An Indie Fantasy Animated Story & Song - By Daniel Grant Newton

A quirky animated story about a woman from the Island of Mu, traveling to Atlantis with a drowned rabbit inside her head, to find her husband, believed to be swallowed (not eaten) by a mechanical dragon.

So pretty standard story then...

I wrote the song at the end, but the song wouldn't have been what it is without the amazing talent and genius of Colin and Anabel (who lent her voice to do Amoretta).

Check out Anabel's YouTube page: youtube.com/anabelcjc

And if Colin puts any videos up on his page, I can assure you they'll be really good too. But as he has not yet, I won't put it up here.

Independent Thinking - the Skeleton Key to Knowledge (Part 3)

This third part has been a few weeks coming. The reason being is that I have been sick... or have I been sick? Yes, I have.

And I have also been hard working on ironing out the last few details before releasing my novel - The Last King of Shambhala - out very soon so I hope you have been saving your pocket money... or have I been working on my book? Again, yes, I have been.

Why do I keep questioning myself? Dammit, I did it again! That's three times I have questioned myself. (Is it three times?) Well, maybe it is because it's time to write the last in my independent thinking articles.

And while I'm letting you on what's been happening with me, I'd also like to mention that I have been to and just returned from the beautiful country of Canada...

A country where everybody plays a practical joke on all new arrivals and puts on dodgy US accents everywhere you go. They are SOOOO fake, they don't even sound that 'US-inese'.

Oh, and everyone drives on the wrong side of the road. The right side of the road being the wrong side of the road, and the left side of the road being the right side of the road.

Those Canadians are so crazy. But loveable.

And if you are a conspiracy theorist, check this out. When I arrived back in my home city, I was questioned (read: interrogated) by four different airport officials and watched much too closely until I left the airport. I'm not saying that it is because I've written a couple of articles on how to think differently and escape the mediocre manipulable mind (a.k.a. m.m.m. or mmm) ... but you can draw your own logical conclusions.

Actually the real reason "I'm not saying" is because of the Reptillian people monitoring my blog posts and farming human beings as 9-5 slaves.

No, I don't really believe in that rubbish... just clarifying there for the M.I.B., Desert Donkey Men and Aghartha Nazis monitoring my blog posts.

Anyway, back to the topic of the day. To start off this entry, I thought I'd share with you some very old ads. The 'facts', 'studies' and 'common knowledge' in these ads seem quite screwy in the lense of today's minds, but they make for a good laugh... Not to mention make you wonder how outdated our society's beliefs will be in a mere generation or two.

Hmmm... so, I guess a little has changed over the last 100 years then. And these photos neatly dovetail into my first topic of the day...

Society believes it (or doesn't), should you?

Peer pressure is an interesting thing. The obvious example is when we do something because everybody wants us to do it. But the less obvious example is adopting beliefs, often subconsciously, by following the pack. I think it's a safety in numbers thing, but it's not always a good thing. Just ask the ghosts of plankton.

One great experiment that looked at the conformity of human beings was conducted by Solomon Asch back in the 1950s. In the experiment people were shown lines and asked which lines were the same length.

The answer was very obvious, with two lines the exact length and the other two lines either much longer or much shorter. However, 76% of people got it wrong.

The reason being is that five people were sat in a row and asked by the examiner one after the other. The first four people were told (on the sly) to say the exact same answer - an obvious wrong answer - and then the final person was asked their answer and had no idea the others were all purposely choosing the same wrong answer. And the fifth person, despite their better judgement, went with the crowd.

You see, we have been trained to conform. It may be part of our prehistoric instinct, but society around us pushes us into manageable squares too.

(Again, there'll be people who tell you it is because of lizard people or a ruling body who want us dumbed down so we are more easily controlled ... but I'm not going to say that because I'm afraid of Desert Donkey Men.)

In the experiment, some of the participants answered incorrectly because they questioned their judgement, some feared the disapproval of the others in the group, and some didn't want to stand out even though they knew they were right.

Bottom line, they were pressured into the wrong answer. So do not - I'm speaking to YOU - do not blindly accept what everybody else believes. Be an independent thinker and blindly accept what I believe.

Do This Test - You can believe anything!

Look up on Google a topic you don't have much opinion about, but are interested in. Look up articles and videos created by people with two opposing opinions. Chances are both sides will make compelling cases. And the interesting thing is...

