Thoughts From the Hold Music

End of the Hold Music

2006-12-09T20:23:00.000-06:00

Hello, those of you who are left...

Well, I've neglected this blog 'til it died. Not coincidentally, my thoughts are no longer stemming from the Hold Music, but rather from my schooling and work in the legal field.

My friends who enjoyed Thoughts from the Hold Music may want to follow me over to my new blog, Barely (Para) Legal, which will feature the same old Parce, repurposed a bit.

It has been a pleasure and a privilege, you guys. Time for things to move on. Hope you'll move on with me.

Love y'all,
The one and only
Parcequilfaut

Don't Give Me That Guff: Thoughts on Community as Samhain Approaches

2006-10-19T11:37:00.000-05:00

I guess it's ten years this year since I "became" a pagan.

I kind of always was a pagan, but that's not what this is all about. Luckily, I spent my becoming-time in relative isolation, going through my "baby pagan" and "fluffy bunny" phases by myself with the aid of books. By the time I was in my twenties, I had a sort-of handle on things, enough to know what I didn't know, to listen to my elders and those who knew more, and to not be quite so insufferably know-it-all about all things Pagan.

10 years later, I'm a teacher and a volunteer. A "somebody". People in this community know me, or know people who know me. I have years and years of work ahead of me, and that thought fills me with happiness instead of trepidation. Life, to put it in short form, is good.

We all absorb the prejudices and preconceptions of our community, for good or ill. But recently I've put paid to the idea that Tennessee, my home state, the place I love and never want to leave, is a place with little to offer the pagans, Wiccans, and alternatively spiritual folks of the state, a place, basically, with nothing to offer non-Christians.

I believed it, too, for the longest time. "This is the buckle of the !#$^$#%^ Bible Belt"..."there aren't even any covens around here"..."I just don't know anyone or how to find them"....and so on, and so on, and scooby-dooby-dooby.

It's simply not true. I said it. It's not. There are pagans all over Tennessee, and they are not hiding in their broom closets. On the contrary, their events are all over the map. (More about the map, in a few.) You, personally, may have had trouble; I'm not discounting that. But we are out there, in force, public and proud.

We all have a pet horror story. We've all been waylaid by some well-meaning proselytizer, given grief by someone with more zeal than sense. Some of us have suffered more: ask Tish sometime about being held at gunpoint by cops. Some of us have less-than-horror stories: the cops who knew exactly what the altar was and treated it with the respect it deserves (because their dispatcher, a Wiccan, had educated them on proper comportment) is my favorite.

However...

A month ago, give or take a week, I started a list for the TN Statewide Pagan Events Calendar, mostly on a whim. I had sat around the table with the AppleOak Elders, and lamented the lack of intrastate communication between the major cities, a lament I had made before. I got on the phone with Tish once I got home, tossed some ideas off, and before a day had passed, I had my very own yahoogroup. That and $4.75 will get you a cup of Starbucks tm coffee-type beverage. I didn't know what to expect.

Twenty-three days have passed since I got started, joining every public TN Pagan yahoogroup that would have me, and scouring Witchvox for updates.

The list now has 124 members, 142 messages, and a calendar that's as near to full as it can get. Between today and New Year's Eve, there are only thirteen days on which a public Pagan circle, class, festival, meeting, or other event is not shown on our calendar. Thirteen days, out of seventy-three left in the whole year.

There are events going on between now and the end of the year in Bartlet, Burns, Chattanooga, Clarksville, Cookeville, Gallatin, Gray, Henderson, Jackson, Johnson City, Kingsport, Knoxville, Lebanon, Medon, Memphis, Mooresburg, Morristown, Murfreesboro, Nashville, Sevierville & Sharon, TN. That I know of. That's not to even mention the fact that there are almost certainly closed circles, coven meetings and public events which are going on merrily without my knowing about them.

I don't want to hear again that there's nothing going on, no pagan community to speak of, no one to talk to, no one to fellowship with. Our friends in the more rural areas of TN may have to drive a ways to get there, but the community is out there, and it's not hiding. I found 98% of my information through forums that are 100% public, or merely required a few day's wait to get approved.

Let's make our After Samhain resolution to go and meet more of these spiritual relatives statewide. There's no need to drive to Huntsville or Atlanta...the community you crave is right here, in your own backyard.

Which brings me to the map.

This is not anywhere close to completion, because contrary to popular belief, I have a life outside work, school, Guedra and TNSPEC. However, I have started a TNSPEC Frappr.com map, showing the places where events happen regularly in TN, and listing some of the rotating groups without a regular meeting place.
It's not as impressive as the list of cities above, mostly because I'm going through the TNSPEC Calendar chronologically to add locations. But it will be.
If you want to add yourself to the map as an individual, or to add your group or coven, feel free to do so. Also, if you know of a Pagan or Pagan friendly business that is not listed, put it up with correct address information.

It is not a requirement of TNSPEC membership to announce your personal location; some of us choose to remain more private, and that is A-OK by me. However, I hope that when I have it more comprehensively put together, that it, too, will serve as a resource for Pagans statewide, and bring home visually the lesson that I remember every time I look at the TNSPEC Calendar....we are out, we are proud, we are not going anywhere, and it doesn't look like anyone is making too much of an attempt to stop us. There is a community for our children to grow up in. You don't get any better than that.

Blessed Samhain to all of you, with dreams of a better future,
Parce

NaNoOhMyGodNo

2006-10-12T22:03:00.000-05:00

Holy shit guys.

This morning, I got an email from NaNoWriMo.org.

Now, objectively I know that the month of November, and ergo NaNoWriMo, is fast approaching. The complexification inherent in that fact vis-a-vis neither myself nor the Artist having a laptop has even been discussed of late.

I have not edited my novel from last year. I have said I was going to edit my novel. I haven't even read my novel all the way through, tell the truth and shame the devil. My novel had a good premise, and then my nannyboss was a crazy bizznatch and I did the last of it at a dead run and the time sense of the book got all fucked up, and now I don't know if it can be redeemed. We shall see. Or, perhaps it will be my For Us, the Living. Who knows?

As usual, I have sixteen squared "good ideas for NaNo" socked away, and probably I will end up doing it the way I did last year...throw it all out, get a good idea in the final 24-hour run-up on Halloween and just go with it. Who can know?

One of my dad's less cute expressions, used when someone is being nosy, inquisitive, or just asking questions my dad thinks are pointless is "What's it to ya, pie-face, you writin' a book?" which is actually sort of cute only because it's my dad (and because of the fact that my three year old nephew now tries to repeat it after my dad on occasion and that is hilarity of the purest kind). It's the kind of thing my grandfather used to come out with when he was having a good time. It's weird. Now I can go "Yes!" in a snotty tone, if only in my head, every time my dad pulls out Typical Chestnut #72. That may be the only advantage I've gained thus far in my "writing" "career" , but at least I have one.

I also have a brand-new 19 inch monitor, which will be nice when I get started. In sixteen days. God spare me.

(Actually, it's pretty effin' nice right now.)

The only thing I know for sure is that I have to use my friend Angelises' habit of completely freaking out every time anyone knocks on the door, even when they've called to say they're pulling into the apartment complex, and yelling "Cheese it, the cops!" or similar.

Are you going to NaNo? If you are, tell me.

By the way, whilst I was noodling in the archives, I came across some things I still believe.

Who Are You (To Try & Tell Me)

2006-09-25T13:23:00.000-05:00

Argh, I hate these things. But I love them as a timewaster, and my neck is fucking killing me, so in lieu of a creative blog entry today, a Stupid Survey I Stole off Myspace...

TELL ME ABOUT YOURSELF - The Survey
Name: Elizabeth, Parce, Miss Moet, (Pope the) Empress (I).
Birthday: 16 August, 1980
Birthplace: Nashville, TN
Current Location: my office, goofing off
Eye Color: blue-green
Hair Color: brown
Height: 5 feet nine inches
Right Handed or Left Handed? right to write, left to reach for stuff
Your Heritage: white people of some kind, can't get more specific
The Shoes You Wore Today: my sensible librarian feels a bit wicked witchy everyday work shoes.
Your Weakness: Artists, kittens, bullets
Your Fears: Amphibians, falling down, losing the love and respect of those I care about
Your Perfect Pizza: one like the Artist makes me at 4 am...all the cheeses in the fridge plus fajita chicken and maybe some pepperonis...and since this is an Ideal, how about some jerk seasoning on the chicken?
Goal You Would Like To Achieve This Year: straight A's
Your Most Overused Phrase On IM? wtf????
Thoughts First Waking Up? "Stop it, cat!"
Your Best Physical Feature? My opinion, or the breasts?
Your Bedtime? When I'm sleepy, by two, period.
Your Most Missed Memory? Randy singing songs withmy name in them after the rain stopped.
Pepsi or Coke? which one is on sale in cans?
McDonalds or Burger King? BK, if the rest of the fifty-jillion other options aren't dotting the landscape.
Single or Group Dates? Dates? I like figs myself, and raisins.
Lipton Ice Tea or Nestea? try loose jasmine
Chocolate or Vanilla? both. And then, something salty.
Cappuccino or Coffee? bleech! Choco-covered espresso beans in a keep-awake pinch.
Do you smoke? "I'se supposeda stop, but I cain't."
Do you swear? When not functioning in my professional capacity? Perhaps a bit overmuch.
Do you sing? When called upon.
Do you shower daily? Unless I'm taking a bath, weirdo.
Have you been in love? Yes.
Do you want to go to college? Generally yes, but today I'd cut if it wouldn't risk DOOOM...
Do you want to get married? Very maybe.
Do you believe in yourself? I'm pretty sure I didn't imagine myself up. But never certain.
Do you get motion sickness? Not often.
Do you think you are attractive? Less often than I claim to.
Are you a Health Freak? In the sense that people talking to me about my health freaks me the fuck out and makes me want to hit them with sticks until they admit that non-smokers and vegetarians die too, yes.
Do you get along with your parents? Most of the time.
Do you like thunderstorms? Baby, I love thunderstorms.
Do you play an instrument? Not really. I drum a lil and play with my flute.
In the past month have you drank alcohol? Hells yes! We found 70 proof vanilla rum!
In the past month have you smoked? Yes.
In the past month have you been on Drugs? Take the fifth.
In the past month have you gone on a date? Nope.
In the past month have you gone to a mall? Hell NOES!
In the past month have you eaten a box of Oreos? Ew.
In the past month have you eaten sushi? No.
In the past month have you been on stage? Yes, I sing for my punch at LSP.
In the past month have you been dumped? No, but I have been stood up.
In the past month have you gone skinny dipping? Too cold...br!
In the past month have you stolen anything? We prefer the term "misappropriate."
Ever been drunk? Oh yes oh yes.
Ever been called a tease? Yes.
Ever been beaten up? Not since childhood.
Ever shoplifted? Nope.
How do you want to die? Heroically saving my family from a burning shipwreck....when I say and not a second sooner.
What do you want to be when you grow up? Tish.
What country would you most like to visit? Strongbadia.

Best Clothing Style: hot hippie librarian
Number of drugs I have taken: I wasn't keeping score
Number of CDs I own: bunches
Number of piercings: eight
Number of Tattoos: seven
Number of things in my past I regret: Non, je ne regrette rien.

Little Green Blobs of Love

2006-09-22T09:11:00.000-05:00

Well, "love" isn't the right word. More like "blistering, festering hate". I hate upper respiratory infections.

I have my Fall Funk. This episode of FF has involved relatively little suffering, thanks in no small part to the Artist, who has plied me with vanilla rum for my pain. Since I'm of the firm opinion that he gave it to me while I was plying his version of it with whiskey last week, that's not as selfless and altruistic as it might appear, but I'm thankful anyway. Here in a few minutes I'll go into the kitchen and have some more delightful off-brand DayQuil.

In other news, been making out like a bandit on eBay buying new work clothes, headed off to AppleOak this weekend for the teaching of Guedra despite lingering cough and general funk, and a very new kitten is coming home to live with me. Hurray!

Not too much more on which to ruminate...up to 548 books on LibraryThing as of last night, totally not packed to leave yet, very much in the mood for a breakfast which does not appear to be materializing. I'll talk to you later.

It's What I Got (I Said, Remember That)

2006-09-15T10:23:00.000-05:00

You know those science-fiction stories/Twilight Zone episodes? I think the story I'm thinking of is Mars is Heaven, by Ray Bradbury....everyone goes to Mars, but on Mars is a place just like home, where your old dog never died and your childhood sweetheart is married to you, and as soon as you relax the tentacled aliens come and eat you? Or the Stephen King variant, Rock n Roll Heaven, where all the dead rock stars are the evil oligarchs of a little town you only find by getting lost?

I think that the tentacled rock stars are going to come out of the woodwork any time, because work? Is heaven.

People are nice to me. They consider me competent. They aren't constantly checking up on me to see if I'm doing what's right. They offer instruction instead of criticism. Most of them have known me since I was a kid, and while that gets mildly annoying, it's a heavenly sort of annoyance. They let me show them how to find things on their computers and do things with their software. They pick me up lunch.

I have my own office. It's kind of blank and uninteresting at this stage of the operation, but I have it. I think next week I'm going to bring in my Van Gogh and hang it up to relieve the white wall.

My dad is his usual grumpy self, stomping around and being satisfied with his own level of competence and dissatisfied with everyone else's, but I learned how to deal with that from the time I was fifteen onward. It's not the MOST intellectually stimulating thing ever: file, do mail, answer phone, type, file, do mail, skip trace someone, file, show S. how to clean out her cache, walk to the courthouse, drive to the federal courthouse, lather, rinse, repeat, with plenty of sneaking cigarettes and blatant misuse of the Internet. Work is always going to be something to be avoided when possible (like, for instance, right now), but work that doesn't make you feel cheap, degraded, incompetent, or just plain stupid? This must be Mars, because it's utterly alien.

School is good: civil trial is boring and my teacher is a dick, general law is interesting and my teacher is hilarious, wills and trusts is interesting when the material isn't already two-strikesing it. Paralegal studies only lasts an hour and a half once a week, but I like it.

The house is lovely, the cats are lolling around like they think this is Egypt 5000 years ago, plans for the Bizarre Bazaar continue apace, I've catalogued 375 of my books on LibraryThing thus far, and my main complaint in life is having to find shirts that cover my bicep tattoos. I'm going to teach Guedra at AppleOak next weekend at their request. I am going places with folks to see and things to do, and I have a sneaking suspicion that I have become popular, despite all my youthful protests as to the impossibility of such an occurrence.

Plus, I'm getting my septum re-stretched tonight, thank you, Kevin. And I got a magical piece of paper from the court yesterday, telling me my charges are dismissed and expunged...or, as N.W.A. famously opined, "Fuck tha police." I win, they lose, the world goes round and round and round and the world goes round and round.

Life's pretty good. I'll check back when I can. Mars is great, wish you were here.

Curiouser and Curiouser

2006-08-25T15:28:00.000-05:00

All day long, since I got out of bed, I have been singing a song by the band Rehab, which I adore on general principle. Specifically, I've been singing the chorus to "Sittin' At A Bar"...

She broke my heart
In the trailer park
So I jacked the keys to her fuckin car
And wrecked that piece of shit, and then walked away...

This, just for the record, is not an ideal tune to be singing idly when one works in a law office.

No one broke my heart in the trailer park or elsewhere recently, and no one stole my car, but it is being a big POS. For the third time recently, the tranny is about to go out. Luckily, said tranny is covered under warranty. Unluckily, my car likes to priss along fine during the week and promptly shit the bed as soon as a weekend is imminent, which sucks, because it is twice as hard to find rides on the weekend as it is during the week.

Because I am supremely blessed with extremely good friends, however, I have pretty much got the weekend knocked out in terms of getting where I need to be when. Action Mike is taking me out to Rickman Castle tonight (a long-ass journey and I owe him big time). My mom is picking me up and taking me shopping so I have law-office appropriate gear to wear to work. And the McGee and the crowd from Hummblebee are collectively taking me to Last Saturday Party.

And Monday I am going back to school. To be a paralegal, because, yeah. Hooray. Maybe I'll end up an attorney.

Who Says Birthdays Come But Once a Year?

2006-08-20T23:01:00.000-05:00

...I've been celebrating mine since Wednesday.

So the party on Friday went awesomely. Most of the out of towners ended up cancelling due to lack of funds and/or lack of child care, but about thirty people showed up for the night of drinking and other things. I wore my Sodomy, Not Bombs t-shirt (because if we stop having sodomy, the terrorists win!) which was a big hit.

Highlights included: CRAndi and most of the Moonies playing "6 Degrees of Parce" with the people they didn't know, UnkyDunky showing up out of the clear blue sky and being given a standing tackle by yours truly, my good friend Linnea of Hummblebee making at least $100 selling her hand-blown glass, the group sing-a-long of Pearl Harbor Sucked (And I Miss You), and, once the party itself had ended and only the people staying the night remained, me using Big Leonard as my personal couch (complete with video from Sqami of me pretending to ride him like a pony), and Hummer Mike's photos of me, in the t-shirt, holding a True Love Waits poster (which is funnier if you know that the shirt has a fist holding a large, unsubtle rendering of a penis on it). I may put that picture up on Myspace.

I got a mad haul this birthday too. I don't normally expect a lot of presents; my parents and sister always make with the gifts, as do my friends from high school, and I never make a big issue out of it. But this year, among other things I won't mention here, I got a 60-minute massage, a new pair of Crocs, bath salts, oil, a pound bag of candied ginger, a candle, a handmade piece from my friend Emma's jewelry designs, a $50 gift certificate to my tattoo shop, a new Sri Chakram for the shrine room, and two new pipes. Plus, my sister gave me $40, always appreciated. (And I haven't even seen my friends from high school yet, although I know I'm getting a pre-owned papasan chair from one of them.)

So the birthday party kicked ass, with the exception of me completely ravaging my baby toe on my banded chest, ripping it all to shit and cracking the toenail, bleeding on the carpet (hydrogen peroxide took that shit out, luckily), and then doing it again the next morning, at which point the Artist lost his temper and moved the chest somewhere where it couldn't commit assault.

We went to Gertie's Diner in the morning, to stave off hangover and up-all-night, where I ran into church people (luckily, I had changed my shirt). That was actually OK, because it was people I like. Sqami and I hung out all day, watched an episode of Without a Trace and the last two episodes of Nightmares and Dreamscapes that I taped a couple of weeks ago and hadn't watched, and then I took her home and went to UnkyDunky's birthday party, which I try to attend every year and, every year, end up being the only female-type person to hold out to the bitter end. I went to the Flying Saucer first, where I talked the very nice valet into parking me even though he really was out of spaces. This turned out to be in his best interests, because on his birthday, UD throws money around like it's going out of style, and he got a $7 tip and didn't even have to pull the car around. We went to Cafe 02 for a while, then to Coyote Ugly, because Duncan knows the bouncer so we all get in for free.

I bonded with three very nice young ladies over the issue of whether or not anyone with sense gives up a $40 brassiere so that Coyote can hang it on their bar. Based on that fact and the fact that they had no bras of any color other than red, black, nude and white, we decided it's a total set-up, because who doesn't go drinking in their purple bra? We also had some nice girl bonding over the complete lack of sense involved in wearing one's skinniest heels and shortest skirt to go out drinking on a cobblestone-sidewalk street. I got to hang out with The Moose, who has been less in evidence since he had a baby, and we three had a collective moment of silence for the smoke shop, where all of us met when we worked there and which, as of two months ago, is no more. (Sniff). Plus, after not seeing him for a year, I finally got John the Martian's phone number, and he now lives one town over. Woot!

I had a great fucking birthday with all my friends. Here's to seventy more or so.

This Hold Music? Way Classier

2006-08-17T11:13:00.000-05:00

So, I'm back. No, really. No, really. Promise.

Because I have a better job. A new/old job. A not-for-a-corporation job.

I'm working for my dad's law office, again. A job I actually like, which is odd, considering. It's not that much different than everything else I've done since entering the workforce (including what I did here when I was a teenager, although I have a shitload more to do now that I can be trusted to type contracts and wills and things like that.)

I help the ladies with their computers. I word-check important stuff. I consolidate files and close them. I run the mail, send faxes, answer the phone.

I love my dad's office. I grew up there, in a way. My dad would park me downstairs with the typewriter and let me go to town. To this day, I love the sound of a typewriter, and totally want one so I can feel like Hemingway or Hunter S. Thompson, depending on what route to intoxication I've decided to traverse on any given day.

There used to be an awesome bookstore next to my dad's office, also, which is these many years defunct. They have a wedding-reception type gathering hall there now, which is nice; the building is historic and I'm lucky it's not dusty and empty like so many of the others on our side of the court square, but I miss "my" bookstore. Call me crazy.

So, yesterday was my birt'day, and tomorrow is my birt'day party. I spent my birthday basically eating everything in sight; I had beignets and cheese toast at ten a.m., a meat-and-three-style cheeseburger n'fries for lunch, celebratory office ice cream at three o'clock, and the traditional "the Parcemom makes stuffed potatoes and everything else the Parce likes to eat and we eat cake and have presents" birt'day throwdown at my mom's, plus postmortem cake at drum circle. It was a kick-ass birt'day.

This party is going to kick even MORE ass though. I was going through things today and realized that over thirty people have assured me they're going to be there. That's not even counting the folks who are iffy for child-care or work-related reasons.

I love my birt'day. Happy birt'day to me. And I'm back. Really. Pinky-swear.

A Quick One

2006-06-23T10:02:00.000-05:00

Yes, MWN, there still is a ParceQuIlFaut.

Too much to tell at this time. Moving to a new house, that will be MINE ALL MINE. No more renting, no more apartment, just a little funky house in a little funky neighborhood in my hometown. Made some new friends, lost some others. Still be-catted. Still myself.

Off to pack the house and love on the kitties. But before I go I just want to say one thing to the American People...I did not have sexual relations with that woman...I never told anyone to lie, not a single time, never. These allegations are false, and I need to go back to work for the American People. Thank you.

This Once a Month Posting is Silly

2006-05-07T18:36:00.000-05:00

But it has been what has been required.

A lot of things are going on, things I won't really talk about here. I've quit the hold music business indefinitely. I've been telling people I'm on spiritual retreat, which is true, and I think I may make a blog of those experiences, which my associates may email me for if they want the link.

This is not the end of ParceQu'IlFaut, but it may be a minute.

Good Thing a Blog isn't a Bonsai

2006-03-20T21:09:00.000-06:00

Sorry, again. I'm lame.

Life is really, really busy nowadays, friends and neighbors. Today was my 10-hour shift (hateful, poisonous concept designed solely for torture). Because of that, and because of the fact that the ParceVan is in the shop, yet again, I am waiting for expensive delivery food (Roma Pizza sub and hot wings, half of which will probably be tomorrow's lunch) and taking time to be online. Because I have had none.

Well, there were three holidays or holiday-analogs in a week...Purim, which happened to coincide with the full moon party my friend throws every month, the Ides of March, which I celebrate with certain of my associates, and St. Paddy's. And the non-calendar holiday that is The Day Following St. Paddy's, which the Artist and I spent almost entirely engaged in the watching of films, all of which dealt with the theme of using evil to fight evil. This was not intentional...we figured it out after the third film of six, and then picked the rest accordingly.

There have been other things too...drama, work, PUF-staff things, getting-ready-for-Beltane things, lots of things. None of which, now that I have five minutes to call my own in front of the computer, seem particularly worth talking about.

I'm well, and as it gets warmer things will settle into a pattern, I feel. Just give me time.

Squee!

2006-03-05T23:38:00.000-06:00

Squeeeeeeee!

Because I have a date. A date, a date, a date. On Wednesday I have a date! With a cute boy! And I like him a whole bunch! And we're going out on a date!

SQUEEE!!!!

OK, I have stopped being a fourteen-year-old girl. (In my defense, I never really go on dates, unless it's with someone I'm already involved with. The new-person-date is basically unexplored territory for me, so I still tend to behave the emotional age that normal people are when they start having real dates. Squee. Eek.)

But, being grown up, I do have a date, with a friend of a friend, with whom I spent the whole day today, going to brunch, trying to go see Brokeback Mountain and finding out there were no matinees, going to my house, and ending up at our mutual friend's house to watch the Oscars, which I never do and was basically an exercise in Mocking Reese Witherspoon, because she went to my school, and HATE.

Oh, and a trip to Kroger to buy beer, and a quick kiss in a church parking lot that holds much promise. (The kiss, not the church parking lot. I did all the canoodling-in-church-parking-lots a person needs in one life when I was still young.) There was that.

So he's headed home to his house, and I'm getting ready to finish my beer and head home to my house, and spend the next three days figuring out what I am going to wear on my Date. Oh, and watching Kingdom Hospital with GoddessA again, because we decided we're going to do that tomorrow now that (hopefully) her mother has seen fit to return MY DVDS that she borrowed before Christmas (which was NOT GoddessA's fault, so I don't want to hear about it). Which means that both GoddessA and myself will be singing the popular tune "NaNaNaNa, Hey Hey Hey, GoodBye" until we annoy everyone around us to semiterminal levels. We will also yell "Antibus!" at random intervals, apropos of nothing. Because, we're us, and we rule.

Eek! Arrgh! Squee! Date! Squee!
Now back to your suave and collected ParceQu'IlFaut, who is far too cool to let a potential social engagement make her act like a pubescent child. Ahem. Right. Here we go with that.

So, There Was That

2006-03-04T11:16:00.000-06:00

So yeah, I went to court.

Court is a creepy adventure. I understand now part of the reason why my friend Sami With A Tail called me the last night that Davidson County was holding Night Court to try and get me to give her a ride. It's a free freak show: for every mullet, a bleach-blond dye job with several inches of dark roots.

What I want to know is this: when did people start dressing worse for court than they would for a job interview? Of all the women in my peer group, I think I was the only one wearing a skirt of appropriate length. Not to turn into Ms. Manners over here, but WTF? You can wear slacks to court, not jeans. Definitely not jeans with holes.

Of everyone in court, though, the bailiff was dressed best. His suit was better than most of the attorneys', and he had a never-ending supply of handcuffs in it.

As for me, I sat there watching the parade of humanity, marveling at girls who go to court with the men accused of beating them, parents who say that the 19 year old who came in drunk and punched them in the face is "the best kid they could hope for," guys who either don't know any better than or don't care to interrupt the judge. I sat that way for about two and a half hours (having quite handily snagged a comfy seat like one of the ones the attorneys had when one opened up in the courtroom, because I had to ditch the wooden-bench-bolted-to-the-floor) and when my attorney came up, he didn't recognize me, mostly because he's never happened to see me with my dreads covered.

I could have been done with court that day; the cop failed to appear because he wasn't issued a subpoena (thanks, Tish!), and the DA apparently wasn't sufficiently satisfied by the little he was able to recall about the probable cause for search without his script in front of him when they phoned him. So they offered a pretrial, 11/29 suspended under diversion statute, probation, $250 fine and 21 hours community service. Or we could come back, have another hearing, and decide with all factors in place whether to plead or take the hearing.

I didn't know what to do. I like to think about decisions, I like all the facts laid out for me. So I asked some questions: am I hurting my chances at a deal by continuing again? No, even if you go through the hearing, we can ask to have it suspended under diversion where it won't go on your record. But some people want to be done with court, and you can go home and not have to come back, or you can take another day off work. Uptoyou. Still I hemmed and hawed, and then I turned into a character from a Heinlein novel -- not even consciously; I realized later whence the ratio came.

"Tip, do I have at least a one in six chance of walking out of here?"
"Absolutely," he said. And I said "Let's go for it."

It wasn't until after that that I talked to Daddy and found out something else interesting. One of the conditions on any subsequent hearing was that we would have a special judge and we didn't know for sure who it would be. I mentioned this in passing and found out that had to mean the judge I had that day, in front of whom I never appeared, had recused himself, probably because he recognized my last name and didn't want to touch it.

So nothing is guaranteed, but that's no different than life as it usually goes. I don't even have a court date yet, just that it will likely be two to three months in the future. More time to do the work, more time to tip the scales in my favor. Another trip to look at the freaks, this time with a notebook. One in six is good enough for Loonies, and it's good enough for me, because six minus one is five. Hail Eris.

Hallo Folks, it's GA Here

2006-03-02T08:25:00.000-06:00

So, Parce got another continuance, and it looks like the whole thing is gonna get thrown out. Unfortunately, Parce is now too busy to sit online and talk to us. Cause she thinks she's too cool for us. Bitch.
;oP

Eeek!

2006-02-28T22:35:00.000-06:00

Hey there, all you cats and kittens.

Not a long post...no news of the amazing sweat I went to this weekend, or the tattoo I'm getting tomorrow, or the painting I have lusted after that I now have the cash to buy. All that will just have to wait.

This is just a simple bulletin. By the time you read this, I will probably be in court, getting the relative state of my future adjudicated.

Happy thoughts, prayers, and outright fist-shaking demands of the universe would be appreciated from all quarters. At the moment I'm drinking a beer and trying not to be nervous with relative success. I even have my court clothes out already, and the Near-Omnipotent Tish is on the case. I have the same attorney who got the Artist off on probation on his second offense. That does not mean, however, that I won't take all the help I can get, and then some.

Update when I have one. If it's delayed, don't worry; the chances of me actually going to jail are infinitesmal, but I do have a lot going on tomorrow other than court and may not be around the computer. GoddessA will know as soon as it happens, and has my authorization to post a temporary update as soon as becomes necessary.

Happy Mardi Gras/Ash Wednesday, y'all. Wish me luck.

Oi!

2006-02-20T22:33:00.000-06:00

Dammit, life got on top of me. Again.

I try really hard not to go more than a week without updating, and I went fifteen days this time. Loyal Readership, mea maxima culpa.

The new job goes well. The nanny job goes not at all. Because I quit it. Y'all would have had a post a week and a bit ago about that, but since I received Dao, every time I get on here in high dudgeon, ready to completely rant out whatever hair is up my ass at the time, I get the rant ready to go, and the computer eats it. Now that I have eight days' closure on it, the rant was somewhat unnecessary, being the same rant that I had laid on Design School Homie and my Hindu teacher (the latter being the one who helped me quit, i.e. sat me down and forced me to admit that the situation had become more verbally and emotionally abusive than I could reasonably be expected to handle, and that, contrary to my perception, I was not "saving" the children from their Crazy Mommy, but teaching them that it is OK to treat people the way that she treated me while simultaneously reinforcing that one should take that kind of treatment lying down.) I miss my Little Buddy already, but I've brought him into meditation a time or two and he seems to be sad, but OK.

Being a bill collector is also OK. I'm not necessarily as into it as some of the collectors are; a lot of them seem to stay in the feral, balls-to-the-wall headspace even when they're not in the dialer, and that's not where I live. But it's a good place for now and it will open up some things, work-wise, that I might like better, such as medical billing.

Had word from the illustrious Dr. Spears for the first time in over a year this weekend, which filled my heart with savage joy; I may go and see him and Don Shiftador sometime within the next two weeks. I have missed Il Dottore more than I realized; when he left town without warning, I shut down the part of my heart where he lived because I gave him up for lost. All the Doctors and their affiliates tend to pop in and out of one another's lives exactly when needed, and I think I needed the Spears.

But nothing much is really going on...making tentative plans to go back to school, spending a lot of time dreading court and getting ready for PUF...I'm on staff this year, which is pretty exciting, to me at least. I have been working either for the collection agency or for myself pretty much all the time, averaging out ten hours a day, and I have a tendency to come home and stare blankly into space instead of doing important stuff, like letting you folks know what's going on.

If LadyA remembers to poke me about it, I will get my partial astrology chart up on our proto-Wide World of Divination site soonish. I thought for years that I couldn't have a chart done at all, because I don't have my exact time of birth. Turns out that, for my birthdate at least, the only thing that excludes is my ascendant sign; the rest of my planets were fairly firmly in their respective signs that day, so I have the best chart I can have for the time being. Interesting stuff, thanks in no small part to GoddessA and her Hubbie's help in interpreting the raw data.

Be well. I'll try to be less sporadic.

HTTP ERROR 403

2006-02-05T00:55:00.000-06:00

All last night, that's what I got when I tried to go to my blog, ET's blog, GoddessA's blog, or Irina's blog. The RenReb's site was working OK, which was good. So was Richard's Midlife Crisis, which was...less than good.

This guy is still blogging (click if you want, but don't bother to comment; last week he still had his headline with the word spelled "happyness", but didn't allow the comment through that showed me correcting him.), and was still accessible. Irony. RenReb didn't have new content because it was Shabbat, and I would be happy if that guy never had any new content, ever again, because ew.

I went to my second Dao Ceremony today, bringing folks to receive, and we all had a good time, and I worked and made some money, and now I'm smoking cigarettes and drinking beer and ignoring the fact that I have a seven-forty-five AM wake-up call scheduled.

NOW sent me a new Keep Abortion Legal sticker, which was nice of them as the one on my car is almost dead. I'm going to send them the three bucks I have hanging around in cash to keep the favor, and wash the taste of That Guy's Blog out of my mouth.

In other good news, the long-awaited GBC XI is up. Read it here.

