How to Do A 21 Gun Salute



I bet lots of people think a 21 gun salute is twenty-one guys in uniform each shooting their gun once. If they thought that, they'd be wrong. I witnessed a 21 gun salute when I was 13, attending the funeral of a man I didn't know. Well, technically, I didn't attend the funeral, I was on the other side of the pine hedge in my house doing my math homework while I waited for the 21 gun salute my father had read about in the papers. My horse had a habit of jumping out of the pasture and so he called the school and had Mrs. Dick, one of the office ladies, drive me home for the morning to keep an eye on him. The funeral happening on the other side of the pine hedge in the cemetery, about five yards from the pasture fence, was for Robert L. Shippee, burned alive in his sleep on the USS Stark in the Persian Gulf by two Iraqi missiles, deemed an accident by Ronald Reagan. He was three weeks away from his 36th birthday. The fire burned all night, all day, and all the next night, but US ships nearby helped save the ship and it went on in 1994 to help fight in the Haitian conflict ("Operation Support Democracy "), and fend off Cuban refugees in the waters off Florida ("Operation Able Vigil ") before heading back to the Persian Gulf.



The seven uniformed soldiers shot their blanks in precise coordination, three times. My horse's head perked up for the shots, and then went back to the fresh spring grass. It was 1987. The US was not at war. The Iran-Iraq war killed about a million people before ending, and in that war the Iraqis killed 37 soldiers asleep on the USS Stark, with no US civilian fuss over why a) we were there, and b) why this reckless nation was our ally. Today we'd be at war over that kind of loss faster than I could send an e-mail. But when the attacker is our friend-of-convenience, we look the other way.



What are the results of that fire caused by the Iraqi Mirage fighterplane's Exocet missiles fired at 9 pm on May 17, 1987? Here are a few. Robert Shippee's son grew up without a father. A man serving on watch on the USS Stark that night went mad and killed a woman and her child with a hammer the following year, claiming post-traumatic stress. In 2001 another survivor of the Stark - decorated for his valor during the fire- is on the lam after fleeing his trial for armed robbery. He also kidnapped his son on his way out of town. A mother of one of the Stark casualties was quoted at a memorial service this past May saying she noticed they put a question about the Stark on Jeopardy. No mention of whether the question was answered correctly.



$142 million was spent repairing the USS Stark so it could be battle ready again. Senator Bob Dole led a Congressional request for an explanation, and in response "the administration thought it wise to delay submission of a proposal to sell new F-15 fighter jets to the Saudis*" (due to Saudi Arabia saying it lacked the authority to pursue the fighterplane that had attacked the Stark) (italics mine). The press made very little of the event, since criticizing the government in war time (even if it isn't our war) is taboo. The Iraqi government apologized, the US became more cozy with Iraq, more hostile to Iran.



After a long inquiry, the Navy Times published a gruesomely detailed account of the events of that night in May when the Iraqis fired on the Stark: "Inferno The Like of Which Had Never Been Experienced" by William Matthews (Oct. 26, 1987).



And what are the results of our involvement in the Iran-Iraq war? The USS Stark was placed in harm's way. Iraq was armed (by the US, France, and other NATO nations) with biological and chemical weapons that they used on the Kurds and Iranians in the late stages of the war. Both Iran and Iraq became more militarized. The US agenda of bringing down Iran failed.



Why are we going back for more? Do we really think we can establish a democracy in Iraq to make a model for the rest of the region? Do we think Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and Turkey will tolerate such a thing? How many more have to die for our misguided agenda of controlling oil interests under the guise of caring about human rights?



I found out doing some research on the Stark that the word "tattoo" in reference to the sad bugle solo played at the end of the day in Arlington Cemetery- and military institutions in general- comes from the original function: to tell the soldiers to leave the taverns and go back to quarters, and the barkeeps to "tap to" or "shut" the keg stoppers. So here I will leave space for a silent tattoo wishing the US military leaders drunk on power to sober up and keep another international middle east conflict from setting off another volley of three, solitary, blank shots by seven uniformed soldiers to be sounded in cemeteries across the country.

















March is the start of intolerable heat in Iraq, so if the US will make a military move, it will be in the next four weeks.



Read your alternative news sources.



And read *a good Newsweek piece by Jason Manning on the Stark and the continued evolution of our support of Iraq thereafter.



And maybe even read this guy's site- still pissed about the Stark, and the Reagan era in general I guess.

Happy Ramkwahanusolstimas!



Ramkwahanusolstimas is a self-invented holiday (by me and some long-lost friends) born of the coincidence of Ramadan, Kwanzaa, Hanukkah, Solstice, and Christmas all happening within two weeks of eachother one year (1999), causing mass overbooking and stress in well-integrated communities. So we thought it would ease things up if we merged them all.



The gist is that you fast for forty days and forty nights, eating only foods that are taupe or mauve, at the end of which you burn your Christmas Tree. The Ramkwahanusolstimas pageant is a parade of housewives watching daytime soaps. Now, here is the gospel of the prophet of Ramkwahanusolstimas, Harold Angel Ali Jamal Jones Ravenstar Fenkl, a cabbie, written by me in the madness of the moment, December, 1999.



~

Found Stuffed Between Seats on the BART Train

(XXX is destroyed or illegible text)



RamKwaHanuSolstiMas XXXXX!



And spoke unto Us, the God of the Cabdrivers

And said he thusly Io!* (*Latin for "Yo!")

And we were afraid, very afraid,

For it was Yet as like unto an Hallucination

Such as like unto That state thereafter

Begotten by listening to Christmas carols to Excess

And so we Hearkened to the Harold Angel

   (Harold Angel Ali Jamal Jones Ravenstar Fenkl).



Said he Thusly-

Go ye forth Blessed among Cabfares

And respect ye the Traditions of ... me.


   To the Good of all things Wild and Free

   And the Five Pillars of Cabbiedom

   And for the Children of Terrib-El
(Second Cousins of the Children of Isra-El)

   And the Seven Principals of the Corner Store

   And for the Son on a Stick who redeems all Unpaid fares.

Thusly shall ye go forth And from the First day of the
Five Foresaken Holidays,

Ye shall make your bodies Chaste of All foods

And excepting only those foods appearing in color To be

Taupe or mauve, such as Triscuits or cranberries,

Fasting for Forty days and Forty nights,

In which Time ye shall sleep And Watch Daytime Soaps

Exchanging Daily a Present numbered in Parts similar to the Fast Day

  Such as (one) a Beer (technically only those beers colored taupe) or

  (forty) cranberries.



And preparing all these forty days shall ye a Tree

Decorated with Such Things As Shall Be Flammable

In order that ye May to Please your Ancestors

Who may have been acolytes to Mass Transit if not
themselves Cabbies,

At the end of the Fast

So then this Tree Burn.



   Pine burns very well, being of Hardwood,

   And so thusly let it be Pine blessed among Trees

   To be thus Sacrificed.



In this Fulfillment of Tradition may you

Observe these truths: Cabbies are Your Shepherds

Ye Shall Not Want. They knowest the Great Secrets of Your Kind.

The most Secret of secrets being that which may either

Save or Destroy you, which is XXXX

XXXXXXX



End Manuscript (Remainder of Text Destroyed)

~

     --- Now everyone be good to eachother this year, 'kay? 'Kay.

The End of the Reign of the Sagittarians



This week ended the month of Sagittarian birthdays that rolls around every year, and reminds me each time of how Sagittarians have shaped my life, for better and worse. I seem particularly prone to tangles with these folks, and this may seem ungrateful, but I feel that people should have a little 411 on how to deal with the quirks of people born under this strange and lonely star. I will try to be generous, for the sake of the Sag teachers and peers who have taught me so much about myself. But I won't candy coat-- these people are armed with some powerful barbed arrows and they run with scissors.



OK, first, THE BASIC RUN DOWN:



Sag affirmation: I know.



Sag people and their relationship to astrology: They dislike or distrust it as superstition, but often know a surprising amount about it. In fact, count on these folks to know a lot of esoterica about things they are skeptical about. They are interested in exact rightnesses and wrongnesses, abstract truths, but will retain amazing scraps of knowledge (and half-truths, and groundless suspicions) to compose their absolute black and white sweeping generalizations. Purely for the shits and giggles they will retain any and all kinds of information and postulate away to their hearts' content. I'm not saying they color the truth with their own opinions. Their own opinions are their absolute truths. Theirs don't need to be your truths; they appreciate the challenge of skeptics. They are strangely confident about their self-constructed realities. Take it as either absent-minded-professorism, child-like self-absorption, or independent thinking.



The Sag Lightbulb Joke: Q. How many Sagittarians does it take to change a lightbulb?

A. I don't know, I'll let you know when I get back from India.



Sagittarians tend to react to negative feedback from superiors or loved ones by traveling, or retreating deeply into their work. Sharing feelings and confrontation about emotional hurts are easily avoided this way. With Sagittarians, PROCESSING IS PUNISHMENT. They know their capacity to talk before thinking and accidentally hurt people, so any processings must - in their minds- be about faulting them about things they unintentionally did wrong. It's just a nightmare for them to be wrong.



