-- spidermoon cobweblog --

hawaii medical delivered my new wheelchairiot yesterday.




it's very cool, a few inches shorter and more narrow than the chairs i've been living in for years, so it fits me better.

i'm gliding a few inches closer to the floor now, which has it's good and bad points, its ups and downs? it is much more streamlined and less boxey, even more than the picture looks, so that's good.

it's a low-rider, feels almost like a quickie manual chair, if anyone's familiar with those.

if needed i can take it to the shop and have it raised to regular height or keep it at the shorter level, so i'm gonna keep it short for a while and decide. it's kinda' nice this three or four inches lower down; however, reaching things like light switches is now more difficult. climbing down and out to the floor, or simply reaching things on the floor, is easier.

the good thing about the height thing is the addition of a power seat, this year's gadget, on this year's model. it raises and lowers six inches which makes me ultimately taller than i've ever been. but to move at full speed it must be in the short position. so it's a mixed blessing for now.

seat goes up seat goes down ... seat goes up seat goes down.

and it only has the regular four wheels, i was hoping for a six-wheeler. but that was my mistaken impression. i'm still in the process of adapting from my previous chair to this one. i feel like a hermit crab trying to fit into a new shell.

so time will tell if it's a complete success. drove it to the store in the rain today, so it's blessed by pele at least. for now, it's a bother, and taking up all my spare time, but it's a fun bother.

...
jezebel 06:13 - [Link] - Comments ()
...

this is a post from carnivaleHBO group. it's about two of the characters in the tv show, carnivale.

each time the twins appeared in the show, it was very noticeable how full of grace and beauty they were, even though they were "freaks" (conjoined twins).

then i read this article and learned they are really trapezists .. no wonder. hah.

but they are still great, because they show how two normal able-bodied women can do more than just appear to become disabled, they are just acting after all, but they do it amazingly well and yet make these disabled twins become a true performance of beauty even in scenes where they are simply walking across the carnivale backlot on an off-duty day to collect their laundry.

they bring incredible beauty and grace
to this freakshow and help transform it into a true work of art.

jezebel

Date: Sun, Feb 22, 2004, 9:55pm (HST+10)
To: CarnivaleHBO@yahoogroups.com

Subject: [CarnivaleHBO] The Twins, Karyne and Sarah Steben


Found this article on the twins (Alexandria and Caladonia) here:

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/artsentertainment/2001860428_behind22.hml

Dreamweaver

Behind the Scenes

Trapezists Karyne and Sarah Steben

By Pamela Sitt
Seattle Times staff reporter

Who they are: They like to make people guess: Sarah or Karyne? The
identical Steben twins, 29, are the latest attraction at the "Dinner
and Dreams" Teatro ZinZanni show, where they do things on a trapeze
that make their mother extremely nervous. Good thing she lives in
Montreal, where the Italian-Canadian sisters were born before taking
their trapeze act worldwide.

The Steben sisters, whose limited engagement at Teatro ZinZanni ends
April 4, have traveled with Cirque Du Soleil, choreographed an aerial
act for Madonna's 2001 "Drowned World" tour and currently appear as
conjoined twins in the circus-set HBO drama series "Carnivale."

The trouble with twins: Being a twin ? particularly in this line of
work ? has its advantages. "We are so in sync, we don't need to speak
to understand each other," Sarah says. Two years ago, when Karyne was
pregnant with her now-18-month-old daughter, Sarah's boyfriend filled
in on the trapeze at Cirque Du Soleil's production of "O." "With my
boyfriend, it was double trouble," Sarah says with a laugh.

But filming the first season of "Carnivale" near Los Angeles proved
to be, at times, a bit too close for comfort. "We were stuck
together, closer than we've ever been," Sarah says. "When I'm cold
and she's warm and if I need to go to the bathroom and she's hungry,

what do we do?" Working in television, the twins found, is less than
glamorous: "We realized we are in a circus all day long in the sand
and the cold," Karyne says. "The waiting (is a challenge). And
learning to perform for a little camera ? we have to make every
movement smaller."

The Steben sisters will return to their home base in Los Angeles ?
where they live five minutes apart ? to start filming the second
season of the HBO series in April.

Knock on wood: Sarah (the "catcher") has never dropped Karyne
(the "flyer") on the trapeze, they say as they both knock on a wooden
table. But they make little mistakes during their trapeze act all the
time, albeit ones undetected by the untrained eye.

"The dress goes in your eyes, or sometimes the hair gets caught,"

Karyne says. "One time (Sarah) choked on her hair." Her sister
nods: "I had my hair in my mouth the whole time." The sisters have
never seriously injured themselves on the trapeze. "Whenever people
(in the circus) get hurt, it's stupid, like walking to the stage and
boom, you twist your ankle," Sarah says.

