Toyotaism: Efficiency at all Costs

Over the past year now I have been working for a large pet-supply company on a project-to-project basis. This is a company that manufactures pet supplies, like dog toys or cat beds...crates, bones, brushes etc. What I do is provide any video production services the company may need, whether it be promotional videos for their website, how-to videos for their products or general training videos.

Just recently, I was commissioned by [the pet-supply company] to film a lecture given by a man who works for a non-profit company named GBMP (Greater Boston Manufacturing Partnership). The lecture was mandatory for all [pet-supply company] employees to attend and participate in. Essentially, my job was to edit the eight-hour lecture down to a one-hour "training" DVD for [pet-supply company] to show any new employees they may hire in the future.

The basic purpose of the GBMP lecture was to educate the [pet-supply company] employees with a "Lean Manufacturing" philosophy, also known in the business world as "Toyotaism". To put the philosophy simply, LEAN is a production process companies can use to eliminate waste, 'waste' meaning any procedure within the work environment that gets in the way of a company maximizing its profit. In layman's terms, the overall objective is to make the company employees work in the most efficient way possible.

As you may expect, videotaping a boring, eight-hour lecture that discussed all the various ways in which a company could maximize its efficiency was tantamount to being waterboarded on a bed of nails. There was one part of the lecture, however, that alleviated the torture a bit. The lecturer from GBMP showed a funny video entitled "Toast", which basically consisted of some old guy making toast for his wife. The video opened with the man saying "And now I'm going to make some toast for my wife"; then, he took two slices of bread, dropped them into the toaster and proceeded to stare into space for five minutes or so while the toast cooked. Every once in a while, the man would walk over to the fridge and get the butter, but mostly he would just stand in front of the counter and wait for the toast to finish cooking.


This GBMP-produced video shows clips from "Toast":




Like many of the other employees in the audience, I found myself cracking up at the absurdity of "Toast". The lecturer from GBMP stopped the video when it was finished and asked the audience what was wrong with what the man was doing. Of course, an audience member immediately pointed out the fact that the man was just standing there - staring into space - and not making the most productive use of his time. I kind of snickered to myself as I stood behind my camera's tripod. I was basically thinking - if I were the class clown - I would say, "maybe he was just saying his prayers." Yes, I realize that's not very funny (like, at all), but I don't think that it was any coincidence that the joke popped into my mind. Although I was laughing on the surface, I think there was a voice inside my head trying to communicate something more profound.

Yes, the more I thought about the video the more I realized how potentially harmful its message was, not to mention the message behind LEAN in general. Maybe I was looking too far into it, but it seemed as though LEAN'S overall objective was to essentially turn the already-very-dehumanized company employees into even more dehumanized individuals. I mean, in LEAN'S eyes, simply taking a moment to stare into space (a very human thing to do) was considered an inefficient use of one's time. In fact, LEAN would likely consider introspection of any kind a "waste", 'introspection' meaning anything that is not a visible, outward action but still can have important value.

Take the inward process of thinking, for example. If the "Toast" video is any indication, LEAN wants employees DOING at all times, not THINKING about what they're doing. Yes, rational thought - the very thing that makes us human - is something LEAN would label 'waste', simply because it gets in the way of a company maximizing productivity and profit. Although it may not be its outright intention, LEAN essentially wants employees to be mindless robots who are always producing. Mechanisms within a lifeless machine. Zombies.

Of course, LEAN wouldn't be so bad if its dehumanization of employees was only limited to the time the employee spends in the work environment. I mean, it's true that companies wouldn't be very functional if employees were staring into space and thinking all day (but, then again, that's common sense, and you don't need preachers of a LEAN philosophy to come into your company and tell you that). The problem with LEAN is that it conditions the human mind in a general sense; that is, the employee becomes generally dehumanized in both the work environment and his or her personal life. The overall message that an individual takes away from a video like "Toast" is that introspection is a waste of time, not just while working, but when it comes to life in general. And I'm not just talking about taking the time to think either. Think about other aspects of introspection, like meditation and reflection and, yes, even prayer. Basically, in LEAN'S eyes, all of these things would be considered waste. The philosophy fails to account for the fact that a lot of important human productivity can occur inwardly, through introspective processes. Work isn't always something executed through outward action. There is sometimes value in "doing nothing".

