Month: April 2009

  • WCFQ 45b: Freedom to Dream

    What is the American Dream?
    WondersCafe

    Though many would seem to think that the American Dream is all about money and its acquisition, the original American dream as documented in the Declaration of Independence was “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,” and before America coalesced into a nation to fight the tyranny of the English empire, the American dream was simply freedom.

    Even today, people come to America in search of freedom, and people of America continue to fight for the freedom to think and believe what they will. Though some may insist that America is a Christian nation, that is just not so. The word Christianity does not appear anywhere in the Declaration or Amendments, but the separation of Church and State is made quite clear despite what many of our current leaders may believe about the public offices they fill. Freedom of religion is something everyone in America has the right to and this is the true American dream, to follow your beliefs without the intervention of people who think they know better.

    America is and perhaps always will be a work in progress. Let us not forget how the Christian settlers tried to wipe out the Native way of life, calling them savages and stealing their children to be indoctrinated into Christian culture through “schools” where they were not permitted to speak their own language or discuss their birth religions. Entire generations were made to feel ignorant and subhuman. There’s a reason substance abuse is so high among the Native population, and it’s not a genetic predisposition. Native Americans are still fighting prejudice today with court cases like the one concerning sacred mountains in the hands of developers who want to use waste water to make snow for a resort. Really, how disrespectful and materialistic can people be? Bad enough they won’t give the Native Americans back their sacred lands, but then they practically want to pee all over it too. What is that…. a way of marking their territory?

    Many other groups are also still fighting for their freedom and respect in American… Pagans, homosexuals, immigrants… American ideology has gotten just about as far as it possibly could from the dreams of our forefathers, even if some of those forefathers were hypocritical enough to endorse slavery and the genocide of the aboriginal peoples of America.

    Not to mention the freedoms which were taken away from the American people during the so-called “war on terror.” It was practically a return to Nixonian politics and the “red menace”… wiretaps and neighbors listening for the whispered T-word. The Bush Jr terms in office were practically a satire of the movie Canadian Bacon, if you can satire a satire with reality… But the most ironically prophetic quote from the movie:
    Secretary of State: We were thinking, what could be a bigger threat than aliens invading from space?
    General Panzer: Ooh boy! Scare the shit out of everyone. Even me, sir!
    U.S. President: Jesus, is this the best you could come up with? What about, ya know, international terrorism?
    General Panzer: Well, sir, we’re not going to re-open missile factories just to fight some creeps running around in exploding rental cars, are we, sir?
    April 30th

    This is the third day of Floralia.

    The festival of Acca Larentia or Laurentia was held today. Like Ceres, Teilus, Flora and others, Acca Laurentia symbolized the fertility of the earth, in particular the city lands and their crops. Acca Larentia is also identified with Larentina, Mana Genita, and Muta.

    It is difficult to determine exactly who she was. According to some, she was the wife of the shepherd Faustulus, and the adoptive mother of Romulus and Remus. She is therefore identified with the Dea Dia. Another tradition holds that Larentia was a beautiful girl during the reign of Ancus Marcius in the 7th century BC. She was awarded to Hercules as a prize in a game of dice and was locked in his temple with his other prize, a feast. When he no longer had need of her, he advised her to marry the first wealthy man she met, who turned out to be an Etruscan named Carutius or Tarrutius. After his death, she inherited all his property and bequeathed it to the Roman people. Thus she was allowed to be buried in the Velabrum and an annual festival was instituted in her honor, at which sacrifices were offered to the Lares. Yet another tradition ties her origins to Romulus and Remus again, stating that she was the prostitute “Lupa,” who left the fortune she amassed through sex work to the Roman people. Whatever her origins, it seems clear that she was of Etruscan origin and connected with the worship of the Lares, from which her name may or may not be derived. This relation is also apparent in the number of her sons, which corresponds to that of the twelve “country Lares.”

    This is Oidhche Bhealtaine, Bealtaine Eve, May Eve, Walpurgis Night, or Cernunnos Dydd (Day of Cernunnos).

    In 1990, the Brocken, the German witches’ holy mountain, was reclaimed by women’s groups.

    May Eve is celebrated as the festival of the dead in Portugal and Spain.

    Alexander Sanders, the ‘King of the Witches’ as he became known, was responsible for founding the Alexandrian Tradition of Wicca. He died on May eve in 1988.



  • WCFQ 45c: It’s a dirty bird

    What is the one invention you wish never existed?
    CaKaLusa

    There are so many things I could choose for this question… DDT, the internal combustion engine, preservatives, hair spray, Styrofoam, organized religion, genetic manipulation… but I’ll go with the big one most people would choose… I wish Einstein had never invented the splitting of the atom in all its terrible permutations. No nuclear energy and no atom bomb.

    Though some people might argue that nuclear fission has done a lot of great things for people, from preventing wars through the existence of the theory of mutual annihilation to nuclear power plants which provide energy as well as employment for thousands (millions?), it is only because most people think in the short term, rather than taking the long view of the ultimate ill that nuclear power does to the environment and mental health.

