| Wiccan Oddities |
[29 Aug 2009|11:30am] |
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Peaches - I Feel Cream |
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"They loved, and were one; for there be three great mysteries in the life of man, and magic controls them all. To fulfill love, you must return again at the same time and at the same place as the loved ones; and you must meet, and know, and remember, and love them again."
This is part of a Wiccan Requiem, as written in A Witches' Bible: The Complete Witches' Handbook by Janet and Stewart Farrar. It's spoken after Death and the Goddess meet and he (literally) whips her into loving him. They then exchange their knowledge.
Within the context, I believe the three great mysteries to be life, death, and rebirth. The second part is about reincarnation, but I think that's only the surface. There's something buried within those seemingly random words within the ceremony. Going a little deeper, it says we must do these things AGAIN. We must meet, know, and love them a first time. Notice how know and love are separated. What's the implied difference here?
A little deeper... We meet again, we can remember again, but can we "know" again? There's that separation to deal with: Given that we could "know" someone as much as we could before death, is it possible to do so again? Through reincarnation, parts have been removed and added. This mixture with the new parts creates a different animal--knowing the preferences becomes meaningless. They're not the same anymore. Is this even the same person? And with these new combinations, can we even love the person again? Perhaps their tastes are too radical for our new combinations. We could not therefore "fulfill" love.
But what is the meaning of fulfilling love? The phrase brings to mind prophecy and fate, even soulmates. It could also mean to bring about... To bring it about, to create it, doesn't fit into the cycle of rebirth. The cycle proves nothing is completely created or destroyed. Fulfilling can also mean developing the full potential of something. That perhaps is the key... to develop love to its fullest potential, we must meet, know, remember, and love again. But that brings us back to the same question: What if we simply can't do it?
Every little defect gets respect
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| Dyn-o-mite |
[14 Jun 2009|12:01pm] |
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Placebo - Speak In Tongues |
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My favorite book, hands down, is not The Wanting Seed as I may claim some times. It's by far the most entertaining book I've read and certainly the one I enjoy the most, but it's not the one that's touched me the most. That one would be The Greatest Thing Since Sliced Bread by Don Robertson. It's one of those books I so love that has numerous characters that seem removed from each other until the climax. The main protagonist Morris Bird III is a 9-year-old boy on, to him, a big journey across the city of Cleveland. Set in 1944, it's a seemingly innocent tale of a child discovering himself and some secrets of the world around him.
Now the reason it's special to me is because of the particular when of my first reading of it. I found it when I was a preteen in my mother's collection of books and began reading it as a bathroom read. Shortly after beginning it, I was admitted into the hospital with one of my bouts of ketoacidosis. When I was asked if I wanted anything brought to my room, I requested that book. It wasn't until years later that I discovered it was the first of a trilogy. Unfortunately, they were all out of print. Abie surprised me with the second and third books (The Sum and Total of Now and The Greatest Thing That Almost Happened respectively) on my 23rd birthday. I'll admit that, upon reading the melancholic end of the third book, I cried like a bitch.
Four years later and I'm looking through the channel guide of my digital box and what's this on 17-2? The Greatest Thing That Almost Happened? It couldn't be based on the story I read, right? Wrong. The Greatest Thing That Almost Happened was apparently released in 1977 as a made-for-TV movie starring James Earl Jones as Morris Bird Jr. and, as Morris Bird III, Jimmie Walker.
Let me make this perfectly clear:
The motherfucker known for shouting "Dyn-o-mite!" is playing the character from a book that may be one of the few pieces of evidence of me having a heart.
It's on in an hour, and I shall at least try the first couple minutes of it before completely denouncing it as an atrocity. My expectations, however, are not very high, especially since they can't even show the greatest thing that almost happened.
She and me's a history of violence but I long and burn to touch her just the same
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| Read it and weep... |
[29 May 2009|08:26am] |
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...with tears of excitement, bitches! From an Amazon email this morning:
We're happy to inform you that the items you requested are now available to order from Amazon.com!
DVD
The State: The Complete Series
Price: $42.99
Pre-Order Price Guarantee! Order now and if the Amazon.com price decreases between your order time and release date, you'll receive the lowest price.