Now, let me get back to my joke about how the man in "Toast" was possibly "saying his prayers". As I mentioned before, I feel the joke had a deeper meaning. I mean, it may sound extreme for me to say this, but I would argue that the LEAN philosophy is really a philosophy that distances the individual from God, and when I say 'God' I mean whatever higher power you may believe in. In LEAN'S eyes, introspective time with God is unproductive. It is a waste. LEAN wants people to be "on the go" all the time...doing...and producing, not standing still and praying inwardly, which is seemingly inefficient. In a world where LEAN rules, 'He' - the big guy in the sky - only gets in the way of human productivity. Or, to put it another way, God becomes the bad guy, and Productivity (measured in terms of profit) becomes the new deity to worship.

But let's give LEAN the benefit of the doubt and pretend that an employee is, indeed, able to put the LEAN philosophy aside when it comes to his or her personal life. Let's pretend that a person's introspection isn't affected negatively when they are outside the work environment - they're able to think, meditate, pray etc. Would LEAN then be a good philosophy? I mean, putting all dehumanizing aside, is LEAN actually competent in making a company more successful? In order to answer this question, all we have to do is look at LEAN'S greatest "success story": Toyota.

LEAN, after all, isn't nicknamed 'Toyotaism' for nothing. The 'LEAN' philosophy (which, at the time, didn't really have a name) is relentlessly championed for transforming the small company Toyota was in the 1980s into one of the biggest, most efficient car manufacturers in the world. But Toyota's success - as we all know - has been deteriorating over the past few years. Since 2007, Toyota has recalled millions upon millions of its cars, all because of various defects with the acceleration. The company's "runaway cars" have resulted in the deaths of several people, not to mention countless injuries. And Toyota still hasn't solved the problem. More cars were recalled as recently as last month (February 2011).

So how is it that GBMP can go around championing a philosophy that clearly doesn't do a company any good in the long run? Well, perhaps one reason is because GBMP is behind the times and stubbornly refusing to acknowledge the latest failures Toyota has experienced. They'd be correct if they said Toyota experienced amazing short-term profits because of LEAN, but recent events show that - in the long term - the philosophy didn't seem to fulfill its goal of "creating more value for the customers" (unless defective cars are considered 'value'). Clearly there is a flaw inherent in the philosophy. Perhaps LEAN takes efficiency to such an extreme that corners inevitably end up being cut and manufacturing quality becomes poor, the consequences of which can be very dangerous (in Toyota's case, drivers have been killed).

In retrospect, it surprises me that none of the [pet-supply company] employees (including myself) were astute enough to see the absurdity behind GBMP's insistence that LEAN was THE way to go. I mean, the lecture had missionary-like tones. LEAN was the answer to the struggling economy; God's gift to the corporate world; a miracle for any company that had stunted growth. But how were we supposed to swallow all this when LEAN'S biggest success story (Toyota) was failing before our very eyes? Why would [pet-supply company] or any other client of GBMP want to end up like Toyota? Are they OK with being responsible for deaths? Do they WANT blood on their hands?

Don't get me wrong: I don't mean to imply that GBMP has malicious intentions in traveling around from company to company, professing the greatness of LEAN. They obviously think this is in the best interest of a struggling company, and also in the best interest of our economy as a whole. I do, however, feel that GBMP is misguided. They apparently viewed the 2008 financial crisis as an indication that companies simply weren't being efficient enough. They didn't want to consider the possibility that the economic collapse was a direct result of flaws inherent in capitalism, a system that operates solely according to what minimizes cost and maximizes profit, a system that is programmed (like a computer program) to value profit over anything else. No, GBMP's answer to the crisis was that people weren't using an extreme enough form of capitalism, which is what LEAN basically is. But does this make any sense whatsoever? Well, maybe it does to GBMP, because they'll never admit that capitalism is flawed. They will cling to that system until the death, even when catastrophes like what we saw at Toyota occur.

