et alia laughing and weeping

tristissima @ 2008-05-08T23:16:00

2008-05-09T06:18:50Z

According to CBS, salary.com has calculated a "mother"'s salary at $148,281 a year.

Laeta Dies Matrum!

lupabitch has the bestest friends

2008-04-24T02:20:40Z

It seems my genius blogging strategy is to have truly awesome friends who, in turn, have truly awesome friends who have nearly-perfected the esoteric art of scouring the web for challenging, interesting, and powerful articles.

Remember the whole "we're headed for a Depression? Further proof in the corporate-led rationing of food! Maybe I'll get to live my dream life as an itinerant hobo teacher-mystic. Woot! What's worse is that the rationed foods are basic staples, such as rice, flour, and cooking oil. This might, just possibly, be seen in some ways as a good thing, as it might cause a move towards a healthier, leaner diet. Frying, after all, definitely requires oil and generally flour as well, and, of course, the starch obssession in our culture as a means of acquiring fat and empty calories, also requires flour. On the other hand, this kind of crisis is exactly the sort of thing big businesses like to turn to their advantage.

Of course, the 1930s might not be where we're headed. Try a century previously (1830s), as slavery in the farmer fields is also running rampant. Oddly enough, this time the supermegahypercorporations are on the side with which I agree. When I was in college, there was a boycott of Taco Bell called for by the tomato-pickers of Immokalee, Florida. I remember this. I participated in this. I only started eating Taco Bell again in the last couple of years, maybe even the last year. It ended when Yum! Foods (owners of the Bell) agreed to pay a penny a pound more for tomatoes, resulting in the workers receiving a 75% increase in pay. To quote the article: "As some growers began to implement the Yum/McDonald’s agreement — an extra paycheck cut to the farmworkers by the buyers, not the growers, mind you — the Florida Tomato Growers Exchange (FTGE), representing 90 percent of the state’s growers, said any members who adopted this policy would be fined $100,000 per worker benefiting from the agreement."

In personal news, I wrote a paper for my Language and Literacy Development in L2 Learners class yesterday that managed to work in Robert Anton Wilson and Feri/Reclaiming Wicca discourse. Specifically, I was considering the Language Acquisition Device (a.k.a., the black box of language learning) and the perhaps-associated Deep Structure of transformative-generative grammar (both developed originally by Noam Chomsky) in relation to Deep Reality and Deep Self. L2 learners, by the way, are those learners for whom English is not their crib-tongue, but I want to develop this paper beyond that. The Gnostic use of Bythos (how does one get Greek letters to show up in LJ posts?) might also show up as I develop this. I know this seems academic, niche, and probably uninteresting to the vast lot of you, but I would love it if anyone had any recommendations about directions I might go with this, resources upon which I could draw, or similar lines of thought I could read. You all rawk!

If this works out, I think I might include it as a chapter in a book I want to write presenting "A utopian pedagogy for the new, sacred revolution rooted in mup", which is, right now, called "Pedagogy of the Strange" in my head, but I think i want to figure out a better title that brings Hoor-paar-kraat/Harpokrates/Heru-pa-khered/Heru-pa-khruti into the discussion, since he is a deity of both children (being the Crowned and Conquering Child, as well as his origin as Horus/Heru the Younger in Egyptian mythology) and revolution (as Lord of the New Aeon, which I take to mean the lord of what happens after the eschaton is immanentized, after the constant apocalypse -- a word which merely means "revelation" in the Greek).

From lupabitch

2008-04-22T01:30:06Z

Ever wonder how anti-nation-state anarchism and LGBTQQIA liberation interact? Queerfolk have trouble immigrating because they can't marry!

Besides the identity-based outrage, I realize that the United States not recognizing marriages in other countries represents a violation of one of the most basic elements of interaction between truly sovereign groups, which is the mutual recognition of contracts. This has been the most basic acknowledgement of sovereignty and peership for, literally, millennia. Of course, we knew that the United States has a bad history with this (just ask the First Nations folk), but that could at least be quote-unquote "excused" due to the large cultural chasm and internalized ethnocentrism and bigotry. This is between us and the Netherlands (to choose one mentioned in the article), a culture placed rather firmly in the larger cultural current within which we swim, and which is (supposedly) on the same level as we ae, yet we don't recognize their contracts? As for Canada, which was also mentioned in the the article, we love to refer to them as "Our Wonderful Neighbor to the North" and "the 51st State", and we don't recognize their contracts?