A Phrase I Saw in A Movie That Makes Me Think of Sagittarians: "From gaol [jail] to the throne, he travels fastest who travels alone." (Seen written on a mirror in a background of some 30's Marlene Dietrich movie.) (Marlene was a Dec. 27 Capricorn, by the way.)



The Archetypes and Tarot Cards I Associate with the Sag:


Young/ immature type: Satyr -- tarot card: 0 The Fool-- adventure, carelessness, sponteneity, generosity, optimism.

Adult type: Centaur / Hunter-Archer -- tarot card: 1 The Magician-- Hephaestus experimenting at his forge, the "I wonder what will happen if I mix this and that" attitude.

Mature/ elderly type: The Hermit on the Hill -- tarot card: 9 The Hermit-- the mad scientist in his/her library reading alone by a single lantern, the spiritual seeker-of-truths-within, the teacher of inquiry and skepticism.



OK, now the Care and Handling part of the 411. SOME SAGITTARIAN FOIBLES:


The Sagittarian's Achilles' Heel: All of the Sag archetypes are prone to Foot in Mouth Disease.



It is almost a phobia for Sagittarians to simply not know something, and risk being thought to be stupid, or without an opinion, so they will habitually talk and THEN think. They will take a perceived accusation of Not Knowing Something personally, on very little pretext, and then often confirm how little (or much) they know as quickly as possible. The wise, balanced, and well-therapized Sagittarian takes this little adage to heart: "It is better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to open one's mouth and remove all doubt," (Voltaire). My father, a Sag, will scamble to add his two cents of wisdom on any topic, even with specious sources (like NPR), even weighing in against eyewitnesses to an event. Sometimes he is so childlike and self-absorbed in his eagerness to be thought smart in trivial arguments, that if he wasn't so smart (in fact) one might think he was retarded. How do you get through to a Sag who spinning her/ his wheels trying to prove themselves right? My mother pokes and tickles my father to get him out of a spin. I try to make my grandmother (a Sag) to laugh to get her out of her spin. Do anything to let them know that you do not consider them a criminal for not knowing, reaffirm your belief in their good intentions and innocent (child-like, immature, self-absorbed) natures. Tickling may not work with your coworkers, however. Try making a small, limited (easy) inquiry that will be a slam dunk for them, so they can rebuild their self-confidence with you. Move on, they are attracted by movement. Just be direct if you can-- "if you don't know what's wrong then I won't bother telling you" won't work here.



Supersensitive people who can't handle a rough-and-tumble verbal tet-a-tet shouldn't tangle with a belligerent Sag. They tend to privately dismiss (watch them delete delete delete your words as you are talking, changing the subject as soon as you pause) those who contradict them, even if they don't say as much as a peep of argument. But trust that they will think about your point of view later. They want to know about it, because at their heart's heart, they do want to KNOW everything.



Cooking with Sagittarians: Beware their concoctions: smell, ask what is in it, THEN taste.



The Centaur hunter/mad scientist is more concerned with expediency than flavor. I have heard about a Sag adding tequila to a bloody mary mix, just to save a trip to the store. My father steamed up our house for days boiling down sap from Box Alders, abundant on our property but a poor cousin to the real thing, the Sugar Maples. He yielded about half a pint of super sweet syrup that nobody would use. This was to save the money we would usually spend on locally made, flavorful REAL maple syrup. The jar was faithfully taken out by him, and the mold boiled off, until he had -- all by himself-- eaten the entire disaster over a course of years. My grandmother (a Sag) wanted to use up some old dried goods, so she added a cup of powdered milk and a cup of Ovaltine to three packets of Swiss Miss cocoa mix, which she then served to an unwitting collection of guests who she was sure wouldn't notice the taste. If she doesn't ask, and nobody says anything, then she is sure her meal-experiments were fine.



She uses this same philosophy with family members who might be sick, hurt, or angry (even if she isn't the culprit). If they don't loudly and directly complain, then things are obviously GREAT. Can you believe she's a practicing minister? The cobbler's kids have no shoes, the minister's kids and grandkids have no nurturing.



You can often find Sagittarian-Americans who are left to their own devices for a meal eating while standing, lost in thought, staring out a window, spooning up cold leftovers that should probably be heated out of the pot in which it was originally cooked. I'm not saying they are uncivilized, just preferring expediency to flavor. In these experiments they can seem "unburdened by the thought process" -- but more accurately they are "unburdened by consideration of anyone else's thought process."



I do know one Sag, a teacher of mine, who is a remarkable, if expedient, cook. Once she wrote a healthy vegetarian cookbook, making a lot of experimental concoctions along the way. Her brown bread is a solid German rye she calls The Wings of Life, which my family calls The Wings of Death: each small loaf is five pounds of solid bread product. If you threw it at someone it could be considered assault with a deadly weapon. But it has a lot of protein, it is simple to make, it doesn't harm the planet, it's EXPEDIENT.



In Summary: Sagittarians make good leaders in group models where practical analysis is more important than consensus, such as in the exact sciences. Sags might be heard to say "This is not a consensus, there is a right answer here." If you love touchy feely gray-area types of relationships, thought-processes, or philosophies, don't expect support from the Sag, but be as open as you can be to their (often cutting) insights: they do have vision and it can put murky situations into high black/white relief, and it is based on knowledge. Just CHECK THEIR SOURCES before you stake your life savings on their stock tips. The real world is a strange place to the Sag, it is their playground, their science lab, and their library. Give the Sag enough space to think and formulate opinions, and s/he can be your best teacher.



I could go on- but I think it's time to watch another Judy Holliday movie. Coming soon on this blog: Celebrating the Greastest Holliday, the smartest dumb blonde in all of 1950's Hollywood.



AND ONE MORE THING BEFORE I GO:

A Correction and An MP3 Link for Cypher in the Snow.



In my blog the other day, I wrongly referred to the music of Cypher in the Snow as "punkabilly." The band's banjo player my friend Lala reminded me of their real sound (which I haven't heard since their live shows of the late 90's) with this no-frills link to a page of high-quality MP3s of songs from their album Blow Away The Glitter Diamonds Stolen From The Crown. If you bought the CD it included a real treasure map. Have a listen: they are obviously not punkabilly but circus-punk.

Sorry for the somber subject, but it's time to unload this information in a public place, after passing it along privately for a while now.



Alternative Symptom Control and Immune Boosting for People Living with Cancer



These are methods that I explored with the several friends I've had who survived or didn't survive cancer, including my girlfriend Kris who ended her own life after a long struggle with breast and bone cancer. ** Indicate the most effective & amazing things you should definitely try if you're living with cancer.



Acupuncture- This is not for everyone, and should be tried only with practitioners who are experienced with treating people with your particular kind of cancer. However, it can be much more site-specific than other pain control methods, targeting the exact root of the pain.



** Aromatherapy / Tart and Spicy Taste-therapy- Taste or smell to help with nausea: peppermint oil, cinnamon paste, strong breath mints like Altoids also help. My Kris found the only mint strong enough to stop her nausea were the little tiny lips-shaped mints sold by Victoria's Secret in little tiny pink tins. The clerk who sold me nearly their entire stock in the San Francisco Shopping Center branch told me that she had found the mints very helpful with her nausea when she was fighting Hodgkin's disease. Ginger is also a good taste or smell to help with nausea. Trader Joe's triple ginger cookies were very helpful to Kris. Of course ginger ale is an age-old aid for nausea. Tart smells and tastes like lemon and lime- the tarter the better- can also help stop nausea. Otherwise, strong tastes and smells, even the usually helpful lavender and pine, may provoke nausea.



Hot/ Cold Treatment-Another treatment I can't speak about first or close-second hand. I had a good friend who had struggled with Lupus her whole life, and then was stricken with cancer. She had to be extremely careful with how she stimulated her immune system, because overstimulation could cause her death. One of the immune-stimulating alternative treatments she used alongside the mainstream western treatments was taking hot baths alternating with sitting in an icy cold tub of water. This can be done in smaller proportions (or with showers, instead of baths) to gently stimulate the immune system. Laura, my friend who tried this, did it through the Seattle Cancer Treatment and Wellness Center, the only place she could find affordable care that integrated alternative and mainstream approaches. She actually flew there from San Francisco about every two weeks for treatment.



Juice- Fresh-squeezed orange juice can be especially helpful for immune-system boosts. Get a juicer and some really fresh juice oranges, yum! Feel the effect immediately.



Magnets- Again, not something I've had first or close-second hand experience with, but I have an aunt with bone cancer who uses magnets to control her pain. So, again, this shouldn't be dismissed as a side-effect free addition to your pain-management regime.



Marijuana Tincture- Smoking marijuana has the unpleasant side-effect of being rough on your throat, and of exposing people around you to second-hand smoke. Eating marijuana in food can give you variable degrees of intensity of effect. Finding or making tincture out of marijuana and putting a small eyedropper's amount into hot herbal tea (evaporating the alcohol content and leaving marijuana-essence in the tea) can give you the anti-nausea and sedative benefits without the smoke and with a controlled dosage. The tincture is so strong I've read that you can rub it topically onto sore spots to get pain relief.



