An etherealgirl's Adventures in Cyberland

last dance

2007-05-23T00:30:00.000-07:00

I don't watch a whole lot of tv but I've had a secret little obsession with Dancing With the Stars the last few months and so tonight was the one I've been waiting for all season. I actually didn't get hooked on it till the fourth show aired this season, quite by accident really. I'd just finished watching a missed Lost episode online, which at that point was my only prime time tv obsession, when I noticed the Dancing With the Stars Logo and my curiosity was piqued. I watched the first episode of this season, and then naturally I had to watch the second one and the first elimination episode and from that moment on I was completely taken in. I've been a faithful fan ever since and I even got my daughter and hubby hooked on it in the process as well.

The last two weeks have been complete torture for me as I was totally in love with the four remaining celebs and hated to see any of them go, though to be honest, I've been sad to see everyone leave the show because they were all so much fun to watch and exhibited so much heart and courage.

But yesterday's performances were especially satisfying to watch, for me anyway. Leila and Maks' pasa doble was gorgeous, Julianne and Apolo's Rhumba was very sexy and highly under-rated by grouchy old Len, and "theatrical" though it might have been, I totally loved Joey and Kym's cha-cha. And everybody was rockin' their freestyle - I was in heaven by the time Joey and Kym's Last Dance played out!

And tonight's perfect 30s for all three couples was a great way to finish but I'm going to totally miss this group of dancers even as I look forward to next season.

Apolo and Julianne really did have the best couples chemistry and they were always fun to watch. All in all, I'm happy with the result tonight, though all 3 couples have been giving awesome performances week after week.

I just hope next season's group will be as much fun as this group was :-)

Now that it's all over for the season, all I've got left to look forward to is Lost's 2 hour season finale tomorrow.

an update from the ethereal plane

2007-05-13T00:31:00.000-07:00

Oh I just cannot believe how horribly long it has been since I've been here to post. Makes me so sad... I've been busy, I've been sick, I've been uninspired for the most part. But I'm up early this Mother's Day morning perusing my fav reads and Crooks and Liars has just made my Mother's Day with this sneak preview of Rush's Far Cry from Snakes and Arrows.

My little sis already has the CD, super-mega-Rush fan that she is, but along with everything else in my disorganized life right now, I've not fired up iTunes for a listen yet, but it sounds great and I'm so excited coz the 3 of us are gonna FINALLY go see Rush for the first time EVER on July 25th (the day after hubby and my 25th wedding anniversary - what an AWESOME present) and my summer has just been made!!!!

In other news, phase 3 of our major remodelling project is just about to roll out - probably by mid-June. We've bought the ubatuba granite and the Eleganza travertine porcelain tile in Ocre for the floors, we've got a contractor and a cabinetmaker who is going to build us some gorgeous caramel maple cabinets and today we bought the kitchen appliances. All we've gotta do now is buy the undermount sink and faucet and the door pulls and knobs and then we are good to go.

Stu and I have also planted some flowers - blue wonder heliotropes and creamy minature roses and Gazania Gazanias in the front and mulitcolor impatiens, sunny yellow crysanthemums in the back - and enjoyed a gorgeous mild and sunny day today for our shopping.

Oh and we finally bought paint to complete our master bedroom redecorating job: One wall is going to be Jakarta (DEC737) and 3 walls Gourmet Honey (DE6150) from Dunn-Edwards. Stu already installed our ceiling fan and once the walls are painted, the draperies up I guess I will have to snap a few pics of the lovely made over bedroom.

I really should post the sunroom, and bathroom remodel pics as well but I'm guessing I won't get around to any of that till the kitchen is done. Wish I could be more faithful to my blog but I guess I just need a big ole break - someday, I hope I'll get myself together and get back here regularly. Right now, though, nothing is on schedule, on time, or particularly coherent. I don't know why - I blame it on my brain adjusting to midlife. LOL! I need to drink more water, eat more raw, and get my life in order.

Happy Mother's Day to all you lovely moms out there!!!

i don't have one

2006-11-28T07:15:00.000-08:00

...an accent that is. That is what I've been telling hubby for years when he has teased me about sounding like a Hoosier. Though I am one (Indianapolis born)... but I DO NOT sound like it. :-p

When I saw the quiz via a link at Pandagon, I knew I had to take the test and prove it to hubby once and for all:

What American accent do you have? Your Result: The Midland "You have a Midland accent" is just another way of saying "you don't have an accent." You probably are from the Midland (Pennsylvania, southern Ohio, southern Indiana, southern Illinois, and Missouri) but then for all we know you could be from Florida or Charleston or one of those big southern cities like Atlanta or Dallas. You have a good voice for TV and radio.
The West
Boston
The Inland North
Philadelphia
North Central
The Northeast
The South
What American accent do you have? Take More Quizzes

Hubby btw, does have a small hint of an adorable accent, which I have long pointed out to him, and which may well be why he has insisted that I have one as well (though I clearly do not as indicated by my test results). His is only very slight but it shows up very big when he says: pin or pen (they both sound like "pin"). His family are from Arkansas and his pronunciation of those two words are pretty much the only hints of his southern heritage. It's just one of those lovely little treasures that makes him uniquely him and very comforting somehow.

legendary guitar tales

2006-10-21T23:52:00.000-07:00

Rockers share stories of their most prized possessions.

This bit took me by surprise:

In 1966 Beck gave Page the guitar that was used on the first Led Zeppelin recordings (the Walsh and Beck guitars can be seen in the band's DVD release from 2003). While fans have long thought Beck gave Page the rosewood 1959 Fender Telecaster as a thank-you for getting him in the Yardbirds, Beck says he gave it to him when he quit the band.

"I left the day I gave it to him. I walked out," Beck says. "I was in Dallas. I said 'Jim, I've had enough of this. You'd better have this guitar. I can't be bothered to take it home.' I just ran to the airport with my bag and went home."

Count me as one of those fans who never knew the correct version of this story.

Fun read!

elvis and his all star band

2006-10-13T22:25:00.000-07:00

Elvis superband ad "a surprise internet hit".

I gotta kick out of this BBC Radio 2 clip featuring my hero Jimmy (and my shero Sheryl Crow) as well as many other pop and rock music luminaries. It's very cleverly done and evidently it is a pretty big internet hit. If you haven't seen it yet, the YouTube capture is at the bottom of the Daily Mail article.

It made me smile, so I had to share it...

steve irwin killed by stingray

2006-09-04T16:40:00.000-07:00

I never could watch the show for more than a few minutes coz I'm a wimp and I was always worried sick that he was going to end up meeting his maker on the job. So I wasn't too surprised when my shocked and sorrowful daughter broke the news to me early this morning. Not surprised but very heartbroken for his wife and young children. The only possible small consolation was that it has been reported that in all likelihood, he died instantly.

My thoughts and prayers go out to his family. He will be missed by millions of heartbroken fans and admirers; his activism in support of wildlife will be greatly missed as well, in fact, his dedication and pr work will be irreplaceable.

There will never be another Steve Irwin in this life, and for that I am so very heartbroken today.

A Memorial Forum can be found here

and speaking of Pluto

2006-08-24T12:42:00.000-07:00

my natal Pluto is located at 2* Virgo and blowing kisses at the Virgo New Moon yesterday. All that action is focused on my 6th house of discipleship, service/work and do I ever need a little discipline, focus and organization there!

Heaven sent as always, April Elliott Kent's latest astrology article, Less Than Perfect, has some lofty thoughts on the meaning of Virgo and Perfection!

pluto demoted

2006-08-24T11:54:00.000-07:00

to Minor Planet Status:

Much-maligned Pluto doesn't make the grade under the new rules for a planet: "a celestial body that is in orbit around the sun, has sufficient mass for its self-gravity to overcome rigid body forces so that it assumes a ... nearly round shape, and has cleared the neighborhood around its orbit."

Pluto is automatically disqualified because its oblong orbit overlaps with Neptune's.

Instead, it will be reclassified in a new category of "dwarf planets," similar to what long have been termed "minor planets." The definition also lays out a third class of lesser objects that orbit the sun — "small solar system bodies," a term that will apply to numerous asteroids, comets and other natural satellites.

From an astrological and personal point of view, it matters very little what designation little Pluto is given; Pluto still packs an impossible to ignore, powerful punch in a natal chart as well as by transition and affects generations and nations.

From an astronomical point of view the Minor Planet Designation no doubt makes a great deal of sense and I imagine that the daunting task of categorizing so many new and recent discoveries and the expectation of having to categorize many more waiting to be found had more than a little something to do with the demotion. It looks like our solar system is a little more crowded then anyone dared to imagine a generation or two ago...

draw your own kaleidoscope

2006-08-24T11:28:00.000-07:00

here!

No I didn't and don't have time for this right now, but I don't have time for anything as usual lately so I just did it anyway :-P

Link courtesy the most awesome Creative Pro Newsletter

And to check out all of Creative Pro's previous listings for the Wacky Web Site of the Week, click here!

screenshot of kaleidoscope builder in progress!!!

what he said: get your drive by tragedy fix 24/7 on cnn

2006-08-20T08:22:00.000-07:00

All JonBenet, All the Time.

To be honest this is only one of the reasons I avoid watching news on TV. To be completely honest, though, I find that I also try to avoid the other perhaps, more relevent news as well, these days. Just can't take it right now...

Nevertheless, the point made is completely valid and raises another disturbing issue with me. Why is it that these horror stories are eaten up by the public? There really and truly seems to be an utterly sick and perverted obsession with tragedies like Jon-Benet as if a large segment of our population just can't get enough of it.

I find that every bit as frightening as the events that inspire these obsessive fixes. As an indication of our collective national health, it just doesn't seem to be a particularly healthy sign at all. I can't help wondering if more people turn it off and walk away than these news channels seem to believe...

ponder this

2006-08-20T07:32:00.000-07:00

I'm just back from a trip back from Kansas (taking my daughter's bf back to college) and Albuquerque (for a far too short visit with family) and as is usual lately I've got nothing. Except this all too true bit of wisdom that served as the opening lines for a recent newsletter I just read via email:

"What difference does it make to the dead, the orphans, and the homeless, whether the mad destruction is wrought under the name of totalitarianism or the holy name of liberty and democracy?"

~~~ Gandhi

What difference indeed...

filmed performances by rock legends discovered

2006-07-16T20:03:00.000-07:00

Hidden hoard of live rock to be released:

THE world’s largest independent rock and pop music archive, featuring stars from Jimi Hendrix to Elvis Costello and from Janis Joplin to Madonna, is to be opened for the first time.

Up to 100,000 songs recorded and filmed between 1966 and 1991 by Bill Graham, the American concert promoter, languished in an underground basement in San Francisco for more than 10 years after his death.

...

There are unknown performances by Led Zeppelin such as a version of Howlin’ Wolf’s Killing Floor, which they later rewrote as the Lemon Song, and a tousle-headed Elton John singing his 1970 ballad Your Song.

From the excruciatingly painful and embarrassing to the sublime, Graham seems to have captured them all, with this incredibly hefty archive. I can't wait to see this!!!

And neither can Jimmy Page evidently:

Jimmy Page, of Led Zeppelin, who spent years begging for scraps from bootleggers so that he could compile a history of the band in 2003, is keen to dive into the archive.

“Bill recorded a San Francisco show that Jimmy remembers as momentous: which Zep fan would not want to hear that?” said an Atlantic Records source last week.

Exactly :-) Very awesome news!

They just don't make Rock Gods like they used to....

wish i was there

2006-07-16T19:27:00.000-07:00

I've only got another couple of weeks before hubby and I sneak off for a litte 24th anniversary mini-vacation (unfortunately it falls right in the middle of school so it's gotta be short) but it can't come fast enough for me! Hopefully I'll have some lovely images to upload and share when we get back.

I hope that each and every one of you are having a glorious, beautiful summer!!!

Love and Light to you all!!!

P.S. That's all I've got right now... I'll try to post again soon

(((hugs)))

23% and growing... chilling olbermann/dean interview

2006-07-13T00:09:00.000-07:00

23% - the approximate percentage of people in this country who profile as authoritarian personalities. And by all accounts the number is growing.

The interview can be found here.

Link found via a commenter at onegoodmove which has a lighter Dean interview with Jon Stewart, found here.

Conservatives Without Conscience

when values and convictions collide

2006-06-09T02:09:00.000-07:00

Once again, my favourite astrologer April Elliott Kent has written an essay that mirrors my own life experience so completely: The Shallow End of the Pool. I've got a Sag signature (stretching across my 9th House and MC) and a Gemini Moon in my own natal chart that probably explains why.

It sounds as though she has been able to hold her tongue in check far more successfully than I've ever been able to, but nevertheless, I can relate completely to that disquieting feeling that follows stressful encounters of the friend and family kind; you know, when otherwise perfectly decent people, people that you love and respect and care about, start saying things you can't believe you are hearing and you find yourself wishing that what you are hearing is not coming out of their precious little mouths. Blood pressures rise, heart beats fast and furiously and something akin to temporary insanity tends to pervade the participants' airspace. And you find yourself standing there, looking at someone who looks and sounds more like an alien than someone you love and trust in the every day, mundane world.

On those fairly rare occasions that I've been able to manage to hold my tongue, for the very reasons she has so eloquently stated, I feel as though I've betrayed myself by not being forthcoming and standing up for what I believe in.

The consequences of opening my mouth, however, has resulted in the equally painful experience of bad, bad feelings for everyone involved.

All in all, it is a completely unsatisfactory compromise and I've yet to successfully learn how to find a balancing middle between the two responses. Still, there's plenty of food for thought to be found in this lovely essay.

a few of my current favourite things

2006-05-31T02:27:00.000-07:00

Okay, so once I got started it now seems that I can't stop. But this is just gonna be quick.

We saw The DaVinci Code last week. And critics and protesters had zero effect on my sheer delight! Yes, I'm sure it's not exactly high art; yes, I know it is fiction not fact (so does the movie); and yes, I've read the book so I knew the plotline very well. I'm no movie critic and I've no problem jumping in with joyous abandon and with a great capacity to give in to the suspension of disbelief. And I suppose I'm one of those all-too-easy to please member of the unwashed masses but it matters diddly... I absolutely loved the movie!!!

My other two favs are in heavy iTunes rotation right now:

Neil Young's raw and outraged Living With War and The Dixie Chicks beautiful Taking the Long Way.

Neil Young's Shock and Awe is an amazing, visceral experience every single time I hear it. It sums it up so painfully and so starkly and captures the outrage I feel so completely, that it almost scares me. Somehow I know that I'm not the only one who feels that way. And I can't get through Families and Flags of Freedom without crying yet. And while it probably hasn't been helping my overall mood lately, I find that I have to listen to it alot. Somehow there is a strange comfort in sharing all these gut wrenching feelings and having them validated and vocally expressed so well...

And I can't say enough about The Dixie Chicks; this cd has surpassed every expectation. The most beautiful and moving song, for me, is Silent House (evidently about Natalie Maines grandma who suffers from Alzheimer's) followed closely by Lullaby (trust me, it's a mom thing and you never ever stop feeling those sentiments no matter how old your baby gets).

But everything on it is awesome and Lubbock or Leave It totally kicks a**.

Post Updated on 05-31-2006 to add a screenshot of the latest desktop I've made featuring Tom Hanks and Audrey Tatou:

Shoutout to my beautiful daughter Mina for giving me some tips on polishing the desktop up! Love you, dear Mina xoxoxox

a couple of things that defy categorization for the moment

2006-05-31T02:02:00.000-07:00

The first one everyone probably already read but I thought it was awesome so I'm posting the link:

Shatner: Horses Can Help Disabled Kids

Yeah, I love William Shatner and I think this is really wonderful!!!! So many things really bring me down this decade (HA!) that I treasure every beautiful little gem like this because it restores my faith in the human race!

This next link... okay, don't harrass me about this. I got the link from a newsgroup I read (I know, I KNOW, but just humour me here a bit, okay????); something I'd never seen or heard of before:

UFO Disclosure Project UFO Meeting courtesy of Youtube.

YES, I watched it; every single minute of it and I was really intrigued...

At about 80:32 George Bush Sr. is mentioned. Then it gets reaaaaaally interesting. Whatever one may think about this kind of thing, it is still intriguing and fascinating stuff and the statements made about the way that Star Wars type programs and scenarios are justified by certain factions of our government... well, let's just say it was just another confirmation for me personally about the way our government is working to our detriment. This meeting happened in May 2001. As far as I know there has been no congressional hearing.

It occurs to me that this can be added on to the enormous pile of so September 10th casualties. Public disclosure of ANYTHING appears to be So September 10th with this lovely administration so it shouldn't be surprising that something as controversial as this would be.

Site link is here.

lz picks up Polar Music Prize

2006-05-31T01:24:00.000-07:00

Umm, yeah, but that was so last week....

You may have noticed my ongoing posting-malaise. You know it is really bad when it takes me about a week to post any kind of Pagey~related news.

Oh well, better late than never, here's some now:

Led Zeppelin picks up the Polar Music Prize

[May 22, 2006] The surviving members of Led Zeppelin received the prestigious Polar Music Prize from Sweden’s king today in the city where they recorded their final studio album 27 years ago.

Robert Plant, Jimmy Page and John Paul Jones crossed the stage of the Stockholm Concert Hall – also the venue for the annual Nobel Prizes – to accept the award they shared with Russian conductor Valery Gergiev. John Bonham, the group’s drummer, who died in 1980, was represented by his daughter, Zoe.

In a short acceptance speech, Plant recalled that Led Zeppelin recorded their last studio album, In Through the Out Door, in a Stockholm studio in 1979.

“It’s a long time ago. Music has been a fantastic passport to us all,” he said.

The award, which is typically split between pop artists and classical musicians, was founded in 1989 by Stig Anderson, manager of Swedish pop group ABBA, through a donation to The Royal Swedish Academy of Music. Each prize winner collects 1 million kronor (around €100,000).

The name of the prize comes from Andersson’s record label, Polar Records.

John Lord, a former member of Deep Purple, read the academy’s citation, calling Led Zeppelin “one of the great pioneers of rock.”

Bonham, Page, Jones and Plant formed Led Zeppelin in 1968. The group disbanded in 1980 after Bonham died, but their music remains hugely popular worldwide.

Before King Carl XVI Gustaf handed over the award diplomas, Swedish band Soundtrack of Our Lives performed Zeppelin hits such as Kashmir and Whole Lotta Love.

To honour Gergiev, the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra played classic music by Pyotr Tchaikovsky, Mikhail Glinka and Sergeij Prokofiev.

The Russian is artistic and general director of St. Petersburg’s Mariinsky Theatre, and will be principal conductor of the London Symphony Orchestra starting in January 2007.

Gergiev said he was “honoured to be on the same stage as my friends Led Zeppelin” and thanked his mother “who made it possible for me to become a musician.”

John Paul Jones and Robert Plant look on
as KingCarl XVI Gustaf greets Jimmy Page

A profile of the honorees sitting in the audience

More images can be found on this page of the Polar Music Prize Site

Note to everyone and anyone who may have noticed an might actually care (lol!):

I dunno what is wrong with me but I just can't get it together right now and so, I guess this is my official admission that I have not abandoned my blog but the posting may be very intermittent for the time being. I don't know how long this is going to last.

Not long hopefully, but think I've got an extreme case of blogger~burnout and I can't seem to get out from under it right now. I'm starting to read blogs more consistently now but mainly I check C&L, OneGoodMove, dKos, FDL, Greenwald and Hullabullo the most. And sometimes, after I've done that I find that I can't summon the energy to read anything else, and when there is something I think I might want to write about, it is because of something I've already read at one of those fine establishments and they've already said everything better than I ever could.

I could do what I've done so often in the past (and will no doubt begin doing again once I get over this burnout period) and just link them with little or no commentary but for some reason, right now I feel very self-conscious doing that. I don't know why.

I know that there are those who would criticize the kind of blog that is long on links and short on commentary but I've done that in the past with no regrets because my biggest goal with my own blog was to be one more opportunity for someone to find something that I believe is very much worth reading about, on the off chance that they didn't already find it somewhere else. I've never claimed to be any great writer or great thinker. Just an information junkie in love with the www and a desire to share what I'm passionate, excited or outraged about. But for whatever reason, the past few months I find I cannot seem to summon up the energy needed to even do that. I keep holding out hope that this will change....

I'm actually having that problem in all aspects of my life right now, both online and off.

Somewhere out there is a sweet friend (at least I'm praying he still is) waiting for a long overdue astrology report with impressions, and I keep starting on it every day and then 200 interruptions later, I set it down for another day. (Dear Friend, if you are reading this, please know I'm gonna get to it as soon as I can, I swear)

It is happening alot at Online groups where I'm supposed to be participating (horrors!) as well. It is happening at home as I listlessly try to pick through responsibilities that have been neglected or gotten half done as I lose my train of thought and pick up something else to do. I've let so many things get to the point of being overwhelming that I just often don't know where to begin. Suffice to say, I don't feel like I've got the right to expend too much energy online while that is going on. So, long story still longer than I meant it to be: things are a mess and I'm trying to work on it, get it under control and get back to things that always gave me the most joy. And... try to recover some of the joy that seems to have gone missing when I do get the chance to indulge in those said things.

Awww, I really think it is the insomnia that is causing the problem. But insomnia is also how I finally managed to post this. I'll stop ramblin now....

pat robertson shares God's latest: a possible tsunami for the pacific northwest

2006-05-17T22:35:00.000-07:00

Rev Pat Robertson: God Says "The Coasts of America Will Be Lashed by Storms"

Although there were lots and lots of quoteworthy gems coming from the comment section, this commenter pretty much sums up my feelings on the matter the very best:

God also said that fat-ass fake religious types that pretend to speak for God will roast like chestnuts in Hell.

By: shemplugosi on May 17, 2006 at 11:58pm

link via HuffPo

hell is for children and animals????

2006-05-04T11:54:00.000-07:00

In reading through the Talk to Action piece, "Every Zygote Is Sacred", or "Can I have my BC already?", I came across this disgusting bit of information, via a commenter that provides the links as well. I'm taking the liberty of posting the entire comment here; yes, I've heard all of this disgusting stuff before and no doubt so have you, but I think it bears repeating OVER and OVER and the source links are provided in the well documented comment:

Good point, actually--not only do the Catholic hospital systems have a history of this, you are seeing dominionist denominations starting to buy up hospitals, too. (One of the things I'm carefully watching, in fact, is whether the Baptist Hospitals chain starts putting in religious-based restrictions. (We have five major hospital providers in Louisville aka the transplant research capital of the US :3. Three of these are religiously affiliated--Caritas (Catholic, specificially Sisters of Nazareth), Baptist Hospitals (Baptist, I suspect Southern Baptist but unsure) and Jewish Hospital (obviously affiliated with the Jewish congregations here, who largely seem to be Conservative Judaism).) One of the things I do make sure with doctors is that they have admitting privs to secular hospitals if need be.)

Regarding the dominionist war on family planning in general, I think it's actually a twofold issue:

a) There is very much a control aspect (in dominionist families, there is a very strict hierarchial setup in that the husband is supposed to be head of household, the wife is supposed to be completely submissive, and the kids are supposed to be completely submissive to the parents). I've posted the following in relation to this thread on Dark Christianity which was concerning longterm effects of abusive childrearing styles in dominionist households:

Heck, to give you an example of how bad this gets, this is from an actual A Beka civics book (specifically William R. Bowen et al., American Government in Christian Perspective, 2nd ed., (Pensacola, Fla.: A Beka, 1997), page 16):

The importance of the family is underscored again and again; however, the family must conform to God's mandate, which is linked, in turn, to the proper relationship of human beings to government. " The A Beka civics text notes, "Governmental authority flows from God to human institutions and to the individuals responsible for ruling others within those institutions [according to] a definite order of command from God to human leaders to their followers. For example, the husband is the head of the wife and the parents are God's representatives to rule their children. Individuals obey God when they submit to and obey the God-appointed authorities over them."

Yes, this is completely typical of dominionist groups (nearly all other dominionist curricula teach it, as do dominionist schools and even dominionist parenting programs).

Examples from the Pearls (which also have published a series of baby-beating manuals popular in the dominionist community and which are often included with the sale of chastening rods and similar "Biblical chastening devices"; they operate a website, No Greater Joy (also the title of one of their manuals on baby-beating the dominionist way) that promotes the same advise online; the Pearls are under investigation by the state of Tennessee for child abuse based on the material in their books):

woman is told to stay with abusive husband because "God hates divorce"

assertive women are accused of having a "Jezebel spirit" (in dominionist groups into "spiritual warfare" there are even exorcisms in attempts to drive "Jezebel spirits" out of women who are seen as being too "uppity" and not "staying in their place")

woman is literally told it is her HUSBAND'S decision, not HERS, whether or not she is to practice birth control and how many children she is to have

In some of the links at stoptherod.net noted above, it's detailed how the Pearls have advocated beating infants as young as eight months old with "chastening rods" for playing with their food and advocate pinching infants as young as four months.

To give you examples of their "childrearing" techniques that I've not already mentioned:

more on tyrant babies! (Did these people watch too much "Family Guy" or something?) Yes, this is very sadly a TYPICAL attitude)

techniques practiced in dominionist households to break will of kids (who are termed "Twinkie twerps" by the Pearls)

the Pearls (who, incidentially, are under investigation by the State of Tennessee for child abuse--in part because of material from the books) actually try to defend their child abuse manuals

advocates being extremely strict from birth; also claims kids being bullied somehow deserved it

yet more fantasies of babies plotting to take over the household from "parental rule"

advocating using a "chastening rod" on a seven-month-old child who will not get to sleep (it's on page two)

advocates beating of children with "chastening rods" made from PVC plumbing pipe for thumbsucking

claims that people who have criticised the Pearls for their extreme methods of childrearing are literally demon-possessed (sadly, a common form of "dead agenting"/"character assassination" in the dominionist community and one reason why it is at times next to impossible to debate dominionists heavily into "spiritual warfare")

Lest people think the Pearls are an abberation, even Dobson uses the beating of a Dachshund to demonstrate how children should have their wills broken (the manner in which he beat the dog is guaranteed to increase aggression).

There is evidence that this has carried over into official government policy with dominionists, in particular with the Abu Ghraib scandal. Actually, there is an EXPLICIT link between dominionism and Abu Ghraib (and, probably, between the generally abusive dynamics and Abu Ghraib); as it turns out, Gen. Boykin is one of the persons behind some of the policies there.

Common Dreams
http://www.yuricareport.com
http://www.yuricareport.com Prison Torture Directory
http://blog.au.org

General Boykin is associated with the AoG and is strongly associated with the increasing dominionist infiltration of the military as well as the hijacking of the chaplaincy system by dominionists:

Daily Howler
http://www.pluralism.org
http://www.yuricareport.com ~ Dominionism
http://www.yuricareport.com ~ Iraq Pentecostal In Charge of Interrogation

So yes, dominionism has been specifically linked to abuse both at Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib--in fact, one of the major players seems to have been a major ringleader of the abuse.

In all of these cases, I'm fairly convinced this is an extension of an underlying coercive dynamic in many, if not most, dominionist churches (it is my sincere belief that most dominionist churches, in particular the pente/charismatic churches affiliated with dominionist movements, are explicitly spiritually abusive and the general patterns of spiritual abuse are starting to show up even in congregations with a recent history of dominionism such as the Southern Baptist Convention).

b) One thing, too, that is a major factor in the dominionist war on family planning is that in many dominionist churches it is explicitly taught as part of the "dominion mandate" that they must "be fruitful and multiply" and that any interference with this is at best a willful act of disobedience towards God. In some circles, women are even explicitly encouraged to have as many children as possible to breed "Christian Soldiers" and women with a "bushel full of kids" are held up to high praise. (Of course, the longterm health consequences of popping out kids every 9-12 months--not to mention the financial consequences--aren't touched upon.)

by dogemperor on Mon Dec 05, 2005 at 08:10:44 AM EST

Not too terribly long ago I was taken to task by a fellow commenter at another site, because I stated that as much as I don't like believing it, it has become clear to me that the reproductive issues that get tangled up within the minds of these people leads to one and only one goal, whether those who are trying to implement it, can or will admit it or not: and that is to control women's bodies and then, as well as any offspring that results from that control.

Reading this reinforces that belief and why I have come to believe that it is so; and I cannot express fully enough my complete and utter contempt for anyone who would claim to be Right to Life and adhere to the childrearing tenets of the repugnant Pearls and the dog-beating psychopath James Dobson. And, it is after moments of reading about the utterly loathsome behaviours of these people, that I am ashamed to say that I wish I believed in Hellfire and Damnation, if only to watch these evil creatures squirm.

God/dess forgive me that; the rage-filled momentary fantasy of Dachshunds eternally tearing Dobson limb to limb and cherubic babes overpowering their monstrous caretakers and beating them unconscious passes and I feel horrid revulsion afterwards... but I find that cannot help the sheer momentary hatred I feel for these people, who claim to love life so much but have absolutely no compassion or regard for the most innocent among us once they are here.

WHAT IS WRONG WITH THESE PEOPLE???? Some things I'm pretty darn sure of: these people don't know the meaning behind the words culture of life. They certainly can't even begin to comprehend the essence of providing and graciously accepting in return a mutual and benign sort of quality of life for all of God's creatures, including and especially those most vulnerable. And since they show no mercy over that which they believe that they have been instructed to be custodians of, I'm thinking they'd better pray like HELL that God is the merciful Father that they don't even pretend to emulate. Because what they deserve is something far less charitable.

Oh, and I'm sorry but I'm still seething a little bit and I just can't help asking: Have you ever wondered how those with the most might and the greatest ability to wreak havoc upon us all, somehow ended up being in the ultimate image of God??? And those who seem to be accused of embuing satanic qualities are those who just happen to be physically weaker and more vulnerable? Isn't it funny how it worked out that way? Umm, yeah... rant over. For today, anyway...

Happy Beltane ~ May Day ~ Beautiful Spring

2006-05-01T20:56:00.000-07:00

Here's my moment of beauty for today:

Have a glorious May dear readers!!!

Love and Light to all (((hugs)))

Sig was created by blending lovely images from Zela aka Marja Flick-Buijs and xymonau aka Dez Pain via their respective galleries at stock.xchng

More on Colbert's brilliant and brave performance

2006-05-01T20:27:00.000-07:00

via Chris Durang's HuffPo Blog: Ignoring Colbert, Part Two

Oh and then there was this from Jesse Kornbluth as well.

And if you would like to thank Stephen Colbert for his intestinal fortitude and brilliance you can do it right here!

I followed the links via my blog addiction, the very awesome C&L.

picking my jaw up off of the floor...

2006-04-30T03:26:00.000-07:00

This was amazing. I don't even remember a time when a reporter has mentioned PNAC to a member of this administration and certainly not like this. That's not to say it hasn't happened before but if it has I'm not aware of it, so it came as a complete and total shock; even though it shouldn't.

The last five years worth of dirty secrets have been a festering wound in dire need of a lancing. If the wound isn't lanced, it is just as likely to nastily erupt of its own volition ~ and that's the good news. The alternative is far more dire but when you are caught up in the midst of a smelly, painful, infected mess, it is hard to focus on any other experience than unrelenting, unforgiving, enduring discomfort.

I can only hope that this righteous reporter will have a positive effect of waking up our press corp to what their collective job is supposed to be. As for Bolton, he ought to be thoroughly ashamed of himself but he has no conscience so I know he isn't. Here's hoping he is removed from his outrageous "recess" appointment before too long.

Then there was this clip of Stephen Colbert's outrageously brave but painfully blunt tribute to the President at the White House Correspondents Dinner last night which apparently left Colbert snubbed ~ can't say I'm surprised as I squirmed uncomfortably through the whole thing myself. It's not as though Colbert's rant and roll wasn't lonnng overdue and right on target; it's more like I'm ashamed on behalf of the object of all this well-deserved derision but I also feel sorry that this man is so completely mockable. It's his own fault but that didn't make it any less painful to watch him receiving his just desserts.

As for the oh so culpable News Media, they got their share of comeuppance as well and I'm sure that probably didn't exactly endear Colbert to them either. Yikes... that was painful...

Still, it's a sad testament to the disconnect much of the country has been operating under for so long. For those who have gotten it from the beginning, I think the outrage has reached the boiling point and the long overdue response is going to play out as a whole lot more of the same, even as the diehard Bush loyalists respond in ever more hysterical denial and deflection and an acceleration of the smear tactics that worked far too well for far too ridiculously long. And those in the (ever diminishing) muddled middle look on in complete horror, not wanting to own any part of it. Unfortunately, that lack of commitment has been a very big part of the problem, imho. And unfortunately, I fear it is going to have to get lots uglier all over, before it has any chance of getting much better.

Something about that (hopefully) diminishing middle; something that I can't help saying because it worries me to death. If we've learned one single thing in these last few horrid years, I hope to heaven that we've managed to learn that each and every one of us don't just have the right, we have the absolute obligation to participate in this American Experiment if it has any hope at all of living up to the dreams and expectations of our forefathers. If we are too lazy and too apathetic or too fearful to take a stand about the things that should matter the most, or to honour the gifts we have been given just by being lucky enough to be citizens of this beautiful country, we deserve exactly what we get.

This country was created expressly to acknowledge and give rights to its people, but with that comes accountability. This government is supposed to be made up of us, to work for us and with us. But it can't do that if we don't do our part, to keep it ethical and to keep it strong, accountable and invulnerable to the weakness of deceit and corruption. It's accountability time, crunch time for all of us. I just hope we've all got the intestinal fortitude and the heart to stick it out and see this through.

UPDATE: I've been gnawing on this all night and reading the blogs and though I only saw the highlighted clips once (and I'd like to watch it all again and get the whole thing), I think this commenter (Choska) at dKos really sums up Colbert's Appearance the best:

It was BRUTAL - The Opposite of Irony

Irony is defined as when the intended meaning is the opposite of the stated meaning. Tonight, I think Colbert wasn't engaging in irony at all, which is why the performance was so devastating.

In line after line he meant EXACTLY what he said, and the assembled journalists and politicos were right to look uncomfortable.

He destroyed Bush, but as rough as he was with Bush he was twice as rough on the press. That line about how Americans didn't want to know about issues like global warming, and the press heard that plea and didn't tell us about it, was crushing.

At the end when he said, 'I have nothing but contempt for these people,' I wasn't so sure he was joking.

This performance, IMHO, was a game changing moment. One of our own got through the gate, and the powers that be in DC have been put on notice.

And that's the word.

Now Play at Neil's Garage

2006-04-28T03:29:00.000-07:00

Have a listen; it's devastatingly raw and real ~ and very very good.

Then check out this review at Truthout.

page plant to play montreux

2006-04-27T21:41:00.000-07:00

Jimmy and Robert are scheduled to play Montreux Fest as part of a tribute to Atlantic Records' founder Ahmet Ertegun on June 30th.

Led Zeppelin was good for Atlantic Records and Atlantic Records was pretty good to Zeppelin as well. So, I can't help wondering why, once again, John Paul Jones appears to have been left out of the loop... colour me disappointed yet again, if not surprised. Oh well... That wouldn't keep me from attending if only that were possible. Which it isn't...

anticipation

2006-04-25T05:42:00.000-07:00

Against my better judgment last night, I followed the links to Loose Change and by the time I got through it I had the headache from hell and literally felt like hurling. Happily, it was time for the nightly walk with the dogs and I was never so happy for some fresh air and some sweet and innocent distraction in my life.

Regarding my better judgment: It's not that I think anything in it is wrong or particularly tinfoil; its rather that it rings entirely too true and that's the complete tragedy of it all. I already knew about much of it and I know what my sick gut and my broken heart already tells me. Sooner or later (and at this point I'm betting a whole lot sooner than later) the truth will out. And it's gonna be particularly ugly for those unable or unwilling to deal with the horrible truth. As for me, I've been living with the ugly truth for a long time and I'm ashamed to say that after 5 years of living with the fear and loathing over what this administration will do next or what latest unwanted revelation will follow I've just about tapped out my coping abilities with it all.

BTW, I don't suppose it takes much seuthsaying to see the writing on the wall these days, but the reason I'm certain this is all gonna come out is because my sweet wonderful hubby who is rational, sensible and Conservative (just not in the neocon insane way), who was horrified that I believed what I did relating 9-11 five years ago, now believes it is very likely after watching months and months of constant revelations about this administration. If you knew my hubby the way I know my hubby, this is a seismic change in his thinking. And he is shaken to the core over this, believe me.

And he's not the only one... it doesn't get any easier with time. After awhile, I find I've got to turn it off and put my head somewhere else before it explodes. So once again, I turn my thoughts to things that give me hope and joy, no matter how superficial it all may seem to the outside world.

I finally pre-ordered The Dixie Chicks' Taking the Long Way and I just bought Pink's I'm Not Dead (technically a birthday present for Mina but I imagine its gonna get alot of play by everyone here via the Family iTunes). Neil Young's Prairie Wind (something we should already have and I don't know why we don't except that these days it takes us forever to get our CD requirements fulfilled due to old age/forgetfulness I spose) and his latest are gonna be next.

I'm really anticipating the summer now because not only are we planning the vacation getaway I've been dreaming about all year but it looks like if we are lucky we might just be able to squeeze in a CSNY date while we are in the approximate vicinity!!!! YAY!!!

Other summer anticipations include a few movies I can't wait to see:

The Lake House

The Break-Up

A Prairie Home Companion

Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest

And, of course, The DaVinci Code, which is just a few weeks away!!!

paradise reclaimed

2006-04-22T06:26:00.000-07:00

Before paradise is completely lost, we can reclaim it for her.

Those who dwell among the beauties and mysteries
of the earth are never alone or weary of life.