Of course, it doesn't help the situation that (according to their website) GBMP lecturers are trained by Toyota directly, which (I guess) means they consider themselves disciples or something, spreading the good news about Toyota and its amazing success. But, again, Toyota ISN'T really a success. It's failing. So these GBMP preachers are basically like false prophets, traveling around from company to company, spreading the flawed LEAN philosophy like the plague.

I don't know what the answer is to the struggling economy and struggling companies, but a super-efficiency philosophy has too many costs attached to it, and I'm not talking about financial ones. I'm talking about human ones.

My Past-Life in Hollywood (Update #2)

This is a third update to my previous blog BEING CAROLE LOMBARD: MY PAST-LIFE IN HOLLYWOOD (click HERE to view). In my last update (click HERE to read), I noted some progress I made in terms of finding out who raped me in my past life as actress Carole Lombard. Unfortunately, I have no new developments about the rape at this time. But I do have some other things.

This past Friday, I was driving down a street in Foxboro, MA., and I happened to pass a sign that said "Tarot Readings". I don't know what it was about that sign but I felt it was calling to me for some reason. I felt almost as though it was sucking me in, like it was a magnetic beam or gravitational field or something like that. I thought - hmmmm - maybe I should stop and get a reading. But to tell you the truth I was kind of tired of psychics and mediums and all that jazz. Plus, I didn't want to give out any more of my money to anyone if I didn't have to.

I drove about ten minutes beyond the Tarot place, but the "magnetic pull" became even more intense. I really felt that I needed to go back and get a reading. I didn't know why, but I felt as though I was meant to drive past that place. I don't mean to sound all melodramatic or anything, but it really felt like a serendipitous event.

Anyway, the pull became so intense at one point that I said, "fuck it", turned around and headed back towards the place where I saw the sign. As it turned out, the sign was actually located at the end of a normal-looking driveway. I pulled my car into the driveway and saw a place that basically looked no different than a house, only there was a neon sign on the outside that said "Ten-Dollar Palm Readings". The thought of getting my palm read sounded interesting to me. I never had something like that done before. Plus, ten dollars sounded like a pretty good deal. I decided I would go for it.

So I parked my car, walked into the house and was greeted by an (Eastern) Indian-looking woman named Jesse. She was supposedly a seventh-generation psychic, which sounded like she knew what she was doing, but I would have to wait and see if she was any good.

"What can I do for you?" she asked.

"Um...I guess I just want my palm read."

"OK, come with me."

She led me through a pair of open French doors and we sat in a comfy parlor with some couches and a glass case filled with crystals, figurines and metaphysical-type trinkets.

"Take a seat. Are you right handed or left-handed?"

"Right."

She took my right hand, had me say my name out loud and then had me voice one wish I hoped would come true. So I basically wished my writing endeavors would be successful or something like that, and - only within a couple seconds - Jesse started relaying information to me that (to my surprise) was very accurate. I mean, I always thought palm readings were things friends did to each other at slumber parties; I never thought it was actually a real, legitimate art.

Jesse drew my attention to various lines engraved into my palm that I'd never noticed before. One long, curved line supposedly meant I would live a long life, but at some point I would experience lower body pains (she didn't really elaborate on the nature of those pains). Then Jesse started talking about my career and how my name was going to grow and money would start rolling in, but then people would try to bring me down. She said that I needed to be in Los Angeles because I needed to "go after my dream". The only thing keeping me in the East was family and friends. She also said that California was where my heart was, anyway. "You're an ocean boy".

Jesse eventually flipped my hand over and immediately said something that scared the absolute shit out of me. Honestly, I had never been so freaking scared in my entire life.

"Who's pregnant?" she asked.

"What? Um, nobody, I don't think."

"You have a daughter and somebody's not telling you."

"What??? Uh...no I don't."

"Yeah you do, honey."

I literally started shaking in my chair. I didn't know what the hell this lady was talking about. My fear was that I had gotten somebody pregnant somewhere down the line or perhaps even very recently and I just didn't know about it. But I was pretty sure this wasn't the case. Everybody I had ever had....um...relations...with was still somebody who was in my life in one way or another, even the girls I'd had casual hook-ups with or one-night stands with. And I was pretty sure none of them ever had my child, or was pregnant with my child.

