Forum Jar is a website I discovered last week and immediately wanted to brag to the world about it. It takes its name from the giant vases of wine that every ancient Mediterranean household used to have and I guess the forum building of a community would have a special one and it was said that no forum could be a forum without a forum jar. As to the website, it has a search engine for whatever kind of forum you can think of, though rather a dearth of comments in most of them. I'd like to see people use forum jar more often. My favorite forums are the Aristotle forums, but I've also contributed to the Clothing Forum, the Dessert Forum and the Suffering Forum. I try to go to the site whenever I can to read stuff people have written under different categories, but I've stopped holding my breath looking to see if anyone's commented on what I've written because people seem not to check back for months or even years. I think I might need to create a Magick Forum. That might just captivate the interest of other witches, for we magicians are an active lot.
Wednesday, November 21, 2012
Wednesday, October 3, 2012
Tonight's Presidential Debate (10/3/12)
I was really surprised at how well Obama stood up in the debate, given that Romney rose to prominence in the first place precisely by debating other Republicans (Remember last year around this time?) I sort of expected a different sort of thing. I really believed and still believe Obama had only the truth to defend himself with and kind of expected him to get really humiliated in the debate. I wasn't expecting the two of them to have so much fun and kind of to transcend the rules and have actual exchanges with each other and talk to each other and so it was kind of fun to watch.
I think what was hard for me about the debate was the amount of obfuscation Romney was doing about Social Security and my feeling that Obama made an aside about Social Security not working exactly except for seniors and his intention to correct the problem. I'm not a lazy freeloader, but I don't work for money but do volunteer work and then collect SSI to live on. All last year I earned about half of the money I got with paid work but I also was constantly accused of not learning fast enough, always inches from being fired and eventually I decided I'd rather work someplace else, but never quite got around to getting another job after I left the first one. Paid work is tough for a lot of people, but in my case I'm always feeling incompetent and like it would be hopeless to come up with disability accommodations that would suit all the different ways that I can't do my job right. It's kind of been my plan to use this year as a time to correct some of the ways I can't fit in with most work environments, but I'm not in a mood to get booted off Social Security when as a volunteer I do a lot of things that most people are too busy working for a living to do and that arrangement would really work for me if people didn't ostracise me so much for being a freak. I facilitate a debate group at Mariposa Wellness Center (which doesn't always work as a debate group but we do get to air a lot of differences of opinion in a respectful way without challenging each other. It's hard to get people with chemical imbalances to feel like arguing is a peaceful thing.) I also work really hard with my muscles and sweat and everything one day a week at Loaves and Fishes soup kitchen though lately I haven't been showing up as often as I'd like. I'm sort of thinking next year about more exciting volunteer opportunities like ones that get me picking up trash on the beach or even getting in the way of illegal whaling vessels with Greenpeace. Forestry would be cool, too, god this is an incoherent ramble.
Anyway, a lot of people like me would just plain starve if we didn't get SSI and there are those who are even more disabled than me.I really would like to see something like a requirement that people on SSI for a mental illness find a structured activity for at least six to twenty hours a week, allowing substitutions like any kind of constructive volunteer job or else school or paid work so that people would get used to us being just as helpful as anyone else and stop shunning us all the time or treating us like we're fragile or contrariwise being downright mean. I think the lazy freeloaders will probably vote for Romney because Romney is so vague about Social Security and telling us we don't have to listen to the rest of what he's saying or that "people are smart enough to understand that" when really we already know he wants to eliminate Social Security and let people's family take care of them. Yuck. And that scares me and I wish the lazy freeloader vote would just stop being lazy and wake up and realize Obama is the only hope a lot of us are going to have against ending up starving or in internment camps or both.
