[The 14th Colony]

13- What physical aspect or actions, either minor or extreme, of a Star Wars character caught your attention in a way that most people would not notice?

The smooth, confident manner in which Obi-Wan walked in TPM. I sustained a limp on my left leg from a car accident when I was 14 and I was always self-conscious about how I walked around people. The way Obi-Wan walked, in the hanger as he told Panaka that he would deal with freeing the pilots from the battledroids, made me think about how I wished I walked as smoothly and could display such confidence in my intentions.

14- Name a personal activity or form of entertainment that you had always looked down upon as obnoxious and infantile, which you are surprised or embarrassed to admit you now enjoy watching or doing?

Professional wrestling. I thought it was staged (which we know), obnoxious and infantile, and I thought the wrestlers were overflashy-overappreciated overactors. Now I think it’s funny and fun to watch. I like the Rock and Stone Cold, but my favorite wrestler is Triple H, and I think it’s hilarious when Stephanie McMann gets riled and wild.

15- If you could not be of the race, creed, or nationality that you are, what would you have yourself be?

I think Cuban or Brazilian, but living in the US.

16- Whether or not you saw the Rob Schneider movie The Hot Chick, if you woke up one day and found that you had been transformed into the body of the opposite sex, how would you react? Would you freak out? How would you adapt?

I would go find the women who got changed into me and have sex with me.

17- Pain is all in the mind. We all know that pain and pleasure, and all of our senses, are how our brain interprets the signals sent by the sense receptors throughout our bodies, which means, from a certain mode of thinking, that all of what we hear, see, feel, taste, enjoy, dislike, are merely how our brain translates the data it receives and are not real. In times of great physical pain, have you ever tried to remind yourself that the pain was not real, that it was merely your brain’s interpretation, and tried to lessen the pain by focusing on separating the brain’s translation of the pain receptors from the wound itself?Likewise, have you ever listened to music you enjoyed, and really tried to analyze what it was you were enjoying, why you were enjoying it, and how it was making you feel the way you did? Have you ever chewed your food very slowly, pondering why you enjoyed it, how you enjoyed it, and what exactly was “enjoyment”? How about your visual, sensual, and olfactory enjoyments?

I didn’t ask about the flavor or texture of a food, or the melody of a piece of music. I referred to your brain’s way of telling you that it was pleasant, and how you interpreted your brain’s conclusions.There have been times when I had agonizing migraines, when I tried to convince myself that the pain was all in my head, which it was, but I couldn’t do it. I know that Tibetan monks and firewalkers somehow managed it, but it didn’t work for me. During the summer I had sliced a small part of my finger and had to have it treated at the hospital. It hurt for weeks afterward. I tried a few times, by sitting quietly and looking at the finger, to persuade my mind that the pain I felt in that finger was not in the finger but was something separate from the finger that could be separated from it. I tried to imagine the pain as a spirit cloud that surrounded the finger, and visualized the cloud being lifted by my thoughts from the finger and cast away. I tried to convince myself that the pain was not real and was only my imagination, but it didn’t work. When I am eating something I do wonder why it tastes good. If I asked the chef he would say because of the nature of the food item and the spices he put on them, but that doesn’t tell me why it was enjoyable to me. Suck on a mint. It tastes good. Why? Because you’re sucking on it? Nope. Because it’s peppermint flavor? Nope. Because you like mints? No, and that adds another question…why do you like them? My uncle cannot taste food. Nor can he smell it, both due to an illness he had when he was a young man, in the days before his illness was understood like it is now. What tastes good to me has no taste whatsoever to him. What tastes bad to me also has no taste whatsoever to him (which made it easy for his wife to cook for him). Getting back to the mint…your taste receptors on your tongue tell your brain what the food feels like to them, and your brain interprets those sensations and you think it tastes good. But why do you think that? How do you think that? Not because of your brain, your tongue, or the flavor of the mint. Forget the tongue, forget the sucking, and forget the peppermint. Focus inside your mind, on your emotions and feelings about things. Why is the mint enjoyable to you? What is “enjoyment”? Why does your mind enjoy, and why does that feel good to you while something bad does not? It's all in your mind. Taste is not real, it is an interpretation. Physical pleasure and pain are not real, they are an interpretation. So how do our thoughts react to them and why do our thoughts give us a pleasurable or unpleasurable feeling? You can be hypnotized to believe that pain is pleasurable, and a stab in the finger with a pin would be enjoyable. But why is a stab in the finger normally unpleasant? Why does a food item give you enjoyment. Is it really truly enjoyment, or really just your brain telling you that its good, like a computer response to a programmed action?

18- Michael Corleone said, in Godfather II, “Wealth is just a trick of the rich to keep the poor without it.”Money makes the world go around. Without it, we couldn’t survive. But we work like dogs and get treated like dogs, by evil bosses who crush us for more money in their bonuses, as ordered by their bosses who do the same to them. Our rents go up or we have trouble making our mortgage, we struggle, and there are many who lost the struggle long ago and are poor and homeless. The more we struggle to buy what we need/want, the more the prices go up and it becomes harder and harder to make ends meet. The more we pay, the more they want; and the more they want, the more we have to make. In many corporations workers are pushed beyond their limits and paid less and given less staff to do more work, in effect crushed by those above them who use them to gain more. Money is saved on payroll and less people have jobs, and managers work harder and get nothing but stress, for the gain of those above them. And the more we struggle, the less we enjoy life in a society ruled by love of money and people intent on crushing others to gain more. But what other choice is there? Can you think of another way for the people of the world to live by, where money is not needed but goods and products are still manufactured and people are able to trade and get what they need to enjoy life without so much struggle and suffering and being taken advantage of by people of power and greed? Could such a world be realistically possible? Is the world as we know it the only way? I am not talking about the Second Coming here or New Jerusalem, for those who have that faith, so please limit your answer or answers to means of human planning and abilities only.

The world could become one big kibbutz, but I doubt it would work. I don’t have an answer for this one. That’s why I asked it. =) But believe me, I question the ways of the world all the time. There has to be a better way.