Availability: This title will be released on July 14, 2009. Pre-order now!. Ships from and sold by Amazon.com.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00274SITW/ref=pe_12230490_emwa_email_title_1
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[10 May 2009|08:27am] |
Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.
--Antoine de Saint-Exupery
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| A message to a nuisance |
[12 Apr 2009|01:37pm] |
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Freezepop - Get Ready 2 Rokk |
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Dear Wind,
We've had some good times over the years. Being an Air sign, I really enjoy your varieties--from soft zephyrs to full-blown hurricane gale-force blasts. Unfortunately, you've been chillin' around my pad for far too long lately. It's not you, it's...well, it's you. You blow my tiny car all over the turnpike on my way to work. You make lighting a cigarette nearly impossible. And now, the final straw, you knocked my potted plant off its perch and broke the ceramic vase.
I'm not asking for reimbursement for the damage. I think it's just best we move our separate ways. Think of the good times, Wind. Think of the fun you'll have elsewhere. There are far too many trailer parks, I hear. Perhaps you can fix that.
xoxo,
Nace
I don't have a joystick or backlit LCD, no Nintendo logo. Don't push that cartridge inside me 'cause I'll push back. Just wait and see.
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| Keep in mind... |
[30 Mar 2009|02:56pm] |
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Fischerspooner - Amuse Bouche |
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http://www.somethingpositive.net/sp03282009.shtml
We gather here tonight, beholden to no god, no fate, but only our memories, our love, and ourselves.
Tonight we take back that which has always been ours but which we forgot, and we make a promise to ourselves and each other to never forget again.
We each invest this bar with a part of ourselves and make it the embodiment of long nights past.
For our friendship
For the first one to arrive
And the last one to show up
For the one who came out of nowhere
And the one planted in tradition and hoping to pass it on
For the solitary
And those happily stuck with each other
For the ones who are gone and never coming back
And those who refuse to forget them
The building is empty, and so's the booze. Everything that matters we take with us, either in our hearts, hands or hollow legs. Fuck anyone who doesn't like it. Fuck anyone who doesn't understand.
And the last one out always turns off the light.
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| You look worse for wear |
[04 Dec 2008|09:16am] |
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+ After 9 or 10 months of computer problems, my system is up and running. The first (demo) track since getting back into production is Every Little Thing. Enjoy.
+ I have a few web design projects in the works. During or after, I'm going to redesign Black-Ring.net. Woot.
+ After 9 months of various car problems, the "Tranny" is purring like a kitten. Driving is officially fun again.
+ I'm writing again. I've been told this is a good thing. But I've been told this by people who've never read my fiction.
This is very important, so I want to say it as clearly as I can: Fuck. That. Shit.</a>
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| A definition |
[28 Jun 2008|01:55pm] |
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Velvet Acid Christ - Slut |
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"Maturity" is the generic term for what remains after our evolution has halted and our dreams have died.
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| Part 1 |
[07 May 2008|01:55am] |
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Dieselboy - Machine March |
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Rush Limbaugh said the following on May 2 during an interview with author Andy McCarthy: "We are all born as little savages. If we were not raised by parents — if we were not instructed in right and wrong, morality and so forth — we would turn out however we did. These people remind me of just that. They're being raised to behave and think as they do. I'm talking about the jihadists, this culture that's 1400 years old. Human beings are not by instinct, not by nature good. That has to be programmed into them, it has to be raised in them — and these people of course have a different definition. They think they are good, they're doing everything in the name of God, and yet their crimes are against humanity."
I won't go into my feelings on Rush (an amusing nutjob) or the Republican party. I'd prefer the bigger picture, the bigger topic. Rush seems to imply not only are we not born good, but we're born closer to its opposite. Or maybe he's implying that born nothing is somehow wrong. His sense of morality is disgusting--not in how he defines the spectrum but that he believes the spectrum exists.
One only has to look at nature to know objective morality is a fantasy. We define killing as murder as sin in most cases. Killing every other member of our gender at a dance club is unheard of and usually frowned upon, for instance. But animals kill to promote their chances in the gene pool. Euthanasia is another prime example. We realize imposing any interspecies morality is futile. Even two factions of the same species can't survive with the same morality. The universal moral compass is therefore a fallacy. This sense of morality stems from thought, that post-instinct post-id ether that separates us from other lifeforms on Earth. Morality was a creation of man, not something ingrained in our genetics.