Only Karyne's pregnancy has ever sidelined either of the sisters from
the trapeze. "The first question I asked in the hospital was, 'Was
(giving birth) worse than the pain we had on the trapeze?'" Sarah
says. The answer: "It's harder, but with better results," says
Karyne. "The trapeze hurts, (but) I learned to like how it hurts. You
have to be a masochist a little bit."

The crystal ball: What does the future hold for the high-flying
Steben sisters? They imagine another 10 years, at most, on the
trapeze. And then? "There are so many things we want to do," Karyne
says. "We want to open an art studio someday. We would love to do
movies. If we did trapeze in a movie, it would stay on the tape
forever."

The sisters have already recorded a demo CD ? described as "world
music, kind of Enya tunes" ? and may incorporate singing into
their "Carnivale" roles.

Despite an impressive résumé of circus acts, music videos,
commercials and TV shows, "we feel like we've done nothing," Sarah
says. "One time, these people wanted to write a (biography). We just
said to them, 'We have nothing! Wait till we're 80.' "

--------------------


Yahoo! Groups Links
To visit your group on the web, go to:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/CarnivaleHBO/

Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to the Yahoo! Terms of Service.

jezebel 06:27 - [Link] - Comments ()
...

Is Your Religion Unsanitary?

Is God telling you to love war? Loathe gays? Restrict women? Join the godless throngs now!
(By Mark Morford)

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2004/02/20/notes022004.DTL&nl=fix

Is your god really, really angry right now?

Is your god telling you, like it tells G.W. Bush every night, that your unwanted unprovoked ultraviolent war against a nearly defenseless nation is not only justified and righteous, but is His deepest wish?

http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20031222&s=stam

And does your religion tell you, like it tells so many of the Christian Right, that homosexuals are a dire threat to humankind and should be stopped at all costs before the so-called gay agenda sneaks into the playground and the drinking water and the "Spongebob" scripts and starts covertly converting our blessed innocent hetero children to a life of sin?

Or maybe it instructs that gay people are simply misled, morally derailed by a hunky leather-clad Satan with great hair and Prada sandals, and, despite that sad fact, they are still all God's children and should therefore be pitied and patronized and helped over their "sickness?"

Is your religion telling you that women who dare to control their own bodies and sexual reproductive powers should be shut down and restricted by legislation and deep guilt and electroshock therapy, and the doctors who treat them imprisoned if not beaten with sticks and set on fire?

Or maybe you say no, it's not like that at all, it's much milder and nicer than that. Maybe your religion, like the carefully spoon-fed religion of millions of Americans, is quieter, calmer, a little more numbly sinister. Maybe your religion, like so many modern incarnations of dogma, is telling you simply to have faith. Does this sound familiar?

Maybe it's telling you to not think too much about the horrors and complexities and odd sexual orientations of the world, that they are simply too ugly and debauched and convoluted to really understand for mere mortals, and if you just leave it up to God and let Him sort it all out, everything will be fine. This is the church line. It has worked for centuries. It is still working today.

God has a plan, after all. This is what they say. He has an incredibly obtuse and impossibly dense master blueprint that explains all the war and death and burned babies in Iraq, all the cancer and animal cruelty and Lynne Cheney, and you are just too small and unevolved to possibly understand, or do anything about it.

Right? Well, no.

Because if it is, if your religion is telling you any of these things, you might want to reconsider your options. You might want to consider dumping the whole thing and becoming one of the outcasts, one among the godless throngs, one of the spiritually inquisitive, one of the sacredly self-defined.

You might wish to radically change your perspective and your worldview, to forgo the doctrines and the pious gooey safety net of a sanctimonious religion that pretends to know all the answers, and go it alone, figure it out for yourself -- before it's too late and you end up shriveled and miserable and dead. As the saying goes, it's never too late to have a happy karma.

That great genius heretic Joseph Campbell summed it up best when he said, "The wicked thing about both the little and the great 'collective faiths', prehistoric and historic, is that they all, without exception, pretend to hold encompassed in their ritualized mythologies all of the truth ever to be known.

"They are therefore cursed, and they curse all who accept them, with what I shall call the 'error of the found truth,' or, in mythological language, the sin against the Holy Ghost.

"They set up against the revelations of the spirit the barriers of their own petrified belief, and, therefore, within the ban of their control, mythology, as they shape it, serves the end only of binding potential individuals to whatever system of sentiments may have seemed to the shapers of the past (now sanctified as saints, sages, ancestors or even gods) to be appropriate to their concept of a great society."

See? Even according to our finest minds, major religion is just terribly unhealthy, excruciatingly limiting. Causes brain polyps. Perspective warts. Fear blisters. Hate rashes. Sanctimony drip. Chronic nose picking.

