The Grax Domain

29 Dec 2007 Christmas 2007 Aftermath

Can you believe it? I sneezed and missed most of it.

The weekend before Christmas Day I spent with my friend and I took the time to spend some quality time with her... and I helped her out with sorting out her Christmas preparations to the sounds of Christmas music and movies into the wee, wee, wee hours of the night. It's wasn't as bad as it sound, she did help me get closer into the Christmas Spirit than I've been in quite some time.

Too bad I picked up a cold somewhere along the way.

So by the time I got to my mums house for the family get together I was progressively getting more and more exhausted. Fortunately is didn't really matter this year.

Normally my mum's clan get together for the usual Christmas rituals. But this year they were scattered all over the place, even as far as Thailand, so it ended up being simply my mum and step-dad for Christmas Day. After the presents and dinner I felt so shattered that I went to bed at around 8:00pm. Fortunately I sweated out most of the cold in the night (quite literally) and was well enough to visit my brother on the Isle Of Wright on Boxing Day. More Christmas rituals on his end, came back the next day, caught up with some friends in Portsmouth (including the gorgeous geek girl Mitu), and discovered the true joy of Doom the Board game! Seriously, if you haven't played it yet, do yourself a favour and try it. Bottles of red wine is optional.

After rounding up with a short visit to my dad up in London and that wraps things up for Christmas 2007. All is left to look forward to this year is New Years Eve.

Oh before I forget. This year I took a fun gamble and took part in Skeddy's Secret Santa event. I sent mine off to my victim and I hope he enjoys it. As for me:



Thank you Secret Santa, where ever you are. ^_^

24 Dec 2007 A message before Christmas

Yeah, I kinda said that I was going to do a huge blog dump after I moved servers. In actual fact all I managed to squeeze in was one week of the Alpha course as an entry. Trouble is I got sidetracked with other things, including shitty long hours at work all week where things kept breaking, trying to sort out all the Christmas presents online, do the social thing with friends Christmas and New Year, it went on and on.

Still, with two weeks holiday time off work that should give me enough time to at least do a proper blog dump (I've got a thing or two about a thing or two to write about), which will be posted before this entry right here, as if nothing unusual is happening.

Till then, it's less than one more sleep till Christmas...

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

23 Dec 2007 Is there a hair length limit for old women?

I think I've noticed a trend that's been going on with older women, particularly women over 60. It seems to be that old women hair tends to be short. Very short. As in almost as short as men's hair short (and sometimes just as masculine). It's almost as if there's a limit to how long women's hair are allowed to be when you reached 60 or more. I'm finding it more difficult to find a woman over 60 that has long grey locks of hair.

It must be from the same set of unwritten rules that state that all men over 60 must wear old McDonald style Cashmere Flat Caps.

Of course this could all be in my head and I'm just reading far too much into this like a nutter.

.... Personally I can't wait until I'm allowed to wear Cashmere Flat Caps. But I'm too young to wear them right now. Just imagine it, old man Grax wearing one of these:




Oh yush.

18 Dec 2007 Christmas Prank 2007

You know those pranks that people play where they wrap some suckers stuff in newspaper or tinfoil? And oh how people laugh when the victim arrives to see all this stuff wrapped up and then unwraps everything with a strained grin on his face?

Well... I thought I'd try and bring some holiday cheer to one of the guys at work...



Gee, ain't I a stinker? ^_^

16 Dec 2007 Another zombie dream and a dream of a vampire musical moment

I had another bloody dream about zombies again last night.

It was all a pretty similar scenario that I've dreamt about before; the surroundings are all dark a scary, I'm running away from zombies that are trying to get me. It's the modern, fast moving version of zombies (kinda like 28 days later), not the classic, lumbering rot-sacks that we all know and love. There this one moment I specifically remember, though I think I've dreamt something similar before.

