Treatment

Perception and Attitude Part 1

2006-01-28T12:16:00.000+08:00

Perception and Attitude

First of all the Universe

I like to call it the universe, because it is outside of myself and it is more powerful than I.
People who believe that life is just random, that events happen randomly for no reason to random people with predictable or not results are choosing a long, and difficult ride for themselves. It’s that simple. Even if they are actually right, what a horribly useless headspace to adopt as any kind of solution for success or happiness. Not taking responsibility for anything, how can you have a hope in hell of anything out of the ordinary, or anything great to happen?
What I do say I know is that events happen in life to the individual, and how the individual chooses to see those events greatly determines how happy and fulfilled that person will be. Success is not about money, although all of us including yourself are programmed to believe that. As intellectuals we might argue that no, success is not money, but deep down in our hearts, we all make the mistake of believing that it does matter, because we rely on it in the modern world. I don’t fully understand how much money has to do with anything, but for some reason we all use it as a measuring stick for how successful a person is, or isn’t. Most of my friends and myself included are hypocrates when we say it doesn’t matter to our happiness, when deep down inside we believe we would be much happier floating on a yacht in the Pacific.
We all like and appreciate money, and having piles of it, yet it’s not cool to admit it, and it’s much more modest looking to pretend it doesn’t matter. So most of us struggle with this internal conflict continuously.
There are many things to be learned about money, and that’s not what this essay, if you will, is about.
So what is this about?
Perception, and attitude, greatly determine how happy you will be in your life. It’s so sad that a large percentage of people on this Earth really have no clue about that. Even intelligent, well read, experienced “intellectuals” are totally in the dark about this concept it seems, or refuse to apply it. I side with Anthony Robbins, Robert Blanton, every motivational speaker in existence who will tell you that attitude is everything.

In Shotokan Karate it is no different. “never give up.” is a very widely used, and general purpose “slogan” if you will, for the greater truths therein. But the simplicity remains, as with any real truth, it is infallible.
I don’t have the strength to put up an argument any more to make a debate, in my essays, unless I do. Right now, I don’t. Defending my viewpoint to an invisible advocate is a waste of energy for me, so I’ll move, and create from there, by saying that these are my beliefs, and this is what I have learned (or have chosen to learn)

The universe, which is outside of your own reality is something you have to accept. If you believe the universe does not exist, that this is all an elaborate dream of your own fabrication, then I’m sorry, but this is not going to work for you. Get help.
If you believe that Jesus is smiling down on you, that’s perfectly ok, my theory can accommodate Jesus, and God, and Satan, but your going to have to stretch more then you might be used to.