I think what was hard for me about the debate was the amount of obfuscation Romney was doing about Social Security and my feeling that Obama made an aside about Social Security not working exactly except for seniors and his intention to correct the problem. I'm not a lazy freeloader, but I don't work for money but do volunteer work and then collect SSI to live on. All last year I earned about half of the money I got with paid work but I also was constantly accused of not learning fast enough, always inches from being fired and eventually I decided I'd rather work someplace else, but never quite got around to getting another job after I left the first one. Paid work is tough for a lot of people, but in my case I'm always feeling incompetent and like it would be hopeless to come up with disability accommodations that would suit all the different ways that I can't do my job right. It's kind of been my plan to use this year as a time to correct some of the ways I can't fit in with most work environments, but I'm not in a mood to get booted off Social Security when as a volunteer I do a lot of things that most people are too busy working for a living to do and that arrangement would really work for me if people didn't ostracise me so much for being a freak. I facilitate a debate group at Mariposa Wellness Center (which doesn't always work as a debate group but we do get to air a lot of differences of opinion in a respectful way without challenging each other. It's hard to get people with chemical imbalances to feel like arguing is a peaceful thing.) I also work really hard with my muscles and sweat and everything one day a week at Loaves and Fishes soup kitchen though lately I haven't been showing up as often as I'd like. I'm sort of thinking next year about more exciting volunteer opportunities like ones that get me picking up trash on the beach or even getting in the way of illegal whaling vessels with Greenpeace. Forestry would be cool, too, god this is an incoherent ramble.
Anyway, a lot of people like me would just plain starve if we didn't get SSI and there are those who are even more disabled than me.I really would like to see something like a requirement that people on SSI for a mental illness find a structured activity for at least six to twenty hours a week, allowing substitutions like any kind of constructive volunteer job or else school or paid work so that people would get used to us being just as helpful as anyone else and stop shunning us all the time or treating us like we're fragile or contrariwise being downright mean. I think the lazy freeloaders will probably vote for Romney because Romney is so vague about Social Security and telling us we don't have to listen to the rest of what he's saying or that "people are smart enough to understand that" when really we already know he wants to eliminate Social Security and let people's family take care of them. Yuck. And that scares me and I wish the lazy freeloader vote would just stop being lazy and wake up and realize Obama is the only hope a lot of us are going to have against ending up starving or in internment camps or both.
Thursday, September 6, 2012
Linda is Healthy Again!
Linda is healthy again, so less fazes me now, but for a while I was having trouble surviving, too, because having a sick and nearly dead girlfriend for a little while awakened me to what matters to me about living and made everything else seem toxic and intolerable. I'm still having trouble playing the game, but still want the rewards that are dangled in front of me as enticements to try to play the game better, but I end up just feeling frustrated and wanting to open a window or something. I'll keep posting (notice how hard I try not to use the word "notify") and see if anything gets any better. Not fucking likely, but we create our own luck in the end, I think.
Thursday, August 2, 2012
Ashleigh, in case you read this.
Ashleigh, in case you read this.
Not my first dream, but my very first shamanic level dream was sometime shortly after my mom died and my dad and I got back from a vacation in Southern California and my dad had decided it was time to move out here. He had all his life felt stuck on the East Coast and at the time we were living in a suburban town in New Jersey which until the age of five was the only home I had ever known.
In the dream, my father and I are visiting an enchanted castle peopled only by cartoon characters with flat bodies that kind of stick to the walls of the castle like Silly Putty. I remember trying to study exactly how it is that they move from one part of the wall to another and then I kind of realize that they don't. Anyway, my dad and I decide it's time to hike our way home again because it's already gettiing dark and Mom is waiting for us. We look at the setting sun on the mountain and then at the miles and miles of hedge maze we have to pick our way through to get over the hill and home again. It didn't seem so hard finding the enchanted castle but getting home again is going to be really dreadful and scary. My father and I say goodbye about a million times and I find myself resenting the superficiality of the cartoon characters.
We disembark, walking and walking, and I'm falling behind as small children often do, until my father turns around, grins mischievously, and says, "Let's go back to the castle." I am so relieved and I laugh and then all at once realize that we're never going to get around to going home again and I never will see my mother again.
That dream is the most important dream of my life, the key to my whole psychological makeup, though all through my childhood I had kind of a sarcastic sense of humor and flipflopped a lot between wanting to live in a fantasy world and not wanting people to disrespect me and other children so much. There really isn't any way of saying enough on this subject so I'm just going to end this post and publish it now.