But then a question suddenly came to me, almost within a couple seconds after my initial panic. I don't know why it came into my head so fast or where the question even came from, but all I know is that it was there:

"Could the daughter have been from a past life?"

Jesse nodded her head. "Yeah, possibly." And I was a little relieved, but only a little.

I explained to Jesse that I had been "doing a lot of past-life stuff lately" and that I had discovered I was (supposedly) a famous actress in Old Hollywood.

"As to whether it's true...I have no idea."

Jesse looked me square in the eye and gave me a little smirk.

"It's true, honey."

All right, so there it was: pretty straight-forward confirmation of my Hollywood life from yet another medium, one who was completely unrelated to any other medium I had consulted with.

"OK, then. I guess it's true."

I then explained to Jesse that there was always a feeling in the way back of my mind that I had a daughter during the Hollywood life, but kept the daughter a secret for whatever reason. My 'feeling' mainly arose after I had read a book about Lombard entitled [title omitted], written by a woman named [name omitted] in 2008. The book is about how Carole Lombard secretly had a daughter when she was a teenager but gave it up to her aunt and uncle to raise before anybody other than a few close family members found out. According to [the author], the book is a "story of possibility" filled with content that is supposedly 95% non-fiction and 5% fiction/artistic liberty.

After I read the book, I was very intrigued by the story. I managed to get in touch with [the author] via email and she told me that - as far as I should be concerned - Carole didn't have any child; the plot-line of the illegitimate daughter was a figurative device she used to tell a compelling story. But [the author] also told me something really interesting that I can't repeat here because she wanted it off the record. Let's just say she had access to a 'source' that nobody else has ever had access to when it came to researching Carole's life. And this 'source' was an enormous influence in shaping her work of "fiction". In other words, there is no way to be certain that Carole Lombard ever had a child, but the "story of possibility" is certainly...well...possible.

Taking all of the above into consideration, you can probably see why Jesse's vision of a "secret daughter" lead me to seriously consider the possibility that Carole Lombard did, indeed, have an illegitimate child. I tried to get Jesse to provide more information about the daughter, but all she could say was that she saw the daughter "grown up" and she had my eyes. This was good news to me, because I was pretty sure that - if I did have a daughter in my current life - she wouldn't be very old yet. If anything, somebody may have been pregnant with my daughter (though I later checked with all recent partners and nobody was pregnant as far as they knew).

Anyway, Jesse eventually placed the whole secret-daughter-deal on the back burner and she started discussing my Hollywood life a little more. She said there was a lot of glamour and a lot of success and there were a lot of positive people around me much of the time.

"In fact, you weren't supposed to live your current life," she told me. "You were supposed to accomplish what you are doing now in the former life. But something went wrong. It was a choice you made...I don't know...things didn't unravel the way they were meant to unravel."

Needless to say, I was a little taken aback by what she was saying. "Come again? I wasn't supposed to live this life? That's a little weird to hear." But after a moment, I think I kind of understood what she was saying.

One possibility is that I died too early in the Lombard life (she died at age 33 in a plane crash). Maybe Jesse meant the crash wasn't supposed to happen. I heard that Carole's mother (who also died in the crash) warned Carole that she didn't have a good feeling about the flight and they should take a train instead. Maybe I made the wrong choice by boarding the plane despite my mother's warning. But, then again, how could you really say my death from a plane crash "wasn't meant to happen"? Just because I made a poor choice by boarding a doomed airplane I completely messed up my soul's path forever? I don't really know if that's something that can possibly happen. I mean, talk about the "butterfly effect".

But maybe Jesse was referring to my Poland life, which coincided with the Hollywood life, a phenomenon known as a "parallel existence" (read about this life HERE). In the Polish life, I was faced with a situation where I was essentially tricked - and then forced - into helping the Nazis massacre hundreds of Polish intellectuals. At a certain point during this experience, I was faced with a very tough decision: refuse to partake in the evil and die, or go along with it and live. Ultimately, I chose to go along with it (in fear of dying and being unable to support my nine children), but maybe I was "supposed" to die. Yes, maybe the Polish existence was supposed to end and the Lombard existence was supposed to go forward. But - for whatever reason - the Lombard existence had to be cut short because the Polish existence didn't unravel the way it was supposed to unravel. Maybe Lombard was destined to take her life in a completely different direction, but couldn't do it because of how things panned out in Poland.