I have been “praying” now for over five years.
No, I don’t get down on my knees, fold my hands, bow my head, shut my eyes, and address some specific hippy dude with a warm smile who walked on water. (And he DID walk on water-I think-because he believed he could beyond the shadow of a doubt)
The praying I do is to the universe. I don’t pray for money, or pray for a new bike. I don’t pray for the universe to help me lose weight. People who pray for these kind of things are refusing to take responsibility for their own action, refusing to harness their own personal power to create, are generally cowards of reality, and choose to hide from it rather than confront it.
When I pray, I ask for the protection of my family. I pray for this fictional thing called “luck”.
I pray for things that are outside of my control, determined by forces that may or may not have been influenced by my own momentum. Before a job interview, I practice my lines in front of a mirror. I know what clothes I will wear. I know the exact route to get to the location, and specifically how long its going to take me to get there to arrive 15 minutes early. I have extra copies of my resume, and I’m ready to start work in case they ask me to on the spot. I’m the man of choice, and I already know I’m hired. It is up to me to convince them of that, and that is where it ends. The rest, is up to the universe.
I am not the supervisor sitting behind the desk looking at Shawn. I have no control over him/her or the decisions that they make. Energy outside of myself and my world does, and that is what I prey to. I ask it to consider my circumstances, and make a decision that “it” feels I would benefit from.
So I don’t get the job, is it failure? Hardly. It sure feels like it though. You see, there really is no such thing as “failure”, there are only “outcomes.”
The result of my preparation for this job is that I didn’t get it ultimately. That is the outcome. Is it final? No.
I could go back next year, and get hired on the spot. Right now, outside forces that are not my own, determined that I am either not ready for this job, or the job is not ready for me. Something outside of myself made a decision. Did that decision get made “for” me like a favor? Maybe, maybe not. But you know what? It does a hell of a lot for your self-confidence, your esteem, and the inspiration it takes to get your depressed ass out of bed everyday to believe that it was. If I believe that everything happens for a reason, it allows me to take responsibility for my action, and it allows me to let go of responsibility and stop thinking I suck because I didn’t get the gig. My ultimate conclusion, is that this opportunity was not the opportunity I need at this point. I thought it was, but there is obviously something different waiting for me to acknowledge it instead. Maybe I need a stepping stone first. Maybe what I thought was ideal, is not at all ideal, in fact a downward spiral in a direction I don’t want to go, or a distracting tangent. Losing out of that job was a favor from the universe, not a lesson, or punishment, which it may have felt like after the door slammed shut behind me.
I think, it all boils down to how you talk to yourself.
I have been living like a monk here, outside of my huge fan club of children at work, I have chosen not to engage outside acquaintances. Why that is, I wasn’t entirely sure at first. Having a 9 to 5 means less time for Shawn. I thought I needed to be selfish with my free time to do the things that make me happy, like writing music, and moving pictures. I continued for months without friendship, only choosing to keep my existing friends through the wonders of modern technology: namely, email!
My second excuse was that it must have been my high standards of quality control. After losing a friendship I’ve kept for 23 years, I felt like I really needed to question the friends that I choose, and the company I keep for my own self-preservation. After all, I am responsible for the shitty decisions I make, absolutely, and boy, or girl, you’d best believe that for yourself, too!
Do I need company around me that influences my weaknesses, and provides me with tempting opportunities to fail myself?
Maybe I do need that as a test of my personal strength. But as an alternative, how about having friends that influence your strengths, and provide you with models instead, to achieve greater happiness and understanding? Wouldn’t I rather have friends like that around me?
I can have 10 friends that I party with, who influence me to disregard my body, my internal machinery for the sake of a “good time”. Or, I can have one friend around me that challenges me to reach for greater things, offers me experience, and provides me with ideas that I never thought of, or had never considered. Someone who has real experience with things that I do not have as much experience with, someone with answers to large questions that I have. I hate to use the term “role model” but for lack of a better one, I will.
Take what is useful, throw away what is not. Even a friend who doesn’t really care about your well being can give you information that is useful. How many times have I been influenced by humor? Somebody with a really quick wit said to me recently, “No good deed goes unpunished.”
That made me howl! What I need to acknowledge about that statement, is how true it sounds, and how untrue in fact it is!
The person who said it to me is a pessimist, and a cynic. Those people make the best comedians, and I thank the universe for people like Chris Rock, and Eddie Murphy, and Dave Chappelle, amoungst a hundred other similar names.
I’m just really glad that I don’t need to live life from this vantage point of being cynical, and jaded, that I can see a higher truth instead of dwelling on the strength of a lower one.
Nothing is more entertaining than pain, and violence!
Especially pain that makes us laugh, because it isn’t ours, and violence beyond our own imagination.
Laughter really is an incredible medicine, and we should do it at every opportunity. But I feel the need to make the distinction between entertainment, and real life. Modeling my life after an intelligent, witty, cynic, doesn’t serve me at all.
Your attitude greatly determines how your life will work out. Failure doesn’t exist, unless you allow it to.
How can you possibly know and understand failure?
Just because you wanted something and you didn’t get it, doesn’t mean that you need to jump to that conclusion!
My most painful memories of regret and “failure” have been the greatest lessons I’ve received from life. Re-organizing those experiences from the past to isolate the essence of what I learned from them, becomes useful tools for the future.
As an exercise try this:
Imagine one of the most embarrassing things that ever happened to you, or even better, something you are deeply ashamed of.
Before you jump to conclusions and say “I’ll never do THAT again”, imagine what could have happened, and how you would do it differently on round two. Extract what is useful from it, and stop dwelling on what went wrong. Making a list of every embarrassing, shitty, dumb ass mistake you made, or opportunities that you let slip by, is a really good thing to do. Re-examining each experience and extracting what you would do now instead, allows you to let go of the painful memory, and arm yourself for the next time a similar situation comes up. Do this, and you will sleep much better at night, I guarantee it.
I’ll leave you with that, and I’ll report back with more thoughts of this in “essays” to come.

