I'm such a Gemini!

LOVERS
"the synthesizer of dualities, polarities,
and opposites"
You have extraordinary gifts working with people of
all ages. You can access your deep
understanding, application, and synthetical
abilities dealing with the concept of paradox,
polarity, and opposition. Relationships are an
important focal point for personal growth and
development-- you need to feel things changing
in a relationship. You have the ability to do
multi-level thinking. You have great insite
and perception of what is going on with people.


which major arcana of the thoth tarot deck are you? short, with pictures and detailed results
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But enough of me stealing quizzes from http://www.livejournal.com/users/fratercapriel/.

Last night I watched Audrey Hepburn in "A Nun's Story". It amazes me that people thought (& some of them still think) that living a life of such austere self-denial can help you achieve communion with God. Even more amazing was that at one time I sort of almost was going to be one of them. Not a nun, but sort of the austere self-denial thing. I actually broke all of my Rory Gallagher & Jethro Tull records, that's how austere & self-denying we're talking. People it was bad.

Even if you want to be one of those Christian people, doesn't the bible issue the injunction to "Taste and see that the Lord is good."? What can that mean? Are you really gonna tell me that to you it means spending all day in complete silence, taking an unflinching moral inventory twice a day and writing your faults down daily in a notebook!? That talking to people is bad? That you have to feel bad for making friends with people? I honestly don't think there is any human in the history of the world (including Jesus, if he ever existed) that would be able to adhere to such strictures.

Marilyn Manson said, "I started to learn that everything that’s considered a sin is what makes you a human being." I have thoughts, I have desires, I am not allowed access to God because of them? This doesn't mean that I'm walking around town wearing nothing but lingerie and turning tricks or whatever, but you get what I mean...

So if I was to define what God was to me (at least at this juncture in my life, or this week, or whatever) it is me achieving a state of No-Mind, or No-God, and from there getting in tune with All There Is, and from there learning what my True Will is, and from there...

I "worship" at the herm of experience... That means tasting, that means making mistakes, that means being joyous, that means talking to my invisible friends and being goofy, whatever I feel like that day.

---

Currently reading: The Chicken Qabalah, by Lon Milo Duquette--since I am a dilettante with a really short attention span who pretentiously considers myself a Hermetic Qabalist, this is excellent.

Teen Psychic, by Julie Tallard Johnson--yeah, I know, cheesy title. I really couldn't care less what people think is fluffy/not fluffy/too eclectic/whatever--I have seen online communities where people were practically discouraged from posting there at all because anyone that asked a question or wanted to discuss something that seemed remotely fluffy they were sternly castigated and called "playgans" by the group's moderator. Anyhoo, this is a pretty good book, has a lot of interesting stuff about shamanism, which is a topic I am interested in, and lots of meditation exercises. I like to collect different meditation techniques.

"And still I rise..."--Maya Angelou

You are a PHOENIX in your soul and your
wings make a statement. Huge and born of flame,
they burn with light and power and rebirth.
Ashes fall from your wingtips. You are an
amazingly strong person. You survive, even
flourish in adversity and hardship. A firm
believer in the phrase, 'Whatever doesn't kill
you only makes you stronger,' you rarely fear
failure. You know that any mistake you make
will teach you more about yourself and allow
you to 'rise from the ashes' as a still greater
being. Because of this, you rarely make the
same mistake twice, and are not among the most
forgiving people. You're extremely powerful and
wise, and are capable of fierce pride, passion,
and anger. Perhaps you're this way because you
were forced to survive a rough childhood. Or
maybe you just have a strong grasp on reality
and know that life is tough and the world is
cruel, and it takes strength and independence
to survive it. And independence is your
strongest point - you may care for others, and
even depend on them...but when it comes right
down to it, the only one you need is yourself.
Thus you trust your own intuition, and rely on
a mind almost as brilliant as the fire of your
wings to guide you.You are eternal and because
you have a strong sense of who and what you
are, no one can control your heart or mind, or
even really influence your thinking. A symbol
of rebirth and renewal, you tend to be a very
spiritual person with a serious mind - never
acting immature and harboring a superior
disgust of those who do. Likewise, humanity's
stupidity and tendency to want others to solve
their problems for them frustrates you
endlessly. Though you can be stubborn,
outspoken, and haughty, I admire you greatly.