I mean, one really has to wonder how two lives influence each other in the case of a parallel existence. Maybe what happens in one life simultaneously influences what happens in the other life. Maybe the Lombard life needed the Polish existence to end at a certain point so it could have more energy or rise to a higher spiritual level and do bigger and better things; but because that didn't happen it was better for Lombard's life to end abruptly and ultimately start up all over again in this current incarnation as Matt Burns (i.e. me). Maybe I am now where Lombard was supposed to be around 1942 when she died. Maybe she was supposed to be where I am now but couldn't be because of how the Polish existence panned out. Yes, I know this is probably confusing as hell for you right now. All I'm trying to do is raise some questions and explore some possibilities. I don't know if there is any truth to these theories.

The fact of the matter is that - according to the psychic Jesse - things didn't go according to plan in the past and I wasn't 'supposed' to live this current life as Matt Burns, but I AM living this life now and that's all I should really be concerned about. Jesse did add, however, that there was a "dark shadow" in my aura because of what went wrong in the past, and it was in my highest and best interest to get a spiritual cleansing before I moved forward with my life. She said this "dark shadow" had the potential of getting in the way of me connecting with positive people in the future. Positive people, she explained, can (subconsciously) sniff out people with negative energy in their auras and they'll keep their distance from them. In other words, the negative energy stuck in my aura could be very detrimental to me forming important relationships in both my professional and romantic life. If this sounds at all familiar, you may have read all about it in the popular book The Secret, which is all about the "law of attraction" (i.e. positive energy attracts positive energy and negative energy attracts negative energy).

Jesse said she had the ability to do a spiritual cleansing for me, but I told her I would sleep on it and get in touch with her later if I thought it was something I wanted to have her do. I actually already knew how to do some form of a cleansing and I wanted to avoid paying money for something I could conduct on my own. In fact, anybody out there has the ability to cleanse themselves if they want to - it's a good way to rid your aura of any negative energy, not just stuff that may have come from a past life. Basically, what you do is stand in front of your bathroom faucet, turn the faucet on with your left hand, let the water run and keep your hand gripped on the handle. Then, you hold a pendulum in your right hand and say the following words:

"I now ask that my high self and my helpers in the light please identify, disorganize and remove all energies within my aura that are not in my highest and best interest to have at this time."

In my case, I wanted to be a little more specific, so I added the following:

"Specifically remove all negative energies I have carried over from my past life in Hollywood and Poland."

If all goes right, the pendulum should start swinging clockwise and you basically just stand at the sink while you get cleared of all the negative energy. It may take several minutes - depending on how much energy is clearing - but you'll know that the process has completed when the pendulum stops swinging and comes to a complete stop. The theory behind this entire process is that all the negative energy from your energy field (i.e. aura) gets washed out of your field and down the drain, all the way into the bowels of the earth where it will no longer affect you. I know it all sounds wacky, but I personally find that I feel lighter and more positive after I do one of these cleanses. It's actually best to do it every couple of days so that any negative energy we pick up from the outside world doesn't accumulate and weigh us down.

But back to Jesse.

I left my "palm reading" on Friday feeling extremely overwhelmed. For one, I still wasn't sure about the mysterious daughter situation and I was still kind of freaking out that somebody was pregnant in my current life. Also, I was concerned about the 'dark shadow' that was in my aura...and whether I would ever get rid of it! And on top of everything else, I felt anxious about how Jesse said I needed to be in LA. Should I be there now? When should I go??? How am I going to make that work? Obviously I shouldn't just go to LA because Jesse said I needed to be there, but, hell, I KNOW I need to be there; I wasn't hearing anything I didn't know already.