    When I was small, I sincerely thought that the world would be blown up by Reagan… so why bother learning what they had to teach me in school? I haunted the libraries and collected books on plants and wilderness survival. You know… the important stuff. I became a preserver of lost lore before the lore could be lost. I filled my head and my shelves with books that might save lives if I was not one of the fortunate ones who died in the initial fiery holocaust of WWIII. Every president after Reagan (with the exception of Clinton), only served to cement my belief that the world would end, thanks to short sighted men and religious zealots. I still think if we and our world are doomed, it will be by our own hands, not some indifferent patriarchal deity of a faith I don’t follow. Oh yeah, republicans scare me.

    Beyond my fear of imminent nuclear destruction, the slow poisoning of our environment through our dependence on nuclear energy is also an issue that weighs heavily on my mind. I’m not sure what the turn around rate is on nuclear waste, how often it is exchanged and the waste buried, but I do know that it takes thousands of years for the waste to be safe. Regardless, it is buried in inadequate storage around the country where it may leak into ground water due to the poor state of the concrete bunkers in which it is squirreled away like toxic acorns. And to think, there are people who want to build more nuclear power plants. We need more wind farms beside highways and solar panels on every new building, and I don’t know… mini hydro-electric dams in all the drains… not more toxins in our environment!

    All inventions which create waste should be designed in such a way as to have a use for the waste. Every lamp/light fixture should be equipped with a panel to absorb some of that radiance back as energy. Every washer/dryer should come equipped to reabsorb some of the kinetic/heat energy expended. I think you can see where I’m going here. Living in a “throw away” society is bad enough, but throwing away energy is just ignorant. And expecting Mother Nature to clean up all our messes is not only short sighted, it’s irresponsible.

    It’s a dirty bird that fowls it’s own nest.
    April 29th

    This is the second day of Floralia.

    On Pagan Tree Day, plant a tree dedicated to your favorite god/dess.




  • Writers Choice Featured Questions: Week 45

    Hey all, I’m back and here are some questions for you.
    (Better late than never, eh?)

    five questions for this week

    How do you define “Wealth”?
    redletra

    What is the American Dream?
    WondersCafe

    What is the one invention you wish never existed?
    CaKaLusa

    What career would you pursue if money (salary wise and/or education spending, for example) was not an issue?
    litoxshortaii

    If you could take part in any one event in history, what would it be?
    Xena_Woman_12

    Answer any one or all of these questions in the coming week. I try to mix the whimsical with the serious here, so hopefully there is at least one question here for everyone.
    April 28th

    Six days of government sanctioned debauchery began today with the Roman festival of Floralia. Originally a feast motivated by the condition of crops and flowers, it is thought to have been created by command of the Sibylline oracle in 238 BCE. Games were instituted in honor of Flora at that time, but were soon discontinued. They were restored in 173 BCE by the consuls L Postumius Albinus and M Popilius Laenas after storms had destroyed the crops and vines.

    Flora, originally a Sabine goddess of spring, flowers, and youth, was offered prayers for the ripe fruits of fields and trees. Her husband is Zephyrus, the west wind, and she is the twin sister of Faunus, the god of wild creatures. In later times, she was identified with the Greek goddess Chloris. A temple was built for her at the Circus Maxima between the Aventine and the Palatine hills, and there was a shrine at the Quirinal where stalks of grain were offered.

    Men decorated themselves, their animals, and the city with flowers, especially roses. Women put aside their usual clothes and wore festive dresses. The scene was one of unrestrained merriment. Beans and other seeds were planted, representing fecundity. Offerings of milk and honey were made on this day and the surrounding five days, which comprise the Florifertum. Goats and hares were let loose as they represented fertility. Gift-giving for the season included small vegetables as tokens of sex and fertility.

    The first five days of the games were theatrical performances. Day and night there were games (ludi Florales), pantomimes, theater and stripteases with people of all classes in their brightest clothes. The courtesans and prostitutes of Rome regarded the day as their own, performing naked in the theater and possibly fought in the gladiatorial arena.


    When Augustus became Pontifex Maximus, he built a chapel to Vesta in his own house on the Palatine, and dedicated it on this day, which was made a public holiday.



  • An extended leave of absence

    I will likely lose my connection at any minute (for the umpteenth time), so I’ll make this short. I’m having computer issues, so I won’t be updating probably for the rest of the week. Sorry about that. I’m just tired of rebooting my computer every ten minutes in order to get five minutes of work done before it crashes again. So, my machine will be making an emergency trip to the computer hospital (or it will soon by flying out the window, I haven’t yet decided).

    I did manage to post the final (supersized page) of chapter five of my webnovel. The whole chapter ran over 40,000 words if you can believe it. The last page is about 3800. So while you’re waiting for me to return, feel free to go read through any pages you may have missed, and make a donation to get my computer fixed (or replaced) if you are so inclined. And if I’m not back by the time you’re done, feel free to check out some of the links on my webnovel.

    Have fun reading!