*~*~*Claim Your Wings - Pics and Long Answers*~*~*
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More Stuff About the Wonderful Me

1. I have a fixation on guys like Bobcat Goldthwaite, Dave Attel, and Jack Black, because they seem like what I might be like if I was a guy.
2. I am unemployed, but I currently have a small dog-walking business. It came at a time when I was very desperate, I was running out of money to pay for a storage unit which had lots of books and craft supplies in it. I subsequently did run out of money for it and lost everything. I try not to think about it too much, it hurts to lose all that useful stuff that I was trying to save. My bad for being such a pack-rat, I guess.
   
   When I was really feeling desperate, I went on Beliefnet and found a pagan prayer. I've actually been studying metaphysics off and on for some time, but I was going out of my mind. Two hours after I prayed, I was talking to my next door neighbor, who asked how much I would charge to walk her dog, and bingo, I had a small means of income drop into my lap. Recently, another neighbor has been added to my roster of canine perambulation, and so things are looking up.
3. When I was on Bloop I talked to a young person about Tarot, (I'm not an expert or a pro {I'd kind of like to be}but I was fairly decent at it some years ago. Getting back into it again.) It seems like some people have these preconceived notions about Tarot, that before you can do it you need to do magick rituals, have candles, etc. I'm not that ooga-booga about it. I feel (especially for young people) magick should be a matter of choice, and if you make that choice, you want to spend a lot of time studying and meditating about it. I also believe you should use divination to guide your magick. So if you needed to do magick to read the cards, it would be like putting the cart before the horse. Divination, to me, is a tool to help you know yourself so that you can bring more to the table magickwise.
4. So last night I was watching videos on Launchcast, I was looking at Stone Temple Pilots (the live version of Sex Type Thing) and also managed to watch that Dave Navarro/Carmen Electra thing. I saw that Dave sports a Unicursal Hexagram tat, which immediately made me sit up and take notice. I then did a google search on him and found out that he's not necessarily the stupid slut-boy I originally thought he was.
   
   Then I found something that said he had surveillance footage on his website of himself masturbating and whispering, "Is this what you wanted?" Something about that made me decide, "Yeah, that's what I want." So I did more mad googling and came up with bupkiss. There is a page on his website that appears to have been sold off to a toy store website--as if something was there, but now that he's marrying Carmen he doesn't want anything like that out there, which I can respect.
   
   So basically, the combination of Scott Weiland's naked butt/Dave Navarro's possible online jackage made me one horny Hermgirl. The idea that developed in my mind was that I would like to see a male stripper that acts like a rock star and comes out wearing women's lingerie and maybe a pair of long fishnet glove things and eyeliner. And lets me smack that ass.
   
   There was a guy I used to work with that was hot like that. In his off hours he was a stripper. He kinda dug me too, I called him "Darryl the Hoochie-Man." Whenever I walked by, he used to do a little snaky stripparella dance for me...

How did the Belief-O-Matic do?

I got this info here.

