Technology for Liars

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Last night on ABC’s 20/20, they identified a new tool for liars called alibi clubs. These clubs allow you to text message a huge group of strangers where people volunteer to lie on your behalf. If you ask them, they’ll even call your girlfriend and pretend to be your soccer coach, co-worker, etc. to allow you the excuse to get away for whatever your heart desires without any ramifications.

Yes, you read that right. Want to read more?

I found this unbelievable! What does it say about people in the world today? These networks operate in Europe, Asia and the Americas.

I think it says that as a society we’ve completely lost touch with ourselves because when we lie to others, we truly don’t know who we are anymore. We have no limits or boundaries and hence that means we lack self-respect.

How depressing…

Seeing the Truth for what it is…

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…is difficult if you are emotionally involved in a situation. Even if you have an extra-good radar for the truth, as I do, if you add emotions, the lie-dar gets fuzzy, making the truth harder and more challenging to decipher.

As long as you remain emotional, you’re likely heading down a dangerous path if you have to act or make decisions!

I believe that as humans, we have two conscious brains for thought: our emotional brain and our logical brain. I also believe that it is critical to be able to differentiate between our emotional brain and our logical brain. It’s quite easy to do, but you must be disciplined with yourself in order to do it.

When we endure a painful situation, our emotional mind starts playing tricks with our head. It keeps “replaying” over and over again the good memories of things we’ve lost, as if we can have them back: “if only…” Or it makes a difficult situation seem outright desperate. Our emotional mind makes us feel like we’ve been stuck into a dark abyss that has absolutely no way out (or only one out: the wrong one!). Our emotional mind torments us, cripples us and keeps us in a limbo situation. It doesn’t ever give us peace or resolve.

We can be having a good day (trying to get back on our feet) when “WHAM!” our emotional mind decides it is time for us to remember something “oh, so sweet” that is now gone (your children in divorce, a failed relationship, a loved one, etc). Our emotional mind is the one that moves us to tears in difficult situations and makes us torn about what to do! It is deceptive, and represents a trickery to our sanity. It paints things rosier-than-rosy and blacker-than-black. Our emotional mind is very dramatic.

Your logical mind, however, does not trick you. It is honest and straight to the point. However, like the devil and the angel, the angel doesn’t always prevail unless you force it to. You have to consciously work at being logical and at denying your emotional mind the liberty to sabotage you.

Your emotions will never be up to any good in difficult situations. This is when they will not be trustworthy—only your logic will be…

When you start to feel overwhelmed with either happy past memories of what was, or you get overburdened with all that you don’t have now, you have to stop your mind from creating all those vivid thoughts of lost times. You have to stop it dead in its tracks and say to yourself, “That’s the past—this is now. Where can I go from here? Today is the first day of the rest of my life.”

Then you have to force yourself to see the truth. Was it really that rosy (or is it that dark)? What it really that good (or bad)? Weren’t there problems that caused things to get to this point (There always are!!)?

What were those problems?

The problems you think about are your truth. They will be logical occurrences that happened to bring you where you are today. Write down the problems that popped up before things got to that stage of emotional torment. Own them, claim them, and then each time your brain plays tricks on you and you start to get emotional, pull them out, read them, and remember them. Then continue to take steps to move forward.

By doing this, you will logically deprive your emotions, and your brain will slowly clear. You will start to think rationally. With that, logically you will see problems for what they are, and you will see the truth about how to resolve your situation. It may take a few days, but if you are vigilant, the truth will come so long as you stay in your logical mind and deny your emotions by pushing them out of your head. You can succeed and find your truth!

When I am really having a difficult time deciphering the truth, I ask myself:

Is this fear?

Or is this what I really believe to be the truth?

If I am facing something fearful, I realize that I am dealing with my emotions, so I dig deeper. I dig until I know I see the truth and I know I have no fear. You will know the truth—you will feel it. You will feel confident and strong. Lies makes us feel weak, and vulnerable, and afraid. Emotions can deceive us, make us feel weak and incapable. Just remember that.