Not my first dream, but my very first shamanic level dream was sometime shortly after my mom died and my dad and I got back from a vacation in Southern California and my dad had decided it was time to move out here. He had all his life felt stuck on the East Coast and at the time we were living in a suburban town in New Jersey which until the age of five was the only home I had ever known.
In the dream, my father and I are visiting an enchanted castle peopled only by cartoon characters with flat bodies that kind of stick to the walls of the castle like Silly Putty. I remember trying to study exactly how it is that they move from one part of the wall to another and then I kind of realize that they don't. Anyway, my dad and I decide it's time to hike our way home again because it's already gettiing dark and Mom is waiting for us. We look at the setting sun on the mountain and then at the miles and miles of hedge maze we have to pick our way through to get over the hill and home again. It didn't seem so hard finding the enchanted castle but getting home again is going to be really dreadful and scary. My father and I say goodbye about a million times and I find myself resenting the superficiality of the cartoon characters.
We disembark, walking and walking, and I'm falling behind as small children often do, until my father turns around, grins mischievously, and says, "Let's go back to the castle." I am so relieved and I laugh and then all at once realize that we're never going to get around to going home again and I never will see my mother again.
That dream is the most important dream of my life, the key to my whole psychological makeup, though all through my childhood I had kind of a sarcastic sense of humor and flipflopped a lot between wanting to live in a fantasy world and not wanting people to disrespect me and other children so much. There really isn't any way of saying enough on this subject so I'm just going to end this post and publish it now.
Friday, July 20, 2012
You're The Guy I Want To Share My Money With
One of the only things that keeps me alive anymore is listening to KZSC radio on my radio when I lie down in bed at night and pretend I'm asleep. The other night-- at the climax of the most dangerous day for me in one of the hardest, craziest, most beautiful and desperate weeks I've ever had in this or any of my previous lifetimes-- I forced myself to listen to a show called Savage Bistro on KZSC even though the menu typically makes me so uncomfortable that it forces me to the conclusion that the entire show was made only focused with me as the listener and I don't get support from the universe when I feel that way and it can even get me killed sometimes (Blogger, please don't censor this because I'm a change agent and I need to do my work.) But I had been talking to faith healers on a call-in program earlier on the same station and I knew I needed to not shrink from that precipice For The Good Of Me And The Universe. Anyway, I want to do a paragraph change even though Strunk & White would censure me.
The dj played an album he said is called "You're The Guy I Want To Share My Money With" and he sounded very precise and almost medical when he said on air the name of the album before hand. It becomes clear to me in my state of consciousness heightened by all the horror I've seen lately that it is really important and deliberate that Laurie Andersen and William S. Burroughs and another poet on the album utilize such a powerful universal blessing in plain language as the title of their album and the dj said it again after it was over, because the album is only comprised of content so morally painful to listen to for anyone that you can't help but wonder if they're trying to kill you with words. and all of the sounds on the album are only words.
The dj played an album he said is called "You're The Guy I Want To Share My Money With" and he sounded very precise and almost medical when he said on air the name of the album before hand. It becomes clear to me in my state of consciousness heightened by all the horror I've seen lately that it is really important and deliberate that Laurie Andersen and William S. Burroughs and another poet on the album utilize such a powerful universal blessing in plain language as the title of their album and the dj said it again after it was over, because the album is only comprised of content so morally painful to listen to for anyone that you can't help but wonder if they're trying to kill you with words. and all of the sounds on the album are only words.
Tuesday, July 17, 2012
Stop Giving A Crap, Write Illegal Stuff, Go To Prison
"Stop giving a crap, write illegal stuff, go to prison."-- Craig Ferguson.