The more you delve into the topic, the more convincing facts, data and research you'll find for both sides.

Or listen to two great debaters battle it out. Often your opinion will swing to support whoever spoke last.

The truth is you can convince yourself of almost anything! You can convince yourself to believe anything. And therefore, you can actually CHOOSE your beliefs.

Beliefs are in fact just a thought that has been considered so much and 'proven' so many times in our heads that it becomes our truth.

If you decided you wanted to believe in fairies for example, just look up videos on YouTube supporting their existance, read accounts of good honest people who have seen them, and read articles explaining the scientific and historical research into fairies. Emerse yourself in all things that support the existence or at least possible existence of fairies.

Eventually you will believe in them - no matter how much resistance you have to the belief right now. And remember, according to the Peter Pan books, every time a child says "I don't believe in fairies", they kill a fairy.

So along with being a blog entry on independent thinking, this is also a public service announcement for fairies. I never thought I'd get to write those words!

My thoughts? Use your beliefs to your advantage!

I'm not going to tell you what you should believe, or what you shouldn't believe. I'm waiting until I take over the world before I do that.

But here's an idea. Choose beliefs that benefit you.

There have been some quantum physicists, motivational speakers, religious mystics and spiritualists alike who have said that our thoughts can directly affect and morph our world.

You may not believe that, but I am sure you can see when you look into it, you'll quickly see that changing your beliefs can be very powerful, and can GREATLY benefit you or hinder you in life.

Take physical pain for example.

With mere suggestion of healing, and the belief of followers, a Faith Healer can make someone who cannot walk because of the incredible pain in their legs, jump up and down and not feel a thing. This may not last when they get home - I don't know, but the belief they can get better can relieve them of the most terrible of pains.

When people are set up with suggestions like "this might hurt", or "as I do this you can probably feel your joints becoming more and more relaxed and flexible", the brain tells the body how to respond. And when you feel increasing relief, or increasing pain, created by the brain, your belief strengthens that the physical pain is changing. As your belief changes, the intensity of the pain or relief increases more and more.

If your belief can't relieve pain and illness, then what's a placebo?  (If your arse is smart you may answer that it is an alternative rock band from London.)

Earlier in this blog article I said I was sick just recently, and I had a physical example of this phenomena (sort of).

I was in such pain I could not do anything. I could not fall asleep, or even lie down. So I decided to distract myself with a very interesting documentary. As soon as my mind became completely focused on the documentary, the pain went completely... until the documentary finished and my brain again realised I was supposed to be in pain.

The pain was reliant on my focus on it. If you can focus wholly on something else, the pain cannot live... because the pain is all in your mind.

Another example of choosing your beliefs wisely - take the subject of confidence and self-worth perception

If you were confident (i.e. positively believed) you were a fantastic mate, you might stroll into a party, talk to every attractive potential mate in the room, and get at least one date at the end of the night. You would think of those who rejected you as "crazy", and achieved your goal of getting a date.

If you were not confident in your self worth, you would most likely talk to no attractive potential mates. And if you did, and were rejected, even if it was the first person you spoke to and they didn't really reject you - you would not try again.

BOTTOM LINE? Write down what you'd like, and write down what beliefs you need to achieve that goal. Then start fostering that belief.

So what can you know for sure?

There is only one thing you can know for sure. And that is that you are conscious in this very moment.

- You cannot know anything in this physical world is real. For those, like me, who have had a real lucid dream, your dream can feel to more real than your life. It can satisfy every sense vividly. So there is nothing to tell you you aren't hallucinating all of this.

- You cannot know that other people are real, unless you could enter their mind. They could be figments of your imagination or robots. I am both P.S.

- You cannot know your past is real, even a moment ago. You've probably had the experience where you remembered something to be so, been absolutely stuck on it, only to see a video of that moment and been wrong.

But more than that, you could have woken up in this world in this exact moment with all your memory having been created by scientists or by CIA agents... I'm just saying, it could happen. The past is only a memory.

- You cannot even know whether you can make choices. Our choices are the result of our preferences that are formed over events and genetics and maybe spiritual/personality make-up. If someone could create the exact make-up that is you, then that person would make the same choice.

