And Now I've Seen A Sith Wedding

Yes, you read it right. This Sunday I took part in a Sith Wedding ceremony at the Carolina Renaissance festival. It took be by surprise. I friend of mine from the Ren Faire contacted me late Saturday night over FB and said that he knew a Sith Wedding was going to occur and they were going to sacrifice a Jedi! So I gathered my Ren Faire Trooper gear and headed out that morning.

After meeting the happy couple, who were excited to have a Stormtrooper for their ceremony, they regretted not contacting the 501st before hand to get more people - they thought of that too late.

The couple are the owners (I believe) in Leather Mystics - dressed in black leather and armed with sabers. The ceremony was conducted by Ren Faire Great - Shamus the Insulter, whose deep voice really added to the mood.  And he had done his Sith research, he referred to the couple only by their Sith names, everyone had to repeat the Code of the Sith and pledge their devotion to the Sith and the couple exchanged light sabers. It was great! And the King and Queen showed up to make it complete!

So, that's something I can check off my bucket list!

Also, for those who don't know, here is the Code of the Sith (from Wookieepedia)

The Sith Code, as written by Sorzus Syn^[1] and taught by Darth Bane:^[2]

Peace is a lie, there is only passion.
Through passion, I gain strength.
Through strength, I gain power.
Through power, I gain victory.
Through victory, my chains are broken.
The Force shall free me.

Clever, Cute and Meaningful

Please think of this blog post as something clever, cute and meaningful.  This will save me a lot of time actually trying to create something clever, cute and meaningful.

Thanks for your attention.

Wilkes Library Con 2012

This weekend was the absolutely huge one day convention at the Wilkes County Library in North Carolina.  Well, maybe not huge, but it was over 330 people - and it's big enough to dress up in costume and talk with old friends and meet new ones!  This Saturday I was there in two costumes, my Renaissance Stormtrooper and my "whatever".  I saw dozen's of different costumes: Stormtroopers, Black Stormtroopers (the armor is black, it's not a racial thing - I know there is a name for this type of trooper, but I can't think of it right now and I expected my color description to help most people anyway as they are not as familiar with Star Wars lore), Boba Fett, a mini Boba Fett (and it was a girl!), a Jawa (very impressive one), Tusken Raider, a tiny Doctor Who, a normal sized Fire Star, Darth Talon, Raven, Spiderman, Batman, zombies, droids and much much more.

I made the local paper (at least it's website).

This woman drew an absolutely adorable picture of me too!

[caption id="attachment_1864" align="alignnone" width="640"] Brittany Dunn drew this at Wilkes LIbrary Con 2012[/caption]

Regis' Recent Activity

1. Yes, it's been 2 weeks since the last podcast.  Stop bothering me. Should be one next week.


2. New site may seem operational, but it's actually not.  Lots of deleting/importing/exporting going on.


3. Have lost 16 pounds in the last month.  Cut out excessive sugar and bad eating.


4. Going through withdrawal for M&Ms


5. Slutty brownies: Double Stuff Oreo, topped with peanut butter, covered in brownie mix, then baked.

Welcome One and All - and Forgive the Construction

Welcome to my new home on the web. I am Regis Jack, also known as the Distracted Philosopher.  This site is the conglomeration of several of my sites - hopefully all the posts will get along just fine.

This is the new home to my podcast, "The Regis Jack Experience" - a weekly podcast where I talk about whatever the hell I feel like.  Also on this site is my blog (formally at 2 different locations) and a new category known simply as "Stasis Leak" - which houses my fiction writing and poetry.

Right now I've imported a lot of previous work but still have change to make - so if you made it here - please look around.

Everything should be right soon.

- Regis

P.S. Actually things are never right, this site will always be in motion!

Enthrone

My vocabulary ain't very big. I use simple words. I talk pretty one day. But, alas, my time has come to embrace the words I learned over the years in actual sentences. Or, more to my point, in word games.

I've played scrabble for years, but mostly as a kid. Where I used words like, hi, him, one, two, ax, axe (oooo, a varient!), it and other words of a child my age that was educated in public school. Once I tried to use the word 'Oreo' in a game with my Grandma, but she slammed me hard on the rule where we couldn't use proper nouns. She was a tough scrabble player, even when I was 8. I still have nightmares....

Anyway, the age of social networking has stolen the gaming concept of Scrabble and now calls it Words with Friends. I play this game often and get my ass handed to me by my friends on a regular basis. And while I win once in awhile, its usually luck - got a triple word or letter with an X and stuff like that. But today is different.

Today is not about winning. It's about the fact I was able to use ALL 7 tiles to create a word that I knew. I starred at my letters on and off for a while trying to figure out what to with them. And then I saw it. 'Throne' I know you're saying, "Hey, you said you used all 7! What's the deal?" I did use all 7, but I had to start somewhere. Actually I what I saw was, TH<blank>ONEN". Once I had that, I just had to find a place to put THRONE on the board (because Thronen isn't a word). But in looking, my spaces were limited, but I continued to look and look.

And there it was. There was an available 'E' on the board. And that's when it came together - ENTHRONED. I trembled as I dragged the letters from my tray to the board. I dropped a letter part way because I was sweating (the iPad doens't like wetness, although I do!). But eventually I placed the word on the board. But before I pressed the Play button, I had to run around my apartment showing everyone what I was about to do. Tears streaking down my eyes in happiness.

61 points! Take that Grandma!

