Happy Holidays!

Richard Branson Resolution

For the full video version please check out You Tube!

On November 19th I competed in a contest run by Virgin Mobile to become the most fearless Canadian. I went in admiring Richard Branson and Virgin but due to the events that took place there I became completely disillusioned. I made a video and sent it to Virgin and they took immediate actions to right the wrong, thereby restoring my faith in Virgin...

Dear Richard Branson,

Most people wouldn't think that a handful of worms was something important, but we do. And instead of ignoring us Virgin decided that what we had to say was important and how we felt mattered.

When we sent our video to Virgin we were only hoping to share our thoughts on National Fearless Day. But Chris from Virgin Mobile surprised us by calling us back not two hours later to hear our story. He listened to us, he asked us questions and he told us that Virgin cared about our opinions. He apologized for the worms (and he even apologized to the worms) and told us Virgin was making a donation to the Toronto Wildlife Centre to make amends.

We were thrilled to hear that our voices were heard and Virgin was taking positive action because of our efforts. The fact that wild animals in Toronto will now be fed because of what happened is a wonderful example of something negative becoming something positive.

Virgin could have ignored our message and turned the other way but instead they did a great thing, acknowledged our viewpoint and took actions to right the wrong and we think that is totally fearless.

Soon at the Toronto Wildlife Centre a raccoon will be eating a blueberry in honor of our waxworm friends. And we feel absolutely wonderful knowing that even the smallest of creatures can make a big difference.

Thank you kindly,

Star Happy Spider
&
Ben Happy Badger

Video Music: Glorious Morning By: Waterflame

For more information or to make your own donation to the Wildlife Centre go to: http://www.torontowildlifecentre.com

For fantastic products that support the Wildlife Centre check out: http://www.mythicalmatters.com

For amazing events and this awesome filmmaking check out: http://www.alternaterealityevents.com

Richard Branson Disillusionment

For the full video version head to You Tube!

We live on a beautiful planet filled to the brim with every kind of life. Every creature is unique, beautiful and worthy of respect.


These are waxworms, wonderful little cream colored worms who are the larva of the wax moth. Given the proper environment these little creatures would eventually transform into wax moths and reproduce. They are also a high protein and fat rich source of food for other creatures across the planet, mostly reptiles such as lizards and larger insects. These worms are a vital part of the food chain and fascinating creatures to observe and care for.


These are snakes, fascinating creatures who are highly sensitive to environmental vibrations, as they sense the approach of other creatures through faint vibrations in the air and on the ground. With over 2.900 species across the world they have a long, interesting history and a complex relationship with human myth and spirituality. These creatures are beautiful, fascinating, unique and worthy of our care and respect. But because of the way they look and the history and myths associated with them they are often seen as something to fear.

But there is a difference between fear and disgust. Fear is defined as an emotional response to a threat. It is a basic survival mechanism occurring in response to a specific stimulus, such as pain or the threat of danger. Whereas Disgust is an emotion that is typically associated with things that are regarded as unclean, inedible, infectious, or otherwise offensive. So snakes are a valid fear as they bite and often carry venom that is harmful to humans, but worms are more tied to the feeling of disgust then fear as they are often seen as unclean or gross.

On November 19th I competed in the Virgin Mobile National Fearless Day Competition. I was excited to meet Sir Richard Branson, the man at the helm of a company I think is doing amazing things for the world, trying to clean up the planet, sending people to space and inspiring people to face their fears and take the leap into the unknown. I had been wanting to meet Richard Branson for a long time, to thank him for all the great things he has been doing, so I came prepared with a piece of meteorite as a thank you gift for bringing the world to space.

As a competitor I was tasked with three challenges, pulling scrabble tiles from a tank full of waxworms (which they called maggots, likely to elicit a deeper sensation of disgust), unlocking myself from a tank full of snakes and walking a high wire above the audience. I was concerned about the welfare of the worms and snakes and as it turns out my concerns were not unfounded. During the break between competitors Richard Branson grabbed two giant handfuls of worms and flung them at the audience. The crowd screamed and proceeded to trample the tiny, fragile waxworms to death. A horrible way for any creature to have to die and a callous show of disrespect for the lives of the creatures that Virgin was using to entertain with and promote their business. These worms are generally used as food for other creatures, but that is a part of the circle of life. Much as a meat eater would ideally prefer to eat a free run chicken who had been well cared for, these worms deserve respect and care even if they will ultimately be nourishment for another creature.