  • Death Triva (No, I’m not Suicidal, but my computer seems to be)

    Because I am feeling slightly morbid today, possibly due to the frequent crashes of my OS, I have prepared for you this collection of death related trivia. Enjoy!

    (PS, if this keeps up, I may not be able to post for a while… This post would have been made in two installments if my computer had cooperated yesterday, so sorry for the length.)

    • Each year, more people are killed by teddy bears than by grizzly bears.
    • A death erection (sometimes referred to as “angel lust”) is a post-mortem erection which occurs when a male individual dies vertically or face-down with the cadaver remaining in this position. If an individual dies vertically such as in a hanging, the blood will settle in the legs and pool at the feet. The blood which remains in the torso attempts to move to a lower position due to gravity, and the blood in the waist (which cannot move down due to the legs being full) causes the penis, consisting of erectile tissue, to fill with blood and expand.
    • The practice of burying the dead may date back 350,000 years, as evidenced by a 45-foot-deep pit in Atapuerca, Spain, filled with the fossils of 27 hominids of the species Homo heidelbergensis, a possible ancestor of both Neanderthals and modern humans.
    • There are at least 200 euphemisms for death, including “to be in Abraham’s bosom,” “just add maggots,“ and “sleep with the Tribbles.”
    • No American has died of old age since 1951.That was the year the government eliminated that classification on death certificates.
    • Within three days of death, the enzymes that once digested your dinner begin to digest you.
    • Burials in America deposit 827,060 gallons of embalming fluid—formaldehyde, methanol, and ethanol—into the soil each year. Cremation pumps dioxins, hydrochloric acid, sulfur dioxide, and carbon dioxide into the air. So much for a “green” burial.
    • Queen Victoria insisted on being buried with the bathrobe of her long-dead husband, Prince Albert, and a plaster cast of his hand.
    • In Madagascar, families dig up the bones of dead relatives and parade them around the village in a ceremony called famadihana. The remains are then wrapped in a new shroud and reburied. The old shroud is given to a childless couple in order to conceive.
    • During a railway expansion in Egypt in the 19th century, construction companies unearthed so many mummies that they used them as fuel for locomotives.
    • In 19th-century Europe there was so much anecdotal evidence that living people were mistakenly declared dead that cadavers were laid out in “hospitals for the dead” where  attendants awaited signs of putrefaction.
    • Eighty percent of people in the United States die in a hospital.
    • More people commit suicide in New York City than are murdered.
    • It is estimated that 100 billion people have died since humans came into being.
    • On average, right-handed people live 9 years longer than their left-handed counterparts.
    • A murder is committed in the US every 23 minutes, which makes about 22852 murders each year.
    • On average, people fear spiders more than they do dying. However, you are statistically more likely to be killed by a champagne cork than by a poisonous spider.
    • Cockroaches can live for nine days without their heads, at which point they die of starvation.
    • In Erwin, Tennessee an elephant was once hanged for murder.
    • After being decapitated, the average person remains conscious for an additional 15-20 seconds.
    • Mourning your dear departed cat? The ancient Egyptians used to shave their eyebrows to show the depth of their mourning.
    • An old wives’ tale claims that if a woman is buried wearing the color black, she’ll come back to haunt the family.
    • The burial wreath was designed more to encircle the spirit of the dead person, thereby preventing them from returning from the grave, than to look pretty.
    • In 1931, Henry Ford decided to preserve his friend, Thomas Edison’s last dying breath. He kept it in a bottle.
    • When Pyrenees beekeepers die, someone has to go around and splash every single one of their bees with black ink.
    • An old superstition stated that if the doors in the house were locked, the soul of a dying person couldn’t get out.


    There may not be thousands of ways
    we deal with the dead, but…


    Wealthier Vikings were placed in ships filled with food, jewels, weapons, food and even sometimes servants or animals for their comfort in the afterlife. The boats were interred in the ground, set alight, or sent out to sea.

    In contrast to western funerals, cremation ceremonies among the Hindus of Bali are quite festive. Carnival-like floats parade down local streets accompanying the body to a charnel ground, where it is transferred into a ceremonial bull receptacle and set alight.

    Reserved for members of the upper classes, mummification in Egypt involved the removal of all organs including the brain, which was pulled through the nose by a hook. The brain was discarded, but many of the organs were preserved in canopic jars. The body was dehydrated with natural salts and stuffed with dry materials like sawdust before being wrapped in linens.

    Tibetan Buddhist Sky Burial is a form of exposure practiced in Tibet. Tibetans call the practice jhator, which means giving alms to the birds, and they’ve been doing sky burial since at least the 12th century, according to the Tibetan Book Of The Dead. The bodies, wrapped in white cloth, are bought to the burial site. The monks unwrap the bodies and using an axe, proceed to dismember them to assist the birds in their meal. When the body is dismembered, the vultures swoop in and squabble over the pieces. When all the flesh is gone, the bones are smashed to bits with mallets, mixed with flour and other ingredients, and fed to smaller birds.

