11:22 a.m.
"Any road followed precisely to its end leads precisely nowhere. Climb the mountain just a little bit to test it's a mountain. From the top of the mountain, you cannot see the mountain."
Wow. That's deep.
Today we celebrate the birthday of the man behind that wisdom, one of the boycotter's personal heroes, Mr. Frank Herbert.
Frank was a critically acclaimed science fiction author who changed the life of every little boy (and a few dorky girls) in the world with one word: Dune.
Dune is considered one of the greatest science fiction novels of all time, is frequently cited as the best-selling science fiction novel in history and was the first bestselling hardcover science fiction novel ever. Dune spawned five sequels written by Herbert, and inspired a 1984 film adaptation by David Lynch starring Charlotte's (from SATC) impotent husband, that gal that drank a lot of wine in Sideways and got mixed up with the crazy bee man in Candyman, Captain Jean-Luc Piccard, and that really buff guy from the Police who does yoga and is into tantric sex, two mini-series made by the Sci Fi Channel, computer games, board games, and a series of prequels and sequels co-written by the author's son Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson.
Sadly, Frank left this world in 1986. But he also left behind a world of Spacing guilds, sandworms, Navigators and gom jabbars that will live on forever.
If you could be any Dune character, which would you be? I guess I would be part of the Bene Gesserit.
This is a secret society for women, often referred to as "witches," with mental and physical powers developed through thousands of generations of controlled gene lines and many years of physical and mental conditioning called prana-bindu training. You better watch out or I'm going to put some prana-bindu on your ass.
When a Bene Gesserit acolyte becomes a full Reverend Mother by undergoing "the Reverend Mother ordeal" (referred to as the Spice Agony later in the series), she gains access to her "ancestral memories" — the complete life experience of all her female ancestors back to the point of each life's conception. The Agony is induced by taking a massive overdose of "awareness spectrum narcotics", or as is discovered by the Lady Jessica, the Fremen way of drinking the bile of a dying sandworm, a melange-essence poison known as the Water of Life that they must change in their bodies. Wow. It just so happens that I had a glass of bile of a dying sandworm this morning with my oatmeal. It makes your breath smell bad, but it's pretty good when chilled.
More words of wisdom:
"It is a wise man that does know the contented man is never poor, whilst the discontented man is never rich."
"Religion often partakes of the myth of progress that shields us from the terrors of an uncertain future."
"Respect for the truth comes close to being the basis for all morality."
"Seek freedom and become captive of your desires. Seek discipline and find your liberty."
"The beginning of knowledge is the discovery of something we do not understand."
"Think you of the fact that a deaf person cannot hear. Then, what deafness may we not all possess? What senses do we lack that we cannot see and cannot hear another world all around us?"
"Without change, something sleeps inside us, and seldom awakens. The sleeper must awaken."
Source: Wikipedia
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