Basically it's been a good day. Here, for their comic value, the Minor Wrinkles:
* En route to Dao Ceremony, completely missing the exit to I-40 because of the ridonkulous construction, and having to rely entirely on the directions of the beautiful Bethums, which was fine, except...
* Ending up heading to Dao Ceremony by different route, and not having the written directions, being able to focus only on the road we needed being "New [Virtue] Natural Feature Road", subsequently realizing that we first had to turn onto [Direction]New [Virtue] Road once that road was safely behind us, and doing a three-point turn in the van in a church parking lot. (Clarification: I'm not going to ID the street, hence the brackets, but "Natural Feature" is verbatim; I didn't remember exactly what type of Natural Feature the builders of that subdivision had named the street after).
*Missing out on the chance to buy a lottery ticket when I had meant to do so. Maybe no one won the jackpot; I haven't checked and don't care enough to expend the tenth of an erg it would take to pick up the phone, so I'll just see if the jackpot amount is back down in the morning.
(note: no one did. Up to $210 million. So it didn't matter.)
*Coming home after a long and mostly beautiful day just to get revenge-pissed on by the EK when it was time for her meds...usually we wrap her in a towel for the actual process because, for one, she's got a UTI and the sporadic peeing is to be expected, and two, if we didn't we'd get sliced to ribbons and still not get the meds down her. As she's gotten more used to the process (although she still hides if she thinks it's meds time), I haven't had to be as careful about making sure her ass was actually inside the towel when I carried her to the bathroom to get drugged up, because the involuntary-peeing-when-lifted has basically stopped. But the little bitch looked me in the face and peed ALL OVER ME. She's mad about the meds and this is how she deals with it? Gives Mean Girls a whole new aspect.

But if a little pee and lost is the worst I have to deal with, how blessed I am. Have a good day, y'all.

Fuck You, I'm Drunk

2006-02-02T01:34:00.000-06:00

If the Windows Media Player update hadn't totally fucked my ability to play any of the music stored on my computer, and if my CD burner would consent to actually burn a CD without crashing the entire goddamn noisy box, that is the Irish drinking song I'd be listening to right now.

I'm not actually drunk. I've had the better part of a Mike's Hard Lemonade and a really rough day, though, so the first part is accurate even if the second isn't.

Went to work today, my first real, counting-toward-quota day, which also happened to be a day when I take an hour lunch and sacrifice my breaks so I can go see my shrink. That part was good -- managed to time it perfectly so I wasn't even late getting back, even though the doctor was late seeing me. But working first five, and then the better part of three, hours without a chance to smoke a cigarette is not entirely conducive to my mental health. Nor was the TDOT choice to put up a sign announcing the closure of a major exit that not only didn't indicate the proper closure dates, but also was situated after the last possible turnoff. Reeeal smart. Now that they are working on the best Way Out of Town During Rush Hour at their customary leisurely pace, traffic is going to suck even more than it usually does for a while. I'm tempted to make some kind of "I shalt not leave town between five and six PM" vow, but I doubt I'd make it even a week with that restriction.

I had to fight the traffic instead of taking my usual "cut across a lot of small-to-major roads" path towards my own place, because after my Day Job is done, my Other Job(s) kick in. I went to the Boss' house to clean, which didn't get finished and will necessitate another trip. That part is OK, as he is supposed to help me design and build a kneeler for the shrine, which we couldn't do today as he had "religious programming" to watch (E-Ring, that show that comes on after it about FBI behavioral analysts, and the first twenty minutes of the Jon Stewart show) and we had to go over my accounts for January, anyway. It took me almost 2 hours to get there due to traffic bullshit and fast-food slowness, which sucked, but we ate KFC and watched TV and I did the light cleaning and for a while all was jolly, or at least full of grease'n'biscuits.

However, as the hour greweth late, the blue funk which has been threatening to settle for a few days decided that it had found its moment. The Boss tends to be my semi-avuncular figure in such matters; he combines compassion and logic in such a weird way that I can usually take him my problems in full confidence that I will come away, if not with resolution, at least with Things to Think About.

Periodically when I am full of discontent, the Boss ends up staying up with me, talking noise, until I am too tired to spew any more "Fuck this, fuck the cops, fuck this fucking fucker, it's fucked", having imparted some anecdotes and words of wisdom whenever he could get a word in edgewise, at which point I either crash out on his incredibly comfy futon or drive home. Tonight it had to be the latter option, as I should have been in bed at least two and probably three hours ago. I sang Ani DiFranco songs and most of the 30th anniversary version of Alice's Restaurant to keep myself awake.

Before I even put down my purse upon arriving back at the Parcepartment, the key turned in the lock, and it was the Artist and GoddessA, who had been calling me repeatedly on the land line for the 45 minutes I was on the road and had finally decided to come over and see what the hell was wrong with me, or barring that, if the roommates knew where I was and why I hadn't talked to anyone since seven when I had expected to be back in town by eleven. They stayed for a moment, then rolled out, but by the time I had locked them out, the furious desire for sleep that had been induced by the drive up Highway 109 and down I-40 had been banished, so I got a beer and decided to post an essentially content-free entry about what I did today. I was going to rehash my blue funk and the reasons why I was spewing obscenities earlier, but now that the mood has passed, it would be no more interesting than what you've already read.

Refer back to the title. I'm going to go to bed and hopefully wake up more human and less crabby.

Professional Bitch -- Amateur Mystic

2006-01-27T16:55:00.000-06:00

I know I've been extremely low on the radar, Loyal Readership, but with everything that's been going on, I've been lucky to get to read my email and make some food before falling into bed to read and sleep and start over.

But that's not what I came to talk about, s'much...came to talk about my new job description, the one I'm considering printing on my business card -- my newly acquired status: Professional Bitch.

Now that the evil weight of inbound sales has lifted itself ponderously out of my life, like Caligula slinking out of the vomitorium, I've been able to pinpoint the Thing That Made It So Awful, the thing that my new job actively discourages: obsequious ass-kissing.

If people don't like the folks on the phone at the Former Network, they can always just hang up and dial the folks at one of their other competitor-clones with three-letter acronyms to purchase their crappy piece of exercise equipment, antiaging snake oil, or crappy cubic zirconium. But, short of FDCPA violations, there's absolutely nothing the people we talk to can do, short of hang up with full knowledge that we'll call them again the next day. They can't demand that their accounts be given to another credit agency; the consumer choice comes from the doctor's offices and radiology clinics and all the people we bill for. Furthermore, anything they say against us is automatically suspect, because of course they hate us; duh, we're bill collectors. Professional politeness is good; allowing oneself to be condescended to by idiots isn't allowed.

My supervisor walked by the other day, which happened to be my second on the phones, and said, "You have such a sweet little voice." (Keep in mind that we are in the South, where any adjective such as "sweet", "cute", or "precious" is grammatically incorrect without its preceding "little".) She followed it up with a laugh, observing "It'll be gone in about two weeks."

I don't know if she's entirely correct -- the polite-but-firm, unruffled-by-client-consternation approach isn't doing me so bad on small-balance accounts, at least. This could totally work out. I spend my time between calls doing malas and eavesdropping on the two hilarious guys who are primarily assigned accounts from criminal court. I don't even have a special code to punch in before I deign to take a piss.

I have my own desk, which came complete with its own bell. People ding them frantically to announce closure on large accounts. The jade Buddha from the desk altar at the house has made it to the desk, and his grin and my grin are beginning to come from the same source of joy, instead of the desire to have the proper Phone Voice. No more forcing my face into a feral rictus of pretend friendliness just to make people think I don't hate them. It makes my real smile real.

I'm so much less pissed off and generally disgruntled at the end of the day. Exhausted, yes -- besides the NewJob, I have three tutoring sessions a week and still watch the SCBLitW's kids on the weekend. I haven't had a day off in God knows how long -- counting back, at least nine or ten days. Don't have one scheduled until Saturday week, and even then I'm herding between four and ten folks to the Dao ceremony.

Oh yeah! That!

Since I had the Big Conversation with the Wise and Increasingly Omniscient Tish, the universal unfolding has been conspiring to increase my confidence in my magic and my abilities, and my conception of myself as a competent leader.

So I come home from PBing, and I have voice mail, and it's the Dian Chuan Shr of the Huntsville temple, the one who initiated me, calling to let me know the date of the next ceremony and asking me to call her. She had remembered that I had a group, you see, and that I might be bringing several people.

I am a girl who gets voice mail from holy women. I know she probably does that with lots of people, not just myself; my happiness over that fact has nothing to do with ego. It's just that I think I may be in the process of becoming the person I wanted to be when I set out on this leg of my spiritual journey. I pray regularly and openly now. I'm doing disciplines with tehellim, with japa mala, with lots of different things. My shrines are happy and well cared for.

I'm floating in the River Why, to wax metaphoric (and the book The River Why is awesome and you must go and buy it right now along with Life of Pi) and I'm enjoying the ride. Om namah Shivayah. I've even started to cover my dreads completely every day but Friday (for reasons that defy any explanation I could give at the present), which is like a Discordian hijab and weird-but-neat. I can feel the shakti that stores up in them when they're covered. I know now why a very wise and holy woman once whispered in my ear, "Never cut those, girl; they your power", repeating it to be sure I got the message.

So all is well here, just busy. As I get into the swing, you'll hear more about it.

Peekaboo, Internet Style

2006-01-17T23:35:00.000-06:00

I have Sitemeter because, like most normal human beings, I have a measure of vanity about my projects. But I'm also fascinated by the places the Internet takes people. For instance, just recently (as in, within approximately the past 72 hours):

Some people came here who linked through Hissyfit's review of the Oscars from last year, which I complimented in the comments section. You should have stayed longer, fellow Hissyfitters.

Someone came through a blog I've never read, really, but whose post on free speech I commented on because I happened to be looking for info on the ugly-ass Nathan Bedford Forrest statue that someone erected out on I-65 (link will show you a pic, if you like hideous and in terrible taste). You also should have stayed, random person from the Bureau of Land Management!

Someone was looking up graywash tattoos on MSN. Thanks for looking at the pics! Someone else was looking up my tattoo guy on Yahoo, came into this post, and I think also checked the pics, based on the amount of time and page views. I've gotten used to the Thor's hammer tattoo searches from time to time.

Why anyone would want to know what MSN has to say on the subject of hold music, I have no idea, but they were from Riot Grrl Headquarters, aka Olympia, Washington, so they get a pass on not staying. (Actually there were two such searches. Weirdos.)

Someone else wanted to find a kitty sensei on Technorati, and found, but did not read, this post. Hello, Malaysia!

Vapo-rub for infants? No help here.

Someone also searched blogger for "PUF Part 1", but I have a feeling that was one of the Loyal Readership.

A proto-Heinleinite on Yahoo wanted to know more about pantheistic solipsism and checked out these two posts. Thou art God; that which groks! Come back and see us sometime. Someone else on Yahoo wanted to know about (presumably) the song Who the F... Is Alice?, but got this post instead. Oddly, it was the first item in the search.

An MSN search on "pre to post modern" yielded my blog because I went to that store recently, but it won't tell me which post and I'm too tired to look it up.

Some were from sources closer to home.... my Myspace profile, Irina's blog, the links that come up in my email signatures, and a couple of people searched me up through Blogger itself. Not to mention all the "unknowns." Sorry I haven't been posting as much; going to work on that as much as I can. Hope y'all found what you were looking for, even if it wasn't here!

The News Is Now

2006-01-17T21:21:00.000-06:00

Don't get the upgrade for Windows Media Player. It's trying to play President Clinton's most famous speech ("I did not have...") right now and it sounds like a stripped DJ Irene track. The "American people" parts are hilarious, but I'd prefer to not have every song in my list beatboxed, you Microsoft-produced mofo.

I pretty much just realized how long it had been since I have posted. A lot has happened since then, so I'll go as chronologically as possible:

1.) I got new roommates. It's still a very tentative situation, but thus far all things are going well. They're sitting behind the tapestry that screens off their futon, playing video games, and if it weren't for Media Player's sudden transformation into a cut-rate Moby remix, I wouldn't even know they were here.

2.) I got seriously rededicated, spiritually speaking. I received the Dao from Fung Dien Chuan Shur, to whom I was introduced by my friend Emma V. I moved, cleaned, and rededicated every altar in the house. I made a new, all-Hindu altar, at which we threw the first puja last night, which was pretty awesome. And, since I had my court thing coming up, the no-atheists-in-foxholes principle (which, alas, my friend in Iraq has now proven wrong, wrong, wrong) kicked in too. It's the New Year (still no highlights, I'm busier than a one-armed paperhanger up in here) and I'm usually better after solstice, but I can't say this level of spiritual activity is my norm. I went to temple last Sunday and sponsored the archana (I think that was it, but the piece of paper with the word written on it is currently under several pounds of clean laundry, and....no), which is a very inexpensive donation to the cost of running the temple and having the pujas (here's a hint: it cost me $40 just to throw the one for six folks that I gave at my house, and they have an image at least six feet tall of Lord Ganesha who gets garlanded with fresh flowers, bathed in milk, orange juice, yogurt and honey, none of which we can do to my deities because they're not made for it) that gets you extra prasad (a bag of food and flower offerings to put on your home shrine) and a specific blessing for yourself and anyone else who needs it. Besides that, I gave thanks to all the deities and to Kshipra and Heramba Ganapatis, the two forms of Ganesh to whom I've been doing specific japa malas (sets of prayers done on beads called malas, about twice as many as a standard rosary, Catholic-style), who I think helped heal GoddessA's bunny and make #3 happen too, and perhaps even #4. I wrote an awesome spell (I almost never write spells, but this one was cool) using the Hebrew angels that SFGod looked up for me, including the angels for the day of the week the hearing was originally scheduled and my zodiacal sign, not to mention law, forgetfulness (for the cop), hope/penance, and a bunch more I can't even recall off the top of my head, plus all the names of G-d that correlate with the Psalms related to favorable judgements in court cases (viz. the 6th & 7th Books of Moses And Magical Uses of the Psalms.) It was wicked awesome and I copied it into my Book for posterity (we of the social sciences know how to do our research). When I randomly ended up at Goddess A's yesterday under the mistaken impression that SFGod was going to be there and drive me home after I dropped off the coffee table and showed him the finished spell, and decided to walk home when they didn't show back up, they speculated for a moment or two as to the identity of the dreadlocked back walking down their road, before driving past me, carrying my Rainbow Brite bag and holding that (lit) candle, and picking me up and driving me home, laughing hysterically. It was fun, in a weird way, and better than walking the rest of the mile.

It says something not terribly nice about me that it's partially taken the threat of probation to get me going, spiritually speaking, but at the same time...I'm going. And out of it, by my belief system at least, have come the next two big Important Things from my brief hiatus.

3.) I got a new job. No more hold music for me...well, actually, yes. But no more selling cubic zirconia, no more looking up gram weights of gold, no more home shoppers, and no more sales. I've decided to really debase myself and become a bill collector.Yeah, yeah. But the company is pretty reputable, the pay is right, the environment is hella better, and the money potential if I get good at it looks verra verra nice indeed. Also, it gets something medical-related into my resume, which, since I've heard medical billing pays the bank, would be nice in terms of the future if this doesn't work out. Only one wrinkle....

4.) My court date got continued again. I found this out at 5 pm today on the same week I am supposed to be starting a new job at which I will not have accrued any off time for a while. The worst part, short-term anyway, is that I won't even be able to speak to my attorney about the continuance date until tomorrow morning because of how late this fell through.

Now, there are two ways for me to look at this: the goddammit way, which was my first reaction, because I really, really want this job and don't want to start out being mentally identified as "the girl who always has a problem" by my new boss, and arrgh, and gah, and paranoid and ohmigod. But I talked to my dad, and then to the new bosslady, who appears to be entirely sane, and they both said it's no problem, the latter adding that all she needed was a letter from my attorney for my file informing her of the new date, like turning in a doctor's note.

Then there's the way, in the light of all the recent spiritual praxis, I ought to be looking at things, which is that I've done, and had done for me, a lot of work with two main objectives: generally getting me cleared of charges, and specifically getting the cop to forget or otherwise miss the court date to get the case thrown out. Obviously the Big Kahuna(e) wouldn't have caused this to happen so quickly and unexpectedly if it weren't what had to happen to accomplish the objectives. When I took a sec to think about it, I realized that even a short continuance will make six months since the original arrest. The cop is going to forget, or just say fuck it. So let it be written, and stuff.

5.) To obey the law of Fives, I will add a fifth: I donated my second gallon of blood for the American Red Cross. Actually, I finished it back in May of last year (five of oh-five), but it took me over five months to find out about it. Unless my recurring winter-induced sinus infection comes back, I'll be doing a phaeresis next Tuesday afternoon. Only five percent of eligible donors choose to give blood, so unless needles make you faint, you should think about it. They'll give you a t-shirt, and after a gallon you get a neat pin and a sticker to put on your car telling everyone you donated eight pints of blood and saved at least twenty-four lives. (Plus, putting "blood donor" under your community service/awards and honors part of your resume makes you look like a badass to those who don't donate because they have needle fear. Or like a sucker for punishment, which some people look for in their employees.) And if you can take the time and do platelets or plasma, the need for those is even greater. (Two needles, though, and it takes anywhere from an hour to two hours from the time you walk in until you leave, but you get your red cells back so you don't even get faint afterwards, and they'll let you watch TV or a movie if you bring one.) Please donate blood. If you know your tattoo artist or piercer uses clean needles, just lie about the question; they'll test your blood anyway. Thanks for listening to this Public Service Announcement, which was sponsored by Parce's veins; now back to your regularly scheduled post.

So, other than being a bit nervous about all the changes (from what I remember of the stress test, I'm getting fairly dangerously high on the stressors list) and uncertainties in my life, I'm actually doing fairly well. There's a large orange cat in my lap, my house is cleaner than it's been in months, I have pretty shrines and I even managed to get almost all of my books on shelves. In some form of order, if that can be believed, although that "order" is relative, still requires some fine-tuning and probably means trying to jam one more large bookcase into this somewhat crowded apartment to replace two of the small ones and still make room for the books stacked sideways on shelves, nestled in plastic Rubbermaid boxes and languishing in cabinets to have shelves of their very own. But, if you had ever seen my library (GoddessA can attest to its sprawling nature), and can be troubled to take into consideration that I live in an 800-square foot apartment with three people and three cats, you'd be almost as impressed as I am with that achievement.

I also went and had a lovely time with my mother this afternoon before the drama, and, after I introduced her to Baja Burrito, one of my favorite places in all the world to eat tacos, we took a little trip to the fabric store, where she bought me (at her own insistence -- I had my debit card halfway out of my bag before she said something) two and a bit yards of some gorgeous, heavy corduroy that I'm going to use to make a neat stripy pillow (I think -- I haven't cut it, just looked at its bounty, because I think I'm too stressed out to start a sewing project, what with the need for precision and my current, distracted state of mind), as well as some thread and a zipper to replace the one that's broken on one of my nicer pairs of pants. I found some much better fabric for the pair of Chinese restaurant chairs I've been meaning to put seats on and recover for four goddamn years, although since its price made me want to gag and I didn't know exactly how much I needed yet, I did not give in and buy it. I've made the bottoms for the chairs. which I got for ten bucks for the pair back in the day, out of heavy pressboard, but the odd shape of the seats means I have to go get the chair foam crap from Home Depot, which is never on my list of places to visit under any normal circumstances. But now I will probably get off my ass and buy both the filler and some of the expensive-but-oh-so-pretty fabric, as those chairs would look awesome with the table that is now by the front door, and I wouldn't need so much fabric that I'd have to hock my firstborn to afford it. Also, I got a much-belated Christmas card (for her, I'll skip using Xkzule) from my Grandma Parce, who is precious, and then called her with the no-longer-broken phone and had a nice conversation. I didn't realize she was pushing 81; I need to go see her soon.

There are a few householdy things I had ought to be doing, but since my life has been, yet again, thrown into disarray, and since they are totally minor in nature, I think I'm going to sit and read my copy of Stephen King's Black House, which I thought had been gone for over a year and I am really, really happy to get back. I knew there had to be a reason I never wanted to spend the money on another hardbound copy, even when I found it cheap a time or two. See #4.....there is a reason for everything. It's just not always evident.

If I keep telling myself that, maybe the butterflies in my stomach will go away.

confidential to FNR: reading this, you dirty fucker? Hurt my beloved sister in law, and I will beat you to death with an Oxford Study Bible. Complete with the Apocrypha. The five-oh are onto you and you are going down. Enjoy your new roommate, Big Gay Ray!

Getting Clean

2006-01-03T20:00:00.000-06:00

Happy New Year, Loyal Readership! I assume that, by now, all of you have achieved some state of sobriety, and am looking forward to reading all your own blog entries about your debauchery.

However, because I am lazy (well, sort of -- you'll see why I qualify that in a minute), I am just going to copy almost word-for-word the capsule review of my Amateur Night experience that I left in the comments to this post, as what I wrote there pretty much covers it:

I made it from the first party I went to (where I only had half a glass of dry champagne, because the Parce is not all about the DUI) to the second while avoiding all three DUI checkpoints, made it to CDHSarah's party in plenty of time to get ridiculously drunk (what my homies from the other side of the river would call "drizz-nunk") before the midnight hour, did not vomit or otherwise make a fool of myself*, only took off my shirt once (and that was for the "everybody take their shirt off and dance" portion of the evening), had a very nice conversation with the Artist (which was most unexpected), got a few very nice kisses from a pretty girl (basically straight, alas, but kisses were really all I wanted), got a bunch more kisses from pretty much everyone at the party as well, saw a bunch of the homies I haven't seen in a while, dealt with the night's only incident of drama in what I thought was a remarkably competent and mature fashion for someone in the state of drunkeness I was in, woke up hangover-free (albeit at 7 in the evening) and even got to work on time on New Year's Day, which is more than can be said for most people, I think. And after work, I even made it downtown just in time to eat at Big River Grille, my absolute favorite restaurant (where I now, apparently, get 25% off as a Cafe O2 employee), which meant that my first real meal of the New Year was my absolute favorite thing of all to put in my belly. Also, I booty-danced with a stuffed snowman, which was new and exciting. All in all, a good start to what I hope will be an excellent year.

Another thing that bodes an excellent start is the fact that Sars apparently found my GBC CD review on her own recognizance, and told me it "made her smile". And that I scored the very last size M girlie Saucy shirt, as well as a GBC shirt of my very own, which means I no longer have to feel inferior to my ET.

Right now I'm having a faux-Jewish post-Chanukah party by myself while I wait to see if I'm having company later and for my filet to defrost. In case you're interested, a FJP-CP consists of a semi-latke (leftover mashed potatoes fried with garlic salt, which is more yummy than it sounds) and the bags of Chanukah gelt I got for 25 cents a pop at the post-holiday sale at CVS. (If they still have any when I go back tomorrow, I'm going to buy it all; I'm not a huge candy or chocolate person, but I lurrrrve gelt for some weird reason. As does Ganesh, which makes it a handy type of prasad to keep around.)

But you may be wondering about the title, and about why I bothered to qualify my description of myself as a lazy ass.

As I mentioned before, one householdy project tends to spawn fifty million more. The kitchen of the Parcepartment had gotten out of control, y'all -- so much so that I hesitated to put any food in the fridge or freezer, because of the extreme scariness. (To give you some idea, before resolving to clean it, I did the Clarice Starling/C.S.I. trick of smearing Vick's Vapo-Rub all over my nose, mouth and philtrum to cut the funk.) Also, at some point in the past few days, one of the cats (Eldest, I'm looking at you) decided to kick over the litterbox in a fit of pique, thus causing the kitten to decide today that her proper potty was the place on the floor where the spillage had occurred. Since that's simply disgusting, I have now:
*mopped and swept the kitchen floor three times (and will give it a final swipe with no-wax cleaner here in a bit)
*prewashed and dishwashed all the dishes-formerly-containing-scariness from the aforementioned fridge
*cleaned the sink at least twice
*soaked the mop used to clean the floor in bleach
*scrubbed every inch of the fridge in bleach, including pulling out the drawers and bleaching/washing them in the sink

And, just for something to do while I was in my funky using-bleach-products clothes, I deep-cleaned the toilet while one of the mop jobs was drying. I'm leaving the bathroom sink (which has been cleaned recently, but doesn't look it because some pink powder incense got spilt in there and simply will not begone) and freezer-defrosting for another night, because as soon as I have put all this bread and potatoes in my belly, there are a large bottle of Canadian Mist whiskey and a bottle of Purity lemonade calling my name in dulcet tones. I'm about to find out if you can sort your own books satisfactorily while sloshed. It's for science, y'all.**
But for now, CDHSarah is headed down my stairs and I must go. Shalom!

*relatively speaking...come on, it was New Year's Eve, people. You have to grade on a curve, here.
** I just realized that my first post of the New Year was mostly about cleaning my apartment. I need to get laid.

Happy New Year (But No Highlights Yet)

2005-12-31T03:01:00.000-06:00

Well, the getting right with God is going well. I have a beautiful new Hindu altar, the previous altar has been cleaned and rearranged to within an inch of its life (and has already gotten the approval of CDHSarah, who was first to see it.)

The Wise and Sometimes Apparently Omnipotent Tish was right as always. The same night as the reading, I came across this line in Standing Alone In Mecca: An American Woman's Struggle for the Soul of Islam, which was one of my Xkzule gifts from the aforementioned and much-beloved CDHSarah:

"...I learned that seeking forgiveness is a way to be compassionate with yourself about actions that carry emotions such as shame, blame or hurt."

It was yet another Kendo Stick Moment in a long line of many. I have a feeling it's not even close to the last, but that's OK by me.

So I am forgiven, because I have forgiven myself, and I feel better than I have in weeks. Even the pain in my back has lessened since I did what I felt had to be done to achieve forgiveness and compassion for myself. And (being a Discordian) it also had an odd and much-welcomed side effect.

As I mentioned, part of what I had been putting off was the massive job of moving, cleaning and reorganizing the altar and sacred space in my room. Part of my methods for that involve the literal cleaning of everything associated with the space -- statues are washed, or dusted if their finish will not permit an actual washing, the shelves are scrubbed, and all the odds and ends (jars, cups, etcetera) which reside there get a similar treatment.

Two and a half years ago, extreme financial straits led me to take on a series of roommates who were progressively more and more shady -- a guy who turned out to be an IV drug user (he was a diabetic and it took me a little while to realize that he wasn't just using his needles for insulin) and a freelance hooker being the worst of the lot. Around that same time, a pair of earrings my mother had given me which were of not-inconsiderable value disappeared. When I didn't find them during the move or the move that followed, despite searching every jewelry box, odds-n-ends container, and similar I own (or so I thought), I decided that they were most likely residing in the sale case of one of the many fine pawn shops in my former hometown. Every time I have thought of those earrings for that length of time, or been asked about them by my mom, a wave of negativity directed at my own stupidity and foolishness has washed over me, to the point that I felt physically sick with guilt and shame.

The one thing I never though of is the fact that, in any move, the altar is dismantled by putting the icons, tools and statuary in the lower drawers, which are always the first things I carry to the new residence. As I was looking for a new container for my sea salt, I noticed the Pueblo carrying pot (also a gift from my mother, from one of her trips to the Southwest when I was much younger) which for years has had my collection of foreign currency stored in it and has propped up one or more altar cards on the shrine since I first set it up.

You can see where this is going. When I looked down inside the pot, lying on top of my Mexican pesos and British pounds were the earrings over which I had spent so much time berating myself. They're not even damaged. Mahalakshmi, namostu'te!

Kendo Stick Moment, as I said, and a lesson in self-forgiveness I won't soon forget.

While on the subject of good fortune, namas also to the very nice member of the Metro PD who pulled me over on my way home from Cafe O2 tonight. He pulled me over less than a half-mile from my house on the cut-through road from CDHSarah's to my place because the red tape covering my rear taillight had come loose and too much white was showing through. He only checked my license and registration (good, because I won't be able to afford insurance until early February), didn't bother to actually run my license number or give me a ticket; he just told me what was wrong, admitted that the recent rain had probably caused the tape to come loose, asked me how far I had to go, and told me to have a nice night and be careful on the roads New Years' Eve, a caution I repeated to him. He didn't even follow me home, as some other officers have done to ensure that I wasn't lying about my proximity to home (my I.D. still has my parent's address, which is in a different county). I have a feeling, because of the time of night (right before the bars closed) that he was mostly concerned with ascertaining that I wasn't driving under the influence. The world needs more cops like that, and I hope he goes far and stays as cool as a member of the police force can be.

Interestingly, again, when I pulled out the registration for my car, a few other items from the glove box came with it, and once the cop had pulled off and I had returned my paperwork to its proper place, the Tarot card VALOUR (7 of Wands) was still in my lap, one from a damaged copy of the Thoth deck the Artist gave me so I could make art out of the remaining cards once they were no longer of any use as a divination tool. How the card got into my glove box (and into my lap, for that matter) when its fellows are all in a box on top of one of the bookshelves at the apartment is a Mystereee, but the card is now ensconced next to the Infant Jesus of Prague's holy card on the new shrine. I hope it brings blessings, both to the officer and myself, and that he will be safe from all the drunk drivers tomorrow night and come to no harm.

In other news, as tends to happen, the moving of the shrine has spawned other householdy projects, mostly the ones involving the ridonkulously large collection of books. Since I had to move two shelves in order to set those up and ended up with stacks and stacks of books sitting in the bedroom floor, I decided it was the perfect time to get around to the other major task I've been putting off: namely, getting the library in some form of order and unpacking those books which have been boxed up since October 2004 (or even longer, in a few cases, but those are mostly little-used textbooks that I won't unpack until I determine whether there's space for them).

At this point, I have three full-size and three small-to-medium bookcases in my 800-square foot apartment. Once I get the stacks of books which are sorted in small piles around the house and in front of other books on the shelves themselves sorted and in their proper places, I have a feeling each and every shelf in each and every bookcase will be full to bursting. The childrens' and young adult literature alone occupies the largest of the medium shelves, and after the "metaphysics" (everything from The Tao of Physics to Scott Cunningham, Dojo Wisdom to The Woman's Bible) shelf on one of the larger bookcases collapsed under its own weight last week, the subject been given its own, small shelf next to the shrine. Right now I'm fidgeting about with the proper sorting and categorization of the fiction, as well as seriously considering either a.) living in this apartment until I die or b.) hiring movers if I ever decide to leave it. How I packed these things up and moved them twice in one year is beyond me...and that's not even counting the thirty-odd books I have out on loan to various associates (not including those lent to people I've lost track of, which will have to eventually be replaced as finances permit) or the God-knows-how-many jammed in every nook and cranny of the van. Once I've got them all shelved and sorted, I've entertained the thought of actually inventorying them, but I have a feeling that would be both frightening and take a lot more time than I have. (Also, knowing me, by book #230 or so, I'd have come across at least 20 volumes I wanted to read immediately, and the project would end unceremoniously with me curled up in the bed with Deliver Us from Evie or some other nugget of goodness I haven't read in a few years.)

The cats are, as usual, a bit unsettled by the reorganization -- the kitten managed to get herself stuck between a bookshelf and the shrine yesterday no less than three separate times because of her refusal to believe that she couldn't exit from under the left-hand side as used to be her wont. The Eldest Kitty traditionally reacts most badly to changes in the furniture configuration, so she's spent most of the past two days hanging out inside the cardboard cat carrier and making various disgusted faces when she deigns to emerge. The other two are mostly concerned with finding new routes which will allow them to circumnavigate as much of the apartment as possible without ever touching the floor. (Since I'm convinced that the kitten, at least, flies at night once the lights are off, I don't see the fascination, but it keeps them occupied.)

So, all of us here are good. Me and the white bathrobe of comfy goodness are about to head off to bed, as tomorrow I have fifty gazillion NYE and non-NYE-related errands to run, a three hour shift to work before the party can commence, and have to burn off some more music for CDHSarah's Massive And Getting Bigger All the Time New Year's Eve bash, at which I plan to get truly plastered (for the first time in years -- CDH's husband has known me for going on five years and never seen me drunk) on my favorite drink, Jesus Walking on Waters. (Back in the day, I named, but did not invent, this beverage: credit for that must be given equally to the Artist and Doctor Spears.)

For those who may wish to add this excellent beverage to their own NYE libations, here's how you make it: get a double shot glass, one of the ones that looks kind of like an hourglass. (This is important, as I haven't found any other kind of glassware that produces the desired effect.) Fill the bottom of the hourglass shape with lemonade -- Purity works best, but isn't available outside Middle TN, so just be sure that it's a sweet and not a tart lemonade, or you will live to regret it. Float your preferred whiskey (Canadian Mist works best when using Purity, but, again...work the recipe to fit yourself) on top in the top half of the hourglass. Toss it back like a shooter -- the difference in specific gravity will usually keep the whiskey on top of the lemonade, which provides the perfect chaser. Also, the lemonade usually has a high enough water content that, barring ridiculously irresponsible consumption, it tends to help you avoid the New Year's Day hangover. (It's also nice with pineapple juice in place of the lemonade, in which case it's called a Jesus Walking Along the Beach In Maui; however, the floating, shot-plus-chaser effect doesn't work quite as well with the pineapple. Makes a decent mixed drink if the float effect fails, though.)