Of course, it must be noted that there are millions who believe in a gentle form of organized religion, a tolerant, forgiving Christian God, persons who are warm and open minded and who do not ever attempt to shove their beliefs down anyone's throat. They are kind and selfless and practice their beliefs quietly, tenderly, in their own nontoxic way. This is glorious and good. This is not the slightest problem. This is, in fact, to be encouraged.

But, sadly, these people are strongly overshadowed, publicly overpowered, by the far more outspoken and well-organized religious fire breathers who attempt to set the spiritual agenda for America and delineate what actions we can take and what kind of sex we can have and whom we can and cannot love. It is these karmically scrunched people whom we are now working to save. And it is the call of any true patriotic, open-minded American to come to the aid of the misinformed and the lost. You know who you are.

It is not a pill, this radical change you might now wish to undertake. It is not a program. It is not a series of eight-minute power workouts on VHS or a stack of subliminal meditation CDs you play while napping and dreaming of Donald Rumsfeld baking blueberry pies in a rubber chicken suit.

It is not a class or a book or a series of daily affirmations you stick on the fridge and check off every time you suck down a yogurt drink or sneak a cookie.

It is merely a choice. A decision to drop the dead weight of a dead book from the spinning modern kaleidoscope of your ever-evolving id, and see what happens. Letting go, de-clenching, letting the spiritual blood flow, is half the battle. Dumping stagnant doctrine and tired patriarchal notions does not mean you must immediately pick up another system to replace it. You want a new worldview? You want a fresh, unbounded ideology, as flexible and porous as you are? Simply start looking inward, at the one true god of the self. And what a gift it is.

It is a perspective slap. It is a choke hold on spiritual timidity. It is a radical peeling back, a falling away, an explosion, karmic whiplash, a massive transformational belch. And it is desperately needed right now.

Ask yourself this: What would happen if you suddenly turned around and said you don't believe in that sneering angry God anymore, or in that specific, nasty interpretation of Bible verse?

What would happen if you said, hey you know what? Life is simply way too short to think that this is all there is and that the church has all the answers, or that I can't just read the Bible as this profound curious literary mythological funkarama full of sex and blood and death and random acts of kindness and not take it all so damn seriously or literally, because that's when the trouble starts?

Why, furthermore, must I think that if there is a God he must be, well, a male, and an angry misogynistic homophobic Republican male, at that, one with a thing for guns and trucks and repressed Catholic priests?

Why can I not, say, reignite the feminine divine in this exhausted, macho world? Would that really be so horrible? So confusing? Could it possibly be worse than now, what with all the hate and fear and pious finger pointing? The answer is shockingly clear: You can.

It is not too late. You can heed the call, make the change, intervene today in a hardcore religious person's desperate life, present them with a new way, a fresh path, introduce them to their own personal Jesus: themselves.

You can teach them to be one of the heathen godless throngs of America, the happily self-defined, the spiritually adventurous, unafraid to take on a deeply felt, difficult, messy, gorgeous type of individual spirituality, independent of dogma and screed and a scowling bearded father figure who pulls strings at random and builds monster warehouses of guilt and dread in your heart like some sort of dour Wal-Mart Supercenter.

It is never too late. It is your choice. Won't you join us?

----------------------------------------------

...



jezebel 05:10 - [Link] - Comments ()
...

[Site "www.ChessWorld.net"]

[Date "2002.12.21"]
[Round "NA"]
[White "MRMOE"]
[Black "jezebel"]
[Result "1-0"]
[Termination "Black resigned"]
[WhiteElo "1739"]
[BlackElo "1631"]
[Mode "ICS"]
[DateLastMove "2004.1.29"]
[Board "[Site "171059"]

1. d4 Ng8f6 2. Ng1f3 d6 3. g3 b6 4. Bf1g2 Bc8b7 5. O-O c5 6. Bc1f4 g6 7. Nb1d2 Bf8g7 8. dxc5 dxc5 9. c3 O-O 10. Bf4xb8 Ra8xb8 11. Qd1c2 b5 12. Ra1d1 Bb7d5 13. b3 c4 14. bxc4 Bd5c6 15. Nf3e5 Bc6d7 16. Ne5xd7 Nf6xd7 17. cxb5 Rb8xb5 18. Bg2c6 Rb5g5 19. Nd2e4 Rg5g4 20. Bc6xd7 f5 21. Bd7e6 Kg8h8 22. Rd1xd8 Rf8xd8 23. h3 Rg4xe4 24. Be6b3 Bg7h6 25. c4 Rd8d2 26. Qc2c3 Re4d4 27. Rf1d1 e5 28. Rd1xd2 Bh6xd2 29. Qc3b2 Kh8g7 30. e3 Rd4d7 31. Qb2xe5 Kg7h6 32. c5 Bd2a5 33. Kg1g2 Ba5c7 34. Qe5e6 Rd7d2 35. h4 Kh6h5 36. Qe6e7 1-0

...


jezebel 14:59 - [Link] - Comments ()
...