Guilty, yes but death?

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Scott Peterson has been sentenced to death by the 6 woman, 6 man jury just hours ago.

While I am convinced that Scott Peterson did kill Laci and her unborn child as he lied frequently on multiple occasions and didn’t respond like an innocent man, we as a society must remember that we never did find any conclusive proof. Furthermore, on average 1 in 10 people who have been put to death in this country have later been proven to be innocent.

How is it that we as a society which calls itself “civilized” can support an “eye-for-an-eye” punishment? How can we find it acceptable to kill someone on a belief without any conclusive proof such as DNA? How can we accept a system flaw rate of 10%? How can we accept that it is okay to kill 100 innocent people out of every thousand where only 900 are actually guilty?

I believe that our capital punishment system is as barbaric as the days public lynching and stonings. What has changed since then outside of the fact we no longer do it in public?

Even worse to me is the fact that Scott Peterson didn’t even get a jury of his peers. In our court system today, if you do not believe in capital punishment — you are not allowed to serve in a capital punishment case. Can you believe this? It’s true and called Death Qualification (USA Today article). A true jury of your peers would have a system that truly reflects societies beliefs. We do not have that.

The U.S. is the only first-world country to continue to implement the death sentence. Why is this? Is it because we are protected from the horrors that occur in the actual killing process? Putting someone to death is very brutal physcial process. I won’t even begin to discuss the details because they are that horrific.

Furthermore, don’t we as a society have compassion for Scott’s family? My heart is so sad for his mom and dad. They are the ones who are getting the death sentence. How does killing Scott Peterson help Laci’s family?

While I understand that what Scott did was horrific and wrong, how can we justify sentencing him to the same “crime” he committed? I just don’t understand it.

I studied the death penalty in college when I was studying pre-law and political science. I had a great, fabulous teacher who made us each research the topic and present an oral report to the class. During the semester while we researched our papers and prepared for our oral report, our professor showed us video footage of actual people being executed in a varity of ways (no, I didn’t watch — I couldn’t stomach it). She showed us videos which made real cases personal to us. We got to know the murders, the families, the victims and we became involved in the situation. We saw real documentaries. We saw what families on both sides went through. Our professor showed us cases where innocent people were killed. She showed us video of the men who execute criminals. She showed us video tape of those who still do it — and those who had to quit.

When the class started out, more than a majority of people were for the death penalty. I stood on the lonely side of the classroom with perhaps two or three people out of 30 students strongly opposed to it.

On the final day of the class, after we each gave our reports, not one student continued to maintain a position of support for capital punishment. I have never seen such a huge sway in opinions before. Thirty plus students now were all against the death penalty. It was a true testament to the horror and brutality of what we do as a society. We all saw the horrors of that in the videos and no one could handle the brutality of it. We all saw how wrong it was. It was undenialbe. If only every citizen who served on a capital punishment case would have to watch what we did, would have to be educated to the details of the process, the realities of what we are really doing — to all involved.

Today, I am sad for the Laci’s family. I am sad for Scott’s family. I am sad for Laci and her unborn child. I am sad, too, for Scott Peterson. While he may be seriously ill, sick or even demented, I don’t believe in killing a man who killed. It just isn’t justice. It’s revenge that will only continue to hurt more people…

This truth I could not bear…

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Last night, I watched Tom Brokaw and Aron Ralston recount a horrible ordeal that happened to Aron back in 2003. You may have heard of this story as it made world news.

Essentially what happened is Aron made a fatal mistake. He went out hiking in the backcountry of Utah without telling a single living soul where he was going or when he’d be back. With that, when he got into life-threatening trouble, he knew the odds of getting rescued were slim to none.

While canyoneering, a boulder dislodged as he was trying to climb over it and as it fell, it pinned his hand against the narrow canyon. Aron was unable to free his hand no matter how hard he tried. He chiseled away at the boulder to no avail, and tried to dislodge it again but it simply didn’t work.