Massage & Reiki-The immune system reacts positively to massage. However, you want to find a massage therapist who is experienced with cancer symptoms, particularly with your type of cancer. Some kinds of massage can stimulate the lymph in unhelpful ways. Generally, though, massage relaxes you and stimulates your body to heal itself. If you've gotten to a point where your body is fragile, gentle caressing without any deep pressure, especially with unscented oils and a heating pad adjacent, can still help soothe the body and stimulate an immune response. Reiki- A wonderful, gentle art of righting the energy balance in your body. It neither requires the actual laying on of the hands, nor the presence of the practitioner, if those are impossible or uncomfortable for you.



Methadone-This is a method neither my partner nor anyone I knew actually followed-through and tried for pain control. I believe it is a fairly new approach, as an alternative to morphine. It has side-effects, such as addiction. But if you are unable to tolerate morphine, this is something to try to explore with the help of a clinician experienced in pain management.



** Quartz Crystals-These are used to regulate watches because crystals love order: they generate low electromagnetic fields that try to put everything in their field "to rights." They dislike chaos and extremes, so if any part of your body is in a spasm, or overly hot, or knotted, put a clear (the clearer the better) quartz crystal that's been run under cold water for a minute directly onto the trouble spot, and focus your breathing into that spot. You may not feel suddenly perfect, but the extremes will be controlled and moderated. With Kris, applying crystals to her painful spots would sometimes cause her to fall asleep peacefully, and I allowed the crystals to fall off when she stopped holding them, collecting them from the bed in a way that would not wake her. Even if it's just the coolness of the quartz and a little dose of placebo effect, I found quartz crystals do no harm and often significantly help with small symptom flare-ups. Running the crystals under cool water for a minute after use recharges them with healing negative ions. Store the crystals in a sunny spot if possible. Here is a link to a cancer survivor's homepage, by which she tries to distribute crystals to people suffering from cancer, regardless of ability to pay.



** Supplements: Spes Capsules-An herbal alternative to morphine that has been shown to have cancer-growth-suppressing properties. The most affordable and accessible vendor for this on-line- at least as of last year- is Seacoast Vitamins. Spes comes in two kinds- PC Spes (for prostate cancer) and Spes (for other cancers). BotanicLab, who made the Spes that I bought for Kris, has closed. You can now buy Spes under other names: Prostasol (PC-SPES) and Imusan (SPES). My grandfather and Kris both found it extremely helpful, mainly noticeable when they ran out and couldn't get new tablets right away. Nu-Gen Nutritional System, including Cantron (nee Can-Cell, an electrolyte formula), Colostrum, Magazyme Forte, Noni (derived from a mushroom), OPCs, Squalamax, and Squalamine (the last two are shark liver and shark cartilage, i.e. non-vegetarian)- This is a system that brought my Kris out of a systemic tailspin, and put her in a U-turn to remission within days. Unfortunately, it demands a rigorous system of taking pills (something like eleven per day) and one strange-tasting twice daily liquid. Aside from the annoying frequency of pills (and the stench of one of the shark-derived pills), the only side-effect is being sleepy for the first two or three days of being on the system. Kris went from not being able to bend over to tie her shoes to jogging with her dog within a matter of days when she was able to stay on this system.



Visualization & Meditation- A visualization of a candle in darkness when you are having discomfort or pain can help bring things under control. Imagine the candle: your symptom is causing the flame to flare up too high, or if your energy is too low, the flame to sputter down to almost nothing. Steady the flame and bring it to a perfect and steady still point of light. Meditation-- Otherwise known as taking time to yourself to sit and try to detach from your situation. It can be easy when you're sick to fall into a rhythm of watching TV or keeping some other thing around to busy your mind without taking the time you need to close up the portals of perception, and while still awake, reflect on your experience of the disease and detach from it. With practice this can be a very powerful tool for handling all kinds of symptoms and side-effects. Try to meditate on being IN your body, even with all its problems, and be in it until it becomes a still place where there is no dis-ease.



** Wiggling Fingers and Toes-Taught to me by a yoga instructor who was loathe to let us out of a difficult straining posture too soon. This distracts your nervous system from the trouble spot. It releases the excess energy generated by pain. Notice that when you are in a state of pleasure, you naturally and subconsciously wiggle your fingers and toes- again, to release excess energy. Hence the phrase "making your toes curl" from pleasure.



Yam Cream- for women with breast cancer taking tamoxifen: this is a side-effect free and completely topical way to control night sweats caused by the removal of estrogen from your body. I bought Kris' yam cream at the wonderful herb store in San Francisco The Scarlet Sage.



...and if none of that, and no traditional methods work, and you no longer have a quality of life that you can live with...



Self-Delivery- Seconal tranquilizer, plus vodka, plus antihistimine, plus cellophane plastic bag and rubber band. Control of her own life was a primary concern for my girlfriend. She could not tolerate the thought of losing the use of her legs, and her bone cancer had gone into her hips. She also could not tolerate the thought of relying on other people to help her go to the bathroom or take her medicine, or make decisions for her when her mind started to go. Before she reached that point, she put her affairs in order and ended her own life on her own terms, on her own schedule. She prearranged for her doctor to mis-declare her death to be from cancer, so that there would be no coroner's inquiry. The people in her life who were licensed therapists were specifically kept out of the loop of the details of her planned death, to protect their licenses.. Good timing is essential, and as much honesty as possible with your loved ones about this planned death is also important. Talk to a hospice counselor before making any decisions. In any case, Seconal (Secobarbital) is very hard to come by (Eli Lilly stopped making it two weeks after my girlfriend's OD), and I think can only be obtained from a veterinarian- it's the drug of choice for self-delivery of humans, and for euthanasia of animals.



That is all for now, happy Solstice.

Welcome to California, Here's Your Lesbian Name and Smoothie. Remember to end all your sentences like a question. Starbucks is bad. Smoking is bad. NEXT!



If you haven't received your Lesbian Name yet.



If you aren't going to walk away happy with that name. I recommend the "So You Want To Be A Cyborg?" link, being pro-cyborg as I am.



Thanks to Larry Bob of Holytitclamps fame for sending these links out in his events bulletin today. It's good to remind the local queercore folk to keep their names up-to-date per changing sexual orientation, gender identity and political affinity. There's nothing worse than an out-of-date name-- you don't want to see a dyke after two years in the Mission, six tattoos, eight piercings and three gender identity changes still being called Betsy Ravenflower of NorthWomynsland.

Stalking Nirvana's Krist Novoselic

Or at least some of his more arcane musical endeavors.



I discovered a happy thing today. Part one of the happy thing is that although the band Sweet 75, which I periodically stalk on the web to see if they have issued a second album yet, broke up in 2000, a musician friend-- Lala the banjo player from the punk-a-billy Cypher in the Snow-- whom I asked about it today turned out to know Sweet 75's sweet-voiced singer Yva Las Vegas through some Northwest lesbionic-musician-type connections. Part two of the happy thing is to find out that Sweet 75 was bassist Krist Novoselic's first band after Nirvana, and it turns out he also played with the wonderful Northwest band Sky Cries Mary. Sadly, all these bands are broken up and not producing anything, but the more I found out about Krist the more it sounds like a) I have a particular affection for his particular bass playing, and b) being that he's political, located among smaller bands who know bands I know, and he's Croatian (me being Slavophilic), he and I could have a decent conversation, if not know someone or two in common. Plus Sweet 75 was named after a line in a Roethke poem about a poem, and what's not to like about that?



Krist's political web sites about inclusive democracy and electoral reform.



The best bio of Krist I found on the web, if you can suffer the format. Featuring his being sent back to Croatia, and getting his jaw wired shut.



Listen to low-grade quality versions of Sweet 75's one and only self-titled album. Ode to Dolly is great, but Oral Health is very often my favorite.



Listen to even lower-grade quality versions of Sky Cries Mary's albums. The song Moonbathing on the album that guest-stars Krist, Moonbathing on Sleeping Leaves, has a special place in my heart, since I did a burlesque-y artsy strip to it at the former incarnation of the San Francisco Luna Sea's women-only Amateur Strip Night, wearing a silver wig and silver makeup and red and blue body paint and big long skirts and spinning a lot.



There ain't no Cypher in the Snow mp3s on the web where I can find them, but there are some tour pictures featuring a shot of someone about to brain my friend Lala the banjo player with a wooden dildo.

A Tiny Break From Cynicism and Criticism

Here below please read the text from Sit In: What It Is Like, a book by the late, great zen poet, artist and philosopher Paul Reps, who, among other cool accomplishments, authored the first North American book of haiku in 1939. Sit In was published by Zen Center Press (San Francisco), in 1975. It is a tiny, sweet out-of-print paperback with Reps' ink painting-poems throughout, bought at San Francisco's Dog Eared Books. He doesn't tell you that he's teaching you how to meditate, but he does. He's basically the only zen poet who writes about how to meditate with a grounded practicality that I can grasp. Yes, it's not short, but it is CONCISE. Trust me, read it. You'll thank me later.


