Mar 05

New Name!!!! New Feel!!! And it is RAGING Good!

By Nora | Life, Women, Zen | No Comments

Dear Readers,

I decided to change things up here on my blog! So I have gotten a new name.

I hope you like it. I really do. It is a more accurate portrayal of me as a person over all and I felt it was time to really be myself on a more open scale.

Raging-Buddha

Here’s a little Dylan Thomas to get you in the mood.

Do not go gentle into that good night

Dylan Thomas, 1914 – 1953

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Mar 02

1

Dear President Obama, I just watched “Citizen Four” but you probably already know that.

By Nora | Life, Politics, Technology or Nerd Central | No Comments

Dear President Obama,

I am sure upon receipt of this letter my name will be added to some mysterious list of people who are a threat to this country and you. Well I wish neither you nor this country ill will. I love America. I was born here. My children were born here. Many generations of my family helped to build this country, fought for it in many wars and forged across it to expand it to the west. But I just finished watching “Citizen Four”. To say what I learned in this movie was disappointing would be a gigantic understatement. In 2004, when you spoke at the DNC I fell in love with you. I fell in love with the idea of you. That you were the Un-politician. You were a rule breaker. The rebel that was going to undo the nonsense of the past 8 years and right all the wrongs. You were America’s, and my, knight in shining armor and I was so excited. I wept as you were elected in 2008. I sat holding my 1 month old son weeping as I watched the results come in and my oldest son, 3 was asleep. I knew that this world was going to be a better place for them. That it would not be one filled with war and lies but one of truth and relative calm as we progressed forward with a truly green global agenda and started to make Earth livable for all mankind. I had HOPE.

Then promise after promise was broken. And it was as if nothing had changed in the white house at all except now our President knew how to pronounce “Nuclear”. But 2012 rolled around and I once again, bought into the lies and hope and like a battered wife, promised myself that you were going to change and that you just needed my help to get there. That inside you were a good person and it was just congress that wouldn’t let you get anything done. (And they haven’t let you do one single thing. They are a major part of the problem and I acknowledge that fully but we are talking about you so I will try to stay on topic.) And then once again I was thoroughly disappointed.

I went from doggedly defending you to agreeing, mostly with critiques of you. Why? Because you lied. You are doing the SAME EXACT THING as all the Presidents have done since I don’t know when, promising the moon and the stars and everything we want and then basically do nothing, or just enough to keep us strung out on your hype so that we don’t protest too much.

When the Patriot Act came out I was vehemently against it. I was probably one of 5 non journalists in the country to bother to print the whole thing and read it. Now looking at this movie, Citizen Four, you have taken the Patriot Act and put it on steroids to spy on not just every American Citizen, but the whole world. I am just appalled at what has happened in the name of “National Security”. We aren’t more secure. We aren’t happier. We aren’t doing better as a nation. We are just angrier. We are poorer and we are tired. So why are we spending countless hours collecting data about each other? To what end? World peace? A cure for Cancer? Those would be noble causes. The “War” on Terrorism? That isn’t even real. You can’t wage war on an idea. Because an idea isn’t real. You can wage war on a person, place or thing. That’s it. Do I think ISIS is possibly the worst group I have seen in my lifetime, yes. Am I disgusted with their actions? Yes absolutely. But, that does not mean that you, or anyone else, has the right to compromise my or ANYONE else’s right to our own lives. To our privacy. To our private conversations on our phones or via text or email. There is no greater cause than our individual right to be ourselves in our own way. We have plenty of other laws in place already that allow for the tracking of criminals via warrants and the courts. Our justice system is built to do that. So there is no reason to go around that system with any type of executive order or anything else.

What has happened to the voice of the people? We don’t want this. We have marched against it. We have sat down in the streets against it. When does it end? What happens to me now if I post this? If I send you this letter. Am I less of an American than I was before I wrote it? Before I thought it? Where is this path leading us? What is the goal of all it?