As far as the daughter situation goes, right now I'm wondering why I even needed to know I had a secret, illegitimate daughter in the first place. I mean, I guess it's important to know, but it's not like I can try to find her and reunite with her...at least I don't think I can. First of all, it's very likely that the daughter is deceased already, though I suppose it's very possibly there is a granddaughter alive and possibly great-grandchildren. But I wouldn't even know where to start looking for them, and I think they would find me too weird anyway. I mean, what would I say to them? "Um, yes, my name is Matt Burns. I'm a 29-year-old man now, but I have reason to believe I am your grandmother from a past life." Yeah, that would really go over well.

I think the fact of the matter is that the past is the past and I can't really do much about it now. As the saying goes, you shouldn't look back unless you want to go that way. Hopefully a piece of my spirit is still with my daughter/grandchildren - watching over them - but that's as good as things can be right now. Perhaps, in the future, mankind will evolve to a point where we'll be able to reunite with our children from a past life without anybody finding it weird. But that time is not now. I can't really do much about the situation. At least I don't think I can.

Of course, I'll let you know if anything changes and whether there are any more developments in this story. Who knows what else could pop up from the Lombard life? Hopefully it's not any more bad stuff; I'm not sure I would be able to handle much more of that. I mean, to be honest with you, the whole illegitimate daughter thing gave me a feeling of sadness. I don't want to experience any more of those emotions if I don't have to. Then again, if experiencing these feelings is the only way to clear the darkness from my aura, then I guess I say bring it on.

My Past-Life in Hollywood (Update)

This is a brief update to my previous blog BEING CAROLE LOMBARD: MY PAST-LIFE IN HOLLYWOOD (read the blog here for the backstory).

When Donna Ciaciarella regressed me to my past life as an actress in Hollywood, she thoroughly described a costume I wore in a film I was shooting "that had to do with a period piece". She described the costume as being a "southern belle dress" (listen to the recording at the bottom of the page from a little before 2:00).

I consequently tried to find evidence of Lombard wearing this type of a costume, but I came up dry. I researched most of her movies - read what they were about - but none of them was something I would really consider a period piece, especially one that took place in the South.

As it turns out, however, I wasn't looking carefully enough. About a week ago, I started to watch one of the most important films Lombard ever made. It was the film that essentially made her a star. The movie was called Twentieth Century.

I was only about fifteen minutes into the 1934 film when I saw Lombard wearing a dress that gave me intense chills. The dress was almost exactly what Donna Ciaciarella described to me in her vision (see the movie poster above and the photo to the right). Now, Twentieth Century itself was not a period piece, but Lombard's character (Lily Garland) wore the dress for a play she was acting in. And the play WAS a period piece that took place in the Old South. Could Donna have been describing this play within the play? After all, Donna never said the film I was working on was a period piece; she said it "had to do with a period piece".

Of course, it's possible that there was another actress from the early twentieth century that wore a similar dress and may have starred in a period piece that took place in the South; but Donna's vision was almost exactly the same as what was going on in Twentieth Century. And when you factor in all the other evidence (that you can read about in my previous blog), I can now more confidently say that I had a past life as Carole Lombard in Hollywood.

Now, does this mean I am the reincarnation of Carole Lombard? No, I don't really feel comfortable saying that, seeing that I also had a parallel existence as a man in Poland around the same time period (read about the Poland life HERE). All I know is that my spirit, soul, consciousness, higher self - whatever you want to call it - previously incarnated itself as a woman named Carole Lombard. That's all I can say and I'm basically 99.9% sure now that this is true.

The entire mystery, however, is still not completely solved. As I described in my previous blog, Donna uncovered that I was raped in Hollywood by a man I was "madly in love with". Up until now, I assumed that I was raped during the time that I was filming the "period piece" and this is why Donna mentioned the movie in her vision. But my gut feeling seems to be telling me something different; right now, I don't believe I was raped during the time I was shooting Twentieth Century. And I don't think I was raped by anybody I was working with on the film. Lombard's costar (and legendary Hollywood bad-boy) John Barrymore briefly popped up as a suspect, but my intuition tells me he was a good guy and didn't do it.