My father recently said I could stay in the closet room off my brother's room when I come home to get my teeth worked on. I've always hated that room and given the adult horrors I've been dealing with lately I couldn't imagine what he meant. And then I thought, Maybe he means that if I need to come home for a little while they'll find a place for me somehow. And then I think now, that he thinks I've been frightfully juvenile and should be ashamed of myself. Be that as it may, I feel really ashamed today of the review I wrote of Modio-media because I call fascist what is clearly not fascist in light of the horrible weekend I've spent in the hospital with my sick and undying girlfriend (fingers crossed.) She was always a miracle woman of survival, sleighted to die before the age of 14, back in the 1950's, and then going on to survive an escape from an early marriage, the death of a beloved infant, a year in the jungle, innumerable drunken fistfights and worse, the entire 1960's drugs and politics culture, and then mental hospitals, the kidnapping of her second daughter by her ex-husband, and years of panhandling on the streets without SSI. The last twenty years have been a lot happier and almost all of it she worked full time, but now she's retired and sees her daughter every day sometimes. She also cares about me more than anyone else ever has as far as I know and she is so, so sick and "god" is telling me she's going to survive this crisis but it's been a horrible weekend and I acted in the hospital like a a werewolf in a convent and I just want her to be okay and for people to understand that I'm not playing "god" if being in love gives me unique insight into how she can get herself better when the hospital is wearing a lot of yellow and only checking on her every 45 minutes. You see, one of the first things she ever told me about herself is it's always been a awful struggle to make her body move but she didn't want to die and so she just kept fighting to survive and found she could often excel at stuff, like sports and school and fistfighting when necessary. And I have a friend who's a combination charlatan/stage magician/Tibetan healer who told me-- and I know-- that you can often choose your lifespan by choosing projects you won't die until they're completed. And I'm finding that mainly applying to me these days and all sorts of unbelievably unfunny kharma is coming to me like an old friend and saying, "You can't go until you pay your debt." and I guess I'm just really happy and I always did love those people and never wanted to go to Heaven, Paradise, or Nirvana even when I believed in that stuff. I could go hide like I always used to or I can embrace it and be glad I have a life.
And Linda is surrounded by so much love from me and her daughter and grandchildren that when her body doesn't feel pain she starts to transcend the physical and scare the shit out of us. And it's also true that she filled out an advance directive and I don't know what it says but I think she hates to be a burden on people and doesn't want to take care of us by letting us take care of her. I've been in that position a lot myself and it's crap. But today I think the hospital reduced her methadone and she's felt like crap all day and I call that clarity, because she's really really sick, so I feel better. See, I'm a sadist. But writing this blog post helps me to turn the situation over to the will of not "god" because I don't give a fuck what "god" wants but I think I can let Linda live or end her life or give up or take on more kharma or not according to her will and maybe I'm even cheering up about it.
All this may be academic because her kidney is a tiny bit better today, according to the doctor, and the swelling in one foot went down, though the other foot has a toes turning red with cellulitis and they drew a circle around it(!) They say they expect her home tomorrow or the next day and I'm taking care of my other relationships for a few days and taking showers and eating oatmeal and if she's back in her apartment Wednesday or Thursday I'll stay with her the weekend like I always do and do whatever it takes to lend a hand without overwhelming her with my panic attacks and my needs. Ha ha.
My father recently said I could stay in the closet room off my brother's room when I come home to get my teeth worked on. I've always hated that room and given the adult horrors I've been dealing with lately I couldn't imagine what he meant. And then I thought, Maybe he means that if I need to come home for a little while they'll find a place for me somehow. And then I think now, that he thinks I've been frightfully juvenile and should be ashamed of myself. Be that as it may, I feel really ashamed today of the review I wrote of Modio-media because I call fascist what is clearly not fascist in light of the horrible weekend I've spent in the hospital with my sick and undying girlfriend (fingers crossed.) She was always a miracle woman of survival, sleighted to die before the age of 14, back in the 1950's, and then going on to survive an escape from an early marriage, the death of a beloved infant, a year in the jungle, innumerable drunken fistfights and worse, the entire 1960's drugs and politics culture, and then mental hospitals, the kidnapping of her second daughter by her ex-husband, and years of panhandling on the streets without SSI. The last twenty years have been a lot happier and almost all of it she worked full time, but now she's retired and sees her daughter every day sometimes. She also cares about me more than anyone else ever has as far as I know and she is so, so sick and "god" is telling me she's going to survive this crisis but it's been a horrible weekend and I acted in the hospital like a a werewolf in a convent and I just want her to be okay and for people to understand that I'm not playing "god" if being in love gives me unique insight into how she can get herself better when the hospital is wearing a lot of yellow and only checking on her every 45 minutes. You see, one of the first things she ever told me about herself is it's always been a awful struggle to make her body move but she didn't want to die and so she just kept fighting to survive and found she could often excel at stuff, like sports and school and fistfighting when necessary. And I have a friend who's a combination charlatan/stage magician/Tibetan healer who told me-- and I know-- that you can often choose your lifespan by choosing projects you won't die until they're completed. And I'm finding that mainly applying to me these days and all sorts of unbelievably unfunny kharma is coming to me like an old friend and saying, "You can't go until you pay your debt." and I guess I'm just really happy and I always did love those people and never wanted to go to Heaven, Paradise, or Nirvana even when I believed in that stuff. I could go hide like I always used to or I can embrace it and be glad I have a life.