[Site "www.ChessWorld.net"]

[Date "2002.10.25"]
[Round "NA"]
[White "Laser Sailor"]
[Black "jezebel"]
[Result "0-1"]
[Termination "White resigned"]
[WhiteElo "1091"]
[BlackElo "1642"]
[Mode "ICS"]
[DateLastMove "2004.2.9"]
[ECO "C50"]
[Board "134139"]

1. e4 Nb8c6 2. Bf1c4 e5 3. Ng1f3 b6 4. d3 h6 5. Nb1c3 Ng8f6 6. Qd1e2 Bc8b7 7. Nc3d5 a5 8. b3 Bf8c5 9. O-O Nf6xd5 10. Bc4xd5 Qd8f6 11. Bc1e3 O-O-O 12. a3 Nc6d4 13. Be3xd4 Bc5xd4 14. Nf3xd4 Bb7xd5 15. exd5 exd4 16. b4 Rh8e8 17. Qe2f3 Qf6xf3 18. gxf3 c6 19. bxa5 bxa5 20. Ra1b1 Kc8c7 21. Kg1g2 c5 22. Rb1b5 Re8e5 23. Rb5xc5 Kc7b6 24. Rc5c4 Re5xd5 25. Rf1b1 Rd5b5 26. Rb1e1 Rb5d5 27. Re1b1 Rd5b5 28. Rb1b3 Rb5xb3 29. cxb3 d5 30. Rc4xd4 Kb6c5 31. Rd4a4 Kc5b5 32. d4 Rd8c8 33. b4 Kb5xa4 0-1

...


jezebel 14:30 - [Link] - Comments ()
...

[Site "www.ChessWorld.net"]
[Date "2002.10.25"]
[Round "NA"]
[White "jezebel"]
[Black "Laser Sailor"]
[Result "1-0"]
[Termination "Black resigned"]
[WhiteElo "1644"]
[BlackElo "1082"]
[Mode "ICS"]
[DateLastMove "2004.2.9"]
[ECO "C24"]
[Board "[Site "134047"]

1. e4 e5 2. Bf1c4 Ng8f6 3. Qd1f3 d6 4. d3 Bf8e7 5. Nb1c3 Nb8c6 6. a3 O-O 7. Ng1e2 d5 8. exd5 Nc6d4 9. Ne2xd4 exd4 10. Nc3e4 Rf8e8 11. Bc1f4 Bc8g4 12. Qf3g3 c6 13. d6 b5 14. dxe7 Re8xe7 15. Bf4g5 Nf6xe4 16. Bc4xf7 Re7xf7 17. dxe4 Qd8xg5 18. f3 Qg5e3 19. Ke1d1 Bg4e6 20. Rh1e1 Qe3f4 21. Qg3xf4 Rf7xf4 22. Kd1d2 Ra8d8 23. a4 a6 24. axb5 cxb5 25. Ra1xa6 Kg8f7 26. Re1a1 Rf4h4 27. h3 Be6c8 28. Ra6a8 Rh4h6 29. Kd2d3 Rh6d6 30. Ra1a7 Kf7g8 31. Ra7c7 Bc8e6 32. Ra8a5 Be6c4 33. Kd3d2 Rd6d7 34. Rc7xd7 1-0

...


jezebel 14:21 - [Link] - Comments ()
...

[Site "www.ChessWorld.net"]
[Date "2002.10.25"]
[Round "NA"]
[White "The Viper"]
[Black "jezebel"]
[Result "1-0"]
[Termination "Black resigned"]
[WhiteElo "1555"]
[BlackElo "1643"]
[Mode "ICS"]
[DateLastMove "2004.1.29"]
[Board "[Site "134055"]

1. e4 Nb8c6 2. d4 d5 3. e5 f6 4. Ng1f3 Bc8g4 5. h3 Bg4xf3 6. Qd1xf3 Nc6xd4 7. Qf3c3 fxe5 8. Bc1e3 e6 9. Be3xd4 exd4 10. Qc3xd4 c5 11. Qd4g4 Qd8b6 12. b3 Ng8f6 13. Qg4a4 Qb6c6 14. Bf1b5 Qc6d7 15. Bb5xd7 Nf6xd7 16. O-O d4 17. Qa4b5 O-O-O 18. Nb1a3 Nd7e5 19. Rf1e1 a6 20. Qb5b6 Rd8d6 21. Qb6xc5 Ne5c6 22. Qc5c4 b5 23. Qc4e2 e5 24. Qe2g4 Rd6d7 25. Ra1c1 Bf8xa3 26. Rc1d1 h5 27. Qg4g6 Rh8h6 28. Qg6e8 Kc8c7 29. c3 Rd7e7 30. Qe8a8 Kc7b6 31. cxd4 Rh6e6 32. d5 Re7e8 33. Qa8xc6 Re6xc6 34. dxc6 Kb6xc6 35. f4 Ba3c5 36. Kg1h1 Bc5d6 37. Rd1c1 Kc6d5 38. fxe5 Bd6xe5 39. b4 Re8e6 40. Re1e2 Be5f4 41. Rc1c5 Kd5d6 42. Re2xe6 Kd6xe6 43. Rc5c6 Ke6d5 44. Rc6xa6 g5 45. g4 hxg4 46. hxg4 Bf4d2 47. a3 Kd5c4 48. Ra6c6 Kc4b3 49. Rc6c5 Kb3xa3 50. Rc5xb5 Ka3b3 51. Kh1g2 Kb3c4 52. Rb5b7 Kc4d5 53. Rb7d7 1-0