Criticism and Compliments

2005-07-14T21:12:00.000+08:00

Criticism and Compliments

This is an essay for artists and creative to read in regards to receiving both criticism and compliments.
A criticism is a compliment as much as a compliment is a criticism; they are not two sides of the same coin, but one side only.
Imagine that you are at a performance. You are completely inspired and blown away but what you just saw. You meet the performer after the show to tell them how inspiring the performance was. But after you talk to them, you wished you hadn’t. You feel like maybe you should have just shaken their hand and said, “Thanks, I loved the show!” and left it at that. How did you manage to piss her off by telling her how great she was?

Working the backline on different performance stages for a handful of years provided me with alot of opportunity to meet some of my idols, and shake their hands. I also met performers that I had never heard of, whom I instantly became a fan of. I can sleep better at night knowing that they probably won’t remember me when I meet them the next time, so even if I made an ass out of myself, I might get another opportunity so save face.
I made a complete ass out of myself to Henry Rollins the first time I met him. I sat there at the end of the table studying him while he typed on his laptop, pretending to be reading a magazine. He kept looking over at me, catching me staring at him, probably wondering what I was staring at, and eventually moved to another table to work, because obviously his concentration was being affected. After a mind-blowing performance, I was completely awe-struck, and while I was humping gear into the back of the truck, I put my hand on his shoulder and said enthusiastically “Great show, man!!” He was already talking to someone, and I was interrupting. He didn’t even bother to look at me and say thank you, and I realized that putting my hand on his shoulder was also the wrong thing to do, and that wasting his time with any more complimentary crap might get me the kind of attention that I DIDN’T want: like a black eye.
At the time I couldn’t understand his reaction, and I thought to myself, ‘What an asshole!”
As it turns out the next time I would meet Rollins, I tried a different approach. I talked to him as an equal, and I ended up hanging out with him on Robson Street for a few hours, talking about everything from why he fired his band members to the current actress he was dating and what a pain in the ass she was.
My original point is that a compliment is a criticism and a criticism is a compliment. I have never once been 100% satisfied with any one performance I have ever been a part of, be it my own or someone else’s show. Maybe I am a perfectionist, maybe I set unrealistic expectations for myself, but I have had countless performances where I am completely disgusted with myself over some aspect that did not go as well as I’d hoped for. One of my recent performances in fact, I could not hear my voice correctly due to a monitoring problem, and I was singing the first four songs just slightly out of key depending on where I was standing on the stage. I knew this while I was suffering it in the moment, but also knew that there was very little I could do about it. I felt totally helpless, and I had to switch into warrior mode just to live through it. So how do you think I felt when someone came up to me after a show that I was disgusted with, to compliment my voice?
I was immediately defensive. What I wanted to say, was:
“What the fuck do YOU know? The first four songs were completely out of key, I was dehydrated, my voice sounded like shit, and I’m sure everyone knows that except you obviously. Or maybe you DO know that and you feel sorry for me, so you are coming over here to patronize me.”
A close friend of mine taught me a long time ago that the best response to a compliment or a criticism is to be short and sweet, and thankful.
“Oh thank you! Thank you very much!” and that is exactly what I said to her, and I continued packing up the equipment. Even if someone comes up to me and says,
“Your show was great except for your singing, which I thought really sucked.”I would still say,
“Oh, thank you! Thank you very much!”
Am I being dishonest? What am I thankful for? I am thankful for the fact that the experience meant something to you, good or bad, and that it meant so much to you that you felt the need to confront me.
If you hated it, and absolutely needed to tell me that, it also means that you liked it, that you got something from it, that you were moved by it, that it affected you to the point of being angered by it.
Of course your opinion is valid. But ss much as all opinions are valid, so by their very nature are they invalid. Even my own opinion that my voice sounded like shit is as invalid as it is valid. I am not talking philosophic; it is common knowledge that one mans garbage is another mans treasure.
What I might consider to be my Holy Grail, is a pile of shit to you!
Because I am as much a part of my performance as much as I am separated from it I will experience it through my own filters and you will see and experience things through your filters, and your previous experiences. You will inevitably notice things that I do not, you will hear things that I will never be able to hear, even if I provide everything there is to hear. So why should I let one single opinion, right or wrong affect my ability, my self-esteem, how I conduct my creative process? Why does one negative or positive voice dominate over an entire choir of equal voices? I like to pretend that 90% of the people who heard my terrible singing did not notice, and felt uplifted and moved by the experience. But in my heart, my true opinion is that it sucked, and that really if those 90% had a clue, they would also know it sucked. Who am I going to be inclined to listen to and believe: the people who tell me they loved it, or the one cynical asshole that came up afterwards and told me he liked everything except for the singing? The answer to that is obvious. I might even go as far as to trust his opinion the next time, over everyone else’s opinion, because he was right on the money the last time round. I might look at him as being more in touch, more accurate, more enlightened over everyone else, because his opinion reflects my own insecurities. All he has to do is luck out a few times in a row by naming the inherent weaknesses and all of the sudden I grant him more power than everyone else. I might even deliberately invite him to more shows, just so that I can have a single valid opinion, amongst a sea of idiots. To think that he can be right or wrong in the first place, or to think that his opinion is more important than my own, or her own, or that guy over there in the corner, is completely ludicrous.
Likewise for the people that appear to “get it”. I know these people “get it” because they cheer when I feel like cheering. When I get lost in the performance and something magical happens, there they are screaming their heads off, and that is exactly how I feel like inside too. Sure, compliments feel a lot better; compliments are the things that we as artists live for! We all want to be “understood”, viewed as “brilliant”. It’s no secret, and you are a fool to think that other artists don’t know that about you too. But a compliment is just as meaningless as a criticism.
I remember a specific event where I approached a musician that I am consistently stunned by, and said:
“Oh man!!! That point during the solo of the second song where you were just going off---you remember that?”
“Yeah, yeah, I think so…”
“It was like you were doing something crazy with the feedback and the harmonics, and it was like a bolt of lighting hitting the top of my head---you remember that??”
“Um… the second song, right?”
“Yeah, yeah—or maybe it was the third song...anyways, it just ROCKED!!”
“Thanks, man!! Glad you liked it!”
And then I walk away feeling really great about the intimate connection I just had with my hero, and he walks away wondering what the fuck I was talking about with bolts of lightening, and feeling even more disconnected from the worst performance he has ever given.