~~start quote~~



Book begins here



Head and heart are not apart



Sit in in-vites you

Into new experiencing

As new all through

Doing (no thing) well



In the Orient

Those who sit in

Become stronger healthier

And surer of their cosmos position



So may you



Humans from over the world

Visit these sitters

And often wonder what they are doing



This book explains what

So they may visit you



The act of sit in

Takes self discipline



Then it takes self guidance

Even to take a step you guide it



Then it takes other guidance

The coming together of cosmos as you

Accepting this togethering thankfully

Graduating from dissatisfaction



All this packs in sit

Keep in before words about it

Do not go beyond in



As men give their life for country

Give yours for life itself

In any position or act of good will

Graduate in



Please compose ourself

This may take a little while

Then



As you sit in

Without moving even a finger

With a friend present or

Present elsewhere



1 minute the first day

2 minutes the second day

3 minutes the third day



Increasing minutely up to 10



Or later maybe more



Preferably at the same time place

Perhaps in an empty quiet room



Your integrity begins to show

Cell rhythms smooth in

And you feel better and

Better



When standing

We balance our human instrument

As three inverted triangles



Head into shoulders



Shoulders into pelvis



Pelvis into feet



As this mobile balancing

Leans slightly

Muscle stress begins to recover

Us into weightless

Perfect

Bliss this



As we compose

Our lowest triangle

Into a firm base

Including our whole body

In-ing begins



Sitting crosslegged

On a hard cushion

Or forward on a low flat seat

with both feet on ground

Somthing amazing happens



We open

Shut up

Up in



Sit comfortably then most

Comfortably erect



Centering your weight equally

On two sit bones



Forehead smooth

Soft eyes near closing



Inbreathflow high through nostrils



Shoulders releasing

Back firm

Neck soft

Jaw not tight



Head floating up from back

As if about to nod yes

Though not yet nodding



The sitting itself

Your answer



The sitting itself

Your healing



Just do it



Difficult when stiff

More and more fluidly flexive

When firm and gentle with you



Impulse subdued



Emotive re-act pacified



Radiance through



Too simple to believe

In experiencing

Millions of years before yoga

Thousands of years before zen



Re-discovered gloriously by buddha

(2500 years ago) and other sages

And variously formalised





If a dull moment comes



Stretch



Loosen



In



"What is it like?"



Like inlight

Actually we are made of light

Too instant for birth death



"How?"



Observe natural breathflow

Outbreathflow

Inbreathflow

Imagine turning palms of hands

Down with outbreathflow

Up with inbreathflow

Continuing without moving hands

In your rhythm of suns and seas

Given with birth



Lo the great harmony



"Are you dreaming it?"

Waking from dream and

From waking dream

Graduate in



"Does it help others?"

Are you others?

Are others you?

Is empty full?



"Can it be done with overstepping

Overdoing overgoing?"

Yes



"Does it get to be a habit?"

If you sit and sag

Try too hard

Try to repeat it



It's electric

Just as it sits



Earned benefits of sit in

May be due in part to:



a) Your willing to practice it

As an act of integrity



b) Charging your batteries

Minding your business



c) Doing nothing beyond in



d) Mind attention accommodating

One aggregate at a time wholly



e) Smoothing broken breathflow



f) In-viting innate nerveflow

Bloodflow lymphflow juiceflow

Cell consciousnessing



g) Pressures on large base

Nerve cluster opening inner doors

To tophead



h) Entering silent sound

Awarefullness



i) Self-learning to do(no-thing)

When about your daily work

Moving water-smooth light-bright

So nothing is the water



j) Multiple other reasons unknown

As yet to us air and light breathers



in this lifetime

IS resolves

to help one individual

you (who me?) so

wondrously put

together



Something

Is

Immediate

Unchanging in change

Inchanting me me

In each grassblade



"Who me?"

Instead of me or I

May one answer



IS -- is does it



Is

Sits





Fresh

Shouts the bud



Strengthening



Trueing



Utterly still



You may feel it is meditating

Or praying or composing

Or graduating from talk-back



Before before say

Keep in

Firm as pyramid

In deep wake

As in deep sleep

Instantly regenerating

Rejuvenating



New life begins here



Thank you for your life



Our energy sea sees us.

Earth and its creatures are negative to light.

We break through to inlight.



any questions?

reps

ZEN CENTER

300 Page Street

San Francisco, Ca 94102



OPEN HERE



~~end quote~~



This guy Paul Reps only has one original book still in print, his famous Zen Telegrams, which is how I found him. The book Zen Flesh Zen Bones, his translations of ancient zen texts, is also still in print, and includes the sexiest poem I've ever read: Centering, with the two sexiest words ever put together in a love letter: "devotion frees."



Here is the most complete bibliography that I can muster for his sixty years of generating random, beautiful little books. I have most of these books, thanks to E-Bay(search titles AND descriptions, people don't always put Reps in the product title), and the Bay Area's (once Reps' home) used book stores, especially Dog Eared Books and Forest Books.



-- 1939 More Power To You: Poems Anyone Can Make. (California). (A book of "visual haiku" published 27 years before Robert Spiess' first collection of haiku, The Heron's Legs, was published, and over 20 years before any of the few other very early North American haiku collections were published in the early and mid-sixties.)


-- 1951 Unknot the World in You.


--1957 Zen Flesh Zen Bones.


-- 1958 Naked Essays by a Wandering Foreigner, publisehd by Komo Hadaka Aruki (Japan).


-- 1960 Big Bath.


--1961 Gold/ Fish Signatures (on ricepaper).


--1962-1964 Picture-Poem Primer (dated 1964 per Bibliography in Letters to a Friend, may be 1963 or earlier).


--1965 Unwrinkling Plays.


--1967 Square Sun, Square Moon.


--1967 Ask a Potato.


--1969 No Need to Kill: 10 Ways to Meditate.


--1971 Be!: New Uses for the Human Instrument.


--1974 Deep Wake.


-- 1975 Sit In, What It is Like.


-- 1978 Juicing: Words & Brushwork.


-- 1981 Letters to a Friend.


-- 1990 Let Good Fortune Jump on You.


and

---- a mysterious undated one-page folded puzzle 8 Ways to You by "Hut-of-Light" (Hawaii).



Read your Reps! It's a panacea better than chocolate, better than a snow day, better than a warm cat asleep on your lap. Or at least more reliable.

In Praise of the Great Ms. Dynamite

I blogged about her before but now I can't find my entry in the archives, so here it is again. Essential music, people!



Please prepare your ears for the amazing sweet groove of Ms. Dynamite, aged 21 and cleaning up the UK music awards after just one album, A Little Deeper. Her genre? Technically UK Garage, but she would fit in among the greats of US Hip Hop. She was a little misfiled under "Soul" at the Berkeley branch of Amoeba Records - but just talk to a nice clerk and they'll point you aright.



I didn't need to know this to love her music, but I heard about her because in September, 2002, Ms. D. won the UK Mercury Music Award, and I'm amazed to find out that (as one journalist wrote) she is " the first black female and youngest-ever winner of the Mercury Music Prize." Someone else wrote "It's official - Ms. Dynamite is the leading light of British music..."



So now I have to try to describe her... she has a silky, strong, slightly higher than Lauryn Hill - but Hill-ish - style voice. She stands out from Hill with a more reggae flavor, and (even) more of an explicitly political feminist set of topics in her songs. It also occurs to me to say that she's the singer Ani Difranco wishes she was. With all due respect to the big A.



Now this isn't the original set of links that I posted, but it will do for now.



The Official Ms. D. Site-- check out the videos, kids!



The BBC's "everything you need to know about" Ms. D.



An informative fan site, actually more informative than the official site.




A high quality version of "It Takes More" --- "if it's not too complex, tell me- how many Africans died for the baguettes on your Rolex?"



Here is the video for "It Takes More" (with the censored, AKA "clean," version of the lyrics). Click on "ADSL" for the RealPlayer version.



Listen to a medium quality version of "Ms. Dy-Na-Mi-Tee"-- Ms. D's first album's hit single whose video caught my attention on the international channel, the chorus thereof thereby lodging itself in my brain and not going away until I hunted down her album and played it about 200 times.



Listen to a medium quality version of "Booo!"-- Ms. D's first hit circa May, 2001-- about clubland violence, with UK Garage luminary Sticky (of So Solid Crew).




Lastly, a site where you can click to see footage of Ms. D LIVE, performing "Put Him Out" -- a nice little song about how a girl just needs to kick out the boy and change all the locks sometimes.



Coming soon--- How to Peacefully Share the Planet with Sagittarian-Americans and Their Tricky Inner Child (Who is Often More Outer than Inner)

Hello, the Genetic Disillusionment that is Thanksgiving



I am still choking on the turkey bone of my family dysfunction, trying to understand how so much that is strange, manic-depressive, and twisted could come out of the same country that spawned the wondrousness that is Ikea. It is no wonder that I have not gone and reclaimed my roots and learned Swedish. Every time I turn that way I find out a new layer of alienation and abuse churning down the genetic runway into my veins.