I was in a multi-story car park with the remaining surviving humans. We had managed to fend off the zombies and gotten the humans in a safe place. The only way for the zombies to get in was via this 'bottleneck' stairway, which was well protected.

I was outside fending off zombies when I got attacked by this one particular zombie. She was unique because it was the hot secretary at work. She attacked me, but I managed to hold her off. Then I did something rather stupid.

For some reason I grabbed her and started to swing her round and round, like a Olympic throwing hammer. I then threw her into the bottleneck stairway where she was able to eat and infect the remaining humans. I remember hearing one of the humans screaming at me “What have you done?!” I felt awful for what I had done.

Then the dream changed.

I was on a stage, which I think was actually commercial road, Portsmouth. People were raised up on the buildings like platforms. I was acting like an very old man in wheel chair with a friend acting as helper. I don't know what we performing but we performed it anyway.

All of a sudden we were all under attack by something. Then I physicallyturned old! I tried to escape the carnage but I fell out of my chair. I was helpless

Then I was approached by three vampire hot girls. I think these girls I know in Second Life but I can't remember who. They took a liking to me, saying something to each other but I don't remember what. I was terrified of them. They each smiled a sinister smile, then kind of smile that said “We're going to do stuff to you”. Then the three vampire chicks opened mouths and blood poured out of their mouths like flowing water, into my mouth. I was chocking on the blood as I was forced to swallow every last drop of it.

The blood changed me. I became young again. It was me but I felt more attractive, more confident. I became a vampire. And it felt so good.

Then the vampire girls and I decided to sing a song in the style of the movie High School Musical song “Start of Something New”. We completely made up all the words on the spot and, despite me stumbling on a few words, it wasn't half bad. I wish I could remember the words. Anyway the audience loved it and asked for an encore. We declined cos we couldn't remember the words we made up.

I walked off with the vampire hotties in my arms into the horizon, with the sun rising up for a new day. The sun didn't kill us despite being vampire, it felt warm and pleasing on our skin.

Then I woke up.

This is about the sixth time over the past two months that I've dreamt about zombies. I can't stop dreaming about them. What is my self conscious trying to say? WHY DO I KEEP DREAMING ABOUT BLOODY ZOMBIES?!?

15 Dec 2007 Alpha Course: The Conclusion

The Alpha Course is now finished. It's been an interesting 9 weeks, with an extra day-out day of discussion. However at the end of it all I don't feel anymore of a Christian than I did at the beginning of the course. I don't feel converted, I have not developed a desire to go to church or make any attempt to spread the Christian gospel.

But I do feel I have more understanding and respect for Christians. I also believe that there is something to this religion thing, something 'spiritually' special that conventional, scientific means cannot explain.

And I did come to the following conclusions:

• Christians are normal people too. They have normal virtues and vices and they do the things that non-Christians do. This fact is something that often gets overlooked when we think of religious people.
• It's the person that gives religion a bad name, not the other way around. If you meet a Christian who is smug about being a Christian, with his “I'm holier than thou” attitude, it's probably because he is generally a smug person and would feel the same about anything that made him feel better than others.
• Religion does make some people do positive things, like self help, being charitable and so on. However religion does not take away the corruption and politics that can happen behind closed church doors.
• There are lots of similarities between different religions, like Christianity and Buddhism, that makes me think there is something real about spiritual energies, deities and the likes of. Either that or everyone is completely wrong.
• One of the fundamental messages of many religions, if not all religions, seems to be “To love and respect one another”. This to me seems to be a fundamental human lesson and survival instinct.
• It gives people a chance to think outside the conventional box a little. Maybe the world was created in just seven days. Would that be a bad thing?

There was a some value to be gained from the Alpha Course, especially if you are willing to listen. If there was a kind of Alpha Course for all of the major religions, hell for all religions, then I would definitely sign up to learn about them. Either that or dedicate some time to studying religious theology.

