Month: July 2009

  • Beat

    Ugh… so tired. I just spent the day cooking my brother’s birthday dinner and then cleaning up.

    Let me clarify…

    I started cooking at 9AM and finished at 3PM. I had to cook enough for nine people to take home leftovers and make soup for them also to take with them. So, I actually cooked from 9AM to 6, counting the soup. I cooked: two chickens and homemade gravy, a ham, corn on the cob, homemade mac and cheese, mashed potatoes, green beans, and two kinds of rolls. This was my only meal of the day. Then I made noodle soup from leftover chicken and gravy so that my brother could take some home.

    I’m beat. G’night.
    July 11th
    (yesterday)

    Theano, wife of Pythagoras and a philosopher herself, is sometimes considered the patroness of vegetarians. She was a native either of Crete or Crotona.


    The Naadam, or Three Manly Games, festival of Mongolia is celebrated with horse racing and feats of archery and wrestling. Of course, this is a misnomer. Women and children participate in the races and archery contests.


    According to the Egyptian calendar, on the 28th of Mesore the Feast of Min is celebrated.
    July 12th
    (today)

    This day was revealed as the luckiest day of the year by the archangel Gabriel. Healing, planting, house building, traveling, and war were all supposed to proceed without a problem. Children born today would be wealthy, and students who began their work today would be great scholars. A new job begun today would be successful.


    On the 29th day of Mesore, a festival was held in the Temple of Sokar and in the Estate of Ptah.



  • WCFQ #10: There’s nothing fair about life

    WCFQ #10:
    Do you feel life is fair?
    Why or why not?
    topremier

    In so far as life is unfair for everyone, life is pretty fair. I mean, life can’t be more fair to people who are basically leeches on the face of the earth, who will never seriously have to work a day in their lives, but who continue to squeeze people in their companies for a bit more blood to line their pockets. That’s not very fair to them or to the rest of us. For their part, it ensures that they may well never develop an actual personality or maturity. They will just be immature, needy babies who take, take, take, for the rest of their lives. It’s all they know how to do since they’ve only ever been given everything they want. People who are rich from birth suffer from developmental limbo.

    And obviously, it’s not fair for us… the “working poor.” I mean, I’m not destitute, but I’m sure not on easy street. I worry if one bill goes amiss. That’s pretty much endgame for me. One bill, and it throws everything into chaos. It must be nice to not have to worry about one little bill of approximately $200 screwing up all your funds.

    For instance, I recently sent a payment for my car which the idiots applied entirely to my principal instead of counting it as a payment. So nine days after it was actually due, they called me at work to ask after the payment. Once they realized what had happened, they assured me they would fix it.

    They didn’t.

    So I received a letter, saying my bill was overdue and another letter showing my regular monthly bill and a double payment due. So I called, and that’s when I found out that they had not in fact fixed their error. I was assured that it would be fixed.

    It wasn’t.

    I received a call, again at work, about three days later asking after my payment. At which point, I lost it and told the person on the line that it should have been fixed way back in the middle of June. She assured me that it would be and was very sorry and that I should just send my regular payment. I told her not to call me at work again as it was very unprofessional.

    I apologized for my rudeness, well aware that the person on the line was not responsible for the screwups of her colleagues, but if I get one more phone call or notice, I’ll borrow the money I still owe on my car from a family member or three, pay it off, and never again will I do business with the company that holds the title to my car.

    But rich people don’t have to worry about things like this ruining their day, their finances, or their credit score. How fair is that?

    Bitter? Nope, not me. I just want what’s fair.
    July 10th

    Once every four years, the ancient Athenians celebrated the Panathenaea in honor of Athena, their patron goddess, by presenting her with a brilliant new robe. It would first be paraded through the streets before the priests would dress the goddess’s statue with the robe.

    Holda, Hela, and Skadi are northern European goddesses of the shades and underworld. The procession of Lady Godiva once included the images of a white Holda and a black Hela. Knut the Reaper is honored today. His symbol, the scythe, is also an emblem of the destroying goddess Skadi, patroness of Scotland and Scandinavia.