What your focus should have been is on the environment. On Earth. This is our home. We don’t have anywhere else to go. So who cares about terrorism when the air we breath is killing us. Does killing off all of ISIS make the Oceans clean and stop the glaciers from melting? Does getting Osama turn back the clock on carbon emissions? No. All the war on Terrorism does, in the long run, is nothing. Because the real battle that we should have been waging is how to salvage our Earth so that human kind will still exist. That could have been your legacy. You could have saved us all.

Instead, like so many that came before you, you are just a bought and paid for spokesperson for the big corporations that run everything. How is a dream like Democracy supposed to have any chance at all in a game that is so rigged that your one hope for progress and reform is actually just playing for the other team?

Sincerely,

Nora Crest

United States Citizen

Sep 18

0

The Mysteries of Laura, why I LOVED the pilot and you should too.

By Nora | Life, Television, Women | No Comments

Tonight I watched Debra Messing return to NBC. I was excited to see her come back and to see her anchoring a show again.

The fact that it was to be a cop dramedy intrigued me. We all know how funny she can be from her days on Will and Grace and her serious side definitely emerged on Smash, so to see a mash up of the two in a cop setting I thought was going to be something new and fun.

Well I was right. Firstly as a disclaimer I watch a TREMENDOUS amount of Television. I have three DVR’s and right now, with all the new shows that have just come out I am DVRing over 70 shows. Yes SEVEN ZERO. I am a bit obsessive. I watch almost every cop drama that is currently on TV and almost all that have ever been on since I was a kid. I watched Columbo, Kojak, Simon and Simon and Magnum PI as a kid. And I just kept on watching.

For me this show was about good old fashioned detective work. Actually looking at what is going on around you and drawing conclusions from that. I appreciated that she was observant and not a know it all like some other TV cops who won’t be named. As a mother of two boys, who at times try every nerve I have in my body and make me question my own sanity, I thought her feelings about her kids and how they acted were well played and not over the top. Her “cad” of an estranged husband, as one reviewer put it, seemed totally in place in this woman’s life, and for any person who has been married for 5 seconds with kids knows that one parent is ALWAYS the bad guy and the other is the cool fun one. I too am the major baddie in my kids lives. As my oldest son likes to call it, “My bad side.” So again I see no real over the top caricatures in that aspect.

Also the fact that a mom, who is also a detective, actually LOOKS LIKE A REAL PERSON was a relief. No offense to Mariska Hargitay, Sophia Bush, Angie Harmon or any of the numerous other fantastically beautiful women out there who are playing police on television, but it was nice to see a woman who WASN’T in a skin tight t-shirt or tank top, while being a cop. It was nice to see a woman and a mother who just looked beautiful in her own skin and was confident in herself and in her career.

I liked that her partner had her back and wasn’t derogatory to her in any way. And yes the cool white, handsome cad, aka her husband, gets it all by saving the day with the school at the end and becoming her boss. Even that I liked. Why? Because I can relate to this woman completely. She is tired, she wants the best for her family, she is working hard at home and at work and it never seems like enough. Is that because she is a woman who “wants it all” and is a failure at all of it as one review suggested? No it is because she is like ALL Americans. We ALL want it all. That is the American Dream after all isn’t it? Good job, good marriage, beautiful children, happy life. Well guess what? Pretty much no one gets all of that all the time.

That is real. That is truth about the world. About all of us. Not just us working mothers.

The show has excellent writing and Debra’s comedic as well as dramatic timing is sharp as ever. If you want to see a real slice of life with a side of sass and laughter then watch this show. It is more than worth it.

Aug 26

0

My Open Letter to Katie Holmes, a response to her new movie THE GIVER

By Nora | Life, Movies, Women | 5 Comments

Dear Katie,

I just saw The Giver this weekend. Since I don’t know how to get a letter to you directly or know if anything that I sent to your agent would ever reach you, since I am pretty sure you receive thousands upon THOUSANDS of letters daily I am writing this to you here on my blog. I hope you read it.