And now I find out my sister is pregnant with twins. For better or for worse, they will probably be born not only twins but GEMINIS - the sign of the twins. As if their genetic makeup wasn't enough of an uphill climb.



On the topic of big happy families, please write to my friend Paul if you have any connection to survivors of Jonestown. Here is his website for his movie After Jonestown.



Here are some other links about mayhem and conspiracy to take your minds off your own unfortunate and inevitable genetic predispositions:

The Mayhem Crime Archives



The Mayhem Jim Jones Blurb

A fun quote from a letter in the Mayhem archives: "Not all of Congressman Ryan's party got killed. Jackie Spier, then his aide, got shot, but survived, as did at least one other person. She then became a state Assemblywoman here in California [and is currently a CA State Senator, D-San Mateo]. In promoting gun control legislation, she has made pretty good mileage out of getting shot at Jonestown. A paraphrased quote: 'Well, I've been shot before. Have you?'"



The Jonestown Story from the Cult Awareness Network



A well-cited article detailing how Moscone appointed Rev. Jim Jones to a sinecure in order to allow him to commit election fraud and ensure Moscone's reelection.

The Slacker Stalker Rules for Living a Spiritually Right Pagan Life

...By me, Lady Pixie Moondrop, the self-selected heir to Lady Pixie Moondrip of the infamous "Guide to Craft Names."


There are 17 ways to right-live here because there should always be 17 Reasons Why. It's San Francisco trivia, you should look it up.



For Goddessakes:



1. SPELLING: "Incense" shall be spelled with a "c" and then an "s," never with an "s" first and never with an "sc." "Witch" shall only be spelled with an "i" and never the yonic "y" (i.e. womyn, wyfe, mynstrual cramp). "Deity" shall be spelled with "ei": remember deity = immortal = no "die."



2. NAMES: If you chose a Craft name or were reared by hippies, remember to take your nametag off before you go out the street door after the conference or workshop. People might not understand that "Crystal Seahorse" is a sacred name and not something you are selling.



3. CREDIT CARDS AND FLOOR SPACE: [ON drippy scary voice] Wield Ye Not your own credit card in a Pagan supply store with a floorspace whose square footage exceeds that of your apartment. And with one payment do not try to conquer a credit card bill that is larger than your paycheck. Therein lies ruin.[OFF drippy scary voice.]



4. MORE SPELLING AND NAMES: There will be no "h" in God. If you want to distance yourself from Judeo-Christian conformist spelling, then name the specific deity, or say the long version of the word: Goddess. If you don?t like any gender in your deity, call it the Intelligent All. If you insist on having a little "ho" in your God, then call her Ishtar.



5. RITUAL PARTY FAVORS: There will be NO throwing away of ritual favors (i.e. tiny smudge sticks, itsy crystals, red clay Goddess baubles). They will be kept until there is no memory extant of the original ritual or of anyone who was in it. Then they will be given to a non-Pagan who will be impressed by them and think they are Talismanic Power Objects and not just New Age Clutter.



6. WHAT ABOUT THE CAT? The cat will be in charge of arranging the house altar, house crystal collection, and house furniture.



7. WHAT IS ETERNAL? Only two things are eternal: taxes and gossip. The mysteries of the former were lost to modern people long ago. The mysteries of the latter are passed on in a whisper to new initiates whenever the subject of the gossip steps up to any microphone.



8. PROHIBITION ON GROCERY STORE LINE LINGUISTICS: There will be no use of the word "matristic" as a synonym for "egalitarian," or at all. Random cross-continental homonyms or homophones or homographs will not be the bases for a new system of gynocentric philosophy. There will be no pretending that there was a P.P.P.P. (pre-pale-penis-people) golden age of matriarchy with "little or no" (to quote from a 1983 matristic text) "sexism, classism, racism, ageism, or war." Did we learn nothing from the failures of the 70's feminist movement? Essentializing estrogen-as-panacea and playing pretend with the real history of multiple isolating oppressions does not build a strong society. Making up obscure new words and assigning arbitrary meanings also does not build a strong society. If you choose to use the word "matristic," you will be sentenced to membership in a local collective consensus-based feminist organic vegan consciousness raising activist group. You will be in charge of fundraising.



9. DIVINE INTERVENTION: Being that people generally suck, particularly in cities today, where life generally sucks, non-offensive interactions with other humans can be taken as signs of divine intervention.



10. SAINTHOOD: This is attained through not stalking and killing the SUV driver who cut you off not signaling turning left on red while talking on his cell phone, and/or through picking up other people's dogs' poops.



11. THE REQUISITE ANTI-SEX LAW: Love is the Law, but nonconsensual masturbation shall be prohibited.



12. INITIATION: this tradition will accept you as an initiate after you have been kicked out of a coven for questioning the priestess' arbitrary invasions of people's personal space, or some other severe, arbitrary exertion of power, especially if it involves public shaming or some noxious essential oil.



13. SIGNS OF RIGHT-LIVING: There will be no chasing of buses, or other public transit vehicles. Being able to make all your connections at a walk is a sign of blessedness and right-living. So is finding all your commute escalators in working order.



14. CURSING: There will be no cursing. Cussing, or swearing, is fine. Trying to exact revenge through casting a curse involves expensive ingredients, labor-intensive ritual, and unmeasurable results. Arson, now there's an effective revenge tactic.



15. GODS ARE LIKE CHILDREN: No deity is omnipotent, but they are extremely defensive about this, so please behave as though they are. Please pretend that they are all equal in your sight. Favoritism is manipulative, and although useful to certain ends, should be publicly discouraged.



16. REQUIRED SACRIFICES: Everyone who is not a roach or a peep must submit to entropy. All goldfish or houseplants who can be killed by overwatering or overfeeding must die, especially if they live with me.



17. WHAT IS GOOD: Everything is good. Everything that is not good is hereby prohibited and discouraged.



And Slacker Stalker wishes you a Happy Thank-the-Native-First-Nation-People Day!
A little reading between food courses, that's all I ask.


Read about the nation decimated by the people who hosted that first Thanksgiving.



Read the speech of Wamsutta James, a modern Wampanoag man, written for a 1970 gathering of Pilgrim descendants celebrating the Pilgrim's landing. The author was disinvited after they proofread his speech.



And check out the main site for the United American Indians of New England for more information on the National Day of Mourning held on the last Thursday in November.


And check out the main site for the awesome International Indian Treaty Council who host the annual Un-Thanksgiving Day sunrise ceremony on Alcatraz, where AIM staged their occupation in the early 70's. Their flier (which you can read on their site under upcoming events/ bay area) reads:



As Indigenous Peoples of this land we recognize Thanksgiving Day by remembering and honoring all those who died in defense of the land and the spiritual ways. At the same time Indians celebrate the vitality of their spirit, will to survive and dedication to the protection of Mother Earth. By remembering and rejoicing this day offers American Indians and non-Indians alike a unique opportunity to gather strength from one another for the future struggle to protect and preserve the land, resources and spiritual awareness for future generations.



And now, off to rural Michigan for my Swedish Congregationalist Minister grandmother's 84th birthday.


Slacker Stalker will be back in a week.

OK, another breather between the didactic babblings of your favorite stalker...

Read About My Neighborhood's Mythical Monster

the 'Devil of the Marsh', described as having a "snake-like body, dark greenish skin and a very large head with small horns."



This cool site also has info on my local free "liberation drive in" - hosted in a local parking lot near me!- and other nifty Oaklandcentric goodies. What a find!

OK, finally the

Slacker Stalker Guide to Shoebox Abuse

...an addendum to My Gender Identity Shoe Key



If you have shoes - i.e. a gender identiy - it's a metaphor, work with me - then you have a shoe box that you don't want to trap yourself or anyone else in.



Shoebox Use:

Safe storage for your ex's sex toys (borrowed permanently).

Shoebox Abuse:

Embarassing drag show photo storage- take them out! Let your little light shine!



Shoebox Use:

Starting element for diorama about what your life would be like if you were a football player or cheerleader.

Shoebox Abuse:

Starting element for diorama about your dark evil revenge fantasies about people who have made fun of your fashion choices.



Shoebox Use:

Handy storage for your spirit gum, fake facial hair, rhinestone bindis, glitter gel, false eyelashes, dressy polkadot bowties and cigarette holders.

Shoebox Abuse:

Unsanitary storage for the unfortunate mishap about which you are still in denial involving the Martha Stewart homeade vanilla soy sauce peanut brittle recipe when you were having a feminine nesting urge. Own your fabulous failures! How will you find a way to link to your inner feminine side if you don't find out how NOT to?



Shoebox Use:

House for your baby guinea pig named Thor, or your little garter snake named Penelope. Or your girl rat you named Boy.

Shoebox Abuse:

Carefully hidden home for that one ostentatious pair of platform latex glitter boots that you bought on a dare but haven't had the guts to wear and are hoping your friends forget about. Flex your feet, flex your gender!



Coming soon: ten new spiritual rules to live with, including spiritual spelling rules.