  • WCFQ #9: Luck… she’s a quirky mistress

    WCFQ #9:
    Do you believe in luck?
    Oceans_Beautiful_View

    Yeah, I do, and if you’ve got any extra, send it my way. I could definitely use some.

    Luck, I believe is akin to synchronicity and equally hard to control, though some people seem to have all the luck to the extent that they are seemingly born lucky. Luck, like synchronicity, is something you seldom see coming.

    But really, it’s all in perception. Even people who have “no luck at all” are not completely luckless. After all, they’re still alive and kicking, even if they might be gruesomely and grotesquely disfigured and skulking about in the shadows to hide the deformities of their miraculous survival. Oh, wait, miraculous survival… so they were lucky after all. Just, you know, not quite lucky enough.

    The thing is, everyone is lucky in their own way in their own time. Ever almost fall down a flight of stairs? or almost hit an animal in the road? or almost say the wrong thing to someone with a lot of muscle and little inclination to control their baser instincts? That, my friends, was luck. (Yes, common sense is a form of luck, just the rarest of the rare forms.)

    Now if we could only harvest luck. Imagine the resale value. Yes, my friends, luck… in aerosol form.. Hmmm, I believe Axe bodyspray would have us believe they’ve acquired a very specific form of luck. I wonder if it works in casinos…

    Everyone is lucky, except when they’re not. You really can’t pick and choose when you’ll be lucky; you just have to hope that you will have it when the time is right. If it came down to it, I’d be happier if I was luckier in the face of my immanent destruction over winning the lottery. On the other hand, who’s to say that good luck is always good. Sometimes the worst luck comes from having been “lucky.” Many people who win the lottery end up colossal jerks in the end and no one loves them, except if there’s money in it for them. Some people who seemingly defied the odds and survived a horrific and tragic accident might feel as if they’d been better off dead.

    One man’s luck is another man’s accident waiting to happen.
    July 9th

    No holy days for today.



  • WCFQ #7: Hell No


    WCFQ #7    :
    Do you believe in Hell?
    SeriousSideofSatanicSquirrels

    Nope.

    The thing about Hell is… it only exists for those who think it exists. If you don’t believe in it, it just isn’t there. Essentially, no one can send you there but you. It’s just that simple.

    People have built up a whole mythology of hell and hellishness, and on some plane it must exist because people believe it does. If people are willing to lend energy to an idea, they can create it. So I choose not to believe in the Christian hell or lend energy to its maintenance. The only way you could ever end up in such a place is if you honestly felt you deserved it, or if others convinced you that you did.

    The myth of hell is based on a variety of sources, but it once had a physical location in Gehenna. This was the waste place where trash and criminals were disposed of outside the walls of Jerusalem. In another life, I was stoned by people who didn’t like what I had to say, dragged to Gehenna and set on fire. I refuse to think of myself as trash or a criminal, and I don’t think anyone belongs in a place that was based on what equates to the city dump.

    People will continue to believe in a place where people are punished and call it hell, but before the Judeo-Christian concept, there was no such place. There is an underworld, a place of the dead, in nearly every belief system, but it is not hellish. It is not a place explicitly for punishment.

    Hell is for those who believe in it, and will continue to exist for those who believe in it until they learn to believe otherwise. So long as people continue to fear death, they will fear a hell. So long as people are told that they are bad for no good reason, there will be a hell because they will come to believe through the words of others that they belong there.

    Confused? I don’t believe in hell, but others do. Belief, as an extension of the Will, creates. If you choose to will hell into existence, then for you, it exists. Yay for you… I guess. o.O




    July 8th

    The feast of St. Sunniva was a medieval version of Sunna, the Norse solar maiden.



    This is the second day of the Nonae Caprotinae honoring Juno.




  • WCFQ #6: If you’re not part of the solution…

    WCFQ #6:
    Have you ever been jealous of someone?
    magdaaaxo
    I’m jealous, and yet I’m not, of people who live life so blithely that they are completely unaware of what is going on outside their own little narcissistic reality. I’m jealous because it must be nice to have that cushion of unreality, to not be aware enough of the dangers of the world to plan against problems that might arise tomorrow or the day after. These are the people who say global warming isn’t real and that nature can take care of itself, but they’ll sure be surprised as heck when they wake up in the future and the oceans are dead from overfishing and pollution. We’re in the middle of an extinction level event, losing species practically every day, and these people continue to use their aerosol, buy imported items, and support the mismanagement of our world’s resources through their lifestyle choices. 