Despite all these things that I've learnt, despite how 'simple' it seems to become a Christian and to gain all of the praise and love from God due to Jesus Christ, I feel that Christianity is not right for me. There are many things about it that I disagree with, I don't like the idea of being completely submit to a deity that I feel I have no connection with. I don't feel a sense of benefit if I was to become a Christian. I know that I would not give 100% of myself to the religion.

If I didn't give 100% then surely that would make me a kind of hypocrite, so what is the point?

15 Dec 2007 Alpha Course: Week 9

The final session of the Alpha Course and it is entitled “What about the Church?” If there was one message to be taken away from this week it is that the church is not the stereotypical church building that people know and go to, whether it be through their own will or otherwise.

People have this common misconception that the church is just the building people go to. Or its the dull Sunday service that they are forced to do, or the clergy, or a particular denomination. In actual fact it is the people that make the church. It is the coming together of people, communities, and faith that make the church.

And that is when the blessing of God is at its greatest. So the minister says.
He went on to talk about how having many different people together brings diversity to the church, which is a good thing. Different people with different interest and talents (which of course God has given each of us) that could be put to good use. The minister gave the analogy of the church being a body and everyone was a part of the body. Each person is important and is needed to keep the body alive.

And the other benefit the minister spoke of? Well it gives Christians access to God, like a priest has. So now any person can reach God through any old Christian that happens to be on the street instead of going to a priest in the church. Which, in a way, almost seems to put priest out of work doesn't it?

But it's not necessarily all jollies in the house of the Lord. Whilst it's true that there is much love for God and one another and it all about about having a relationship with God and stuff, it doesn't always come naturally. Like other relationships sometimes you have to make an effort for it to work. It's the idea of respecting one another despite their differences (isn't that true for most religions in one form or another, if not all religions?). The feeling of love and acceptance is one reason why people turn to Christianity. But the amount of effort to put into loving one another can also turn some people away from it.

The minister rounded up his talks and we got into our discussion groups for one last time. It was kinda silent in the group. Maybe it was the last-session blues kicking in. Maybe it was because we couldn't think of anything decent to talk about in regards to the church talk that the minister gave. We exchanged a few words of reflection about the Alpha Course as a whole, some of it was positive, some negative, some stating that people would like to carry on with the course. Indeed the people running the course did offer me the chance to carry on with the discussions as part of their 'Post Alpha Course' groups.

I declined the offer. After all I did the course, I feel I'm slightly more educated in Christianity, and besides I don't really like Christianity enough to drive over a hour and a half every week to talk about it.

... I could always form my own church at my house! Get people to come to me. And I can soak up the collective energies being produced by it!

Grax, you're a genius!

15 Dec 2007 Alpha Course: Week 8

'Does God heal today?' That's the question of this week's session. Whether it's physical, mental or spiritual The Holy Spirit is able to heal whatever ales you. Or maybe there is something else that's going on behind the scenes.

This weeks speaker was not the usual minister, but in fact was a Christian healer, a person who claims that she heals people with the power of prayer (i.e. asking God to make the person better). A Christian healer? This caught my attention. I pondered that maybe it's similar to other kinds of spiritual healing, like reiki.

The majority of the time was spent flicking through many different bible verses to try and show that this kind of healing is real “cos it sez so in da bible” (my words, not theirs). She gave a quick explanation of what she does exactly to heal, which roughly consisted of positioning her hand in the area of aliment and praying to God to make it right. This was not limited to physical aliments. If you had mental illness or are spiritually unwell then potentially these problems she can heal.

Truth be told I felt the most value of this week was not through the talk, but actually through the discussion group.

Because there was a strong theme to prayer the people in my group spoke of similar stories they mentioned before in prevois discussions, namely they prayed to God to heal them and it worked, if it didn't work then they'd get more people to pray until it did work (an over-simplified example but that was the general idea behind it). As expected there were discussions about whether there was another explanation for this kind of 'unexplained healing', including other forms of alternative healing, the placebo effect and so on. Then we tried something completely different.