OK, I can't RESIST sending you all to check out the Wide Pancake Week schedule of events
...hosted by the City of Moscow Government Committee for Tourism. Turn up your volume for some not-to-be-missed cheesey techno Russian folk fusion.



Really, the tract on shoebox abuse prevention is still on the docket for this week, I promise.

Two Good Articles Someone Who Opposes the War or Someone Who Likes Cyborgs Should Read



There are two articles in today's Bay Guardian by people I know. One is by my good old pal and role model Pratap (pronounced like "Prothap"), someone who has his issues, as do we all, but whose political opinion I really respect. In this Op-Ed he talks about a trip he took to Afghanistan in January of this year, and his thoughts on the aftermath of our soon-to-be-waged war in Iraq. He's so smart the SFBG keeps a standing offer open to him to publish anything he gives them. Sometimes he researches a piece for years before submitting it. I could go on and on about him, but you know, that might start making me sound like a REAL stalker.



The other person I know who has something in the SFBG today, Annalee, in fact has a regular SFBG column that I have read for years: Techsploitation. She's a girl geek and writes about gender and technology and shit. To be truthful, she is more a friend of friends, but we do technically know eachother. I'm just a big starfcker and have a compulsion to drop names and call them "my friends." But anyway, her column today is a sad remembrance of her mother, who became a cyborg. It's just something that cyborg supporters should read. She's still a fan of cyborgs, I'm still a fan of cyborgs, we're ALL STILL FANS OF CYBORGS, just read the article anyway.



Tomorrow- Shoeboxes and Their Many Uses and Abuses.

Stalking Gender Identity with the New Gender Identity Shoe Key

Argue if you will, but I'm pretty sure it's unimproveable. With all available information, that is.



OK. Whatever. Behold the glory. Inspired by the ESPN rerun of the national cheerleading championships, which reminded me of the fact that outside the San Francisco Bay Area people actual engage the extreme ends of gender and take it seriously.



Starting at the masculine end and working towards the feminine, find that shoe that suits you:



FOOTBALL PLAYER

100% 24/7 passing male with an unchallenged gender identity

Adidas Running Shoes



STONE BUTCH

The can't live with 'em, can't live without 'em kind of guy/ FTM/butch who nevertheless is at the mercy of the HIGH FEMME.

Lace Up Hiking Boots

These tend to set the tone of the butch (male, female, trans, gay-les-bi, whatever) discourse, because they are the most likely to draw attention to their own gender identity, willingly or not.



SERVICEY BUTCH

The fop who likes to make all the ladies at ease, aware of his/her effect on people and voted Most Likely to Bring Flowers.

Penny Loafers



SOFT BUTCH

Voted Most Likely to Have a Political Agenda, and/or a Sarcastic Sense of Humor, and/or a Women's Studies Degree.

Classic example: Mo from Alison Bechdel's Dykes to Watch Out For

Skechers or Other Vanity Pseudo Sport Shoe

AND Voted Most Likely to Wish S/He Set the Gender Discourse, Butch AND Femme



FUTCH

This category confounds gender identity. From pixies with bald heads to bodybuilders with long hair, from superheroes to performance artists. And bloggers.

Anything 'tall. From Jellies to Moon Boots.



LOW FEMME

I have a bit of a blind side about this category because it's where I fall most of the time. But it is my ASTUTE opinion that you can tell a low femme by her

Sensible Shoes, like Doc Martens or Blundstones.

Voted Most Likely to Wear Hand Me Down Shoes. (She can be a bottom feeder of a sort, she has no glamour to lose.)



HIGH FEMME

This is the one the Stone Butch can't live with but can't live without.

Duh. Pumps.



SUPERFEMME DIVA

These tend to set the tone of the femme (female, male, trans, gay-les-bi, whatever) discourse, because they are the most likely to draw attention to their own gender identity, willingly or not. Like the Stone Butch.

Open Toe Spike-Heeled Pumps or Other Extreme Toe-Cleavage-Revealing Shoes

Voted Most Likely to Own More Than One Each Wig and Boa (Feathered).



CHEERLEADER

100% 24/7 passing female with an unchallenged gender identity

Adidas Running Shoes

Voted Most Likely to Become a Vampire Slayer or Demon Goddess and Start Wearing Leather Pants.

...OK at least in my universe.



AND NOW THAT YOU HAVE THE TOOLS TO MEASURE YOUR GENDER STRENGTH:

go practice flexing your gender muscles. Try out a new gender presentation. Learn a cheer. Throw a football. Buy new shoes.

Or, if you want to try out Low Femme, scavenge them.



And for chissakes check out the Gender Terrorist's website. My friend Del-- who doesn't believe s/he is transitioning gender, but creating gender art every day with her/his own body. If you only knew the look on my 94 year old great uncle the Methodist Minister's face when he pulled Del's book off my shelf.



Here's Del defining Gender Terrorist:



A Gender Terrorist is anyone who consistently and intentionally subverts,destablizes and challenges the binary gender system.This is the notion that only two genders exist, male and female. The fact is, while this system might work (and that's a matter of opinion) for most people it doesn't work.Too many people are harmed both physically and mentally,in the attempt to force themselves into a shoe that doesn't fit.



Happy shoe shopping/ stalking/ scrounging, Cinderellas!

In Praise of a Beautiful Single Bi Girl with Cash who Has Grown Up into a Philanthropic Feminist


Everyone Take a Moment to Ponder the Loveliness that is Angelina Jolie

From the Department of What the Fuck

Ya'll deserve a treat for pondering the nature of life, death, compassion, and vengeance with me.

Please to Try Your Hand at Harnessing the Awesome Power of the Mysterious Singing Horses of Latvia, and Their Runaway Hit Single "Dum Dum Dum, Tim Tim Tam"

From a Latvian Blogger. You want to try your hand at reading the comments people wrote about this little ditty?



My favorite comment is the one that goes "aaaaaaaaaa, shallallallaallaaaaaaaaaaAAAAAAAAAA, vai arii pum pum ã ã."



It looks like war is about to break about between Poland, Latvia, and Lithuania over these horses, though. That would be a pity.

Q. Why Is Compassion so Damn Hard for the Witty and Charming?

A. Because you are afraid it will make you into a fanatic.



Fact is you are already fanatically avoiding feeling compassion, every time you unthinkingly give the less fortunate people (there are ALWAYS less fortunate) a hand-out just to get them away from you, rather than because you think someday you might end up that way. Or every time you unthinkingly blame the more fortunate people for not helping you more often (my family's speciality). Or else you are fanatically avoiding all people so that nobody can ever criticize you or make you feel uncompassionate, which makes you feel bad. But think-- fanatically avoiding ever feeling bad means that you never know when you really feel GOOD.



I know, I know, it's not an exact science, but here are my inane equations anyway. There has to be a way to explain why people, seeing me dealing with grief over my dying girlfriend's suicide, are actually repulsed and even TELL me that they have a hard time feeling compassion for me. So here's my wild ride down the slippery slope of character equations.



YOUR AVERAGE PEOPLE PERSON + inner child (id) or inner optimist (desiring anything and acknowledging it takes optimism)= someone who will seek faith, a faith, something to direct their choices, a code of right and wrong, so that people will like her/him. This person seeks ways to ingratiate her or himself through wit (not just knowledge, but discernment, knowing what's funny when). This person is a natural flirt, even if they couldn't hold up their end of a conversation with a saw horse.



NON-PEOPLE PERSON + inner child = my sister, never quite getting a joke, never quite understanding why the choices of words she makes sometimes infuriate people, someone basically not open to leading an examined life because she gets it "wrong" so often. She knows how to want, and how to seek faith, but she condemns herself so often without seeking remedy, that she generally avoids people and got herself a heinous husband who people generally avoid. He thinks he's infallible, he criticizes her to the point where she categorically dismisses all his criticism, and then she lashes out at people to make herself feel superior because she doesn't really know what she's worth anymore.



OK. I had to open up a shelf in the hierarchy where I could leave my sister. What do you do with someone you don't trust to make good choices who specifically doesn't have compassion for anyone, even herself? What do you do with a drunken sailor? I'm just going to say call this a NON-PEOPLE PERSON and leave them to their slurred little Song of Theirself.



Moving on, let's say you are a PEOPLE PERSON SEEKING WIT (the highest expression of ego: discernment) but you have forgotten your optimistic side. You are rootless. You can't remember why you got up this morning, or came out of the womb in the first place. You are reading T.S. Elliot "The Wasteland" with your breakfast every morning and you can't quite grasp why HE got up every morning. Nobody reads poetry anyway. Nobody cares. You don't even care. Why try?



This is the state of mind that I think most people are in. From this state it is impossible to overcome your need for a right/ wrong answer, extend yourself beyond the few things you believe to be true, and be compassionate to a stranger who looks as though they've made at least a few choices that you would not have made.



I'll characterize this as: PEOPLE-PERSON - inner child + wit = your average twit. Myself on a bad day. The egoist with her latte and a bus pass but no way to see that the soulless bus driver is not actually TRYING to spill her drink, because it's technically illegal to drink on the bus. This person is prone to feeling permanently wrong, permanently punished, and that everyone's expectations are Too Damn High.