    But I’m also not jealous of them. Because when the $h17 hits the fan, they’re going to be overwhelmed. They’re not going to know what to do. They’re creating the problem and will go on creating the problem until the problem backs up to their doorstep, and then they won’t know how to live. I wouldn’t want to be one of these people who don’t really know how to live unless the tv tells them how to do it. I don’t want my life to revolve around the latest fashion, newest gourmand treat, or my next QVC purchase. I’m not really jealous of them, just wistful for their blissful ignorance. It must be nice to be so numb to the wailing of the world. It must be nice not to think.

    They say that the higher your IQ, the less happy you are. The smarter you are, the more you think about things. The more you think, the more you realize all the things that people do which are wrong and how that’s going to affect your life and the lives of your future family and of people you don’t even know yet but who you will love. Think of all the people who have developed cancer from exposure to asbestos and how many years the people who allowed them to be exposed knew about the toxic effects of exposure and preferred to do nothing because it was cheaper. Think about the fact that it’s okay to sell poison like cigarettes and alcohol in stores, provided they have warning labels. In the end, I’d rather be someone who thinks and is unhappy than one those people who is blissfully unaware of the harm they cause, whether they come by their ignorance naturally or through the medication that the tv tells them they should have. I want to think and know and strive for a better world. I don’t want to be part of the problem.


    July 7th

    During Hashi Matsuri or Tanabata, Japanese families mark the reunion of two celestial lovers. Called the Tanabata lovers, they are the stars Vega and Aquila, separated by the Milky Way, the “celestrial river.” Vega represents the weaver maiden Zhi Nu and Aquila is the cowherd. Children’s writing samples and personal pleas are affixed to bamboo fronds. Prayers will be answered and the children’s writing will improve.


    The Roman festival of Consualia honored Consus, god of harvests. The Feriae Ancillarum was the Festival of the Handmaids during which maids were beyond the control of their mistresses. The second festival of Parilia honors the Pales. A special feast, called the Nonae Caprotinae (Nones of the Wild Fig), was celebrated in honor of Juno on the Nones of Quintilis (7th of July). Female servants went in procession to a fig tree, carrying on all kinds of sports. Maidservants had charade fights with stones and engaged in other competitions. A feast was enjoyed at the tree, followed by a day of thanksgiving on the 8th.



  • All my friends…

    There is a protected post up. Just so you know. I’m sure you all know what that means….
    July 6

    Julian the Blessed (331-363 BC) was a learned philosopher and Roman emperor who restored pagan religions to Rome.



  • Writer’s Choice Challenge #1

    Writer’s Challenge #1:
    What’s that thing under your bed?
    (If your bed is on     the floor,
    what’s in your     closet or other random place
    where you tend to accumulate “junk.”)
    Reach in there and     pull out one random thing.
    Then write a short story or poem about it.
    Be as     factual or fantastical as you like.

    wily rabbit warriors
    rampant on fields of gray
    I smell your musty odor
    before the attack
    on my sinuses
    hiding in the pages
    magazines     collected
    against a day of crafty need
    coating the vibrant colors
    with your dusty prints
    your warren undone
    with the flip of a mattress
    the roar of a man-made cyclone
    run rabbit run



    No holy days today


  • WCFQ #5: An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure

    WCFQ #5:
    Do you believe in fate or destiny?
    Jolteus33


    By our habits and personality, there are some things which are more probable than others. If this is fate or destiny, then yes, I believe in it. You can defeat fate by changing your habits. Recognizing an unhealthy habit or characteristic is the first step to changing your fate. Some things you can’t change.