However it is that you celebrate, do so safely and, whether you're drinking or not, try to avoid the roads. I want to see you all back here in the New Year safe and sound for the promised Highlights Reel, which will happen IF (and only if) I can get the computer to stop being such a randomly-restarting fidget midget. Have a safe and happy New Year's Eve, and see you in 2006!

P.S. -- Sars still has a few GBC CDs (and apparently some of the t-shirts) left. Before you miss out, you should go buy one. Or three. (The "GBC CDs" link is the link to buy; the other is my impromptu rave review/call to action.)

Eh Bien, And So

2005-12-28T20:08:00.000-06:00

First things first...here's to a whole year of TFtHM. Feel free to sing a chorus of "Happy Blogiversary to Parce" if you're so inclined, and here's hoping we're all here together this time next year. At some point in the next few days, in honor of the Western New Year, I'll try to put together a highlights links reel of Year In Review, but no promises, as I've got a lot going on between now and then.

In other news, while the back has not entirely stopped its bitching and moaning (as well as causing one of the more amusing Chrimmus-church experiences of my life, about which I will tell you in a moment), the damage is not as bad as I originally perceived. After putting up with it for essentially 6 days, helped along by various muscle relaxers, pain pills and the ever-wonderful Midol and Midol-analog, I said to hell with it two nights ago and went for a visit to the kind and ever-blessed folks at Vanderbilt's ER.

They just built a new facility which meant that I barely had to wait at all (having 70 beds plus the children's ER right across the way helps with the excessive wait time). The nurse who checked me in and I had some giggles: I gave my usual "No, or we'd best page the Pope" answer to the question about the possibility of me being pregnant, which amused her highly. They've also added the question "Is anyone hurting you at home?" to the standard triage form, which, while it's not a funny subject AT ALL, prompted me to say "No...well, the kitten, but he don't mean to, he loooooves me," which led to a showing off of the bloody bruise he created last week when being chased by the Middle Kitty across my sleeping form, and a more serious discussion where we swapped war stories about dealing with abused and battered women (me from my stint as a deputy clerk). She was super-nice and complimented my Docs, which (since I was wearing one of my absolute favorite outfits ever) made me quite happy, got me settled into a room, and was openly jealous of the vibrating lumbar pillow that my sismilarly back-pain afflicted sister had thoughtfully given me for Xkzule. Come to think of it, several of the staff were fairly admiring of it, so, hey, sis, thanks. The thing's come in super handy.

All of the staff were similarly fab, including the doctors. The first one took a look at the hurty, did the normal pushing and "does it hurt here, does it hurt here, does it...sorry, ok", and had me bend to check my preexisting curvature. Her fear was that I had walking pneumonia, which can present with a similar pain, but she thought that because the pain was localized and I had no fever, that it was neither that nor a cracked rib. She got the attending in to be sure, though; he told me we could do x-rays if I wanted, but "You can ID right where the pain is coming from, you have no fever, your lungs sound mostly clear, and you look fabulous, so if you'd rather go home..." (I have carried that compliment around like a present for two days; seriously, if I look fabulous while braless in a hospital gown, either hell has frozen over or losing all this weight has made me significantly hotter than I thought. Or the doctor was just trying to make me feel better, but -- shut up and let me have my moment.)

So, apparently, I have pulled one or more of the muscles that connect my right scapula to my spine, which is why it hurts to breathe (or move, or stand, or bend, or scratch my ass...). They gave me some very fine pills and some of the massive, kick-ass ibuprofens, and I went to CDHSarah's for a night of somewhat blurry and all-seated revelry. We woke up and went to the Axis of Evil-Mart, for which I had been given a $50 gift certificate from the ParceRents, almost all of which went on new fabric -- I think I'm going to make a skirt and have enough black/silky/shiny stuff left over to make a new altar cloth, as well as some nice dark blue fleece for a new fall/winter ritual outfit, and some pretty gauzy rainbow stuff for a new headwrap.

Speaking of ritual stuff, as soon as I'm done here (which must be shortly, as time's a-wasting) I am going into the ParceRoom to, despite the protestations of my muscles, move some furniture. I went to see the Very Wise And Almost All-Knowing Tish today, because, as happens, I am in a strange period of mental freeze, some of which is probably due to Saturn being in Leo (and for those of you who care to, click the link about the Pope above and you'll see that I predicted this last December), but most of which has to do with the fact that I have absolutely NO IDEA what I want to do with myself in the new year. I'll do my own yearly reading quite soon, of course, but she tends to see things clearly and lay them out for you straight, it's always good to get a second voice of reason when you're in a state of confusion, and since we're buddies she also agreed to let me pay her for the reading at the end of the week when I can cash my check, since she had no appointments.

I'm not going to give all the details here, but -- after letting me know that yes, this rocky patch of mental weirdness is going to continue through the next six months or so until Saturn hauls his corpulent, fucking-shit-up ass into the next sign to bother them for a year and a half -- once it's over there are good things in the works. Much of the reading focused on the main issue at the moment: my upcoming court date, the outcome of which was not immediately apparent as the cards appeared contradictory. She laid a side spread, looked me right in the face and said, "Why is your magic not working for you?" (I love Tish with all my heart, but sometimes her level of psychic perception is not only a bit creepy but an actual pain in the butt.....not even the people who practice with me had really been aware that, except for very small things, I haven't been able to do the things I'm accustomed to doing as a matter of course for quite a long time, and have, to a degree, stopped trying.)

I told her. See, I did a bad thing a bit ago, the details of which I will also not disclose except to point out that it was "bad" only as relates to my personal relationship with Divinity, and not anything done to anyone else, about which I have had ongoing and lingering doubts and guilt. (And no, it had nothing to do with keeping or failing to keep the vow of celibacy, you perverts. When that comes to pass, I will shout it from the gee-dee rooftops.) She reminded me that "Thou art God", that we give our emotions and thoughts and human experience to God in exchange for the ability to create the lives we want for ourselves, and that the only reason God isn't talking to me the way God usually does is because I perceive myself as having not been forgiven for the original Very Bad Thing. "God hasn't forgiven you because you haven't forgiven yourself," she said, "and you know that, but knowing isn't the same as manifesting, so go home, go do the things to your tools and your space that you've been avoiding doing, get yourself right with yourself and God, and get your ass on this court thing, cause time's a'wasting and there's work to do." We talked a bit more about how to properly set those safeguards -- I don't want the arresting officer to get shot two days before the court date or anything drastic, I just want his alarm to fail to go off, for him to wake up thinking it's Thursday, for the evidence to get mysteriously misplaced, for his battery to die -- something benign, something that won't hurt him but will get me off scot-free.

In better news from the world o'Tish's reading, apparently once the rockiness has subsided and the court thing resolved itself, there is love coming back into my life (God be thanked!) and also a return of some kind to higher education, one that will actually lead to some form of material advancement. Because the cards themselves were so determined to focus on the major issues at hand (court and resolving the Very Bad Thing) that until those have resolved, everything else is very much in the realm of the general, and we'll look at the other once the big stuff has gone as it goes.

So, as soon as this is posted, I will go and bathe myself, disassemble every altar in the house, and recreate my sacred space -- a task I had been putting off for New Year's Eve, as it's also the New Moon, but was really avoiding for the reasons I've discussed. It will be difficult, and more so because my back is not liking the idea of moving the main altar (which is a two-piece hutch and not precisely lightweight). Then I will sit down and do the homework she assigned me. To help me, CDHSarah's ceremonialist husband has lent me his Seal of Solomon related to absolute success, which is on a chain around my neck, and his other seal related to intelligence, which is in my pocket as it requires repairs before it can be worn as jewelry, with instructions not to return them until court is over or I don't need them anymore, whichever comes first.

Oh yeah. I promised to tell you about the amusingness of Chrimmus-church, which I will do, not least because it gives me a few more seated minutes before the Massive Project begins. My parent's particular flavor of Christianity does not recognize Christmas as a religious holiday, but doesn't actively discourage its celebration. However, this means there are no special Christmas Eve services, and that Sunday service is held as normal, even in the rare event that it falls on Christmas Day. Oddly, this year I wanted to go (thinking that a friend I haven't seen in a while might be visiting his family, which was no dice, more's the pity), but was in ridiculous pain. So my wonderful mother gave me a very fine pain pill from her own stash of drugs-to-make-the-back-stop-hurting, and off we went to church.

I made it through Sunday School fine -- a bit sleepy, but I blamed that solely on being up until 2 am watching TV and trying to wrap presents without using the right side of my body. (I'm almost-but-not-really sorry that I won't be in Sunday school on New Year's Day -- my dad teaches the class I attend when I'm there, and they're going to study the fact that prejudice itself is a sin against God, which is a lesson I think more people need to hear.) 'Round about the beginning of actual service, however, I started feeling the woozy, floating feeling that only a very fine pain pill can provide. I made it through the announcements, the first prayer, the first 2 hymns, and then had distinct difficulty getting my eyes to open again after the second prayer -- not because I was trying to go to sleep, but because the muscles had decided that the VFPP meant they had no moral obligation to follow the commands my brain was issuing -- at which point I turned to my mother and said, "Give me the keys, I need to go sit in the car."

Bless her, she offered to go with me -- she told me later I had lost all my color and she was afraid I was going to fall out while walking up the aisle -- which I refused; I took the keys, went and curled up in the back of the Lincoln, and spent the rest of Chrimmus-church having a VFPP-induced nap, which I continued in my bed at home until the ParceSis, ParceBroInLaw, and ParceNephew showed up. God be praised! :)

So that's the news from here. Off to get right with God, y'all. Talk to you again before New Year's; hope your Xkzule was merry/happy/fruitful/full of yummy food. Namas'te!

Oh, JESUS! (And Not In An Orgasmic Way, Either, Dammit)

2005-12-24T03:26:00.000-06:00

Oh, dear Lord. I probably shouldn't even be sitting up to write this, except that lying down is far more painful.

As I mentioned yesterday, when I went to bed last night I had a cramp (or what I thought was only a harmless and innocent cramp) in my back. As my back is the source of most of my Random Pain Pangs (tm Laurie Notaro), I thought little of it, just took a muscle relaxer, finished up a few things I had to do, and went to bed.

Within five minutes of lying down I was writhing in pain and actually yelling as I thrashed around in the bed. I found the least-painful position and did some deep breathing until I fell asleep.

I had three parties to go to today (as well as a present to buy and a sick friend to visit), and I kept feeling the twinge throughout the day -- not an acute pain, just a "Hey, over here" every time I moved, coughed, or breathed too deeply. That sounds bad, but anyone with chronic back problems knows it's not at all uncommon. I've gotten to where I simply ignore them most of the time. As I was told this evening, I should probably stop doing that.

At Party #1 a friend did a bit of work on it, and what had become a mid-level stream of "hey, I hurt" babble went back to an angry mutter. At Party #2 I took another half a muscle relaxer and spent most of the night leaning into the corner of the couch.

Party #3 was the only one not being thrown by close friends of mine, and due to the need to visit 2 other places, I got there once most of the shindiggery had ended. (In fairness, I had called the hostess and been told to come on over, as while most of the child-having folk had had to make their goodbyes, there was still a party going on.) It was Chelsea's Pre-End-Of-The-World party, a hootenanny she throws yearly on 12.23 in preparation for the end of the Mayan calendar on that date in 2012. Chelsea is one of the Silverscroll members, and she invited me to her party at the Yule celebration (although apparently both times when I talked to her on the phone, she thought I was another Parce she knows, hee), so despite the lateness, I felt compelled to go; I'm trying to broaden my circle in 2006, and all the Silverscrollians seem to be interesting people worth including in that circumference.

By the time I got there, the party had turned into a chill-and-talk-on-the-bed..2 young lesbians, Chelsea herself, a very nice girl and her husband whose names I would probably remember were it not for the fact that I have had a Percocet since meeting her, and Kate, another Silverscrollian.

I approve of lying down and having nonsexual cuddling, which is what we proceeded to do; we talked about this, that and another. After Kate and the little lesbians made their exit, however, the twinge turned without warning into the same horrendous, stabbing pain that had me sounding like a pain porn last night, this time making it difficult to even take a full breath. Greeeeeat feeling, that, to sit on the floor and whimper in front of people with whom you have spent less than 2 hours cumulative in all your life. Hyperventilating in front of strangers is so attractive.

Luckily for me, Chelsea (and the other girl, whom I'll call Cassandra as her name was something close to that, if not that itself) are both healers. After trying to stretch out the now-stabbing pain, which only made it harder to breathe, I ended up lying down and having hands laid on.

The muscle theory was quickly laid to rest, both because the muscle relaxers had failed utterly to relieve any of the pain, and because, despite my orignial categorization of the twinge as "a knot", she failed to actually find any knotting of the muscles when she attempted to rub ir out. "It's nerve pain from lack of alignment in your back, I think," she said.

In the course of the previous conversation the subject of health had come up, so both women knew that I have degeneration in my bottom two vertebrae, so their identification of that as the major break in energy flow was not imexpected. Chelsea imaged my back as a tree whose knots showed her the blockages, while Cassandra "saw" a nerve chart in green and red, but both of them saw some things that were quite impressive, considering our short acquaintance; Chelsea indicated that she saw no "roots" of energy flow at all in my left leg, which I found interesting because until a couple of days after I got the flu, that leg and knee had been subject to near-constant and unexplained pain that had gone on for over 2 months unabated. She also saw a "split" in the energy at precisely the spot where my shoulders usually cramp and burn.

When you deal with holistic healers, however, you get holistic advice, which can be embarassing when they're near-strangers. "You don't listen to your body much," one pointed out, "because you see it as separate from yourself, just another object." Guilty; I spend more time being irritated at my body for failing to function optimally than I do treating it nicely. "Some issues with respect," the other said. "You're proud of yourself, but you don't necessarily think that you're worthy of respect, and thus have trouble giving it, too." (My response to that correctly identified me as a reader of Ayn Rand.) All the while laying on hands, they gave me some advice about body awareness meditation. Chelsea went so far as to predict that my misalignment would, at least temporarily, correct itself within 48 hours, about which we'll see, and gave me some self-monitoring advice. "I can't completely fix it," she said, "not tonight. It's physical and emotional, I'd have to open you all the way up." As I know enough about energy healing to know what time and effort that entails, I understood completely why she hesitated to do that this evening.

It's hard to learn from strangers (although, since she invited me to her next full moon party, I don't think she was as embarassed as I was by the fact that I had spent most of this party lying on her bed and gasping in pain every time I tried to fill my lungs to capacity.) It's especially hard when the learning is about things close to the center of yourself -- your body attitude, the ways you relate to yourself and your world, your faults, essentially. But if you want to be healed, even if only for a little while, you have to take the deeper stuff with the surface. I've never known a real energy worker who didn't work exactly lke that.

However, the Perc has completely kicked in, I'm nodding out in my chair, and I have a feeling that despite the fact that my back is still not happy, I won't be able to avoid sleeping once I lie down. I apologize for any typos I may have missed while touch typing under the influence. If I don't write again before it's over, Happy Festivus. (That said "Jappy" to start with, hee.)

Is it too late for me to page Santa and find out how mice I'd have to be to get a back that works? Oh, well. Have a very Chappy Hismus and a Hairy Maunakah, y'all.

Make The YuleTide Gay

2005-12-23T02:41:00.000-06:00

Happy Day-After-Solstice, Loyal Readership. In honor of...yesterday, I'll keep my promise to tell you about Yule.

Last Saturday was Spiritual Co-Op Yule. Like Samhain, about which you did not hear because of my absence from all things Internet, it was held at one of our local UUs (Unitarian Universalist churches, for the uninitiated.) It's a pretty little church relatively close to my neighborhood, that I would probably attend were it not that on the rare occasion that I am actually awake on a Sunday morning, I usually spend that time at temple, instead. But it is a beautiful church, so much more so because...how many other churches let the pagans use their space instead of freezing outside? So a thankful WOO to First Unitarian Universalist, to start.

I almost didn't go to Yule. Last Saturday was our purely secular Day of Shopping, Nails & Movies, where myself and my 2 best friends from high school got together, got manicures (a gift from Design School Homie), randomly ran into one of our favorite high school teachers at the nail salon, spent vast amounts of money at the Green Hills Mall (for those non-natives in the Loyal Readership, GHM is somewhat upscale and pretentious, but has recently come to include one of the only non-chain bookstores in Nashville that is not primarily a used bookstore, Davis-Kidd, and one of the better movie theaters, hence the choice), got the Worst Service Ever in the new instore restaurant at the aforementioned bookstore, and went to see The Family Stone, which I really enjoyed, despite the fact that I am not generally a fan of either the Christmas movie or the family movie. It was no Royal Tenenbaums, but I liked it a lot.

But my beloved CDHSarah was going to Yule, and even the nonreligious High School Homies pointed out that if I expect anyone to show up for our Beltane next year, I need to get out and represent. So, full of Xkzule joy and with fabulous nails -- light blue/purple candy paint -- I rolled down the road a piece to the UU.

The group hosting had some familiar faces, but it was the first time I had encountered them as a unit. At least as far as I was concerned, they hit this one out of the park.

They did potluck first, which I skipped due to the day of eating and movies. When it came time for ritual, they had us line up against the rear wall of the church, at which point one member began singling, beautifully, a vaguely familiar song that I later found out was one she had arranged using a passage from The Red Tent. She led us around the sacristy (I don't know what the Unitarians call it, but you get the idea) and when her song was done she started one of the better-known neopagan elemental chants, the exact words of which escape me at the moment, in which most of the participants eventually joined in. As the line passed back around into the rear of the church where the ritual area was prepared, Heather, one of the coveners, smudged each person.

Quarters were called, in the usual fashion, marked only by the fact that each covener addressed his or her quarter in an original manner -- one hailed a Watchtower, one gave a Namas'te to the spirits of Fire, etc. The bulk of the ritual was a reenactment of the birth of the Moon and Sun, complete with blanket bundles representing the infants which were passed from hand to hand. (The cuteness of CDHSarah explaining in a stage whisper to our friend's four-year-old "That's the Baby Moon" is indescribable.) We were reminded of deep roots, of the need to care for one another, of all those home-hearth-and-family things that are representative of the Solstian holidays in nearly all traditions of which I'm aware.

So I met some pagans I like, did some networking, got invited to yet ANOTHER party scheduled for tonight (I'm going to three, including that one). This one is an End of the World Party, prepping us for 12.23.2012 and the end of the Mayan calendar, being thrown by a healer whose business card quotes the "By their works you shall know them" verse from the New Testament, which I think is awesome. Also, I got to actually have a conversation with the aforementioned Heather, who is super-cool and also, apparently, a friend of LadyA's. It was awesome, and I enjoyed it, and I'm ten times more hyped for Beltane now than I was before.

In more recent news, I spent last night with my Hindu teacher, since her drum circle went until 12:30 am and we sat up talking for 2 hours after that. So I woke up today instensely happy, as sleeping in the shrine room and waking up looking at Kali and the great view of the woods will do that. This afternoon, I hooked up with Army Husband Buddy to pass along his present for shipping; we went to Baja Burrito, went and hit up Mad Mod and Pre To Post Modern. At the latter I found a classic pinup-girl ashtray and a funky blue and green striped throw for the ugly-but-comfy green chair, which made me quite pleased despite that fact that, after a short Goddess & The Moon visit, I had to go to work.

Going into work at 6 pm is such a demotivator -- by that point I'm having a natural low and would rather do anything except be responsible. But tonight was pretty good, as I got to give the kids of the Second Most Evil Bosslady in the World their presents...Where the Wild Things Are for the three-year-old, Harold & The Purple Crayon's 50th anniversary hardcover edition for the one-year-old. And the 2ndMEBitW got a lamp ring-style diffuser and some lavender essential oil, in the hope that the aromatherapy will chill her ass out.

The purchase for her went like this: go to the Body Shop to get lip crap for self's cracked and bleeding lips, because the Body Shop has the best lip crap ever. (Got the Hemp Chanvre this time, as they have no kiwi-related flavors this time of year.) Have vague thought in head of getting something beauty-and-health related for 2ndMEBitW, combined with fervent desire to no longer be making single yearly trip to mall, which cannot end until present is purchased, as book I planned to get her (Don Miguel Ruiz's Four Agreements) she has read and, apparently, absorbed no information from whatsoever. Upon approach by cute and earnest salesgirl, tell her you need a present for $10 or less for a total neurotic. Shoot down her suggestion of a traditional diffuser with candle on basis of 2 children under three and accompanying fire hazard issues. Seize on her suggestion of lamp ring and lavender oil as thoughtful and of benefit to self as well, as changing table for 1-year-old is in the bedroom where gift would likely be used and lavender more pleasant scent than ones usually emanating from there.

However, 2ndMEBitW did redeem herself by giving me a Christmas bonus, so I regret in small part my Scroogish thought process during gift purchase...but only in small part. I celebrated by going to Cafe O2 and giving Kara her new ba-gua for the front door of her new house, which made me super-happy as I managed to find one of the ones with the concave/convex combo mirror, which is the best thing for front door use.

So it's been a great day, but right now I have a random back cramp and my bed calls. Happy belated Solstice and early Christmas, guys. Talk at you soon.

Maine Is Full Of Good, Folksy People Such as Myself

2005-12-21T04:17:00.000-06:00

in which I totally fail to shut my folksy piehole

Word of mouth is everything. Click the link, and buy this CD.

Disregard the handlebar streamers; the new Girl's Bike Club CD is the best thing about Xkzule this year.

My ET and I have been telling y'all forever about how cool everything Sars says is, and especially her pearls of wisdom regarding the mysterious, ineffable, inexplicable comedy that is the Girl's Bike Club. There's a reason one or the both of us has announced the posting of each of the recent installments as if bringing those tidings of comfort and joy that certain people won't shut up about at this time of year. The written version was brilliant; the audio is transcendent (in comedic terms, at least; I can't promise it will cause you to be assumed bodily into heaven, but there's at least a passing chance.)

I missed the shirts when she had them available. I got the CD yesterday and, as yet, have listened to nothing else. It costs $10 including shipping, it's the best thing you'll hear before the year ends, and Sars sent me a really nice response to the congratulatory email I sent her for the incredibly quick pre-Xkzule shipping and the subsequent near-pissing of the pants upon first listening to it. So, should you do as I command you, you'll be buying DIY art from a pair (for Wing Chun, who cocreated Television Without Pity, plays her part with aplomb) of professionally snarky female writers who serve to mock pop culture intelligently and with unflinching honesty...yet who, in real life, are genuinely happy that you like their art, and are cool enough to thank you when you take the time to say so. Seriously, your indie cred will jump right through the roof. This CD will make you cool.

OK, so if you aren't already cool -- which you are, Loyal Readership of Five or Six, At Last Count -- this CD will not provide the necessary mojo. But seriously. If you want good artists in the world, you have to support them. Go read the essays. Go buy the CD. If I'm wrong, you're out $10. If I'm not, you are laughing your ass off. In either case, Sars can pay the vet bill, Tomato Nation, This Is Not Over, and TWoP (not to mention Fametracker and Hissyfit) keep on turning, and I can keep reading all of them, thus getting out my rage at the suckiness of much of everything in a positive fashion, instead of simply expiring in despair at the continued presidency of GWB. That way, maybe I'll be alive to vote the Anything But This Ticket in 2008, to place the decisive vote that casts the current cast of characters out of their high places and positions of power.

In short, the fate of the world is in your hands. Just click.

******I realize I didn't tell you anything about why it's funny, what's good about it -- and I'm not gonna, because any attempt to explain the GBC concept falls flat like Simon LeBon post-blow dart, and y'all just need to trust me (and Sauce, the twin who has the t-shirt), shell out your $10, and be prepared to bask in the funny.

Letters & Sodas

2005-12-19T16:54:00.000-06:00

I want all that stupid old shit
Like letters and sodas.
Liz Phair, Fuck & Run

So, the year in review.
I had a job. I lost it, but I had another job so it was OK. I went to a pagan festival. I had no phone, had a phone again, lost it, got it back. I started studying a new religion. I lost some friends and made some different ones, and one of the most important ones up and went to Baltimore, presumably to return for visits.

I'm still a celibate. After this calendar year ends, that may be different. Because, like Liz Phair, I want a boyfriend. Or a girlfriend. Actually, the latter would be preferable.

You do a lot of thinking when you don't have distractions. I figured some things out over the past year and a bit.

I have never had a casual relationship. Honestly, I've never "dated" by most people's standards. My life breaks down into two categories: one-night stands and long-term boy/girlfriends, complete with the requisite long and agonizing breakups.

So I'd rather split the difference....the whole "meet someone, take them home, sleep with them" thing was never really my bag, and I'm just not up for a hugely complicated and committed thing right at the moment...although if one developed, it's not out of the question. But for the moment, letters and sodas sounds about right to me -- and dinner. Dinner would be nice. Eating with CDHSarah is nice, but she has a husband, and eventually it gets old fishing around for someone to accompany you so you don't just take your book to dinner. Again.

So, here's looking for a boy/girl of appropriate orientation who likes books, dinner, letters and sodas. Because it's awfully hard to get drinks out of the girl who doesn't.

I may sound like a loser (OK, I do sound like a loser). But at least now I know what I want. Happy New Year, y'all. Next time I'll tell you about Yule.

***ETA***
For those of you who may be wondering, the Little Kitty reappeared in the house, by magic (or because the maintenance guy put her through the door I left unlocked, but until he confirms this I'm going with the former theory), two days after she originally disappeared. She's fine. Actually, she's sleeping on the skirt I plan to wear to Christmas church service, so I'm about to have to move her, but she's A-OK.

My E-Mail To Bill O'Reilly

2005-12-14T02:59:00.000-06:00

Saw this on TINO. Normally I wouldn't give Bill O'Reilly the time of day, but, inspired by the other brave TINOers, I wrote (and sent) my own letter of interest to Mr. O'Reilly, the text of which I now submit to you.

Dear Mr. O'Reilly --

Allow me to respectfully submit my qualifications to be added to your "enemies list". I assume that it has not yet been posted on billoreilly.com because of the enormous number of persons eager to stand and be counted. I would be delighted to be added and present the following as evidence of my worthiness:

1.) I am an Independent who voted for John Kerry.
2.) I am a religious pacifist who finds both the death penalty and the war in Iraq signs of our moral decrepitude, and our failure to feed the world's hungry as the same.
3.) I am not a heterosexual, do not believe in the special "sanctity" of heterosexual marriage, and know lots and lots of good gay daddies.
4.) I believe in civility in discourse, that certitude leads to corruption and decay, that constantly questioning in order to refine has been and remains the heart of the American ideal, especially as it affects our interpretation of the Constitution and other seminal documents written by the Founders.
5.) Speaking of those guys, I do not believe they were Christians; they were Deists. Therefore, all "this is a Christian nation" arguments appear specious and irrelevant to me.
6.) I love Islam, finding in it, as much as any faith which I do not practice, a valid path to union with the Divine.
7.) I think Al Franken and Molly Ivins are both lovely people, very intelligent and funny.
8.) Although I would not, personally, have an abortion, finding it inconsistent with my personal and deeply held religious and spiritual beliefs, I do not oppose the free access to abortion nor think that it should be either the decision or the concern of anyone but the woman in question.
9.) I don't think there's anything wrong with performing the Vagina Monologues in a high school.
9.) If for no other reason than Joseph McCarthy being the guy who thought it was necessary, I don't think the words "under God" belong in the Pledge.
10.) I don't believe George Bush was legitimately elected President, and think history will show that his years in office resulted in a more divided, weaker, and corrupt America.

These proofs may be enough; if not, please feel free to contact me for further proofs and letters of recommendation.

Sincerely,
parcequilfaut

*************
Signed my real name to that. Would do it anytime.

Because "Shake It Like A Cholera Victim" Didn't Catch On

2005-12-12T19:37:00.000-06:00

Well, I'm back. For good, ostensibly. After 2 hours with the really, really nice Comcast guy, we finally figured out that we had to unplug the router and plug it back in.

I lied. We didn't figure that out; we called tech support. But I have an Internet and a phone.

I also have a flu, and the smallest kitten is outside, somewhere, having French leave. So I can't produce a scintillating return post, so much as "hold my hurting sinuses to keep them from falling out" and "look out the French door every 3.5 seconds."

I am back, though, and upon a return to greater wellness will be more voluble. Good cat-back vibes, please?

The Xkzule Letter

2005-12-06T10:54:00.000-06:00

Hello, all.
To further irritate the religious right, I have now determined that the season traditionally associated in America with quasi-religious holidays which all focus in one aspect or another around family/presents will not be called Chrismahaunakwanzaayule, my last years' takeoff on the Verizon wireless commercial that left out the oldest of all the solstice observances. If they don't like "Xmas", "holidays" or "season", let them get a load of Xkzule, the new moniker for the season I am going to be discussing. Every place you see this non-phonic string of syllables, just plug in the name of the observance you'll be observing around the end of December. Yes, it's ridiculous, but so is the current state of affairs on cable news, which I had the (mis)fortune to watch last night; the "War on Christmas" is not news. Fighting about how best to wish that people get through the winter without killing each other in a northern-hemispheral fit of seasonal affective disorder is like fucking for chastity. There is no war on Christmas; it's a smoke screen to keep you from noticing the real war that's damaging America's values, people! But, pre-rant and gift advice, first, a status report.

Reconnection of my very own cable modem, which I tend to worship as Devi on that day, is imminent; waiting on the bank to do its thing with funds availability, and then for ComCast to get their hind ends to my house. When I have an ETA from the latter, I will tell you guys, but not hold my breath.

In the meantime, I am shopping like a Tri Delt on steroids.

I am not really a shopping person most of the time. I always know what I want, and go and get it, without dilly-dallying overmuch to see what else there might be. I get that impulse out using the searches on Amazon, Half.com, and eBay. And there's that money thing, too.

But the festive season of consumerism is nigh, and I have the lovely feeling of having all my bills settled or in the process of being settled until the New Year. Which means I have some cash to throw around this holiday. And I love, love, love to give presents. It's the best kind of being bossy: "I bought you something I know you'll love and wouldn't get for yourself: now, enjoy it!" And I genuinely do try to get people things they will enjoy and not impose my taste on them. With one exception: books.

I am a book pusher. Not everyone on my list gets books, but it's a near thing. The two year old nephew? Is not getting another piece of plastic shit, nor is he being shopped for at any place with -Mart or R'Us in the suffix. Along with (at last count) five of the other people on my list, his Xkzule gift is coming from Ms. B's Used Books, the best little used bookstore still fighting the tide of things with A-Million and Dot-Com in their suffix.* And I love the latter, if not the former, but seriously; if you want to have independent bookstores, you have to use your dollar there, especially around Xkzule. This public service announcement brought to you by the Ministry of Completely Obvious Yet Often Overlooked Facts.

Since he's not old enough to read and my sister doesn't read the blog, I'll tell you what he's getting (and what the library is getting also; link goes to Pamie's library drive info, which you can use to support Oakland, your local, or even a random library picked off Amazon's published wishlists): Where the Wild Things Are and Harold & The Purple Crayon, which is on its 50th anniversary edition. Nothing like the pure classics. And, because they were so cute, I got him a pair of frog house shoes.

I'm considering the adult members of my family with some trepidation, because they are hard, hard, hard to buy for. And, even though my sister and brother in law are expecting another fetus, I don't want to cop out and get them a baby present. They deserve something for them. What, is the question; I've about exhausted the options over the past four years, and one of those years I got them, at their request, a Home Depot gift card because they were remodeling the kitchen.

Mom is simple: she gets a teapot from me every year, I found a glass ornament at a vintage repro place that is almost identical to one I broke the Xkzule I was seven, which is just the right level of sentimentality for her, and I'll find her a devotional book of some kind. Dad is impossible. Last year I got him some small present and donated a book in his name, which I may do again.

Our big plans to procure a new Xbox for our friends' husband in Iraq didn't go, so he's getting a huge box of candy and magnets (don't ask me; he asked for them and now we're on the hunt for the coolest magnets possible) and DVDs and crazy stuff, because pretty much all his friends here are sending his presents in one giant box. My buddy in Iraq would approve of the Xzkule phenom, because he's just an atheist who likes presents.

At the very least, although I doubt any other great happening like the war ending or America collectively coming to its senses will occur this Xkzule, two things will happen; the people I love will be happy, lots of them will be reading, the library will have new books for children to read, and there will be more goodness in the world, on whatever microscopic scale.

And, since I have money, I've bought a few things for myself; new murtis, a new book on Vajrayogini, a new headwrap, and a hanging to put over my window. That last was absolutely necessary, as there is a draft from that window right onto my bed. Everything else was pure, unadulterated joy at having money for things other than gas, food, rent and cigarettes.

Here's hoping you have fabulous joy in the preseason, and that I have Internet before the New Year. Namas'te!

*I don't know why it's coming up as LA Citysearch; Ms. B's is in Hendersonville, TN.