    Indigenous tribes in many parts of the world determined that the best way to dispose of the dead was to put them in elevated areas. Groups in Australia, British Columbia, the American southwest and Siberia were known to practice tree burial, which involved wrapping the body in a shroud or cloth and placing it in the crook of a tree to decompose. Exposure on raised platforms was another common practice. In Australia, there are two main burial stages. First the corpse is left on a raised platform and covered with leaves and branches until the flesh has rotted away (a process which can take months). When nothing but bones are left, they are taken from the platform and painted with red ochre. The bones are either placed in a cave until they become dust or inside a hollowed out log. In some cases, they are carried around by relatives for up to a year. This is sometimes followed by total destruction or abandonment of the deceased’s property, and for a time no one is allowed to say the name of the deceased.

    Zoroastrians believe the body is impure and shouldn’t pollute the earth after death through burial or cremation. The deceased are brought to a ceremonial “tower of silence”, usually located on an elevated mountain plateau, and left exposed to the animals and elements. When the bones have been dried and bleached by the sun, they are gathered and dissolved in lime.

    Among some cultures, it was possible to start your funeral arrangements before death, though sometimes it was involuntary. Self-immolation (or Suttee) was a traditional Hindu ritual practiced in India, whereby a grieving widow would voluntarily (or not so voluntarily) lie beside her husband on his funeral pyre. Thankfully, this practice was outlawed by the occupying British in 1829, and again in 1956, and yet again in 1981. Third time’s the charm?

    Buddhist Self Mummification was practiced until the late 1800s in Japan, but has been outlawed since the early 1900s. For the first 1000 days, they would change their diet to just nuts and seeds to reduce body fat. Then the priests would eat only a small amount of bark and roots from pine trees, for another 1,000 days to reduce water in the body. Finally, they’d drink a special tea made from the (Poisonous!) sap of an urushi tree, causing explosive diarrhea and vomiting but having the added benefit of lining the guts against maggots. At the end of this 2000 day ritual, the priest was sealed into a small, stone room just big enough to sit in the lotus position. If the priest had successfully mummified himself, he would be revered as a Buddha.

    You can purchase your own space burial, though the cost depends on just how far out into space you want to end up. You can have your ashes sent into low orbit for a while for as low as $695, but getting a spot on a deep space Gemini Module can run up to $60,000. The first space burial was performed in 1997, from an aircraft carrying a modified Pegasus rocket and contained the ashes of twenty-two people (including Timothy Leary and Gene Roddenberry). Sadly it re-entered the atmosphere in 2002. This form of “burial” has become a symbolic gesture for the deceased who had an interest or career in space. In Timothy Leary’s case, he actually requested it. Of course, if you can’t quite afford a burial among the stars, you can always have your loved one’s ashes turned into fireworks with a company called Angels Flight!

    You can also now send your corpse on a tour of museums with plastination. Developed by German scientist Gunther von Hagens, his popular “Body Worlds” exhibits showcase the controversial preservation technique, which involves dissecting the body into bits, embalming it with a hardening fluid and posing the body in various ‘educational’ positions. Personally, while I’d prefer some permanence in my mode of “burial,” I’d like something a little less grotesque. There are now companies which will convert your ashes into a diamond (LifeGems), or a company in Georgia (Eternal Reefs, Inc) which will mix your loved one’s ashes with concrete to help restore reefs. Want something a little closer to home and less expensive than diamonds, Memory Glass is a cremation keepsake company that suspends your loved one’s ashes in a solid glass globe or pendant. The globes require very little of the ashes, so it’s possible to have several of these made, allowing each family member their own unique memorial. Another company, Art in Ashes, will take a teaspoon of cremation ashes and mix it into paint, using the paint to create one-of-a-kind artwork to memorialize your loved one.

    Finally, though the story of Walt Disney’s quest for immortality through cryogenics was an urban legend, cryonic science is a reality. It is currently only legal to perform on those who have actually been pronounced dead. Participants are stored in a liquid nitrogen solution to prevent decay until a  time when death becomes a reversible phenomenon. However, I’ve heard nitrogen damages the cells, so resurrection is pretty unlikely unless they also manage to repair the damaged DNA.

    Of course, for a completely biodegradable burial, a Swedish company called Promessa will freeze-dry your body in liquid nitrogen, pulverize it with high-frequency vibrations, and seal the powder in a cornstarch coffin. They claim this “ecological burial” will decompose in 6 to 12 months.




    April 16th
    (yesterday)

    This is the fifth day of the Cerealia.


    The god Apollo was worshiped by his faithful cult in ancient Greece during an annual festival called the Hiketeria.


    On this date in the year 1946, Pagan author Margot Adler was born in Little Rock Arkansas. Her Wiccan handfasting on June 19, 1988, was the first Neo-Pagan Wedding to appear in the New York Times’ society pages.


    It was customary to begin weeding the crops today.


    The 2nd day of Payni is a Holiday of Ra and His Shemsu (followers).
    April 17th
    (today)

    This is the sixth day of the Cerealia.