1. New Age (100%)
2. Neo-Pagan (97%)
3. Unitarian Universalism
4. Mainline to Liberal Christian Protestants (85%)
5. Liberal Quakers (80%)
6. New Thought (79%)
7. Christian Science (Church of Christ, Scientist) (77%)
8. Mahayana Buddhism (77%)
9. Theravada Buddhism (77%)
10. Scientology (68%)
11. Bahá'í Faith (64%)
12. Reform Judaism (61%)
13. Taoism (59%)
14. Mainline to Conservative Christian/Protestant (56%)
15. Orthodox Quaker (56%)
16. Secular Humanism (53%)
17. Hinduism (47%)
18. Nontheist (47%)
19. Orthodox Judaism (45%)
20. Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (Mormons) (43%)
21. Jainism (37%)
22. Islam (37%)
23. Jehovah's Witness (35%)
24. Seventh Day Adventist (34%)
25. Sikhism (31%)
26. Eastern Orthodox (24%)
27. Roman Catholic (24%)

What's My Type?

free enneagram test

INFP - "Questor". High capacity for caring. Emotional face to the world. High sense of honor derived from internal values. 4.4% of total population.

Take Free Myers-Briggs Personality Test

Conscious self	Overall self

Take Free Enneagram Personality Test

Enneagram Test Results Type 1 Perfectionism |||||||||||| 50% Type 2 Helpfulness |||||||||||| 42% Type 3 Ambition |||||||||| 34% Type 4 Sensitivity |||||||||||| 46% Type 5 Detachment |||||||||||||||||| 74% Type 6 Anxiety |||||||||| 38% Type 7 Adventurousness |||||||||| 38% Type 8 Aggressiveness |||||||||||| 50% Type 9 Calmness |||||||||||||||||| 74% Your Conscious-Surface type is 9 Your Unconscious-Overall type is 8w9

Take Free Enneagram Personality Test

And most importantly:


You are Recovering The Satellites, you have
achieved success but are not entirely sure how
to deal with it. You're being positive though
and it shows.


Which Counting Crows album are you?
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The Darkest Time in My Life--Or, How My Cats Helped Me Through a Tough Time

The lowest time in my life was when I was about 25. I went through the most debilitating depression I ever thought anyone could have. It lasted for about a year, and the memories I have of this time are very fuzzy. Today, if I hear that someone I know is depressed, I tend to be more sympathetic than before I went through it.

There were about four or five different points of crisis that I believe contributed to this state. I had broken off a friendship with a friend I had had for 10 years, it was almost like going through a divorce. This friend had been very manipulative and domineering, so by the end of the 10 years I sort of no longer had a personality of my own, I was more like an extension of this person's life. Psychologists will tell you that these kind of relationships can be very damaging to the ego, and breaking it off like I had to do can then be quite traumatic.

Another factor was the fact that I had fallen in love with someone, the first man I had ever been interested in. In my younger days at school and so forth I had never been interested in guys, preferring to spend my time with aforementioned friend or alone. When I became attracted to this guy it hit me like a ton of bricks, like all that repressed stuff just came out all at once. He was very cute, funny, and smart, and he knew it. Unfortunately, it wasn't meant to be.

Another factor was my five-year experiment with Christianity. It caused an even bigger rift between me and the rest of my family than I had already had, coming off my rebellious teen years. They just did not understand what was going on with me. I had always been weird to them, and this was just confirmation. Christianity was sort of like a drug to me, at the end of the five years it just got harder & harder to get "high". It wasn't helping me with the problems I had turned to it with in the first place. In the end I was going to church & bawling my eyes out through the whole service, every time I went. I would kneel in my dark little room in prayer every morning, at the end of an hour I was shouting at the ceiling. One weekend I was tired of not being able to communicate with god the way I used to, so I asked for a sign from him about what he wanted me to do, how I could get back in touch with his will, etc. My family & I were spending the weekend out in the country. Nothing happened until my mom and I were driving home. We were the only ones in the car. Then she drops the bomb: My brother has informed the family that he is gay. I have since come to appreciate & celebrate gay people, but at the time I was a fundamentalist Christian, so this certainly knocked me for a loop. Oddly enough, when we were teens, I was the rebellious one & he was the straight laced young republican (I used to call him the Reagan Youth, because he voted for him both times.)