~~~~ Rachel Carson

Some good reading today:

Earthday Network Homepage

Earth Day Footprint Quiz

InternationalEarth Day ~ The Official Site

Saving the Future By Looking to the Past

John Muir took walks on the wild side

Sauntering in the footsteps of John Muir

Wishing each and every one of you a beautiful, peaceful and inspiring Earth Day. Take joy in natural beauty today and remember Mother Earth is all we've got. Love and respect your Mother by taking care of her and protecting Her!

bad news, good news courtesy National Geographic

2006-04-18T21:51:00.000-07:00

While perusing National Geographic site for info about Snowflake, I came across this chilling report:

San Francisco's 1906 Quake: What If It Struck Today? According to this article, it would be a catastrophe of Katrina-esque proportions.

After reading that, I was relieved to find a more positive and potentially very exciting headline there as well:

The End of Oil? Breakthrough Turns Coal Into Clean Diesel.

Still, I think we can (and indeed some incredibly smart people are already working on this very thing and in fact have been for a very long time) come up with even better alternatives. It's just a darn shame that there hasn't been more vigorous public support for research on oil alternatives but then we all know why that has been, don't we?

Frankly, I'll be not one bit surprised if crisis~level shortages will suddenly and miraculously be circumvented by ingenious alternatives flying out of some big name corporations as if from nowhere ~ with a nice hefty price tag and complete monopoly over whatever the miraculous resource turns out to be, of course... yes, I'm cynical.

remembering snowflake

2006-04-18T20:55:00.000-07:00

I have no idea why, really, but all day I've been remembering an old National Geographic cover I'd seen as a child; the one with the beautiful little albino gorilla named Snowflake gracing it.

I hadn't thought about Snowflake in years but for some reason he popped into my head today and wouldn't go away until I discovered his fate.

I'd really love to see this someday.

easter egg chickens

2006-04-17T22:11:00.000-07:00

Who knew? Well, at least I didn't anyway.

One of our neighbors has a beautiful little white hen that has completely enchanted me. They let her go out on the front lawn most afternoons to forage for snacks and whenever I pass by their house at that time of day I look forward to the tiny little thrill I get when I catch a glimpse of her, serenely strutting around and pecking away without a single care in the world.