Criticism

Usually when I don’t “get” something, it is not because it sucks, or it isn’t translated clear enough. It is either because I am blocked in that particular area due to previous negative experiences that I’ve had, or, like algebra, it is something totally new to me that I have no previous experience to relate it to, and I cannot grasp on to it. Ultimately in both scenarios, I simply don’t know how to experience it. I have in the very least enough self-knowledge now, to recognize this, give it the benefit of the doubt, and simply admit that I don’t get it.
I spent how many years staring at abstract painting, trying to figure out what the hell the big deal was about a red dot painted on a purple triangle, until one day when something finally clicked with me, and I instantly humbled.
Imagine the embarrassment and shame I would feel if I had spent those years in the dark shooting my mouth off over how invalid and pointless abstract painting is. Now, I am perfectly okay to accept the fact that there is art out there that is beyond my perception, that is too advanced for my puny little brain, art that I may not ever get until that one day when something clicks, if that day ever comes. Isn’t it better then to shut my mouth and say nothing when I don’t get it, then to run my mouth over how much I think it sucks in case I’m wrong? Is there a right and wrong? You can certainly argue that you believe something sucks due to the fact that you completely understand it, it has no mystery or allure, there is nothing new being said, there is no evidence of any kind of hard work present, in fact you in your expertise can make direct connections as to where you’ve seen it done better by someone else. Over and over in fact, and that this song, this book, this painting, this gown, this lyric, this page layout, is nothing but ignorant plagiarism. But you know what? You’re still just as wrong as you are right.
When a close friend of mine criticized one of my songs, it became immediately apparent to me that she does not have the capacity of feeling to understand it. This is a person who fears love, bails out of relationships when things get too intimate, ultimately someone who cannot handle love, so how on earth is she going to understand a song about love? Because I see her as blocked in that place in general, I don’t think that she gives herself permission to let herself feel those kinds of emotions and what she does feel makes her VERY uncomfortable, which might explains why she insists on hitting the “skip” button on her CD player when that song comes on.
I remember female friends of mine describing to me how heavy metal music puts them on edge, and makes them snap at people, get really angry and make them feel generally irritable and unpleasant. It still makes me laugh to think about that to this day, because whether those female friend of mine understand what is really happening or not, they are reacting to the music, and the music is affecting them in a drastic way, yet they do not know how to properly handle the stimulus. I have been a heavy metal fan since I was 2 years old and listening to Kiss’ “Destroyer” at my grandmothers’ house. I have always found a certain kind of peace, sanity, calmness, healing, and tremendous release in listing to angry, testosteronated music. The angrier and the more pissed off it is, the better. I can also understand where these girls are coming from however, because when I listen to Shania Twain, I get the same effect: irritation. I want to go out and smash things. I want to cause deliberate pain to small animals when I listen to anything that even resembles Country music. It is still only one opinion that country music is the most derivative, simplistic, formulaic, cheesy and predictable form of music that there is. That it lacks any kind of substance, and only reflects the ideals of a redneck is pretty much my honest opinion. I can however look beyond that, and see that maybe in the right circumstances, in the right environment, at the right time, Country music might resonate with me and maybe I might change my mind.