    For instance, I read about a recent study on nicotine addiction. Basically, the more melanin you have in your skin, the stronger your addiction to nicotine because the melanin cells actually store the nicotine. This does not just extend to dark skinned people, though I would assume that your best bet concerning nicotine if you happen to have darker skin is to just never start smoking! Apparently though, if you tan regularly as part of your job (roofing, landscaping, etc) or recreationally, you are also more prone to this nicotine storage problem. So get as little sun as possible and don’t ever try smoking and maybe you can deter fate from making you a smoke stack.

    Bottom line, if you know you have a predisposition to something… either through awareness of family history or by observing your own personal habits… you have the tools to avert fate. If you know that heart attack runs in the family and that you’re probably going to have one too at some point, change your diet and get regular exercise. If you know that skin cancer runs in the family, get as little sun as possible and get regular check ups for those funky moles you got on your back. If you know aneurysms runs in your family, well… not much you can do about that. Apparently we’re all born with weak vessels in our brains that are just going to give up the ghost at some point. Sorry. I don’t know if there are any preventative measures you can take against stroke that aren’t going to make you out to be a hypochondriac.

    Ideally, we should all be examining ourselves, our habits and our physical health, on a regular basis. Which is not what most people do. Most people are more concerned with outward appearances and what other people are doing than what’s going on in their own bodies, but a healthy person, and by this I mean physically and mentally, should indulge in self examination at least once in a while. What is the measurement of “a while,” I couldn’t say, but self awareness is the key to a long life. The fates can still slip a fast one in there. You could be driving home from work and a deer could attack your car, but if you’ve made the effort to ensure that you should be on the road at all (good eyesight, reflexes, no reading, eating, or hygiene engaged in while the peddle is to the metal), then chances are, you’ll survive.
    July 4th

    The Athenian festival to honor Athena was called the Panathenaea. On the sixth day, the goddess’ statue was dressed in a new robe. This was also a holy day of the Roman Goddess Pax, goddess of peace.



  • WCFQ #4: Icky

    WCFQ #4:
    Does sex fill a void or
    does it create one?
    all_over_love

    For the record, I have never had sex. Yes, I know… I’m a 35 year old virgin. It’s a fact that really only impresses you sexual types. I, fortunately (or unfortunately from your perspective) am an asexual. Which means, I have no sex drive. I’m simply not interested in sex for sex’s sake. I suppose if I ever met someone who I loved and had a rapport with that I would try it, but since I have never met anyone with whom I felt that specific kind of attraction, I’m just not inclined to go out and do it for the sake of finding out what it’s like. I’ve never been someone who gives into peer pressure and this societal urge to have sex, from television and music to jokes and fashion, is just not something I feel I have to agree with to be happy.

    Maybe this gives me a unique perspective in terms of what I can observe in how people and society treat sex. Which is to say, younger people seem to think having sex will cure something, yes, fill a void in their lives. Make them adults? Make them fit in better because “all their friends are doing it?” Who knows. According to various family members, I was never “young.” Older people seem to think sex creates a corrupt society. Sex itself is an act that invites immorality into one’s life. Pornography. Prostitution. And the people in between? It’s mixed bag, ranging from the belief that having sex will “fix something” to the idea that sex is an unclean activity which only degenerates crave.

    See now sex is just a physical act so far as I’m concerned, and each individual attaches their own significance to it. For some, it is nothing more than a physical exercise. For others, it is a way to get closer to their significant other, to share something intimated of oneself with the one who you trust explicitly. Still others see it as a holy act which should only, ever be engaged in with someone you love for the purpose of procreation. Others label it in derogatory terms, as a dirty thing that is kept private because it is a necessary evil.

    Whether sex fills a void or creates one all descends from personal perspective. It both fills and creates a void and at the same time has nothing to do with such notions. Sex is a physical act which creates life. It is a way for two people to share each other with each other. It is a way for people to hurt each other. It is a dirty thing that should be kept behind closed doors or maybe even be replaced by modern science with cloning, splicing, and artificial insemination… It is a way for new souls to enter this existence. It is a means to an end. It is an amusing past time. Sex is the subject of many jokes. According to comedians, people make funny faces during sex. Apparently it is awkward and icky and makes a mess and/or babies. Sex is just something animals do in order to perpetuate the species.