After that I told myself no matter what happened I would no longer continue with the competition, I had no desire to be a part of something so brutally thoughtless towards any creature. I no longer wanted to meet Branson, nor did I want to give him the piece of meteorite I had wanted to give him for so long. There were so many other things that Virgin could have done to create a creative fearless contest while still remaining respectful towards the lives of all living creatures and I wished it had all gone down in a different way. The snakes were treated horribly as well, the hostess at one point grabbing one of them and waving it over the audience. The snake must have been so scared with all the flashing lights, pounding music and vibrations of the crowd, for a creature that can feel even the smallest vibration, it must have been horrible.

It is this kind of callous attitude and thoughtlessness that allows us to continue spewing toxins into the air, hunting species to extinction and creating the massive climate changes that are such a major threat to the whole world. We can try to repair the planet in a million different ways but it will always continue to deteriorate unless we begin modifying the careless, self-centered attitude we have towards each individual creature and start being responsible for the actions that we take.


It is not just the grand gestures that define us, it is every action that we take. And for people like Richard Branson, who are always in the spotlight it's even more important to be responsible and take every life into consideration in order to inspire people to be more mindful, caring and to appreciate the vital importance of every living creature.

In retrospect, the day was actually a success. We managed to save eleven wax worms from being crushed to death on the noisy, crowded floor. Had we not been there, they would have most certainly lost their lives. To those eleven worms, our caring made a difference. Can you imagine what kind of world we would live in if more people spent more time caring about the world around them? They are not just worms and snakes. These creatures truly deserve the title of the most fearless Canadians.

"Today, more than ever before, life must be characterized by a sense of universal responsibility, not only nation to nation and human to human, but also human to other forms of life."
- Dalai Lama

National Fearless Day!

November 19th is National Fearless Day and I am aiming to be the most fearless Canadian, but I need your help!

In order to overcome my claustrophobia I spent a harrowing hour in the containment closet at the Ontario Science Centre. Locked in and freaked out I was able to breath through it and overcome my fear of small spaces! We caught it all on video and I am now entered to win the title of most fearless Canadian in the Virgin Mobile contest for National Fearless Day!

Your votes can help me win! Please head over to:

http://nationalfearlessday.ca/#/en/video/129

You can vote once a day until the 16th of November and every vote counts!

The main prize on the line is a meeting with Sir Richard Branson, a priceless opportunity that has always been on my life list! Richard Branson's fearlessness has always been inspiring to me and I hope to be able to tell him that face to face!

Please help vote me into the finals and help make me the most fearless Canadian!

*****



The experience of overcoming one's fear is a fascinating one. At this point I understand that the deepest problem is not the experience, but the fear itself.

For the night and most of the day before I went into the containment closet, I was terrified. I kept imagining the walls closing in and not being able to escape the dark, creepy space I was about to go into. When Badger went to shut the door and kick in the door stop I flipped out, crying and repeating how much I didn't want to go in. When the door was shut, the air was stale, it smelled metallic and the space was so tight I could only crouch or stand. When I pressed the button the wall slowly closed in as the presentation told of people in slave ships in similar sized spaces and others being shipped to concentration camps in WWII. It was horrifying. My breath got shorter and my stomach was hurling itself around in somersaults. There I was, stuck in a place I didn't want to be and had to stay in order to help overcome my fear. Deep breath.

As time passed I started to look around, there was very little stimulus in the booth and so every little movement became drastically important. At one point I simply changed directions and my anxiety came flooding back like a tidal wave. Every breath was felt, every sound was echoing through me and I held onto any little bit of it I could, it was my hold on the reality that was swirling outside the closet that I wanted to be a part of.

I started to get more comfortable. Less anxiety ridden when I changed directions. Less freaking out about the fact that I couldn't move, or escape. I pressed the button again to challenge myself and felt more comfortable as the wall closed in on me. It was just space, sure it was small, but it was just a place, like any other, my life was not in danger and there would come a time when I could leave. It could be much worse. I felt deeply for all the people and animals who had ever been forcibly confined, it was horrible and I wished well for anyone who had to go through such an ordeal.

When the door opened it was bright and the air swept over me in a glorious wave. Freedom tasted good. A crowd had gathered to watch me emerge and I hugged Badger happily. I had done it, I had overcome my fear and spent an hour in the containment closet. The worst part had been before I even went in and my first few minutes of enclosure, but I had fought through the panic and the fear and emerged triumphant. It really did help me feel better about small spaces, I noticed the effect on the subway as we travelled home. The subway may have been crowded, but it was nothing compared to the containment closet!