And Linda is surrounded by so much love from me and her daughter and grandchildren that when her body doesn't feel pain she starts to transcend the physical and scare the shit out of us. And it's also true that she filled out an advance directive and I don't know what it says but I think she hates to be a burden on people and doesn't want to take care of us by letting us take care of her. I've been in that position a lot myself and it's crap. But today I think the hospital reduced her methadone and she's felt like crap all day and I call that clarity, because she's really really sick, so I feel better. See, I'm a sadist. But writing this blog post helps me to turn the situation over to the will of not "god" because I don't give a fuck what "god" wants but I think I can let Linda live or end her life or give up or take on more kharma or not according to her will and maybe I'm even cheering up about it.
All this may be academic because her kidney is a tiny bit better today, according to the doctor, and the swelling in one foot went down, though the other foot has a toes turning red with cellulitis and they drew a circle around it(!) They say they expect her home tomorrow or the next day and I'm taking care of my other relationships for a few days and taking showers and eating oatmeal and if she's back in her apartment Wednesday or Thursday I'll stay with her the weekend like I always do and do whatever it takes to lend a hand without overwhelming her with my panic attacks and my needs. Ha ha.
Wednesday, July 11, 2012
An Unsolicited Review Of Modio-Media.com
Hopefully no one comes at me with a fasces...
I should say, as a qualifier, that it is my friend's company and that I always felt stirred in some way by her presence and all she does, both in a positive and negative way simultaneously, so that this cannot help but be a very biased and colorful view.
First of all, she and her husband produced the trailer for what looks to be an incredibly good film when they and the director get the financial backing to finish it. It appears to be their baby right now, as in, it is the work they are most proud of and rightly so. It's called, "A Thousand And One Journeys" (https://vimeo.com44550024) and is about Arab-Americans in the USA and both their struggles to adapt and ways that they were already adapted fine as Americans when they were still on the boat. The trailer consists of bits of interviews of faces I recognize and faces I don't recognize sharing primarily about their values and what they bring to a situation instead of seeking to take away from it. These are among the people who built the country, in every sense of the word, and they make no bones in saying exactly that, which I think is great. Modio-Media's obsession with Italy and with the video image disappears altogether behind the passion of telling the story, which is terrific. A++ I can hardly wait to see it when it's done. If I had the money I'd ask to invest in it myself.