For example, if I was at a summer barn dance in Sweden, surrounded by a bunch of hot, horny country girls, who want to hold me close to their cleavage and teach me how to two-step, I might actually get into it!! It might forever change my opinion about country music, due to the fact that every time I listen to country music now, I am reminded of the that summer orgy I had in Sweden, waking up in a hay field full of partially naked Country Crock!!

Half-hearted compliments

It is a friend of mine that I will relate to you that opened my mind up to this new reality of compliments and criticisms. Through his example, I realized that allowing any one person to have special privileges to criticize or compliment my work is not being fair to the work, or myself. Understand, he knows that I respect his judgment, he knows that I allow and accept whatever he says to be more valid than some guy standing in the corner that I do not know, and like the person in the previous example, I used to give his opinion a certain kind of authority over other opinions because of his dedication to telling the truth as he sees it. Well, after showing him some of my recent accomplishments, swallowing a lot of criticism, and only receiving a few half-hearted compliments, I had a bit of an awakening. In my own paranoia, I couldn’t help but wonder if his opinions were deliberately designed to undermine my accomplishments, to intentionally destroy any proud feelings I might have towards those accomplishments. It was an intuition that had no logic behind it: he has told me in the past that he would like to see me succeed at what I do best, that he believes in my talent, and the work that I put into my “Ivory Towers.” Giving him the benefit of the doubt, I fought against my new, ridiculous intuition, but why did he seem so eager and determined to crash a wrecking ball into my ivory towers of accomplishment? It is too easy and too simple to say in a pitched whiny voice:
“Oh, He’s just jealous.”
Whether that is true or not, to simply default to that train of thought is a cheap oversimplification. Because I allow him special privilege to take shots at my hard work, does he feel like I expect that from him, and will not respect anything else? Or do I come across as being so overconfident, cocky, and arrogant that I challenge his wrecking ball to even dent the front door? Is that how I read?
If my tower of so-called perfection is strong enough to withstand my own relentless eye for detail, then it should certainly be strong enough to stand up to his. What message am I sending him that is being so drastically misinterpreted for him to think that the only way I will respect his opinion to be true, is if he trashes my work?
Do I appreciate having things that to me are mysterious and beautiful be seen in oversimplifications, and painted (almost in a mocking tone) with such a broad brush of generality?
My immediate defense that I can sleep with at night is a simple mirror of his reflection on one side, and my own on the opposite side. This person who stands before me and my art with his sharpened, bitter tongue, his cynical opinions and his so called experience—where are the ivory towers of his creation? Where, (besides in his mockery) are his true feelings being put on display for the world to see? I mean, isn’t it the ultimate trick of the cynic to convince us all that he knows more, and that his version of the truth is the only worthwhile reflection? Isn’t the cynic ultimately afraid to leave his own precious eggs alone in the nest unattended, for all and any wildlife to eat and molest? I am willing to bet, that the person who stands before you running his mouth over how much you suck because of this reason and that reason does in fact have an ivory tower of his own creation: In his head.
It is hidden away so far below the surface that no one and nothing will ever see it’s natural brilliance accept for one single set of eyes that will forever stare at it: his own.
What a coward to not put his heart on display for the world to see, yet he can look into yours and find every flaw. How lazy is it to not to put the work in, not to suffer and experience the setbacks, the hurdles, the inconsistencies, the difficult decisions to make for his own and others’ benefit.

