So I talked to my boss this morning and she told what my raise would be. I got the highest amount you could get for the review I received, which wasn't much, really, but considering last year was not a financially stellar year for the company I'm happy I received a raise at all. I've been at companies where they've held back raises because the finances were so bad or haven't given them at all.

I don't think I've done that badly at this company. Since I left my other job in 2004, my salary has gone up 12%. The yearly bonus will be small as well, but I'm just happy becauseI haven't worked for a company that gave out yearly bonuses in a long time. My thinking is, whatever money the company can give you is a good thing.

I'm not going to lie and say I'm not pleased that "Crash" won the oscar for best film. "Crash" was an excellent ensemble film dealing with so many relevant issues from racism to caring for an elderly parent to the seeming inhumanity of the health care system to children getting more love from their nannies than from their parents to human slavery to arab race relations.

It was an intense movie with some of the best realistic dialogue I've seen in a film in a long time, outside of anything David Mamet or Quentin Tarantino have done. I also liked that it was a relatively low budget film of $6.5 million that made $55 million at the box office. Now that's one heck of a return on investment.

"Crash" dealt with perhaps what some people say are mundane issues, but they are issues nonetheless that so universal to anyone living in America right now.

When I went to a Robert McKee seminar last year, the man himself even raved about how great the movie "Crash" was and one that we all needed to see. This praise was coming from the same man who totally dissed "The English Patient" a year previously. Guess the guy really knows his movies. I wasn't even going to see "Crash" until Robert McKee recommended it. I don't think the movie was even marketed that well when it came out, and made the amount of money it did from people seeing the movie and telling their friends.

Not that "Brokeback Mountain" didn't cover a relevant subject, but "Crash" I think just covered more issues and did it in current day. And with the disgusting political correctness that is taking over everything from the coverage of the news to what people say, "Crash" was a like a big "F-U" to all of that, and said "you know what, this is how life really is and no change in vocabulary is going to change it unless we confront it and transform it through the medium of film."

So back in the early 90's when I was dating stockbroker boyfriend who used to wake me up in his luxury high rise apartment so he could watch the opening of the stock exchange, we often talked about what else, stocks. I told stockbroker guy, who was managing millions of dollars of retirement portfolio funds at the time, to hang onto his AT&T stock. I told him AT&T stock was a good investment, even though at the time AT&T was in divestiture at the time and was selling off parts of the company. The jewel of the company, the AT&T labs, would be left intact with the company.

Well it's like so many years later, and AT&T is once again making the news first with the purchase of SBC and now with the announcement today of the purchase of BellSouth.

Even though stockbroker boyfriend wasn't a very good match, way too much alcohol and partying for my taste, I know he kept his AT&T stock even though he really, really wanted to unload it. I hope he's happy now that he followed my advice.

The Recognition ...

It starts with a look, a face, a smile, a curve of a check, maybe even something heard in a voice, and then all of a sudden the cloud of unknowing parts and you see. You see a ray of sunshine among the stormy and dark clouds, you see into the unseen, the veils between the higher and lower worlds, between the dimensions, between the frequencies.

You are a like a generator cell, pure energy, buzzing day and night, maintaning and building the life of the whole organism. You have a purpose but it is unknown, until you glimpse a projector cell. A projector cell who has no propulsion of its own, so it drifts around on the body's, the world's endless energy currents created by the generator cells. The projector cell lets you dock within them, within their own timing. And the recognition process takes place. The recognition process takes place through a coded lock and a key program built into these two types at birth.

And you glimpse the light, the light of your own soul, you see into the darkness, you hear the words of Christ as he cried out in agony on the cross in Golgatha "Father into you hands I come", and you surrender believing with a faith that does not believe to see, you give into the madness, the recognition, where each choice becomes a death, where you will confront the parts of yourself that you do not want to know is there, that you didn't know even existed, the bits of darkness the floats freely among the quiet stillness of your soul, the loneliness, the self-pitying, insecure, addictive, compulsive, utter selfishness and evil parts of your self, that coexists side by side within the good, within the light, because without the darkness the light cannot shine, the light cannot be seen and the light must illuminate the darkness, so the darkness can be transmorgified and transmuted into the light.

And so you journey, make that first step, make that first choice, and you hope the moment lasts a lifetime until you take your last breath. But sometimes a moment is just a moment that does not last and is as fleeting as the bink of an eye. But the journey must be made and the choice is accepted and then the step is taken because there are always lessons to be learned, and a life that must be transformed and demands change.

Biology references taken from and inspired by Gene Keys of the UK.