...


jezebel 21:23 - [Link] - Comments ()
...

What Are You So Afraid Of?

Sex? Gays? Terrorists? God? In BushCo's fear-drunk world, only one question really matters

By Mark Morford
http://sfgate.com

Oh my God but we are one terrified nation.

Fear is in. Fear is the new black. Spritz it on your face and neck, walk around the world all quivering and tremulous, waiting to be crushed by some dark massive throbbing wall of evil at any moment.

Fear is everywhere. Classrooms, water coolers, truck commercials. Fear is our government's raison d'etre, the calling card of the GOP. It will be the prime motivator in this year's presidential election, as Karl Rove will command that Dubya beat the drum of fear loud and hard and nonstop, smirking all the way.

Fear of terrorists fear of gay marriage fear of women and foreigners and the poor and environmentalists and progressives and Janet Jackson and hippies and commies and gul-dang liberals who want to take away your guns and make you think for yourself. We cannot have that.

Vote for us, the GOP will scream, and we will make sure to slaughter all those evil hippie demons, all while keeping your fear at a fever pitch via a never-ending parade of freshly minted evils that threaten your numbed McDonald's-gorged diabetic asthmatic children who can't breathe due to all the air-quality laws we've gouged. Shhh.

Fear has served the GOP beautifully. It won them the election and let them launch two full-blown wars and has pumped billions into the coffers of crony corporations and there is no reason to stop now.

Fear is bombing Afghanistan, right now. Fear is why we are decimating Iraq. A massive murderous budget-busting U.N.-hating war on a nonthreatening nation would have been unspeakable and intolerable had the GOP not deliberately engaged in truly world-class fearmongering beforehand, all about leveraging the sadness of 9/11 and tying it to nonexistent WMDs and biotoxins and nukes and scary bearded foreigners who are all hell bent on slaughtering American babies with rusty machetes.

Basic truism of politics, worldwide: Get the populace scared enough, and you can get away with anything. Fear yanks away your basic civil liberties, your intuition, your sense of dignity and humane behavior.

Fear means not blinking an eye as you remove your belt and your shoes as you allow your carry-on to be dumped out and rifled through and your toddler to be groped and her teddy bear strip searched by some snickering security personnel.

Fear means barely wincing as the utterly draconian USA Patriot Act gets reamed through Congress, twice, giving the FBI and police appalling new powers to monitor your e-mail and your Web-site visits and credit card usage and telephone calls sans warning or warrant or even probable cause. Fear means no longer saying hey, just what the hell is wrong with you people?

Fear is a tactic. It is a calculated force, a strategic maneuver, a carefully constructed PR methodology. It is a poison in the air, a cancer in the national bloodstream, a media pastime and a cultural narcotic. And here's the biggest secret of all: Fear is a learned trait, a practiced habit. It is something you cling to and allow to fester. They are counting on it.

Fear is why we buy SUVs. Fear of horrible spine-mangling accidents, fear of smashing head-on into a Mack truck at 90 mph at any given moment, fear that just around the next corner is an enormous gorge full of anthrax and gangbangers and demonic vegans that we will have to traverse just so little Timmy can make it to therapy and Daddy can haul his load of dry cleaning back from the office.

Never mind that SUVs have hideous road manners and are, in fact, far more deadly than smaller cars and suffer far more accidents than smaller cars, which are much better at avoiding accidents in the first place. Fear scoffs at this. Fear knows it's all about convincing you that horrible accidents and ungodly pain are inevitable, even if they're not. After all, fear drives a Hummer.

And logic? Poor ol' logic breaks down in the face of fear. Fear has no patience for common sense and spits at it and smashes it with a baseball bat and treats it like Dick Cheney treats a fat, docile pheasant.

Fear is why we love our guns. Fear is why we love our huge knobby tires and Super-sized fries and ultraviolent sports, making us feel all manly and corpulent and invincible. Fear is why we pummel the weak, hate the different, cling to uptight religious doctrine that we know, deep down, is sapping our soul and crushing our independent thought and numbing our sexual potency.

