Get Ready for the Halloween Spirit....

taken @ Karyn's Place....yikes Zombies

The Retreat is going through a transformation from Summer to Fall and right into the Halloween Spirit. There will be zombies, ghosts and a cool hunt to explore. Stop by and take a look already. This is a great place for photography and hang-out and you can always party at the Basement Club.

We welcome you to stop by and find all the special details of this year's Halloween Horror Night. Don't worry you will get out alive, well maybe, we do have a cemetery!!!

Chill wave and more at the Basement Club

If you haven't been to the Basement Club lately then it is time you check it out. The music here is not your everyday kind of product. You will hear lots of Indie and Alternative music as well as some of the sub-categories. Shoegazing is a subgenre of indie and alternative rock that emerged in the United Kingdom in the late 1980s. It is characterized by its ethereal-sounding mixture of obscured vocals, guitar distortion and effects, feedback, and overwhelming volume.

You may also hear Chillwave, Slowcore, Dream pop, Nu gaze. Chillwave is a music microgenre that emerged in the late 2000s. It is characterized by a faded or dreamy retro pop sound, escapist lyrics, psychedelic or lo-fi aesthetics, mellow vocals, low-to-moderate tempos, effects processing, and vintage synthesizers.

Ready for some new music? Come on over anytime. Thursdays 8-10PM SLY, Saturdays 6-8PM SLT, and Sundays 7-9PM SLT...

The beginning of Fall

While leaves in the United States turn yellow, orange and red in the autumn, those in Europe only turn yellow. The riot of color that erupts in forests every autumn looks different depending on which side of the ocean you're on.
While the fall foliage in North America and East Asia takes on a fiery red hue, perplexingly, autumn leaves in Europe are mostly yellow in color.
I really love Fall and its colors and here in the Real World where I live now, I have to drive into the mountains to enjoy the beauty of it.

As a child, I remember the cool Autumn Days and how good it felt to run around in the forest. When the weather begins to turn cool in the fall, chlorophyll, which is sensitive to the cold, stops being produced. As the green fades, yellow and orange pigments called carotenoids (also responsible for the orange color of carrots) take over. These pigments were always present in the background of the leaves' color, but can finally shine through as the green diminishes.

The red color comes from anthocyanins, which unlike carotenoids are produced only in the fall. These red pigments act as a sunscreen for the trees by blocking out harmful radiation and preventing overexposure to light. They also act as an antifreeze, preventing leaf cells from freezing easily in the autumn chill.

Some scientists have even suggested that the red colors ward off pests that would munch on the leaves if they were a more appetizing-looking yellow. It's from this premise that scientists figured out what might be going on.

Happy FALL!!!

to be continued

I will return soon....at the moment taking a break from everything~

Haitain zombiare

Zombie folklore has been around for centuries in Haiti, possibly originating in the 17th century when West African slaves were brought in to work on Haiti’s sugar cane plantations.

Better to kill the zombie before it gets you

There is a certain fascination about these creatures by young and old. Whether you’re a fan of zombies or the thought of running into one causes you to sleep with one eye open, they’re part of modern pop culture. Although the zombie myth has a basis in fact, today’s zombies have taken on a life of their own.

I got you

The digital age is beginning to fundamentally change the ways in which human beings interact with each other. Immersion into our smartphones and our second lives in virtual worlds offer novel and exciting experiences but also erode the lived, bodily dimensions of our humanity. The impact of technology on society is hardly new, but it certainly has accelerated in the past 20 years. 

So given the recent explosion of the undead in popular culture, one should wonder whether all of this might be suggesting an imminent zombie apocalypse?

Zombies may be created in a variety of ways. Early depictions, drawing from Haitian Vodou, often represented witchcraft as a means for reviving corpses. Haitian zombiare said to be created by maleficent priests or sorcerers for the purpose of doing their bidding. There are two potential parts to the Vodou process: first, a zombi astral is created by removing part of a person’s soul. Then this part of the soul may be used for further magic, including the revivification of the person’s corpse, or zombi corps cadavre. 

Methods of zombification developed in fiction include radiation exposure and contagion. Especially noteworthy in the latter case is the danger of a so-called “zombie apocalypse,” in which the eventual zombification of the human population through virulence seems inevitable. 

Zombies are often depicted as proliferating by killing or infecting others—usually by biting—who then become zombies themselves.

DJ Etiquette

The customer is king, and this business is no different. 

At the end of the day, the patrons are the ones keeping you and the club in business, you need to bear this in mind. Things to keep in mind when club-goers requests a song: Don’t be a dick about it, be as polite as possible. A country song request may not work when you are playing techno tunes.

Just because someone requests a track doesn’t mean you have to play it. Also, it’s a good way to judge what the clientele of the club wants to listen to. A great way to deflect a patrons song request is two thumbs up and a big smile. This gives a positive response to the patron and more than likely they won’t come back. 

If /when you are taking requests you are best to bring a pen and pad. This allows you to remain focused on what you are doing and sort the requested track later on. Having this list also gives you something to fall back on if you need it.

Do have fun playing music. Enjoy the energy of the people and they will enjoy you. 