It's Raining at Indian Wells

No matter what the weather - hot, warm, cold, raining, windy - it's always good to be at the beach. I know you probably don't care, but for me, the beach is about relaxation, laziness, and actually staying on the beach so I can see and hear the ocean all day and all night long.

The beach is a time to read, write, podcast (or not), reorganize, reevaluate and create new ideas. It's also the time for overpriced buffet's with lots o' crab legs (and I do mean lots) and scary frog legs, a time for butt fuzzies (from the trip to and from), a time to watch wild dolphins in the surf, watch the birds guard the beach and dead jelly fish wash up along the shoreline *sniff*. It's also a good time for sleeping, Tai Chi and meditation, but not all at the same time.



Some days the water is rough, some days it's calm as can be - the wind may pick you up and carry you away or be just enough to cool you down. No matter what, the beach is the place to be, unless there is a hurricane coming. Then get as far away as possible.

And of course, time to spend with the ones you love (and possibly some you don't).

That's all for today, sorry you had to read it.

Creative Conflict or ADHD?

Recently I experienced a creativity conflict.  It's the reason for my lack of posts and the reason there hasn't been a new TRJE podcast in a few weeks.  Some would say I suffer from writers block, but I say nay to these people (to which these people say, "Nay? Really?  Who talks that way?")  I have loads of ideas and tons of material to write about or talk about - but what I don't have is, well, that's the problem.  I don't know what it is I don't have.

This goes back to an old discussion I had many years ago with a manager (who I believe heard it from a politician) - it's about 3 important things that will help you plan.

1. Known Knowns.  These are things you know you know.  Or in other words I know something and I'm aware of it's existence.  I know how to post to my blog - and I know that I know how to post to my blog.


2. Known Unknowns.  These are things that I know I don't know.  For example, I don't know Einstein's Theory of Relativity, the population of Bismarck, ND or how to bring a woman to orgasm.  But, if I need to know these things, at least I know I need to look them up and learn.


3. Unknown Unknowns.  These are the most important things on the list.  These are the things you don't know, but you don't even know that you don't know these things.  For example, um, well, never mind.

The secret is #3.  If you know that, you can plan for anything. Unfortunately, the fact is, there is no way to deal with or address #3.  If you know of it, it's #2.  It's just another way to say, "Shit Happens."

Anyway, that has nothing to do with what I'm talking about. I'm not even sure how I ended up talking about it. Oh well. My problem is I have so much I want to do, I can't figure out which one to focus on.  Even writing this is distracting me from my creativity.

Actually most of this is a lie.  Just like the cake.

Thanks for listening, I'm so sorry you had to read it.

Female or Amateur Female?

While browsing ads on my local Craigslist recently, I came across the following:

"Looking for an amateur female or female to take adult style photographs of me (I'm male) I can provide the digital SLR camera also if needed. I do not have a location to shoot, but would be up for shooting at whatever location is comfortable. Contact me if you are interested or have any questions, thanks."

I found so many things interesting about this ad, I had to blog about it.  Let me break it down.

"Looking for an amateur female or female" - I'm not exactly sure of the difference between a female and an amateur female, but I think a female is born with a vagina and an amateur female still has a penis but looks like a mighty fine woman (can someone say Bailey Jay?  Google or Bing the name, you know you want to.)

"to take adult style photographs of me (I'm male)" - Everyone who reads this thinks of one thing and one thing only.  Penis.  Look at my penis.  I'll be naked and I have a penis. Did I say penis?

"I can provide the digital SLR camera also if needed" - This just means he is packing more equipment than just his penis.

"I do not have a location to shoot, but would be up for shooting at whatever location is comfortable." - I'm married and want to meet you at your place or some hotel room.  Your place is better as you may have a cute roommate and after I'm naked and you see my big bad penis we could have a threesome.  Then I'll "hide" the pictures on my hard drive and accidentily post to Facebook and twitter.

I know some of you are thinking that I placed the ad.  Guess you'll have to answer it to find out!

That's they way I see it, sorry you had to read it.

Reset; Edit; Cut; Damn It!

So here's the story.  I've been "blogging" on the web long before anyone knew what it was.  I loved to write for the web, posting my ideas, opinions and other stuff for dozens of people to read (only dozens because it was long before good search engines). But eventually everyone was able to blog, I no longer felt special and my drive to write for an anonymous audience left me.  So I stopped blogging and pulled a SOPA on myself!

Then I started a podcast.  That was the ticket.  Podcasts were not as mainstream yet, so I felt a bit like a rebel.  But then that became popular (the medium of podcasting, not my podcast) and I began to question why I was doing any of this.

And then it hit me.  I had started to fall into the, "I care what other people think" mode of thinking.  WTR (what the regis) was wrong with me?  I mean OMFR (oh my fraking regis)!  What had come over me?  Caring about what other people think!  How dare I!

Well, that's going to stop.  And I'm going to start up again - blogging about whatever the hell I feel like and podcasting about whatever the hell I feel like.  I'm moving domain names around and working on a way to shave my sites down into just a few.  I'll have the podcast site (http://regisjack.com), my blog/writing site (this site, but have a few domains point to it), my professional site (the site under my own name - for my day job) and finally my religion site (a work in progress - had a domain, but never followed through).

2012 will be a year I take back myself and my multiple personalities and get back to being me.

Thanks for listening (or reading), sorry you had to hear (or read) it.