Remember my thoughts on the need to mention the poverty of nations with "strange" or "harmful" customs? I fear a creeping United States superiority I can hear sneaking into our discourse. The concept that we are somehow inherently "superior" to other cultures -- one which I don't recall experiencing seriously in 26 years of life -- is dangerous.

What do ya'll think?

I think I got all these from lupabitch, who got them from other people

2008-04-17T17:38:20Z

John Michael Greer, Arhdruid, discusses the problems of a civilization based on specialization.

A follow-up, perhaps, to the report of the new continent of trash in the Pacific (remember, it's larger than Australia!); 6,000,000 pounds of garbage were found on beaches in one day, by only 378,000 volunteers worldwide! More than half of that was found in the United States, by the way.

Now, I wasn't going to post this story about an eight-year-old getting a divorce, because I don't know enough about the situation to form an intelligent opinion. Of course, I have un-intelligent opinions, but they're not worth spreading. The reason I'm spreading this story is because of this line: "Yemen, one of the world's poorest countries, has no law governing the minimum age of marriage." Again with the need to mention a country's economic (and, ergo, social) status! Just like the article about burning witches, I find this comment irrelevant. The only purpose I can see is to demonize, de-humanize, or, at the least, infantilize poor countries (particularly poor countries containing people of color that are neither industrialized nor our friends). This linking of economy to moral development is, itself, morally repugnant to me! Now, I realize that this culture into which I was born has at least a coupole generations in it of explicitly linking the two, but i had always thought of these teachings (commonly found, just by sheer demographics, as a Christian meme; wealth is a gift from God and God oinly gives gifts to those who deserve them, ergo anyone who has wealth deserves it, ergo, anyone who has wealth is virtuous and anyone who doesn't, isn't). I feel like this is setting up either ethnocide (a word chosen because it can refer to the destruction of a culture through forceful but technically non-violent social means as well as include genocide) or "the white man's burden" crap all over again, and I don't even know which is worse!

Ah, but some of you (ok, a very few) might be wondering how I can justify a conception of kalokagathia (classical Greek veneration of the beauty of the human form) in a worldview such as this. This is because, to me, kalokagathia is a call to include Beauty as a virtue itself, rather than as the result if said virtue. That is, if one is beautiful, then that is good and virtuous, but one's state of beauty in and if itself says nothing of your character as a whole. Similarly, one can be brave but miserly, honest but unmindful, loving but hopeless.

Signs of the Times to Come: Immanentizing that Eschaton

2008-04-14T22:45:53Z

Thanks to lupabitch, who gathered these from elfkat and amberite, respectively.

First, a wonderful, informative, and challenging NY Times article discussing the impacts on human societies of global climate change. Though the article is perhaps a little classist ("other poor countries that still commonly attack supposed witches" -- why does the word poor have to be in that sentence? The writer is discussing the cultural trait of attacks against witches, not the socioeconomic status of countries), it does remind me of a Twilight Zone episode we read and acted in 6th grade or so. The aliens turned out the lights and everyone in the neighborhood killed each other, leaving the neighborhood free for alien invasion. The cold, the glaciers, the hurricanes, none of this is what we have to worry about in the case of global climate change; it's our neighbors.

Second, this article, in its own way, announces the birth of a new continent in the Pacific. I'm not lying. By my (rough and quick) calculations, this . . . well, read and find out what it is :-) . . . is larger than Australia. (For the curious, I took the area of Australia from here, ran it through the converter at this website -- note that either a period or a comma will be taken as a decimal point -- to get the area in square miles and then used my computer's calculator to divide by 2, then by 3.14159 -- pi, obviously -- and then hit square-root. I received the number 687 -- approximately, of course -- for the radius, resulting in a diameter of about 1374 miles. Since the linked article lists the size of the thing at 1500 miles wide, I deduced it was larger than Australia. I don't have time to do it the other way, unfortunately; I'm late for class).