My first instinct was to blame morality's creation on boredom. Longer life expectancy and fewer natural threats certain enabled humanity to contemplate the processes of its existence. But morality predates boredom. Animism and certain pagan spiritualities were around long before life became "easier." Then it dawned on me: The true source to whom we can blame morality? Blame itself.
Not too far from our instinct-driven ancestors, we found certain patterns and practices that worked. This trial-and-error process may have taken years, centuries, millennia. We learned the ins and outs of more complex living. Staying downwind of prey is obvious. Staying downhill and maintaining a certain amount of stealth less so. Using certain tools, a certain amount of members in a hunting party, camouflage...definitely complex.
But what of the practices that couldn't be improved? The processes that were used for millennia and that early humans had down to a science? The harvest needs to be planted in this season, with this amount of irrigation, with this kind of dirt/fertilizer. Everything perfected and tried countless times. And then...nothing. Nothing seems to have happened, but nothing grew. Why? Did we plant too early? No? Drought this year? Too many animals? No, no. Nothing's changed. Then why? WE DID SOMETHING WRONG.
Thus the creation of blame. X happened / didn't happen so Y occurred. Destroy Y. Praise Y. Use Y as a...what should we call it? How 'bout "god"? And anything that promotes this god is holy and revered. And anything that doesn't will be destroyed.
Hey, my children: What seems important won't last forever.
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| Overdue Updates |
[23 Mar 2008|04:01pm] |
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Filter - I'm Not the Only One |
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+ Moved to Erdenheim, PA (near Flourtown / Ft. Washington).
+ We now live 10 minutes from Bri and 'Quat.
+ Had 2 interviews at the place Chris Robins works.
- They were as bad as any other corporation.
+ Getting a raise starting 3/31. Will be receiving highest wage I've received so far.
+ The new place doesn't have cable TV. I've gone through a shit-ton of books already.
- The Saturn's ill. The transmission is messed up. Who knows how much that'll cost.
- My computer had a meltdown over a month ago. Looks like it'll need, at the very least, a new motherboard. Again, who knows how much that'll cost. I'm using Ananya's old desktop for now.
- Broke our washer AND dryer the first day or two we had 'em. I'm just no good with technology lately.
+ This has been the first real weekend I've had in at least a month.
- John was in a nasty accident on the turnpike. He's all right, but the car's gone.
+ John and Zoie moved in with his father's sister-in-law. They're only 10 or 15 minutes away and it'll be a real snazzy place once it's cleaned up a bit.
- I missed Sarae's birthday (March 8). Sorry, hon. Happy belated birthday! And I feel like I missed someone else's around the 15th. Happy birthday to...um...whomever I'm forgetting.
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| Mommy, can I have it?! |
[10 Jan 2008|09:39pm] |
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Tenacious D - Beelzeboss |
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TV-B-Gone Kit
Seriously. I will hump the brains out of anyone who gets this for me. Or you can be my new best friend. Or you can punch me in the face. Other options are available upon request.
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| The Fallacy of It All |
[06 Jan 2008|06:24pm] |
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Lolita Storm - Hot Lips-Wet Pants (I Wanna) |
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The insurance and pharmaceutical industries form the scum of the system. While governments may control what we do and who we do it with, they cannot control our imagination and system of beliefs. The insurance and pharmaceutical industries, however, use pervasive and perverse methods to maintain and enhance their domination of our lives.
Most of us don't even encounter the government until we're in our teens. Maybe we committed a crime, maybe we have to register for enlistment at 18, but our everyday lives don't usually warrant direct government interaction. But when did you first go to the doctor's? When did you first take that spoonful of medicine because your tummy ached? And the solution to every physical ailment after that resulted in the same advice: Take this pill, drink this solution, see this doctor.
When our hormones caught up with us, they wrecked havoc in our brains, resulting in some moments we may not be proud of. If severe enough or if under the guidance of helicopter parents, we were told to see a doctor. And the medication began. It wasn't our fault, of course. Brain chemistry is delicate. Take this drug and let me know how it works. If it doesn't push you over the edge. Any attempts to stop the meds resulted in the same thing: The jolt from transitioning from numb to emotional was too hard. The answer? Stay on the drugs to better "control" your own mind. Maybe it'll get better with age.