We were encouraged to try and do some prayer healing within the group. Two people volunteered themselves to be healed (I considered asking to be healed, but the only thing wrong with me at the time was I had bad gas. Hardly worth bothering the Holy Spirit I thought).

The first person told the story of her friend that was going through a rough patch in his life. He apparantly dabbled in some Satanic stuff and she was worries that he would slip back into it. So she asked us to pray for him. We all gathered round this girl in a circle, placed our hands on her and we all started to pray for her whilst the minister leading the group spoke some words of prayer. I joined in with the standing and touching in the appropriate way. But I didn't pray because it's something I don't believe in, at least not in the Christian way. So I concentrated on my breathing and imagine myself channelling my energies into the girl.

Channelling my energies into the girl?? Sounds like a silly thing for a sceptic person to do. But hey, you gotta try these things out, right?

After the prayer the girl in the middle was happy and you could see on her face she was emotionally moved by the experience.

The second person said that she was having some headaches and asked to be healed. So same again, we all circled her, placed our hands on her and started to pray. Afterwards she said that she felt much better and she also described a warm sensation on her shoulder where a guy placed his hand, possibly right on the source of her pain. Could it be I witnessed a mini miracle healing right in front of my eyes? Did that man channels his energies into healing the woman? Or could it be that she believed it so much that it healed itself through the power of the human mind and body?

Maybe it stopped hurting when she stopped thinking about it.

The evening drew to a close but there was one more thing that I wished to do. I wanted to talk to this Christian Healer. I approached her with a eager smile and starting asking her questions. I got the impression that she acted like a counciler as well as a physical healer. She would be somebody that people can unload their problems onto. And she would know when to say the right things at the right time. So for example she would not tell somebody that she sensed that they have a serious anger problem if they are not willing to listen and saying so would upset them. Interestingly she state that it was all God's doing, she took no credit for her work. It was like she was saying “Right, thank you for telling me your problem but I'm not going to do anything about it. Instead I'm gonna ask God to see if I can palm it off to Him so that He can sort it out.”

Lastly I asked her what she thought about other kinds of non-conventional healing like reflexology, acupuncture, reiki, etc. Her answer was “It was all a load of tosh”. Such a strong claim took me a bit by surprize. I asked her why she made such a bold statement, to which she replied “Because none of the other forms of healing are written in the scriptures” (I presume she meant the bible). It would be interesting to see how much exposure of these other forms of healing she has, if any at all, but it was time for me to go at that point.

So did this week session convince me that God can heal? I think that scientific means of healing do work. I think that the human body is capable of feats far greater than we fully understand, to the point of the body performing miraculous healing. I like to believe that the power of prayer (or positive thinking) is capable of healing the human body, mind and soul. I like to believe in alternative means of healing, partly because of the fantasy appeal and, well, it's rather cool. As for God doing all this, I'm yet to be convinced.

If it was possible for the human body to do such amazing things, why should God have to worry about us? Are we not capable of looking after ourselves?

15 Dec 2007 Alpha Course: Week 7

This week session is entitled “How can I resist evil?”. In a world of evil and corrupting things, Christian faith seems to have a way of helping people defending themselves. But is it easy? How effective is it?

The minister talked about how Christians are in a constant battle against the forces of evil. It's not just a figure of speech, the threats are real. Christians have to resists against:

• Sin – Personal vices that takes us further and further away from God
• The World – Non-Christians and the corrupted trying to stray Christians from the path
• Satan – Oh yes, he is real. It says so several times in the bible, so it must be true.

The ministers shared with us his personal experience in life where one of these three things might have affect the outcome in the situation. He gave an example of a man getting a flat tyre it may have been influenced by one of these three things, the sin of sloth made you lazy enough not to check, the mechanic (aka the world) might have done a bad job on the tyre, the devil would do something that I can't remember what the minister said.