tristissima @ 2008-04-14T10:32:00

2008-04-14T17:47:04Z

Thanks to dragonscholar, I now know that even the Right Wing is recruiting for the homosexual agenda. Seriously, though, if that quotation isn't the epitome of not only the fearful nature of right wing homophobic frames ("they're out to recruit us!"; note the quote's intriguing use of the word "evangelical"), but also (and worse) the virulent anti-pleasure meme infecting their ideology, I don't know what is. Now, I'm fairly hardcore on the "opposite" side, perhaps, at least intellectually, but still. Pleasure is good :-)

Grr, wanted to be profound there, bjt it ain't working for me at the moment. Oh, well. :-)

bilenski believes that a Depression will be declared soon (he originally told me tomorrow). Yes, that's right, a Depression, like in the 30s. This article discusses some of why. The RPGer in me is thinking that the Depression is a great setting and that, as we get closer and closer to some of the cyberpunk-style technology I've seen people on my friendslist link to, we're looking for some awesome. Other parts of me are thinking that this may very well be a necessary reboot for our system, if not the chance for new social, economic, and governmental structures to grow. Widespread hardship is the perfect fertilizer for utopias. Finally, a third part of me mourns even more deeply the loss of hobo culture in this country (hobos having turned into the homeless of the last 40 or 50 years). It used to be that we had an extra-governmental information service (a niche largely now filled by the internet, but that is widely propagandified or propagandificable, by both traditional governments and neo-governments/corporations in a way that direct human contact is not), work, and art/culture exchange. We don't hahat anymore, that I can see, and I worry how this country is going to survive a Depression without it.

Daily (well, I'm trying!) Divinatory Draw

2008-04-08T16:41:46Z

First, Free Will Astrology, my guiding read for the week:
Cancer Horoscope for week of April 3, 2008

In recent years there has been a rash of climbers shedding all their clothes on Mount Everest. A sherpa by the name of Lakpa Tharke claims the world's record for high-altitude nudity, having stood skyclad for three minutes at the 29,035-foot summit. Some Nepali authorities are seeking a ban on such displays, believing that it defiles the revered mountain. "How would Westerners feel about people stripping in church?" they ask. Not meaning any disrespect to them, I urge you, Cancerian, to make "in the buff on the holy mountaintop" your power metaphor of the week. Blend sacredness and nakedness in any way that appeals to your imagination, especially if it's in high places or makes you high.

Healing with Angels:
Healing (reversed)

Runic Tarot:
Peorth (reversed), Rune 14, labelled "Gamble, Fate, Fortune", and ruled by Libra and Scorpio

Medieval Scapini Tarot:
The Empress (reversed)

Goddess Tarot:
Two of Pentacles

Spiral Tarot:
Nine of Pentacles

Spanish Flashcard:
#732 -- la prenda (pledge, article of clothing)

Blank Tarot:
Blank

Feri Deck:
Temperance (reversed)

NOTE TO SELF: YOU NEED AT LEAST 25 MINUTES TO DO THE READING. NOW RUN TO THERAPY!

Theology of Duality: A mup perspective Seeking Discussion

2008-04-05T17:39:51Z

I just posted this to neos_alexandria@yahoogroups.com and thought ya'll might like to see it.

DISCLAIMER: I wrote this while attending a teaching seminar, so I apologize if it doesn't flow as well as it might or communicate as awesomely as it should.

Sannion ait:
"All gods
are complex and multifaceted - and often contain their seeming
antithesis within them."

I would say necessarily so.

At the center of the hurricane, the web (everything), is the eye, the spider, the not-hurricane (in mup, Azathoth in the hurricane analogy and Deep Reality in the web analogy). We are the farflung raindrops at the edge of the storm, the distant threads of spidersilk at the edge of the web. The gods are the whipping winds at the edge of the eye, the foundational threads that uphold the rest of the web upon which our threads are draped. Duality, here, is one element of the climatological or architectural matrix which interfaces between that center and us.

OR

There is a beautiful woman, larger than galaxies or string theory, more beautiful than sanity, morality, or ignorance, upon whose eyelashes the featherlight tapestried illusion of the world rests. In mup, this is Inanna. Here, we are images in the spread of the world, avatars of maya, and the gods are Inanna's eyelashes, upon which our experience is draped. Duality is one of the threads (or two of them ;-p) in the tapestry.