Try this test. Ask your neighborhood neoconservative homophobe just what, exactly, would happen if, say, gay marriage were to be legalized nationwide.
Ask them what would change. Ask them to be very specific. How would their lives be threatened? How would society crumble, exactly? Riots? Locusts? What is the danger in allowing love to flourish in all its variants and be enthusiastically supported by the state? Be as clear as possible. What, really, is so terrifying?

Fear, it just is. It nibbles away at our souls like a tapeworm. It is our own personal kryptonite.

It does not matter. For most of us, letting go and dissolving tight, harmful definitions of self and forsaking, say, an angry sneering homophobic God in favor of cultivating a messy raw juicy delicious wet incredibly difficult sense of personal responsibility and open-mouthed divinity is far too much to ask. We are terrified to even try. The church is counting on it.

We do know one thing: Change freaks us out. It is an upheaval of what was, the known, the stable, the safe. Change -- social, sexual, political -- is confusing and troubling and forces us to question our own inhibitions and moral shortcomings and deep inborn prejudices and who the hell wants to do that? No one, that's who.

Fear means never having to dig very deep, never having to ask serious questions of the self. There, there now. Don't bother thinking for yourself. Let the priests and the government CEOs and the war hawks make it all better. Boom boom crush snicker.

There are, of course, plenty of ways to defeat fear. You hear little about them because they aren't nearly as sexy or dire for media and politicians. After all, fear sells copy, moves product, draws ratings, gets votes. Defeating fear is for New Agers and peaceniks and pot smokers. Right? Whatever.

This is all you have to do to defeat fear: You don't. That is to say, you actually do the opposite, which is to promote the positive, educate yourself, drop your tired notions of how it's all supposed to work and pump out what the ancients knew to be a radiant kind of raw ego-free love. What, too fluffy? Tough.

Because only by making your world, your body, your perspective truly "in love" does anything actually change. It ain't pink hearts and fluffy bunnies and Hallmark swill. It's the most difficult and often most painful and life-altering thing you can do. It means forgoing the safe, questioning your deepest belief, peeling back the self in ways you can't even imagine until you get there and you say, oh my freaking God this is a pain in the karmic ass.

But once you tap into something divine and deeply personal and free of the spewings of the hate-filled homophobic Right and the whiny politically correct Left, only then can you use this energy to battle the demons of ignorance and fearmongering on every front, every day. Because, simply put, the more you know yourself, the less you fear. It is the only way. And you can start immediately.

After all, what are you so afraid of?

...


jezebel 04:38 - [Link] - Comments ()
...

[Site "www.ChessWorld.net"]
[Date "2003.5.25"]
[Round "NA"]
[White "jezebel"]
[Black "Klaus Behrmann"]
[Result "0-1"]
[Termination "White resigned"]
[WhiteElo "1654"]
[BlackElo "2248"]
[Mode "ICS"]
[DateLastMove "2004.2.11"]
[Board "249823"]

1. Nb1c3 e5 2. Ng1f3 Nb8c6 3. b3 d5 4. d4 Bf8b4 5. Bc1b2 e4 6. Nf3e5 Nc6xe5 7. dxe5 d4 8. a3 dxc3 9. Qd1xd8 Ke8xd8 10. Bb2c1 Bb4c5 11. b4 Bc5b6 12. e3 c6 13. f4 Ng8e7 14. Bf1c4 Ne7d5 15. Bc4xd5 cxd5 16. Ra1b1 Bc8d7 17. Rb1b3 Ra8c8 18. O-O Bd7a4 19. Rb3b1 Ba4xc2 20. Rb1a1 d4 21. Rf1e1 d3 22. f5 d2 23. Re1e2 0-1

...


jezebel 06:19 - [Link] - Comments ()
...

[Site "www.ChessWorld.net"]
[Date "2003.5.27"]
[Round "NA"]
[White "jezebel"]
[Black "HagarTheHorrible"]
[Result "1-0"]
[Termination "Black resigned"]
[WhiteElo "1651"]
[BlackElo "1589"]
[Mode "ICS"]
[DateLastMove "2004.2.3"]
[ECO "A00"]
[Board "251170"]

1. Nb1c3 e5 2. Ng1f3 Nb8c6 3. g3 d6 4. b3 Nc6b4 5. e4 Bc8g4 6. h3 Bg4xf3 7. Qd1xf3 Nb4xc2 8. Ke1d1 Nc2xa1 9. Bf1c4 f6 10. Bc1b2 Na1xb3 11. axb3 a6 12. Nc3d5 Ng8e7 13. Qf3h5 Ne7g6 14. f4 exf4 15. gxf4 Qd8d7 16. f5 O-O-O 17. fxg6 Qd7e6 18. Nd5b6 cxb6 19. Bc4xe6 Kc8b8 20. Bb2d4 Rd8e8 21. Be6f5 h6 22. Bd4xb6 d5 23. Qh5f3 dxe4 24. Qf3f4 Kb8a8 25. Bf5xe4 Re8e6 26. Qf4e3 Bf8d6 27. Be4xb7 Ka8xb7 28. Qe3xe6 Kb7c6 1-0