To be honest, I think Donna described my part in Twentieth Century to me for reasons unrelated to the rape. In his book Regression: Past-Life Therapy for Here and Now Freedom, Dr. Samuel Sagan reminds people that past-life regression doesn't only uncover negative traumas, but sometimes positive trauma as well. Twentieth Century, after all, was known to be Carole Lombard's career-altering movie. It was the film that officially made her a big-time Hollywood movie star. Maybe the entire Twentieth Century experience was so positive that it left a good scar on my soul and this is what Donna was picking up on.

Anyway, the fact of the matter is that I don't think anybody associated with Twentieth Century raped me. But I do have a prime suspect in my head right now. I was reading some of Larry Swindell's biography on Lombard (Screwball: The Life of Carole Lombard) and I stumbled upon a few paragraphs describing a "fling" Lombard had with Howard Hughes when she was about twenty years old. Hughes was supposedly Carole's first crush. She was very much in love with him, but Hughes kept the whole affair very hush-hush and secretive, partly because he was also dating actress Billie Dove on the side. Lombard and Hughes saw each other for a while, but then Hughes called the whole thing off when he apparently lost interest in her. Carole didn't want to let him go. She told all her friends that she would get him back eventually. But she never did.

At the time of the affair, Swindell says that Lombard wasn't acting quite like herself while at work. She was actually fired from a Cecil B. DeMille movie she was working on (Dynamite) because she wasn't remembering any of her lines. According to Swindell, there was a "detectable vagueness about her that seemed contrary to the forthright, eagerly working Carole Lombard [colleagues] would later know and direct. It was the only case of her having been remiss in application." Was there something bothering Carole that made her 'vague' and 'remiss'? Was she just hurt when Hughes dumped her? Or was there something else bothering her???

What I'm getting at is that the "affair" between Lombard and Hughes sounded very similar to the situation Donna described to me in her vision. Donna said I was madly in love with whoever raped me. It was a teenage-like crush that I blew out of proportion. I had fantasies of marrying the man and living a fairy-tale-like life happily ever after. But the man had no romantic interest in me whatsoever. Donna described him as a "womanizer", which is exactly what Howard Hughes was known to be.

On top of all these similarities, I couldn't help but remember my eerie experience at a metaphysical bookstore called "The Enchanted Fox", when a medium working there (named Rose) said she saw an image of Howard Hughes when she looked at me. We were both confused as to why she was seeing Hughes, but could it have been because he raped me in my past life? This is all too possible, but I don't have any evidence to support anything. I am currently in the process of trying to get a medium to corroborate my suspicions, but I haven't had much luck yet. I also asked my friend Jan to dowse for me, but she wasn't able to get any answers for some reason. Maybe I'm not meant to get any answers. Maybe I'm just completely out of my mind. It's very possible, I suppose.

But, yes, right now Howard Hughes is the number-one suspect. I feel in my bones that it was him, but I can't go pointing fingers unless I have some sort of confirmation from a source outside of myself (which, I suppose, has to come in the form of a medium). Of course, Hughes is long dead (he died in 1976), so it's not like I would be able to press any charges or anything. But it would still be nice to attain some closure in regards to the situation.

I will, of course, keep you updated if there are any more developments in this mystery. If you have any information that can help me out (either from the real or spirit world) please let me know. I'll take anything I can get. Thank you.


Here is the actual recording of my regression session with Donna Ciaciarella. You can listen to the other recordings at my previous Carole Lombard blog (click HERE) or at my Youtube page (click HERE).

How "ill" is Charlie Sheen?

It's late right now, but I just wanted to write this quick blurb about the Charlie Sheen situation. I was going to post it as a Facebook status, but it was too long, so I will do it as a blog. The following is what I was going to post as my status:

"It's a breath of fresh air to finally have a celebrity not being politically correct, not full of BS, not purposely being humble and modest, not playing it safe in order to maintain a stable career. Part of me wants to celebrate Sheen for being a true, ballsy American but it would be naive to ignore the fact that he probably has some mental issues as well. Or maybe we're so used to lies that we've come to interpret sheer honesty as a mental disorder. It's something to think about...."

That's my thought of the day. Good night.