after dropping off threadless yearbook quotes for fun, the strangest thing happened: i won the prize for "eugene"!

i'm pretty excited about the 12 club subscription. i mean a few years back i decided that one day i'd want to be a part of a secret societal order (though one that is tolerant of those who don't keep secrets well) of absolute silliness. just a means to get together, create and wear riddiculous hats, and pretty much invent and develop ways of getting access to cool free stuff and means of having fun. the 12 club is an unexpected induction.

as for the $100 gift... i've been told to use it wisely by my threadless financial advisor (they come out of the woodwork whenever you win items of value). at first i was curious if i could buy blik wall art... but i guess that is actually through blik. kind of considering some wall prints, but then i thought about shirts for friends. hmmm... as for my own shirts, i'm running out of space. threadless is a vice. what will i do when they all fade away and i have 50,000 of them?

The girls and the guys shirts really matter not. We know this. If a girl is too big for girl sizes she's going to go for the guy shirts, that's common sense. Sadly though it's those guys mediums which always run out, followed by guys small.

On the other end of the spectrum, people should know that kids sizes can be comparable to girly sizes, so if you buy for kids and something sells out, anything above an 8 should be comparable in a girls size. This also works well if you are looking for a kid and there isn't a kids size section. I believe girls sizes are slightly longer, but some people might prefer that.

It has always eluded me...

Has anyone had much success with a lemon zester?

Dream bunnies are complex characters symbolizing everything from fear, sexuality, creativity, luck, self-sabotage, vulnerability, popularity to re-birth.

So how to interpret the one who hopped into your dream? Vital clues are found by looking at their symbolism in various cultures' mythology.

Norse and Pagan peoples celebrate the 'Ostara' festival. Ostara is derived from Eostre which then becomes Eastre and finally morphs into Easter for Christians. Eostre/Eastre is a fertility goddess who, in some mythologies, has the head of a hare. Her festival is celebrated at spring, a time of renewal. The rabbit, being a nocturnal animal, is associated with the moon. The moon, of course, goes through a monthly process of death and rebirth. Thus, the rabbit's association with the moon connects it with rebirth itself.

Another interesting association of rebirth and the rabbit comes to us from ancient Egypt. The flooding of the Nile was encouraged by sacrificing Osiris, who in the ceremonies, took on the form of a hare. As this process occurred annually, the rabbit/hare became associated with resurrection. As a symbol of resurrection, it is easy to see how the rabbit made the leap from Egyptian mythology into Christianity.

Does you dream rabbit remind you of the Easter bunny? Does the dream leave you with feelings of excitement? Is the rabbit peacefully hopping along or building a home of some sort? If so, your dream rabbit may herald a 'resurrection' in your waking life.

Self-sacrifice is the rabbit's main association in Buddhism. The story is that when the Buddha found himself starving it was the rabbit who sacrificed herself to feed him. In this capacity, dreaming of a rabbit may be pointing to feelings of martyrdom or feelings of silent suffering.

Look to the action of the rabbit for more clues to its meaning.

If your rabbit is hiding or running from something, it is most probably entering your dream as a harbinger of fear. Rabbits are known for being timid animals which burrow deep into the ground to elude their predators. A burrowing or hiding rabbit, therefore, can indicate a long standing or deeply ingrained fear. If the rabbit is motionless, this may indicate that it is time to move on from a situation which is symbolically paralyzing you.

Or instead of seeing a rabbit hiding, do you see yourself as Elmer Fudd out 'hunting wabbits'? If so, this may indicate that you are actually in the process of attempting to ferret out your fears, or that you are attempting to overcome some long standing fear. Alternatively, it may indicate that you feel persecuted.

Is the rabbit is eating? If so, what is it eating? If it is eating something precious to you or destroying a garden, it may indicate something that is 'eating away' at you. There may be a gnawing situation in a relationship or in your career that is trying to get your attention.

What color is the rabbit? Colors often show up in tandem with other dream images and may be the key to interpreting what the rabbit it symbolizing for you. (Check out my article on color as a dream symbol here: http://www.bellaonline.com/articles/art13547.asp for more information on color as a dream symbol).

How many rabbits are there? If there are a number of rabbits, the dream may be pointing to fertility. In dream language, while fertility may point to the actual state of being able to procreate, more than likely fertility means something broader. Dream fertility often points to the creative process, being in a receptive state of mind which may lead to creative projects. Dream creativity may be anything from a project at work to an artistic endeavour.

Even if there are not many, rabbit in a dream may still represent fertility. Fertility may also come in the form of increased luck or good fortune or any form of excess.

Rabbits are also known for their speed and agility. They are quick thinkers who allow intuition to guide their feet as to the best route possible to escape danger or find food. As such they may symbolize a situation requiring you to use a quick mind, fast feet, and openness to your own intuition.

As with all dreams, the meaning of your rabbit dream will come from the events of your personal life and own psyche. Look to your life's mythology to see where you believe rabbit fits in your dreams.