And what a fool I have been to let his compliments and his criticisms affect me so deeply!

The truth can never be completed, a compliment and a criticism are only ever one side of a pocket full of coins.

Shawn Dean
©2005

A Happy Canada Day?

2005-07-03T23:56:00.000+08:00

Hello Friends, lovers, partners, family, acquaintances and quite possibly strangers.

Is it indeed a fantastic day to be a proud Canadian?
After not bothering to celebrate Canada Day when it was actually happening, I am choosing to celebrate it today instead.

Today is the day that one of our most celebrated psychopaths will re-enter Canadian society. I’ve included a URL to the story and images of her pretty face so you can commit it to memory in case you run into her hitchhiking on the side of the road. Or maybe I should say, in case you run over her hitchhiking on the side of the road.
Let me first say that I am not at all ashamed to admit that I am in full favor of the death penalty. Because of people like Karla Homolka and her ex? Husband Paul Bernardo, I believe it is ultimately a disgrace that it is not a part of Canada’s justice system.
According to modern psychology, there are three different kinds of predators out there. Allow me to illustrate them in my own words for you:
Type one is your classic DSM-V description of a looney-tick.
This guy barks like a dog when he gets hungry, spends 6-7 hours a day digging large holes in the dirt with a spoon, and after he chops up his family into small bite sized pieces, he will spend the next few months screaming and yelling at all the pieces until the police arrive. Think: Jeffrey Dahmer.

What do you do with a guy like this? The answer is simple:
You put him away in a nice safe padded room, where he can still fantasize about digging holes, and he still gets to bark like a dog when the food dish slides under his door. He is allowed to live, because it’s not really his fault that he is psychotic, and to kill him is just not right. As society needs protection from him, he also needs protection from himself. There is a huge infrastructure of systems set into place, and millions of dollars pouring into them every year for people like Jeffrey.

Type two predator is someone not that dissimilar to you or I.
An opportunity arrives, you cannot, or choose not to resist the temptation, so you do it, because you knew that you’d be able to get away with it. You do it once, and then you probably spend the rest of your life regretting it, feeling a tremendous amount of guilt and shame over it, a lot of money spent in therapy, and you never, ever do it again. Most of these kinds of predators do not get caught, or they get caught much later on in life once technology catches up to them. What is the solution to this kind of predator? Its really quite simple: Jail. You do your hard time, you feel really bad about it, it pretty much ruins your life, but once you get out, at least you’re free now, and you can still life your life.