We've begun dreaming of the day when we have retired to some small acreage and can have a free range hen of our own; for her eggs, of course, and every bit as much for her zenlike serenity and faith that all's right with the world. And all will be right in the world of any hen who graces me with her beauty and presence.

Our little hen-neighbor has done as much for my recovery from surgery and stress in these insane times as anything else has. I think it is because she's domesticated but a little bit wild; I've no doubt she is their pet as any hen of mine would be, but that is the kind of pet that is far freer and more aloof than a dog is and even, probably a cat. I love my cat and dogs with all my heart and they've been instrumental in helping me keep my sanity and faith in all that is good as well... but there is something about the innocence and trust that beautiful little hen carries around with her as she goes about her business oblivious to the great big, all too often bad old world.

She trusts that everything will be fine. And every single day the world around her complies with her faith in it. If she can do that, why shouldn't I?

Not exactly un-related; serendipity (synchronicity?) works like that.

peace and beauty be with you all

2006-04-16T13:40:00.000-07:00

Whether you celebrate Passover, Easter, Ostara, Al-Hijra or just celebrate the beauty of April and all of her gifts, I send my wishes for peace and beauty to you today.

May you be experience a little bit of the magickal renewal and small wonders of spring today; may your hearts be reborn to the newness, the innocence and the beauty of spring's promise and may it fill you with hope. Miracles, large and small, are always possible, an ever present potential... just waiting for us to manifest them with our faith in them and our intention to bring them about.

May you be surrounded by love and and joy today and always!

a (lovely) relic from a different age

2006-04-16T13:35:00.000-07:00

Though, it looks a little grainy and beat up, but I was delight to link up with this YouTube find: Jimmy's tv debut at 14

You've probably seen the snippet of this before (I have obviously ~ an even shorter clip but I think it was far better quality than this one appears to be) but it's still a great little trip in the waaaaayback machine and I had to post the link to it here for personal bloggie posterity. 1958 was a very good year imho as I made a debut of my own that year on Friday January 3rd at 10:04 a.m. :-) Yes, I am ancient. :-p

As for the charming young star of this video, I've gotta say they sure don't make em like they used to.

self-righteous pharmacists need to be fired!

2006-04-13T17:12:00.000-07:00

This is really getting out of hand. These supposed health care professionals should be canned post-haste.

"Today, one of our clients asked us to call in her prescription... to Swedish outpatient pharmacy. [We] called the prescription in... and spoke with an efficient staff person who took down the prescription. A few minutes later, this pharmacy person called us back and told us she had found out who we were and she morally was unable to fill the prescription." (Cedar River thinks their client eventually got her prescription filled.)

...

The complaint also includes an incident from November 2005 in Yakima, in which a pharmacist at a Safeway reportedly refused to fill a Cedar River patient's prescription for pregnancy-related vitamins. The pharmacist reportedly asked the customer why she had gone to Cedar River Clinics and then told the patient she "didn't need them if she wasn't pregnant."

things i'd rather ramble on about instead

2006-04-10T16:51:00.000-07:00

This summer's planned anniversary vacation to Muir Woods

Ross Halfin's latest beautiful images of my Guitar God and the desktops I created with some of them:

Getting myself motivated to actually post to my highly neglected booklog, the great stuff I've been reading since... last year... yikes, including my most recent favourites: Michael Palin's Around the World in 80 Days, Pole to Pole (both which got me through a pair of uncomfortable nights at the hospital ~ Michael I love you and I'm forever in your debt!) and Sahara. I don't have Himalaya (the book companion) yet, and I still need this one as well, but I've got the most awesome dvd which started this whole serendipitous armchair travel reading marathon with my favourite Python.

And to wax poetically over my two latest delightful reads (I need to update my sidebar but I just kinda gave up awhile ago) Margaret Sanborn's Yosemite which I purchased during last year's lovely vacation there but never got around to reading till last week and David Rothenberg's very lovely Why Birds Sing which I just received and couldn't resist starting to read earlier today. That's a very bad habit that keeps me disorganized and overflowing with stacks of half-started books all over the place ~ but I couldn't resist...

Brag about my very talented Care2 buddy Mark's band Giles latest awesome album which just happens to be called (ahem!) Dancing with Dolores and pretending that I was the inspiration for the song (when in fact the song had been written well before I ever knew how great Giles is! but a girl can dream about her own 15 minutes of fame, can't she?)

Revel in the beauty and delight of a perfect Southern California spring.

another day, another scandal

2006-04-10T16:26:00.000-07:00

And now for the latest daily revelation: Phone-Jamming Records Point to White House

WASHINGTON - Key figures in a phone-jamming scheme designed to keep New Hampshire Democrats from voting in 2002 had regular contact with the White House and Republican Party as the plan was unfolding, phone records introduced in criminal court show.

The records show that Bush campaign operative James Tobin, who recently was convicted in the case, made two dozen calls to the White House within a three-day period around Election Day 2002 — as the phone jamming operation was finalized, carried out and then abruptly shut down.

I'm no soothsayer and I've got NOT ONE SHRED OF ABSOLUTE PROOF, I'm just going by my gut but I've long thought since the last election that George Bush and John Kerry's numbers will someday be revealed to have been exactly reversed. I don't care anymore, whether this qualifies me for a tinfoil hat in the interim; I know in my very soul that this is true and I know that one day soon that, and no doubt, a whole lot more highly unpalatable things are going to come to light. And as divided as we are now, I'm really fearful that when every revelation is revealed it is only going to send the true believers into a violent denial of biblical proportions.

And even though I'm convinced of this, and as angry and betrayed as I feel about the last 5 years, I'm feeling very sad for this poor deluded soul. I'm not inhumane or lacking in compassion. Sometimes I can't bear to watch what they are doing to themselves anymore than I can stand what they are doing to everyone else.

I felt this in my bones last autumn, and I'm certain of it now, but I suppose I'm just stating the obvious for anyone who has eyes to see: the unraveling has well and truly begun. And I've no doubt that it is going to be painful (and perhaps very very dangerous) to be a part of this national spectacle. It's all going to be very ugly as every dirty deed is revealed, and I can't deny that I'm dreading it, even as I welcome the breaking of this horrid spell we've been under.

Link via sfarnell's dkos diary

the scariest most insane thing i've heard yet

2006-04-09T19:33:00.000-07:00

and the saddest thing of all is that I've no doubt that this administration is capable of absolutely anything; even this: Sy Hersh on the "Iran war plans"; clip courtesy of C&L. Heaven help us all...

pink's dear mr. president

2006-04-09T19:24:00.000-07:00

listen; link via Eschaton.

bring tissues...

john kerry: two deadlines and an exit

2006-04-04T20:52:00.000-07:00

John Kerry's New York Times Editorial here; he calls for troop withdrawal by year's end.

Half of the service members listed on the Vietnam Memorial Wall died after America's leaders knew our strategy would not work. It was immoral then and it would be immoral now to engage in the same delusion. We want democracy in Iraq, but Iraqis must want it as much as we do. Our valiant soldiers can't bring democracy to Iraq if Iraq's leaders are unwilling themselves to make the compromises that democracy requires.

~~~John Kerry

link via georgia10's dkos diary

will wonders never cease?

2006-04-04T20:35:00.000-07:00

ok, this is just really gross.

It's my understanding that Homeland Security is supposed to protect us from the dangers of the big bad scary world. That's fantastic, if it works. But what I wanna know is just exactly who is supposed to protect our most vulnerable members of society from the abuses of the the sterling characters like this sexual predator who works there...

Someday, we may look back on the last 5 years and the ever mounting scandals and constitutional abuses, the lying, the complete disregard for integrity and honour and just laugh our collective a**es off.

.
.
.
.
.

nah, I don't think so either. At this point I'm just hoping we get through this mess with some shred of sanity left and enough determination to clean it up.

i guess i'm officially back

2006-03-31T01:38:00.000-08:00

I've found a quiz result to post:

Where was your soul born?[pics + detailed answers]

Your soul was born in the Sky.You have a free soul and you hate to be tied down. You love a good challenge and you love to compete with your friends. You're very kind and open-minded. You accept anyone as longs as the person doesn't try to hold you down. You have a habit of bending and sometimes breaking rules, but you're very careful with stepping over lines. You might break some rules but you also have respect for them. You're element is Air. You're unpredictable and people can never figure out what you will do next. You're admirable and many people look up to you. You do you best to capture the day and make the most out of it. You're honest, but sometimes your honesty can hurt people. Remember that you're not boring just because you're serious sometimes. Sometimes you need to be serious to get respect from others. You can't joke everything away.

Take this quiz!

Quizilla | Join | Make A Quiz | More Quizzes | Grab Code

jill carroll freed

2006-03-30T05:37:00.000-08:00

It's a awesome to wake up to some great news for a change; story here!

when creating your own reality goes horribly wrong

2006-03-29T13:31:00.000-08:00

Reporting the good news about Iraq; even if you have to do it from beautiful downtown Bakirkoy, Istanbul...

This meltdown in alternate reality caught and captured courtesy of Daily Kos, with additional glimpses of the madness found at Attytood, TPM and Jesus General.

hidden persephone

2006-03-27T23:02:00.000-08:00

Persephone is the goddess archetype that I have always related to the most. At this point in my life, I identify most with the Triple Goddess aspect in its entirety but because the 8th house plays such a pivotal role in my natal chart, I've found that all aspects of the Persephone/Demeter theme has resonated with me throughout my life.

So when I followed this link I was very curious to find out where the asteroid Persephone would wind up in my chart. I guess I was a bit surprised to find her in my 3rd house of communication and early life. But then again, maybe not:

Third House: we may be too timid to speak up for ourselves, and consequently let others do our talking for us

Obviously anyone who has a blog must at least be attempting to overcome some of that; but then again, that may be a big part of working that Persephone out.

My whole life I've been in love with words, with language, the very art of communication. I'm a frustrated writer and a terribly maudlin poet (no one ever sees it because it truly is bad, in the very most trite sense of the word).

I can taste words, smell them, feel them intensely. I love to sing words; lyrics have always meant as much to me as the beauty of a tune. I write in journals, on scrap paper, on the back of envelopes, any free potentially writable surface I can find.

Many is the morning I wake up still half asleep, but full of have baked conversations going on in my head. This, by the way, is an extremely aggravating problem and one of the reasons I thrive on shutting down regularly and giving in to those meditative moments... I simply have to find a way to shut myself up, even in my scattered head.

Maybe it makes sense that the thing that I love the most is the very thing that I have felt, many times in my life, the most completely inadequate at doing well. Natal charts often have patterns that repeat the same themes, and one hint at confirmation of this well-placed Persephone is the location of my natal Saturn conjunct Mercury ~ right on my Midheaven ~ 10th House of Career/Public Life. Saturn can't help but try to put a lid on Mercury's motor mouth (especially early in life) and without question there has been a very good reason for it. Saturn conjunct Mercury is an invitation to learn to speak wisely and discerningly. While I hardly think I'm there yet, I think maybe I'm beginning to get there at this late date in my life; at least, enough to consider this aspect a gift of a lesson for one who might otherwise potential abuse, or misuse those words I obsessively/compulsively love so very much.

As I thought back to my early childhood, it struck me that this Gemini Persephone of mine forms a fairly close conjunction with my maternal grandmother's Gemini Sun. She was an incredible woman, and without doubt, one of the earliest inspirations to my love of words. She was witty, and clever; she was a great storyteller and a wonderful singer. And... at times, she could be incredibly intimidating. Her criticism could cut you like a knife, so razor sharp and on target. The fact that I was a small child and I idolized her played no small role in this but I suddenly can see very clearly how Persephone might come into play here.

Just an observation. But it never ceases to amaze me how my chart works for me so well, in pointing out archetypes and impressions of events that made their mark on me, for better and worse....... and for better!!!

I don't think it is any accident that I was gifted with a clever, sharp tongued grandmother who loved words and language and expression as much as I do. And I really believe that everything, even the moments of self-imposed inadequacy I felt in her presence, (and please know there were many, many more beautiful moments, and I love her dearly and cherish every one of them) were lessons and experiences I really needed.

Learning to think before speaking has been a life long struggle... sometimes. Learning to speak when it was easier to be silent has often been another one. My emotions have always ruled my responses or non-responses to situations and my emotions have never been dependable, particularly since they are utterly subjective and prone to over-sensitivity. Without Saturn to temper them, to bring some common sense and stability to any given situation, I may have had an even harder struggle with communication than I already had. Many is the time that my emotional overwrought Gemini Moon over-ruled my much needed Sag Saturn/Mercury caution, but that's a classic opposition in action, if ever there was one. And so the struggle continues, and no doubt will to my dying day. But that's what life is all about.

This hidden Persephone speaks to my own personal, lifelong struggle, my Jihad, to find the perfect balance between what's better left unsaid and what needs to be heard.

Note to my fellow astrology buffs or anyone curious about finding out where their personal Persephone is located: the asteroid Persephone is 399 in the asteroid scale. If you want to find out where she resides in your chart, you can get a free account at the wonderful Astrodienst.com and when you have input your data to create your basic natal chart details you can head over to the page where you can create a chart and choose "extended chart Selection. Once there, you just choose natal chart wheel (which is the default option) and leave the chart style and house system on default and head down towards the bottom where there is a box next to the words:

additional asteroids or "hypothetical" planets (please enter the numbers from the respective lists, e.g. "433,1221,h48")

and just type in the number 399 and then scroll back up a bit again and click on the button that says

click here to show the chart

and the chart will show you which house Persephone is located.

little paradise

2006-03-27T05:17:00.000-08:00

Just dreaming again of places I'll probably never get to go....

Seychelles

Even after I toured around visually it was lovely just to close my eyes and listen to the little sound loop of paradise....

little island in the Seychelles

photo taken by Tracy Wade's gallery at stock.xchng

archeological discovery in bangladesh

2006-03-24T23:06:00.000-08:00

Bangladesh discovers ancient fort city

Artefacts found in the 600 x 600 meter (1,800 x 1,800 ft) include metal coins, metallic chisels, terracotta missiles, rouletted and knobbed pottery, stone hammers and bangles. Ornaments suggested Buddhism dominated life in the urban centers. Mostafizur said the citadel was believed to be a part of Harappan civilization and a prime trade center might have flourished there, possibly serving as a link between contemporary South Asian and Roman civilizations.

antarctica melting at alarming rate

2006-03-24T06:01:00.000-08:00

UK's TimesOnline reports that many coastal cities, including London and New York, will be underwater by 2100 at the rate that Antarctica's ice sheet is melting.

The threat comes from melting ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica, which scientists behind the research now believe are on track to release vast volumes of water significantly more quickly than older models have predicted. Their analysis of events between 129,000 and 116,000 years ago, when the Arctic last warmed to temperatures forecast for 2100, shows that there could be large rises in sea level.

link via HuffPo

The Dixie Chicks are back

2006-03-24T02:19:00.000-08:00

And they're Not Ready to Make Nice. Righteous indignation and hurt never sounded so beautiful. Go hear it right now. Can't wait to get this one.

I made my bed and I sleep like a baby
With no regrets and I don’t mind sayin’
It’s a sad sad story when a mother will teach her
Daughter that she ought to hate a perfect stranger
And how in the world can the words that I said
Send somebody so over the edge
That they’d write me a letter
Sayin’ that I better shut up and sing
Or my life will be over

~~~ words and music by Emily Robison, Martie Maguire, Natalie Maines, Dan Wilson

Taking the Long Way is due to be released on May 23rd.