Finding Water With A Forked Stick May Not Be A Hoax
Dowsing Data Defy the Skeptics
BY JIM WILSON
Published in the November 1998 issue.

Usually, the boundary between science and science fiction is as distinct as the difference between the 6 o'clock news and "The Simpsons." Wherever the line blurs, you're bound to find contentious debates. One of the longest-running of these disagreements centers on dowsing, a supposed sixth sense that enables people to find underground water using a forked branch, pendulum or pair of bent wires. There is no scientific reason why dowsing should work. Yet, it apparently works well enough and reliably enough to keep the practice alive.
The success of dowsers doesn't surprise the people who know the most about finding underground water, hydrogeologists for the United States Geological Survey (USGS). They point out that the United States is so water-rich you can get wet drilling just about anywhere, if you drill deep enough. Far harsher criticism of dowsing and dowsers comes from outside the mainstream scientific community. Two organizations, the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal (CSICOP), http://www.csicop.org/si, and the James Randi Educational Foundation (JREF), http://www.randi.org, are actually working to discourage the practice, which they both dismiss as paranormal nonsense. To make their point that dowsing is a sham each has staged demonstrations in which dowsers were asked to find buried pipes. Dowsers did no better than the laws of chance predict. JREF is so confident of its position it promises to pay $1.1 million to anyone who can "prove" dowsing works.

Yet Dowsers Flourish

Like bees unaware they are too aerodynamically challenged to fly, dowsers don't let the skeptics get them down. In fact, the ranks of dowsers have been steadily growing. Forty years ago, about 50 dowsers and curiosity seekers were drawn to Danville, Vt., for a 1-day National Dowsing Convention. That get-together led to the creation of the American Society of Dowsers (ASD), www.newhampshire.com/dowsers.org, which now counts about 4200 members. Lest you dismiss dowsing's popularity as just another New Age fad, take a close look at the 16th century drawing to the left. The men wearing traditional miners' clothing are holding the same type of forked stick in use by many dowsers today.

Now comes a massive set of data that suggests there may be some validity to dowsers' claims. The encouraging words are contained in a study financed by the German government and published in the Journal Of Scientific Exploration, http://www.jse.com/betz_toc.html, which is a peer-reviewed scientific journal published at Stanford University.

The project was conducted by the Deutsche Gesellschaft fur Technische Zusammenarbeit in the hope of finding cheaper and more reliable ways of locating drinking water supplies in Third World countries.

Researchers analyzed the successes and failures of dowsers in attempting to locate water at more than 2000 sites in arid regions of Sri Lanka, Zaire, Kenya, Namibia and Yemen over a 10-year period. To do this, researchers teamed geological experts with experienced dowsers and then set up a scientific study group to evaluate the results. Drill crews guided by dowsers didn't hit water every time, but their success rate was impressive. In Sri Lanka, for example, they drilled 691 holes and had an overall success rate of 96 percent.

"In hundreds of cases the dowsers were able to predict the depth of the water source and the yield of the well to within 10 percent or 20 percent," says Hans-Dieter Betz, a physicist at the University of Munich, who headed the research group.

"We carefully considered the statistics of these correlations, and they far exceeded lucky guesses," he says. What's more, virtually all of the sites in Sri Lanka were in regions where the odds of finding water by random drilling were extremely low. As for a USGS notion that dowsers get subtle clues from the landscape and geology, Betz points out that the underground sources were often more than 100 ft. deep and so narrow that misplacing the drill only a few feet would mean digging a dry hole.

As impressive as this success rate may seem, it doesn't do much to change the minds of skeptics. Their preference is to test dowsing under more controlled conditions. Back To The Lab

Anticipating this criticism, the German researchers matched their field work with laboratory experiments in which they had dowsers attempt to locate water-filled pipes inside a building. The tests were similar to those conducted by CSICOP and JREF, and similarly discouraging. Skeptics see the poor showing as evidence of failure. Betz sees the discrepancy as an important clue. He says that subtle electromagnetic gradients may result when natural fissures and water flows create changes in the electrical properties of rock and soil. Dowsers, he theorizes, somehow sense these gradients and unconsciously respond by wagging their forked sticks, pendulums or bent wires.

Low-Energy Sensor

There is ample evidence that humans can detect small amounts of energy. All creatures with eyes can detect extremely small amounts of electromagnetic energy at visible light wavelengths. Some researchers believe the dark-adapted human eye can detect a single photon, the smallest measurable quantity of energy. Biologists also have found nonvisual electric and magnetic sensing organs in creatures from bacteria to sharks, fish and birds. Physiologists, however, have yet to find comparable structures in humans.

Betz offers no theories of how dowsers come by their skill and prefers to confine his speculation to his data. "There are two things that I am certain of after 10 years of field research," he says. "A combination of dowsing and modern techniques can be both more successful, and far less expensive, than we had thought."