of the end, of his love affair, he would cut off his right arm, before he would ask her to do that to him. but he is not conscious of what he is doing to her, if he loves her.

So then after he messes her up, they finally come to the conclusion, that Love, don't last. But, that's A LIE. LOVE DO LAST. Love will last you A LIFETIME, IF you don't misuse it. And when you put your penis, in your woman's mouth, or in her rectum. you are mis-use-ing your Love. And that's Why it turns sour on you. So don't mis-use your woman, And she will Love you the rest of your Life.

And if you and your woman have this problem. NOW. What you have to do is This: You and your woman will have to get your heads together, and KICK, THAT SEXUAL HABIT. And once you have Kicked, Your Sexual Habit, You can get your Love Life back together again.

Courtesy Of AL ISLAM

Thanks, Al.



Click to see scan of original handout

©2005 hpb©creations (except for Al Islam's rant)

The Art Snob

About two weeks ago, my wife, her brother, Jim, and I went to Ojai for a neat little art show.



Their dad, James Wilson, was showing a bunch of his new Pastels and some of his Plein Aire pieces. We went to show him some support.

Jim and I were wandering around checking out all the cool work from various local artists. We came across this one exhibit by Kirk Lowry (see the "Gallery" link at the top of the page). He had all kinds of swirly, trippy paintings:



Jim and I especially liked these long boards that had been covered with different colored paints twirled together and then covered with some kind of resin or epoxy to give them a shiny finish. They were awesome! (Kirk, you've got to get some of those pieces on your website)

Jim started saying how they looked like an effect done by one of the tools in Photoshop. I recognized what he was talking about, but could not remember the name of the specific tool in Photoshop at the time (often a temporary problem of the BP).

About 2 minutes later, I came across another booth with photos by Daniela Raiti:




She had some really cool little cards and prints of her photography. I immediately noticed that some of her work used the feature in Photoshop Jim and I had just been talking about.

I asked her if she "Photoshoped" her pictures. She took on this defensive tone, and she informed me that she only used a single image but manipulated it with effects in Photoshop. (She was very difficult to understand - partly because she had a strong foreign accent, partly because of my hypomanic hearing, but mostly because she really had no idea what she was talking about.)

I explained that I had just been discussing the effect she was using in her photos, but I couldn't recall the name. She condescendingly said to me, "I don't use any tools or effects; I use special filters." I replied, "Oh, you use third party software to produce these...?" She told me, "No, it's a feature included with Photoshop." Ahh, OK. I asked her, "What's the name of the filter?"

She kinda whispered to me, "That's my special secret."

What a snotty bitch!

Fine, Daniela, be that way.

Hey Everybody!

The name of the filter she is using to produce the effect is called "Twirl".

You can look it up in the Photoshop help, but I'll make it even easier for you.

There are two ways you can make Twirl happen in your pics:

1. Open a pic you want to Twirl; Go to the menu and click on "Filter"; scroll down and click on "Liquify"; in the window that pops up, choose the "Twirl Clockwise Tool" button or the "Twirl Counter Clockwise Tool" button on the far left. Play around with it - have fun with it!

2. Open a pic you want to Twirl; Go to the menu and click on "Filter"; scroll down and hover over "Distort"; on the sub-menu, scroll down and click on "Twirl"; this one allows you to Twirl the whole pic or a selection made with the "Marquee" tool.

Here's a sample I made from the first pic at the top of this post:



Play around with these tools. Now that you all know the "secret", I expect demand for Daniela's photos to plummet. After a few hours of messing around, most of you will probably be as good as, if not better than, Daniela.

The funny part is, I really liked some of her work and was considering buying a piece; she just killed the sale with such a snobby attitude.

BTW, her website design sucks.

First off, she uses Microsoft FrontPage 2000 (version 4.0). (Come on Daniela, they're up to FrontPage 2003 (version 6.0) now; it's time to move into the 21st Century) This is a tool of the Devil.

I won't even go into how wrong it is to use Flash on your Splashpage if you're trying to beef up your hit count; her website is difficult to navigate; the end user can only look at one pic at a time; the pics are not compressed for more effecient use of Bandwidth on the Internet, thus they take a longer time to download; the pics aren't adjusted properly for use on the web - I had to adjust the one shown above to bring out the rich colors; everytime the end user clicks to go to the next pic (should have used thumbnails, Daniela), the whole page reloads - next time, try using CSS or ASP; the backend code is way too complex for the simple website that it really is; remember the web programmer's mantra: KISS (Keep It Simple Stupid). All around, a pretty crappy website, especially for someone touting herself as a "Web Designer".

Daniela, for the Information Architecture services, I'll only charge you half price; you can PayPal me the $250.

©2005 hpb©reations

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©2005 hpb©reations