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jezebel 06:09 - [Link] - Comments ()
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Curse Words For Janet Jackson

Daddy, why does that f--ing politician hate women's breasts? Because he's a s-- and a hypocrite, honey

(By Mark Morford)

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2004/02/04/notes020404.DTL&nl=fix

Jaws were clenched. Brows were furrowed. Scowls were scowled. Fake sanctimony was hissed. Pasty cellulitic butts were scrunched. This is what happened.

Just last week, well before Janet Jackson reignited her limp career in the most nipple-riffic PR stunt in months, uptight members of Congress from all corners squeezed their narrow ideologies into little fiery balls and decided to berate, as they so often do, radio and TV for being "vile, crude, disgusting, and awful," yo hey pot kettle black. And, lo, lightning did not strike them dead on the spot.

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2004/01/29/MNGCA4KAGH1.DTL&nl=fix

Why the outburst? Because Bono said the delicious f-word during the Golden Globes, and it wasn't edited out. Because a few of the country's crude 'n' obnoxious Clear Channel shock-radio stations you would never listen to because you have taste and a brain aired one of those vapid sexist gag radio bits that appeal only to semicatatonic homophobic frat boys.

Oh, and because S.F.'s own KRON-TV dared to accidentally flash a shot of a real penis during a segment about the very much not-all-that-funny "Puppetry of the Penis" theater show. Shocking. Appalling. Honey cover your eyes.

And thus did the sanctimonious pseudo-Christian cry go out, powerful and time tested by politicians worldwide, guaranteed to induce fear and ignorance and allow them to paint themselves as all self-righteous and ethical and pretend they're not a corporate shill raping the environment from the back pocket of an oil lobbyist: Who -- pray, who -- will protect the children?

So the politicians, they hissed, they derided, they wrapped themselves in cloaks of hypocrisy and righteousness and proposed a bill to quintuple the Federal Communication Commission's powers to punish "crude, vile" media violators -- i.e., anyone who broadcasts certain "forbidden" swear words or exposes genitalia or offers up crude schlock-radio pap, as if these are the true demons of society, the true leeches sucking the souls of the virtuous and the young. Wrong again, pols.

Which leads us, naturally, straight to Janet Jackson's nipple. To the instantly infamous fully intentional breast-exposing PR stunt wherein Justin Timberlake "accidentally" ripped off one of Janet's breast plates, exposing one actually quite cool silver sunburst

http://www.navel-rings.net/nipple-jewelry3.html

nipple shield, just before a panicky NBC cut to a much more morally virtuous Pepsi commercial.

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2004/02/03/MNGH84NN631.DTL&nl=fix

Once again, America was shocked and appalled. Families were horrified. Civilizations trembled. Churches crumbled. Eighty-nine million viewers gasped and made the sign of the cross and realized just how desperate Janet's career must've been that she had to try to pull that one off. So to speak.
And oh yes, children were traumatized, too. Deeply scarred. Forever and ever. So very sad.

Because children are *always* traumatized by such events, aren't they? The wee ones simply can't handle sex and nudity and swearing and it's a wonder the damn little things can get out of bed in the morning, what with all the f-words and exposed nipples and penises flopping around out there. Right, senator? The poor dears. Thank god for Spongebob.

So outraged was the populace that Michael Powell, sanctimonious head of the FCC, he of the flagrant corporate whoring who recently tried to cram through new rules that would've allowed a handful of media giants to own almost every media outlet in the nation, is actually launching a probe into the Janet episode. How cute.

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2004/02/02/national1126EST0580.DTL&nl=fix

This is the message: A woman's bare breast is a horrific and disturbing thing, completely inappropriate for an afternoon of wholesome macho homoerotic skull-bashing NFL violence and endless hours of nauseating commercial crassness -- unless the woman is, you know, a cheerleader. Now rush off to bed kids, and read your Bibles while Mommy and Daddy pop some Zoloft and Levitra and crack a few Bud Lights and head off to the fetish dungeon to lick our new Ford GT. Got it.

Yes, a woman's flesh is unspeakable evil. However, umpteen erectile-dysfunction commercials and crotch-biting pisswater Bud Light commercials and toxic-junk-food commercials and faux-macho truck commercials and the ad featuring two old people beating each other up over a bag of greasy potato chips, why, that's just tasteful, healthy capitalism. Is that it, Mike? Politicians? Just want to be clear.