How About That?

2005-11-30T15:30:00.000-06:00

I did it, y'all. Thanks for the participation.
Now on with my regularly scheduled life.

Happy ThanksGiblet

2005-11-24T17:58:00.000-06:00

Happy Thanksgiving to those of you who celebrate it.

This is the part where I'm supposed to tell what I'm thankful for, so here goes.
I'm thankful that I know where next month's rent is coming from, that my crazy boss went out of town for the holiday and gave me a respite, that I spent today with my family and last night with Sri Leela, my Hindu teacher, and her drum circle, that I'm going out in a bit to be on the town and visit with Matt at Cafe O2, and that the Artist, even though he isn't speaking to me, turns 21 today.

I'm also thankful that my sister noticed how skinny I've gotten. While I've never really played into the whole fat/skinny thing, having someone who almost never sees me notice really brought it home. Because "I really want to lose three pounds." ;) Actually not. And I'm glad that she's going to have another ProtoNiece/Nephew at the end of April, although I hope we don't go 0 for 2...I was at Bonnaroo when she had the first one, and don't want to be at PUF when the second one is born.

I am the most thankful of all that the end of NaNoWriMo is in sight. 36,000 words at last count, seven days to finish...this is doable, y'all. Especially since my schedule for tomorrow looks like...having nothing to do at all, all day. There's a technique in the NaNo guide for producing 12,000 words in an eight-hour day that I may take a good look at when I get back from the ParceParentPad.

Anyway. Hope all y'all are well. Know what else I'm grateful for? That I should be getting my Internet back in a few weeks and can return to our regularly scheduled bitchery, pokery, etcetera, etcetera. Yay!

Full Moon Blues

2005-11-15T15:30:00.000-06:00

I need more wordage. Week 2 of NaNo was hell, and now I have my period and feel supremely uninspired. I think CDHSarah and I are going to have a powwow tonight.

Anyway. Still no time, as I have to get my characters out of Memphis, somehow.

I require pressure. Berate and shame me in my comments. I will finish this. I will.

NaNoWriMo

2005-11-02T10:15:00.000-06:00

Just a quick, quick check-in to say...I did it. I took the NaNoWriMo challenge.

Emails of exhortation and nagging, or comments of similar purpose, would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks to Lakshmi, it looks like I might get Internet at the end of the month, too, which would resume our regular schedule.

Until then, bug me a lot to get my shit done, ok? OK. And bug CDHSarah too, she's on board.

A Real Update

2005-10-20T00:28:00.000-05:00

OK. A real update.

I've been having a rough time, not an unduly rough one, but one that made me disappear from all things Internet. When the money's tight, the Internet has to be first to go, and go it went.

I have a new gig, doing child care for The Second Most Insane Bosslady In the World. More about her later. The kids are three and nine months, and it could be a lot worse. It's money, but it's also eating my life, so I'm beginning the Hunt for a New And Better Job. Also, I have a new tutoring student for ACT prep, so that will help when it starts next week.

The reason my beloved GoddessA was asking for good vibes for me was that I joined the ranks of those who have run afoul of the police and got arrested. All in all it was pretty painless; I didn't even go through booking, much less to jail, and my lawyer is fairly optimistic that we can get me off with little to nothing because of irregularities in the probable cause. (For those who are curious: one count of simple possession schedule vi, one count of possession of drug paraphenalia, 1 1/2 hours in handcuffs on the hood of the squad car, 1 anxiety attack, no other damage.)

So there was that, and it made me even less able to go on the hunt for a computer to tell y'all about it. I've done devotions almost every day since and things are looking up.

Nothing all that much else to report, really...just a lot of work, a lot of Cafe 02, a lot of hanging out. Oh, and the Mountain.

I've discovered one of Tennessee's intentional communities, Short Mountain Sanctuary, in recent weeks. The Radical Faeries threw the kickass Lammas party earlier this year, and SMS is a Faerie sanctuary. I got to hang out with New Orleans Faeries displaced by Katrina (and learned from one of them the mad skillz of the washtub bassist), with gay men and drag queens galore, and with fabulous people like Silverfang, whose business card advertises FREE INSTANT CRACKPOT THEORIES...she's a Discordian who runs Chaos House in California, has green dreadlocks three times the length of mine, and I want to be her when I grow up. I have found the people like me, and they live up the mountain a ways and down in the holler. Since it was the Gathering, I've been up there three times in three weeks, and had an excellent time each time and wish I could just buy a parcel of land and some goats and join 'em and forget about nanny jobs and arrests and lack of cable Internet, and just worry about whether the solar power is going to hold out and if the spring is going to run dry......

But I can't, so it's more Lakshmi devotions and Ganesh mantras to make the life I have better. I'll keep you posted as I can and catch up with your blogs as soon as I have a spare second. Promise. And if I hit that massive Powerball tonight, that might be sooner than I think.

***

Just checked. Damn Oregonians spoiling my sweet, sweet daydream. Ah well...maybe I hit for something. Even five bucks wouldn't be sniffed at.

Not A Real Update

2005-10-11T14:00:00.000-05:00

For the record, I thanked GoddessA for taking care of notifying my dearly beloveds that I was, like the Cheat, still not dead, when she told me.

I don't have time to give the gory details of my absence and the reasons for it. I was not in jail, I just didn't have Internet and, more relevantly was having personal difficulties. Actually, both of those are still true, but hopefully changing soon.

In the meantime, I've done lots of cool things that I'll tell you about when I return. So just freeze a picture in your head of yours truly at the off-the-grid Radical Faerie sanctuary, down in the holler on the mountainside, smoking a cigarette and listening to a blues song recently written by a Katrina evacuee while watching-and-learning how to play the washtub bass. That's the best of what's gone on while I was away, and I'll be back as soon as I can possibly make it happen.

Love to all for the good vibes, namas'te.

Don't Kill Me Parce!

2005-09-28T14:21:00.000-05:00

You prolly will tho.

Hi folks! It's GoddessAradia here giving you a mini update on Parce.

Send lucky vibes her way. It's not my place to say whats up, but she's in some shit and could use some lucky vibes. Nothing too horrible mind you, along the lines of losing your job or wrecking your car - but not. Anyway, she's still quite alive, and will be back online eventually....see ya!

(Parce don't kill me for hacking into your blog to post this! I only did it cause I knew no one would see a comment and not all of your blogger pals (giggle) come to my blog.....)

So, What's New?

2005-09-10T00:26:00.000-05:00

Oddly, considering my out of pocket status, a lot of things.

In the book department...

* a collection of 50 Poirot short stories by Agatha Christie. I had never read Poirot, and I like him, although I think AC's estate needs to sue the executive producer of Monk forthwith.

* Journey to the Center of the Earth. I had this book when I was a kid, but the picture on the cover scared the crap out of me and eventually it got lost. Good book, though. I need to read 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, since I somehow never got around to it...

* We Need to Talk About Kevin. I bought this book purely for the title, as a former acquaintance of myself and CDHSarah had the same name and, eventually, prompted the same comment. It's actually a novel-in-letters (I think there's another name for that, but don't recall what it is) from the mother of a kid who shot up his high school. Interesting, and clever, even if it was recommended by Good Morning America.

* Eleven On Top, the new Stephanie Plum novel from Janet Evanovich. I wasn't entirely certain how I felt about this book. On the one hand, taking the series in a somewhat different direction is interesting. On the other hand, I think she's let her universe get out of control. Only seeing Sally Sweet once in the lead-up to Valerie's wedding? Simply doesn't work for me. I'm still interested in this series, but I'm not looking forward to the next book with nearly as much abandon as I looked forward to this one when I read the last pages of Ten Big Ones. Facts is facts.

* False Prophet. Yet another Faye Kellerman. I like the Rina Lazarus/Peter Decker novels, but her need of an editor with a nuanced grasp of the English language needs to happen. The proliferation of homonym-based errors, particularly in idiom, in popular literature (even Evanovich, although she gets away with it because Stephanie Plum is the type of person who would make those little mistakes) is really starting to drive me bugshit. It's not a "lynch pin", it's a "linchpin". Seriously.

* The Quality of Life Report by Meghan Daum. This book kicked ass. It reminded me of Moo, still my favorite Jane Smiley. I like clever satire, and apparently I like the Midwest. Read it, it's good.

* Steppenwolf. I'm having more trouble with this book than I did Hesse's Siddhartha, but I've gotten past the prologue and into the body of the book and think it'll be pretty good once I fully settle into it.

* 120 Days of Sodom. I've been looking for this book for-freaking-ever, as I've never read de Sade. This edition has a foreword by Simone de Beauvoir, and I'm still working my way through it....my brain is too frazzled for really serious stuff.

* The Chalice and the Blade. Same here. Toooooo tired to read about sexism in archaelogy and the peace-loving egalitarian cultures who made, among other things, the Willendorf Venus. The book is good, thus far anyway, and not too special-pleading, woe-is-the-lot-of-womynkind, but I just can't make myself read it with the attention it deserves, at least not right now.

* Bonfire of the Vanities. I love Tom Wolfe and find John Updike unpalatable, and I loved Bonfire and am even now kicking myself in the ass for having, yet again, left The Right Stuff at the apartment. I've owned it for over a month and haven't read it yet only because I keep forgetting to take it with.

I'm sure there are a few others...oh yeah, the new David Sedaris, which I read in one sitting at Cafe O2...but I can't remember them right at the moment.

On other fronts, I have new clothes...a broomstick skirt, a blue MATH COUNTS t-shirt with which I fell instantly in love, and fifty-million other things salvaged from the summer rack at the boutique...a little print shirt-dress to wear over jeans that shows off the fact that I have, apparently, lost 10 pounds, a few cute t-shirts, some incredibly awesome zip-up mens' shirts with neat venting that I'm at a loss to describe. Also a pair of sunglasses, which I haven't owned in years, which have yellow lenses, and the most comfortable pair of pants currently extant in the United States, if not the world.

Losing 10 pounds is also new. People haven't seen much of me, online or off, in the past 2 1/2 weeks, and everyone appears to notice, so that's kind of nice. I weigh less now than I have in the last three, if not five, years. It won't last past the end of the job, I don't think, but it's nice. What isn't nice is the brand-new squeaky sound coming from my brakes, which is going to be expensive judging from purely auditory clues.

Listen to me, nattering on about my books and clothes and weight. Next thing you know, I'll be writing chick lit. At least I'd be writing something. In the interim, I'm writing to let you guys know I'm OK...because I am NOT DEAD, I SWEAR, whatever CDHSarah and LadyAlambil may be saying. ;)

I'll see y'all as soon as I have my life back. Promise. Call me later, 'kay?

Far Afield

2005-09-02T21:30:00.000-05:00

I am still out five miles from proper civilization and will be for the foreseeable future, probably another five days to a week.

I am so tired, y'all. But I paid off my landlady for my past due, I have September's rent as of Monday, and somewhere in there I can do everything else.

The lovely and gorgeous CDH is watching the Kitties. And I am sleeping in the floor, eating only cold foods, and working anywhere from 8 to 12 hour days, seven days a week.

I have fifty million new freckles and fifty million and one tick bites. But I'm not actually unhappy. I'm too tired (the good, worn-out, can-actually-sleep tired) to be unhappy.

Somewhere in the meantime I had a RS meeting and Hindu class and my mom's birthday, for which I got her an awesome present (edition of THE FAVORITE UNCLE REMUS, which she had had and lost, that was collected the year before she was born). And I got my couch. So it'll be there when, at long last, I'm home.

In the meantime, I love you all. The CDH will keep you posted, I'm sure. See you soon!

Hotter Than Hell's Kitchen

2005-08-25T12:57:00.000-05:00

Yes, it is.
It's so hot it requires the prefix "balls" to describe it.

What am I doing during this weather? Am I lying naked and sipping frosty drinks under the fan? Oh, no. I'm helping renovate a house, because I need the money.

The Renovation Era List Of Things I Don't Like...

1. Heat. Because it sucks and I hate it.
2. Ticks. Seed ticks. We've had an average of 192 per person at the end of each workday.
3. The Boss. Normally I love the Boss, but when things don't go right, he gets cranky with everyone whether the real problem is our fault or not...understandable, since this is his project, but honestly...we don't have anything to do with a lot of the issues plaguing him. The worst me and the unskilled labor crew have done is break a saw (and for that we had a spare, and it can be fixed) and be somewhat remiss in putting things back exactly where he wants them. But, see #1 and #2. That's enough to make anyone bitchy.
4. Machines. Other than the broken saw, we have a tractor whose hydraulics decided to go out, putting us another day behind schedule. The post-hole digger should have been here this morning; not until tomorrow.
5. UPCs. Do you have any idea how friggin' long it takes to remove the yellow tags off several grand worth of wood when each and every 2x4 has a wee tag held in by two or three industrial staples? HAAATE. "But it's the UPC, every product has to have one..." Don't make me slap you.
6. My own clumsiness, as I smashed my finger with a sledgehammer the first day out and have had to reengineer my typing style drastically.

But it's money, and it's not so bad. In the meantime, will someone bring me a bottle of water? Or a gun?

Theft Breeds Theft...

2005-08-20T21:21:00.000-05:00

Full disclosure: I stole this from my ET.

At the last of the Leo birthday bashes, I checked this out on her blog and promptly ganked it.

Enjoy!

First Name
Elizabeth

Were you named after someone?
Not really, but a friend of my parents' from church suggested it because he said I had Elizabeth Taylor eyes. I would prefer Bette Davis eyes, but no dice.

Do you wish on stars?
Oh, hells yes.

When was the last time you cried?
Wednesday week.

Do you like your handwriting?
I block print with caps most of the time for clarity, but I like my signature.

What is your favorite lunch meat?
Elm Hill bologna

What is your birth date?
August 16 during the Reagan presidency.

What is your most embarrassing CD?
I am generally understood to have no shame.

If you were another person, would YOU be friends with you?
Possibly, depending on whether I was medicated or not.

Are you a daredevil?
I don't like stunts, but I don't mind taking risks. However, I did give birth to the AntiChrist 2 years ago, so I suppose "devil" is a definite yes.

Have you ever told a secret you swore not to tell?
I swore never to answer such questions.

Do looks matter?
If you meet the buddha, kill the buddha.

How do you release anger?
Stream of consciousness writing, bitchy coffee sessions, losing my temper with my sister-in-law (although I'm working on that), primal screaming, and meditation.

Where is your second home?
I'm currently second-homeless, unless you count my parent's, but since I don't have my own room there, that's a contested issue in the mental forum.

Do you trust others easily?
On intuition with a certain amount of reserve.

Favorite high heel plastic shoes?
I no longer own a mated pair of heels. My favorite shoes that would fall into this category are my vinyl 20-eye burgundy Doc Martens that I scored on eBay for so little that it was criminal.

What class in high school do you think was totally useless?
Most of high school was pretty awesome for me, but I have to say that all Health & Human Development taught me was that my guidance counselor was a waste of space.

Do you have a journal?
I have my Book of Spiritual Stuff and more notebooks than Harriet the Spy, plus a blog, but technically no.

Do you use sarcasm alot?
Yes, especially when I come across grammatical errors such as, for instance, "alot".

Your nicknames?
Emac, E Moet, E-square (once), Hippie, Izme Oame (pron izz-MAY oh-AY-may), Elvis Twin (to Special Sauce only), and a few not fit for public display. SFGod calls me "boss" but that's kind of his universal nickname. Oh, and CDHSarah calls me Parce, only she pronounces it par-SAY specificially for the purpose of pissing me off. See above.

Would you bungee jump?
It would require divine intervention, scandalous amounts of cash, and/or sex with an elf chick. Quite possibly all three.

Do you untie your shoes when you take them off?
Boots no, neeks yes.

Do you think that you are strong?
Chittananadarupa, Sivo'ham, Sivo'ham

What's your favorite ice cream flavor?
The now defunct Ben & Jerry's Bovinity Divinity.

Shoe Size?
Would you believe I have no clue? Eight and a half or nine? I haven't bought new shoes in over a year.

Red/pink?
I could make a joke in poor taste about my fondness for the female sex, but instead I'll take this to mean color choice in clothes and say red.

What is your least favorite thing about yourself?
My disorganized insanity.

Who do you miss most?
The Doctors, my Nanny, and my Weakley/Paris County crowd. Also my dexter grandfather.

What color pants and shoes are you wearing?
Shoes in the house? Pants? Are you insane?
I'm wearing a sarong tied as an ankle-length wrap skirt and a shirt with the arithmetic and multiplicative properties of math on it. There's a pair of black flip flops around here somewhere, and a headwrap that I was wearing when I got here.

What are you listening to right now?
The PUF CD and Don Shiftador's fans.

Last thing you ate?
Barbecue chicken sandwich with bacon and monterey jack cheese, seasoned fries, and half of a ridiculously large eclair dubbed "The Cream Vagina".

If you were a crayon, what color would you be?
Something in Crayola's tragically unpopular "Shades of Existential Despair" line, I'm sure.

What is the weather like right now?
Dark, hot, muggy, and downtown smells like crotch rot.

Last person you talked to on the phone?
My Hinduism teachers' husband.

First concert you attended?
Alanis Morisette, Jagged Little Pill tour.

Last Concert you attended?
Allgood Fest, but actual single-band concert...Sound Tribe Sector 9 at the Cannery Ballroom. (According to Papa Sue, I should have been at the Le Tigre show last month to see her kiss Kathleen Hanna, but that's life.)

Celebrity Crushes?
Sam Waterson, Christina Ricci when she eats, Johnny Depp, Tori Amos, all the members of Sleater-Kinney and the Butchies...I have a lot, come to think of it.

The first thing you notice about the opposite sex?
Nothing in particular, but then, I don't usually sleep with the opposite sex.

Favorite Drink?
I don't usually drink alcohol but am partial to a Jesus Walking On The Beach In Maui. Non-alcoholic? A Dalmation from Fido...white hot chocolate with real whipped cream and dark chocolate shavings. Been loving that drink for nearly a decade and haven't thought about stopping.

Favorite Sport?
Chess is too a sport.

Favorite TV show?
I don't usually watch television, but I'm fond of any episode of L&O featuring McCoy, Briscoe, Munch, or Ice-T.

Favorite Movie?
The Royal Tenenbaums, without question.

Last cd purchased/burned?
My mom bought me Medicine Woman II: The Gift (vaguely South American "Goddess" music) for my birthday for reasons that have yet to be ascertained, but the last one I got that wasn't a mix was Page 80.

Hair Color?
Red-brown dreads.

Eye Color?
Thingy, in the cool-to-neutral range.

Do you wear contacts?
No, thank you.

Name of Pet(s)?
Or'n'j'lo, L'mn'j'lo, & Gr'p'j'lo.

Favorite Food?
Peasant food.

Last Movie You Watched?
Little Monsters, at the birthday boy's sufferance.

Scary Movies Or Happy Endings?
Yes.

Summer Or Winter?
I'm a Beltane-and-Yule pagan myself.

Hugs or Kisses?
The creation of such an exclusive option is forbidden by the Geneva Convention and the International Conference on Human Rights.

What Is Your Favorite Dessert?
Non-living? The shortbread and preserve cookies my mom makes me.

Living Arrangements?
Slightly overdue on the rent but basically living with the cats and no roommate and doing OK.

What Books Are You Reading?
What books am I not reading?

How Many Candles Were On Your Last Birthday Cake?
Try none. Double German chocolate upside down cake is not candle-friendly.

What's On Your Mouse Pad?
Don't use one...I run the optical on the arm of the green chair.

What Did You Watch On TV Last Night?
I watched Law & Order: SVU on USA while I cleaned a house.

Who Was the Last Person You Kissed?
Fraternally? John the Martian. Somewhat more than fraternally? A cute little dyke named Amanda.

Favorite Smells?
Nag champa, tea tree, the MK's fur, the inside of my incense drawer, fried chicken.

What's The Furthest You've Been From Home? Living?
Been? France. Lived? Weakley County...I've never lived out of state.

What's Your Biggest Indulgence?
Smokables and Subway. Books aren't an indulgence, they are a necessity.

If You Could Be Anywhere Right Now, Where Would You Be?
If it weren't my fellow Captain and Doctor's birthday of the 21st variety, in bed with at least 2 persons of opposite sex and apposite gender.

So, that. I still don't have a home base Internet connection, but y'all will be the first to know.

Seriously, Though

2005-08-16T00:00:00.000-05:00

It's that time again.

I did it. I made it to five squared.

Now I'm going to bed.

Dribs & Drabs

2005-08-13T04:57:00.000-05:00

I hate being poor.

I'm working on fixing that. But in the meantime, I'm living on dribs and drabs.

Tonight I made $60, which has to immediately go to the electric company without either passing Go or collecting $200. Over the course of the weekend, I'll make that same amount, and pass it along to the cable company. My biggest "yay!" for the month of my birthday isn't the fact that I'm having an awesome birthday party at Cafe O2, but the fact that the Boss has a contract job for me that should let me pay off everything I owe my apartment complex. (I'm less than 2 weeks behind on the last $100 of the rent, but I have an outstanding deposit owed for the kitten, who is way too small for me to owe $175.)

I hate owing money. I hate paying bills in partial amounts, $60 this week, $20 next week, enough that it won't get cut off but never totally paid up. It's galling for someone who believes in TANSTAAFL. But honestly, I don't see how I could do any better. Even if I gave up my small vices, it wouldn't equal out to enough to make a difference.

For the first time in my adult life, I'm going to be staying in the same apartment for more than a year. I'm planning to renew on the ParcePad at the end of this month, which makes paying everything outstanding with the apartment even more important. The cats like it here. I like it here.

So, yes. I need a new job.

I saw the Moose today. (Like The Cheat, the Moose is always referred to complete with pronoun. He happened to come into Patrick's shortly after I got there, and I joined him while he drank his it's-payday beers over at Mulligan's, and talked authors, philosophy, and other such Moosey goodness, including the ability of redwoods to nourish other plant life growing parasitically with no harm to itself. The Moose was my first introduction to Our Lady Eris, and for that I worship his lotus sandals. (Even though the Moose always wears boots.) He flattered me by offering me a job at the bread-and-coffee joint where he just became a manager, but unfortunately it pays less than any job I've had in the past 4 years and doesn't offer benefits. Too bad, as I got the Moose his first "in" to work at the smoke shop when he had just come to Nashville, and there would have been a pleasing circularity to him becoming my boss. But alas, it wasn't meant to be.

For now, though, I'm exhausted enough to hit the sack instead of recounting the almost-race-riot I saw on Second tonight. That will just have to wait.

So'ham, Ham'sa

2005-08-11T04:39:00.000-05:00

Chittanandarupa, Sivo ham, Sivo ham.

I get settled in on the floor. I can't meditate very well sitting up when my knees are bothering me; I do better flat on my back.

I have trouble with unguided focus meditations. Tonight we were supposed to visit the sea of the collective unconscious and spread healing there. That is not a place I've ever been, and I get a bit panicked listening to the rest of the meditators begin the slow and even breaths of deep meditation.

I call on the mantra I use to sleep. I am Shiva, the Bliss of Consciousness; my feet Shiva's lotus feet, my heart open like the lotus, my dreads (because Lord Shiva wears his hair the same way I do) in a topknot through which shines the manipadme, the Jewel in the Lotus, the thousand-rayed crown.

Suddenly I am at the sea, my skin an ashy purple, my body strong and muscular and male, hypermasculine almost, and the trident taller than my topknot that tip me off: Sivo ham.

The sea is full of Lovecraftian goo, like an oil slick, but with colours out of space that are nauseous to the sight. Like Oppenheimer, I am become Shiva. Wherever I point my trident, I make not. The Destroyer of Worlds. So'ham.

I wade into the water I have cleared, the water that has become the Ganges, the Saraswati, the holy rivers. Though there is more of the semisentient ooze, it cannot approach that which I have made sanctified, and I stride forward, under the water, walking along the floor to the place where it drops off and the light of the sun can no longer be seen. There is only the light of the manipadme which shines from within and all around me, but it is sufficient.

I see a fish, Leviathan-sized, that was never meant for this world, something made less earthly by its interaction with the slime coating the surface of the worlds' thoughts, like a shark with a catfish mouth stitched on and teeth set at angles that would sever the skin of its face at the same time as they crushed their prey. I point my weapon at it, but in the same instant I become large, so large that my topknot reaches out of the sea and into the sunlight. Now I am Leviathan and the fish is no more than a guppy, and instead of blasting it, I cup it in my hand. When I open my fingers, a goldfish of almost Disneyesque, fairy grace darts off into the sea.

I become tired, and lie in corpse pose on the sea bottom, watching the bubbles rise in the light of the manipadme, the light that, even diffused as it reaches the surface, makes not those things that would create separation, those globules of wrongness that are the veil of maya.

I sleep, and when I awake, I rise from the sea and walk, becoming smaller as I go, until I reach the seashore only slightly taller than a human man should be.

Ganesh is there, a pink-skinned child of perhaps two or three, waiting patiently away from the water. Within my sight of the coast, it is clear, and I motion that it is all right, that he can approach in safety. As I turn my back and feel the water drying on my violet skin, I see him place his trunk in the water and trumpet bubbles in the surf with unbridled joy.

And again I am myself, not on a beach in the daylight but on the floor in the dark, with the slow breathing of my compatriots telling me that I am the first to come out of the meditative state. Slowly, in exhaustion, I pull my body into a protesting lotus, to bless the aspect of Devi that has given me parsad in the vision of myself-in-Shiva, Shiva-in-me.

So'ham, ham'sa. I am that, that I am. Om shanti, shanti, shanti.

I've Got A Box!

2005-08-10T04:12:00.000-05:00

Thanks to Erik the Viking, I have a monitor.

Thanks to the past 3 hours of nonstop clicking, I have checked all the email that came in in the less-than-48-hours that I was without it.

There was a LOT of it, too. And most of it was legit.

Note to the one definite weirdo who responded to my ad on craigslist: either you meant to craft an email full of poorly hidden sexual innuendo in response to a legit ad for legit services, in which case you are creepy, or you really need to go back to English 101 and learn about this little thing called "connotation" before you allow yourself near a keyboard again. But I'm pretty sure you're just a garden-variety creep. There's a whole section for people with your...needs...and it's not listed under "employment".

Soon, I'll post about the crazy woman at Hindu class last Sunday, my adventures with Shiva, and how I ended up spending tonight smoking shisha with one of the hottest girls I've seen in a minute (and, regrettably, doing nothing but smoking), but for now it's nearly 4:20. And, since I am an old fart, that means it's past my bedtime instead of almost time to fire it up.

I will also rewrite the reviews that myspace ate and a few more if I have time.

In the meantime, y'all use your Magic Blogger Vibes to try and get the professor who wants me to clean her house to agree to pay less in exchange for tutoring me in her subject, because that? Would be awesome. Me like learn stuff. Me want learn stuff but no pay tuition.

So'ham, ham'sa. Have a good day!

Let The Fae Come Out To Play

2005-08-07T03:31:00.000-05:00

It's three-thirty in the Music City. I have a rainbow turban on my head, a Celtic-animorph print tunic that hangs on one shoulder and trails down past my ankles, ribbon bracelets on both arms, and I am positively covered in no less than three distinct types of glitter.

I love fags.

Tonight the Nashville Radical Faeries hosted their annual Lammas Cotillion at Kung Fu Coffee. They took the idea from the New Orleans RF, who throw a similar shindig for Imbolc/St. Bridget's Day. It's a costume party/ritual/coronation, as that's when they transfer the Empress crown from one Fae to another.

I don't normally go to Kung Fu Coffee because nine times out of ten when I get a yen to go, it's lame. The Artist and I did read the last fifty pages of Skinny Legs & All there one afternoon, but other than that, just showing up during business hours usually yields no fruit in the "fun" department. However, they throw a party like no one's business, especially when they have a lot of artistic help: one of the first raves I ever attended was the pre-opening party that the Doctor got me into, where I met Count Travula. Tonight was more kickass than that.

The sad thing is that I almost didn't go at all. For all my Leo nature, I don't like to go out by myself to events. To dinner, or the oxygen bar, or the smoke shop, sure. To a Lammas Cotillion? (When I wasn't even sure what a Lammas Cotillion was?) Perish the thought.

I got dressed (in all but the ribbons and glitter, which came later), and then lost my nerve and started calling around for a last-minute escort. But no one would go with me, so I hemmed and hawed and thought about going to the first house party at the place the Don just moved into, but instead I found the van carrying me downtown. I still drove past the place twice until I determined that I wouldn't be entirely out of place. All praise to the guy in the Jolly Roger cowboy hat, who I spied on my second turn and whose getup made me decide that I wasn't either over- or under-dressed for the crowd.

I made it in and was immediately set upon by WingHeart, the Empress-elect, and her Skexsis-looking "pet" (a shoulder puppet), and given the Fag Welcome of You Look Lovely, Are You New? Welcome, Sister. Within five minutes, I had met Ribbon, the Empress of the moment, who was dressed like the gayest Roman-Egyptian hybrid ever to wear the Eyes of Ra and Horus, and who introduced me in the subsequent minutes to two of the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, and Fae too numerous to name, including Medusa, Monkey, Lapis, Jesse (who was dressed like a Djinni, down to the caliph slippers and fez), SnapDragon, Synonym, and a bunch of others whose fabulous monikers have escaped my brain.

Medusa, the ritual facilitator, was one of the more interesting Fae I met all night; he seems in the same position as a lot of RS members to the community at-large, and might be an RS perspective...but I'd have to talk to him when he wasn't imbibing. Which, apparently, EVERYONE was, except me, which was no less than I expected.

The ritual portion of the evening was interesting, to say the least; ending up between a Sister and a bi-boy's incredibly hott girlfriend and said girlfriend's hott angel wings and giving them hugs as the energy-raising commenced (with lots of making out for some, but not me) was, well, hott. The quarters-calling was as cheesy as every other quarters-calling seems to be (no offense, CDHSarah -- we're talking Adventure Wicca here), but it worked. Also, I liked the calling of the Androgynous Principle after the Male and Female Principles. Something happened, despite the informality of the circling -- the only time I've ever heard "SHUT UP, BITCHES!" from the Priestess-of-the-moment, and I laugh even now to think how much that could have improved one or two rituals I've attended -- because it got hotter than Hades and stayed hot inside after the ritual, and I spent most of the rest of the night outside, milling and being fussed over.

As I said, I love fags. They seem to love me, too, judging by how often I was told tonight that I was, or looked, awesome. They seemed to appreciate the fact that I put some effort into dressing for the event, as the Fae do. I saw, besides the Djinni and the Egyptian costumes already described:

*a Fae in a pageboy wig, Underoos, and a Louis Vuitton scarf
*the DJ, who was in a studded leather codpiece and tennies
*assorted other Djinni without caliph shoes or fezzes
*a sarong-swathed Fae I made sure to compliment, as s/he was wearing the hell out of them
*the Sisters...of the two I met, one was wearing a beaded veil, wimple, and white face paint, the other had a wimple made of a bra (think the BoobHead in Little Nicky, but with the cups used as draping points for a veil) and a full white beard
*a Fae painted blue, wearing a loincloth, a skull-design codpiece, and horns
*a Djinni rocking a Baphomet theme (horns with half-mask, orange vest with a Baphomet symbol, harem pants)
*assorted leather boys
*a Fae in a white harem veil, white linen wrap skirt, and nothing more (but hir boyfriend is probably well-satisfied judging by the evidence)

I could go on, but those are the Costumes of Note, other than mine, which wasn't really a costume until they added the ribbon bracelets, which were used in the circle, and approximately one half-ton of glitter, which sparked a hilarious conversation in the smoking area about how glitter is nonbiodegradable and thus we'll have a Glitter Earth before it's all up.

The Coronation was fabulous, if short. Both Ribbon and WingHeart had been really wonderful to me all night, and they looked precious. The best part, however, was the giveaway...mock "W" stickers that read THE EMPRESS across the bottom where the standard article says THE PRESIDENT. I have about twenty in my purse and one on my turban, which prompted an unpleasant interlude with a drunk bitch once I had made my way to Cafe O2 for the night.

I'm really proud of myself for going and having fun instead of chickening out. I'm trying to be more self-reliant, and "going to a club alone" is a pretty big deal. It could only have been better had there been lesbians on hand, but alas; perhaps three dykes, none either available or my type. I'm going to be reduced to the personal ads before much longer.

I may not have been the Empress tonight, but I was the Belle of the Ball, and I feel just peachy. I'm not even mad that myspace ate two reviews. I am, however, looking forward to my birthday with even more relish. If even two or three of the people I met tonight show up, it will be On even more than my sister-in-law's soirée was. (Link goes to the Cafe O2 article and picture in Nashville Rage, the one the photographer shot at CDHSarah's bash...featured are the Chieftess and the Champion.)

Have a good night, all! Blessed (belated) Lammas!

The Source Believes In You

2005-08-04T01:47:00.000-05:00

My life is immensely boring right now, which is why I've been a bit remiss. The Artist was here and is gone again. We should see him in December if all goes well.