In watching your performance in the movie I couldn’t help but see the parallels between this dystopian utopia and the world of Scientology that you so artfully escaped. I was born into Scientology, I started working for the Celebrity Centre in January of 1995 at the age of 18 and worked there until March of 2000 when I was sent to the RPF (Rehabilitation Project Force) for doing what is considered a normal right of passage for most college age girls, I fell madly in love with my roommate. We started a very secret relationship. When I finally confessed that we were in a relationship, both of us were sent to the RPF (The Scientological equivalent of a concentration camp) where I stayed doing manual labor 12 hours a day, 7 days a week, eating horrible prison reject food for $11.25 a week for almost 3 years. I received many hours of “processing” to recondition me from the ultimate sin in Scientology, being gay. I was belittled, beaten mentally and physically, screamed at, sleep deprived, almost bleed to death and denied proper medical care and finally escaped in November of 2002 by attempting to take my own life. The only thing worse than being gay is being suicidal. They wouldn’t let me go no matter what.

When I saw in the news that you were dating Tom, I was sad for you. Not because Tom is some kind of monster. I met him and his kids on a few occasions. I even got to work with his kids, they were super young then, but they were so nice as was he. I was sad that you, like so many before you, had fallen into the shiny, happy, void of Scientology. I never met you and because I was in the Sea Organization when I was and I didn’t get the chance to see Dawson’s Creek. I didn’t know who you were outside of Pieces of April (Which was BRILLIANT). But I feared for you. Then you had your daughter and I was terrified. I knew what kind of pressure my father, who was an auditor and a very popular Scientologist, no where near Tom’s status, I remembered the pressure that he put on me my entire life. Nothing was more important to him than Scientology and my role in it. I knew what that would mean for Suri. The tremendous pressure she would be under from the time she could talk to “remember” and be something that she wasn’t. The pressure she would get starting from the age of 8 to “return” to the Sea Org because of course she picked you as parents and she “knew” that she was a last lifetime Scientologist so she would need to get back to work immediately. Her “child” body is just a body and her mission to save the universe would trump anything else. I never wanted another kid to feel that immense pressure. The weight of not just the soul of every person on the planet, but every potential person in this universe. I mean what kind of kid wants that? Who can survive that? Who can say, “No I don’t want to help people. I want to be a kid and play with my stuff.” It is a terrible proposition that is a no win situation for any kid put in that position. I started hoping that you would somehow escape. That you would run. And when it happened, WOW. I was floored. You were sincerely my hero. I know the press made a field day about it and I know you and Tom have come to whatever agreement that you made and are now legally bound by, but HOLY SHIT, that was a checkmate move that NO ONE in the church could have ever saw coming. Like I said earlier, we have never met, but I was PROUD of you. Proud of how you handled the entire thing and how you saved Suri from untold mental and physical abuse, the likes of which are unimaginable.

Having gone through it myself I can say with certainty that you saved her. So when I saw this movie, and the miserableness of your character and the prison that she was living in; that she not only was held by, but was working to hold herself and others in I couldn’t help but see the direct parallel to Scientology. It takes an incredibly strong person to see beyond the bubble that you are trapped in. To see the real world and jump confidently into the abyss despite all other signs and people and “friends” telling you not to. That you will die, that you will fail at everything you do if you leave this group, no one will love you, you will be eternally dammed to nothingness in the void of time and space. It takes a truly brave person. You are a brave and mighty person. I was so happy to see you in this movie. To see you thriving and making it in the world and in your career. I hope more great roles like “Pieces of April” come your way soon. Your daughter is lucky. She has a superhero for a mom. Someday, I would love to get the chance to meet you, to thank you in person for your bravery. For bringing light to the darkness that is Scientology and for giving credit to the many people like me, telling our stories, that before you fell on deaf ears because of course we were just crazy. So thank you for taking that very public leap into the abyss and showing many others out there that there is something on the other side.

Sincerely

Nora Crest

Aug 13

0

And then there were Three.

