This Week's Favourite Things! Monday April 13th - Sunday April 19th, 2015

1.  The big demonstration of support for the Nova Scotia Film Industry last Wednesday, in protest of the cut to the film tax credit.  I think the thousands of people taking to the streets of Halifax indicate how many people are affected by this change.  Even William Shatner tweeted in (pic in the above link).  This industry provides good jobs for younger folks and brings a lot of economic activity throughout many sectors, hopefully this abrupt cut to the tax credit didn't just axe the industry.  I hope the government can see how dollars spent on this sort of tax credit might possibly have a higher 'velocity' than money sunk into the coffers of already profitable big businesses.  In any case it's good to see people getting involved.

2. Random links found on twitter:  I love this video from Emoi Art in Ireland, it's cool to see artists using video and music (drums!) to promote their art. Play The Move (Freedom of Art) from Ontario is "a transparent and fully engaged social art network that helps solve the ever increasing need of emerging artists.  Up with freedom!  City Calm is also great and has lots of links for things like yoga and vegan recipes.  Nice.

3. This CNN article about the CEO of Gravity Payments taking a 90% pay cut and slashing company profits in order to increase his employees salaries so they could enjoy a better standard of living.  Bravo!  Now if only more CEOs would follow suit the global economy could be saved!

4. How to activate your super conscious mind.  Cool youtube video, I might have linked to it before.

5.  The Prince Ea Channel on Youtube.  Found this via a post from Collective Evolution about "Why I Got Rid of All My Friends".  Lots of neat videos here.

6.  This week's bisque firing!  Hooray I fired my kiln and realized things have been taking so long because I actually have two, not one, kiln loads of stuff.  I've decided it's good exercise and a nice part of the process having to carry things from my studio room on the 2nd floor of the house across the yard to the kiln shed, and a lot cheaper than figuring out how to have a studio all on one level.  And where these firings have already taken 3 months longer than I thought they would, what is the hurry.  Getting closer to having new work.

7. Wildlife! Birds, squirrels, deer.   It seems that in exchange for being fed through this hard winter the local wildlife have been especially photogenic.  This pics were taken by my husband.

We have a metal bird feeder now, this one got chewed to bits.  It was difficult to put the lid on properly but made for some funny photos:

Squirrel with 2 American Goldfinches and a Chickadee.  Pic by Brendan Labelle.

Chickadee and Squirrel having a conversation.. Chickadee -"What the F are you doing in my feeder?"  Squirrel - "Eating sunflower seeds obviously".   pic by Brendan Labelle.

Three of the White Tailed Deer that having been hanging around the compost box.  Brendan started feeding them apples, carrots and assorted vegetable scraps.  The deer on the right has an apple in its mouth.  Pic by Brendan Labelle

8.  Various videos on psychopaths/narcissists. 

Narcissists Destroy Who They Cannot Control 

How To Deal With a Psychopath - I like point number 3 of the above videos "the psychopath has the uncanny ability to turn anything you say against you".  mmm hmmm, been there and have experienced that.  And in point 5 "maybe someday people who trusted you will see the truth.  But even so if your psychopath was a masterful one they will wonder about you, even after the true colours of the psychopath are made known".   Sad but true I think.  Oh well. It's okay.

Psychopath BBC(?) Documentary - the last couple minutes are cut off on this link.

The Psychopath Next Door CBC Doc Zone Documentary

 I was going to totally stop blogging about this topic out of fear that it makes me look like a whacko and get on with my life, but I find I can't help myself.  Up with looking like a whacko.  In fact in order to prove that I'm not afraid of looking like a super whacko I'll admit that in pondering whether or not I should keep writing on this topic I did one of the free Oracle Card readings from Doreen Virtue's awesome new website.  The reading was in favour of passionate sharing.  Goody.

I guess it's common for those who have been affected by the psychopath issue to want to spread the word to help others, and I watched some good videos about it in the last week.  One amazingly positive benefit of my experience and new insight into this issue is that I've pretty much stopped caring what people think of me anyhow.  It's nice! Up with fearlessness!  

I've previously been brainwashed by a skilled manipulator to think a former target is the incarnation of evil (sorry former target, I cannot apologize enough and will always feel like a big douche for this), so I can see how it could happen to people I know or knew.  But I can take it on the chin as my karma for being so quick to believe negative things about others in the past.  Bring on the karma. 

After spending a sunny day in the garden this past week pruning various things I was struck by the sheer abundance the earth wants to offer all of it's residents, how easy it is to grow healthy food, how bright the sun is, and how we've all seemed to have forgotten that all we humans really need to get by is food, water, shelter and community.  Somehow a whole bunch of us have been bamboozled into thinking that what we've ended up with - an epidemic of wage slavery to big corporations, corrupt governments and financial institutions, unhealthy destructive agribusinesses, - is "normal".  Ba ha. This made me think that the upward mobility and deceitful ways of the psychopathic among us might be a big part of what has kept so many in oppression as resources are diverted from the many to the pockets of a corrupt minority.

 So up with spreading the word about sociopathy/psychopathy, the more that people are educated, hopefully the less likely they'll be used and abused by those among us that lack a conscience.  And it's not just money, it's time, energy, passion and personal power that gets bled out from the empaths that they trample over; which is too bad because it is a lot easier to be led than to lead, and the world perhaps could use more empathic leaders like that Gravity Payments CEO guy.  Luckily he didn't get derailed from his vision.  More reason not to keep quiet about the psychopathy issue.  Note that I'm not advocating some sort of witch hunt, because I don't think it is someone's fault if they were born without a conscience, I'm just suggesting that maybe let's all wake up and quit helping them rise to positions of power. If that feels agreeable.  Up with freedom. 

And here's a Doc Zone article from the documentary, which includes a link to a modified online psychopathy checklist quiz based on the popular test developed by Robert Hare.  For the record, I scored a 3 on this, so pretty much the opposite of a psychopath, believe it or not.

And here's an article on traits of the psychopath's victims.  I had a bunch of these! But a fortunate outcome for me was that somehow my experience healed a bunch of them.  Hooray for me!  To quote a tweet I saw today from @ItsKylieJenner "Once you get f**ked over, you stop giving a f**k about a lot of things." In my experience this has been true.  It's nice.   Maybe that's why doctors used to used leeches to heal people.  Who knows.  Actually it looks like leeches may be making a comeback in modern medicine.  Same with maggots: "Maggots and Leeches, Old Medicine is New". Interesting!