I am well on my way to becoming the Most Fearless Canadian!

The Paladin's Blessing

The Paladin's Blessing from Ben Loughead on Vimeo.

Previously I wrote about playing Underworld LARP and since then we have gotten more and more involved in the game. The games I am most interested in playing are ones in which the real world and the game world mix and it is hard to distinguish the boundaries between fantasy and reality.

Bringing things out of game, into the real world adds a new dimension, makes the experience more real and brings it up to an almost spiritual level (if you choose to see it that way). In games you learn so much about who you are and those around you and you have the unique opportunity to become everything you have ever dreamed of being.

In the game both Badger and I are Paladins. We believe in seeing the best in people, even at their worst. We are committed to finding alternate solutions to killing and we always offer peace to any creature or person who approaches us in game. Apparently nobody likes the good guys though. We get a lot of push back in the game for our extremely positive characters. People who are battle worn and sour see us as annoying and weak, villains see us as easy targets and even the long arm of the law has had a hand in our dealings as the other day I got arrested, for talking to a villain instead of killing him. It is a fascinating thing to know that the majority of people within a fantasy town hates us for being good. In a fascinating twist of fate we have become the villains for being compassionate.

In a world that is completely upside down with hate, our job has become clear. Spread the love. In order to do so we decided it was time to play... our way.

The main focal point of the game is an evil entity who lives at 'the ridge' it is fed by hate and fear and initially by a racist conflict between elves and humans. It lives behind a magical curtain that our town put up to keep it at bay. So if hate feeds the evil logic dictates that love should make it weaker. In an effort to drive it away with sheer goodness we created an in-game, out of game blessing.

*****

Actioni contrariam semper et aequalem esse reactionem
For a force, there is always an equal and opposite reaction

As aspiring Paladin's
We created a blessing in game
Where for every negative in game action
We would create a positive out of game reaction

If the clerics have to write an essay to plot to outline why they would make good clerics, consider this our Paladin essay.

"Good is what should be, could be and in some cases is." - Shekinah, Angel of Cassandra

With these actions we hope to work towards lessening the power of hatred beyond the curtain, strengthening the curtain and helping to restore the beacon so that it continues to shine in Jericho and protect the everyone from the anger and hate that lives at the ridge.

And...in light of new developments, we would like to also dedicate this video to YOU.
YOU can take everything we own, strip us bare, rip our flesh, but you will never take our spirit.
If YOU strike US down, our goodness will become more powerful then anything you can imagine.

With truth and honor,

Glory/Star & Rath/Ben

With a special thanks to Kal/Rob for helping us along our path...

Rabbit Rabbit

A while back I started a journey to become a more positive person. Positivity is amazing on so many different levels, as your attitude in life affects everything you do from the way you approach problems to your overall health. As a part of this path I decided I would take on a study of evil. I wanted to understand all the different forms of evil and why bad people are the way they are. Compassion comes from understanding and each bad thing has a history, a story. I reckon if I can understand the story behind evil, somewhere in there I can learn to find compassion for it.

So in order to further the study Crow and Coyote suggested to myself and Badger that we go see Rabbit Rabbit at the Factory Theatre. We were instructed to not look at any of the images for the play or read any information about it, as it might taint our expectations. Here is the description from Now Magazine:

"This extremely dark comedy finds Larry (Alex McCooeye), a pedophilic children’s entertainer, trying to get his weekly sex fix from Britney (Katie Swift), a sixteen year-old prostitute. Despite the lurid subject matter, both Sandeson and McCooeye turn in frighteningly real performances, making their complicated characters relatable and even sympathetic (no easy feat)."

To suggest that this play is a comedy is absolutely shocking to the core. What was more shocking even still was that people were actually laughing throughout the performance.

When we arrived at the theatre the music was playing loud and the stage was set with a bed and a chair, both covered in plastic wrap. There was a large sheet of butchers plastic forming a wall at the back of the stage. Bad news from the get go. The play was elegant in a horrifying way. It was poetic in a disturbing way. It was touching and deeply moving in a disgusting way. There came a point when it became clear that both characters were too far gone and it was so unbearable and I burst into tears. After that things got worse and worse and I just kept crying. The clown was going to sexually assault a little girl if he didn't get his 'weekly fix' from the prostitute. The sixteen year old prostitute was abused and broken beyond repair. She tried to help him in the only way she knew how. He broke down, she broke down. There was screaming and swearing and the most awful taboos issued forth that it became disturbing beyond belief. And all the while the clown was rubbing his face on the butchers plastic making awful smears that reminded you of the deep, dark stain on his soul. And all the while the audience laughed.

