Happy New Year goys and goyls! I’ve been kinda busy over the new year (not hung over), so I’ve handed off the first post of the year to our Uzbekistani correspondent Azamat. He’s actually from Kazakhstan, but had to move after you know what with his sisters. His English isn’t perfect, but he works cheap and he’s devoted to Prabhupada. Isn’t that all that counts? Hope your year is full of fun and happiness.
Love and kisses, V. Read the rest of this entry
It was 1933, during the height of the Great Depression, in a one dog town in northern Mississippi just south of Memphis, goes by the name of Clarksville. It was a hot and dry day, as days tended to be in the deep south during the Great Depression, seeing as they was hurtin so bad they couldn’t even afford to keep their traditionally humid climate from being repo’d up and out of there, sold off to carpetbaggers from the north for a song.
It was bad times for all, but especially for the po sharecropper black folk. Negroes, or coloureds, they called them back then, that is when they was being polite and all. Dickwood “Fatback” Johnson had mouths to feed and a failing crop. While he was “a no account shifty middling musician,” as his wife liked to call him when describing to her friends about how they met, he was a desperate man in desperate times, and in playing his harmonica he felt a sense of letting steam off. It let him vent his frustrations in the music of the Delta negro, blues they called it, (the Delta Blues it would later be famously known) because it was about releasing their blues, their blue mood, through music. Which was a healthier way than a more destructive course of events, of which there were a many.
As Dickwood’s crop had failed because of the intense dry heat and drought conditions, he set upon the idea to head down to Yazoo where he heard there was work “for bucks who ain’t afraid for a hard days work” in rebuilding the shipyards—after the Great Mississippi Flood of ’27 had wreaked it’s unholy vexification on the good folks of Mississippi. As he set out on foot towards the center of town, towards the crossroads where he could hitch a ride down south, he took one last look at his young bride and mother of his 9 childrens. A strange feeling came over him as if his previous life with his family had all been a dream, that it was as ephemeral as a mirage in the heat of the Clarksville sun.
When he got to the crossroads he put his trunk down and stuck out his thumb; he had left early, hoping to get a ride before the heat of the day swallowed him up whole. It wasn’t to be. He stayed in that spot for pert near 12 hours before deciding to give up and go back home with hat in hand, dejected, a failure at even getting a ride. But that also was not to be, not on that hot and dusty summer evening at the crossroads in central Clarksville, Mississippi 1933. What Dickwood “Fatback” Johnson didn’t know, was that he was being watched (just like all of us, folks). Read the rest of this entry
From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chatterbot
A chatter robot, chatterbot, chatbot, or chat bot is a computer program designed to simulate an intelligent conversation with one or more human users via auditory or textual methods, primarily for engaging in small talk. The primary aim of such simulation has been to fool the user into thinking that the program’s output has been produced by a human (the Turing test). Programs playing this role are sometimes referred to as Artificial Conversational Entities, talk bots or chatterboxes. In addition, however, chatterbots are often integrated into dialog systems for various practical purposes such as online help, personalised service, or information acquisition. Some chatterbots use sophisticated natural language processing systems, but many simply scan for keywords within the input and pull a reply with the most matching keywords, or the most similar wording pattern, from a textual database.
1. regulating the soul or internal feelings, soul; Providence, Supreme Spirit as guiding and regulating mankind. Brahman; (according to the Bṛi. Ār. Up. अन्तर्यामिन ‘the internal check’ is the Supreme Being and not the individual soul
At a recent high level meeting of the ISKCON GBC [Governing Board Commission] and temple presidents, they sat and met with the leaders of the SSPT [Spiritual Strategic Planning Team] to discuss plans for the future of ISKCON.
As many of our readers are aware, outside of India and Indian communities, most of ISKCON membership and congregation has been in decline for many years. There are some places [ex-communist bloc countries] where ISKCON has not declined and is doing well, but the trend for most of the world has been a continual decline. It’s gotten so bad that many once thriving communities are now more or less nothing more than social clubs for the local Indian communities.
In order to counteract the continual decline of ISKCON amongst the non-Hindu populations, ISKCON leaders empowered the SSPT to devise “synergistic” solutions to the membership and participatory problems ISKCON continues to experience.
After a number of years of research and study by going to conferences around the world and searching for answers, SSPT members had all but given up. Disheartened at their abject failure to come up with synergistic solutions through management techniques, leading member of the SSPT, Goball Bhuttass, a businessman and long time ISKCON acquaintance, had a road to Damascus moment: Read the rest of this entry
What’s funny about the following conversation besides Prabhupada being so out of touch yet believing he was far more intelligent and superior to everyone else; and besides how he rambles on without any seeming intent except to put the man down for not surrendering and making Prabhupada his worshipful guru; and besides how he seems to think that his bizarre contradictory rambling is some perfect revelation and law from God; and besides how he presents himself as God’s true enforcer and that everyone is a fool to think otherwise; and besides the strange childish obsession with hating on homosexuality — the funnier part is him trying to convince that if modern society would change to ISKCON’s cultural point of view then everything would be better for everyone. All those aspects of ISKCON have been disastrous and harmful to so many:
The following is different from the above conversation — but complimentary, or rather, contradictory. Either way, the above is comedy gold and so is the below:
Conversation with devotees — Tokyo, April 25, 1972
Prabhupāda: That means your lavatory. Therefore the demigods do not come here even to urine. (laughter) Formerly they used to come. Now they do not come because it is not fit for their urinating. Here, we are very much proud of our advancement, but the demigods do not come even to pass urine. Why they should come? Now, because another house is raised here, even a common man is not coming to urine here. A little less facility, so they are not occupying. So why the demigods will come to this nonsense place? You can understand. These apartments are lying vacant on account of a little less facility. So why the demigods? Their comforts and their standard of living is many millions times better than yours. You cannot imagine it even. The more you go to the higher planetary system, their standard of living is still higher, higher-duration of life, standard of living, beauty, other facilities. Why they are called higher planetary system? Here in this planet even you don’t get the sunshine sufficiently. The bare necessities. Now you can experience that when you go above the cloud by airplane you see there is no more cloudy. The sunshine is free. You can imagine how in the higher planetary system the sunshine is so free. And here as soon as there is little sunshine, oh, today, “Good morning.” Today is very good morning. In London, Lennon’s gardener, he was meeting, I was walking. He was Mr. Johnson or something.
Śyāmasundara: Frank.
Prabhupāda: Frank? So, “Today is really good morning.” “Yes.” Otherwise it is dark. And actually countries which have no sufficient sunshine, they are condemned. I told you frankly, your London is hell, in that television. Actually it is hell. We could understand from outside London, simply dark, moist, everything damp. The trees, they have got, what is called?
Devotee: Moss.
Prabhupāda: Moss. Yes. That moss for want of sufficient sunshine.
Devotee: People get little relief from their misery and they say, “Oh, I am happy now.”
Prabhupāda: Yes. From the miseries, Mr. John is happy by becoming naked and having fireplace. He is bringing the wood personally, putting there. And Yoko is very happy. Japanese wife. She was talking philosophy with me Read the rest of this entry
 | laura on Sri Srila Prabhupada-asst… |
 | Vrajabhumi on Prabhupada Said #2 |
 | William Schuler on Nobody Expects the Spanish… |
| William Schuler on Nobody Expects the Spanish… |
| William Schuler on Prabhupada Is Always Righ… |
| William Schuler on Prabhupada Said #2 |