OR

There are three Souls or Selves: Talking Self, Younger Self, and Deep Self. Talking Self communicates and expresses in language; Younger Self communicates and expresses in image (not visuals, but the poetic sense of image -- though without language!); and Deep Self communicates and expresses either in experience or in a manner so disparate from Talker's language that it is impossible or nearly so to discuss it while inhabiting Talking Self (the spider who weaves the World Wide Web). Deep Self is what I describe as "the part of you that's everything". "Self" lives somewhere between Younger Self and Deep Self. Perhaps it's a gate through which our experience must travel in order to go into and bring something back from Deep Self. Perhaps it's made of horn. Duality is, maybe, an analogous gate between Talking Self and Younger Self. It, maybe, is made of ivory.

OR

Antinomianism is one path to power, freedom, and a conscious, pleasurable (either as defined by Epicurus or by one of the more archetypal hedonists) life. We break our own sacred laws to experience the fullness of existence and transmute habit into choice. The gods are more powerful, more free, more conscious, and more pleasured than we are. Therefore, they must be more antinomian than we are and must therefore have discovered what is behind the thesis-antithesis-synthesis cycle.

AH! THE LISTENER SAYS!

This is what each of these ontologies highlights, with important distinctions between each of course (left to later discussion for the moment). There is something behind seeming duality, something deeper than dialectic, something more radical than dichotomy, and _that_ is to what the gods are tied, _that_ is the substance of their being. Gods necessarily include their antithesis because, if they didn't, they would be people or spirits or servitors or MAYBE egregorai (though with that last, I might argue that their nature as amalgamations of a group's mana, they get closer to the radical existence of the gods).

tristissima @ 2008-04-05T09:13:00

2008-04-05T16:14:19Z

*An Ecstatic Presence Empowerment for Play: "That I Am."*
by LaSara FireFox, www.lasarafirefox.com

You are intimately connected to everything, everywhere.

When we put something outside of ourselves, we are engaging in the practice
of division. This practice can be a useful veil upon the path to union, but
even the path is a veil that can get in the way of the destination. In
reality, there is no destination.

I am, as I have been, as I will always be.

When you feel separation - whether through love, longing, desire,
rejection, repulsion, hope, definition, clinging, etc. - realize that you
are THAT, too. You are the thing you desire, you hold the thing you long
for, you are one with the thing that repulses you.

All things are held within the Divine. The Divine is in all things. We are
each part of this grand tapestry, and are never separate from the All That
Is.

Experience the Power of I Am. Notice every time you say, "I am..." today.
If you are creating an "I AM" with the statement that feels less than in
total alignment with your most true self, choose a new statement of truth.
In every moment you are creating. Bring consciousness to your own healing
into wholeness.

Consider yourself empowered!

(peace. passion. presence.)

Two interesting divinatory notes and some possibly relevant current events

2008-04-05T01:59:01Z

That Imbolc 8 from yesterday has reversed itself into an upright position . . . This is going from the coward's way out, from getting someone else to fight my battles for me to facing them, finding a new strength, confidence, and creating new challemges to break out of a dull and meaningless period of my life. Lots of Mars here; dies anyone know the current astrology on Mars? "So failure or success matters little, but what has to be done must be done".

The Spiral tarot is sticking in Wands (hmm, Fire . . .), transmuting a Four into a reversed Knight . . . Optimism for the future, a change in (mental/spiritual) residence becoming stagnation or useless energy? Wands is Fire, as is Mars . . .

These are the two things that have jumped in my face (well, that and el origen coming up on the first day I have a full set of eight draws . . .)

Now, the intriguing thing about all this is that when I went to take a shower earlier today, I discovered one of me had broken (I knew it was coming) and another broke as I was removing it from my wrist (I was NOT expecting that!)! Not to mention that last Woden's Day, my ileke broke for no apparent reason while I was playing Three Flies Up in the Barefoot Parking Lot with a hackeysack late at night . . .

The ileke, I was told when I showed it to the Heart of the Rose Society, was all wrong, so I thought that that was that, but the other two . . .