Also, I had quit my job at Sears, the workplace I had stayed the longest at, in order to go to school. Because of my ADD, I wound up really fouling up at school, and had some trouble finding my next job.

When I went through my depression, I did not have the benefit of a therapist or drugs, I just went through it all by myself. I stayed in my room sleeping all day. I would go without bathing for weeks. The only thing keeping me from killing myself was the fact that I had to get up in the morning to feed my two cats, then I would go right back to bed. The fact that my cats were there was really what kept me alive because they gave me a lot of love.

The feelings I were having were very frightening, I did not realize people could really have feelings like this, I really felt like I was going insane. I made things worse by sort of becoming addicted to sugar. I would literally eat granulated sugar from the bowl, several tablespoonfuls, and go into a hyperactive crying jag in my room.

My mother hears me talk about little snippets of these experiences and says "Where was I when all this was going on?" She was just unhappy with me at the time because I didn't do the dishes or whatever. I remember during this time she got irritated with me because the dishes weren't done and I went nuts. If it hadn't been for my parents allowing me to live rent-free though, I don't know what would have happened.

Anyway, it was a very scary time. I had never been self-destructive or suicidal, but during this time I felt like the unhappiness I felt would eventually drown out everything else, and I would attempt suicide, even though I didn't WANT to kill myself. Strangely, this is a part of the experience that redeemed me, beyond everything else. It was like once everything had been stripped away from me, my beliefs, my friends, even having more than extremely minimal contact with other people, I found a rock hard core of self preservation, way down deep, and I had to journey long to find it.

I began finding little things to enjoy. I started watching All My Children, and it became as though the characters were my friends. I started calling a morning dj on the radio, and I was able to make him & his comedian cronies laugh as they had made me laugh (to this day I credit Alex Bennet as one of the people that saved my life.) Humor really is a strong medicine. I started going to the library again. I found a self-help author that really helped me a lot. Another thing that really helped me out was I would sit in the sun by the side of the house with the cats. We would sit in the sun together and I used to get into this meditative state that I called "Waiting for the Mother Ship" This is going to sound weird but I believe that I developed an empathic connection with my cats by doing this. They sort of knew that something was going on in my brain, and they helped out somehow.

When I finally came out of it, it was like a season changing. Even though it was the lowest time in my life, I feel it made me stronger. I came out of it around 1991, and I sometimes like to say I spent the nineties recovering from the mistakes I made in the eighties.

If this makes any of the Christians out there feel like proselytizing me, please don't. I have since read things that have convinced me that Christianity is just a bastardization of all the different myths and religions that were going on in the Middle East at the time that the Bible was being written. I like to think of myself as a "born again pagan."

This was very cathartic to write about, I hope it helps others.

Books on my shelf

I posted this on the Thelema.nu site, thought I'd let my blog buddies read it.

This is a great topic for me--I absolutely love books--I have worked at three bookstores in my life, and about 75% of the wall space in my room is filled with books

First of all I have a lot of fiction--Saul Bellow, Hemingway, Richard Brautigan, the Beats--Kerouac, Burroughs, Diane di Prima, etc.

Typical stuff like Stephen King, Jonathan Kellerman, Clive Barker, Thomas Harris, etc.

Business motivational stuff like Cluetrain Manifesto, Tom Peters, etc.

Then I have stuff like the Collected Works of Antonin Artaud--one of my literary idols. The edition that has an intro by Susan Sontag is really good, because she talks about gnosticism. Like Crowley, Artaud was an insane(?) drug addict. Like Crowley, his ideas went on to shape the second half of the twentieth century.

I also have a bunch of antique books I inherited from my grandmothers. A set of Dickens, a set of Balzac, a series of children's fiction and history.

A huge passel of pocket paperbacks, with stuff like Nietzsche, H.P. Lovecraft, Pat Conroy, Jackie Collins, and Ayn Rand. I find the Ayn Rand a little embarrassing, but I keep it in there because it tends to weird out & intimidate people who don't read much.