I have more mixed feelings about the promo films for Modio-Media as a whole, however. If you truly have a product that could win you customer loyalty, Modio-Media is right for you, but if your product is just the envelope it was supposed to come in, I'd not trouble with it. Other than that, it appears to be a tiny studio with THX potential, but I found most of its promos aesthetically upsetting on a deep level and I want to explain why because I think it might get people curious about seeing for themselves and that could eventually win the company clients. They're capable of uplifting work, but only in the hands of an uplifting client with the vision to engage them in creative dialogue about the project. Gia admits it haas mostly "Italy-focused content," which is fine for clients in Italy, but I clicked on "television" to look for a promo film for CNN and found this newsclip that horrified me. It start to tell a story of the fires in the MidWest, but includes this agonizing footage of a rescue worker being dragged up accidentally into a helicopter (he survived), followed by a hospital corridor full of enhanced images of the arms of reporters holding microphones politely crammed together against both walls while the smoke inhalation victim from the first shot, having gotten to the hospital, comes crashing through them on a gurney...It's even more grotesque than I make it sound, defensibly Saturnalian, and displaying in every way the camera's overdeveloped eye for beauty and obsession for workers. But then I thought, too, that more people work and see themselves as workers than care about fire victims so that the imagery makes use of the psychological technique known as "masking" to use exaggerated details of workers as an Everyman for seducing a lukewarm audience into fascination with the story. It can then proceed to tell about people needing our compassion or admiration or whatever. The only reason a sensitive person may feel revolted by the apparent fascism of the heroic proportions and obsession with nationality is because a truly sensitive person will feel revolted by the fascism they live in every day, whatever country we happen to be in or feel most kinship to. And no aesthetic can bear the distinction of being more fascist than another, it's apples and oranges. Besides, I'm only complaining about what I feel to be the most original of the promo films. "A Thousand And One Journeys" shows how majestic and sublime their work can also be.
I should say, as a qualifier, that it is my friend's company and that I always felt stirred in some way by her presence and all she does, both in a positive and negative way simultaneously, so that this cannot help but be a very biased and colorful view.
First of all, she and her husband produced the trailer for what looks to be an incredibly good film when they and the director get the financial backing to finish it. It appears to be their baby right now, as in, it is the work they are most proud of and rightly so. It's called, "A Thousand And One Journeys" (https://vimeo.com44550024) and is about Arab-Americans in the USA and both their struggles to adapt and ways that they were already adapted fine as Americans when they were still on the boat. The trailer consists of bits of interviews of faces I recognize and faces I don't recognize sharing primarily about their values and what they bring to a situation instead of seeking to take away from it. These are among the people who built the country, in every sense of the word, and they make no bones in saying exactly that, which I think is great. Modio-Media's obsession with Italy and with the video image disappears altogether behind the passion of telling the story, which is terrific. A++ I can hardly wait to see it when it's done. If I had the money I'd ask to invest in it myself.
I have more mixed feelings about the promo films for Modio-Media as a whole, however. If you truly have a product that could win you customer loyalty, Modio-Media is right for you, but if your product is just the envelope it was supposed to come in, I'd not trouble with it. Other than that, it appears to be a tiny studio with THX potential, but I found most of its promos aesthetically upsetting on a deep level and I want to explain why because I think it might get people curious about seeing for themselves and that could eventually win the company clients. They're capable of uplifting work, but only in the hands of an uplifting client with the vision to engage them in creative dialogue about the project. Gia admits it haas mostly "Italy-focused content," which is fine for clients in Italy, but I clicked on "television" to look for a promo film for CNN and found this newsclip that horrified me. It start to tell a story of the fires in the MidWest, but includes this agonizing footage of a rescue worker being dragged up accidentally into a helicopter (he survived), followed by a hospital corridor full of enhanced images of the arms of reporters holding microphones politely crammed together against both walls while the smoke inhalation victim from the first shot, having gotten to the hospital, comes crashing through them on a gurney...It's even more grotesque than I make it sound, defensibly Saturnalian, and displaying in every way the camera's overdeveloped eye for beauty and obsession for workers. But then I thought, too, that more people work and see themselves as workers than care about fire victims so that the imagery makes use of the psychological technique known as "masking" to use exaggerated details of workers as an Everyman for seducing a lukewarm audience into fascination with the story. It can then proceed to tell about people needing our compassion or admiration or whatever. The only reason a sensitive person may feel revolted by the apparent fascism of the heroic proportions and obsession with nationality is because a truly sensitive person will feel revolted by the fascism they live in every day, whatever country we happen to be in or feel most kinship to. And no aesthetic can bear the distinction of being more fascist than another, it's apples and oranges. Besides, I'm only complaining about what I feel to be the most original of the promo films. "A Thousand And One Journeys" shows how majestic and sublime their work can also be.
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