The one I was somewhat expecting was my community me, the ice necklace from Mr. Mister on playa wrapped around an old rubber bracelet from my alma mater's Safe Space program. The ice from the necklace is now missing and the black plastic is flapping all around. The one I wasn't expecting was my education is freedom bracelet, which is flat gone (or awaiting creative recycling into a new me) -- Interjection: I feel something in my left hand, whose me broke all the way on playa; it is also the hand I associate with self due to Iron Pentacle symbolism. Interestingly, the bracelet broke on the spine of the D, making it Ducation, rather than Education. I am still leading, but no longer leading out.

I feel as if the genius of Free Will Astrology is forcing me to enact its edict this week. I am called to nakedness and half my me are gone! I also ponder the meaning of my giving of the me during my Antinoan mystery. Shall they be gone from me now?

Note the Answered Prayers reversed and the Hekate reversed . . .

Daily Divinatory Draw

2008-04-05T01:29:22Z

First, Free Will Astrology, my guiding read for the week:
Cancer Horoscope for week of April 3, 2008

In recent years there has been a rash of climbers shedding all their clothes on Mount Everest. A sherpa by the name of Lakpa Tharke claims the world's record for high-altitude nudity, having stood skyclad for three minutes at the 29,035-foot summit. Some Nepali authorities are seeking a ban on such displays, believing that it defiles the revered mountain. "How would Westerners feel about people stripping in church?" they ask. Not meaning any disrespect to them, I urge you, Cancerian, to make "in the buff on the holy mountaintop" your power metaphor of the week. Blend sacredness and nakedness in any way that appeals to your imagination, especially if it's in high places or makes you high.

Healing with Angels:
Self-Acceptance

Runic Tarot:
Imbolc 8, representing the 4th week of March, labelled Challenge, and ruled by Aries (by time) and Scorpio (by number)

Medieval Scapini Tarot:
Eight of Swords

Goddess Tarot:
Three of Swords (reversed)

Spiral Tarot:
Knight of Wands (reversed)

Spanish Flashcard:
#191 -- el cielo: sky, heaven(s)

Blank Tarot:
Blank

Feri Deck:
Birds on the Wire

Found my Feri deck!

2008-04-04T04:48:43Z

Today's Feri card:
Hekate (reversed)

Daily Divinatory Drawing

2008-04-03T18:57:38Z

First, Free Will Astrology, my guiding read for the week:
Cancer Horoscope for week of April 3, 2008

In recent years there has been a rash of climbers shedding all their clothes on Mount Everest. A sherpa by the name of Lakpa Tharke claims the world's record for high-altitude nudity, having stood skyclad for three minutes at the 29,035-foot summit. Some Nepali authorities are seeking a ban on such displays, believing that it defiles the revered mountain. "How would Westerners feel about people stripping in church?" they ask. Not meaning any disrespect to them, I urge you, Cancerian, to make "in the buff on the holy mountaintop" your power metaphor of the week. Blend sacredness and nakedness in any way that appeals to your imagination, especially if it's in high places or makes you high.

Healing with Angels:
Answered Prayer (reversed)

Runic Tarot:
Imbolc 8 (reversed), representing the 4th week of March, labelled Challenge, and ruled by Aries (by time) and Scorpio (by number)

Medieval Scapini Tarot:
Knight of Coins

Goddess Tarot:
VI - Love, ruled by Venus (reversed)

Spiral Tarot:
Four of Wands

Spanish Flashcard:
#651 - el origen (origin)
Interestingly enough, there is a Chruch Father named Origen

Blank Tarot:
Blank

Feri Deck:
Not in my purse where I thought it was! Grr!

Been meaning to do this for a while . . .

2008-04-03T03:00:52Z

Daily divinatory deck draws! I'll draw one card from each deck and their union, plus the weekly Free Will Astrology reading shall be informative! Maybe!

Full list of my divinatory decks off the top of my head: Doreen Virtue's Healing with the Angels Oracle Cards, Runic Tarot, a special handmade pseudo-Tarot from veedub, Scapini Medieval Tarot, Dragon Tarot, Goddess Tarot, a blank make-your-own Tarot deck, and a box of Spanish flash cards my grandfather just told me to take home!