There are also things from the fifties, like Bob Hope's "I Owe Russia $1200" and "Barbara Owen, Girl Reporter".

Tons of Complete Idiots Guides and for Dummies books.

An embarrasing amount of Llewellyn books--They were shiny, happy, pagan books that were about three bucks apiece at one store I worked at.

Tons of books on yarn crafts.

Tons of books on Tarot (my current favorite is the Complete Idiots Guide to...")

Some Hippie dippy type stuff like Ram Dass "Be Here Now" and Timothy Leary "Confessions of a Hope Fiend" and also that book he did with R. A. Wilson, the title of which escapes me now. I also have tons of R. A. Wilson, except for that one about Bob & Slack (post-modernism kind of gets on my nerves.)

One of the first books on metaphysics I ever read was Colin Wilson's "the Occult".

I also have some stuff on Gnosticism, like Pagels & Steiner.

I also have a lot of Ouspensky/Gurdjieff--but the only Ouspensky book I even got halfway through was New Model of the Universe, and that was because I really dug the parts where he talked about his disillusionment with society through his newspaper job, and subsequent search for wisdom. "There are enough lies in the world without mine." There is a very cool book about the 4th Way community called "Struggle of the Magicians: Why Ouspensky Left Gurdjieff" by William Patrick Patterson, which reads like a spy novel. You should check it out if you're into them.

I have some things like Godwin's Cabalistic Eycyclopedia, Regardie's Golden Dawn and Garden of Pomegranates.

Of course I have a lot of Crowley books, one of my favorites being an edition called "Portable Darkness: An Aleister Crowley Reader" edited by Scott Michaelson, which provides a nice introduction to his work. I have the Confessions, Laurence Sutin's "Do What Thou Wilt," The Law is For All, Holy Books of Thelema, Book of Lies, Magickal Diaries of AC, 777, Book of Thoth, Magick W/O Tears, Tarot Divination, Magick in Theory & Practice.

I have arrived...

Good. You know your music. You should be able to work at Championship Vinyl with Rob, Dick and Barry (although you know this place could never hold a candle to the greatness that was the Record Exchange with George and Jim.)


Do You Know Your Music (Sorry MTV Generation I Doubt You Can Handle This One)
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Welcome to the Grotto in realtime. The exercise in futility I thought of as getting caught up with my former blog activity so as to give my buddies a better taste of "mah flavah" has come to a screeching halt. The weasle bastards at Bloop saw fit to delete my diary. Not that big a loss, but there were some highlights I would have liked to save. My bad. I will just have to meditate extra hard tomorrow to remember as much as I can.

Note to self: Don't write journal entries without putting them in a notebook first.

I have to go. Got a long day tomorrow...

She was just a wish...

I wish for peace.

We may have found Saddam, but what good are we really doing over there?

Greetings, LiveJournal Citizens!!! (Originally an LJ post)

I bring you salutations from between the Emerald Pillars!

That was a very pretentious way of saying hello (hermeticists should get it, perhaps no one else will.) Generally I prefer a more casual brand of intelligence, rather than intellectualism.

I sort of have an overgrown teenage exterior, on the inside a will of steel. I can hang out with my teenage nephew & watch TV or listen to Queens of the Stone Age, or I could discuss Swinburne & Nietzsche.

I am currently in the process of transferring my old blog over to here, and some of the themes I will be talking about are these:

• Counting Crows (although probably not as much as I have been, since due to currently being unemployed I have no money for concerts.)


• Tarot (used to be quite proficient, am trying to get back into it, but a little rusty.)
  


• Books, TV, movies, music (all kinds.)


• Knitting & Crocheting (I hope someday to obtain a digital camera so I can show off my work.)


• Insomnia (I have a tendency to stay up till six or seven in the morning.  I am going to attempt to do less of this in the New Year--though not eliminate it, I have too many things to do and sometimes it is the only way to get anything done.)