I watched Big Fish with him while he was here and we enjoyed the hell out of it. For someone who believes in World-As-Myth, that movie is like a forgotten gospel. Plus, the Vietnamese twins are hott in some mildly disturbing way. Other than that, and the title of this post, there's nothing I want to share about our visit, because it was most distinctly water brother business. But take my word for it. You should definitely watch the movie. Even if you're not into twins.

Went out with the Shamanism BellyDancer last night and ripped on stuff. I may be tutoring her kids in maths this fall, which should be fun. Also, met Erik the Dane, who is supposed to go to temple and Kali class with me this weekend, and The New Dave, who discussed Heinlein with me all night.

But really, just been hanging out, reading books I've already read, playing fetch with the cat, getting by.

You know you're getting old when your big birthday present from your mom is your tags and registration. For the first time in 8 months, I'm driving totally legally...well, almost, as there's the little matter of insurance, which I can't even come close to affording. Yet another I'm-supposed-to-be-a-grown-up freakout.

Also, there was a minor flap with a troll on one of my pagan listservs, and Lughnassad happened. And...yeah. No life. Right over here, the no life goes to table 3.

I did apply for a job at the City Paper, so any spare vibes would be welcome.

Later I'll talk about the end of my celibacy...while I haven't done anything about it in the past 2 days, I'm free of the geas, and that's something. But for now I need to go lie in bed until I fall asleep; Conservative Wiccan played a great tonal CD for us tonight that got me relaxed enough that I may accomplish that little feat without drugs. Woot!

The Almost Five Squared Blues

2005-07-31T06:09:00.000-05:00

The Design School Homie and I met up tonight, partially because we both needed a night off from our normal pursuits, but mostly to go over my resume. Since she just interviewed approximately umpty-million people to fill a couple of positions at her design firm, she has a sharp eye for what employers don't want to see, and wanted to give me some cover letter advice. She, like everyone else, thinks it's time for the hold music phase of my life to end, because it is destroying my soul piece by piece, and making me even more bitter and cynical than I used to be. (How can I be a hippie when I hate almost all people?)

Predictably, because we're us, we spent more time eating chicken fingers at the Coop and laughing at the obnoxious guy outside Fido than we did actually working. We also "discussed" (read: were cattily bitchy about) pretty much everything and everyone in our lives, up to and including the guy with the bad ponytail and worse pocket-watch-themed shirt walking in front of the deck at the restaurant, and the fact that "Dead bears" have become so mainstream that you find them on official collegiate merchandise, and thus are no longer "counterculture" in any way, so will people please just get over them, and how while we like jam band music, a 45 minute rendition of Tube just goes a weeee bit over the top from "improvisational" into "please stop playing now".

The words of hers that stuck with me most, however, were part of the more serious conversations of the evening, and came in the context of a discussion about the fact that our ten-year highschool reunion is coming up (in three years, but we like to get the bitching started early):

"Trust me, dude. As soon as you turn 25, whether it's the day of or a week later, you are going to completely freak out."
"I already had that freakout. I started having it back in February or something."
"Well, you're going to have it again. Mark my words, dude."

And she is probably right. I haven't looked forward to turning 25, and have been trying to soften the eventual blow by starting to give that as my age since early spring. But it's not working, and I am totally freaking out.

It doesn't help that the ParceSis got married when she was 25 and just celebrated her 5-year wedding anniversary by leaving her two-year-old with the doting ParceRents and going on a cruise with my brother-in-law. Admittedly, said brother-in-law and my sister had dated since her senior year of high school and it was only a matter of time, but it honestly doesn't seem like five years since I came back to Nashville. More specifically, it doesn't seem like I have five years worth of "stuff" to show for it.

Most of my friends have spouses, houses, or both. Neither are on the horizon for me. Some of my friends have careers instead of jobs, and I suppose I'm working on that. But it's been four years since I published a poem, three years since I got my first degree, two years that I've been in this crappy-ass job, and a year and a bit since I last had a relationship, or even relations with anyone but my friends, Right and Left Hand. Like a geometrical progression of failure. Or at least it feels that way.

I don't see how I could freak out any more than I already have done/am doing, but we'll see.

That's why I was so happy to find (Re)Generation on the shelves at Cafe O2, a collection of art by twentysomethings, mostly prose and poetry but with some good photos, thematically about our "generation" (including our habit of feeling the need to put everything in quotation marks). Apparently, people with their shit slightly more together also have the same sense of aimlessness, of relativity, of a surfeit of options that send us into choice paralysis because if we can be anything, like they told us since elementary school, why aren't we exactly what we want to be?

I don't know, and I'd probably settle for a good night's sleep if the choice was between that or an answer. But "well-rested" doessn't really qualify as a life goal, unless you follow Lazarus Long's example of the man who was too lazy to fail, and I'm not that organized. For that matter, "getting the cat to stop sitting in front of the monitor" and "go back to college, probably" aren't lofty aims either. But the book comforted me; apparently, a lot of us are stuck in jobs we hate, a lot of us still don't know who we want to be when we grow up despite the evidence that we already have, a lot of us have made families out of our friends instead of getting married and having children. There's time enough for us to get what our kindergarten teachers promised.

We hope.

What I read heartened me a little, right when I needed it, and once I've given it another, more focused read-through, I'll review it. For now, though, I have to go to bed. Not to sleep, necessarily, but with the hope that one will follow the other.

Where's Your Head At? (Sleep Where You Fall Remix)

2005-07-28T04:33:00.000-05:00

First of all, shouts out to the new readers I'm getting thanks to the courtesy of the ever-fab PsychoToddler, who has added me to his blogroll. Also to the folks who are coming here through JewLicious...this is not a kosher place, exactly, but we try to keep the monkey business to an absolute minimum.

But the Loyal Readership has only one question, burning with the force, if not the discomfort, of a urinary tract infection: How did CDHSarah's 21st birthday bash go?

The answer, in short, is "Better than expected."

1300 hours
The Artist walks in my apartment door as I am vainly struggling to get my ancient computer to cooperate with the task at hand (burning party CDs). We swap hellos and how-are-yous, watch Bubba Ho-Tep, and, much to my pleasure, the Artist took over the CD-making duty. Like many things, he excels at mixmaking, a skill in which I am mediocre at best.

1600 hours
I have to take off to an appointment before meeting the crew chez Sarah. I leave the Artist in nominal charge of the house while he completes the pre-DJing of the evening.

1800 hours
Necessary tasks completed, I head over to Sarah's. Some of the crew, including Don Shiftador, LadyA, and Andar, have already made their appearance. However, the shopping for the party is not entirely completed, so I book out of there fairly quickly, trying to get a decent parking space (i.e. a parking space for which I am not required to pay), a task that is hardly impossible on a Tuesday night, but gets harder the further you get from 6 pm, when the meters turn off.

1820 hours
Sweet success; a District parking spot, same street as where I'm headed, four blocks up on the non-hilly side. Thank lucky stars. Even though I am more than a half-hour early, head down to the Emporium to visit Jimmy at Patrick's place.

1845 hours
Go and settle into the seating area at Cafe O2. A few minutes later, Matt, my chess nemesis and bartender-for-the-night, comes down, also early. We settle in with the Weekly World News to wait.

1900 hours
The lovely Kara shows up and shows us how to open. We get things set up for the party. Then we wait.

Meanwhile, Sarah and the rest of the crew are eating dinner at the excellent Big River Grille. Due to the size of the party and the fact that the place doesn't take reservations, they end up waiting a while, which means Matt and I do also. Read Ben Stiller & Janeane Garafolo's "self-help" parody. Read Siddhartha by Herman Hesse. Light candles. Refresh the flowers around Ganesha.

Find out that the local about-town free paper is sending their photographer tonight to get shots to promote 02's upcoming art show and charity benefit (Aug. 5, proceeds to the Nashville Lost Boys of Sudan), and that the in-house photographer whose studio adjoins O2 will also be taking publicity shots. Start to get nervous.

2045 hours
The first partygoers begin to arrive. Kara and Kevin are generally delighted. All is going smoothly and Matt refuses to let me lift a finger where the register is concerned. The word spreads quickly among the partygoers that the photographers are coming. Makeup is retouched by those who wear it.

2130 hours
The photographer shows up from the paper and gets some great shots, although none of yours truly (which was fine, as I didn't look nearly as sophisticated as the rest of my more femme-y associates). Run hither and thither. Smoke a lot. Dance some.

After this the timeline breaks down entirely, but here are some of the evening's highlights:

*Kevin, the Artist, and Don Shiftador talking about hyperspace/n-dimensional geometry
*Matt's pre-interview for a slot in the Terrestrial Navy, and the great honor done by his regular interview being scheduled with me and not the Fleet Commodore
*the arrival of Patrick, so late we had almost given up on him, and his subsequent and genial presence
*the random arrival of a drunk 17-year old, also celebrating her birthday, and her six closest friends, all of them hot and attired in black formals. Sadly, we had to kick them out, as part of the conditions of a private party is that liquor = guests of legal age. Several of us, however, were quite sorry to see them go; however, Kara apparently arranged to throw that girl a late birthday bash on a normal, all-ages night.
*Kevin taking me aside to tell me, variously, how great a time he was having, how he loved all my friends, and how he loves my taste in music (with nods to Evan's mixmaking skills)
*repeated plays of Where's Your Head At (a me and Sarah favorite since we watched the episode of Kingdom Hospital that features it) and The Motorcycle Song
*loud singing of Waltzing Godzilla while dancing arm-in-arm with CDHSarah
*the mob scene in the boutique that was ten people singing along to The Cheat Is Not Dead at the top of their lungs, including an energetic Pentecostal-inspired "got-the-Spirit" dance led by the Artist during the closing thereof (and if the photos of that come out at all, y'all will see them)
*being told "Great party" by just about everyone there

At some unspecified hour of the morning, around 1:30, the party broke up and made a half-hearted move to Sarah and SFGod's house, but, mostly due to the necessity of the sober drivers running cars back in from downtown, that really never took off. It ended with Sarah in bed, while me, Dave Not O, and the Artist argued the finer points of Heinlein and Asimov with a vigor until 5 am, when DaveNO had to get home. (Before that, the Artist indulged in a little prophecy, but due to his wishes, I will not publicly share that. He never remembers after, and prefers not to be reminded...and while he doesn't read over here often, I respect his wishes absolutely in that vein.)

I passed out at CDHSarah's from sheer exhaustion, despite the fact that my own house and bed are literally around the corner, a decision I sort-of regretted when the day ended up starting at 11 am...even though the "day", such as it was, consisted of sitting around, them hung-over, me be-migrained -- the heat has given us a respite, but only because there's a rain-filled pressure system sitting over the Tennessee Valley -- none of us able to do much more than watch a movie, smoke too many cigarettes, and munch on subs. I passed out again on the floor before time for meeting, a not-particularly organized one where we discussed business (last meeting of the month is schedule/group project discussion time), death and dying in our particular paths, and then had a short remembrance of Alice.

After that I rolled out to the Burrow, to return various articles left at Sarah's during the afterparty to the Don, while the Artist played D&D with the birthday couple. I probably won't see him again until Monday, and after that probably not again until Yule.

I still feel kind of crappy, and probably will until sleep becomes more regular, but I have one thing to sustain me: after years of trying, I finally threw a party (with help, but this was essentially my baby in terms of facilitation) that went off. Now, if all those people plus a few more will just show up to MY fast-approaching birthday (with the exception of the Artist, who will have to be back in Pensacola -- he wouldn't have been here this week had he not had the responsibility of walking his sister down the aisle, as well) with the same party spirit. A place I love got the kind of positive word-of-mouth (the party won't be in the article, except maybe in the captions of the photos) that will do them lots of good, as some of the people there were older than us -- a friend who works for one of the Networks plans to start bringing her editors there for after-work drinks, and all the rest of the folks have said "We'll be back and bring our friends," not just to the owners, but to me privately. Ganesha sustained us, both our friends who stuck their necks out to host the first-ever private party, and myself and Sarah.

Still, I am exhausted. Throwing an awesome party may be an ego boost, but it takes it out of me.
The rest of this week until the weekend is pretty busy, but I should be around. If you don't see the birthday girl herself, it's because she took her vacation time to get the rest of the week off and won't have regular Internet access. I myself will talk to you once I've returned to town and have 2 seconds to rub together...

Not "Until Brooklyn" -- Just The "No Sleep" Bit

2005-07-26T03:45:00.000-05:00

My name is Parce, and I'm an insomniac.

A lot of people use that term for what CDHSarah would call "Dark Time" people, people who simply prefer to stay up until dawn and sleep through the day. I must admit, I do enjoy a little of that; some of the best conversations I've ever had have occured in the dead time between two and five A.M., as well as some of the most creative time I've ever experienced.

But when that propensity to get work done after the sun goes down moves into true insomnia, it's no longer cool, or even what I consider to be "living".

We're not sure precisely what cog in the old brain has slipped, my medical professionals and I. Could be a medication side effect. Could be caused by the fact that we've been switching said medications around, especially those I take at night, in the past two months. Could be stress. Could even be some of the spiritual practices. All I know is that I went from being a person who would gladly spend eleven hours of an off-day sleeping (get in a good seven or eight, wake up, read for a while, drop off with my hand still marking the page, wake back up, go back to sleep, lather, rinse, repeat) to a person who is slobberingly grateful to get six or eight hours. Not at a stretch, either; these days, those hours inevitably have one or two interruptions caused by nothing that we've yet been able to determine.

You don't know what you have until you lose it, and that goes double for the primary needs. When the RenReb was talking about the fast day she just passed, I pointed out that my own experience with fasting is something I wish everyone had on a semiregular basis, so that they could understand what it is to be hungry. Not "I missed lunch" hungry, but "I have a headache and can't think about anything but the knot in my stomach" hungry. Would give people more compassion. But I wouldn't wish this on my worst enemy. I know now why sleep deprivation is used as a form of torture; it doesn't leave bruises or scars, but it makes life barely worth the effort it takes to keep breathing.

It hasn't been a particularly bad stretch recently, except the horrible 72 hours where I only got 6 hours of sleep cumulative. I seriously thought I was going to lose my mind. When I lose my ability to sleep, the rest of my body's systems go into shock. If I'm not sleeping, after a point, I'm not eating either, or at least not enough to sustain myself. (A funsize bag of Doritos and two big pieces of chicken cho cho does not count as a day's nourishment, especially when said "day" is 22 hours long.) Because the act of getting food requires too much effort, and because once I have the food it's kind of sickening, because my whole system wants nothing more than to lie down for the next two days and start working off the sleep debt, I end up only eating enough that my stomach doesn't cramp hard enough to hurt. My eyes dry out because my blink response slows down. It gets to the point where I don't feel safe to drive, because I can start having surface hallucinations, which at least make the staring-out-the-window-waiting-for-dawn times more interesting, but don't make the process of getting food any easier.

So I'm hungry and tired, and next I inevitably get sick. It's been a billion degrees outside since June, but I just spent 4 days with an upper respiratory infection that I'm sure I got because my immune system looked at the parts of my brain that were supposed to be making me sleep and eat at proper intervals (but were instead playing a high-stakes game of Texas Hold'Em), said, "Oh, fuck it," and bought in, leaving the keys in the door and the WELCOME mat out for those hardy germs that had withstood temperatures that should properly be measured in Kelvin to get across how high they were. Those types of germs are not quitters. Do you have any idea what a lame excuse it sounds like when the Red Cross calls you for a phaeresis and you tell them you have a URI? In July? They think you're just being a sissy, but the truth is, I needed every platelet I had last week, plus a few.

So then I'm sick AND hungry AND tired. And the "sick" part serves its purpose, in that it starts whipping Sleep Need and taking all its chips, so that eventually Sleep Need has to go back to work. So I get well, sort of, and I start sleeping again, sort of, until the least little thing happens and I don't go to bed concomitant with the first yawn of the evening, and then it's on again.

It's 4 A.M. in the Music City. I have a doctor's appointment in seven hours. The only choice I have at this point (since I have stuff to do tomorrow afternoon) is to go lie in bed, listening to my eyeballs clicking, and hoping that my getting down to sleep comes before the sun gets up. (Sri Leela gave me a breath mantra and taught me pranayama breathing that she said might help, so I suppose I'm off to give that a shot.)

Today is CDHSarah's birthday. As of four hours ago, she's legal to drink in the U.S., and a good thing too, since I was there when she got her first bottle of liquor and that was some time ago. Seriously, go wish her the best. Then pray for Gefilte and GetUpGrrl, and go read the new reviews. Before you're done with all that, I should (with luck) be asleep. I hope.

The Best Place to Begin Is At the Beginning

2005-07-25T00:30:00.000-05:00

Having now had time to pause and reflect, I have determined not to talk about my brief sojourn out of state except in the briefest terms: I went to a WV music festival with a friend from Virginia and her boyfriend and played with the hippies and thought Deep Thoughts. I had a Sars-knockoff post all ready where I told most of I-40, Michael Savage, and my bank to shut up, but it wasn't as funny as that which it imitated, so to hell with it. It was an OK weekend, not great, not horrible, and I ended up coming home earlier than planned.

I've been busy since I got back, though. And all in all, the past week has sucked ass. We lost Alice, I didn't get to do one of the major cleaning jobs I had to do, I got lost in Bordeaux and ended up somehow hitting all 4 points of Nashville before getting to my neighborhood, I had one of the 6-hours-of-sleep-in-72 bouts of insomnia, so badly that I was almost to the point of sleep-dep hallucination, someone stole the goddess that I had sold to the folks at Cafe O2 right off the altar, and to add just the proper elan to the entire thing, it has been about a million degrees plus the heat index ALL WEEK. Thank Deity for the sarong and the ubiquitousness of air conditioning in my city. (No help Saturday, when we went and cleaned an outdoor property and thought we'd all die of heatstroke despite drinking copious amounts of water. I actually skipped Sunday drum circle when I found out the heat index was at 115 degrees.)

But good things have happened this week too: we got a theme, SFGod turned 24, we got Sarah an awesome venue for her birthday bash, I met some awesome puppies, Sri Leela gave me initiation to a breath mantra, and I read the new Harry Potter. (And I don't want to talk about that at all, because I think I am still in shock, a little.)

Also, I've been reading the Principia all week, in possible preparation for Episkoposery, and have come to a few interesting conclusions, foremost among them that I want to be an Episkopos of some sort, possibly taking the newer ideas in q-phy that hold up the Discordian premises (the Principia talks about Heisenberg a bit) and using those to form the basis for my own Cabal. But for now, I'm just living Discordia, doing stuff like going to the gas station with a stuffed flower in my hair and a bindi mark on my forehead after Kali class, which doesn't confuse MulletMan (the gas station guy) at all but seems to make the other patrons develop a headache.

Sauce is in the land of the rednecks now (it's been the Time of Vacations for the Loyal Readership lately), and tomorrow is CDHSarah's 21st birthday, so go tell her happy birthday. Not because I like her or anything... ;)

I'm behind on just about everything at the moment, including reviews, and this week is full to the gills, but I should be around at least enough to keep up with everyone, if not to follow my usual prolific schedule. However, there is a new review up of Red Lobster, White Trash, & the Blue Lagoon : Joe Queenan's America for your delectation until I get more caught up.

Blog Updates, Not Trip Updates

2005-07-20T02:15:00.000-05:00

I still haven't collected my thoughts with regards to my trip over the weekend...Tuesday was very busy, catching up on the Internets and emails and trying to get the cats to acknowledge my existence after my unforgivable four-day absence. The Middle Kitty has consented to come down off the top of the fridge, and even gave me a few minutes of lap-time until the sound of the keys started to get on his nerves.

Also, there is another major distraction....the new Harry Potter book. I like to "read" them first by listening to the audiobooks, as the reader is truly amazing, and have continued my tradition with The Half-Blood Prince. Unfortunately, I have great difficulty in doing anything other than the most mundane of tasks while doing the first listen-through, so instead of working on my trip post, I finally took the excellent userguide provided to me by ET via MWN in order to get the list of links you now see to the right up and running.

I am half-dead with excitement to find out what's going to happen in Book 6, so if I'm a bit distracted for the next day or so, don't take it personally. When I return, I will tell you both of my voyage and of my impressions of the next-to-last installment. (Apparently the Artist gave me the wrong spoiler info, so other than "death of a major character", which I've known since last year, I'm as much in the dark as anyone else.)

If you miss me that badly, you can always check out my new reviews of Odd Girl Out and From a Buick 8...

See you when the book's over. In the meantime, also keep Special Sauce and her opportunity to work with Chillin & Yoot in your positive thoughts, prayers, or closest analog. She rocked her interview, of course, but every little bit counts.

Away From The Roll Of The Sea

2005-07-19T02:06:00.000-05:00

Just a quick update, to let the Loyal Readership of Five know that I made it back into town safely and without major incident. I'm not going to try and do justice to my trip at this hour after eight hours on the road and a celebratory dinner of boiled shrimp, especially since I am being roundly ignored by three very angry cats for the crime of going out of town.

Also, to welcome Tony, who of all the bloggers in the last post came over to say hey, and to thank him for not busting my blatant misspelling of his blog name in the last post, which I will correct shortly.

And to note the two additional weird searches since last night: cattle desanguination, and fuck photo, which is odd only because the user was in Saudi Arabia, where (I think) a-lookin' for such things on the Internets is illegal. Again, intrepid searchers, hope you found that which it was you were seeking, especially the latter.

I would also like to note, for the record, that the phrases "I have to go/am going to bed" have officially become semantically null when spoken by me, because I don't remember the last time I said or typed that and didn't do at least three other things before actually beginning the "going to bed" process.

In parting (because this time I'm really going to bed, I'm knackered), my one and only ET has an opportunity to work with Chillun & Yoot, and the RLoF all know she'd be faboo at that with all her Codger Corral experience. Her interview is today, so be sending all the vibes you can muster her way. (I did a Ganesha mantra between Crossville and Cookeville with some Om shakti thrown in for good measure, and will probably do the same in the morning...and for those who are even bothering to try and guess to whence I voyaged, there are your second and third clues.)

Super Secret Squirrel Sitemeter Stuff

2005-07-18T01:07:00.000-05:00

Still in Super Secret Squirrel mode, probably back to home port tomorrow. Winds fairish with much rain. The men are full of scurvy, and mutter mutinously. Tomorrow I will have them flogged...

No, wait. I'm not really on a pirate mission. Promise.

What I am doing is ignoring cable in order to (of course), obsessively play with Sitemeter, and being mad at the Artist for calling my voicemail and telling me which major character dies in the new Harry Potter. (Not super-duper really mad, but mad enough that I'm going to have to do something similarly underhanded in order to retain my face.)

So, first of all...welcome to those who came here from Blogger (and there were a bunch of y'all...did I get featured or something? (those blogs which go to advertising are not listed. Fuck y'all.)
Godfamilyrepublic, who not surprisingly didn't stay. Sigh.
AllGardening
Petty10-4
SuzieViews
Sankofas
Rojaks (Kuala Lumpur! That reminds me of an ancient Lore comic from the bygone days of the Brunching Shuttlecocks!)
The Wine Kone
Cerka
Gato Federento
Idigak
Paradise City
El Paripatetico
No Guru
Ja tenho um blog
Contemplative Scholar
Pinned & Wriggling
UnYielding
Blogasms
Primate Journal

I will give you all the hits you deserve once I am back to home port.

Second of all, hope the people that were searching for using self hardening clay to make Parthenon (I was in JCL in high school too! Hi!), ya devi sarva bhuteshu (Namas'te!), isis goddess speaking in tongues, you get a line, and rainbow gathering, hope you found what you were looking for.

To whoever searched stinky women, you're a weirdo. Of course, I'm probably a weirdo for putting it into a title, but...shut up.

Plus, of course, all my homies previously mentioned.

In other news, new reviews will go up super soon for Odd Girl Out: The Hidden Culture of Aggression in Girls, Jesus & The Essenes, The Jewish Book of Why, and probably From a Buick 8 and Needful Things. (Hi LouiSe!) So I'll be busy, and then I'll be back. And CDHSarah totally misses me, and what she DOESN'T know is that I have a TOTALLY AWESOME theme idea (that is not Tiki Bar) that is going to shock and surprise her so much when she beholds its sheer awesomeness that she will drop Alice into an interdimensional crack, and Alice will be gone. Forever. (Even on vacation, MWN, I always have a nomorealiceever story.)

Checking Out

2005-07-13T22:49:00.000-05:00

Hi y'all! Sorry I haven't posted in a day or two, but doing the marvelous photo essays for a certain someone ought to count. *grin*

And now when I do check in, it's to tell y'all I'm checking out...headed off to my Super Secret Out Of State Squirrel Location for a few days. The certain someone referenced above will be pleased to note that I heeded her wise counsel and stayed an extra night in town instead of making the banzai, middle-of-the-night, I'm-only-awake-because-my-eyes-are-too-tired-to-blink, run (for you puzzlers out there, I'm going about 6 hours from home in a direction unspecified), because she was right; when she last saw me I was too worn down to make it. I realized that when I got ready to carry something else up to the van and simply couldn't make myself get up the steps. (Gloating in my comments by aforesaid comrades will result in deletion, bannination, and no more Alice, ever.)

I just have to pack up my wraps and my sneakers and I'm ready to go...the cats have a sitter, everything is pretty much set up and ready to go. The cats smell that something's up, but they'll deal with it.

Except for the fact that this will be my longest solo road trip of record, I think I'm finally actually happy to go. I always have a good time in my SSOoSSL, but leaving for anywhere, even PUF (perhaps an hour from home) usually involves forgetting many useful things and remembering ones with no practical application. If I need a yoga mat or a Stephen King novel or a clean t-shirt while I'm out of town, I'm OK. Anything else is negligible to iffy. Except spare headlight bulbs and fuses. Those I have. Also an eyeglass screwdriver. Map? Not so much.

Anyhow. I absolutely have to go to bed if I'm going to get up and on the road at the time the Ambitious Me (and the Very Ambitious Out of State Secret Squirrel) has decided will be best. I'm not sure of the connectivity there, but if I can give you a SSU while I'm there, I will. If not, see y'all by this time next week at the absolute latest.

Wherever You Go, You End Up Here

2005-07-11T02:51:00.000-05:00

Not quite. But after I gave the brief life overview of what's been going on since Wodinsday, I decided to check the stats on the Sitemeter I finally broke down and installed on the site.

Here's what strings hapless search-engine users are typing in to end up here....most of them aren't staying, sadly. Still funny stuff. Check it out.

AskJeeves search for Steve Hawking's Black Hole theory
(Steve? Are you on first name terms with the guy?)

Technorati search for case worker and shaman AND quail
(the supreme irony of both those search matches has not been lost on me)

Yahoo search for tattoo thor's hammer (and an Alltheweb search for "tattoo mjollnir" that turned up the same page). Hope those dudes aren't copying the Artist's piece, because he might cut someone for that.
(It's creepy how many neo-Nazi and white supremacy links come up when you use that search string. For the record, the Artist isn't too fond of skinheads, he's just a big fan of the Norse Gods.)

Yahoo search for music of Godzilla
(there you go, CDHSarah)

Yahoo search for inspirational thoughts to live by & points to ponder
(hee!)

Plus a few people from Irina's blogroll, none of whom apparently stayed, a couple people from comments on Pamie.com, Chez Miscarriage, and Jewlicious, and some myspace folks of unknown origin, as it only lets me track back that they came from either the book blog or my profile. It also appears that our Aussie friends came to visit for a few minutes when they got to Chicago. Hi guys!

But the lovely Louise and the excellent ClooJew (whose blog name I cannot believe I spelled correctly on the first try) are the only ones leaving comments and letting us know of their illustrious presence! You can hang out, guys. Pacifists usually only bite in the heat of passion, and there hasn't been any of that for a looooonnnng time, promise, so I think I've learned to control myself. Pull up a chair. Sit a spell. Kick back and whittle some.

This has got me tempted to seed the blog with weird search phrases (like the RenReb, who gets all kinds of weird hits for "sexy babysitter" and "hot frum girls" (and, thanks to CJ, "lulei demistafina"). Maybe now I can be cool like she is.

Blah Blah, Jai Ma, & Some Stuff That Doesn't Rhyme

2005-07-11T01:16:00.000-05:00

On up to Tennessee, a lot of the real niggas be showin' love and you know I really appreciate that -- all the dope boys be coming out, all the homegirls be showin love, but a lot of folks, man, they still be lookin at me like they don't know who I is.

Rapper T.I., in his seminal work, Rubber Band Man.

Why the rubber bands? They representin' the struggle, man.

The WinAmp popped up this song, which I actually really like now that it's no longer in heavy rotation. Like everything in this post, it's pretty much random.

I haven't posted in a few days because I've been -- off. Not bad, not ill, just off. Of course, there was the tragedy in London, which I heard about only a few hours after my last post, and since I had nothing to add to the outpouring of sympathy and grief -- I've never written about my "dealing with 9/11" experiences either that I recall, other than anecdotally, even though I remember everything about the day and the days that followed, including the chocolate doughnuts I bought and distributed in the student lounge at school to everyone glued to CNN, like Disaster Relief Homer Simpson -- I have been dealing with that happening in my own, nonliterary way. I felt kind of heartless when I got home on Thursday late and didn't have anything to say about it, but I think I've said to God all that I can muster on the subject, even now. My period is late (I think the Readership of Five jinxed me a few days ago), so I just keep having weird cramps that don't actually presage the event. I managed to get my sleep schedule all screwed up again when the Artist came into town for the night on his way to Pensacola. He appears to be very well, if broke, and while I was thrilled to see him, the staying-up-all-night-to-see-him-for-the-one-night when I had stuff to do the next day indirectly led to me accidentally ditching Sarah on Saturday night (see earlier comment about sleep schedule being entirely screwed). I have ended up agreeing to drive to Virginia instead of taking the bus as planned, and I can't find my saints. At the same time, though, good things have been happening and I've been mostly happy -- a lot of chess and Scrabble getting played, a lot of Kingdom Hospital with CDHSarah, a rare foray into watching TV to see the Live 8 highlights, a lot of book reviews -- the two newest are The Serpent & The Rainbow and Chuck Pahlaniuk's Survivor. Plus, an evening or two with my new friends at Cafe O2, who are very spiritual and fun folks (even if Matt does totally own me on the chessboard, which I am blaming on the ever-changing medication that is robbing me of my ability to concentrate long enough to see a good game through endgame), and Daughters of Kali tonight, and many, many good-but-small things that just haven't, individually, been what I judge to be "blog-worthy". Probably they're not blogworthy in aggregate, either, but I'm about to get busy on the going out of town preparations and didn't want to go from "long weekend" to "unscheduled hiatus", for my own reasons mostly.

And CDHSarah and I have started a book. It hasn't even reached the blastocyst stage yet, so I can't tell you much about it -- it's a book of our observations & "lessons learned" on spirituality, mostly in the pagan community. We're still trying to decide how to structure the ideas we want to cover into more than a series of disjointed essays, but haven't quite gotten there yet. The odd thing is, I think we might actually do it...if we don't kill each other before it's over.

In ET Synchronicity, Sauce is having an annoying time of it right now, so y'all go give her the love. Plus, according to blogger, I've broken the hundred-post mark a while ago, which makes me oddly happy. This is number 121, I believe. Word.

Meeting Papa

2005-07-07T02:01:00.000-05:00

That sounds like a harrowing WWII movie, but really, it's what I did on Wodinsday.

I've been a whole week and a half without real spiritual stimulation, which is probably why I've been so blah. In this down time, I need my medical and spiritual frameworks to give me a reason not just to sit in the house, all the time. They get me out, they get me moving, they get me thinking. But meeting was cancelled last week due to emergency on the parts of both the intended guest speaker and the leader for the evening, so we just gave it a miss...and, of course, Daughters of Kali was on a weeklong hiatus because Leela was visiting out of state for the Fourth. So, on Tuesday, I was totally hyped for the meeting, eager and excited.

I didn't feel that way for most of Wednesday...other than the fun with CDHSarah on instant messenger, the whole first portion of the day was one piece of suckage after another, from the missed phone call to the callback without benefit of a cigarette to keep me calm while on the phone with DisabilityLady, the subsequent and sneaky disconnection of the phone from its power source by a feline yet to be determined, which meant that not one of my phone calls got through for 2 hours. I realized this about the time I needed to be getting ready for meeting, and by then I was so over the entire thing that I could barely make myself get up and get ready.

Good thing I did.

Tish has been channeling Odin for ten years or so, and while I have heard about the sessions, I have never attended one. In fact, I had never attended a channeling, period. I've seen spontaneous trance, but never with someone else "coming through".

I can't describe it. I want to, because his words for me were all about my writing, how it's what I'm supposed to be doing right now, but I just can't.

I've known Tish for what seems like forever. I've known her husband for almost ten years, but I don't remember when I first met Tish...seven, eight years maybe. I know her. To see her go away -- to see the arrangement of the muscles in her face contract and contort subtly until I might not have recognized her at first glance, to see the change in the way she moves and speaks and even breathes...it was disconcerting, but not frightening, because Odin was there. He was looking out of her eyes, and they weren't her eyes any more. It reminded me almost exactly of the reading I've done on Santeria, etc, in the description of what it looks like when God mounts the head of a human.