First, Free Will Astrology:
Cancer Horoscope for week of April 3, 2008

In recent years there has been a rash of climbers shedding all their clothes on Mount Everest. A sherpa by the name of Lakpa Tharke claims the world's record for high-altitude nudity, having stood skyclad for three minutes at the 29,035-foot summit. Some Nepali authorities are seeking a ban on such displays, believing that it defiles the revered mountain. "How would Westerners feel about people stripping in church?" they ask. Not meaning any disrespect to them, I urge you, Cancerian, to make "in the buff on the holy mountaintop" your power metaphor of the week. Blend sacredness and nakedness in any way that appeals to your imagination, especially if it's in high places or makes you high.

Runic Tarot:
Samhain 11 (reversed), representing the third week of January, labelled Rebellion, and ruled by Capricorn (by time) and Aquarius (by number)

Healing with the Angels:
Friendship (reversed)

Medieval Scapini Tarot:
Page of Wands

Spanish flash cards:
#232: el consuelo/consolar: comfort, consolation/to console

Feri, Dragon Tarot, Goddess Tarot, and blank draws -- as well as thoughts and interpretations -- to come later. For now, what are ya'll's thoughts? :-)

Free Will Astrology

2008-04-02T17:02:40Z

Cancer Horoscope for week of April 3, 2008

In recent years there has been a rash of climbers shedding all their clothes on Mount Everest. A sherpa by the name of Lakpa Tharke claims the world's record for high-altitude nudity, having stood skyclad for three minutes at the 29,035-foot summit. Some Nepali authorities are seeking a ban on such displays, believing that it defiles the revered mountain. "How would Westerners feel about people stripping in church?" they ask. Not meaning any disrespect to them, I urge you, Cancerian, to make "in the buff on the holy mountaintop" your power metaphor of the week. Blend sacredness and nakedness in any way that appeals to your imagination, especially if it's in high places or makes you high.

Found my charger!

2008-03-31T00:27:22Z

I am once more reachable by phone!!!!

Wa-hoo!!!!

I found my phone!

2008-03-30T23:40:55Z

Now I just need to find my charger . . . .

:-p

tristissima @ 2008-03-30T13:46:00

2008-03-30T20:52:02Z

So . . .

I danced with Pombagira on Friday night.

One of the Pombas present danced up to me and kinda just laid on me that Oshun is in my heart, Obatala is on my head, and Kali is my mother.

She also said that Pomba is an exu of Kali, which was quite intriguing. I am now pondering in the back of my mind the differences and similarities between an exu (from Ifa and Yoruba-descended Afro-diasporic traditions) and a sukkal (from Sumer, Akkad, and Babylon). Reading through a pamphlet I happened to own concerning Obatala, I am also pondering the connections between awo (from Ifa, et cetera) and me (from Sumer, et cetera). Much to think about there.

More importantly (perhaps) is that Obatala's initiates are often given taboos against drinking and cussing and for cleanliness and high moral standards. Dammit! I gotta clean? ;-p

Watch this. Now.

2008-03-29T17:36:48Z

tristissima @ 2008-03-29T08:59:00

2008-03-29T16:06:54Z

News Release

Estimate: 120 Veteran Suicides Per Week


March 24, 2008	Email to a Friend Print Friendly Version

Late last year, a CBS News investigation found that in 2005 "there were at least 6,256 suicides among those who served in the armed forces. That's 120 each and every week, in just one year."

Last week, CBS News reported on data it had just obtained from the government on veterans who were recently treated by the Veterans Administration. In this limited sample, "two age groups stood out between 2000 and 2007. First, ages 20-24 -- those likely to have served during the Iraq-Afghan wars. Suicide attempts rose from 11 to 47. And for vets ages 55 to 59, suicide attempts jumped from 19 to 117."

JOYCE and KEVIN LUCEY

Joyce and Kevin Lucey are the parents of Jeffrey Lucey, who committed suicide after being in Iraq for five months in 2004. Joyce Lucey said today: "My son was betrayed first by a government who sent him to war and then by the Veterans Administration for not giving him the treatment he needed. He and others died from this war but their names will never be on a memorial wall.

"The letters we received from him were brief and sanitized. But to his girlfriend of six years, he said in April of 2003 he felt he had done immoral things and that he wanted to erase the last month of his life. 'There are things I wouldn't want to tell you or my parents, because I don't want you to be worried. Even if I did tell you, you'd probably think I was just exaggerating. I would never want to fight in a war again. I've seen and done enough horrible things to last me a lifetime.'"