I have been exploring LJ, and I've already joined many communities.  I think I am going to like it here.

The next entries after this one will be transfers from another blog, which end a little before Xmas, these will be labeled, "Blog Transfer Entry"  to differentiate between my regular entries.

So here is what has been going on between my last blog entry & now:

I went up north to my oldest brother’s house, where he lives with his girlfriend, her teenage daughter, and his fancy parquet floor that you can't walk on in shoes.  This is the brother I don't care for, but I went and made nice.  I was almost going to sneak out of the house the morning we were set to leave so I wouldn't have to go, I had a note written & everything, but it was raining that morning so I chickened out.

The whole time we were there, my brother was so tense you could have bounced a quarter off of him.  The stay was made more pleasant by the fact that I got to gossip with my sister, and spend a lot of time with her teenage kids.  Despite the fact that my older sister is extremely high-strung, we get along quite well.  I don't think she realizes how much I admire her.  Also nice was that we got to see family friends.

Then we came home, and there was a couple of days before my parents were going up to Seattle to visit my aunt for New Years.  I was going to have a nice few days all to myself, but unfortunately, there was a little "episode" prior to this.

Mom was a little disappointed that during these few days when she had her vacation that she hadn't been able to get Dad to do some things she wanted around the house, so she was kind of on the warpath (she pretty much had been since since a few days before we left for my brother's--she knew I didn't want to go, and even bribed me with money--saying it was a Christmas gift, etc. {I took the money--big mistake}amongst whatever other reasons she had for being in Bitch Mode.)  This is her basic pattern:  She has some kind of argument with Dad, and when it stalemates, she lays into me.  She can be extremely domineering and mean, and thinks nothing in these instances of raking me over the coals.

So she decides to open my mail and look at my bank statement, which, since I am unemployed she knows is going to reflect my sorry state of financial affairs.  Of course, in her mood whatever she finds is going to be terrible, and she bullies me into closing my checking account.

Man, was I happy when they left for Seattle.

I spent the time cleaning my room (that is another thing that will be covered in this journal, room cleaning--or lack thereof.) and got it to a nice level of organization.

On that note, I will end this rather long-winded entry.

Stuff I Need to FECKIN' Write

(Note on 1/17/04: This is a humorous entry, since I can't remember most of what this is talking about!)

The Richard Brautigan Bibliomancy deal.

The dream I had last night (nightmare where I am a man quilting and visited by DEATH) only make it a woman sewing a coat...

Working in bookstore piece (block-o-fiction.)

Henry and June resume piece (don't use real names.)

My online history (short & uneventful though it may be.)

Find that feckin' Sleeping Beauty poem and work in Disney Princess.

Courtney Love on being blonde.

Punk remembrance of Sleeping Lady Cafe.

Read that FECKIN' book and review it...

Please, get OFF YOUR ASS and feckin' do this...

(I am actually going to try to remember some of this and do it...)

Frickin' Coffee!

So here I am at one in the morning, when I should be sleeping. I hate having an on-again, off-again relationship with caffeine, it really sucks. Of course I have gotten a lot of good internet reading done, but today I had to deal with that coffee withdrawal/hangover thing that makes me feel like sleeping all day. If we could just abolish sleeping, I wouldn't feel like such a loser.

And in other news: I pissed off a famous author today! He was dissing new age metaphysics and blathering on about Sid & Nancy like he knew about the inside of a real punk rock club, so he got on my nerves.

It was Christopher Locke, one of the guys that wrote Cluetrain Manifesto. Now, Cluetrain Manifesto is actually a pretty good book, but after checking out the guy's weblog (which will not get a plug here, I'm a bitch, deal with it) I got the impression that the total was worth more than the sum of its parts. Like these guys were maybe a bunch of IT hacks that got pissed off one day.