Link via One Good Move

President of Oglala Sioux to establish reservation-based Planned Parenthood Clinic

2006-03-23T08:31:00.000-08:00

Bitch PhD introduces her heroine of the week, and mine as well now that I've read about her.

Bless you Cecilia Fire Thunder.

man, we were robbed....

2006-03-23T08:29:00.000-08:00

and it just breaks my heart all over again.

One day, during the 2000 campaign, Spike Jonze spent a day with Al Gore and his family; you can watch 13 minutes of it here.

Just one more reason for me to grieve that horrible election theft; it only reinforces my conviction that this man would have made such a positive difference to our nation and our relationship with the rest of the world.

via dkos

just a little green

2006-03-10T19:34:00.000-08:00

I've got a stack of books I wanted to post about over at my long neglected bookblog and a couple of movies that made big impressions on me. But I don't even have the energy to do that right now, much less try to tackle current events right now. My spirit may be willing, more or less but my energy is lagging behind. So sorry.

So, as I'm in lacking substance but craving light and beautiful things (my usual state most of the time these days), I'm afraid it is time to bore you yet again with screen shots of my two most recent desktops. Oh, lucky, lucky you. :-P

I made this one on March 1st because it was green and celtic looking:

And I made this one tonight, because I was craving spring themes and a new desktop:

And I've got the lovely chorus of a favourite Joni Mitchell song stuck in my head the last few days so I guess I must be craving clorophyll (at least visually):

Just a little green
Like the color when the spring is born
There’ll be crocuses to bring to school tomorrow

Just a little green
Like the nights when the northern lights perform

There’ll be icicles and birthday clothes
And sometimes there’ll be sorrow

Actually listening to the song again, I think maybe this song is hitting me on so many levels right now....

Indicted: my aunt fannie!

2006-03-10T14:06:00.000-08:00

So I just got on line a few moments ago; only to be greeted with this heartstopping little headline from CNN:

No, not the first story; the one that says Dems Indicted: Clinton and Kerry Targeted

Heart pounding, I click on the link to be greeted by this duplicitous ugly mug and a modified headline:

followed by this completedly predictible, utterly reprehensible diatribe by the biggest, stinkiest pot having the nerve to call the kettle anything:

Mehlman's text reflected his intention to argue that Clinton's solution to support U.S. troops in Iraq was higher taxes and poked fun at Kerry for joining in the unsuccessful challenge to Supreme Court justice Samuel Alito's nomination from a conference in Davos, Switzerland.

In the 2004 campaign, presidential nominee Kerry was widely criticized for his comment about voting for $87 billion for U.S. forces and then voting against it. Mehlman will parody that line in his speech.

"They say one thing come election time, but their records show that they mean - and will do - another,'' the text said. ``They were for the Iraq war before they were against it. They were for the Patriot Act, until the far-left came out against it. ... I've bought used cars and I know a bait-and-switch when I see it."

Oh that kind of indicted. haha, I'm busting a gut here. (Can I sue somebody?)

The worst, most scandal-ridden, most despicable Administration in the entire history of the United States of America, and this is all they've got; no surprise really.

What disgusts me is their sick little enablers, that noble Free Press that arrogant, cynical propagandists who know damn well how utterly full of crap they are, still dare to call "leftist" media. Just another day in the world of slimy-filled GOP talking point purveyors and the lame-assed wimpy SCLM that loves them.

UPDATED at 3:37 PM PST

DA**! I KNEW I should have checked dkos first before posting this; sorry about that. Eh, great minds and all... LOL!

everywhere in america

2006-03-07T09:04:00.000-08:00

including South Dakota. Please read SallyCat's dkos heartbreaking diary, Little Girl Lost.

Dana Morosini Reeve Dies Age 44

2006-03-07T07:04:00.000-08:00

This breaks my heart. Especially because she was still so young with a teenage son who had already borne the loss of one parent.

She was a courageous woman who fought tirelessly on behalf of her husband for spinal cord research. In facing this latest setback, she had this to say:

She said in November that said she was able to keep her spirits up because she "had a great model. ... I was married to a man who never gave up."

The report states she never smoked.

the battle for control of your uterus has begun

2006-03-06T08:28:00.000-08:00

Sex, autonomy, contraception, abortion. If you are a woman, there is no issue more important right now. It's a painful, gut-wrenching, horrible issue. And we are embroiled in the Mother of all Battles about it right now: the battle over who gets to control a woman's Uterus. Imagine if you can, a similar circumstance, for our male counterparts. You can't... can you.

The first thing we need to do as women, regardless about what we may believe we feel about this issue is to inform ourselves. Let's not kid ourselves about what is going on right now in this country. If you are a woman, decisions are being made about your body right now and your permission and agreement about that is not of any interest to those who would like to implement changes.

Please follow the Green Knight and the links he provides here.

And while you are at it, please read The only moral abortion is my abortion: When the Anti-Choice Choose

The hardest thing to read about may be the most important. Maryscott Oconnor's dkos diary Abortion: Intact Dilation & Extraction.

Oscar Night

2006-03-06T06:56:00.000-08:00

well, I missed it last night... again. But that's ok, coz One Good Move saves the day again. And to think I could have had the answer pre-Oscar Ceremony due to the tremendously prescient powers of Da Colbert Code!

And thanks to Oscar's Red Carpet Gallery I got to check out my favourite part of the whole thing; the beautiful gowns (yes, I guess I'm shallow...)

Here's a couple of my personal favourites from Jessica Alba and Keira Knightly:

the daily show's pill of rights segment

2006-03-05T05:56:00.000-08:00

courtesy the very awesome One Good Move: pure comedy gold!

hubble's greatest hits: more cosmic beauty

2006-02-26T03:47:00.000-08:00

I'm up to take my pain meds and feed the kitty and the dogs, so I had to take a moment to post a link to this bit of loveliness, sent to me by one of my Care2 friends. As she advised me, be sure to keep watching after the music stops to get a peek at every gorgeous image!

a thing of beauty

2006-02-24T22:04:00.000-08:00

This is a quick note to thank you all so very very much for the well-wishes, the heartfelt thoughts and prayers that have meant so very much to me and my family!

I'm not really, exactly, "back" just quite yet, but I'm home, surgery went fine and I am getting better every single day.

I get tired pretty easily so I'm doing lots and lots of resting in between "ambulating". We just got back from our evening walk and I was poking about a bit on the net for the first time in almost a week.

And I found this thing of beauty at Crooks and Liars. I'm forever grateful for the clip as I didn't get to see it the first time around though I did manage to catch a repeat of the big 3's short programs - all delightful and just what the doctor ordered.

I will try to get posting regularly again by Monday if not before. Till then, bless you all!

ode to my uterus

2006-02-20T02:35:00.000-08:00

ewww, sorry about that folks. Not really ... well really but that truly is between her and me and a private conversation we've been having most of this very sleepless night so I won't bore you with it.

I'm so very sorry I haven't been around for... YIKES!!! 20 days?????

I had much better intentions than that but to be honest this has been a really not so good month. I have not been feeling well at all; and my swan song moon time got so very bad on February 6th that the evening culminated with a very dramatic... and painful... visit to the ER.

Needless to say, that while I'm anxious as all get out (far more than I probably should be for a routine procedure) about my surgery at noon today ~ Feb 20th, 12 noon PST (Fullerton, CA) for any astrology buffs - or a real live professional like my buddy April Elliott Kent ;-) ~ I know it's got to be a better outcome by far than the miserable month I've just had.

Anyway, apologies to all. I'm not dead (please the God/dess and knock on wood) yet anyway and I do fully intend to come back if you all will bear with me a little longer.

My deepest apologies also to all who have left comments on my blog. I really meant to respond on several occasions (as well as keep my email box from overflowing repeatedly) but I just haven't been up to snuff lately. I appreciate everyone's comments; I love you all and right now I'd just like to shamelessly beg one and all to send your most positive intentions and prayers my way, if you could. Believe me, it is most appreciated.

The reason I'm a bit freaked out about my surgery has a little bit to do with my and my hubby's synastry in regard to it. If this doesn't make sense to you don't worry. If you are April or someone else who cares to take a gander at it, by all means please go for it. But in the last analysis, it probably won't matter much at this late date, coz for better or worse I know I'm gonna need to go through with it and it's only a few hours away.

Anyway, details:

me: 01-03-1958 10:04 a.m. Indianapolis, Indiana

he: 12-07-1958 11:52 a.m. San Antonio, Texas

event: 02-20-2006 12:00 noon Fullerton, CA

In my case, I can honestly say that I do know that a little knowledge is a very dangerous thing but what can I say. I've been apprehensively looking over the charts for days now; which was stupid when one considers that I probably don't know enough to even begin to understand what I thought I might be seeing... AND I never could bring myself to try and get any outside assistance from those who know better and might be able to help. I don't know why... I really don't, anymore than I know why I am stupidly rambling on about it right now. I guess I've just been committed to this date because it took quite a bit of juggling to get this date set up and because I'm resigned to the fact that it needed to happen. Que Sera Sera...

And of course in all likelihood I know that everything will be just fine. And I also know that whatever the outcome is, I will still ultimately be just fine and it will have been meant to be. So enough of this idiotic and morbid rambling.

Please keep me in your thoughts and prayers and I will be back as soon as I can.

Did I mention lately that I love you all dear readers???? Well, I do...

That is all. Love and Light to each and every one of you and yours!!!!

i laughed, i cried...

2006-02-01T09:33:00.000-08:00

...and then I felt a whole lot like hurling. Ladies and gentlemen, our cutting edge, hard-nosed, truth-ferreting, t.v. news media.

Thanks as always to the good folks at One Good Move, for providing links to the stuff that keeps me sane!

twenty

2006-01-30T13:06:00.000-08:00

Watch Robert Cray's moving video here.

how did your magnet support the troops?

2006-01-30T07:03:00.000-08:00

Egad, more apologies for not blogging regularly. People, I'm a mess right now... too much info I know. I swear things should be getting better in the next several weeks. At least I'm hoping. I'm just completely wiped out right now: I've got severe anemia and an appointment with a gynie specialist in three days. Then I expect it will be surgery and recovery. Right now, it's all I can do to get my butt to school and do the most limited home related stuff that I can manage. Sorry for the excuses but that's where I am right now.

However, I just got this in my email box and I had to spread the word. I've got a nephew in Iraq and so it means extra, extra much to me. If you can possibly do so, please give to this most worthy cause:

Received this info from Cranky Liberal today and here is the gist:

the next couple of weeks a new site will be launched called Bake Sales for Body Armor, it is a not-for-profit site that will be dedicated to raising money to buy body armor for the less fortunate men and women of our Armed Forces that cannot afford to buy it on their own. This not-for-profit is being endorsed by Bring It On! because we feel it is a disgrace that our own government cannot properly equip our brave men and women of the Armed Forces.

Bring It On! also felt that this is something that cannot wait and have decided to raise money in advance of the launch of Bake Sales for Body Armor . Please click on this link to donate and get a bumper sticker or shirt to show your support for this cause, all proceeds will be donated to Bake Sales for Body Armor . This is a non-partisan issue, the lives of our soldiers are at stake, please donate now!

After donating you can use this to put on your site and help get the word out.