By Nora | Life, Technology or Nerd Central | No Comments

There has been a lot of death recently. Robin Williams died, and then yesterday Lauren Bacall died. Two other actors also died. But no one really knew them so I guess they don’t count in the rule of three. But today my Grandfather, Dr. R. Edward Nather, died. He was 88 years old. He was an Astrophysicist. He was a professor for most of my life at the University of Texas and he discovered many things about the stars above our heads. He worked with many great people, some you may have even heard of, Like Neil deGrasse Tyson and Bill Nye. He didn’t seek notoriety in the traditional sense. He was never on TV or anything like that. But he leaves behind quite a legacy in the Science area. He helped develop the Whole Earth Telescope, or WET. It’s pretty cool.

The biggest impact he had in my life was of course my mother. The fact that she is his daughter has always been impressed upon me. I consider her to be one of the greatest people I know and I was sure that at least half of that came from him. Her smile and wit and her passion were similar to his, except hers is for Cinema and his was for the Cosmos. The conversations I did have with my Granddad were intense and well though out. It was like playing verbal chess with a true master. I told him a few months ago that I was pretty sure that he would never die, that he in fact might be a superhero born of genius and radiation exposure. He liked that theory. It gave him a good laugh. He didn’t get to meet my son’s in person but they sang “Happy Birthday” to him over the phone and told him they loved him. I don’t know if they will remember that down the line but I will never forget it.

To be honest I didn’t really know my Grandfather all that well. I saw him a total of 4 times in my entire life. He was like that. Not there but everywhere. Even though I didn’t physically see him often he always had a huge influence on my life. When I was young I was fascinated with the stars. He sent me my first telescope. I still have it. Every time I have gazed into the heavens I have thought of him. What he would see when he looked up. What the universe looked like through his huge telescope and what secrets did he know about it. I have never stopped looking up. Never stopped wondering what is out there, where we came from and what it all means. Now that he will be returned to stardust himself, I hope he finds a happy home, there amongst his beloved stars.

Jul 25

0

LUCY one of the best films ever made, no I am not kidding.

By Nora | Life, Movies, Technology or Nerd Central, Zen | One Comment

I just went to see Luc Besson’s recent masterpiece, Lucy. I am still thinking about everything that happened in this movie. This is akin to how I felt when I left the Matrix for the first time. Or even one of my all time favorite movies, also by Luc Besson, The Fifth Element. Luc has an understanding of the universe and life that I aspire to reach. This movie shows the beauty of humanity and what we are missing in ourselves but what we ultimately can reach and achieve. I love that he consistently writes very strong female characters who, in the end, end up saving us all. As he says in this movie, “Only ignorance brings destruction. Not knowledge.” This is a film that makes you think for the entire film and keep thinking afterward. Go, see this film, and experience it for yourself.

I just watched the movie for the second time this weekend. It was even better the second time. I could sincerely watch this movie over and over and over again. The principals in this movie and the data thrown at you isn’t just entertainment, it is enlightenment.

May 07

0

Cosmos – The most important show on Television.

By Nora | Life, Technology or Nerd Central, Television | One Comment

Cosmos- A Spacetime Odessey starring Neil deGrasse Tyson is absolutely one of the most, if not THE MOST important shows on television.

I watch TOO much TV. I am currently DVRing over 70 shows. which is why I have 3 DVR’s. So I can get all of them. Some of them come on at the same time so multiple DVR’s, for me, is a necessity. I watched Cosmos with Carl Sagan years ago as a child and it made me LOVE the universe and wonder about it and feel like I was part of it.

This show’s new inception is even more of that. Of course the special effects that are available now are a million times what Carl had access to and the science data has evolved as well. How we see the universe now, what we know now about it and what is in it and what it is made of is so much more than we did 30 years ago.

Some things never change. You should always be polite to company and strangers. Always look someone in the eyes and give a good firm handshake when you meet them. Smile. These are constants. But the universe is changing always. And our ability to see the universe and to understand it has changed over the many millennia. That is what is fantastic about this show. It talks about not only what we know now about the universe but the journey that we took to get to this understanding.