Yes, yes, could have been faked, could have been cleverly practiced playacting with a decade of experience in playing the role. Except that it wasn't. One of those faith things, because you couldn't take this one to the lab. But Tish isn't like the Shirley Maclaine-style channelers, she doesn't accept money or even "love donations" for it; why would a woman bother to put on an elaborate fiction with no conceivable reward? It doesn't matter. Odin was there, and that's how it is.

Odin is mostly jolly when he manifests through Tish -- he rarely shows his anger inside her vessel, I've been told -- twice that she can recall, but as is usual she doesn't remember much when she comes back out. He joked about the spindly diner chair being too small for him, about Tish's worry that she wouldn't make it back out in time to pick up her husband from work, about CDHSarah's bunnylike tendencies. After the first few minutes there were giggles, then full-out laughter. We laughed with the All-Father quite a lot.

He told us a tale of the Norsemen, of their life, of how they came to seek gods as ruthless and crafty and powerful as themselves. He answered our questions. He assured us that our brother the Artist will be protected on his journey. And he told us all what we needed to know. More than that, and words fail.

The hour was too short, and we all can't wait to invite Tish and Papa back again.

We misspent the rest of our free night in eating Chinese food and rewatching the first four episodes of Kingdom Hospital. And when I called to check my voice mail? Every call for which I had waited patiently was accounted for. I've got things mostly under control over here, feel better than I have in days, and will have some progress for the Nigerian doctor to chart when I get in tomorrow. In the meantime, as I don't know how to give him my thanks in his own language, Ya Devi Sarva Buteshu Odinrupena Samsthita, and Om Sri Ganeshaya Namah, for the ever-appearing $5 bill and the promise of the money to pay the cable bill by Friday.

New reviews up tomorrow with luck, but probably later in the evening as I expect to finish both books I'm reading while getting worked in at the doctor's tomorrow.

Why I Love My Sister In Law...Most of the Time

2005-07-06T14:00:00.000-05:00

My sister in law is known to most of you as the gorgeous and talented CDHSarah.

She's not actually my sister-in-law...by various reckoning she is "my old roommate who lived with me in the house out East"', "my former landlord who let me rent her guest house last summer", "my brother", or "my ex-boyfriend's blood-brothers' wife". For purposes of not getting sent to the psych ward, I tend to call her my "sister-in-law", which only confuses people if they know my parents adopted 2 girls. "Water brother" confuses just about everyone, so we stick wth SIL.

Margaret Mead and slight intoxication made me think about our weird relationship last night. She went over one culture that was very Martian, in that your mother's sister was "mother" -- everyone from your mother's generation was your mother, everyone from your own "brother" or "sister", somehow, because of the way the marriage system is set up.

In my own artificially created family, the first one, I grew up knowing that you adopted people because you love them and want them to be in your family. I don't think my parents expected that I would end up with quite so many mothers and brothers -- and one sister-in-law.

"In-law" has become a dirty word, a way of separating the family-members-of-choice from the family-members-born-to-the-same-bloodline. But my first family didn't have that. The CDH is my sis-in-law because we don't quite have the relationship my raised-sister and I have. But I see CDHSarah more, have more fun with her, think she probably knows more about my adult life, than my raised-sister.

Which in turn reminds me of another Margaret Mead explanation, this time about the tribe of headhunters she visited in which aggression was considered the norm for both sexes, but usually took the form of highly stylized insults, especially where women were concerned.

People who don't know us sometimes think CDHSarah and I are always in a fight, but in reality we're usually just in the middle of a vast and invisible game of one-upwomanship, the rules of which are so arcane I'm not sure we even know the finer points. I correct her on some point of usage and somehow later in the day she gets a "you can't correct me any more today" concession and proceeds to use it to her advantage. But I love Sarah, to death, would never hurt her, would cheerfuly trade my life for hers -- and yet threaten to either stab her in the eyeball with a pen, choke her to death, or beat her until she cries, at least once a day. If they ever subpoenaed my IM records in the suspicious death of CDHSarah, I would be totally convicted on circumstantial evidence...and I'm a pacifist. It's like a cat fight (between two Leos) all the time...and when one of us gets clawed for real, usually through misconstruance, there's usually half an hour of soothing and the human equivalent of cleaning necks. I can't remember the last time I went to bed mad at Sarah. When I go to bed mad, it's really bad. Otherwise it's just the game.

While I've been off work, I've been leaving my Yahoo! messenger open at night so that when CDHSarah gets to her job she can IM me. (I forget to sign things back on, but my computer is so ancient I can't really launch five things at startup without hurting the poor thing.) This often means that I either wake up to the dulcet sounds of the Yahoo messenger alert, or stumble in to the computer and phone area of the apartment to find a series of morning messages from the lady herself.

We watched Mean Girls last night, and then Saved, again, because we're dorks. But the movie does get one thing right; all people are mean. All people have meanness inside of them. Instead of being evil Cruellas de Vil, CDHSarah and I have just turned it into a no-keepsies game of mean, instead of a soul-destroying game of mean.

Part of the game centers around IM. At least once throughout the day, Sarah IMs me about wanting to be at home with her Alice, the half Netherland-dwarf, half English-spot bunny that possesses the power of cuteness to unending degree. That is my cue to begin today's Tale of No More Alice Ever, which is always different, always wildly unlikely (so that there is never a chance of it being taken seriously), and always culminates in a triumphal IM of "No more Alice...ever", followed by a hearty NOOOOOOOO!

Here's the slighly edited version of part of today's IMs with CDHSarah. (To understand this fully, you need to know that I slipped a note into her pack of cigarettes yesterday that said REMIND PARCE ABOUT REBATE, and I should have known better. Bobby is the creepy stranger who knocked on the door last night who we think was completely flying on uppers and whom we did not allow in. E Moet is the name in which my fake doctorate was issued.)

cdh sarah: SEND IN YOUR GODDAMN REBATE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
cdh sarah: there.
cdh sarah: get up you lazy liberal you. cooooome on. geeeeeeet up.
cdh sarah: you gots ta MAIL IN YOUR DAMN REBATE, REMEMBER?
cdh sarah: MAIL IN YOUR REBATE E MOET.
cdh sarah: NOW
cdh sarah: RIGHT NOW.
cdh sarah: E MOET, I AM FAITHFULLY REMINDING YOU TO MAIL IN YOUR DAMN REBATE!
cdh sarah: NOW!
cdh sarah: EEEEEEMMMMMMMOOOOOOEEEEEEEEETTTTTTT
cdh sarah: GO MAIL IN YOUR REBATE EMOET.
This is the point at which I got up and realized I had missed a phone call from my case worker.
mine: haate
cdh sarah: it's your fault for making me remind you.
cdh sarah: now love, for meeting tonight shall be fine
cdh sarah: Do I get a doggie biscuit?
mine: no and i'n busy
cdh sarah: oh, tw, I meant to tell you this. It's rather important for meeting tonight
cdh sarah: MAIL IN YOUR REBATE
cdh sarah: I'll leave you be for now
mine: please die, and then remember that pagan coffeehouse is saturday
cdh sarah: i will do the latter, not the former. sorry.
cdh sarah: maybe next time you'll think twice before telling me to remind you about something
cdh sarah:
mine: dude, I am not in the mood to deal with you
mine: and anyway YOU OWE ME $10
cdh sarah: yeah
cdh sarah: and your point?
cdh sarah: ok, well if you arent in the mood to deal with me I'll ttyl
mine: I was kidding, but am on phone with disability lady
cdh sarah: ok
cdh sarah: lemme know when ur done
mine: so u can remind me about my rebate? no thanx
cdh sarah: (obnoxious smiley with lots of teeth)
mine: ok, i'm off the phone
mine: the disability counsellor called ALICE too
mine: we were on 3 way calling
cdh sarah: what did ALICE say?
mine: that she couldn't take it anymore
cdh sarah: did she tell you how she collapsed on my boobie this morning and refused to get up?
mine: she was overeating, binging and purging, and on crystal meth
cdh sarah: what?
cdh sarah: ALICE!
mine: she's done up on about 5 grams of crystal
cdh sarah: poor poor alice
cdh sarah: she must've run out and collapsed in exaustion this morning when she REFUSED to let me get up and go to work!
mine: she says she hates it when you go because she can't help but invite bobby over and smoke, smoke, smoke
mine: she was pretty sketched
cdh sarah: oh shit, i forgot about bobby.
cdh sarah: I'm still freaked out about that.
cdh sarah: poor poor alice. I must go home and help her through detox
mine: sorry
mine: she's been taken inpatient
mine: no more alice ever
cdh sarah: NO!

That's how it goes, with me and my sister-in-law. This is what we do for fun. At least, it's fun until we have to explain to the waiter that the chorus of "Fuck you" that he walked up into isn't really the hint that we're about to dive across the tables and start clawing at one another's faces and jewelry. (What's better is when people think we're dykes having a public breakup. That one scores points for both of us.)

If people have to fight, and I think they do, I think our way is best. And Alice has been taken away by the Homeland Security Agency and the Secret Service. Just so you know.

After the Fourth

2005-07-05T16:19:00.000-05:00

Today is suuuuch a lazy day.

I've found I get less done when I get up in the early morning than if I give myself a couple more hours of sleep. (This is assuming all goes well and I actually get to sleep before the sun comes up.) I don't see much reason to be up before 10 am when I don't have to go to work, since I inevitably spend that time in a sort of somnolent daze, halfway reading about Margaret Mead in New Guinea (a review of which is probably next up or second up here. There will be a new review before the end of the day, but it'll probably be Danse Macabre), halfway petting the cat and drowsing and being pissed at the phone for ringing and making me get up before I'm ready.

That laziness tends to continue, and I haven't done much all day -- small organizational tasks, a brief foray to the store for chips and money orders to pay the rent, catching up on email. Which leads me ever on to my point.

Yesterday I posted about my Fourth of July experience to a small degree. I didn't talk about it at the time, but last week, the same night I got the job, I met John and Alex, two incredibly awesome young Australians on a backpack tour of the U.S..

It was already fairly late when the poker game ended and I joined their conversation at Cafe O2...we talked about, among other things, Tommy Emmanuel (my knowledge of whom was described as "obscure"), slang across the globe, the Mississippi River, and holidays, specifically the Fourth of July. They have Anzac Day in New Zealand and Australia, and other patriotic-type "remember the war dead and veterans" days just like we do, but on description couldn't think of any "patriotic" holidays that would cause, for instance, a particularly cute barista to put red, white and blue extensions in her hair for the week leading up to the holiday (they were very cute, I swear...you'd just have to know her). I told them they'd have to give me their impressions after they'd seen a celebration for themselves.

The boys emailed me today from St. Louis, which is where they headed the day after I met them. Here, excerpted from their emails, is what the Glorious Fourth looks like to two dudes from the Southern Hemisphere:

Forgot about fourth of july so when we got into town and the streets were deserted it was strange, then cheerleaders and marching bands on every street all day,very american. the fireworks were awesome and there were sooooo many people.but the second the fireworks finnished everyone just up and left! so noreal party scene or anything which was a shame. (John)

4th of july was pretty extreme. the fireworks...oh man, wow!!! mega fireworks, bigger than anything i've ever seen. we don't really have such an organised celebrations back home, just more general drinking etc. (Alex)

From this dazzlingly scientific sociological study, I conclude that Australians know more about what makes a good party than we do. But then, I already suspected that. Which would you rather get drunk and try to sing: The Star-Spangled Banner, or Waltzing Matilda? (CDHSarah does not get to answer this question, because it will involve her stomping through the flattened streets of Tokyo.) Then again, I've never been a huge fan of fireworks and a large fan of parties, so perhaps I am prejudiced and/or UnAmerican. I dunno.

Maybe if the Bush administration pisses me off any more I'll take a trip to see if, like Friday in the Heinlein novel, I prefer life with the Aussies and Enzedds.

Good journey, John and Alex! Thanks for being cool passers-through.

ETA: We're going to try this again. Book reviews are up for Danse Macabre and We Have Always Lived In the Castle. The links to the stories SHOULD take you to the individual reviews now, but I can't be sure because something in my Myspace settings tries to keep me logged in while I try to look at things without a username...will someone check, and comment? (And then will you all join MySpace and comment on my book reviews? Purleeeaze?)(Kidding.) (No, really.) (No, really.)

Today We Are Free

2005-07-05T01:08:00.000-05:00

Today we are free. Today, we declared ourselves free (well, not all of us then, but we've been working on the issue for a while, so today, let's cut ourselves some slack, like the SubGenius types do.)

Today we are free, but we cannot get our gasoline free. I ended up being thankful to pay $1.99 plus that stupid 9/10 of a cent per gallon, driving up to Ft. Campbell to hang out with the high school homies and the soon-to-be-deployed-to-Iraq Ethical Atheist, about whose future I am terribly concerned.

Today we are free, but we cannot park for free. It's $10 and a whole lot of hassle to park downtown, because everyone, their mother, and their 2.5 kids had to be on the riverfront to watch the fireworks. It somehow...OK, always...seems unsporting, the way they increase the fee on the nights of national holidays like that, but I don't have a monopoly on parking between Second and Tenth Avenues, so what do I know about the price of eggs in China? I guess milking that extra $3 out of everyone who wishes to peaceably assemble to watch the city's fireworks (because they frown pretty hard on you setting off your own inside Metro) is the American Way.

Today we are free to wander downtown, more so than on other days because Second is reserved for pedestrian traffic, and people jaywalk even more than they usually do in this strange little city. Today, I realized that I am getting old fast, because the sounds of merriment made by people my own age have begun to ring sour to me. I am not yet, however, too old to enjoy watching Patrick ban drunk, obstinate, and incredibly rude Betties from his store, because I will never be too old for that if I live to be a billion -- it's a joy to behold, the drunken Betties realizing they have crossed the line and the sober and indomitable Will of Patrick forcing them out of the store with his sheer disapproval and distaste. Which he is free to do, because this is America, and it's Independence Day.

I could talk about the things that went wrong tonight, but the night didn't, overall, and as I have what might be the positive pregnancy test of a short story percolating, I don't wish to discuss those petty slights which will be corrected later in the week.

I didn't see any fireworks and I didn't salute the flag today, but hell, happy Fourth of July. Here's to America and Americans, who despite their many faults are a charming and childlike people, who will sit on a bridge for five hours over a smelly river to watch fireworks and remember that once upon a time someone founded a country by saying they were sick and tired of the bullshit and weren't, by God, going to take it any more.

One can only hope a little of that spirit is still with us, that the distractions of bread and circuses have not bred it out of us entirely, but all evidence in that direction is hopeful. Happy Independence Day, y'all.

Likes: Books, Judaica & Disposable Income (With Which To Buy The Former About The Latter)

2005-07-03T01:30:00.000-05:00

H'lo all....just a quick update to let you know that the new review of Davita's Harp, my second review on my new Myspace blog of book reviews is up. It is being a diseased whore about letting me link directly to posts, and fairly enough I don't expect an answer from customer service until after the Fourth, but there aren't so many posts over there as yet to confuse folks as smart as y'all.

Because I am the kind of person that, much to my shame, requires external validation, may I humbly ask y'all to rate my ratings over there, in the comments? Pleeeeease? (Myspace is pretty neat, although I'm not as all about it as some people are, and it has helped me find people I like who have dropped off my radar for one reason or another)..

Right now I'm listening to the Grateful Dead and Janis Joplin playing Lovelight, and getting ready to lay in bed and pick back up Danse Macabre, which is causing my booklist to grow tumescent with things I haven't read, or haven't read in years and aren't in my personal library, or things I haven't seen since two moves ago and am skeptical about my current ownership of. Damn you, "Uncle Steve". I mentally contradict Sars and Wing about you, and what do I get? More books I need to read (fairly, none of them yours -- not accusing you of being a self-plugger) because you told me they exist, and now, like my handle, I must. Arrgh.

Well, g'night, all.

eta: Originally I was going to ask y'all if y'all knew how I could get my cute profile pic of the MK to show, but as you can see, it's in the upper right hand corner now. Ain't I just the smartest little girl in the county-o?

Oh Happy Day

2005-07-02T15:45:00.000-05:00

Yes. I have two copies of that hymn on my computer, and I'm listening to the one from Sister Act II.

I have a new gig, which was given to me through pure chance.

Thursday night, I went to Patrick's, as I do...but the game got done quite early,y, and the new oxygen bar downstairs had gotten really swamped, so Kara (one of the owners) invited me to come down, whereupon I met Jon (pronounced with a Yod sound).

Jon runs a very upscale salon downtown and owns two floors in the building. Half the second floor is his (incredibly gorgeous) apartment.

I am now the hired help. We ended up going to the Chute (gay bar, if you couldn't guess) after Cafe O2 closed, and back to his place after. When I mentioned that I clean for the boss and am at loose ends right now, he offered me the same amount I get to do an entire house every other week to come once a week and clean the apartment, which compared to the boss' place is a total cakewalk. Hello, over $200 extra each month! You will easily cover the cable and electric bills! He's also talking about hiring me for 2 extra days each week as a PA, to do things like take his precious puppy to the groomers and go pay the bills he can't pay online. He's even payin my parking downtown. I am thrilled.

In other news, Ganesh came through for me, and I have enough money to pay every bill this month, get the rent in on time, and still have money for things like groceries, and new books.

I got new books yesterday with the unexpected cleaning money, after I paid the electric bill. Which means you can expect new reviews at the book blog soon, probably tonight after I get home from watching Kingdom Hospital with CDHSarah.

But first I'm going to Tish's, and buying a new sarong to wear to the TWO parties I've been invited to on the Fourth. Quelle bonne chance! I feel so popular these days.

A Subsidiary Blog

2005-06-28T13:58:00.000-05:00

Through various blandishments, I've been convinced to put myself out on MySpace, which gets me more blog space.

I like blogger, and don't want to move, but I wanted to do something with the space, both to plug this place and because I'm a dork with no life. When I realized you can import pictures of the books you're reading from their library, I hit on it.

I plan to use that space to review and note the books I'm reading, not just to keep a record for myself (because I do read an awful lot), but because I've stopped being able to remember them enough to put them up here.

The first review is The Devil Wears Prada, and you can find it here. Comment here or there, as you will.

Now on with your regularly scheduled week.

Ya Devi Sarva Bhuteshu Blogrupena Samsthita

2005-06-27T20:47:00.000-05:00

All quiet on the Middle TN front.

The Artist left out early, as it happened. I didn't see him again before he went. He called and reported in from his Youper location today to tell me that the town his grandmother lives in is a Youper Mayberry and that he is living in The Andy Griffith Show. He may be headed for Virginia next.

I may be headed for the Rainbow Gathering in West Virginia for two or three days, depending on the health of the Eldest Kitty and the finances. Until that coalesces, I don't want to jinx it, so will say no more here.

Everything here really is quiet. The storm stopped a little while ago and outside smells like rain. Inside the cats are all curled into little balls in their faorite spots -- the EK in her box by the front door, the MK on top of the monitor...and I thought the kitten was behind him, but she's in her second-favorite location, The One Where Mom Doesn't Know Where I Am Or What I'm Doing, which is Most Likely Pretending that I Am A Panther.

The house isn't freakishly clean anymore, which is something odd -- how quickly entropy works. I worship entropy to some degree, and yet it amazes me every time, how things go from perfectly arranged to not, seemingly effortlessly. I'll work on the place tomorrow.

Spent a quiet night with DSH and the other high school posse, played Scrabble, worried about our AnorecticAssociate, who despite gaining some weight, still talks about food in terms usually reserved for discussions of ethics and morals. Later that night, I played Scrabble online with the Phunky Chemist Bitch, my heterosexual life partner down in VA. (She's heterosexual; I'm an allegedbian. It works out.) She's dreaded her hair and now we're more like sisters than ever. I miss her so much, and she's trying to blandish me into going to AllGood with her, but again -- it all depends on the health of the sick kittybutt.

All seemed relatively quiet on the blogosphere today, too, so I sat for a long time, rereading my favorites in the archives of Tomato Nation, and downloading random songs in Hebrew and Sanskrit, looking for meditation music.

It's the kind of day where it'd be really easy to be depressed, but I'm not. Just a little tired, a little lazy, a little not-ready to start what has to be started this evening...namely, the fifteen-syllable Kali mantra for ego destruction, which has to start tonight if things are to be finished in time for my birthday and the karmatic-rebirth stuff I've been leading up to all year.

I have reason to fear the mantra, because it makes things not (ego-things, not people and cars and buildings), and making not is a scary process.

But for now, I'm just reading The Corrections (here's what ET had to say about the book), being in stillness, and watching the cat breathe.

I've had worse Mondays.

When Waiting Is Filled

2005-06-24T16:10:00.000-05:00

Hello, all.

My best friend, fellow Doctor, Commodore and water brother, the Artist, is leaving, or as he puts it, gettin' the hell out of Dodge.

I've been offline for the past few days because I cleaned the entire ParcePad from head to foot (it is cleaner now than it was when I moved in, seriously) and then spent a day and a half with him, hanging out and doing our version of saying good-bye.

I have grokked this, and this is the best thing. He needs to get away, he's going to a safe place, he's taking another friend, he'll even have e-mail, and he'll be back, temporarily at least, in a month. He's been happy since he decided to go, and I am happy for him.

Nonetheless, as I said to him, I don't know what I'm going to do with the Artist gone. No one talks to me like he does. No one even has the frame of reference to try, even the friends I've known longer. We've read the same books, we argue fine points of Heinlein (were doing it even during our hang-out night), we grok together in the closest human approximation. Which means he can never really leave completely, because my nest is his, but nonetheless, I'm a short-timer, and it is hard for me to wait until fullness without any sorrow at all.

Ave, aqua frater, ave atque vale.

In his last meeting with the group (well, not last-forever, because he left in good standing and will probably come back as a speaker even if he never moves back to town and rejoins), I did as Saraswati had instructed me to do...before I found out he was leaving, I had had a larger, more ritualistic and not-really-me celebration planned, one that would have required putting off cleaning the PPad for another week. But since he was coming to stay and has asthma, I had to get the place defurred if I wanted to be able to hang out with him without him wheezing and being miserable.

So I asked Saraswati what to do, and dreamed the perfect guided meditation. Since our meeting was the day after Solstice and in the evening, it didn't really make sense for us to celebrate the solstice qua solstice. But it's an important event in the Wheel of the Year, and I didn't want it neglected either.

In some traditions, the year is divided by solstices, the two halves each with their own champion -- the Oak King, who rules from Winter Solstice in December through Summer Solstice in June, and the Holly King, who rules from Summer to Winter Solstice. At the Solstices, they battle, and the King of the previous half-year is slain (and regenerated in the womb of the Goddess).

So what to do for the day after Solstice?

What else but to carry my people to the bier of the Oak King, and allow them to commune with him before carrying him, with the help of the Holly King, to his funeral pyre? They were urged to give their worries about the past 6 months to the dead King, and to discuss the upcoming months with the Holly King.

This was particularly significant because, since Beltane last (2004), the Artist has been closely identified with the Oak King...which meant he came into the meditation as the dead King, and attended his own wake. Pretty neat, and unexpected...and fitting, for the time. The Oak King always returns when his waiting is filled...and, though the Artist is not tied to the sun and seasons quite as closely as his counterpart, I believe he will, as well, when his own waiting is filled.

So all is well, except the little, non-Martian part of me that cries out with fear at the thought of being with the Artist in spirit only until fullness. But that part of me is being soothed by the rest, despite snarky comments like, "Well, King Arthur is supposed to do that too, and I don't see his ass showing up" from the former.

But I am here, and will remain, for ten minutes or a thousand years, until my brother's time comes. Count on it.

White Trash Witches & Their Fat Cats, Next on Springer

2005-06-20T02:57:00.000-05:00

Arrgh.

Well, after only limited blood loss on the part of yours truly, the cats were packed up and off to the vet on Saturday.

The Kitten and the Middle Kitty are in excellent health. The vet thinks the MK's extreme beautifulness may be due to his daddy being a Maine coon cat, and judging by the ridiculously cute Maine coon kittens who look almost exactly like he did as a wee slip of a kitten, they may be right. Me, I think it's due to his peoplefather, and the fact that he's sufficiently brash to be, as of this writing, trying to steal and eat the flowers I brought home for Ganesh for the fourth or fifth time. The cat, not the Artist -- but it takes a special sort of grokking to know that the flowers on the altar are special...he never tries to eat flowers otherwise.

The Elder Kitty is morbidly obese, and that's what's causing the butt issues. She's always been fat, so I didn't notice when she got too fat, and now I feel like the mom of one of those 700-pound people on Springer where they have to use heavy earth moving equipment to get them out of bed. I feel like the worst kittymom ever. Of course, the penance of having to wipe kittybutt with unscented baby wipes is more than penance enough, and the doctor says as long as I take away the drop feeder (which is not going to go over well) pt her on the Fatty Fatty Two By Four Times As Expensive cat food, she'll be fine.

The doctor was somewhat confused by the Suffusion of Jellos, but he seems like a nice guy, and Jai Ma my mother for picking up the tab (over $200) without a word.

Other than the strangely ET-like, nursing-home feel around here since we all got back from the vet (and Jai Ma Sauce, for the comforting words about the Worst Kittymom In The World situation), all's quiet on the redneck front.

Daughters of Kali was fun tonight -- got an invite to a fire puja on Solstice (Tuesday),which I may or may not attend, and sang the Devi hymn I liked so much last week, as well as actually getting to participate in the opening puja, which Leela usually does before class starts. Then I went over to CDHSarah's, where we have been watching Kingdom Hospital, the Stephen King miniseries. It's pretty damn good, both as a piece of SK-universana, and as a series. She got a new car, too, which is pretty swanky (well, it's a new old car, but it's nicer than the ParceVoiture to be sure. I get her back by gasping at inopportune moments because, unlike her, I've read just about everything the man's ever done, including all of the Dark Tower books, and so am catching some very nice little subconscious-yet-meta references that "tell" a little more of the story than what people who don't have SK-timeline/space concordances in their heads.

It's a little creepy, the relationship I have with Heinlein and King. Of course, I don't have a personal relationship with either one of them, since one of them died before I was much more than a lump of protoplasm with potential, and the other, I'm sure, has more than enough mystical types who want to see the world through his microcosm writing him missives. But in terms of their respective bodies of work, we're practically intimate.

Here's an example. On FARK.com recently, there was a story about a crazy woman who is suing Stephen King, claiming both Annie Wilkes and Eleanor Druse to be based on her (which, if you know either of those stories, is both ridiculous and self-contradictory). A discussion thread made up mostly of of Stephen King fanciers quickly built up, mostly centered around comments like "I'm Roland Deschain, where's my money?", and getting more and more obscure and fanwanking as they went along.

In about 300 posts, I recognized every reference. I know why I should be afraid of: clowns, chattery teeth, red fungus, fingers, Room 1408, anyone wearing a cheap yellow coat, little bald doctors, the desert, sand in general, people who give me weird job offers, people who tell me they know a failproof way to quit smoking, people who don't smoke, Crouch End in London, trains, the fair, people with expensive cars and the best cocaine and baseball cards, Polaroid cameras, early 20th century lesbians with building fetishes, hotels with topiary, and the sewer, not to mention the military, anything even resembling an early burial site, and, of course, the entire city of New York and state of Maine. (Anyone else who can correctly identify all those specific stories will get a cookie and an all-expense paid trip to todash space.)

Eh. Maybe I'll get a senior project out of it when I finish my B.A. . For now, I have to go play nursemaid to a remarkably uncooperative cat...the Exalted and Revered Nephew is at my parent's place, so I'm going to hang out with him all day tomorrow.

Spirit In The Sky

2005-06-18T00:11:00.000-05:00

I'm waiting for fullness.

What else is going on? I have had Spirit in the Sky stuck in my head for the last 48 hours.

Eldest Kitty is having butt problems, so the kitties go to the vet tomorrow. She's not seriously ill, but good thoughts for her butt would be appreciated. Like many of the elderly, EK is very, very quiet until she gets a little sick, when she proceeds to be very vocal about her desire to feel better RIGHT NOW DAMMIT. And the ParceMom (who is the very best ParceMom that she can be) gave each of the kitties a vet trip to be redeemed as needed for Decemberween, so I don't have to worry about paying THAT bill. Om Sri Ganesha Namah, and praise be to Jesus and St. Francis.

Speaking of St. Francis, he's missing. Sometime during the last week, I lost track of my saints' medals necklace. I normally don't remove my main jewelry, but the chain is so heavy that it makes it uncomfortable for sleep.

Since I moved all the furniture in the bedroom less than two weeks ago, I am steadily becoming less concerned (gloat all you want, CDHSarah, but my path does center around totemic objects to a degree, so I don't think my minor freakout upon realizing that I didn't know when I'd last seen them was unwarranted). The other likely possibility is that it's somewhere in the deritrus of my car, since I had a Major Purse Spill last week too. The pendulum insists the saints are safe, and thinks they're in the apartment more than the car. And the pendulum, she is good about finding the missing totemic objects.

Assurances aside -- those of you who are so inclined, some Michael, Row Your Boat Ashore (Back To Parce Remix, Mary Come Home, How You Gon' Lose (The Patron Saint of Shit You Lost (the new 50 Cent track, yo), or just plain When The Saints Go Marching In vibes, as well as some Fix EldK's Stanky Butt vibes for good measure, delivered to the version of the titular reference of your choice, would be appreciated.

But it's not all bad down here, y'all. I've started the Great Book Migration of 2005, which is awesome and may yet result in shelves where every book is actually visible, a luxury I don't think I've enjoyed since about the age of twelve, when I started to get an allowance and the book collection mushroomed.

I really shold count my volumes, but that's nearly impossible, considering that I think almost every one of my friends is borrowing a book of mine at the moment. Don Shiftador has The Virgin Suicides on indefinite loan. I know AnDar has something, LadyA walked out of my place tonight with The Princess Bride, CDHSarah has some damn thing or another, SFGod has The Jewish Book of Why, BassPlayingJunkie has a Hightower book I inherited from my ET, and I ain't even knowin what of mine the Artist has, but I think I have his Number of the Beast and probably some other things. Those are just the ones I can remember.

Well, I think it's time for me to head for bed...I have kitties to wrangle into the one Cat Carrier (they have less than five miles to go, don't fret) at 8 am.

Ten Hours In That Smoky Womb

2005-06-17T04:45:00.000-05:00

This is going to be a short one...not only have I been annexed by MK, again, but it's way past my bedtime to boot.

I woke up late today, no dreams that I remember, and realized I had about 30 minutes to dress myself and get over to the office of the Nigerian doctor. I was ten minutes late, but I made it.

Once I was properly shrunk, even though it was about three hours earlier than usual, I decided just to head on downtown to Patrick's place. As it turned out, that was the best decision, because otherwise it would have been a repeat of last week, because they've moved Dancin' in the District back to the riverfront, and getting into a garage before 5 pm meant I didn't have to pay the exorbitant special events parking fee.

I had an excellent chicken sandwich from the Night Owl Cafe, read Insomnia, and played some chess with JimmaJimmay.

JimJ took my place in the Smoke Shop Employee Hierarchy after I left. He's a good kid and a smooth criminal, and he whipped my ass righteously (I really have to start playing more chess, because my skillz have deterioriated through lack of use). But in my defense, I was beating him soundly until the Asshat of the Day showed up.

The shop was really busy...besides the show, there's a biker convention in town, and the Southern Baptists are here this week too. That provided me with a hearty "Heh" while I was looking in vain for parking I didn't have to pay for. While there were about four people in the shop, a large, loud man in a particularly tasteless Aloha shirt came in, waving a pack of Winstons and saying something about lung cancer. I wasn't really paying attention until he got up to the counter and started trying to browbeat JimJ.

The guy claimed that "sometime Wednesday afternoon", he was eating in the Night Owl (downstairs from the shop) and his 15 year old asked for $5 and left the restaurant, whereupon our friend the Moose was supposed to have sold her a pack of cigarettes. The guy wanted his money back or he was going to "come back with felony warrants" and "shut the place down by 8 pm". He was, he said, an attorney. What he was, in fact, was an asshole.

JimJ treated him as reasonably as possible, explaining that since he was not on duty, and since the man didn't have a receipt, he was going to have to call the boss about the matter. He offered the man a seat, which he refused. When JimJ told him he had not been working that day, this asshat turns on l'il ol' me (still studiously examining the half-finished chess game) and said "Oh, so it was you who was working when my fifteen-year-old bought these cigarettes." I politely informed him that the last time I had worked in the shop was three years previous, and thereafter he ignored me.

The boss had already left his day job, and the Moose vehemently denied having sold any Winstons the day before. (This, added to the fact that the Moose is far more scrupulous in his carding habits than the rest of us, was pretty much the clincher for me that this guy was full of shit.) JimJ offered to take a number for the gentleman if he preferred not to wait, but stood by the fact that he wasn't authorized to give a refund without a receipt. The guy blustered and threatened and swore some more, and with one last threat of having us shut down, banged out the door.