And now a word from the creator of Bake Sales for Body Armor, Tammara Rosenleaf, who is a member of Military Families Speak Out (MFSO), Helena Peace Seekers, Just Don't Go and the Prairie Chapel 12. Tammara's husband Sean is currently serving in Iraq. Tammara can be reached at: tammara@bakesalesforbodyarmor.com

OK friends,

as many of you have been aware, Charlie Anderson of iraq vets against the war, and i have been working on this little project called bake sales for body armor.

this is because despite our government's best and fervent insistence, we keep getting reports of soldiers who do not have it, and are in Iraq, which is a stupid place to be in the first place, but really bad without body armor.

we know that the military says that they get the armor to those who need it the most, but the others need it none the less. at this point we have not heard of any one still lacking the breast and back plates, but some are still lacking the delt and side plates… the very things that were just such a hot topic when it came to the recent pentagon study regarding mortality and the marines… if you haven't read this study and want to, let me know…

our web site dedicated to this effort will be going up in the next two weeks, it is being worked on by a really good designer, and what we have seen looks wonderful. you'll all love it.

our first real bake sale will be Feb 11, here in Helena, but we will be looking for folks who want to host sales in other places, and there will be a place to post them on the site. we also plan to have a virtual bake sale, where you can down load pictures of baked goods with a receipt for your tax free donation, if you just want to donate to the cause.

we have the pay pal account set up, it will go up with the website, and a way for folks to sign up people who need things is also going up.

which brings us to the point where we say that this site is not limited to body armor alone..we will always put a soldier lacking armor at the top of the list, but, anything else a soldier needs over there, we will try to get for them…

our very good friend and sponsor, at bring it on, has come up with a fundraiser to support this cause.I've given you the link below… what i really like about this is that it addresses the need for the body armor, at the same time as it says… "What the hell do all these yellow ribbons have to do with real support of the troops"

--

www.teambio.org

If everyone were to buy one of these stickers, if everyone who bought one of those lousy magnets were to replace them with one of these stickers, just think how much body armour that would buy for our brave men and women in the armed forces? This is just about the least any of us could do, and as pathetic as it is that our own government hasn't done their part, We the People can do better. This is a very simple, very real way we can show our support to our troops. Dump those damn magnets today and do your part to buy our troops the body armour they need. Bless you all!!!

looks like it's time to play jihadball

2006-01-23T03:56:00.000-08:00

Some people claim they've been misunderstood; I say Michael Moore serves out some Just desserts to those who had it coming.

under the weather and wide awake

2006-01-22T02:02:00.000-08:00

I feel really terrible; I think I've got a bug or something. But as usual my hours are out of whack and I just can't sleep. And I can't concentrate on much of anything but thank the heaven's above for Photoshop to take my mind off things. I was hoping it would help me to get sleepy too. I might just be able to go lie down and rest even if I can't actually sleep yet. Anyway, I don't have anything, though I know that there's lots going on in the world.

But I made myself a new desktop and I also made a couple of sigtags (for a group I belong to) the other day too. So I can't resist posting them here.

I wish I had more of substance. I wish I felt better. School just started late last week and I really don't want to start out by being sick and out of it. Anyway, wishing everyone out there healthy, happy times!

For Yemaya's virtual altar at a forum I belong to; I blended 3 images that had no restrictions on usage thanks to the generous photographers who uploaded them for sharing at stock.xchng.

My desktop wallpaper is anticipation and preparation for Imbolc:

image used for my desktop © Liiga Smilshkalne; all rights reserved

couple of quizzes

2006-01-19T05:16:00.000-08:00

Take the "How Do You Use Magic?" test!

Written by Brimo

Where your beauty lies...

Heart, your beauty lies within your heart. You love those who are put down or even just because you want too. You would hate to be alone and couldn't possibly survive without a compainon whether that be human or animal. Always remember that beauty is not only skin deep...

2601 other people got this result!
This quiz has been taken 9770 times.
27% of people had this result.

brought to you by Quizilla

you gotta have faith

2006-01-16T22:46:00.000-08:00

Last night, feeling kinda lousy (I'll spare you the details of my current female problems) I walked into the middle of the movie Contact; right at my favourite part of the movie (if you've never seen the movie before, you've gotta see it because it's awesome).

If you've seen it, you know the part: from the moment she steps into the machine they've been given instructions to build and sets off on an 18 hour journey that she cannot prove she made. This is the part of the film that never ceases to fill me with a myriad of emotions, not the least of which includes the thrill of living vicariously through the very talented Jodie Foster's embodiment of a bright, inquisitive and incredibly brave Ellie Arroway, the first human to take the incredible and beautiful journey deep into our galaxy and make that momentous contact.

A couple of favourite quotes from the movie (the 2nd one below the image):

I... had an experience. I can't prove it, I can't even explain it, but everything that I know as a human being, everything that I am tells me that it was real. I was given something wonderful, something that changed me forever. A vision of the universe, that tells us undeniably, how tiny, and insignificant and how... rare, and precious we all are! A vision that tells us that we belong to something that is greater then ourselves, that we are *not*, that none of us are alone.

~~~Ellie Arroway, Contact

Ellie Arroway sees stars:

"Some celestial event. No - no words. No words to describe it. Poetry! They should've sent a poet. So beautiful. So beautiful... I had no idea."

image found here

image © Warner Brothers- all rights reserved

the man who dared to dream

2006-01-16T21:59:00.000-08:00

about a better America. Today we commemorate and celebrate the man behind that dream.

I Have a Dream

The King Center

The Martin Luther King Jr. Research and Education Institute

Martin Luther King Jr. National Historic Site

When we let freedom ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, "Free at last! free at last! thank God Almighty, we are free at last!"

~~~Martin Luther King, Jr.

baby, you're the greatest!

2006-01-16T21:25:00.000-08:00

To steal a Ralph Kramden quote coz it's the first thing that popped into my head when I saw this:

Page's Stairway Tops Guitar Solo Survey

And here's the Top Ten:

1. STAIRWAY TO HEAVEN - JIMMY PAGE (LED ZEPPELIN)
2. ERUPTION - EDDIE VAN HALEN (VAN HALEN)
3. FREEBIRD - ALLEN COLLINS and GARY ROSSINGTON (LYNYRD SKYNYRD)
4. COMFORTABLY NUMB - DAVID GILMOUR (PINK FLOYD)
5. ALL ALONG THE WATCHTOWER - JIMI HENDRIX
6. NOVEMBER RAIN - SLASH (GUNS N' ROSES)
7. ONE - KIRK HAMMETT (METALLICA)
8. HOTEL CALIFORNIA - DON FELDER and JOE WALSH (THE EAGLES)
9. CRAZY TRAIN - RANDY RHOADS (OZZY OSBOURNE)
10. CROSSROADS - ERIC CLAPTON (CREAM)

image from the great big Led Zeppelin Photo Album Online

wise words from a wombat

2006-01-15T15:14:00.000-08:00

listen to the wombat here!

Link sent to me by one of my very cool Care2 buddies, Amin!

We are One, Brothers and Sisters!

a view of the Cartwheel Galaxy

2006-01-14T22:37:00.000-08:00

Space telescopes capture a cosmic jellyfish

A cosmic jellyfish appears to pulse with light in this multi-wavelength image of the Cartwheel galaxy, compiled from images taken by four space telescopes.

The galaxy probably came by its distinctive shape when a small galaxy – possibly one of the objects at bottom-left of the image – collided with it head-on 100 million years ago. The crash set off ripples in the large galaxy's gas that led to concentric rings of star birth.

"It's like dropping a stone into a pond, only in this case, the pond is the galaxy and the wave is the compression of gas," explains Phil Appleton of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, US. "Each wave represents a burst of star formation – the youngest stars are found in the outer ring."

Read the rest.

The Cartwheel galaxy shows concentric rings of star formation, probably caused by a collision with a smaller galaxy (Image: GALEX/Chandra/Hubble/Spitzer)

what he said

2006-01-13T02:00:00.000-08:00

GK is feeling blue and I can relate.

Yesterday's shenanigans were just about the last straw for me. Every single time I think we are making some headway, getting close to breaking the ridiculous spell that our country has been held under, something surreal like this happens and we are right back where started once again. Lost in the land of delusion with our hands tied behind our backs.

Ah, well all I can say is Give Em Hell, Harry. Obi Wan, (it sure is feeling like) you are our last hope...

yes it's a bit of old news but lest we forget...

2006-01-10T21:15:00.000-08:00

...corruption... very extensive...

Meanwhile Digby shares a clearheaded commenter's clarification between "what people perceive as 'big-business influence through lobbying" (which they relate to both parties) and the Culture of Corruption swirling around the Republicans..." in this post which reminds us to K.I.S.S.

life path # 9

2006-01-10T01:31:00.000-08:00

Your Life Path Number is 9

Your purpose in life is to make the world better.

You are very socially conscious and a total idealist. You think there are many things wrong with the world, and you want to fix them. You have a big idea of how to world could be, and you'll sacrifice almost anything to work towards this dream.

In love, you can easily see the beauty in someone else. And you never cling too tightly.

You are capable of great love, but it's hard for you to focus your love on one person or relationship. You have a lot of outward focus, and you tend to blame the world for your failures. You are often disappointed by the realities of life - it's hard for you to accept the shortcomings of the world.

What Is Your Life Path Number?

on top of the world

2006-01-10T00:27:00.000-08:00

ooops and one more thing!!! I've gotta tell the world, if you haven't seen this yet, I really really recommend it!!! This is one of those moments that I really wish I were Michael Palin. But the dvd set (which was a Christmas present from my most awesomely beautiful inside and out hubby, Stu!) is a very handsome consolation prize. I've absolutely got to get my hands on every single one of the travel dvd's he's done... what I really want is THIS.

But I can't coz they don't deliver it here. So I guess I'll have to scrounge around and order one series at a time, and maybe settle for videotape if I can't get it in dvd form.

I guess I know what is going to be be on my permanent gift request list for a good long while! :-)

Happy Birthday to my Glorious Guitar God!

2006-01-09T23:25:00.000-08:00

Oh my ~ Another seat of the pants, last-minute post. I'm super busy right now and school hasn't even started again yet. :-(

Mina is back!!! YAY! We both had doctor appointments today and the cupboard was bare so we also had a very big grocery shopping expedition to attend to as well.

And the sobering news is that I'm probably going to have to have a hysterectomy done in the next couple of months... is it too late to wonder if that was an appropriate thing for me to post here? Oh well, there it is. It's on my mind and so it just became posting fodder. I'm not exactly heartbroken about the prospect to be honest; but I am a bit apprehensive, to say the least. But, I'll know more when I see the specialist about it on February 2nd.

I've got a million things going on right now but it's almost midnight and I had to pay tribute to my Guitar God since today is his 62nd year on the planet!!!

And the world is better for it, so says I (and about a million other fans)... I'm certainly better for it. So a Very Happy Birthday to James Patrick Page and here's wishes for a very creative and very fulfilling year ~ hopefully with a record completed by the end of it! crossing my fingers and hoping like mad...

And... that's all I've got right now.

Some people are forever beautiful!

And some people grow more beautiful

both inside and out ~ every single day!

1st photo and 2nd photo via the great big and awesome Led Zeppelin Photo Files
(photographers unknown by me at this time but the 2nd one is Outrider era ~ so very sorry about the lack of information regarding photo credits)
3rd photo: (AP Photo/photographer unknown by me at this time ~ so very sorry)
4th photo: (AP Photo/Fiona Hanson) Associated Press

All photos copyright their owners

a sentimental journey

2006-01-05T16:08:00.000-08:00

So one bit of mindless self-indulgence is in order as far as I'm concerned. I had a great birthday and that most certainly includes in the (admittedly shallow of me to covet so much) gift receiving department.

I'm completely impressed with people's abilities to read my mind this time around! I was absolutely thrilled with my in-laws surprise: a DVD of March of the Penguins and... a fantastic 6 dvd set of the Rodgers and Hammerstein Collection!!! I love Rodgers and Hammerstein Musicals as much as I love It's a Wonderful Life or The Wizard of Oz (ooh gotta get that deluxe version!!!) or any of my other sentimental movie classic favourites.

And the last time Suzanne and I went hunting for some ancient commercial and all VCR tape from a televised version of one of them (I think it was The King and I or Oklahoma) we discovered that the last 10 minutes never got taped!!! Bleah...

That was several years ago and I honestly don't know why it never came up to replace those movies (some I didn't even have, the rest were badly taped from the t.v. VCR versions) before now, because Suzanne and I both watched them fairly regularly for years and years. But for some reason it never made either of our gift lists and Stu didn't really have much of a clue that we needed brand spanking new dvd versions (... or did he... put a bug in my in-laws ears maybe???).

Anyway, it was an awesome surprise!!! The set includes Carousel (tear-jerker of the highest order), The (very sublime) King and I, The Sound of Music (I've got three words for you: Christopher. Plummer. Rawrrr!), South Pacific (GAWD, I love it!!!!) and my absolute favouritest, most beloved Oklahoma! (sheer Musical-perfection!) and... it has one that I've never even seen before and I'm totally looking forward to watching first: State Fair.

I know this is all sentimental-value stuff and most modern and urbane people probably don't get it, but I don't care about that now do I. :-) I love Cole Porter; I love Hoagy Carmichael. I love Rodgers and Hart and I absolutely love Rodgers and Hammerstein. Lyric and Music; and old fashioned musicals! I love it as much as I love Led Zeppelin and that's saying alot... My in-laws, bless their hearts, are brilliant!!! Absolutely... and thoughtful as can be.