    Dedicated to Machendrana, the ancient and powerful Indian God of rain, an annual religious event called the Chariot Festival of the Rain God is held in the Himalayan kingdom of Nepal. Beginning today, the festival continues for approximately eight consecutive weeks.



  • WCFQ 44b: Helping People… helping the future

    Is saving the environment,
    or helping other people more important?
    guildelf9

    To me, saving the environment is helping other people. No one can live without an environment. If we destroy it, everyone will need help. Though the environment may not be in imminent jeopardy for our generation, our indifference to the downward trend we can see in environmental events like the destruction of the ice caps, the spread of tropical zones and corresponding insect-spread illnesses, even the socio-economic plague that is the epic-fail of oil and gasoline production and usage, all impact as much on human life as they do life on this planet. It’s the next generation which is in jeopardy and for which we need to sacrifice our pleasures now so that they have a future worth speaking of.

    I tend to take the far view in most decisions. It’s not so much how will this affect me tomorrow (which is still important), but how will this affect everyone next year (or in thirty years or a hundred). Granted, my personal decisions are not likely to have far reaching ramifications for the next generation, but every little bit helps. If everyone recycled as much as possible, instead of just assuming that someone else will do it so they don’t have to, then the future would at least have a bit more hope in its pocket. But the majority of people can barely be bothered to pick up their own litter if they happen to drop something or have no ready receptacle for it, let alone pause long enough to pick up a bit of trash blowing in the wind and dispose of it properly. It’s really this lack of concern for things which do not immediately affect us which is destroying our environment and a reasonably comfortable future for generations after us. What do we care after all, if four or five generations down the road, uncontaminated food, water, and even air become high priced commodities. We’ll all be dead by then so it hardly impacts us, does it?

    So how is helping the environment not helping people? It’s just taking the long view in what people need, what our species will need, at a later time. Really, the only people that can make this decision are the people living now. The people of tomorrow can’t come back in time and say, hey, look guys, we’re really going to need fresh water to drink and food uncontaminated by oil based pollutants. Oh, and you know… we kind of need oxygen so could you take steps not to kill the ocean while you’re at it? kthanxbai!

    (But if they all talk in lolspeak in the future, they deserve what they get!)
    April 15th

    This is the fourth day of the Cerealia.



    A feast was organized by the Vestal Virgins in honor of Tellus Mater, an Italian Earth-mother, to insure plenty during the year. To ensure a productive year and the continued health of the world, farmers sacrificed a pregnant cow and cremated the unborn calf. Tellus is the matron goddess of all environmentalists.



    This is the New Year in Bangladesh.



    The Festival of the Iron Phallus, Kanamara Matsuri, is celebrated annually in Kawasaki City, Japan. The ancient Japanese deities associated with sexuality and human reproduction give their sacred blessings and encouragement, especially to couples who wed late in life or to men who suffer from declining potency. Originally the shrine existed to honor the gods of iron, but historically, the area was also the site of lots of brothels. The workers used the temple to pray not to get syphilis and from that this festival started.



    The Pi-Puppids meteor shower begins today and ends on the twenty-eighth, peaking on the twenty-third. This is a relatively young stream, only been detected since 1972, and produced by the Comet P/Grigg-Skjellerup. It is best viewed from the southern hemisphere.



    The first day of Payni is a Festival of Horus and also for Bast.




  • Tag-ology

    Tag, I’m it… from wild_ireland_rose
    Did I tag you? That means you’re it now. Go, spread the love.

    ***********FOOD-OLOGY***********

    What is your salad dressing of choice?
    I prefer Russian usually, but if it’s not available, as it’s not at most restaurants, or we run out, I’ll use French or Thousand Island dressing. Funny I don’t use as much though as I did when I was a kid. I used to drown my salad in dressing, now I use just enough to tinge the foliage. I do like dipping raw broccoli in Ranch dressing… though I really shouldn’t since Ranch dressing gives me hives.

    What is your favorite sit-down restaurant?
    I don’t really have one since I rarely go out, but I guess it would be Red Lobster simply because it’s where we go every year for my birthday (because my mother is a tremendous lobster-junkie).

    What food could you eat for 2 weeks straight and not get sick of?
    Mmmmm, pizza. I really love pizza, cold or warm. Nothing fancy, just cheese, sauce, and dough. Yum.

    What are your pizza toppings of choice?
    Cheese and maybe a little extra sauce if it’s good sauce. The sauce really does make the pizza, though the quality of cheese is an important factor as well. I make this homemade pizza that my mother calls my lasagna pizza because I put five different cheeses on it: feta, colby-jack, mozzarella, munster, and havarti (and gruyere when I have it, mostly too expensive).

    What do you like to put on your toast?
    Honey, but usually only when I’m sick.

    ***********TECHNOLOGY***********


    How many television sets are in your house?
    Three, but I only use the one in my room, and that’s sporadically. Sometimes I just leave it on for background noise, but I hardly ever watch tv any more aside from rented movies.