After days and days of struggling to get free and running out of food and water, he realized he was going to die alone in this canyon. His hope to get rescued was barely a thought. He was very up front with himself and faced the facts that he probably wouldn’t survive. He bravely faced his inevitable death.

I was amazed at Aron’s candidness and honesty with himself. He was brutally honest with himself during the entire ordeal. The Discovery Channel aired actual taped footage of Aron as he thought he was going to die because he couldn’t come up with a way to free himself. While he had thought about amputating his own arm, his knife wasn’t sharp enough to break the bones.

Watching actual footage of Aron, I forced myself to look inside. Could I be that honest with myself?

I sat there and doubted I could be. I think I may have found my honesty limit. I am honest, super honest — very up front and open about reality in life with everyone I know — including myself– but if I were faced with this situation, I don’t think I could have looked the truth in the eye. I think I would have turned away in denial. I wouldn’t have been able to cope.

Aron finally had the realization in the final hours that he could either break his own arm bones and hack off his arm with a little dull knife — or he could wait for death. He decided to snap his own arm bones — and then hack away the muscles, skin and nerves until he was free and able to start the long journey back to his truck.

Can you imagine??

The guy amazed me. He was so candid about his mortality and his options to survive. I don’t believe most people have this spirit. Maybe it is the spirit that keeps him climbing like he does. That spirit is not typical. Aron was able to face everything for what it was… down to the rotting, decaying flesh that was once his hand. I was in awe.

Somehow while I am honest and able to deal with most everything in life — death is not one of them. I don’t think I will be able to face death with as much grace as Aron did. He is truly a unique character who has shown me my limits…

BIG DEAD BUG in my butter

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Yeah, you read that right. My stomach is turning right now. Today is my hubby’s 42rd birthday (god, how did he get so old?!) and so I wanted to make him a lovely rum cake. When I pulled the sticks of butter out of the packaging, I noticed this big brownish-black thing at the end of the butter.

I knew immediately what it was.

What else could it be?

I looked away…sad for the bug, sick to my stomach. I plead with my husband to take care of it for me, please. I didn’t want to know — so I handed him the stick. As I glance over at him, I see him about to pitch the entire stick in the garbage.

“Wait,” I yelled. “Why throw away the entire stick? I mean let’s face it. We eat these things all the time — and getting another stick doesn’t guarantee ANYTHING. Just cut off the bad end.”

The hubby agreed and so he cut off a couple of inches — and gave me back the remainder of the stick. Then he pitched the chunk in the garbage.

“Don’t you want to know what it was?” I asked.

“No, I don’t,” he replied.

I don’t want to know either because I’ll get nauseated but I do want to know — I want to know what precisely it is.

The hubby had no desire to investigate it and I couldn’t do it either. Oh well, I’ll let that one go… I want to be able to eat that cake but right now after thinking about it, I don’t that I will be able too. It’s really gross.

After the ordeal, I decided to see what brand it was. In all the years of my life, I have never seen a bug in butter. It ended up it was our local state’s name brand! Uh… I’m not surprised so I decided to call to see if they’d at least replace my butter for Pete’s sake.

“Yes, I am calling because I just found the most disturbing thing in my butter. I found a BIG bug squished into the end of it!!”

“What you need to do is send in the specimen to our facilities, let me give you the address,” says the woman at the butter company calmly.

I’m thinking OH. MY. GOD. This is a normal occurrence. She wasn’t shocked, she didn’t seem taken back — she acted like this happened everyday.

I wanted to throw up. She didn’t react like a normal person who is surprised AT ALL. Gross. The facility must be crawling. Next time I am going to pay more and buy the national brand — screw this — even if I have to pay more. Ewwwww…..

So the woman gives me the address and she says to me that they will investigate this. Investigate this? What the crap?! Then after the investigation they will ship me a refund.

Can you believe it?

I asked if they pay my postage if I send in the sample and while the woman said yes, I don’t believe her at all. I’m not buying this butter ever again!!!

The company didn’t pay for any of my postage with cash, but I must say that someone in the company sent me 4 coupons for free butter.