Kevin Lucey said today: "Jeffrey had Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, but PTSD is not so much a mental dysfunction as a normal response to an abnormal situation. Jeffrey refused to go to the VA due to the stigma associated with it. We finally got him to the VA, but after he committed suicide, the VA wouldn't give us all his medical records, claiming a Freedom of Information Act exemption. We finally managed to get the records -- Jeffrey had told them how he was thinking of committing suicide and they put him down as a moderate risk."

Joyce and Kevin Lucey testified at the recent Winter Soldier conference. Audio of their testimony is available online, as is video of various testimony.

CLOY RICHARDS

Cpl. Cloy Richards served two tours in Iraq as a Marine, including a siege of Fallujah. He returned home suicidal and fought with the VA for almost two years trying to obtain help for his traumatic brain injury and PTSD. Ultimately, his mother had to go to Congress to obtain the help he needed.

Richards contributed several poems to Warrior Writers: Re-Making Sense, a collection of creative writing and art by members of Iraq Veterans Against the War. One of his poems, "Survivor's Guilt," is available online.

More Information

MIKE BOWMAN

Bowman testified before the House Committee on Veterans' Affairs in December. He said: "As my family was preparing for our 2005 Thanksgiving meal, our son Timothy was lying on the floor of my shop office, slowly bleeding to death from a self-inflicted gunshot wound. His war was now over, his demons were gone. Tim was laid to rest in a combination military, firefighter funeral that was a tribute to the man he was.

"Tim was the life of a party, happy-go-lucky young man that joined the National Guard in 2003 to earn money for college and get a little structure in his life. On March 19 of 2005 when Specialist Timothy Noble Bowman got off the bus with the other National Guard soldiers of Foxtrot 202 that were returning from Iraq he was a different man. He had a glaze in his eyes and a 1,000-yard stare, always looking for an insurgent. ...

"[My son] was not counted in any VA statistics of any kind. He had not made it into the VA system because of the stigma of reporting mental problems, he was National Guard, and he was not on a drill weekend when he took his life. The only statistical study that he was counted in was the CBS study. And there are many more just like him. We call them KBA's, killed because of action. The unknown fallen."

More Information

YANIA PADILLA

Sister of Walter Padilla, Yania said today: "My brother committed suicide on April 1, 2007. He was about to become engaged, they'd bought rings, they had gone house-hunting the day before. He'd been discharged with PTSD in February of 2005. He'd gone to the VA, but they just gave him some pills. He was withdrawn and introspective."

See "Vet's war continued at home."

For background, see:

"Suicide Epidemic Among Veterans"

Nov. 13, 2007

"Suicides Seen Among Vets Treated By VA"

March 20, 2008

CNN reported Feb. 3, 2008 that according to the military's own statistics: "Every day, five U.S. soldiers try to kill themselves. Before the Iraq war began, that figure was less than one suicide attempt a day."

For more information, contact at the Institute for Public Accuracy:

David Zupan, (541) 484-9167

tristissima @ 2008-03-24T18:08:00

2008-03-25T01:09:19Z

I has a new blog

2008-03-14T03:48:18Z

I had to set up a blogger blog during a class discussion on technology in the classroom.

Rather than letting it fester like a boil on the ass of the Internet with no guiding objective, I decided to make it a blog exploring strange new shadowy areas of pedagogical possibility. In other words, a blog wherein I try to build a pedagogy or pedagogies out of all the radical and countercultural ideas and ideologies bouncing around in my head. If anyone would like to comment, weigh in, or just see how postmodern anarcho-situationism, eclectic occultism, and the rampant over-application of scientific and artistic theories can all affect how I might run a classroom.

The URL is magickeducator.blogspot.com

San Jose Poetry Slam!!!!

2008-03-07T05:13:19Z

This Monday, March 10th
MACLA, 501 S. First Street
7:30 pm
ALL AGES
$6 cover
Hosted by Mike McGee!
Featuring Rob Sturma, the poet formerly known as Ratpack Slim!!!!!

Continuing this Strange Music Theme

2008-02-29T08:57:45Z

I was listening to the Gorillaz song, Clint Eastwood.