But by then it's too late. Headache? Acne? Hairloss? ED? We have just the medication for that.
What I find the most sickening of this disease is the fact we're told we can't do it on our own. Like Alcoholics Anonymous, we have to admit we're powerless. Now, I'm not saying to burn down the hospitals and shove a stethoscope down your doctor's throat. They're a necessary evil. Some injuries we just can't fix properly. We can't cure cancer through sheer willpower (yet). But I suggest a sincere distrust for any group that profits off "fixing" us.
"But Nace," you may say. "Don't you work in pharmaceutical research?" Yes, yes I do. It pays the bills. The industry is at the point where the common man knows it's big, but he doesn't think of it as an untouchable demigod like most people see the government. Therefore the industry still has room to grow. As more baby boomers age and break down and as more Gen-Xers feel pain in their joints they didn't notice before, the pharmaceutical industry will be here to satisfy their needs. And every blessed pill to save you from yourself will be paid or at least endorsed by the insurance industry.
One thing I've learned by working in this industry, though, is that its employees are not the targets. I'm not even sure there is a target anymore. The industry is so bloated that no one knows what anyone else is doing. So the employees, as long as they want to be paid, continue working in their specialized fields not realizing what it is they're working on. But everyone seems to do this. There is no evil puppeteer controlling the strings for his own sick merit. Just an endless amount of ignorant cogs in a machine whose forgotten its own purpose.
I just keep hoping the machine will continue blindly driving itself forward until one day it helplessly flings itself, bloated and sick with power and ignorance, off the edge of a cliff.
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| The Nihilism of Rentals |
[09 Oct 2007|01:14am] |
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Celldweller - Frozen |
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It's only been a few years since I came out as a "rental," or adopted child, and since then, I've had the opportunity to communicate and observe a number of other rentals. I've noticed in this time that there only seems to be one common characteristic, independent of the circumstances or level of comfort found within individual situations: Each rental seems to have a certain degree of nihilism, which breeds a distinct systematic outlook on life.
I think this comes from the first hand experiencing of the dismantling of the American dream. Everyone knows the formula: Work hard, get money, marry, start a family, and so on. But no matter how well the hard work and money aspects of the situation, adopted children see that this plan isn't perfect. If for whatever reason the people can't have children, they can go to a service that provides a "fix." The children essentially become products.
On at least a subconscious level, the adopted children see the "fundamental" truth of the American dream for what it is. And if that truth can come into question, then what else? What other fundamental truths are simply societal preferences pressed upon us until we see no other choice?
From this subconscious epiphany comes an approach to apply to the rest of the world and its situations: There are no truths, there's nothing that "has to be" a certain way, and there are options to every challenge. All expectations can be questioned and refused. Nietzsche's dream becomes flesh. God dies.
So who has the advantage at this point? The stagnant children of Eden that think their ways "have to be" this way? Or the adopted children of Lilith who realize the facade of one of society's most prized ways of life and therefore the fallacy of every other mentality and philosophy they encounter?
Losers.
I want to forget mistakes they've helped me make. It's better to be broken than to break.
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| Waiting for the Flood |
[13 Jul 2007|12:33am] |
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Gary Numan - Prophecy |
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Think of everyone you hate.
Everyone you love.
Everyoue you want, fear, and torment.
Think of everyone who passes through your thoughts every day.
Right now you are hated.
Right now you are loved.
Right now you are wanted and feared.
Right now someone is planning your torment.
Right now there is someone who thinks of you on a daily basis despite whether they've talked to you recently or in years.
How can anyone ever feel alone in this universe?
For all the words I've spoken and the ones who've led me there because I still feel something burning me, rising, the wanting that's in here. So with my broken meanings, I find there's still life left somewhere. So take your miracle placebos and know that I am still right here.
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| Room with a View |
[23 Jun 2007|02:00am] |
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Ayria - Infiltrating My Way Through the System (Steril mix) |
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In a Writer's Digest column* on fantastic fiction, James Minz is quoted as saying: "In terms of the big picture, let's face it, the world today is looking pretty grim: the war on terror and its many pitfalls and problems; the middle class feeling the pinch of shrinking income and increased expenses--this often leads to readers turning to literature that's escapist in nature." Minz fails to mention, however, the ever increasing isolationism of modern man and its effects on trends in entertainment.