Eine kleine Nachtmusik

A little night music is never wrong and classics written by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart is good for the brain. My favorite is Vivaldi and at Northumbria University (UK), a research team performed some experiments on students’ brain functioning when doing tests while they listened to Vivaldi’s Spring concerto. They were answering faster and better than when they listened to the sadder Autumn concerto. The conclusion was that brain activity is improved when listening to pleasant and arousing stimuli.

Various studies show that listening to music can reduce post-operative and chronic pain, especially after surgery. It will never replace painkillers of course but will be a great help in reducing depression, disability, and pain. The reason seems to be that it can help to tune out the pain by increasing the brain’s reward center, thereby alleviating the sensation of pain.

You know how difficult it is to eat slowly, chew your food properly, and really enjoy it. Playing soft music and dimming lights in dining areas has been found to help people enjoy their food more and eat less! This is the main result of a study carried out at Cornell University. On the other hand, places like fast food joints use brighter lights to encourage fast eating and more profit for their business. You can improve the way you experience food by being more intentional in the way you eat, including playing soft music during meals.

There are so many more benefits to listen to classical music, so try it one time. 

The star-money

A fairy tale by the Brothers Grimm

There was once on a time a little girl whose father and mother were dead, and she was so poor that she no longer had any little room to live in, or bed to sleep in, and at last she had nothing else but the clothes she was wearing and a little bit of bread in her hand which some charitable soul had given her. She was, however, good and pious. And as she was thus forsaken by all the world, she went forth into the open country, trusting in the good God.

Then a poor man met her, who said: "Ah, give me something to eat, I am so hungry!" She reached him the whole of her piece of bread and said: "May God bless it to thy use," and went onwards. Then came a child who moaned and said: "My head is so cold, give me something to cover it with." So she took off her hood and gave it to him; and when she had walked a little farther, she met another child who had no jacket and was frozen with cold. Then she gave it her own, and a little farther on one begged for a frock, and she gave away that also. At length she got into a forest and it had already become dark, and there came yet another child and asked for a little shirt, and the good little girl thought to herself: "It is a dark night and no one sees thee, thou canst very well give thy little shirt away," and took it off, and gave away that also.

And as she so stood, and had not one single thing left, suddenly some stars from heaven fell down, and they were nothing else but hard smooth pieces of money, and although she had just given her little shirt away, she had a new one which was of the very finest linen. Then she gathered together the money into this and was rich all the days of her life.

Extinguish the triggers

Triggers can unleash nausea, survivors of violence may have to contend with many other PTSD symptoms, such as reliving the experience through recurring dreams or flashbacks. Sometimes it can be just a word or a sentence that triggers you off into the world of rejection and panic. You hold on to those people in your life that are there and listen but yet do not fully understand why you can't just shut it all off.

It does not mean it is hopeless and one never gets over this, it is a matter of learning to deal with it and extinguish the triggers before they play a mental war against you.

Some people may think it is silly to still feel the anxiety and the panic when someone rejects you in the most simple ways. It really isn't. Think of an addiction and you are trying to wean yourself off it. You will always be an addict you will just have learned to be strong and not take what made you escape reality.

Following a traumatic event, almost everyone experiences at least some of the symptoms of PTSD. When your sense of safety and trust are shattered, it’s normal to feel unbalanced, disconnected, or numb. It’s very common to have bad dreams, feel fearful, and find it difficult to stop thinking about what happened. These are normal reactions to abnormal events.

For most people, however, these symptoms are short-lived. They may last for several days or even weeks, but they gradually lift. But if you have post-traumatic stress disorder, the symptoms don’t decrease. You don’t feel a little better each day. In fact, you may start to feel worse. There are no easy answers or cures. It is different for everybody. Find what works for you and what makes you connect with the world again. I try to do that in Second Life, but even there it is hard.

Dare to dream!

“If we never experience the chill of a dark winter, it is very unlikely that we will ever cherish the warmth of a bright summer’s day. Nothing stimulates our appetite for the simple joys of life more than the starvation caused by sadness or desperation. In order to complete our amazing life journey successfully, it is vital that we turn each and every dark tear into a pearl of wisdom, and find the blessing in every curse.” 

Dare to dream your dream, not someone else's, but yours. Do not let others hold you back. Every day you hesitate is a day lost.

"I came to you, I came for you, but you could not see me.
I swam the seas, I traversed the coals, 
I died a thousand deaths for you.
I found my way, I did, I did.
But when I got there, you had fallen asleep.
You had drunk their potions and I could not wake you.
I got there on time but your eyes were closed."

Never surrender your hopes and dreams to the fateful limitations others have placed on their own lives. The vision of your true destiny does not reside within the blinkered outlook of the naysayers and the doom prophets. Judge not by their words, but accept advice based on the evidence of actual results. Do not be surprised should you find a complete absence of anything mystical or miraculous in the manifested reality of those who are so eager to advise you. Friends and family who suffer the lack of abundance, joy, love, fulfillment, and prosperity in their own lives really have no business imposing their self-limiting beliefs on your reality experience.