My sister-in-law and brother-in-law sent me a gorgeous Abbey Road T-Shirt and my daughter got me the latest Jimmy Carter book I've been coveting: Our Endangered Values: America's Moral Crisis (she actually gave me this just before she left for her Christmas vacation... she finally gets back tomorrow and believe me that's gonna be the best birthday present yet; I just miss her so much) and my sweet sister gave me my always requested Borders Gift Certificate and the newest edition to my journal collection (those two items are always, ALWAYS on my birthday/Christmas lists and every year without fail I get at least one absolutely gorgeous and unique journal - one of my favouritest things to receive!!!)

But, the best gift of all. My hubby got me The 1950's Classic Edition of the Betty Crocker's Picture Cook Book. To understand what that book means to me is to take a trip down memory lane; to my earliest memories in fact. The original version of that cookbook, may not have been my mom's only cookbook but it was certainly one of the oldest, and most frequently used, tried and true cookbook. Next to my Grandma Vera's handwritten masterpieces, that book was the one that held the most culinary magick in our household.

I remember looking through that cookbook over and over as a child, salivating over the color-plate pictures of all kinds of scrumptious food (laughable really as the colour was "off" in that 1950's book - and I'm happy to report that the latest edition has those very same images in their very same slightly "off" hues! what a blast from the beautiful past!).

Some of my favourite desserts are buried in there, including the hard-to-find Strawberry Delight that I got a hankering for (a couple of birthdays ago in fact) that my sweet hubby improvised for me based on a description of the dessert from my memory of the recipe in this book. NOW, I've got the recipe again!!!

One of the first desserts I ever made for Stu was way back when I was 17 years old and using mom's original version of the cookbook to make Baked Alaska! I was madly in love and my love was the colour of that lovely pink ice cream featured in the colour-plate image of that most heavenly dessert (page 243!). Mine didn't come out quite so lovely as the inspiration and it threatened to melt away quickly as we scambled to make short work of it, but I was proud of the end result just the same! I will never forget that moment or countless other warm memories that I associate with that dear old cookbook.

To own the revised copy is almost as precious as the memories it evokes! It's a very cool little time-capsule of a book too with lots of great old-fashioned hints and cute little vignettes explaining the origins of various recipes!

For example, did you know that:

"the first waffle is said to have been made in 13th Century England. A crusader wearing his armor accidentally sat in some freshly baked oat cakes. The cakes were flattened and bore deep imprints of the steel links. His wife, delighted with the way butter stayed in the imprints from the armor, made him put it on once a week and sit on fresh oat cakes. They were called "warfres," meaning flat honeycomb-like cakes."

~~~from The Betty Crocker Picture Cook Book (please don't sue me General Mills; that blurb was too cute not to share!!!)

All in all, a perfect birthday and a lovely trip into the far, faaaar distant past....

all the bad news fit to print?

2006-01-05T15:50:00.000-08:00

Reading the news the last couple of days has just been heartbreaking and depressing. The other day there were half a dozen tragedies listed one right after the other at the place I (grudgingly) get the online headlines. Is it just me or was last week a particularly bad week?

Really and truly I don't like to dwell on these things but I feel almost remiss not paying some sort of sorrowful tribute to it so I began collecting the links the other day but I had to stop at four because it was just too much. Though I know everyone's already no doubt read these and wallowed in the misery of them, this is what I found before I couldn't take it anymore:

Officials Piece Together Coal Mine Tragedy

Suicide Bomber Kills 32 at Iraq Funeral

Body of 14th Victim Found a German Rink

Indonesian Rains Death Tool Could Hit 190

So I walked away from it; but I came back today only to see this.

If I seem as though I've been extra-airheaded and glib lately, I apologize. I'm just not made of that sterner stuff where I can take a steady diet of this sort of thing without hitting that proverbial brick wall and coming face to face with a visceral need to bail.

I find I'd rather dwell on the lighter side of life; and I find that I have a need to create it if I can't find it or I'll just completely lose my mind.

Then again there are little bits of news like this that give me little tiny rays of hope.

bush blows off mine safety

2006-01-05T15:48:00.000-08:00

Just like he blows off just about everything else...

From David Sirota's Blog on Working for Change, Bush ignored explicit warnings in 2002 about mine safety

The 2002 fact sheet and the Chicago Tribune article shows that Bush knew full well that mine safety was suffering - and now we know he didn't do anything about it, to tragic consequences. They can put out GOP hacks and administration spokespeople to deny this reality - but the facts are there. Here's hoping Democrats are able to force an investigation, as requested by Reps. George Miller (CA) and Major Owens (NY) - it's high time the White House answer for its negligence.

And as always I'm not surprised, but I'm really depressed. Does anything really matter to this administration besides lining the pockets of Halliburton and their corporate fatcat compadres? That's a rhetorical question BTW. Everyone already knows the answer to that whether they will allow themselves to admit it or not.

Reprehensible...

it hasn't been all work, no play

2006-01-03T16:56:00.000-08:00

Alright, it is my birthday so I'm not gonna deny I've had my moments of idle pleasure, and YES, I will confess that may have contributed to the fact that I seem to be making slowwww progress on my great big get~organized project.

Here's a couple of insubstantial bits of fun I've had today, just because I wanna show them off:

No, they serve no purpose... except for the possibility of forum or message board sigtags; those pointless bits of graphic-based vanity plates that are strictly for fun. But that's reason enough for me. But if I don't get my project done I'm not going to get to use them anytime soon...

Happy Birthday to Me!!!!

2006-01-03T16:31:00.000-08:00

I'm sorry I haven't been around. I'm trying desperately to get myself together and get my only New Year's Resolution going. All I want to do is get organized around the house, get back on schedule so I don't get slam-dunked by the simplest little things like school... or laundry... or medical appointments.

So I can have clean sheets and towels in a reasonable and timely manner. But I'm struggling and its going awfully slow. But I really want to make some headway before I spend extensive time blogging and doing all the things I'd rather be doing besides sorting through and giving away clothes and books and....

well, but anyway, had to post this news. It's news to me anyway, since I've been buried under a pile of laundry for the better part of the day. It gives me hope that while I'm cleaning up my act at home, our government may have to spend some serious time cleaning up theirs as well!

Gives me a little ray of sunshiny hope in this still brand-spanking New Year!!!

Well, time to start another load of laundry... but... I WILL BE BACK.... soon!!!

everybody be careful out there tonight!

2005-12-31T08:57:00.000-08:00

I'm hoping to actually post something in here today but if I don't get a chance to do so before, I wanna wish everyone a very safe New Year's Eve and a most joyful and prosperous 2006!!!

banner created with photo by strong des aka Melissa Balkon
courtesy of stock.xchng

reconnecting with Shekinah

2005-12-27T06:40:00.000-08:00

Forward Newspaper online has a fascinating article about a subject that I'm becoming more and more immersed in; the roots of Judeo-Christianity and the Pagan connection.

From Jay Michaelson's Jewish Paganism: Oxymoron or Innovation?

Traditional Jews "do" a deliberately watered-down, domesticated version of these rituals, within boundaries circumscribed by Halacha. Even if Judaism does have pre-monotheistic roots, is getting back to those roots still "Jewish"? Or is it getting back to exactly what we were supposed to get away from?

For Rabbi Mordechai Gafni, a controversial, charismatic rabbi with two best-selling books and an Israeli television program, it all depends on how paganism is put into context. For Gafni, paganism was the essence of biblical Jewish practice. But, he said, "we need to distinguish between 'level one' paganism and this new, 'level three' paganism. Level one is the idea in its raw form, and it was rejected by level two, which is the religion of the prophets. The prophets saw that level one paganism was all about eros, with its power and passion. There was no ethics. The prophets rejected that. They said, 'God's primary demand is ethical behavior.' And the prophets are right. But level three both transcends and includes level two. We don't get rid of prophetic ethics, but we move from that place to eros. We reclaim eros, the energy of Shechinah, the energy of the goddess, and unite it with ethics."

Ezrahi, who recently co-authored a book with Gafni on the myth of Lilith, told a similar story. "The Talmud is full of sages talking to rivers, trees, birds. But in [Tractate] Sanhedrin it says, we don't want to be pulled to idolatry, and we are willing to 'pay the price' of prophecy to avoid it. "

Since then, Ezrahi added, the pagan parts of the Talmud were minimized and marginalized by rationalistic rabbis. "We thought that we became smart. We are scientific people, and we know these things don't happen. Actually, we became blind, deaf and arrogant."

As a result, Gafni said, our culture has gotten so devoid of spirit that paganism is needed to rescue ethics itself. "All ethical failure comes from a lack of eros. When you're moved to act unethically, what is happening? You're responding to a primal insecurity. In order to be ethical, we have to be in eros. Bonfires, chanting, ecstatic dance, embodied ritual — all recapture divine energy," Gafni said.

the magnificent 7 list

2005-12-25T21:18:00.000-08:00

or something like that... I just like the way that sounds. :-)

I was gonna just stealth-read my blog favs and sneak back out of my blog without posting till tomorrow but when I went to one of my must-reads, I discovered I'd been tagged. Whoops!

I thought I'd pretend I hadn't seen it just yet and wait till tomorrow or the next day, but I started to feel kind of guilty, so here goes.

Then its back to reading blogs coz I'm having major withdrawal due to not being able to spend much time reading them lately due to school and holiday preparations and puppy pre-op/surgery/post-op care. I'll be back in earnest in the next couple of days.

Till then, there's this:

Seven Things To Do Before I Die
See George W. Bush leave office
See Jimmy Page play guitar
Become a certified astrologer
See New England in the fall
Drive, fly or cruise to Alaska
Finally put some long planned for content at my domain
design and finance a retirement cottage some place magickal (probably New Mexico)

Seven Things I Cannot Do
play guitar (or any other instrument)
draw, sketch or paint
speak Spanish (my dad's native tongue-even after several semesters in high school)
crochet or knit
parallel park (gasp!)
give directions to people on the phone

Seven Things That Attract Me to...Blogging
It's a fun way to track and share my internet linking journeys
It's a great opportunity for me to engage in a form of written communication
It's gratifying to find people all over the world who share common ground
Blogging gives me my own special little vanity platform and a small audience
I love to read other people's blogs and get a small peek into their virtual world
Blogs are often a source of alternative news information
Making cosmetic changes to the blog gives me a chance to practice what I'm learning in school

Seven Things I Say Most Often
whoops!
horrors!
anyway,
Jimmy Page
while I was surfing the net
lovely and talented
hero

Seven Books That I Love
Jane Eyre ~ Charlotte Bronte
The Plains of Passage ~ Jean Auel (actually love the whole series)
Living a Beautiful Life ~ Alexandra Stoddard
A Handmaid's Tale ~ Margaret Atwood
Understood Betsy ~ Dorothy Canfield
Desert Solitaire ~ Edward Abbey
Open House ~ Elizabeth Berg

Seven Movies That I Watch Over and Over Again
When Harry Met Sally
Yentl
Shop Around the Corner
All About Eve
You've Got Mail
It's a Wonderful Life
Bowfinger

Seven People I Want To Join In Too
(if they haven't already done this and I apologize for not knowing because I'm way behind on favourite blog reads again!)
Janet
Heidi
Joel
Frank
Deb
Michael
Chandra

And anyone else who wants to play!

And thanks, GK, for always including me in the fun. You totally rawk!!!

shine it all around

2005-12-23T08:53:00.000-08:00

Light a candle and share your intentions and prayers here!

naughty and nice

2005-12-23T05:26:00.000-08:00

MacKenzie had to have an elective surgery yesterday (to remove more bladder stones and to have a liver biopsy done as well) and between Mina being so far away and missing her so badly and Baby Mac having surgery, I was feeling agitated so I decided to take my mind off of it by thinking about and working on a blog template for January.

While surfing around I found this irresistable template created by Caz and promptly forgot about January; instead I decided to update the blog with this template for the rest of the holiday season.

The blog template also had a javascript included for snowflakes but it was doing strange things on my browser so I gave up on it. Too bad coz it's really pretty on the site sample.

Anyway, for all you Blogger users who aren't big on doing your own design, she has alot of nice options over there! If you have a Mac and/or don't have Notepad, you will have to find another way to access the actual code though.

I was able to get it to show up by opening it up in dreamweaver and changing the doc from a .txt file to an .html file so some kind of WYSIWG webpage generator or webpage editor should work.

Baby Mac is home but he is still pretty wiped out from the procedures. Poor little thing. :-( And I didn't hear from Mina at all yesterday... yes, I know she's busy and has a life. ;-P They were going to go to Washington DC yesterday so they were very busy. I've got to admit I'm really envious - I've never seen our nation's capitol! But someday... someday, I will. I'm sure she had a fantastic time and they were going to try to take pictures so I can't wait to see them. But then, again, I can't wait to see her. :-(

So... I've got a million things to do to prepare for company tomorrow and I'm actually grateful for the distraction. But I will try to post some stuff in here today for a change, when I get the chance.

Till then:

the lovely image above that I slightly manipulated via photoshop was photographed by Joshua Davis aka railking at stock.xchng

His other sites:

iStockphoto.com

ShutterStock.com

some "articles of impeachment"

2005-12-21T23:59:00.000-08:00

From Dan Froomkin at WaPo: Return of the "I" Word

The "I-word" is back.

The revelation that President Bush secretly authorized a domestic spying program has incited a handful of Congressional Democrats to discuss his possible impeachment. And while continued Republican control of Congress makes such a move extremely unlikely, the word is reemerging into mainstream political discourse.

From William Rivers Pitt at Truthout: The Breaking Strain

A long time ago - before the Iraq invasion, before the elections in '02 and '04, before all the unprecedented governmental violations of trust we have discovered and endured - I wrote something for a book.

"This is America," I wrote. "At bottom, America is a dream, an idea. You can take away all our roads, our crops, our people, our cities, our armies - you can take all of that away, and the idea will still be there as pure and great as anything conceived by the human mind. I do very much believe that the idea that is America stands as the last, best hope for this world. When used properly, it can work wonders. That idea, that dream, is in mortal peril. You can still have all our roads, our crops, our people, our cities, our armies - you can have all of that. But if you murder the idea that is America, you have murdered America itself in a way that ten thousand 9/11s could never do. No terrorist can destroy the ideals we hold dear. Only we can do that."

The breaking strain has been reached, and those ideals we hold so dear are indeed in mortal peril. The President of the United States of America has declared himself fully and completely above the law. The Constitution does not matter to him, nor do the Amendments. Laws passed to safeguard the American people from intrusive governmental invasion have been cast aside and ignored, simply because George W. Bush finds it meet to do so.

From Joe Conason at NYO:

Bush's Abuse of Power Deserves Impeachment

What has provoked fresh discussion of impeachment is the President’s admission that he has ignored the law’s requirements and that he intends to keep doing so. The impeccably conservative legal scholar and former Reagan aide Bruce Fein explained the deep implications of the President’s arrogance:

“If President Bush is totally unapologetic and says, ‘I continue to maintain that as a wartime President I can do anything I want—I don’t need to consult any other branches,’ that is an impeachable offense. It’s more dangerous than Clinton’s lying under oath, because it jeopardizes our democratic dispensation and civil liberties for the ages. It would set a precedent that … would lie around like a loaded gun, able to be used indefinitely for any future occupant.”

David Sirota at HuffPo:

From "It Was Legal" to "I Am Lazy: The George Bush Domestic Spy Story

So now we really see what it's come to. The law is just a nuisance to these people. They don't feel like "marshaling arguments" or doing the "paperwork" that the law requires – the law, mind you, that was written to protect people's civil liberties, and the arguments/paperwork that are specifically required to make sure there is a check on Presidents whose henchmen are conducting surveillance operations on political enemies (ie. civil rights, anti-war, environmental, animal cruelty, and poverty relief groups).

We are supposed to feel ok about all of this because, as the New York Times noted, "Mr. Bush and his senior aides have emphasized since the disclosure of the program's existence last week that the president's executive order applied only to cases where one party on a call or e-mail message was outside the United States" (as if that means law breaking is acceptable). But even this inadequate explanation has been exposed as a lie. As the Times noted, the illegal surveillance program "has captured what are purely domestic communications."

Christian Dem in NC' dKos diary: Dusting off articles of impeachment

FleetAdmiralJ's dKos diary: The Straw That Broke the Camel's Back

And the Downing Street Memo has the ongoing investigation of this administration's dubious activities right here.

obsessions with secrecy and the price of liberty

2005-12-20T23:23:00.000-08:00

Mousemusings has the Buzzflash link to the latest bit of wisdom from my PBS hero, Bill Moyers: In the Kingdom of the Half Blind.

As always, Moyers is a sane voice in the lost wilderness that has captured the bulk of our press corp; but this haunts me:

In his recent book, The Gospel According to America, David Dark reminds us again of a lesson we seem always to be forgetting, that “as learners of freedom, we might come to understand that the price of liberty is eternal vigilance.” He might well have been directly addressing the press when he wrote, “Keeping one’s head safe for democracy (or avoiding the worship of false gods) will require a diligent questioning of any and all tribal storytellers. In an age of information technology, we will have to look especially hard at the forces that shape discourse and the various high-powered attempts, new every morning, to invent public reality.”

snoopgate: just another scandalous day in Bu$hAmerika

2005-12-20T21:17:00.000-08:00

Halleluajah, both finals have been completed and that behemoth of a final project is finally done as well!!!

But while I've been in my little bubble, the news apparently has been very ominous indeed. Still there is every reason to believe that the latest scandal from the Bush Administration has resulted in the final over-reach and maybe, just maybe, the final nail in the collective coffin of this ethically-challenged bunch of miscreants.

Just read Jonathan Alter's editorial covering Bush's Snoopgate via Truthout.

I think maybe the Gate on this one has just swung shut, nice and tightly. Oh, If only it were the door to a jail cell....

Finally we have a Washington scandal that goes beyond sex, corruption and political intrigue to big issues like security versus liberty and the reasonable bounds of presidential power. President Bush came out swinging on Snoopgate - he made it seem as if those who didn't agree with him wanted to leave us vulnerable to Al Qaeda - but it will not work. We're seeing clearly now that Bush thought 9/11 gave him license to act like a dictator, or in his own mind, no doubt, like Abraham Lincoln during the Civil War.

No wonder Bush was so desperate that The New York Times not publish its story on the National Security Agency eavesdropping on American citizens without a warrant, in what lawyers outside the administration say is a clear violation of the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. I learned this week that on December 6, Bush summoned Times publisher Arthur Sulzberger and executive editor Bill Keller to the Oval Office in a futile attempt to talk them out of running the story. The Times will not comment on the meeting, but one can only imagine the president's desperation.

Read the rest here.

a time-honoured tradition: the holiday card

2005-12-16T04:18:00.000-08:00

Astrologer extraordinaire April Elliot Kent has another timely essay posted at her site; all about the old-fashioned way of communicating, through my favourite vehicle, the written word.

She and I both share Gemini Moons so it was no surprise to me that I could relate totally to this:

There's a slow grace to communicating by mail that appeals to me. Oddly, for a person born when the Moon was in Gemini, I dislike the telephone. Well, that’s not exactly true -- I do dislike answering the phone or placing a phone call, but once I’m engaged in a conversation with someone I like, I can yammer away for a pretty long time. Yet the telephone has an immediacy that is a bit of an imposition. If you call for a nice chat at the precise moment that I’m lashing out in an existential premenstrual fury, it can be an awkward moment for both of us. Owing to unfortunate timing, I can’t be the gentle friend you hoped you’d find and that I desperately want to be -- I’m too involved in my own little shrewish drama. Alternately, when I pick up the phone to call you, I worry that I’m interrupting your only free afternoon in a month, or at the exact moment when you would rather/need to be doing about fifty other things from your ever-burgeoning To Do list, and that you’re just too nice to tell me to shove off. Between the timing thing and the lack of opportunity to formulate soulful insights or snappy responses, the phone is kind of brutal, the freeway approach to communication: direct and expedient, but the likelihood of a sort of telecommunicative multi-car pileup gives one pause.

I didn't realize it was an oddity for a Gemini Moon, but I must confess that for the most part I absolutely loathe the telephone (don't even have a cell phone) and avoid placing calls almost as much as I avoid answering one. Not surprisingly, I adore the answering machine and its screening capabilities. I suppose the reason I don't relish phone calls is because they generally are of the telemarketing kind.

But like April, I find written communication, especially the art of letter writing to be a revered and sorely lamented long lost art. It is one of the saddest casualties of modern life that I can think of. Sometimes instant gratification is simply neither.

Still, my baby is going to be a couple of thousand miles away from me this holiday, so you can be sure that I'm going to be unusually grateful to the telephone for the next few weeks... my one communication lifeline to bridge the distance between my one and only kiddo and me. It's also the time of year I'm grateful for being able to talk with my parents who are so often at their home while we are at our home during the holidays. :-( Missing them all right now... so very much....

Gotta get moving so we can grab some breakfast and... gulp... head out to the airport soon...

t minus 185 minutes and counting... more or less...

2005-12-16T03:54:00.000-08:00

She's taking her shower now and I'm getting that aching in my bones and queasiness in my tummy. Her plane leaves a little bit before 7:30 a.m. I wish I could lose these butterflies in my stomach but I don't think they are going anywhere. I'm dreading the next couple of weeks... HORRORS! I can't imagine this is ever gonna get much easier but the first time, surely, it has to be the WORST....

Anyway, more JP-esque news to try to divert my mind for a few minutes more. Led-Zeppelin.com has added a classy looking updated Photo Gallery to their site, including some lovely wallpapers for your desktop. LZ Fans should go check it out!!!

link via the totally awesome (and totally Japanese) Jimmy Page Fanclub!

not exactly my beautiful launderette

2005-12-16T02:54:00.000-08:00

In just a few short hours we are taking our daughter to the airport so she can fly out to spend Christmas (her very first one apart from us.... EVER! sob...) with her boyfriend's family in Virginia.

I'm a nervous wreck and I just can't sleep. The last two days I was supposed to be completing my final project and take a final exam but the washing machine - and my whole world it seemed - stood still as I went into emergency mode trying to help Mina get ready for this momentous - and overwhelming - trip.

The final exam has been rescheduled for Monday and the Final Project is due Tuesday and the clothes are washed and packed thanks to a serious chunk of time spent at the Bizzy Bee Laundromat today; and I'm exhausted but I just. can't. sleep.

But here's an item that I found while insomnia-induced netsurfing:

Jimmy Page Receives the OBE from the Queen for ABC Task Brazil Charity Work!

I guess he got it on the 14th the same day my washing machine went into revolt.

Wish I could've been there instead but it is a lovely bit of news nevertheless!

Jimmy holds up his OBE for the camera!
By Fiona Hanson, AP pool

And one more for good measure, coz I'm image-greedy!

AP Photo/Fiona Hanson, pool

merry fitzmas everybody!!!

2005-12-15T02:31:00.000-08:00

Wish I'd known about this site yesterday when I was compiling Virtual Tree Decorating spots. This one is a gem! And there's one lovely present there I wouldn't kick outta my ~ er, out from under my tree.

awesome link via One Woman Wrecking Crew!

the reason for the season

2005-12-15T01:37:00.000-08:00

Chandra is a real unsung hero in my eyes. She is part of a small but caring group of people who are giving the gift of their time and compassion in this Season of Light.

She reminds us all not to forget New Orleans during this holiday season. Please go read her post and if you can, click on a link and give someone in need a very special, very heartfelt gift, whether it be of time or money. Every little bit can make a very big difference to someone in need.

while you are sleeping

2005-12-14T01:45:00.000-08:00

I'm trying to read thru all my blog favs as fast as I can tonight coz its back to my frantic-paced workload tomorrow.

SO much has been going on, but like the pReZ I guess I've been in my own little bubble. Not much time to contemplate things but I did want to link to this chilling insomnia-inducing little toon from Mark Fiore found via Coffee House Studio.

in the meadow we can build a snowman

2005-12-14T00:18:00.000-08:00

well, ok, may I can't build one in Southern California but I can build a virtual one here... or here... or here!

You can also light a virtual menorah here and play spin the dreidel here!

And you can decorate avirtual Christmas tree here, here and here!

Lots of other fun online games here! I just wish I had time to play some of them right now.

I just wanted to post something here and let you know that I'm still alive and I wish I was here!!!!

This is the Christmas Tree I made last year at a cool little Christmas Tree Maker found at Isryan's Dolls! Unfortunately the link no longer seems to work. :-( If I can find out if she has a new site I will credit and link it here. In the meantime, let your hearts be light! Enjoy this beautiful month of love and joy and make a little space in your heart every day for peace and calm in the midst of all this outer madness we are swirling around in...

and we're back

2005-12-07T08:59:00.000-08:00

The blog is still looking a bit wonky but the comments are now working once again.

Now if I can get back here and actually post something other than these junky little updates of no consequence. Oh well. Maybe later...

wonky and comment free :-(

2005-12-07T01:01:00.000-08:00

It's late, late, late and I'm still up. Wired from my first draft deadline and ready to hit phase two hard in the next several days. But I hope I will get to drop in here more and blog once in awhile (or at the very least peruse my very long list of blogroll addictions because I'm having major withdrawal since I've been unable to read my favs much lately due to school... bleah!) and most importantly, try to figure out how to fix the comments problem I'm having.

Yup, as some people may have already figured out, the comments box does not seem to be working... at all. :-( I don't know what I've done wrong but I may end up having to change the blog again just to get them to come back. Hopefully I will be able to resolve it in the next few days. My apologies for the mess I've made of things in here in the meantime.

Anyway, everyone enjoy this beautiful season of light. Merry, jolly, happy, joy to you all!

sign for voter confidence

2005-12-05T15:32:00.000-08:00

I just got this email and I am having major blog issues right now. Not sure what is wrong but evidently my cosmetic changes to the blog has screwed stuff up. Unfortunately I've got zero time to deal with it right now but I did want to at least attempt to post this link because it is very very important!!!

If you care about making sure that every citizen's right to a fairly counted vote is protected, please, PLEASE go sign this very worthy petition!!!

I sure hope this works! I'm also having comments issues right now. So very sorry about this big mess but I will not be able to fix it till after tomorrow in all likelihood. Thanks for understanding!

test

2005-12-05T14:57:00.000-08:00

testing this mess again

commercialized christmas?

2005-12-05T11:59:00.000-08:00

You bet. But I like the pretty lights and right now I don't have time to do more than hit and run my own blog with a quick post so I guess I might as well make the most of it.

Planet Christmas 2005 has this year's show-off gallery up and running.

Also, here's a link to watch something that is supposed to be truly amazing. I can't verify this because I still do not have a Windows Media Player installed, but if you do, you can check it out for yourself: A Christmas light show synchronized to music.

Well, it is down to the wire on one of my projects ~ due by class time tomorrow night, so I need to get back to my part of it (this one is a group project and I still have stuff on my end to get finished... YIKES!!!) so it's back to work on it right now...