    What color cell phone do you have?
    Gray

    ***********BIOLOGY***********


    Are you right-handed or left-handed?
    Ambidextrous actually. I write better with my write hand, but I do just about everything else the same or better with my left.

    Have you ever had anything removed from your body?
    Um… hair? Nail clippings? Can’t think of anything unless the aliens have been dissecting me in my sleep, but then I think I’d have to worry more about what they put in me than what they may have taken out. lol

    What is the last heavy item you lifted?
    Um… Books? Just about every day. I do work in a bookstore, so I often carry armloads of books stacked up to my chin to their respective locations. People would be surprised how labor intensive working in a bookstore is.

    Have you ever been knocked unconscious?
    When I was a kid, I was in a sledding accident and got knocked out on landing. I woke up when the paramedics put me on the gurney-sled thing to get me in the ambulance, but lost consciousness again almost immediately and didn’t regain consciousness until I was at the hospital. It was really embarrassing actually. All I could think of was whether I had on clean underwear or not and the fact that my hair was all knotty from my hat and scarf.

    ***********BALONEYOLOGY***********


    If it were possible, would you want to know the day you were going to die?
    I don’t know. On the one hand, it would take all the fun out of living. On the other hand, it would probably give me a push to achieve more before the end. I mean, nothing’s sadder than being a day away from reaching your goals and dying. It’s like coming in second in a race of one.

    If you could change your name, what would you change it to?
    Could I change it to a symbol like Prince? lol I don’t know. I used to hate my name. Now I don’t care too much about it.

    Would you drink an entire bottle of hot sauce for $1000?
    I guess so? Not a big fan of the spicy, but I’d probably do it for $1000. It’s not like it’s a decision that infringes upon my morals in any way. I’d probably try to haggle it up to $5000 though. Just because.

    ***********DUMBOLOGY***********


    How many pairs of flip flops do you own?
    None! I have a pair of sandals, but no flipflops.

    Last time you had a run-in with the cops?
    I never had what could be called a run in, but the last time I had to talk to the cops was when that idiot hit my car over the holiday at the mall.

    Last person you talked to?
    My mom, if you mean the last person I spoke to. As for actual conversation, that’d be one of my coworkers I guess. 

    Last person you hugged?
    My mom.

    ***********FAVORITOLOGY***********

    Season?
    Autumn

    Holiday?
    Samhain (Halloween)

    Day of the week?
    Thursday

    Month?
    March

    ***********CURRENTOLOGY***********


    Missing someone?
    Nope

    Mood?
    Is tired a mood? Mmmm, frustrated mostly. Wishing for a change. Tired of “working for the man.” I could go off on the video they made us watch at work today and how our new CEO must have gone to the George Bush School of acting with all his hand gestures, but I’ll be good and not blog about work….

    What are you listening to?
    Voltaire

    Watching?
    Nothing ATM

    Worrying about?
    Ever managing to open my own business and get out from under the thumbs of my corporate masters.

    ***********RANDOMOLOGY***********


    First place you went to this morning?
    Um… bathroom? Or do you mean outside the house… that’d be work.

    What’s the last movie you saw?
    In a theater, Watchmen. On tv, I just bought a DVD called Sundown which is an old comedic/horror/western with Bruce Campbell and David Carridine.

    Do you smile often?
    Depends upon the circumstances. Lately, with work and other issues, I have not had much reason to smile aside from when I’m making fun of the powers that be.

    ***********QUESTIONS***********


    1) Do you always answer your phone?
    Actually, I hardly ever turn it on. It’s my mom’s old phone and I didn’t want it in the first place. Supposedly I should have it if I ever have an emergency, so I never turn it on because I never have an emergency. My mom gets annoyed with me because she leaves messages on my phone that I never hear until after she tells me she left me a message.

    2) It’s four in the morning and you get a text message, who is it?
    Couldn’t say. If I got a text message, I’d be a little weirded out… first of all, I never turn my phone on and secondly, texting is disabled on my phone. If I got a text message at four in the morning, I might consider doing an exorcism on my phone. lol

    3) If you could change your eye color what would it be?
    Well, my eyes are gray now and I like them the way they are, but if I could change them… I’d probably go with some unique shade. I saw a girl with orange eyes once… technically I suppose they were brown, but they were so light they looked orange.

    4) What flavor do you add to your drink at Sonic?
    I’ve never been to a Sonic, but mint I guess.

    5) Do you own a digital camera?
    Yeah, I guess. I rarely use it though.

    6) Have you ever had a pet fish?
    Yeah, a couple times in my life. Betas and Japanese fighting fish, angelfish, catfish, snails, fresh water sharks. When I was a kid, we had a huge oscar and giant carp. I’ve also had frogs, lizards, turtles….

    7) Favorite Christmas song?
    Greensleaves? Not a big Christmas person… um, The Snow-miser/Heat-miser song?

    8) What’s on your wish list for your birthday?
    My birthday’s past. I don’t have anything in mind yet for next year.

    9) Can you do push ups?
    Yes

    10) Can you do a chin up?
    No, not that I’ve tried or have any place where I could try… I just don’t think I can.