So then, it is possible destiny or god or whatever has made you up to make a certain choice. Something people call destiny. And without knowing it, all your choices could have been made for you before you make them.

- Oh, but what if I go back in time and tell myself to choose another choice. Destiny or god or whatever probably made you want to go back in time so that you could choose another choice they wanted you to choose. You cannot escape it.

So only your awareness in this very moment is solid and real.

Okay, usual programming returns next blog entry. I hope you enjoyed this very different and long blog series.

Independent Thinking - the Skeleton Key to Knowledge (Part 2)

Always question statistics and 'facts'!

As I've hopefully shown you in the previous blog article, you can easily manipulate opinion surveys, but what about cold hard factual statistics. Surely you can't change them... yes, you can.

Let's take for example the following made up statistic (I'll make it up since 67.92% of statistics are made up anyway):

33% of people with blue eyes catch the flu before they're four.

Okay, this is made up, but assuming it's true (or proports to be true), there are some unanswered questions that would put it in context. Without thinking like an independent thinker you'd say, "oh dear, blue eyed children are prone to catching the flu."

But is it really significant?

What percentage of people in general, for example, catch the flu in any given four year period? What about people with brown eyes or green eyes? Or people who are not between the ages of fetous and four?

And if that percentage is significant compared to these factors, what about all blue eyed people or all children indiscriminate of eye colour? Is it blue eyed children or just all blue eyed people? Or all children?

And who was recorded to get this statistic? How many people? Could this have been an anomaly in the area surveyed? Is it because they are blue eyed and children, or is there another reason for why these particular children get the flu?

Without this information the statistic is meaningless. It tells you nothing, yet it is manipulated statistics that get thrown around all the time to push opinions as facts.

Now this is a very harmless statistic to analyse. When the statistic has an emotional trigger involved, i.e. a topic people feel passionate about or enraged over, it is much easier for the population to accept. However, an independent thinker will never just accept blindly any statistic or 'fact'.

The Dangers of Dihydrogen Monoxide

A while ago there was a petition to ban a substance called Dihydrogen Monoxide (DHMO). If you are not familiar with it here are just some of the startling facts. The substance:

- is a major component of acid rain (called "hydroxl acid")

- greatly contributes to the "greenhouse effect"

- can be fatal if inhaled

- can cause severe burns

- erodes our natural landscape

- accelerates corrosion and rusting of metals

- has been found in tumors of terminal cancer patients

However, despite the danger, DHMO is often used:

- as an industrial solvent and coolant

- in nuclear power plants

- in the production of Styrofoam

- by athletes to improve their performance

- in many forms of cruel animal research

- as an additive in certain junk foods, and especially so-called "diet" food

- in distribution of pesticides (even after washing the produce remains contaminated)

When this research was submitted to the US government of the time with the signatures of many concerned people, the government didn't take the petition seriously.

Why? Because Dihydrogen Monoxide is another name for H20 (water).

But people didn't ask what DHMO actually was, they just listened to the facts, and became enraged as an 'educated' member of the public. This case study is very famous and makes a clear point about the importance of being an 'independent thinker' - a thinker that isn't led.

Putting your trust in scientists in white coats, doctors with stethoscopes, and the "common belief"

For most people, a strong influencer in shaping your own beliefs is the opinion of 'credible experts'. They've studied the subject, so they must know more than you, right? They possibly do, but it is still not a good reason to compromise your own judgement and follow blindly.

Take the Milgram Experiment as an example, conducted by Stanley Milgram some fifty years ago or so. In this experiment people were brought in to do an experiment that was suppose to test if you could accelerate learning by administrating pain in the learning process.

The group was split up into two groups, those that would be 'teachers', and those that would be 'students'. A student would be paired with a teacher, and they would go into two separate rooms and communicate through a microphone.

KEY: E = Experimenter, T = Teacher, L = Learner

The teacher was then instructed by a scientist to ask questions to the student, and if the student got it wrong, the teacher would administer an electric shock. This electric shock would be increased for every wrong answer.

However, in reality, the scientists and students were all actors. The answers of the students and their responses to the electric shocks were actually recordings. But the teacher, the only group not let in on this, believed it to be real.

As the student failed to get the right answers the teacher was instructed to increase the level of electric shock, and despite the screaming in pain of the student, most subjects did as they were told by the expert and increased the shock higher and higher.