As a New Ager myself (sometimes I call myself an occultist, other times New Ager, it matters not to me) I get a little irked when I see people taking cheap potshots at people's belief systems in an obvious attempt to make themselves look like quite a smartypants indeed. Like pasting a mock ad for Body & Soul magazine, with a blurb underneath it that reads "Get Fucked in a romantic Aegean monastery!" Or quite a saucy little sarcastic headlines that read "WOW! GIANT New Age Wholesale Directory!" or, "If I Laugh at This, Does it Make Me Homophobic?" over simply a picture of a book on gay wiccanism.

Do I also believe that there is a huge amount of crass commercialism in the New Age world? Yes, definately, and that is unfortunate.

But the problem I have with you, Mr. Locke, and your suck-ass weblog, is this: for the words "New Age", substitute "Moslem" or "Jewish" or "Black" or "Gay", and maybe you'll start to see my point.

So I wrote this in an email to him:

We get it, you think new age metaphysics is bullshit.

You also string together pop-culture twaddle in an attempt to sound poetic.

But while you're busy being so self-congratulatory and self-referential, you seem to have forgotten your own Manifesto: #3. Conversations among human beings sound human. They are conducted in a human voice.

He writes back to me:

Huh?

I'm interested in what you say here, though I suspect there's more to it. What has you so pissed off? Is it my attitude toward "new age metaphysics"? You did get that part right. I'm writing a book about it-- hope to post a little something to my blog later today that will be not as cryptic as the usual.

But like it or not, that *is* my human voice. If you don't recognize it as such, then one of us has a problem. Eh? Either that or people are way more different than advertised. I think the latter is probably closer to the truth. If there's a truth to get closer to, that is.

Thanks for writing. Say more.

chris

Well, chris, you make me want to ball up my fist and scream "Dooohhh" like Homer Simpson. I will not give you anything to go on further for your crappy little book so you can cash in on your petty prejudices, but I will say more here. Your ham-fisted attempt to make me look dumb by saying that I didn't recognize your human voice means that YOU are the one with the big problem.

Hipper than thou intellectualism sucks! You are unacceptable and need to be bitch-slapped!

That's enough air-time for him I guess.

Hi Everyone!

Writers are people that live on the cutting edge, like rock stars.

They work in a solitary environment. They can be in their own little world, even in the middle of a crowd. They are watchers who observe and record, but never interfere. They are part of the lunatic fringe, having the ability to know strange, interesting people and do strange, interesting things. They are at home with artists and academes, having the ability to hold court amongst the talented.

They are tied to ancient traditions of storytelling and bardic shamanism, with the ability to weave magic spells with words. Ordinary rules don't apply to them. They don't have to have clean rooms, balanced checkbooks, or soul-killing day jobs. They are like the Gods.

I'd get more writing done if I didn't have to live with my parents. I'd get more writing done if I had a clean room. I'd get more writing done if I didn't have a soul-killing job. I'd get more writing done if I didn't feel so crappy all the time.

I'd get more writing done if I didn't watch so damn much TV. I'd get more writing done if i could return to that perfect inner landscape I once knew (ah, Hermworld, your songs echo in my heart.)

God Damn It!!!

Hello everyone. I'm sorry I haven't been posting lately, but I've been busy with the whole work/school thing.

I must post today, because I need to vent about both of these areas of my life, it has NOT been a very good week.

Work: I have had to go from one job to another recently. I left a rather lucrative position at Whole Foods Market, because they refused to give me time off to spend with my mom, who was in the hospital, when I had no idea how well she was going to be doing (she is fine now, but I had no idea how it would go at the time.)

So I got this other job at a baby furniture store near my home. It seemed like the perfect place at the outset. They needed someone to work the hours that I needed to have because of school. I didn't have to take a cut in pay; I wouldn’t have to work really late. Then I started working there. From day one, my supervisor, a young lady in her early 20s I believe, has been on this little power trip. While she hasn't been nasty to me, she has not been happy with me from day one. Also, her training style leaves quite a bit to be desired. She wants me to talk to the customers in exactly the same ways she would, using the exact same words she would, and picks nits with me over this stuff every chance she gets.