However all is not lost. God is here to help the Christian believer fend off against evil. He give Christians the strength to fend off evil and a Christian is compelled to be righteous and do righteous things, instead of doing unrighteous things.
The minister gave us an analogy of this righteous/unrighteous scenario. He compared the unrighteous path to being like Sainburys (ie supposedly in a negative light) whilst the righteous path was like Tesco (ie supposedly in a positive light). At that point I screamed out “Oh God no! You poor thing”. I could help myself. I felt like it was a poor comparison. It was as if was claiming that God was his huge monopolizing entity that spammed the market with lots of cheap stuff and didn't stock the things you actually wanted but instead force you to buy the mass stuff they have for the masses.

Come to think of it....

No, that joke is far too easy to make.

Let's move on shall we?

The minister spoke of the devil's tactics, ways of destroying the church and corrupting people, including:

• Error – Making people teach the wrong things
• Immorality – Making people do naughty and immoral things
• Persecution – Accusing the church and making them feel bad about themselves.

However the minister claimed that despite all these tricks and tactics the devil uses he needs to get permission from God to be able to do them. God has complete control of the situation. Now understandably this raises some interesting and difficult questions, like “What the fuck?”

One thing did come up that I thought was quite hypocritical. To act upon a sin is obviously a naughty thing to do. And apparently to think and play out the sin in your mind is just as bad. But simply being tempted is not a sin in itself, so that's alright. My problem is when does it stop being just a simple temptation thought and starts being a sinful thought. Does that mean we have to spend our whole lives thinking only sterile thoughts?

The minister concluded that Christians are at a constant battle against evil until the second coming of Jesus Christ. But this provided an interesting conundrum in the discussion groups. How can we resist fighting and be all soldier like, which can be an evil thing, and yet defends ourselves? The two don't seem to go together. But then again it is more like self defence, which is not an aggressive thing.

The other question that arose was why there was actual evil in the world. Why does God allow evil in the world when a world without evil would be great. A couple people in the group even admitted that they would love to live in a world of pure goodness. I think however that evil is needed for a balance, like ying and yang. After all how can you have a measure of good, appreciate the value of good without the bad to compare it to? Besides, human beings are suckers for conflict.

I didn't enjoy this session that much because, unlike last week, I felt it was a bit too biblical and kinda relied on you having a belief in the religion. It didn't really seem like it could be applied to non-Christian ways of thinking, at least the way it was all phrased didn't seem so. Whilst there are some pretty horrific things that occur in the world, like high school killings in America and dictators like Hitler (was he fully evil?), it's probably due to the fact that these people are just not wired up like the rest of society and not due to some external evil.

Then again isn't it said that the greatest trick that the devil has achieved is convincing the world that he does not exist? After all, none of the people in my group have seen him, and most of them are Christians.

14 Dec 2007 Moving Servers: Complete

Bloody hell that was a feat an a half...

A few more kinks to iron out? A few kinks my arse!

Anyway the move to the new server is finished and everything should be back to normal for your reading pleasure. I'll be doing a big blog dump over the next few days to get this place up to speed.

On a side note I felt like adding two new categories to the site; Thought Of The Day and Religion, although I'm not sure if the Religion category is 100% accurate seeing as it contain almost nothing else apart from the Alpha Course stuff that I've done (which I've completed now, no more sessions for me). I might change the Religion category to something like Alpha Course or something. I dunno.

Edit (16/12/2007) - Screw it I'm changing it from Religon to Alpha. It just makes more sense.

3 Dec 2007 Moving Servers

The Grax Domain is gonna be in the process of moving servers. Hopefully it will be a painless process and everything will be completely sorted and out of the way by next week (I gotta find a decent place to have me stuff hosted first).

But if something fishy happens to the site then you'll know why.

I'll save any new entries until the move is complete.

Edit (8/12/2007) - Nearly there. Just a few more kinks to iron out...