Oh oh oh oh oh

I aint happy, Im feelin glad
I got sunshine, in a bag
I'm useless, but not for long
The future is coming on
I'm happy, I'm feeling glad
I got sunshine, in a bag
I'm useless, but not for long
The future is coming on
It's coming on
It's coming on
It's coming on
It's coming on

Yeah... Ha Ha!
Finally someone let me out of my cage
Now, time for me is nothing 'cause I'm counting no age
Now I couldn't be there
Now you shouldn't be scared
I'm good at repairs
And I'm under each snare
Intangible
Bet you didn't think so I command you to
Panoramic view
Look I'll make it all manageable
Pick and choose
Sit and lose
All you different crews
Chicks and dudes
Who you think is really kickin' tunes?
Picture you gettin' down in a picture tube
Like you lit the fuse
You think it's fictional?
Mystical? Maybe
Spiritual
Hearable
What appears in you is a clearer view cos you're too crazy
Lifeless
To know the definition for what life is
Priceless
For you because I put you on the hype shit
You like it?
Gunsmokin' righteous with one toke
Psychic among those
Possess you with one blow

I ain't happy, I'm feeling glad
I got sunshine, in a bag
I'm useless,but not for long
The future is coming on
I ain't happy, I'm feeling glad
I got sunshine, in a bag
I'm useless, but not for long
The future is coming on
It's coming on
It's coming on
It's coming on

The essence the basics
[Clint Eastwood lyrics on http://www.metrolyrics.com]

Without it you make it
Allow me to make this
Child, like in nature
Rhythm
You have it or you don't that's a fallacy
I'm in them
Every sprouting tree
Every child apiece
Every cloud you see
You see with your eyes
I see destruction and demise
Corruption in disguise
From this f**kin' enterprise
Now I'm sucking to your lies
Through Russ, though not his muscles but the percussion he provides
with me as a guide
But y'all can see me now cos you don't see with your eye
You perceive with your mind
That's the inner
So I'm gonna stick around with Russ and be a mentor
With a few rhymes so mother f**kers
Remember where the thought is
I brought all this
So you can survive when law is lawless
Feelings, sensations that you thought were dead
No squealing, remember
(that it's all in your head)

I ain't happy, I'm feeling glad
I got sunshine, in a bag
I'm useless, but not for long
The future is coming on
I ain't happy, I'm feeling glad
I got sunshine, in a bag
I'm useless, but not for long
My future is coming on
It's coming on
It's coming on
It's coming on
It's coming on
My future is coming on
It's coming on
It's coming on
It's coming on
It's coming on
My future is coming on
It's coming on
It's coming on
It's coming on
It's coming on
My future is coming on
It's coming on
It's coming on
My future is coming on
It's coming on
It's coming on
My future is coming on
It's coming on
It's coming on
My future

This part, in particular, stuck out to me as I was listening to it:

I'm in them
Every sprouting tree
Every child apiece
Every cloud you see
You see with your eyes
I see destruction and demise
Corruption in disguise
From this f**kin' enterprise
Now I'm sucking to your lies
Through Russ, though not his muscles but the percussion he provides
with me as a guide
But y'all can see me now cos you don't see with your eye
You perceive with your mind
That's the inner

And I began to get very curious about something, something I've never heard talked about before.

Hip-Hop Spirituality.

Yup, I said it. Hip-Hop Spirituality.

We can approach this two ways, I think. The first is the appearance of spiritual themes and elements in hip-hop, particularly (being me asking the question) alternate spirituality, particularly pagan/occult/magical spirituality.

Thus, question #1: Where have you seen any spirituality crop up in hip-hop? In what songs? Any spirituality, whatsoever, by the way, not just the two types in which I am particularly interested.

The other way to approach it is the application of hip-hop culture to spirituality (again, particularly alternative, particularly pagan/occult/magical). We have hip-hop politics, hip-hop fashion, hip-hop fiction, hip-hop academics, hip-hop philosophy, et cetera. Why not hip-hop spirituality.

Thus, question #2 & 3: Are you aware of any hip-hop spirituality movements? Hip-hop Christianity, hip-hop Buddhism, hip-hop Asatru, anything? How might one construct a hip-hop spirituality? How would your spirituality look through a hip-hop filter?

Thanks in advance for ya'll's responses!!!!