Then there is the PEOPLE-PERSON + inner child + wit = someone seeking routes to transcendence, new expansive ways of thinking, access to compassion. This person understands the role of the responsible citizen, the inner-parent / super-ego. They believe in parking laws, even if they sometimes break them. Then, they pay the ticket and don't act like that 28 dollars makes them Broken Down By The Man. They accept that they are tools, or better yet, cogs in the machine, and they aspire to understanding what this machine might be up to, and since they are bringing their inner child along for the ride, this machine might just be up to something Good.



Then there are the NON-PEOPLE-PEOPLE + inner child + wit, which equals the reclusive artists like Edward Gorey. And the NON-PEOPLE-PEOPLE - inner child + wit, which equals Andrew Dice Clay, back in the day.



And this brings us to the Compassionate Person.



PEOPLE-PERSON + inner child - wit + compassion= someone who follows blindly, like your average local 19 year old Mormon "Elder." Or someone at Jonestown. Someone who can't sit down and make a cost benefit analysis about a moral choice to save his life. These folks serve in the interest of whatever piques their interest that day, giving them good, optimistic feelings, like a child in a room of phones and a telepromter telling them what to say when they make those fundraising calls and a fearless leader there to offer them a glass of kool aid as a reward for their excellent work.



PEOPLE-PERSON - inner child + wit + compassion= I think a lot of existentialist liberals end up here. They understand service to a Greater Good. They understand a set of rights and wrongs. They just can't see the Why Try of things. They read the Tao of Pooh and the Te of Piglet and end up like Eeyore. They become graduate students and eventually become lawyers and eventually end up becoming the life of the wine and cheese party only quoting book and movie reviews and never books or movies. Snore. I think this is the place I am most in danger of ending up.



PEOPLE PERSON - inner child - wit + compassion = a Methodist minister. My grandma, for example (who is a Methodist minister). She can't tell a joke. She takes herself incredibly seriously. She is almost militaristically "at service" to any and all. She doesn't visit, she steam rolls various parts of the family on a seasonal basis. Sigh. Two weeks until her 84th birthday. I have a completely wholesome low-fat anti-war pity-drenched dinner to look forward to this Thanksgiving. Not that I need fat, or war, or dry wit to keep me going. OK fat and wit, but not war. All I'm saying is that it is hard to have prolonged conversation with this person.



NON-PEOPLE-PERSON +/- inner child +/- wit + compassion= the non-people person's compassion is only theoretical: they don't actually leave their safety zones to test it, so I'm not going to count it. Let's just call this person My Sister That One Time She Nailed a Non-Abusive Joke And Had Intended to Do So To Show Someone Who Was Having a Hard Time that She Understood. A rare bird indeed.



So what's my bottom line here? To keep from getting stuck in a rut in life you might work harder to be aware of all these three-- optimism, discernment, and compassion. To realize when these three things come and go takes practice and discipline. And practice doesn't make perfect, it just makes less imperfect. And more daily practice.



1. Hold and enjoy the moment in your mind when you know you're feeling optimistic.

Me, trotting out to get a Gingerbread Latte without even thinking that they might screw up and burn the espresso.

2. Sit back and enjoy watching yourself make a decision. Take advantage of your ability to make good choices.

Hm, I want to save money, so I'll get a small Gingerbread Latte and use the rest of the money for bus fare. And I won't offer to buy the Gingerbread Latte of my friend in line behind me.

3. And then be kind to yourself and others in a conscious way, if only in your inside voice and not your outside voice.

That bus driver didn't mean to spill my latte on me, I think I won't imagine Buffy jumping out of a seat and killing him. Stab stab stab stab stab stab stab.



Well, I said it was a practice.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer Could Branch Out For a Change

More Important than Compassion: Personal Vengeance



Buffy the Irresponsible Dog Owner Slayer

Making the Parks Safe for Children and Their Picnic Blankets Everywhere



Buffy the Drivers of SUVs Who Turn Left At Red Lights While Talking On Their Cell Phones and Not Signalling Slayer

These People Even Scare the Shit Out of Vampires



Buffy the Purveyor of Insufferably Cute Poetry Chain Letters and Concerned Citizen Petitions Slayer

The Taliban didn't ever read your petition protesting the treatment of women, and I will lose my few remaining friends, not a hallmark of good luck, if I forward them all your horrible poem about the child whose father died in the World Trade Center, OK?



Buffy the Uncaring Medical Professional Slayer

Can't Afford to Get a Bedside Manner Transplant in Time for Your Next Appointment With the Sick and Vulnerable Woman with Cancer Who Needs Help With her Pain Management? You Can't Afford Not To Get One!



Buffy the Overzealous Arbitrary Parking Law Enforcer Slayer

Soulless Creature, Nobody Likes You and Nobody Will Miss You



Buffy the Grammar Snob Slayer

You the Middle Management of the Literary Art World, Humanities Majors Gone Wrong, Underemployed and Taking Out Creative Insecurities on the Innocent-- Be Warned! Obsessively pointing out bad spelling to a short blonde cheerleader may be the last thing you do! I mean, I like a typo-free piece of text as well as the next person, or maybe more than the next person, but especially men who like to make women feel stupid by reading only a woman's typos and dismissing her ideas need to be stabbed more than once with a stake in the heart.



Buffy the Everyone Who Voted for Bill Simon Slayer

What was it, you liked his criminal record better than Grey Davis'? Repent and vote Green for chissakes. Or better yet, Meet Mister Pointy!



{Imagine Stabbing Noises Here}



Next, More on Compassion!

The Agenda of the Extreme Optimist

or, why people are afraid to be compassionate



The theme for this week is compassion and optimism. I think these are actually the same thing.



People fear that being an optimist (i.e. having compassion) will cause them to:

1. Lose their credit cards

2. Wear ugly shoes

3. Meditate



Solution:

Encourage optimism where you see it by:

1. Spreading optimistic information (noticing that we are barraged by negative information)

2. Noticing optimistic moments out loud

3. Finding out what causes optimism, like alcohol.



Later I will address the sport of Extreme Compassion and why it threatens, in particular, people who are witty and charming.

Haitian Homebrew from Hell
or, the Story of Miss Zora and the Zombie Makers


In 1937 the anthropologist (and African American/ Caribbean storyteller and story-collector) Zora Neale Hurston suspected a chemical poisoning to be behind the high Haitian zombie population... fifty years before science proved her right. Read a little about the amazing Miss Zora and the Recipe for Making Your Own Zombie Slave. Stock up on tetrodotoxin, atropine, and scopolamine, kids!



There are still some of those zombie folk employed by SF Muni as busdrivers... I guess it beats a labor camp. Won't someone please organize a zombie liberation movement? If only for the sake of all the fun acronyms you can make with the letter "z"?

Getting in Touch With Your Inner Undead Person

...through blue eye shadow abuse.



A year and four days ago my girlfriend died. I misspoke for a long time and said that I had died on that date instead of her. I still can't say her name plus the word "died" and believe my own words. But, well, I lived. She died.



Last night I danced at a local bellydancing restaurant, and made myself polished, glittered, and inky-eyed for the occasion, since someone was videotaping and that always washes out your features. Last time I just did mascara and lipstick. This time I tried out the eyeshadow that I found in a makeup bag alongside the road I walk to public transport in the morning. I have a personal rule: I don't buy any makeup besides coverup, I always have such good luck FINDING stuff. It's like all these femmes are walking around tossing brand new lipsticks into couches wherever I go. Well, anyway, I am not very good at putting on makeup and I don't want to waste my money on something I don't know how to use.



So, I made the mistake of mixing a lightish blue and a darkish blue on my eyelids just before going on stage last night, and the SHIT DON'T COME OFF. I came home and I looked in the mirror and there I was: me as a zombie. I don't know how many times in the last year I FELT just like I looked last night in that mirror.



For now I'm at peace with sticking it out with my cat and my various tattered lives that keep me busy, but I know that it is only a matter of time before I will be with my girlfriend. Meantime, I will try to live mostly as a living person and give my inner-undead-person a chance to express herself through a little occasional abuse of blue eyeshadow so that she won't EVER show up in my mirror unannounced and scare me like that again.



For the record, when I go I don't want to be one of the Walking Dead. I expect the Dancing Dead will let me join them when I show up at that great undead parade, marching towards the light.