Because there is no outcry. There are no snide FCC honchos or uptight politicians hurling the terms "vile," "disgusting" and "crude" at the true poisons of the culture, like those above -- not to mention politicians' own oil cronyism or easy lies about war, or the decimation of our foreign policy. You want to talk vile and disgusting, senator? Have you seen the new BushCo budget?

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2004/02/03/MNG9V4NMSL1.DTL&nl=fix

Most telling side note: Bono, of U2, was barred from performing a song about AIDS awareness at the Super Bowl because he is "too political," given how he fights for those horrible un-American causes of peace and Third World debt relief.

But pseudo-gangsta P. Diddy can pimp like a talentless thug and Kid Rock can, well, be Kid Rock and NFL players can kneel in smarmy bogus prayer rituals, praying fervently to crush the other team's vertebrae and win a shiny trophy. My God but we are so beautifully, deeply screwed.

Mind, this is no impassioned defense of vulgar radio or tacky overblown halftime stunts, which are, by American tradition, inane and insulting on 157 levels. After all, a nation gets exactly the type of schlock entertainment it deserves. And, as for the children, well, if you let your 5-year-old listen to Howard Stern, you get exactly the kind of kid you deserve, too.

But in the final analysis, which is more harmful to your innocent unsoiled perfect child? Hearing Bono say "this is really fucking brilliant" during the Golden Globes and ogling Janet Jackson's PR-happy breast for all of 1.7 seconds, or the endless stream of blood-soaked images of BushCo's bogus war machine interspersed with never-ending commercials featuring misogyny, bestiality, cheap beer and toxic sodas, along with arrays of pneumatic bleached-toothed cheerleaders doing the splits while sweaty 300-pound men in tights pulverize each other like gorillas on meth?

Verily, congressman, and truly, Mr. Powell, why are you not out there screaming and clenching your fists and protecting our innocent children from the endless array of sociocultural lies and abuses and corporate whorings you yourselves support and help perpetuate?

Why are you not, in short, ranting about the need to protect our children from the likes of, well, you?

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jezebel 15:09 - [Link] - Comments ()
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ok, hopefully now when anyone clicks on the moon icon above, they will get the monthly moon calendar from the almanac.

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jezebel 04:27 - [Link] - Comments ()
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news flashback

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2 February 1979: Sid Vicious dies from drugs overdose

Sex Pistols' bass player Sid Vicious has died of a heroin overdose in New York.

His mother, Anne Beverley, found him dead in bed with his sleeping girlfriend in an apartment in Greenwich Village this morning.

There had been a party in the flat to celebrate Mr Vicious' release on $50,000 bail yesterday pending his trial for the murder of his former girlfriend, Nancy Spungen, last October.

The precise details of his death are unknown but party guests say Sid Vicious - real name John Simon Ritchie - took some heroin at midnight.

His mother, once a registered addict, said: "He knew the smack was pure and strong and took a lot less than usual."

Shortly after taking the drug Mr Vicious, 21, collapsed, went into seizure and displayed the symptoms of overdose.

He revived 40 minutes later and went to bed with his girlfriend, Michelle Robinson, at about 0300 local time.

The first police officer on the scene later in the morning was Robert Zink who discovered "a syringe, a spoon and what is probably residue near the body."

In retrospect he was obviously far safer in jail.

The troubled punk musician - renowned for his violent behaviour - had been on a detoxification, methadone programme in prison, but he had developed a £40 a day habit since meeting Miss Spungen last year.

It was the second time Virgin Records - the Sex Pistols' label - had to bail out Sid Vicious.

He was re-arrested after his initial bail for assaulting Patti Smith's brother, Todd, in a New York disco and had just served another 55 days in prison.

A spokesman for Virgin boss Richard Branson said: "In retrospect he was obviously far safer in jail where the temptations that ultimately killed him were not present."

Sex Pistols' manager Malcolm McClaren - who was planning a comeback for the band - also blames the person who gave him the heroin at the party.

Vicious was facing trial over the death of an ex-girlfriend

The autopsy confirmed Sid Vicious died from an accumulation of fluid on the lungs, characteristic of heroin abuse.

Anne Beverley and Malcolm McClaren were involved in a wrangle over where Vicious should be buried.

Mr McClaren thought he should be buried in London, his home town, but Vicious' wish was to be buried with Nancy Spungen in Philadelphia.

Ms Beverley scattered her son's ashes in the - Jewish - graveyard where Ms Spungen had been interred, without seeking the family's permission.

The Sex Pistols re-formed for their 20th anniversary in 1996 with original bassist Glen Matlock taking the place of Sid Vicious.

http://newssearch.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/february/2/newsid_2523000/2523601.stm

for more: "My way: The Sid Vicious Story"

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jezebel 05:06 - [Link] - Comments ()
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