Type 3 Predator is a different kind of predator altogether. He/she is also like you or me. They can function and have a place in society, fall in and out of love, switch careers every seven years, buy a house, have kids, have a midlife crisis. But unlike you or me, they have a really sick hobby that absolutely know one knows about, except for the victims.
In Karla Homolka and Paul Bernardos case, it was raping and torturing adolescent girls and videotaping the proceedings. I really believe that Paul Bernardo is not a psychopath. Just because he is capable of intense cruelty and inhumane acts does not a psychopath make. And neither is his wife, Karla. She baited the girls and brought them to him. Her first victim was her own kid sister. She did this for the adrenaline rush, she did this to please/appease him, she did this for the power of it. And likewise, I’m sure that fetishes aside, Paul Bernardo did what he did because of the power dynamic and the adrenaline rush. BDSM culture probably didn’t quite cut it for him, because it was probably too consensual for him. Sure, you can tie someone up, flog them with a rubber paddle, jerk off, and call it a night. But it’s still consensual, and for an asshole like Paul, there is just no fun in that.
What is the solution to a predator like Paul Bernardo and Karla Humolka? Rehabilitation? Yeah right.
With people like this, there is nothing to cure! They are not sick! Can you “cure” a homosexual? A homosexual is not sick, and nobody’s cured any of my gay friends yet. Therefore, can you “cure” someone who has a fetish for hurting little girls? I really, truly doubt it.
You see, its one thing to fantasize about inhumane sexual acts, but its something else entirely to cross the line and recreate fantasy into real life. That takes a series of decisions through a decision making process. Every step of the way, you have the choice to change your mind, but you ignore that, because you are selfish.
So ultimately you make a choice to do that, to go ahead with your plans, and you follow through. And then once you have done it, you now have a little bit of experience, so the next time you do it, you can work out the kinks in your plan.
Do it enough times, and pretty soon you will have it down to an almost fail safe science.
So how about cold hard time in jail? Maybe if he was a first offender, and if it was his only crime. But Paul Bernardo had a long list of unknown victims, and at least four known victims. This is a person with a fetish. Fetishes don’t just go away—they grow and morph. And his loving wife was every much a part of it as he was, and I don’t buy the story that he psychologically dominated her, and that she was afraid of him killing her if she didn’t obey him.
If you live in Canada, you might be wondering : where is Karla going to live when she gets out?
I’m sure she’s had a lot of time in jail to do some serious planning and thinking about this. Speaking of her time in jail, apparently she took on a female lover, and got in deep doo-doo over that. There was also evidence of a male pen-pal she had some kind of relations with who, like Bernardo, is currently doing time for rape. Is Karla rehabilitated? Doesn’t really sound like it to me.

If she was an idiot, she’d find a nice “peaceful” backwoods town in Alberta. Or maybe she’d move to Prince George, where every redneck with a 12 guage shotgun would want her head right beside last year’s trophy!

If she was smart, she would adopt a British accent, move to a third world country, where blue eyed blonde woman are revered as god-like, and no one in a million years would question why she was teaching English to teenage girls with her new boyfriend, Stinky-Tom.

There was actually a website that somebody built, who was placing $$ bets on how many days Karla would live after her release from the pen. One of the rules of the game was that if you placed a bet on how long she would live, you were not actually allowed to kill her yourself, or you’d be disqualified from the game. Of course, that is a hate crime, and CESUS intervened pretty quickly on that one, shutting down the site. I think that’s kind of unfortunate, because now I cannot place my own bet.
Anyhow, if you would like to read the full story about Karla Homolka and Paul Bernardo click on the link below.

http://www.crimelibrary.com/serials/bernardo/bernmain.htm

Shawn Dean
© July 2005

Mission Statement

2005-06-11T15:29:00.000+08:00

The purpose of this blog is to challenge your thoughts.
Don’t like that feeling? Then this is probably not your cup of tea, and you should go have a cup of tea and watch some television instead.
I have no problem admitting that the opinions, philosophies and ideas expressed herein are full of holes, full of contradictions, and I invite and welcome you as a reader to point those out to me, not only my for own benefit, but for the people who read the work. Everything that you will find here and the topics that you see listed at the right hand side of the page are considered “works in progress.” What that means, is that I am constantly re-writing them, re-thinking them, in the vain pursuit of perfection, that I might actually be able to say something that represents a small fragment of undeniable truth. That is my goal at least, and the purpose.
I really enjoy reading things that people have spent a lot of time and energy figuring out for themselves in order to present to the public. Like a piece of art that someone has spent thousands of hours working on, there is always at least something for everybody regardless to whether you share my opinion or not. So if you made it this far, please feel free to explore.