More Undead News and Resources

Duke University Study Recommends the Living Wear Bicycle Helmets Around Undead-Americans

Georgegore Albush Declared President - A Red-Letter Day for All Composite Undead-Americans

A Nice Interview with Spike and Drusilla - The Vampire King & Queen of the Bon Mot

Continuing the Honor Roll of Undead-Americans and Other Undead Role Models



Amelia Earhart

Buffy

Superman

Xena & Gabrielle

The Six Million Dollar Man

The Bionic Woman

Robocop



Note that I've expanded my definition of the Undead to include cyborgs, i.e. everyone with an artificial vital organ; actually, I'm including everyone who wears glasses or any other life-enhancing prosthesis, has no magazine subscriptions, and wears out-of-style clothes. You yourself my unwittingly be eligible for my Undead Honor Roll. I think the Undead Continuum can be roughly outlined as this:

|- LESS UNDEAD (MORE DEAD-DEAD) ---> MORE UNDEAD (MORE DEAD-BUT-LIVING) -|

|-Residual Floating Energy Presence ~ Bottle-genie ~ Patron Saint/ Spirit Guide/ Deified Dead Person ~ Poltergeist ~ Zombie ~ Vampire ~ Cyborg ~ Basic Standard Issue Geek ~ Librarian -|

Honoring Our Inspiring Undead-Americans and Their Role Models



For the next few days I'm going to try to make a list of Inspiring Undead for us to think about as we approach the Day of the Undead (Oct. 31) which is followed by All Saint's Day (the day to honor the Goody Two-Shoes Undead, aka Hallows -- the 31st is Hallow's Eve, or Hallowe'en), and then the Day of the Dead (those who may be eligible for the Undead roster if they play their cards right).



Here we go. Some of my Favorite Undead (see definition of Undead in yesterday's blog entry if you need to):


Buddha

Jesus

Elvis

Lazarus

Angel and Spike, Buffy's lovely boytoy Vamp camp-followers

the Virgin of Guadelupe



to be continued...

The Undead Continuum



A coworker friend of mine used the word "Undead" today as he was describing the plot of a little play he just saw "Attack of the Living Dead Drag Queens." I contended that "Living Dead" was redundant for "Undead" and that if I were a Zombie Person I'd prefer to be called a Living Dead Person, rather than the dismissive-sounding Undead (which is also a confusing term-- aren't you really Resurrected rather than Undead?). He opened my eyes and got me to think about all the myriad ways you could be Undead.



So, welcome to the Undead Continuum:

UNDEAD-- umbrella term for the differently dead.




If you are "undead" you have a living-history and are now identifying with the post-living. However, you could be living with many different "undead" identities.



"Undead" does not include you if you are a Werewolf, Mermaid, or other seasonally/ environmentally changing creature, because you never technically died.



THE LIVING DEAD-- also called THE WALKING DEAD. These are the undead (formerly living) who are experiencing something like a life while actually not technically having a beating heart and traditional human dietary habits. Among the living dead you can find undead people who identify as any of the following:

ZOMBIES

VAMPIRES



They tend to dress a little out of step with fashion, but that's a beautiful thing too. It's ok to be different. It's not easy being green, as Kermit says.



DO NOT ASSUME THAT ALL LIVING DEAD REQUIRE:

* Nourishment from blood

* Protection from sunlight, holy water, or crosses

* A coffin for a bed

* A soil sample of her or his homeland to rest

* An invitation to enter a non-living-dead person's home



DO NOT ASSUME THAT ALL LIVING DEAD CAN:

* Survive anything

* Hear your personal conversations from miles away

* Do triple flips in mid-air from a standstill

* Heal themselves with blood (yours or someone else's)



DO NOT ASSUME THAT LIVING DEAD CAN BE "KILLED" by:

* Wooden stakes

* Decapitation

* Sunlight

* Any recitation of biblical source texts



Most of the above points are copped from this site---
I have no idea what it is.



If you are Undead, but not Living Dead, then you may identify as any of these...

GHOST (a category that includes Poltergeists, Ancestor Spirits, Casper-the-Friendlies, etc.)

GHOULIE

WILL O' THE WISP

MONSTER (Frankenstein's, etc.)

DEMON

PATRON SAINT



The more you dwell among the Currently Living (signified by the number of magazine subscriptions you have), then the more you may identify as a Living Dead person. There is no reason why a Ghost could not be living among us completely unnoticed and undifferentiated from the Currently Living. Look at your bus driver tomorrow morning-- could this person really be alive? Couldn't s/he be a Ghost? Would you really notice if s/he was?



The more you are tied to place or object (such as a genie in a bottle), the less likely you are to identify with the lifestyle of the Living Dead. However out of step with the world of Currently Living you may be, I'm sure you will be welcomed and supported among your Undead peers.



More than ever it is time to stop saying "EVIL" and "UNDEAD" in one breath without giving some consideration to the rich lives, uh, lifestyles these folks live. Are they reeeeally Evil or are you just envious of how they don't have to pay taxes?



Here are Some Resources for Undead People:

Care and Feeding of Undead Pets

Zombie Guide 2002

A Vampire-centric View of the Undead (for you Vampire fundamentalist-separatists)

An Actual News Article About Undead Banks in Russia ...slightly Vampicentric but a good read nevertheless.

Stalking the Sparkling Ms. Dynamite

She makes me happy.



"Dontcha know there's no such thing as superstars, you leave this world alone, so who gives a fuck about the things you own." --It Takes More.



Her Dynamitishness' Explosive Web Home where you can watch the video that I saw on the international TV channel that got me hooked on her song Dy-Na-Mi-Tee.



And a link toher first single Booo! - a reggae dancehall supergroove-- "feel tha bad girl bass injection..."



And lastly, the fansite that, despite the Angelfire plague of popup ads, is actually more user-friendly/ informative than Ms. D's own site Ms. Dynamite Online.



I might be a widowed old lady at 29 polishing my tarnished silver at home with my cat late into the night, but at least I am not reduced to being a fan of lite rock love songs.

The Poet in the Weather Room



Where can an English Major get work where you don't have to wear a funny hat and a grease-stained uniform? Either in social services, education, or, apparently, writing the San Francisco Chronicle weather report. Sitting at a burger joint-- where I do NOT work, thanks for asking-- reading yesterday's leftover paper I noticed that the forecast summary for yesterday, today, and tomorrow are all the same IDENTICAL forecast. But, written as artfully as a sestina, so that you would not know that the weather will not change a whit for three days. Notice how they change the temperature one degree each time to keep it exciting.



Witness the genius:

Today -- Mostly sunny skies after morning fog. Highs, 59 - 77. Lows, 44 - 53.

Tuesday-- Areas of fog, then mostly sunny skies. Highs, 60 - 78. Lows, 45 - 54.

Wednesday -- Clear to partly cloudy after morning fog. Highs, 59 - 75. Lows, 46 - 52.



This person clearly cares about the reader, wants the reader to have an interesting reading experience even though nothing is happening. This writer inspires me and makes me feel like a careless brute for cutting-and-pasting identical passages, missing opportunities to flex and glory in my English skills.



Grief has turned me into an old lady. At 29, I am checking the weather report every day, spending my evenings (lately) polishing my tarnished silverware, and doing Latin-- for fun.

Useless Knowledge to Live By

Things I have inadvertantly recently learned.



About 16% of women have extra taste buds that are specifically in the bitter range.



Alligators have a weakness for marshmallows.



Jell-o is made from such vile stuff that they won't allow the manufacturing process to be filmed.



Romania has closed its borders for adoptions because of the problem of poor people selling their prettiest children.



Civet juice comes from a dead civet cat and ambergris comes from dead whales. (These are both common perfume ingredients.) Also, civet cat shit is harvested for the coffee beans it selects to eat in the wild. Since it's a picky eater people pay 200 dollars a pound for the beans it has excreted.



Is that enough information for everyone for today?

P.S. to the post below-- Sapphire Doric is not a dyke band, and isn't from Slovenia. They are a UK ambient music and animation collective of unspecified anything. They are listed under "Queer" on a Slovenian music web site. But there are plenty of other reasons why you should love Slovenia.

Stalking Slovenia



This sounds like a lifestyle to strive for (from a Washington Post article at the site I linked above):

A Slovenian aristocrat evaded taxes and an angry emperor's armies by building a four-story castle -- complete with ballroom and chapel -- into the side of a mountain riddled with caves and tunnels. He used secret tunnels in the castle's back to sneak out and gather supplies while under siege. He taunted those below by throwing fresh cherries and roasted duck at them.



And besides being the home of the original Lipizzaner horse breed (famous in Vienna), it is the home of a nice and healthy skeptical political view- since they are the most successful / prosperous/ democratic of the former Yugoslav Republics and essentially are a bridge between Western and Eastern Europe... They are a liberal and tolerant society. Except they don't like the US much. But that's ok, I have lots of problems with the US too. Here's a link to a political cartoonist's page published in the online Slovenian news source Dnevnik. Here's a recent cartoon "Final Resolution," with George W. sending off a US missle aimed at Saddam with Kofi Annan & the UN flag roped onto it.



More reasons to love Slovenia: here's the latest Sestre interview (which I found in the latest edition of this mainstream Slovenian news source). They make a cute, very pink picture. Sestre (Sisters) is the world famous drag trio which was selected as the Slovenian contender in the Eurosong contest this past spring. In this interview, one of the Sestre, Marlenna, said "We’re a revolution in Slovenian thinking about sexuality."

And look! Here's the Sestre home page! Well, for the moment it's not working right, so here is a bunch of Sestre links from a fan site. And if you don't love Slovenia yet, here's a link to a site for a Slovenian dyke punk band Sapphire Doric.