The audience laughed the moment they saw a clown on stage. As though, no matter who he was, or what he had done, he was funny because he was wearing silly pants and making balloon animals. The evil in a mask fools the masses. Throughout the play, no matter how terrible it got, no matter how low and depressing and dark, if the little prostitute said a funny swear word the audience would laugh. If the child molesting clown moved a little making his hoola-hoop pants jiggle, laughter ensued. As I cried and shook the audience behind us found mirth in the madness. When we left the theatre I was still crying and the rest of the audience who lingered by the door stared at me as though I was shot from guns. I wanted to shake them and ask them how it was they were laughing and not bawling at the unfairness of it all, at the horror of it all.

We talked to the writer after the show. She seemed shocked at my tears, she also told us she was surprised by the laugher. When we asked her about evil within the play she couldn't really comment. She told us she just wanted to show that everyone had a story and everyone could be empathized with. She wanted to break into taboos and expose the dirty underbelly of the situation. It was a pretty standard artist response and if I hadn't been crying still I might have been interested in getting further into it.

I have seen 'clown shows' before where I wind up crying well the audience is laughing. But that is because of the hidden symbolism and representations of hope and deep sadness of the clown that is on the stage. This was not a clown show. It was a show about a clown and it was not even close to funny. It was like the audience had willfully ignored what was going on and chosen instead to skim the absolute top most layer to pick out the amusements. When the sixteen year old prostitute had a break down and started screaming in the most heart breaking way, they laughed because she said the words 'monkey cum'. I even heard, as the audience was filing out of the theatre lingering chuckles and murmurs of the words 'monkey cum'. In the midst of the madness they had focussed on the one thing that could make them laugh. So, as I looked to the empty stage and then back at receding tide of the audience I wondered, what was the true evil here? That of the players on stage or that of a crowd full of people laughing in the face of great terror? Where was the righteous indignation at the horror we were witnessing? Where was the deep sorrow at the knowledge that somewhere in the real world this scene was playing out over and over again, ad infinitum? Where was the sheer, overwhelming terror that we are powerless to stop the prostitute from making that age old mistake and the clown from ruining the life of the six year old girl he was going to go molest? Was all of that buried within the giggles and talk of the use of the words 'monkey cum'? Somehow I doubted it.

Badger, bless his heart, tried to see the best in the audience and suggested that their reaction was defensive. Unable to cope with great horror people sometimes turn to the most available and easy emotion. And if one person is laughing the rest of the crowd will take their cues and do the same. And although I would also like to give the benefit of the doubt, I have seen this attitude far too many times. Defense mechanism or not it is still willful ignorance. They are choosing to skim the surface for shallow meaning that can make them laugh. They are actively ignoring the horror in hopes that they can glean a moments worth of entertainment from the terror unfolding before them.

Within the play the prostitute did a monologue about a girl who says 'whatever' to everything. It is a terrifying glimpse into the rampant apathy that must exist within her world in order for her to survive. The play ends with the prostitute saying 'whatever' to the clown. A supreme act of abandon in, what she sees as a hopeless situation. She feels she is powerless to help the little girl he is about to go and molest, she feels she is powerless to help the monster who stands before her. So she says 'whatever' to all of it and resigns herself to a life that tortures her and drives her to the brink of insanity. And the audiences laughs. Through laugher is the audience declaring it's own state of 'whatever'? By finding a terrifying joy within the deep folded layers of evil is the crowd showing it's own apathetic response and desire to look away from the horror lest it keep them up at night or force them to take action? Or am I simply reading too much into it and it was simply a first line of defense against the terror they were witnessing?

Either way it was a horrifyingly enlightening experience. Peeking into the depths of depravity and evil. But knowing full well that every evil has a story, a place where it comes from, with the final understanding that in the end evil is a choice. We can choose to close our eyes and laugh our whatevers into the face of the beast, or we can face it eyes open, tears streaming and hearts set against the travesty. Compassion in heart, heart in hand, ready to offer what we can to fight the rising tide of apathy and try to create positive change.

The Tale of Spider and Badger

Awhile back I spoke of Parachute Love, I also spoke of my own search for someone who believed in being outstanding. I have found just that person. Our story was very much a perfect combination of adventure and romance and I would like to share it with you. Love has many champions and we are huge advocates of leading a life less ordinary.

Go forth and be glorious in the name of love!

Spider = Me
Badger = My Love
Crow and Coyote = My Best Friends