    11) Does the future make you more nervous or excited?
    A little bit of both, but mostly nervous. It’s hard to feel excited about something which is seemingly completely out of my control.

    12) Do you have any saved texts?
    I’m assuming this question refers to phone messages, but I’ll reinterpret it to mean online texts of books, and the answer would be yes.

    13) Ever been in a car wreck?
    Yes, more than once.

    14) Do you have an accent?
    Everyone has an accent to people from other places. People from the South would say I have a Northern accent, while I would say they have a Southern one. Beyond that, I can do a couple accents. I do a great Orbitz gum commercial impression. lol

    15) What is the last song to make you cry?
    I always cry for Deathcab for Cutie- I Will Follow You Into the Dark

    16) Plans tonight?
    Reading

    17) Have you ever felt like you hit rock bottom?
    Only once, so I know how it feels and it doesn’t break me. It just pi$$e$ me off.

    18) Name 3 things you bought in the last week?
    The Mabinogion, boboli pizza crusts, glasses for my mother to give to my sister for my nephew for mothers day….

    19) Have you ever been given roses?
    My mother got me yellow roses when I graduated college.

    20) Current worry?
    That my corporate overlords will drag out closing the store until next year. Because I know they’re going to do it. It’s just a matter of time, but the stress of having to deal with their increasingly stupid decisions is very wearing.

    21) Current hate right now?
    Well, I’ll always hate ignorance in all its permutations, but currently my biggest hate is the continued senseless “war on terror” and the “war on drugs.” Both seem to be a waste of time and cause needless suffering.

    22) Met someone who changed your life?
    No… though who knows? I might have been a completely different person if not for the way I was treated in school, so my life could have changed several times now and I wouldn’t know it, not being aware of how my life would have been different if it had not changed.

    23) How did you bring in the New Year?
    My tradition is to sleep through it. I’m not much of a party person.

    24) What song represents you?
    The Beatles- Blackbird or Queen- Pressure
    April 14th

    This is the third day of the Cerealia.

    This is the third day of the Japanese Kamo-Tama-Yori-Hime festival.

    According to the Norse calendar, Sommersblot welcomes the summer half of the year.



    According to superstitious belief, the fourteenth day of April is a very unlucky time for travel, especially by ship. (It was on this date in the year 1912 that the ocean liner Titanic collided with an iceberg and sank to the bottom of the sea.) Whether the Titanic tragedy spawned the superstition or merely served to reinforce it is unknown.

    Maryamma (or Mariamne), the Hindu goddess of the sea, is honored in India with an annual festival.

    On the 30th day of Pachons, Celebrations were held in the House of Ra, Osiris and Horus.



  • WCFQ 44e: Immigration, what’s the BFD?

    Do you think that Mexicans
    coming over here is ok???
    miley211

    In all honesty, I think the idea of borders should be retired. Is it ok for the Mexicans to come “over here?” It may not be the most popular response, but I don’t see the problem with immigration. I think now that it has been established that humans, everywhere, are all human together, and there is no difference between us aside from culture, the concepts of country, borders, and immigration are outmoded. Belonging to a country is no different than belonging to a particular political party, and in some instances, a lot easier to change!

    People complain that immigrants “take our jobs,” but with the invention of outsourcing, most of our jobs don’t even exist in America any more. The next time you get a call from a telemarketter, check the accent. Most telemarketters seem to be from India these days. So when people immigrate to America and “take our jobs,” what job are they taking exactly? For the most part, immigrant workers do the crap jobs no one else wants… the menial jobs and the labor intensive ones. Just like the outsourced telemarketing jobs. Do you want these jobs? I don’t. I feel sorry for immigrant workers most of the time because of the crap jobs they “steal” from “hard working” Americans.

    Borders and anti-immigration laws only serve to isolate us and create artifical problems. The sooner we stop treating anyone who is different as an outsider, the sooner we can begin to embrace each other for our enriching cultural differences. Being human should be the most important part of existing, but all this cultural discrimination only serves to distract us from finding out exactly what that means.




    April 13th

    This is the second day of the Cerealia.



    Thailand’s Buddhists welcome the New Year for three days with ceremonies of cleansing. Statues of the Buddha are ritually bathed and people throw water at each other to wash away the old year’s evils.



    The Spring festival of Libertas, the Roman goddess of liberty, was held today. Libertas commemorated the creation of the Atrium Libertatis, the temple of the goddess Liberty.



    This is the second day of the Japanese Kamo-Tama-Yori-Hime festival. The two nigi-mitama are taken from the haiden of the two main shrines and placed in two other mikoshi. The four mikoshi are then brought into the haiden of another shrine, the Obuyu-jinja. They are placed in separate compartments on a platform and decorated with flowers, fruit, mirrors, paint-brushes and ‘anything that may amuse a child’. Children offer artificial flowers. At 4 pm, they are offered tea, and at 9 pm, about a hundred men come to shake the four mikoshi violently for one and a half hours (symbolic of rigors of child-birth), while a ritual dance (shishimai) is performed for their benefit. They are thrown from the platform (representing the actual child-birth) and each mikoshi is taken back to its own shrine. The child-kami that was born is called Kamo-wakaikozuchi-no-kami.