If you aren’t watching this show, turn it on. Learn about the universe, after all we are all made of stardust. And that milky way out there in the night sky is the ultimate selfie.

May 07

0

Why I can’t love Android as much as I LOVE my iOS.

By Nora | Life, Technology or Nerd Central | No Comments

Well it happened again!

Every so often HTC or Samsung will get me hooked with a very slick package. I will research the hell out of the phone and fall in love with it. Well most of it anyway. This time it was the HTC One M8. I fell immediately in love with the Camera. The features were amazing. I would have to download at least two or more apps to do that on my iPhone 5S.

Since I have TMobile and I can Jump™ anytime twice a year I decided to take the plunge and get the phone. I backed up my iPhone and went right to the store. Firstly the phone seemed HUGE to me. I am not a fan of big phones. I don’t have gigantic hands and they feel odd in mine. So that was a downside for me. The casing is gorgeous, all metal with a brushed finish. And dual Cameras on the back so you can get a Lytro like effect. I was SO looking forward to that.

Well after taking the couple of hours to set up my phone fully with all the apps that I had on my iPhone and get the ring tones I sorta liked, since not all of them were available, I was ready to go out and take a bajillion pictures with my new fantabulous camera.

Well that was another story as well. Yes I got stunning shots with the camera. No question. But when it came to using all the hyped features. I couldn’t get a single one to work. Not a one. No changing focus nothing. Because my pictures weren’t taken with the right settings. Well what are those settings? Hell if I know. I did the one thing I vow NEVER to do when getting a consumer product of any kind especially a cell phone, I consulted the manual.

But the catch was there was no real annual. It was just a tiny starter guide that gave me no real info. So I decided to just take the pictures as is without any embellishment since they were already pretty spectacular.

Then there was how I answered the phone. It was weird. And by weird I mean not what I was used to with my iPhone. I didn’t like how the apps looked or responded. All of the them were totally different.

So in the end I was left with a really pretty shell that held a great camera with an operating system that didn’t do everything that I was used to or liked. It lasted 10 whole days. I went back and switched back to my iPhone. I have written this down for anyone else out there who is thinking about switching for the pretty outside. And for myself. To remember NOT to do it again.

The iPhone 6 comes out this fall. I will get that. Why not? I have gotten every other version of the iPhone since it came out.

Mar 22

1

Home School 101?

By Nora | Life, Politics, Technology or Nerd Central, Women | No Comments

Well SO much has happened since my last post. I mean I think I saw at least 40 movies in that time and the amount of TV I am embarrassed to say. But mostly it has been LIFE going on. So many changes. Firstly, I am now homeschooling my oldest son. That has been a HUGE change. It has mostly been great though. I was super worried about it because I am NOT a teacher. I have tremendous respect for them and what they do but I had no idea how I was going to do any of that. Curriculum planning and all that was simply terrifying to me. But I ran into a situation with my son where he was not getting what he needed from school. The teacher was not equipped to deal with a child who has Aspergers and so I decided to take on that task as well. After doing a TON of research about home school programs I settled on K12. The K12.com is AMAZING. It is all there. They send you all the materials for FREE and there is a teacher that I can contact at any time to get help. We meet with her Quarterly to do the parent teacher conference. It is all fully accredited and really a great fit for my son. Pretty much all the work is done online, which he LOVES and he can get things done as fast or as slow as he needs to, so he can really grasp it.

My least favorite part of this has been the looks on peoples faces when I tell them I am homeschooling. Like suddenly I grew another head out of my head and it was SUPER ugly like Koato poking out if that guys stomach in the original Total Recall. And then 99.99% of people immediately want to know what I am doing to “socialize” him. What? Did I miss something. When I was a kid, we played outside. We met kids in the neighborhood and played sports and hung out at the YMCA and found friends in all sorts of places. NO ONE ever asked how I was being socialized. That is just ridiculous. He isn’t from another planet. he isn’t learning English as a second language. He is a kid. Yes he is spending a ton of time with me. And he will make friends or not as he chooses. Period.