Eventually the recording stopped, and the participant supposedly answering the questions became completely unresponsive. And although it appeared the subject may be dead or unconscious, many still continued to administer higher and higher shocks as the student failed to answer questions in the alloted time.

Similar experiments have had people doing numerous shocking or ridiculous actions because of the instructions of actors in 'credible' uniforms. So the obvious lesson here is do not just base your entire belief system on someone who wears a white lab coat or a minister's collar, etc.

_______

In my final blog entry about this subject I will look into the influence of peer pressure, how you can convince yourself of absolutely anything, the only thing we can know for sure, and what I believe is the best beliefs to adopt.

I hope by reading my last blog entry you will open your mind and formulate your own well-educated and flexible belief system. After this third entry, my blog will return to the usual humour and maddness.

Taking the Road Less Travelled - An Audacious Plan to Self-Publish Fiction

I've got that movie trailer voice in my head. And it is saying something like (fade to black):

One man with no experience... decides to take on the publishing world...

And then they'd be sounds of cars, the beeping of crossings, and people's shoes hitting the tarmac.

With a self-published fiction book.

And then it would cut to me, and give a quick montage of what might be in store for me in the coming weeks. Because yes, deciding to self-publish a NOVEL, is a cardinal sin amongst 'intellectuals' - and that, and like, but like whatevvvveeerr. 

AND especially in the audacious manner I'm planning to do it.

But that's why it excites me (cue the waving flag in the background). It is the unknown. The challenge. The adventure.

Sure, I could've listened to the wise-heads (i.e. the ones that get uncomfortable when you deviate from their mental construction of 'social norm') and gone down the typical route... Submitting a manuscript into a publisher. Waiting 12 months for a few rejection letters (perhaps) and an offer to publish the book (perhaps).

Then, as a first time writer, I'd be given like 0.02 cents for each book sold, they'd do a "merde" job of marketing it (excuse the French), and they'd make me re-write it so it sounds "merde" and make the cover "merde". And then after a half-arse "merde" result, they'd discontinue it and the story would be dead. ("No reprints Mr. Newton, zee story does not sell!" ... yes, someone with a dodgy German accent would have published my book, and done a French job of it.)

Then, as a result of my baby being flushed down the toilet, I would spiral down into writer's depression... drink cheap wine for breakfast from a casket, not wash for weeks justifying the waves of tears have done a good enough job at cleansing my body, start yelling obscenities at the mirror and at my shadow, and end up shivering, rocking back and forth in the foetal position on a motel floor watching Two and a Half Men re-runs (because it just won't be the same without Mr. Epic Winning) with my seven pet stray cats and whispering "damn you Mr. Fake-German-accent-man".

That is not a "rock-star from mars" type attitude, Daniel, but the very pit of 21st Century society.

A risk not worth taking when you extrapolate the likely cause and effect with Chaos Theory science as I have just done.

So instead, I am taking the road less travelled - a road I recommend to anyone in any endeavour. The "risky" (read: "madman dreamer") road. The road that perhaps one of the characters in my book would take if they were in my position. The road that shouts "I don't care (too much) about what you think, I'm going to do something a little loco."

But as the seasoned traveller of roads less travelled, Dr. Livingston, wisely once said, or would've said if he were living right now and self-publishing his first novel (and writing this blog entry), "a road less travelled, may have bumps, but it is the friction that creates the diamond."

(I think he may have stolen two different clichés there.)

But how very wise of hypothetical Dr. Livingston. Very wise indeed.

So with his great hypothetical mixed-cliché advice ringing in my ears, today I set forth to become the most successful self-published writer since Moses wrote the ten commandments (I hear Moses' descendants are still getting royalties on it! Sweet! - I apologise in advance for that one). Or even, dare I dare to say daringly, more successful. Muhahahaha.  (Perhaps too early to mention my plans of world conquest???)

Wish me luck and a nay-sayer ray gun as I step into the unknown and rocky land of self-published fiction. I hope you come along for the ride (read: buy my book and subscribe to my blog)! Hehehe.

Coming to a blog near you.

P.S. I have not actually ever sent in a manuscript to a publishing house, but I am not adverse to someone doing so. If you want to send your manuscript to a publishing house, I wish you good luck, and see you where the roads meet... in the Amazon.