  • Writers Choice Featured Questions Week 44

    five questions for this week

    unfeatured questions stolen from the featured question chatboard, dated from November of 2007
    What’s your opinion on the death penalty?
    flipnautick

    Is saving the environment, or helping other people more important?
    guildelf9

    If the internet never existed and thus you couldn’t blog on xanga, what would you doing with the time you spent on here?
    PreciousOnyx

    Do you think we would have morality if religion in general didn’t exist?
    flipnautick

    Do u think that Mexicans coming over here is ok???
    miley211


    Answer any one or all of these questions in the coming week. I try to mix the whimsical with the serious here, so hopefully there is at least one question here for everyone.
    April 12th


    This is the first day of the Cerealia. Games introduced at the founding of the temple of Ceres were held from the twelfth to the nineteenth of April. In later times, another festival to Ceres was established in August. While the Megalesia was mainly a patrician holiday, the lower classes had the Cerealia. This was a time to pray for peace. Offerings of grain (spelt), salt, and incense were left on the hearth. White is Ceres’ proper color. She was prayed to for peace, good government, and abundance.



    In Taiwan, the goddess who presides over birth, Chu-Si-Niu, is honored annually with a religious festival. Pregnant women go to her temples in order to receive blessings for their unborn children.



    The Nepalese New Year occurs in the middle of an eight day festival called Bisket. According to tradition, a princess was possessed by two serpent demons who killed all of her lovers. A foreign prince arranged a tryst, but unlike his predecessors, he came prepared. After they made love, he resolved to stay awake and keep watch. Two dark thread-like tendrils rose from her nostrils, expanding and solidifying into two snakes which he promptly killed.



    This is the first day of the Japanese Kamo-Tama-Yori-Hime festival. O-yamakui-no-kami and his wife Kamo-tama-yori-hime were honored from April twelfth to fourteenth. They each have two shrines, one for his (or her) entirety, and one for his (or her) soul or spirit of the outside world (aramitama), equaling four shrines in all.

    On the first day of the religious festival (matsuri) the two aramitama, whose shrines are side by side, are brought down in two portable shrines (mikoshi) and left in the adytum (i.e. haiden) of the main shrines consecrated to the soul or spirit of the inner world (nigimitama) of the God. At 9 pm, they are married – the two mikoshi are joined, back to back and left there all night.


  • Socrates Cafe: The Retailiator

    Should there be limits
    to civil/polite behavior toward others?
    What are those limits?

    Oh, I think definitely, yes.

    Perhaps I am biased, working in retail as I do, but it seems to me that “Customer Service” has become a code word for bend over. Obviously you want to give customer service because customers want to feel welcome and you want customers to return to your business. On the other hand, there are people who hear the word “customer service” and think… how can I turn this corporate enforced a$$-kissery to my advantage?

    In most situations, I don’t have a problem being civil or polite. Homeless people, mentally challenged people, people with legitimate product or service issues which need addressing… these are all situations for which “customer service” is the proper etiquette. But there are people who only seek stores in order to see how far they can bend the rules or mess with the employees, knowing that the employees may not retaliate or even complain about how poorly they are treated.

    I think that good customer service for bad customers only belittles the employee and validates the bad behavior of the shopper. The customer is not always right, especially if they decide that screaming, cursing, or outright abuse is called for. Bad behavior is a two way street and as someone who works in retail, I don’t want to reward that behavior. I want to show that person the door and when they “threaten” not to shop at our location any more, I want to thank them. As a supervisor, I’ve actually had people grab me by the arm in the middle of their tirade, and my immediate supervisors shrugged it off as if it were nothing. That makes me feel like I am nothing. I refuse to do that to people under me.

    I’ve had my people tell me after the fact that someone told racial jokes in a way as to indicate they were telling them for the benefit of my coworker. I had coworkers tell me after a customer has left that they invaded their personal space by inappropriate touching. In all honesty, if they had told me what happened while it was going on or I had seen it myself, I would have had that customer out the door in an instant. That’s behavior that I will absolutely not tolerate. Allowing customers to treat the staff as objects only encourages them to see us as less than human.

    In other words, if someone first offends my sense of civility or polite behavior, I refuse to behave as if their behavior is alright. Good customer service or not, that’s not the kind of repeat business I want. Though I have to be more tolerant because I work for a corporate entity rather than myself in my own store, I will show people the door if they can’t act like civilized beings, and I will have them removed if they make a nuisance of themselves.
    April 11th

    The Ludi Cerealici or Cerealia begins tonight. Cross inscribed loaves of bread are traditionally baked in honor of the Roman goddess Diana. In Greece, branches of evergreen, myrtle, or bay were worn by children for protection against the evil eye.


    In Armenia, the goddess Anahita is honored annually on this day with a sacred festival. The deity of both love and lunar power, she dwells within the silver light of the moon.