The true reason behind the popularity of stories such as The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger is society's curiosity-turned-voyeurism into our neighbors' lives. Common knowledge dictates that the higher the concentration of the populace in any given area, the higher the amount of isolationsim. And despite the reasons--be they fear, ignorance, or pure apathy--a part of us really wants to know what goes on after our neighbors close their doors.
The idea that the neighbors do exactly what you or I do, though, is uninteresting and, frankly, boring. What drives our curiosity is the hope that something fantastical happens when we're not looking. And if we watch long enough, if we glance through the right keyhole, we'll catch a glimpse of the phantasms we can only dream of. Ghosts, time travelers, vampires: we want our neighbors to be strange. We want the excitement, the voyeurism, the story. And the more terrifying, the more grandiose our survivor story becomes.
But in the slim chance that something fantastical does happen, wouldn't we be admitting our ignorance? Doesn't every news story end with an oblivious neighbor describing how he "was quiet, kept to himself. I never would've known he enjoyed eating people's eyeballs and using their skulls as candy dishes. That could have been me!" By surviving, you're only admitting you were too blind to notice the world around you. Each continued breath is a testament to you existing by sheer dumb luck.
* "On the Edge" by Jordan E. Rosenfeld; June 2007 issue.
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| Sweet Harry on Ron Action |
[31 May 2007|12:15am] |
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I:scintilla - Cursive Eve |
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According to C|Net, LiveJournal deleted around 500 journals and communities this week claiming that didn't promote the kind of community LJ wants. Most of the journals/communities seem to involve pedophilia to some degree, at least to an outsider's point-of-view. The screen names used to attribute quotes is entertaining in itself, but the most amusing part for me is the literary comparisons. "...fan-written fiction, frequently sexually explicit, about characters in the Harry Potter novels" is compared to classic works by authors such as James Joyce, William S Burroughs, and Shakespear.
To be, or not to be: that is the question: Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, or to tap some goblin ass with my enchanted +1 charisma sword?
Once upon a time not so long ago, I remember dreams of saccharine, living without care and without sin, dreaming of the things I could have been. Once upon a time not so long ago, I remember hope I'd persevere, living without sin and without fear, waiting for the light to reappear.
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| In the Face of Every Child |
[24 May 2007|10:13pm] |
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The Chemical Brothers - Saturate |
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We can see the beauty of God within every creature, or so we're told. God, however, is a natural psychological extension of ourselves--a 4th century BC comic book hero embodying that which we wish to attain. An analysis of God therefore is an analysis of our own hopes and dreams.
An omniscient God shows humanity's thirst for knowledge. God as the creator displays our own interest in creation such as art, civilizations, and procreation. God as the father is our own need of and desire to protect. But what of omnipresence? It seems rather odd that anyone would want to be everywhere.
Omnipresence is part of everything else though. We don't just want to protect, we want to protect everyone everywhere. We don't just want to create, we want to create everything and display it to everyone. But more importantly, I think God's omnipresence is a sign of our need to experience everything. We want to live it, breathe it, be it all. This is the basic idea behind "Live life to its fullest."
But life gets interrupted by survival. Our desire to be omniscient forms governments and systems of life that promote the few, sustain the many, and crush the rest. To stay alive within the system, we sacrifice omnipresence. In many cases, we have to sacrifice or compromise our creation and protection as well.
As the compromises build, the belief in God strengthens. The less we can express our desires, the more we want to envision a being free of these restrictions. Thus, religion really is the opiate of the masses. Instead of focusing energy on a way out of an unpleasant life, the masses focus on a mythical being. When enough believe in the being, money is donated towards various causes within the new-found religion--the same money that could be used to raise a person's standard of living. And when we do make an attempt to boost ourselves and fail, we're deemed sinners.
I, for one, am tired of sinning. The trick isn't to worship harder or follow the rules to the letter. The trick is to take God out of the equation. Become what you desire to be instead of projecting it onto thin air. There's an entire system in place hoping you'll never do this. Be spiteful. Prove them wrong.
So lay with me in the chill of afterglow ever still 'til we replenish the thrill over again into ever. So taste again of my skin, so sticky brittle and thin, yet still invincibly grim that I shall have you forever.
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