    Sex got me a cute little nephew and another niece/nephew on the way.
    July 3rd

    The New Year of the Seminole Indian tribe of Florida begins on this date, and is celebrated with an annual Green Corn Dance honoring the new corn crop. Eating the first corn marks the start of a new year.



    The Festival of Cerridwen honors the goddess of knowledge, wisdom, plenty, and pigs.


    In Italy, this day is sacred to the Witch of Gaeta; while in Greece, the goddess Athena is honored.



    Sothis begins in Egypt, honoring the rise of Sirius.

    The Dog Days of Summer officially begin. According to Hellenic traditions, the rising of the Dog Star heralded the hottest part of the year for the Northern Hemisphere. The Dog Days of Summer, as calculated by the Greater or Lesser Dog Star (Sirius or Procyon), may continue from 30 to 54 days. A generally accepted period is from July 3 to August 15.

    The Greeks referred to the Dog Stars as Maera and Hecuba, and the Romans called them Canicula and Sycamine. It was called Isis Hathor by the Egyptians and symbolized by the form of a cow with disc and horns or as a cow recumbent in a boat with head surmounted by a star appearing from behind the western hills. In the earlier temple service of Denderah, Sirius was Isis Sothis and at Philae Isis Sati or Satit.  Sirius, Canis Major, was Al Shi’ra or Al Si’ra in Arabic parts of the world, and Canis Minor was called Al Jummaiza or Al Ghumaisa, “the Dim” from the fact that her light was dimmer than that of her sister Al Shi’ra. They were also called Al Aliawat al Suhail, the Sisters of Canopus. The Norse called Sirius Loki’s Brand.



  • WCFQ #3: Lessons

    WCFQ #3:
    What is the difference
    between reality and truth?
    summerrr_x0

    Everyone has a personal reality and everyone therefore has their own personal truths. No two realities are exactly the same, even with twins. From the moment a being begins to perceive their surroundings, interpreting the data on a personal level and differentiating between “me” and “not me,” a personal reality is created wherein truth is based on perception.

    There is no difference between reality and truth. You may listen (or read) as someone expounds on their personal truth, and from your own experiences you may discover truth in the other person’s words. But this may not be the truth they intended to share and it may only be a temporary sharing of realities… you may decide after you have more experiences under your belt that the truth shared with you from someone else’s perspective is no longer your truth. You have the power and right to differ with the truths of others.

    Truth is entirely subjective and cannot exist without experience. Experience is dependent upon how your reality agrees or disagrees with your expectations. It is through interpretation of your expectations that you arrive at your personal truth. When reality agrees with your expectations, it validates your truth. When you disagree with the circumstances, you may discover a new truth about your environment. It depends upon you however, whether you will perceive this new facet of reality or not and incorporate it into your world view, your reality. There are plenty of people in the world who are so wrapped up in their expectations that they rewrite the circumstances of their experiences, creating a personal reality which others perceive to be unhealthy. Their personal truths create this reality and this reality reinforces their personal truths. It’s a vicious cycle of misery begetting more misery.

    In essences, we gather from our reality the lessons which agree with our world view or alter it. Either way, we arrive at a truth which is valid until we choose not to find validity in it. If we perceive ourselves to be victims, then that is what we are. It was true when I was a child that I was a victim because I let myself be a victim. I am no longer a victim because I choose to see the truth in my reality that all experiences contain the potential to teach a lesson. What lesson I choose to learn from my reality is dependent upon my perception of “me” and “not me.” If I choose to see everyone and everything as one thing, then I cannot be harmed by others. I can only harm myself with my expectations. If I perceive a slight from someone, then it is entirely on me whether or not I allow that perception to alter my reality or not. In the end, it is my reality and my truth that is most important, and it is easier to forgive that which is “not me” and move on than become the victim of my own perceptions.
    July 2nd

    The Italian Il Palio in Siena is a festival of medieval games.


    In ancient times, the citizens of Rome celebrated the Feast of Expectant Mothers. At temples throughout the city, all pregnant women gathered to receive blessings and honor Bona Dea, Carmenta, Lucina, and other goddesses associated with birth and fertility.