Yes there are days when I wish I could take a 5 hour recess from the whole thing. I am not going to lie. But I find mostly that I am having a tremendous amount of fun learning again all, some of it frankly I don’t remember learning at all. He is even taking Latin. He is learning so much. I am very proud of him. And happy that he can do well and feel good about school. Most days he is on me to get started. That is a HUGE change from before.

I think that the way schools are being run right now is really doing no one a service. I know many teachers, there is only one thing on their minds, helping their students learn. That’s it. They want the kids to learn, to love learning and to be successful. When all of this “core” curriculum and “standardized” test are thrown in and all anyone cares about is test scores, well the kids and the teachers get lost in the shuffle. The teachers have no freedom to give the kids what they know works and what is best. They HAVE to do this ridiculous curriculum that, as far as I can tell, no one really understands or even likes. Teachers are burdened with more and more students at once who they cannot, no matter what Herculean effort they make, get to everyone. They just can’t. I have only two kids and I can barely pay equal attention to both of them. I can only imagine what that is like with 35 kids.

I am lucky that I can stay at home with my son. I have the ability to do that because I have my own business with my husband and we work from home. I can flex my schedule that way. I know not everyone can do that. But I think if we can stand united, parents that is, and demand that our public schools are reformed with the best interests of the students and the teachers in mind, I think we could get all kids to be as excited as my son is about learning.

Dec 12

0

Hardcore Zen and Brad Warner

By Nora | Life, Movies, Zen | 4 Comments

Last Friday I was in Ojai for the screening of a documentary about Brad Warner and his Zen teaching.

I have read Hardcore Zen by Brad and I am almost done with his second book., “Sit Down and Shut Up. Punk Rock Commentaries on Buddha, God, Truth, Sex, Death and Dogen’s Treasury of the Right Dharma Eye.” I really thought that I understood what Zen was all about. In fact when I decided to start practicing Buddhism I specifically did NOT want to do the Zen Buddhism because I thought it was all fortune cookie type philosophy. Like well what happens happens and nothing you do or say is going to change it so que sera sera. UGH! I HATED that. I had spent my whole life in Scientology, (SUPER long story for another time) and I wanted to get as FAR away from that as I could. But the Zero responsibility thing was a NO for me.

Then one day, randomly, I came across Brad’s book. The cover immediately made me laugh. A dingy toilet in some crappy club and the words “Hardcore Zen” on the cover. I read the back and I laughed some more. At first I thought this would be great for my sister who is a voracious reader and and Athiest but I thought she might get something out of it, but ultimately, I was in the middle of reading the Dalai Lama’s book, “The Universe in a Single Atom” and struggling wouldn’t be an adequate term for what I was doing reading this book. So I thought maybe I would get a good chuckle and learn something.

This book has transformed me. I learned SO much, not just about Buddhism, which apparently I knew NOTHING about, but about life, punk rock, monster movies and how to be happy with right now. That is something that I have struggled with my whole life. I have never existed comfortably in the moment. I am ALWAYS in the future or mulling over the past. CONSTANTLY. This book was the first step in my journey to learning to truly live.

Then going to the screening and meeting Brad and seeing this BRILLIANT film made by Pirooz Kalayeh and I Like Nirvana has stayed with me and I would love to see it again. Well, if you don’t get “it” from his book that he is just a punk rock dude who is also a Zen Monk, then you definitely get it meeting him. It made me realize and see Buddha in a new light as well. People say, “he was just a man” but we have little statues and HUGE ones all over the place depicting him. People bow to them. I wear one on my neck. But meeting Brad made me realize, he was JUST a man. And I am just a human doing what we humans do. Surviving. Living. But now I am going to really do that each moment. Each second. I am going to live. And that makes me so happy. Happier than I have been in a long time.

So thank you Brad.