We had a good laugh, and the cops never showed up. But JimJ kicked my ass at chess.

This is what I want to know: if you're an attorney, aren't you usually aware that offering not to report a crime in exchange for financial compensation is extortion, a felony, while selling cigarettes to a minor, while carrying a heavy fine, is a misdeameanor citation??? And if you're from out of state (Michigan, according to the asshat), why are you letting your child wander the downtown district of an unfamiliar city by herself?? I mean, I've been going downtown unsupervised since about the age of sixteen, but I am from here, which makes a difference. When I went to New York to stay with a friend at the same age of the purported daughter, I wasn't allowed out of sight in the city long enough to scratch my ass, much less buy cigarettes. Even in Jersey, where said friend lived, we went to the mall in a group or not at all. Sheesh.

Don't try to fuck around with the Smoke Shop...Patrick doesn't let you work there if you're a dumbass. Ask me soemetime about the time the cop came in on a Sunday and tried to roust me on a "sale of paraphenalia" charge.

Anyhow. Patrick came, we had a good laugh again, I massaged Patrick until he fell asleep in his chair, and then I read an excellent book on African-diasporic tradition that he brought back from New Orleans for me when neither he nor Tish could turn me up a Legba image.

Around midnight, Patrick advisd me on the symbology and traditions of Litha in prep for my ritual next week, and then I went home, reborn again.

When my therapist last asked me where a safe place was for me, I told him that after every Thursday session I head to the shop, which is warm and womblike and home to me. When I told Pat, he reminded me that the place is a touchstone of my life, representing some of the best years thereof, and that, other than the obvious advantage of having a dyed-in-the-wool Southern gentleman to watch over me while I'm there, was why I naturally feel safe.

Inside the smoke shop time doesn't pass as slowly as it does in the world outside. Ten hours almost anywhere and I'm ready to be somewhere else...except Patrick's place. Legba be thanked for that particular smoky womb, and its continued availability...becase when I am waiting for fullness, there's nowhere I'd rather be than there.

The friggin sun is coming up...time to go lie in bed and wait for sleep.

Law & Order Is Hard (When You Have A Kitty In Your Lap Remix)

2005-06-16T01:10:00.000-05:00

I wanted to write. The Middle Kitty wanted the bulk of my lap. We're three-finger typing up in this bitch.

Met another god today (not that I don't every day)...the Artist's ritual contribution to the meeting was one of the coolest we've ever had. He created ritual space with sage, calling the Norse elementals, and then continued to walk the circle, "casting it in fire" as he put it, while giving the rest of us a guided meditation to Asgard, so that we could all meet Forsete. (Wikipedia has nothing on this guy, other than an alternate spelling, and neither one gave me an acceptable definition. Arrgh.)

FRONT! Remind me to write a blog post on "linking out" information and whether it makes people, as a whole, more or less educated (the ability to explain a thing being one of the prerequisites for understanding.)

Dammit, I need running secretaries and other modern conveniences.

Forsete (or Forseti, although something about that spelling puts me off) is the Norse god in charge of Sam Waterston...I mean, in charge of law and justice. The interesting thing is that designation, because they differentiated between the carnal justice, the justice of war, embodied in Tyr, and the justice of law, which is Forsete's forte. He will not fight in Ragnarok, although Tyr is listed among the combatants -- he will be keeping order and honor right up to the point when Loki slays Thor.

So we went across the Bifrost Bridge, the famed Over the Rainbow, and all of us learned things there. The things I learned I have not yet grokked, but waiting is until waiting is filled.

But I found out one thing; while it's up to Odin whether or not I ever feast in the Hall of Heroes, in Valhalla, I will not be shut out of Asgard when the time comes. Which matters, since I have friends in both Fiddler's Green and Valhalla (depending on your belief system) and if you can't get into Asgard, those people are lost to you. It is a goodness to know these things.

We had sweet mead blessed with the Artist's boarknife (his last December gift was a Freya on boarback and he now has a bone-handle blade with a cast boar on the handle that is one of the neatest athame-type knives I've ever seen) and did our mala together, and then I went (mistakenly) to wait on a friend who wasn't coming (not her fault), and instead sat and withdrew and tried to grok what I had learned.

In other news, the slow excavation of the ParcePad has resulted in the reassembly and growth of the Desk Altar.

The Desk Altar used to be really awesome, with this nifty staggered-candle, feng shui a la Target base my sister gave me, and small statues and stones scattered around it. Unfortunately, after I moved and then moved again, I have ended up having NO IDEA where the damn thing is. It'll turn up, likely during the excavation, but in the meantime things have coalesced and I have accidentally created a nicely-balanced, albeit small, altar-type thing.

I don't hold with desks, not since school, and so my computer sits on a large glass table that looks a good bit different than it did when the Artist and I carried it 2 blocks home from the Salvation Army sidewalk sale, thanks to a new coat of paint. It's a large table, and relatively deep, so the CPU is next to the monitor, and the altar is right under it -- the red halo around Ganesh's head covers the power button. Clustered around him are Venus 1.0 (the first large Dordogne-style I made), a clove-scented green candle, a holy card with the Sacred Heart of Mary, a piece of quartz, a resting Buddha, a primitive Goddess-with-cauldron, and a glow-in-the-dark St. Isidore, patron saint of the Internet. If I can find a Saraswati large enough that the cats won't carry her away to realms unknown, I'd like to add her to the party, but waiting will fill.

I hadn't really looked at it as a whole until tonight, because with the cleaning and the moving of the central altar and all that, it's been shuffled a bit. Apparently I do pretty darn well when I'm not paying attention.

Well, I have die shrinkenmeister in the morning, so I'm going to cut the semipagan ranting short and mosey off to bed. Have an excellent Thursday, even if you've never quite gotten the hang of them.

Angels We Have Heard Are High

2005-06-13T11:28:00.000-05:00

Thanks to Bitch and Animal.

WARNING: THE NEXT PARAGRAPH IS VIOLENT AND CONTAINS OVERTONES OF THE SCHOOL SHOOTING TRAGEDIES. THOSE WHO DO NOT WISH TO READ IT SKIP DOWN. THOSE WHO DO AND ARE FREAKED OUT BY IT ANYWAY, PLEASE CONSULT MY SUBCONSCIOUS WITH YOUR COMPLAINTS.

I had a dream that the Artist (who, even though he cut his hair in part to avoid the comparison, really does look like a traditional Christ) and I were stuck in some very weird religious cult that was mostly young people and set up like my mother's old elementary school. When I got caught sneaking down the hall for a reason that was important then, the Folks In Charge decided to terminate the entire operation. Literally. We got out just as the adults were going nuts with assault rifles. Somehow one of the other people in the dream was a homemade-explosives aficionado, because the end of the dream, before CDHSarah called and woke me, was the Artist, complete with assault-rifle stigmata, turning a glass of water to blood to distract the religious freak who was trying to kill us all while the other guy detonated the explosives. (Other Guy is the one who got us out, and all the kids he could, and he may have been making the bomb in a plot to escape, but I honestly don't remember, only that it involved hair spray in some fashion.) I'm not sure if the Artist was Jesus, or just pretending, but I think the former.

It was supremely creepy, but means nothing yet -- no one else I recognized, for one, which is usually a hint that I am either blending dream with the one person I do know, or that I have actually gotten into delta for once and am having an utterly meaningless dream experience. I also don't feel tired, which would indicate Door #2. (Can any of you see that this is really freaking me out?)

Why am I freaking out? Because I do, occasionally, have precognitive dreams, which makes even one that doesn't fit what seem to be my criteria for precog dreaming a cause for at least mild concern.

The only true precog dreams I have, which are spot-on, cover meaningless and ordinary, but sometimes unlikely events. Case in point -- a year or so before I started hanging out with the Doctor socially (we have known each other practically since birth), I was hanging out with him and a stranger, talking about doctors. The other guy was the Artist. I watch out for people I haven't seen in a while in my dreams, because often they resurface shortly after -- like my mind is trying to remind me what they look like, so I recognize them. Other times, I precog things like Patrick beating me four times at chess, when I hadn't played chess with Patrick before -- but that happened the night of Fan Fair Suckage, and the chess set was out when I got there.

Those are the real ones. Then there are the monitoring dreams, as I like to call them -- the dreams that I experience where I know, while dreaming, that I am not in my own dreamspace but someone elses' -- only people with whom I share spiritually, usually, and usually a warning of some kind or another based on that person's particular symbology. I knew two days before he came to me with it that the Artist suspected his last girlfriend of cheating on him, even though we weren't talking much those days.

Both kinds are little, unimportant visions, that someday I might be able to take to a different level. I don't envy the associate of mine whose mother and sister have precognitive dreams too -- she was three when Challenger blew up, but she woke up screaming about "the teacher in the big plane" maybe 15 minutes before the explosion. Her mother told me this story, and I don't doubt her. I don't know if I want to have big visions...with great power comes great responsibility, and all that crap.

This dream was not precognitive, and I'm pretty sure it was just my dream. I will meditate on that further when the time is right.

So, how's your Monday?

Conservatives Make Me Think

2005-06-12T01:38:00.000-05:00

Two of my favorite people (one IRL, one online) are ConservativeWiccan and our own Irina. Mostly, this is because they are funny, not what my mother would call "hateful", and they make me think about stuff.

The latter has been making me think about intuition -- a factor that most of my real-life associates consider just as much of a given as Murphy's Law, if not gravitation.

My working definition for intuition is "the things you know without knowing them", a statement that means absolutely nothing. It niggles at me to believe in something I can't easily define, but that's the nature of the mystical, I suppose -- while I go to a doctor for my broken bones, I went to a Reiki healer for my last URI and had a much less miserable few days. Doesn't prove that Reiki works -- but I've had hands laid on for years now in various situations, and know in ways I can't prove that it works.

Intuition. However much I would like to pretend otherwise in order to absolve myself of guilt for a few major fuck-ups, I have an extremely accurate sense of the nature of individuals. In Charismatic churches this is sometimes a recognized charism, or gift, called "discernment". The listed definition limits it to spiritual events, but in practice I've heard it applied to individuals as well. I wasn't raised Charismatic, but the fact remains that since I was a young adult, I have had an almost inerrant, initial sense of whether a person meant me good or ill, not just in the short term but the long run. Whenever I have ignored what our friend Mike, the Man from Mars, would call "wrongness" in a person, I have fallen out badly or been hurt by the individual in question -- most recently, LokiKB -- and upon examination, this goes back much farther than my knowledge that such a gift existed. I've stopped ignoring my gift of discernment, trying without much guidance to improve it -- and am, hopefully, succeeding.

The Quakers call that sense, that sense of rightness and wrongness, the "still small voice of God." That's as good a name for it as any. Unfortunately, until we solve a few fiddly problems with quantum mechanics, or build ourselves a dinkum thinkum that can solve them for us, we won't have any way to take that which we know without knowing and prove scientifically that what we hear tells us correctly. Not to discount logic -- logic is required to create true intuition, because it gives you a baseline to make sure you're listening to the right things at the right times -- but perfectly logical arguments fall apart when tested on new data all the time. so it's not out of the bounds of possiblity that all the methods we use to tap into our intuition will someday be accepted as ways to encourage what I consider to be a pro-evolutionary trait, instead of the maunderings of overly emotional thinkers.

It's late and I'm debating going to temple tomorrow, so I'm going to cut this short. Have a good one, y'all.

Five Years

2005-06-10T12:48:00.000-05:00

My mom just reminded me of something I wish she hadn't.

It's been five years since I came back "home" -- to Middle Tennessee, anyway -- this year. As of, basically, right now...I came home at the very beginning of May.

She didn't remind me directly. That would have been kind of creepy and probably the start of an argument. But my sister's five-year wedding anniversary is this summer, too.

My family has basically grasped that I really, really suck at dates of things like birthdays unless they are for some reason really easy -- like my mother's, which is the first of the month, or my two friends from high school whose birthdays are the day of and day after St. Patrick's Day, so whenever I start hearing radio commercials for St. Paddy's I remember. Otherwise, I just really suck at it. Not on purpose, or because I don't care...the information just doesn't stay in my brain. So someone usually tries to remind me, because when I accidentally forget people's birthdays I feel horrible. I forgot my sister's this year (well, basically -- I didn't realize until 11:30pm, so I called and left a sort-of belated happy birthday thing on her cell phone). Anniversaries just don't rate. I wish they did, but nope.

I had forgotten my sister's five-year anniversary was coming up, which meant 5 years home for me. I wasn't even old enough to drink when I came back, for God's sake. It was before the Doctor, the Artist, CDHSarah, or even Papa Sue. (It wasn't really before the Doctor, but it was before his incarnation as such.)

Five years ago I had never heard of Robert Heinlein (which is odd, considering the people I lived with at the time). I had not yet begun to use the Osho Zen tarot, which means I wasn't using Tarot at all. I had not yet read the Principia. I was still more Gothy than hippie. I didn't have a cat, not even one. I hadn't run afoul of my hometown. I didn't read BUST!. I didn't have dreadlocks (although I got them at the end of the summer that year.)

Who the hell was I when I was 20? Who the hell am I now?

Dammit, Mom. I don't suppose I can blame you for the fact that my sister's wedding anniversary is also giving me an existential crisis, but hey. And big ups to my sis for keeping the five-year thing going (we're also five years apart in age which means I never forget how old she is like I do with my mom and dad) so I can remember everything except the baby's age with the same mental formula.

The System is...Up? Also, Bite Me, Fan Fair

2005-06-09T22:17:00.000-05:00

The system is working again. I should be thrilled, but I'm not feeling all that peppy for some reason, just kind of what the Artist would call "meh".

This may have something to do with the interruptions in my Thursday routine. First of all, working or nay, I DO NOT GET UP EARLY ON THURSDAY. It is "going to the doctor" day, and I try like hell never to schedule anything before, at the very earliest, 10 AM on Thursday.

Comcast, because they suck donkey testicle, started off the routine fuckery.

Now, I know better than to trust the cable guy or his supposed ETA. Nevertheless, because the rep swore to me that she was noting my appointment as one of the guy's first three (which turned out to be true, as a buddy of mine who works for the Evil Empire showed me some of the internal coding that lets you know how you were queued..,not promised they'll be done in the scheduled order, but that was something), so I actually set the alarm for 8 AM so I wouldn't be naked and groggy when he started to knock on the door, or miss him entirely, as happened once before when the cable guy was actually early and I was in a state of posthypnotic undress. So I put on clothes and went back to sleep, but woke up every hour or so long enough to fume about having woken up early in the first place. He didn't show until 10:30 am.

It took about four hours to fix my cable for no apparent reason, and the guy had forgotten his company phone, and on and on and on with the annoyance. The cable guy was actually pretty nice, but it somewhat unnerved me when he borrowed change off me to call the company so I could give them my credit card to pay for the reactivation. It just struck me wrong, somehow.

So I had no time before the doctor, just time enough to head out, and after the doctor, when I was expecting to take a leisurely drive downtown well before rush hour (which is usually awesome, as I always get caught in the drive time when I'm trying to get downtown after an appointment), I instead was in gridlock backed up to 14th Avenue, because of the hordes of fucking tourists.

It's Fan Fair time in Nashville, y'all, and look who forgot?

Reasons I Hate Fan Fair

1. Hordes of tourists. Normally I don't mind tourists, we always have them anyhow and I try my best to be nice. But Fan Fair brings them out en masse.

2. It happens when it's really, really hot. See #1. Gridlock when it's 90 degrees and above 75% humidity is like waiting in line for Hell. I don't envy the kids going to the Roo this weekend one damn bit.

3. #1 and #2 make "parking downtown" -- usually not a huge hassle on Thursday afternoon -- an extremely large production, requiring all the wit, skill, and knowledge of our fair city I possess. Problem is that even lots that are usually free aren't during Fan Fair, and they close First, which is unmetered, so I had to park at the Gay Street Extension (hee...readers of Heinlein take note), which is not terribly far. Under normal circumstances.

4. Essentially, I hate Fan Fair because it makes everything not work the way it usually does, including the availability of entrances to places I may be heading, hence more walking in the heat, and the poker game being cancelled. I don't guess I can blame it for me getting my ass whipped at chess by Patrick, but I'll sure as hell try.

I have new bookshelves that I need to finish assembling. I have a poem I need to finish. I have a messy-ass house, and in 12 hours I have not-at-home type things to do, so I need to get something done before bed, as well as a bath. (Also, tomorrow (appendages crossed) I might ACTUALLY get my FUCKING PHONE TO WORK. That's what you get for trying to go with the new technology.)

What am I doing instead? Reading Britney and Kevin: Chaotic over on TWoP.

Anyway, since I have no great spiritual wisdom or cute cat photos to impart, I will leave you now that you are aware that I'll be around more once I feel like being around and have a reason to impose my presence...or something.

Big ups to Fresno, y'all.

Another Sabbath Day

2005-06-06T17:08:00.000-05:00

Yesterday was another Sabbath Day for me.

The Hindu Honkies I referenced in the above post invited the RS gang to visit Sri Ganesha to see Saraswati rededicated. I didn't think about it, but they do the Saraswati puja at the end of the school year, and have anyone continuing in school come to participate in the puja, as well as the graduates, to present them to Saraswati for her help with their continued studies.

I didn't realize that the standard service starts at 11 am; I had been told 11:30 for the ceremony. So once I got in, the Ganesh service was in full swing. I didn't see Saraswati at first, because she had been so changed by the work the HHs had done on her.

Her eyes look right into yours. I settled down close to her and began my first mala of the day...and noticed something odd.

I prayed my mala in my purse. I did not want anyone to see me.

Probably it's a hold-over from my upbringing. I understand very well the admonition of Christ that those who pray in public have their reward already on earth and will not receive it in heaven. (For those unfamiliar with the parable, he was talking about those who make a show of public prayer, not all prayer in public.) But with the other service already in progress, it seemed the thing to do to keep the beads in the bag.

Saraswati and I chatted-without-words for a short and infinite time, and then the puja for her began. The HH came over, as well as the Hexenmeister, and sat with me for some of the ceremony.

The temple does the Saraswati puja to coincide with graduation or end of school for most of its students, who ranged in age from middle school to adults in college. All of their names were read to Saraswati with the request that she help them in their studies. Didn't understand more than one word in ten, if that, but it was lovely. I blessed myself with fire, and then ended up at lunch (again) with the Hexenmeister and HH families (again), which was fun. Sitar is much better than Taste of India, and I think I'm now addicted to chicken tikka.

The only problem was that it was. So. Hot.

It was so hot and humid on Sunday that it was not to be borne, seriously. Someone fainted during the puja, and the A/C was on. After eating spicy food (mistake!), I ended up with free time and nowhere to go that had the benefits of central air.

So I went to the mountain.

Well, it wasn't a mountain, it was the hill where drum circle happens. I went early because up there there is at least a remote possibility that a breeze might cut its way through the 83% humidity and make you aware that your body is actually cooling itself by all that sweating. I love the South, but we need siestan instituted as of yesterday...no human being should be forced to do anything but sleep from about 3 to 5 when the weather is like this.

I had put on long pants because I was headed to temple in the morning, and put the dreads up. I usually do, as I don't own a sari and my non-sarong long skirts were dirty.

Five minutes out of the car I did the most bizarre reverse striptease ever in order to get the sarong on my head around my waist in a way that would preserve my dignity throughout the operation. I looked funny, I'm sure, but I wasn't hot any more.

Drum circle was very cool. CDHSarah was there, as usual, and some people asked us about our malas. Once it was over, I headed over to Daughters of Kali, the class I was so excited about.

I had made a tactical error while trying to avoid tactical errors, which is typical of me, by driving down the street where the class was being held the night before to try and find the place. I found the building that I thought was it, memorized what it looked like, and figured I was good to go.

Due to extreme dehydration, though, I had left downtown early to leave time to stop for water, and had left too much time, arriving thirty minutes before the start time. There wasn't a sign, but the signs on the door indicated that it was a place that might be it. So I settled down and read the PaganNet news again and watched the time tick away.

At about quarter after seven, about when I had decided that there wasn't going to be a class, I looked at the mailboxes and realized that the class was in the building next door. (Turns out the other building is a recording studio; they left me the Berry Hill version of a parking ticket, which is a handwritten, Xeroxed sheet asking you please not to park there even when it looks like they're closed as people use the studio at all times.) I zipped over there.

Turns out I was the only prospective Daughter of Kali to turn up for the introductory session, so it was far more informal than it probably would have been otherwise. We began going over the Goddess timeline until the teacher realized I knew most of it up to 10,000 BCE in India, which was her area of expertise as it was, so we skipped ahead and talked about the evolution of the Goddess in India, how their Goddess culture is far less broken and subsumed, a lot of topics...just talking. She showed me her altar (after placing my goddesses on it, which was a nice gesture) and an abbreviated puja to honor the deities on any altar, which was nice. We chanted and meditated for a while. There wasn't a lot I can share, really, because it was so informal, other than that I like it, am going back, and am inviting others to go with me.

Then I went and hung out with the upstairs neighbors and actually got to watch an episode of South Park for once. God bless.

You Get What You Pay For

2005-06-06T15:28:00.000-05:00

Again, big ups to Irina for giving me memes to do while I'm Secret Squirrelin'...they always get me off on thoughts. And for the record, during the Saraswati puja for students yesterday, I totally directed my thoughts at her LSAT scores...let's all hope she does well.

For your delectation, my (adapted) version of Irina's latest tag.

Choose Your Own Life Soundtrack Meme For The Story of E Moet

Opening Song
Subterranean Homesick Blues, Bob Dylan

Waking up
(if happy about it) Bouncing Around the Room, Phish
(if not) No No No, the Gossip

Falling in Love
(with man) Head Over Feet, Alanis Morisette
(with woman) Sugar Magnolia, the Grateful Dead

Sex Scene
(bouncy fun scene) Brick House, Rob Zombie remix from House of 1000 Corpses
(lovely sex scene) Untitled Six, Sigur Ros

Heartbreak
(with anyone): Being In Love, Meryn Cadell
(with a man) Good Woman, Cat Power
(with a woman) Population 1975, the Butchies
(with both at the same time) Dancing Barefoot, Patti Smith
(in secret, so no one knows I'm a huge cliché) Untouchable Face, Ani Difranco
(when I'm starting to feel better about it) Who's Going to Mow Your Grass, Buck Owens

First Big Argument with Parents
STS, the Butchies. "No! You don't even know!"

Rebellious Song
P.I.M.P, 50 Cent & Hypnotize, Notorious B.I.G.

First Time Really Drunk
Bloodletting (The Vampire Song), Concrete Blonde

Otherwise Intoxicated
Smoke Two Joints, Sublime or Ganja by the Gossip

Driving
(aimless, thinking) Garden Grove, Sublime
(aimless, scenery-watching and singing): Waltzing Matilda (Slim Pickens version) or Whiskey in the Jar (traditional, not Metallica's version)
(need to be there already) Move, Bitch, Ludacris

Getting Ready To Go Out
Supermodel, Bran Van 3000 or Brown Sugar by the Rolling Stones

Wedding Song
Dueling Banjos, Roy Clark/Chet Atkins.
(yes, that's the song from Deliverance. Yes, the one. With the buttfucking. It's also one of my favorite pieces of fingerpicked bluegrass. Anyone snickering at my unlikely putative wedding will be caned, double if it's CDHSarah.)

Dream Sequence
Singapore, Tom Waits

Out of Body Experience
Staralflur, Sigur Ros or Space Oddity, David Bowie

Feeling Depressed
most of OK Computer. Can't really get more specific than that.

Birth of Child
What else but Little Babies, Sleater-Kinney?

Walking in the Rain
These Days, Nico

Striptease Song
N/A -- socially in partial or total undress too much of the time to make a guess.

Going To Hated Job
Pick A Bale of Cotton, Leadbelly

Walking Off Said Jobsite
Many Men, 50 Cent -- or, if tech job, All My Shootins be Drive-Bys, MC Stephen Hawking

Moment When Sun Shines In Room Perfectly
Shame On You, the Indigo Girls

Falling Asleep
Jòga, Björk

Funeral Song
I Ain't Marchin' Anymore, Arlo Guthrie

Closing Song
In The Aeroplane Over The Sea, Neutral Milk Hotel

Memes just don't fit Discordians, man. Here's the categories they forgot:

PMSing
Smack my Bitch Up, Prodigy

Breaking Up
(man) Like A Rolling Stone, Bob Dylan
(woman) Angie, the Rolling Stones
(heh)

Chain Smoking
Judy is a Punk, the Ramones (since in deference to The Royal Tenenbaums we light a cigarette literally every time we hear that song)

...and here's the mini-playlist of Songs To Sing Loudly With Intoxicated Friends

Show Me The Way To Go Home (that one's CDHSarah's)
The Cheat is Not Dead, as originally sung by The Brothers Strong
Fuck You I'm Drunk
Irish Drinking Song, the Drop Kick Murphys version
Waltzing Godzilla
Trogdor, the Burninator
Fire Water Burn
and many others. Only $19.95!

In non-meme news, I started a class at the Holistic Growth Center related to Kali, and went to a Saraswati puja. That requires more grokking and cherishing than I can give it right now, so look for it here soon!

Om Ayim Srim Fnord Goddammit

2005-06-04T15:00:00.000-05:00

Mantra-ing going well, relatively speaking.

I just finished reading Julie Gregory's Sickened, and now, I am.

Sickened is Ms. Gregory's memoir of growing up with a Munchausen's by proxy mother.

Now, I do not consider myself a sucker, but this book really, really upset me. The Buddha tells us that to lie is to distort reality, and is the only thing a bodhisattva cannot do, the only "sin" not forbidden. So much more so, for those of us who are not. Most of the hurt in the world comes from forms of distorted reality, from deception, from untruth. MBP, my knowledge of which was fairly limited to Judging Amy and ER, as well as a couple of psych classes, seems to me to be the worst kind of deception.

I am such an optimist that when I finished the book I was sure -- sure -- that Ms. Gregory would succeed in her aims. If you haven't read the book and don't want to spoil the ending, I don't suggest going to juliegregory.com until you've read it.

All I have time, or energy, or no-spoilers, to say is that the update section made me very sad, and very tired.

Off to go get the first mala of the day done...I'm taking a late start.

Tagged! Bagged! Mantra'ed!

2005-06-01T23:30:00.000-05:00

Hola folks from the land of Secret Squirrel...still no fixin' on the horizon, but I should get that all ready to happen tomorrow. If I don't wake up feeling worse than I feel now, which is pretty bad.

Anyway, Irina tagged her readership, and although I don't usually do the meme thing, I decided I'd hit this one.

Total number of books I've owned:
No. Idea. Over a thousand, I'm sure, as I know I have nearly that in the apartment, not counting all the ones in storage, lost, given away....I'm on my fourth and fifth copies of some of my favorites.

The last Book I Bought:
I bought 9 books at a stretch the last time and am eagerly awaiting their delivery. Here they are:
Sickened by Julie Gregory...this is a memoir of a Munchausens-by-proxy childhood, and it'll probably be the first one I read when the books actually arrive.
The Gypsy Game, Janie's Private Eyes, Blair's Nightmare, and And All Between by Zilpha Keatley Snyder...all sequels to books of hers I read when I was a kid. Thanks to the Pamie.com message board, I found out some of them were trilogies or series, and promptly went and got several of the ones I was missing.
Expanded Universe by Robert Heinlein. I had a copy of this at some goddamned point in time, but I don't know who the hell I lent it to and it's less aggro just to get a 75-cent copy on Half.com than to try and track down the miscreant.
Downsize This! and Stupid White Men by Michael Moore. I'm not Mike's biggest fan, nor his harshest critic, but I do tend to buy his stuff used and not new, so make of that what you will.
Lastly, Getting Mother's Body by Suzan-Lori Parks. I don't know anyone who has read this, but the review I read of it in the Nashville Scene ages ago made me add it to my wishlist, and when I saw it had dropped into my price range I snatched it up. I'll keep you posted.

Also, I only spent $2.92/book on this venture, even though the shipping was more than the book cost. I came out ahead.

The Last Book I Read:
I'm right in the middle of re-reading The Moon is a Harsh Mistress for the fifty-billionth time. The last new (not-read-before) book I finished was a bio of Barbara Jordan sent to me by my lovely and gracious ET. I'm also reading Conversations with Seth whenever I'm at Tish's place.

Five books that mean something to me:

Stranger in a Strange Land. Um. Yeah. If you read this blog at all, you knew that already.
Principia Discordia. Ditto.
The Four Agreements by Don Miguel Ruiz. I recommend this book to basically everyone I meet. Changed my life, although not as much as #1.
Sister Light, Sister Dark/White Jenna by Jane Yolen. My first introduction to the Goddess. I've read the third book, The One-Armed Queen, and it's good, but didn't punch me in the gut the way the other two did. Of course, there was a decade between all that, so that's prolly why.
The Dark Tower by Stephen King. All 7 books, actually, although the last one is the one that had me up at 5 am, still reading through barking sobs that brought my cats running to see what was wrong with Mom. I believe I literally wailed at one point.

So, there's that.

Nothing to report this end, other than starting a 40-day Saraswati mantra with the rest of the group...we strung our mala tonight and started the discipline. I'm trying to do 100,000 reps in the 40 days, but not obsessing on it, as that requires 25 reps per day and I don't know if I'm there yet. Anyway, hope to be back soon, with more to report.

I Loves Me My Messiah

2005-05-28T22:04:00.000-05:00

(Note to the RoF: The reason for this post I will discuss later.)

Probably more magic is done in my part of the world invoking Christ, Mary and the saints than is done in the name of any other pantheon. This is not the sort of thing for which real statistics exist, but I know, because I've been at the site of so much of it -- despite the fact that my particular, early indoctrination denied flatly the existence or religious permissibility of such things as a whole.

The day when I was twelve years old, dressed in my favorite (although embarrassingly tacky in retrospect) dress, white cotton bodice on top of a primarily fuschia tropical print skirt, with a hat I'm probably better off not remembering -- this was the early nineties -- and "went forward" to be baptized, and then to receive Communion (from my own father, although that wasn't the standard practice), in an auditorium full of 500 families, was the day I first understood magic -- first understood how the mundane (getting wet all over, which I had done at least once a day from childhood -- I've been a bathtub reader since I was old enough to bathe myself) became the magical, and changed you. I was a lot too young to know the difference between transubstantiation and consubstantiation, young enough that I had started to get curious about the other, "incorrect" faiths -- especially the entirely forbidden Catholics, whose rituals and churches had appealed to the aesthetic and historical senses I was just beginning to develop. But that was the day I understood that magic is real, even if I didn't call it that, or know that name for it.

After that there were "games" that weren't, quite -- games where Mary's name came up. The first written, intentional ritual I ever did, as such, performed in tense and unneccessary fear at the back of my mother's garden, involved a rewrite of the Hail Mary I wish I hadn't burned in a fit of adolescent pique. I can't date that experience to anything other than "adolescence", but I can still see the moon and feel myself naked under my bathrobe, my legs shaking not from cold but from Fear of Being Found Out. I had read the anti-Satanist scare literature that enjoyed spurts of popularity amongst the parents of Christian teenagers, and I knew that this would definitely be misconstrued. Even then, I knew it wasn't wrong. I still didn't call it magic.

Since then, after the discovery of a lot of history, literature, and concepts, and after getting rid of the anger at the flaws in the institution that had raised me, I began to see the individual goodness. More psychically aware, I began to see the Godliness in the people who still love me, on the rare Sunday I show up with my mother and father. Eventually the universe started dropping Jesus in my path until I had to reexamine Jesus entirely.

When I was 16 years old and on a school tour, the central statue of Sri Ganesha Temple in Nashville spoke to me. I learned of, and eventually saw made flesh, Cernunnos. The cycle of the God-that-dies was a part of my year, after a short while, once I linked my fascination with the moon to the Wheel of the Year. But I bore resentment for Jesus -- Jesus who, in my mind, had become wholly associated with the repression of women, the fall of paganism, the ill-treatment of ethnic group after ethnic group, the inherited racism of my parent's generation.

I am a student of philosophy, however, and studies in logic eventually made that mental association untenable, once I had become able to forgive the wrongs done to me personally in the name of Christianity. I was a hot pick for Bible Bowl back during my Church Camp days, and I had too much information about the mythical Jesus to not, eventually, be forced to examine Jesus just as I had examined other regenerative gods. (My corresponding fascination with Mary is another matter that will be dealt with later.)

When I divorced Jesus from his cult -- the original ones, the post-Crucifixion interpreters and Church founders (with St. Paul foremost -- I must say in the interest of full disclosure that he will probably never grace my altar) -- I found the power of my religious understanding strengthened by the reconnection to the deity to whom I had sworn, over ten years before, my allegiance, and to whom I had been bound in the first act of magic I had ever actively participated in. It was as if Christ and Mary -- Mary who remains the first representation of the Triple Goddess who ever made herself manifest to me -- threw the rest of my belief in magic into high relief. It broke a barrier I wasn't even aware of.

I discovered a man who was well versed enough in the religion of the day to successfully contend with both elders and politicians about the meaning of the commandments, yet whose views were sufficiently divergent to make aforesaid groups uneasy -- much like myself. I found a man who told stories that boiled down to "Heaven is when everyone treats one another decently." I found an egalitarian. I found a man with views on racism and sexism that converged with my own, a pacifist, a man who mostly got pissed off at hypocrites and corporations -- a guy like me. Most importantly, I found a pagan Christ -- that Christ did and continues to die and be reborn as a lesson about the nature of the Universe with which he was one being. I could make the statement "All Gods, which are one God, and all Goddesses, which are one Goddess, and which God and Goddess are also One Being" along with my Wiccan sister and speak Truth, a truth I had given lip service to, and possibly even thought I believed...while mentally discounting the deity to which I had first been exposed, an act of hypocrisy I hadn't even recognized as such until I stopped, like Peter, denying Christ.

Everyone encounters God in a purely individual way, and practitioners of magic tend to draw the deities they need. As most of the aforesaid practitioners have found, those deities can be somewhat insistent about needing to be recognized. With my Christian background, it was inevitable that I either accept Christ, or lose faith -- because I could not continue in a lie of unity while making exceptions based on bigotry and fear, even my own. I grok my God now, more fully, because Jesus is contained within it.

Hail Discordia.

I Really Do Have A Readership Of Five

2005-05-27T23:26:00.000-05:00

And that's OK, because I love each and every one of you. (See the comments to my last post for details.)

Anyway, I hate Comcast and working. Everything else is going along quite nicely. Nothing to report worth reporting.

But I am still out here. Just for the record. I can't get the cable fixed until next week at the absolute earliest, so it's Secret Squirrel Season, and when I get somewhere, I have nothing to share.

Keep watching; I'll be back in full force. Soon.

20/80 AC/DC SEEKS WATER BROTHER

2005-05-21T21:28:00.000-05:00

Just checking in. After minor drama too petty and ultimately irrelevant to relate, I am checking in from one of my super secret locations. There's another post waiting at Parce Central, but I haven't been home in over 36 hours due to aforesaid minor drama, so instead I thought I'd catch up with my ET while I had the opportunity. And, true to form, she piqued my interest with her version of the Tomato Nation Personals Ad Experiment.

I haven't ever placed a real profile of myself online, and don't think I'd care to. Much as there are physical places in this city that I've pretty much given up visiting because of the incursion of the people I think of as the "visibly cool". With my water brotherhood, I am utterly naked. Around everyone else, I tend to be clothed like my upstairs neighbor, metaphorically speaking. I'll talk to almost anyone, but won't show you anything truly important without feeling you out with all of my senses.

How would I even begin to describe myself in 25 words or less? Does bi-polar count as 2 words?

You know, I thought I could. And I can't. Hell, my faithful Readership of About Five (hi y'all!) don't even grok me in fullness, I don't think, with the possible exception of CDHSarah, and she's admitted that she doesn't grok with fullness on more than one occasion. We don't speak Martian. We're not telepathic enough to live in a nest where Discordia has been transcended. But we do all right for the only relatively trained.

I realized trying, you can't advertise for a water brother. A water brother meets you when cusp is. In alternate and more general terms, I discussed that with the Artist just tonight. It goes back to my oft-cited thing I'm going to write a book about someday, my theory that everyone's personal experience or life, if viewed from the fourth dimension (which would allow you to see time as a unified whole, the way you can see one surface of a piece of paper as a whole), would act as both a wave and a particle within the closed system of the three-dimensional universe, which would go a long way towards trying to answer the free will vs. predestination argument...but as my ride beckons, that's a subject for another day.

Note: ignore all broken links, will be fixed at Parce Central shortly.

The Buddha Tells Us That Life Is Suffering

2005-05-17T19:51:00.000-05:00

The Buddha doesn't fuck around.

Where Have All The Flowers Gone is playing, the sun is almost set, I'm in my apartment, which is lit solely by the screen of my computer.

I'm lonely, and I'm tired, and I hate spring.

But that's not what I came to talk about, so much -- I come to talk about the draft.

Not really. I came to note for my mostly concerned membership that there is very little chance of y'all seeing hide or hair of me over the next several days, which include in their delights 6 hours of OT, two doctor's appointments including the dreaded GYN, an a phaeresis appointment (Donate blood, bitches -- fifteen minutes with one needle is NOTHING compared to an hour to hour and a half with both arms needled up and your blood in a centrifuge behind your head, so I don't want to hear your excuses. Go donate blood right now), a Radiant Star meeting, a "go hang out with Patrick and learn how to make an Ellegua" session, nicely capped by Friday (13 hour shift), Saturday (11 hour shift) and Sunday (6 hour shift), going straight back into the work week.

I'm not going to have time to wipe my own ass, and I just now realized I had done that to myself, and am seriously wishing I had just taken Wednesday off like I usually do every other week.

I'll try to update as it's possible -- write the html and email it home -- but I really have no idea how the next seven days are going to go in terms of my personal time, which I have a feeling are going to consist of "throwing together edibles", "bathing the night before" and "passing out with a book in my hand". Especially since I have fifty-two working hours in six working days, and my "day off" is going to consist of specula, needles, and other unpleasantries. I don't know if I'm going to want to look at my computer. But after the rant I didn't want anyone to think I had gone totally AWOL or taken a trip to the Psychiatric Hilton if I pulled a me and didn't post until next Wednesday.

In the meantime, whatever that meantime may turn out to be, go read CDHSarah's blog, which might include a me-sighting every now and again, and be good to yourselves.

And Now -- The Sabbath Day

2005-05-16T20:06:00.000-05:00

After all that bitching, you must know I had a truly awesome (in the sense of "inspiring awe") and most righteous (in the Bill & Ted sense) Sunday, to cap off my week of despair and suckage.

I got up early, put on my awesome bright-stripes polo that I usually wear when going to an event where I might lose my people, wrapped up the locks, watched the Eldest and Middle Kitties cleaning one another's necks, and then rolled out to Goddess & the Moon.

I was meeting ConservativeWiccan and BellyDancinBeth to go to the Sri Ganesha temple on the other side of town to hear Karunamayi speak. Since some of us were leaving our cars, we met at a place where we knew we wouldn't get towed. CW showed up first, so we walked across the street to get sodas because BDBeth was late.

I mention this only because it is a part of this coincidence that I got to spend most of yesterday in the company of the also most righteous PerryfromtheArmy, who was in Nashville, had found G&tM, and would have figured out in about 5 minutes that the place wasn't open yet. He told me later that he almost stopped at the store, too, and didn't. I totally assumed someone like the Artist or CDHSarah had forwarded on the temple event to his email and he had just shown up. Turns out he didn't know anything about it, but he was game, so I took a bag of carrots, hopped in his car, and we headed off to Sri Ganesha.

When we got there, the Germanic hexenmeister/powwow and his wife that I met briefly at PUF but hadn't really had a chance to connect with, despite how awesome I've been hearing they are for two years, turned out to be the couple we were meeting there. GHP led us around the upper sanctuary, giving those of us with no Hindu knowledge and those of us with a little bit a running commentary on the shrines, their origins, and proper etiquette. (We all knew to take off our shoes!) I communed with the 2-ton, beautiful Ganesh, who I hadn't seen since he spoke to me when I was 16 and on a school tour. It was good to see my old friend, dressed in fruit and flowers. I found out that Nashville's temple is unusual in that it has a multiplicity of shrines, some of which cater to different Hindu sects, and that all the people come in and hold worship at different parts of the shrine on holy days. (The child-Krishna was fascinating; I'm going to go back and visit him.)

About the time we got done touring the upper sanctuary, the procession to welcome Amma (the other name of the guru, meaning "mother") had begun. The priests and the worshippers led her around the shrine (always clockwise, according to GHP) singing songs of welcome, as she greeted the shrines, and the central Ganesh. While I must admit that it is odd to see worshippers wipe up the dust where a person has stood to transfer a bit of that person's holiness, it's not invalid; better a person who tries to be holy than a person who is merely famous, or infamous.

We followed everyone downstairs to the auditorium for the program, which was periodic -- the 9-Om chant, the Saraswati mantra, followed by the guru speaking, then a new chant, song, call&response, or mantra. The fact that they kept turning on & off the lights for silent meditations made things distracting. I didn't care, though; I was transfixed by Karunamayi.

Karunamayi is supposed to be an incarnation of Saraswati, the Divine Mother, representative of limitless compassion. She was born in 1950, but having seen her up close and greeted her during the processional I would have placed her age at about 35, maximum. Her talks were on universal energy and the love of the Divine Mother. It annoyed some people that she constantly referred to all of us as "her children", but that's fully consistent with someone filling the Saraswati role. She's round, has a self-effacing way about her -- even when she was greeting us during the processional, she looked like she was kind of embarrassed by the pomp and circumstance. Mostly, I was just entranced by how beautiful she was -- it's rare, any more, for me to love someone for their beauty with no sexuality involved.

Maybe I'm easily rooked, maybe I'm just gullible, but I could believe in her. I could feel her love. Hell, I could see her aura, and I almost NEVER see auras, I just sense them. When she stopped speaking and people started lining up to receive her blessing, I looked at my Palm to find out what time it was and was shocked to see that only 2 hours had gone by -- I guessed three, PftA guessed four.

We waited until close to the end to receive the blessing, because it was crowded. She placed her hands on my head and most of the bad physiological results of the medication adjustment stopped -- they had continued throughout her talk, but they were gone when I left her presence. Don't worry -- I don't think she cured me of my depression, but I do think she took the horrid adjustment symptoms of the medication away, which is pretty strong juju as it is.

She gave us all a blessed piece of fruit, a bag of sacred ash from her ashram, and some simple mantras. After we had all been blessed, we decided (surprise surprise) to go to Taste of India for lunch.

All day long people fed me. I owe so many dinners coming up, but it's worth it.

Along with us came the Hindu Honkies, a couple that knew the GHPs, and lunch was a fascinating dissection of the experience, and the type of people who attach themselves permanently to a spiritual leader as opposed to the people who just experience that person and carry that experience back out into the world (her Caucasian followers were, without exception, assholes -- we compared it to a permanent childhood, to live and follow the Divine Mother is to always, always, ALWAYS be a child, to always approach God in that way, and that's the spiritual equivalent of a disability.) CDHSarah showed up briefly because she wasn't sure she was going to make it to drum circle and wanted to tell everyone hello.

After lunch we went back to the HH's apartment, which is one of the most beautiful apartments I've ever seen -- it's the attic of a converted, turn-of-the-century building, which they had painted beautifully. They restore and recreate furniture -- I covet their Klimt coffee table. They are repainting a two-D Saraswati for the temple and she looks beautiful.

While we were there I finally got the chance to talk to the hexenmeister about the issues with my back. He's been wanting to take on a distance healing, as he hasn't done many, so he took a lock of my hair home with him to Kentucky and is going to get back with me in a couple weeks to do a hands-on healing if the distance working is ineffective.

Perry and I had planned to go to the Centennial Park Sunday afternoon drum circle, and we did, but not without much getting-of-the-lost. Turns out "the hill across from the Parthenon" is actually in West End Park, even though it's across the street from Centennial. CDHSarah did end up showing up, even though she wasn't feeling well, and she TOTALLY DISRESPECTED THE SACRED BANANA by throwing away half her piece. (Kidding!)

We almost thought there wasn't going to BE a drum circle, because we were half an hour late and the drumming hadn't started. It wasn't the best one I've ever been to once it did get started, either -- the major problem in a drum circle is that you need at least one and hopefully two Really Big Drums, to carry the simple rhythms. Otherwise it gets cacophonous. But really, it was good because BellyDancingShamanismLady showed up and we actually got to have a real conversation, which I thoroughly enjoyed. We talked about I Ching, which she had wanted me to explain, and laughed about PUF and where to get the awesome outfits she wears (similar to the traditional Hindi male dress, with the long tunic and loose pants). Perry slept in the sun and I made plans with BDSL and HeathenryLady, who assisted at the blót and turned out to live in our neighborhood. They advised me on the best intro to bellydance classes for the least money and may be coming with me to the African dance introductory next month.

I feel like yesterday was PUF family reunion or something. It made me so excited to see all these people again, the ones I don't normally see.

After BDSL and CDHSarah both decided to head out, Perry and I decided to head back to G&tM so he could head home. Just so turned out that CW and BDBeth were pulling up to get BDB's car at that moment, so I tagged along to the Evil Rabbi's acupuncture clinic.

The Evil Rabbi isn't really evil; he's a Jewish Kabalist who is also well versed in Chinese medicine, energy work, and acupuncture. This is another guy I've been hearing about from everyone for forever and a day, and he is pretty awesome. I could see the energy coming off him too -- he gestures a lot when he talks, and silver streaks come off his fingers when he gets excited. We talked about religious internal consistency as a validating factor for the spiritual path, why tongue piercings aren't the best thing for you in the long run, and other things, as well as eating delicious Turkish food and drinking apple tea. When I pass up the baklava because the lamb chops and rice were so good that I can't eat another bite, you know the food is awesome.

I didn't want my day to end. But it did, as days do. I went home, to my (blessedly) working Internet, and talked to LadyAlambil, who I miss sorely while she's home on college hiatus. I took a bath and went to bed and slept better than I've slept in years.

Sometimes it's good to have a Sabbath of your own.

Told y'all the day more than made up for the previous week.

Also, I sold the first of the Venii today! Woot!

Big shouts to my Elvis Twin -- thanks to her, I have kitties blissed out on catnip and stuff to read. She's my hero.

I Hate Comcast Two: Electric Boogaloo -- In Other News, Full of the Light of God

2005-05-15T23:27:00.000-05:00

I have been on extended absence, and I hate Comcast. Right now I love pretty much everyone, but Comcast is the exception.

After four calls to 3 separate tech support lines, I now have internet connectivity. I still don't have broadband phone access, but since it's due to a defective box, I'm being shipped a new one for free.

It's been a bad week for your old friend parcequilfaut. The phrase I use as my moniker roughly translates from the French as "because it is necessary that", which my brother and I use idiomatically as a "Because I must/you must" -- if I'm trying to get him to do something and he's dillying about deciding, for instance, I'll look at him and go, "Mais, il faut" or something of the sort. This week, the completion of the phrase has been "suffer".

The Buddha teaches us that life is suffering and that we can escape it by cultivating mindfulness and joyful detachment. I haven't been feeling very joyful or detached. Mostly, until today, I've felt like shit and acted like a pissy bitch, mostly due to the need for the nearly-inevitable early spring medication change. Unfortunately, for the first couple days I thought it was just a particularly shitty case of the menstruals and didn't recognize the early warning signs, so after a particularly hellish Thursday, which included the forementioned calls to various tech support guys as well as a drastic uptick in the price of aforesaid medication, I basically had a mini-nervous breakdown, in which I think I damned several major pharmaceutical companies and at least one insurance company to the eternal fires of Hell, and in which I blasphemed God to my mother, which I feel bad about as blasphemy isn't really my nature, and especially where my mom is concerned. When I yell until I'm physically exhausted, it's sufficiently uncharacteristic to drain me for the next day or two.

May I just plug my mom? When she found out I had spent my grocery cash on medication, she totally took me to Kroger and bought me all kinds of comfort food, including Double Chocolate Milanos, which I never buy as they cost the earth. I love my mom. And I'm sorry I blasphemed God, but I think I made up for that today, or at least I had been punished enough for it. (Basically, I went off on a rant about how God made misery on purpose because he's a bastard, which is not really part of my belief system, but I was pissed off and on a roll.)

The next two days were horrible, physiologically. Shaking, messed-up depth perception and color sense, total inability to get warm and stay that way -- I was up until 3 am Friday night because I couldn't stand the sensation of fabric on my skin and was too cold to be without a blanket. It's been bad, but not nearly as bad as I have felt. My card for this month was the inverse Fool, which means being able to avoid the obvious pitfall with a near miss -- another week without an adjustment and it would have been the hospital, so I'm grateful. All hail the Fool.

Everything hinged on today. Not to pull the cheap cliffhanger crap, but it's late and I have to work in the morning, so, knowing I've had the week from hell, watch eagerly tomorrow as I tell you how I had the best Sunday since I got baptized, spiritually speaking. I'm fine now, absolutely, so don't worry. I wouldn't even do this, but I have to bathe and hit the sack.

Who Loves You? ERIS LOVES YOU! (Fnord)

2005-05-10T20:15:00.000-05:00

All sorts of goodness surround me, even when the world is annoying me half to death.

I worked today and then, due to having accidentally sent my OT request to the wrong person, had a three-hour break between times. So, of course, I went to Tish's.

I got fed while I was there because she had had such a busy day she hadn't had time to get food. When I inquired what had kept her chained to the computer all day so much that she hadn't had time to walk across the street, she reminded me that she is leaving tomorrow for her buying trip to New Orleans, which in turn reminded ME that she probably hadn't noted that I had asked her to pick me up an Ellegua down there. It's in her phone now. Hail Discordia. Good sense would have told me to hang out closer to work, not to waste the gas (which I found 3 cents cheaper than I've seen in 2 weeks by taking the route I only take from work to Tishs'), to be sensible. But now I have a better chance of getting what I need, so thanks, Eris.

I thought seriously about taking advantage of her Dumpster and cleaning out my car while I was there. But it was a good thing I didn't, because when I returned to work I found out Scheduling had a.) misread my request for sick time for two weeks ago to encompass days when I was neither sick nor absent, and b.) lost the doctor's note for the days in question. Luckily, said piece of paper was smiling up at me from the passenger seat of the filthy van, and I was able to lay hands on it and put paid to that nonsense within 15 minutes. Down with order. Order would have left me high and dry...that's not my regular doctor and I doubt a copy of the excuse is in my chart there, even though my regular doctor and I keep every piece of paper we ever send my work for just this reason. That done, though I do need to clean out my car...filth and Discordia are not necessarily the same thing.

Now the only chaotic source of distress is the continuing difficulty I'm having in getting in touch with CDHSarah. But I'm sure that will resolve itself as well. Oh, and the network at the house, which will not resolve itself without help. (Help would be welcome, if anyone's listening, hint hint.) If I can't find a phone tonight, I'll ask the G-man (Ganesh, not G. Gordon) to take care of that as well as Saucey's job and the Artist's new job. And every other obstacle.

Also, I just realized, working the OT I was complaining about also probably kept me from binning that note, because if I hadn't done it tonight, I would almost surely have done it over the next 2 work-free days.

Which reminds me...y'all may not see me until Friday, unless the network gets fixed. So don't freak out. I'm going to try to get a library card on Thursday, it's on the list, but given what happened at the library last time, which is a story for another day, I'm not entirely confident. In the hopes of inspiring good mojo, and for the Alanis-irony of it all, I'll save that story for when I'm using their computers (that my taxes pay for, but I am not currently permitted to access. Chuh.)

I love y'all. Give me some love back, and send wellness vibes to the CDH, who is full of Vick's goodness right now.

I Am Working & Smoking & I Feel FINE

2005-05-09T17:19:00.000-05:00

So a funny thing happened.

I spend a lot of time at Tish's place these days...once she has her website up I will link her so all of you can see her fabulous wares and buy Venii (kidding)...mostly because I'm always happy when I'm here. I rarely want to leave unless I know I'm in the way, but the way the shop is set up, that's rarely the case. I can be hanging out in the sacred space/Reiki room, the reading room, the porch, the display room or the office with equal impunity (now, that's not true of everyone, but since I used to work for the Ineffable Patrick, I pretty much have the run of the place.) And I usually "work" when I'm here -- I fetch things and answer the phone, nothing that is paid, or needs to be.

Today I happened to show up at just the right time, as Tish and another associate were getting ready to close the shop early. ConservativeWiccan bowed out on watching the shop because he had dinner plans. I said, half-jokingly, "I'll watch the shop."

Now, I've watched the shop before, for about 15 minutes while Tish or Elf ran to the bank or to get lunch. But right now, I am Watching the Shop. I have keys, and authorization to use the credit card machine, and permission to give readings (I only) if customers want them since she's not here to read Tarot. I'm not really getting paid, although I could -- I just asked her to knock off the price on one of the items I've been coveting, and that sounded just dandy to her.

There are so many people I'd like to grow up to be, and Tish is one of them -- well, sort of a Tish/Patrick combo. I'd love to do what Patrick does...work for the state during the day helping people, then come to my own little shop at night and read and chat with folks until the early evening. And I just realized that the first step is almost mine, if I get the job with the courts that may or may not be mine in July.

I mean, I'd love to be a professor. And I may do that. And I'm definitely going back to college at some point, but at this point I seem to have so many areas I could be happy studying further, and they want me to pick one. You don't ask the girl with six books in six different genres literally in her bed at the moment to "pick one". So if I go back to school it's going to have to be some double major, triple minor, professional student venture. And in the meantime, I'd like to have something to do that doesn't often make me feel as if my soul and will to live have been sucked out my aural canal...not the work itself, but the hours required to make it pay.

But for right now I'm not stressing that. I'm listening to the fountain, and the bird imitating the ring of the phone, and watching the wind wave the grass outside the window (another thing I don't get to do enough, in the current work situation), and waiting. Waiting for someone to walk through the door and need me. Right now, though, no one owns my time but me. No one is watching me.

And that feels awesome. Not Bill & Ted awesome, but the real meaning that has been obscured by the popularity of the phrase. Filled with awe. I may be a wage slave, ladies and gentlemen, but I am free. Right now, I am free.

And CDHSarah is on her way, full of sickness as I expected, to bring me dinner.

However much I bitch, my life is awesome. And I am free.

Just Call Me Veruca Salt

2005-05-09T09:12:00.000-05:00

I want a cigarette, and I want one now.

With the new policies, the smokers are coming under particular watch with the supervisors, to make sure we're only indulging during our scheduled breaks and lunches.

I want a cigarette. I want one so bad.

It's curious how psychology works. Normally (even if I had ever smoked during a nonscheduled break, which OF COURSE I have NEVER DONE), I wouldn't want a cigarette this early in my shift, only an hour and a quarter in. It usually takes at least another half-hour before I start to shift and wiggle in my chair, and part of that is not nic-fit but sheer-boredom related.

I want a cigarette. Want want want. I'm turning into that guy from Airplane!

Outside in the smoker's purgatory, a pathetic, stunted little tree on the divider of the property between us and the bank, the sun is shining. Out there it is warm and I would not need to be wrapped in a knit blanket printed with sunflowers, the one that used to be on my bed when I was a kid, back when I had the bedroom with the exterior door that meant I could go smoke whenever I wanted to.

Cigarette. Want. Parce want cigarette.

The smoker's purgatory is almost like heaven compared with inside. I'm freezing, to start with....my eyes are burning from tiredness as my all-important final hour of sleep was interrupted by the guys who MUST start mowing the grass at 7 AM OUTSIDE PEOPLE'S WINDOWS instead of on the parts of the property that DON'T BORDER ANYONE'S PRIVATE SLEEPING SPACE...outside there is grass! And honeysuckle! And one stunted little tree! And people! People, with cigarettes!

I want it NOW.

What I'm wondering is...who narced? What smoker told on the other smokers who may or may not have been seeking a little extracurricular nicotine? Why would someone do that? Don't they understand karma and realize that they will now be off sneaking a smoke when something REALLY important happens, like the birth of their first child, or the cancellation of Charmed, and it will be because they told on their subordinates. I happen to know that one particular department is comprised entirely of smokers, and I've seen the entire department take a smoke break at the same time. Somehow I don't think they're complying with their regularly scheduled breaks and lunches to make sure all departments remain at maximum efficiency throughout the day.

Give me a cigarette before I get mad. I'm already thinking about crawling under the desk and lighting up just long enough to taste it.

At CDHSarah's work she can take the phone OUTSIDE WITH HER so she can smoke and do her job at the same time. If I hadn't broken the compy, I could be sitting at home, not taking calls and smoking. (There are no calls right now. I haven't had a call in 20 minutes. I could have had a cigarette and been back and not dropped call 1.) Plus, there would be kitties there.

Give me a cigarette. Give me one now.
Or leave me a comment, because I? Have an hour to go. And I? Am not pleased.

Validating CDHSarah

2005-05-07T14:44:00.000-05:00

Not exactly, but that thought was the starting point, so hang with me.

Last night I went and hung out with my neighbor, friend, and fellow group member, whom pretty much all of you know as the lovely and talented CDHSarah.

We have both had kind of a stressful week, and Friday is always bad for us...because she is finishing out her work week, where I'm having a "case of the Mondays" because I usually don't work my regular job in the middle of the week. The potential for tension is high, and we had been quite snappish with each other through the afternoon, but once we had a bit of down time we stopped being evil for the sake of evilness and just went back to our normal, somewhat feline, sensitive selves.

A portion of my Discordianism, I realized, was inadvertently hurting my friend.

Because I don't believe in absolute truth, I see the ridiculousness in everything. It's part of being a Discordian. Faith defies logic and intellectualizing, and therefore can be self-contradictory and not subject to the rules of logic. If it makes you a better person, closer to the Divine, it doesn't necessarily have to make sense.

That said, I like to laugh a lot. I like to poke fun. I think there is a lot of silliness in the world, and that goes double for the world of religion. I think it's silly that there's a huge fight about families that go away for Pesach to avoid the stress of the holiday. I think it's silly that people are getting disfellowshipped for voting Democratic in one incarnation of the Baptist church, just like I thought it was silly when my mother's church got rid of a guy for not believing that the 7 days of creation were 24-hour periods. But I'm most likely to point out the silliness in the community closest to mine, which is the Wiccan/pagan community. Not that I'm worried about passing judgement, because I'm not -- when you think everything is both equally true and equally ridiculous, you can't be worried about that -- but it's what I know the most about, and I'm likely to get the least flak for talking where I know what's up.

Do I think using your Craft name as your public name is silly? Yes. Yes I do. (Silly Ravenjuice and Shakti Gawain, my attention is focused in your direction, because I've already made fun of ZStN.) Do I think the persons unnamed who told CDHSarah that the bad weather at PUF was due to her casting her circle in the wrong direction are funny, as well of full of what makes the grass grow greener? I think that's HILARIOUS. Do I think that people who get all sanctimonious and claim they're practicing "the religion of their ancestors" in embracing Wicca (est. 1957) are historically inaccurate, and silly because they won't admit that what they practice is, at best, a reconstruction of European paganism with more roots in ceremonial magic than any ancient tradition? Yep. Does that invalidate the religion? Not in the slightest. God is big, and there's room for silliness with God. In fact, I have a God/Dess pair devoted to that very idea (Dionysus/Eris). It's one of my tenets of faith. It's how I avoid the curse of Grayface.

Does this make me a huge bitch? Probably. You aren't supposed to think other people's beliefs are silly. It's not nice, and I'm about nice. But I don't mock the seriousness of the belief to the people who hold it, or their right to have it. I just call them as I see them, and when someone introduces herself to me as Raven Kali Earthchild (not anyone real, I assure you), my first inclination is to snort. When someone waxes rhapsodic about the "unbroken pagan traditions of my Celtic forebears", I really want to snort, and snorfle, and do whatever it takes to keep from rolling on the ground laughing. But, that's what makes me a Discordian.

I judge people individually and ideas in general. I have some ideas that seem ridiculous even to myself, but hey, they're ideas. Who gives? If you believe that your Spirit Guides are whispering in your ear constantly telling you what lotto tickets to buy, that's fine with me, as long as it's benign nuttiness and not SGs who are whispering for you to kill your mom. It's no nuttier than believing that bread and wine become flesh and blood, or leaving a chair open for a prophet that was supposedly carried into heaven in a flaming chariot over 2000 years ago, or not eating certain types of animals because you're afraid God will get mad, or believing that the multiplicity of the universe came about because of a series of chemical accidents, or believing that the Goddess of Chaos is your personal BFF, like I do. All of these things are illogical. All of them work for the people that believe them. So when I say that something is silly, it's not to be taken personally...because it's all silly. Valid, but silly. If I drop (well, if I transport myself back in time pre-Vatican II and then drop) a Communion wafer on the ground, it means nothing to me. But it's a serious action because of the people who give it credence. Objectively? Silly. It's a cracker. But it's more than that, because we are a species who works with symbols, and we confuse symbol (bread, chair, wine, statue) for referent (God) all the time. Not bad. But silly. Doesn't mean I'm going to start getting funky with the Host to challenge those peoples' beliefs, because that's not cool. Doesn't mean I'm going to be sanctimoniously and obsequiously "respectful" by continuing to confuse symbol with referent. I don't think the ward in my pocket, the altar in my purse, or the statues in my home ARE God. They only have as much power as I give them, through belief. And I laugh at myself, when things happen like the kitten chewing on my best Ganesh and I start to get all flustered and upset about the statue, before I realize that God is not damaged in the slightest by a teething baby kitty with an affinity for high places.

People don't get that. At least, non-Discordians don't. And I hurt CDHSarah's feelings inadvertently, and had to spend some time explicating the very same thing I've just ranted on about...only while tired and intoxicated.

I take CDHSarah seriously because she takes her faith seriously without becoming a sanctimonious prig about it. That's my general litmus test for people. CDHSarah has never ranted about a ritual being useless because the lighter didn't get blessed before the candles were lit, or anything else that would lead me to believe that she is turning into Grayface. So I take her seriously. I wouldn't practice with her otherwise. Ditto SFGod, the Artist, the RenReb, and most of the other sensible people of faith I've ever encountered. They take their faith seriously -- they're not religious when it suits them -- but not so seriously that it acts as a blinder instead of a source of enlightenment.

Wiccans get the brunt of this in the pagan community. They get it because their faith has become pop-culture, HotTopicized, and the starting point for a lot of people to either discredit earth religion as a whole or to move on to other types of practice, and because those who are most public about it are often the most prone to being Grayface -- to taking themselves TOO GOSHDARN SERIOUSLY. CDHSarah had taken some of the (admittedly harsh) comments I've made about these grayfaces to heart.

It's all good now. But I thought I needed to talk about it. So there it is. I realize I've probably offended every person of faith, ever, but rest assured, I think not having faith is equally, if not more, silly than having it. It's just that...not a one of us is special. Not a one of us has universal truth. So we ought to just laugh, and drink, and have a good time.

Which is what I'm going to do, as soon as my work releases me from ongoing torture of too many people being forced to work overtime, when there aren't enough calls, which means I want to go to sleep instead of sitting here for another 2 hours before my dinner break.

Jeezus, Get Off the Notorious

2005-05-07T09:44:00.000-05:00

I'm really tired, y'all.

I have mandatory OT today which means I will be at work (although not working the entire time) for 14 hours today. So I'm just reading Harry Potter & The Order of the Phoenix and sulking.

Things I'd Rather Be Doing Than Sitting Here:

*shopping for new books at Ms. B's in Hendersonville (maybe in a couple weeks, since my commission check should be juicy)
*playing with the Middle Kitty, who tried to love me 'til I agreed to stay home on my way out this morning
*fixing my wireless network
*cleaning my house
*scrubbing my toilet
*going to Centennial Park for a nice sunshiney nap in the van
*cleaning out the van to make a sunshiney nap possible
*taking the recycling from the woods property to the Can Man
*hanging out with Tish
*deciding what kind of goddesses I want to make with the pound of terra cotta in my car
*learning to play the sitar

I'm pretty much going to read all day in a half-awake stupor. With over 100 people on the phone, there should be plenty of time for that.

You see where this is going. I just keep telling myself that as soon as the wireless network is back up I'll have a phone and can start telecommuting. A fourteen hour sentence to stay home with the cats isn't nearly as difficult to swallow.

Who wants to bet I go home and listen to rap?

Leave me a comment so I know you folks with free time and real weekends love me back.

If We Could Fix Stuff, Why Would We Be Discordians?

2005-05-06T09:26:00.000-05:00

Just as everything negatively chaotic fixed itself, the thing I wanted to happen least happened.

I broke my compy.

Not permanently. I somehow fucked up while installing the wireless router so I could hook up my phone. So now I have no phone, and no internets, until I either get ComCast out to my house to fix whatever I did while installing the @#$% wireless router (sometime next century) or I find one of my poverty-stricken friends and make them fix it for me.

Send my puter love, because all it's good for right now is Winamp shuffle. And I still don't have a phone. Dammit. Also, anyone with my Secret Squirrel email needs to email me at parcequilfaut at yahoo dot com until further notice.

***

In the good news, Tish loved the statues, I did my first ever paid I Ching reading, and my kitties are precious. Really! Scroll down and look at'em! And then go give ET love, and the Evil one. And CDHSarah, too, I guess.

In Lieu Of Ethics, Today We Will Show Pictures

2005-05-05T12:20:00.000-05:00

Venuses! The big one is technically WV 2.0 -- she's terra cotta colored like the others, but I can't get the pics to come out right.

Posted by Hello

A really good pic of Middle Kitty...see his pretty markings?

Posted by Hello

Please, no pictures.

Posted by Hello

Eldest kitty doing something other than lying around? Surely you jest!

Posted by Hello

Standing up and almost posing....about the best the Eldest Kitty can do.

Posted by Hello

Scary panther kitten...ATTACK!

Posted by Hello