Then, last weekend happened. The old man who is the senior owner (& who has owned & operated the place since 1947) ushered me into one of the furniture showrooms where no one was around. He showed me a crib that needed to have the bedding put on it. As I was making up the crib, he asked me if I had sold any furniture that day. As I was occupying my mind trying to answer his question, he came up behind me and stroked the side of my back in a long, slow feeling-up kind of way. I was so shocked I couldn't say anything. And the problem is I feel like I can't say anything, because my supervisor is so girly with him and lets him hug her and talks in a whiny girly voice with him that she would probably say, "Well you just misinterpreted him, he's just very friendly, etc..."

So there's that. Then my supervisor took me aside and had a list of things she wanted to talk to me about. Apparently I raise my voice to the customers, which actually means I just talk in a louder voice than she does. So I guess I have to go around whispering. So I politely sit and listen to her and just kind of yes ma'am the whole thing, but apparently that wasn't good enough for her so she had the store manager have a talk with me and essentially I got written up, and she painted it with the darkest brush possible.

So all this places me in a mood where I no longer care about anything they want. I am getting another job as soon as humanly possible, and then they can kiss my ass. Then today I was helping a customer with a procedure I wasn't familiar with, and my supervisor spends as little time helping me with it as possible. She walked off at the end, so I yelled across the store at her--I knew she would hate that. So she sent me to another department, where I know even less stuff. Apparently no one in the store understands that a new person needs to be helped out with procedures.

So I came home & had some Johnny Walker Black Label (and I NEVER drink, so you know I have had it up to here) and decided that the no-holds-barred search for the replacement job starts promptly on Monday morning at 9:00 am sharp.

I will have plenty of time to do it since I am not going to school this summer, because...

School: Monday was the first day of the summer session, which I went to and promptly decided to sit this one out till fall, when they get the GOOD teachers back, because the one they got for our class was completely unprepared for us, & I decided it wasn't worth eighty bucks of my hard-earned dough.

I apologize if this entry is pissy, but I just had to vent.

What I Did Today

Went to school, late (11:00).

Talked with Anita & Jodie--a good discussion, about why I don't work at Whole Foods Market anymore, the Martha Stewart movie last night. And an idea about a website for Jodie--"General Jodie", a play on words about her expansive general knowledge & also her ability to help other figure out how to get going on their lives. It would be a cross between an advice site and an ask jeeves type of thing.

Of course, Anita was quick to attach some get-rich-quick scheme to the whole thing. "You could charge people for advice!" I'm not sure I like Anita very much--she may have a certain amount of intelligence, but what little there is is buried under so much coarseness and scatterbrainedness it is hardly worth hunting for. I explained to her that you can't really make money giving advice, that this kind of site is "content" oriented and that its potential for realizing any monetary benefit was after the fact--using it on a resume, selling advertising, etc. Tomorrow she will probably ask me about "that content website you were talking about..."

On the bus after school I got a very good idea for a short story based on something my Uncle said to my Aunt.

Then I went to my local library, not my favorite library, but that was where the books I wanted were. I tried to check some stuff out & found out I couldn't because a check I wrote to the Friends of the Public Library went bad. I apologized to the library technician, she didn't make a big deal out of it, but apparently she must have told the older librarians because when I went to tell them about the malfunctioning copier, she told me AGAIN about the thirteen bucks I owed them.

I hate those bitches.

 

A day in the life of your average Hermgirl...

I went to school today.

I attend a vocational school, Regional Occupational Program, where I study MS Office. I am at the point where I have a certain amount of skill, I can type & file up a storm, and I'm pretty good at Word 2000, but I don't yet have the skills I need to get that good paying office job I keep talking about. I've gone too far to abandon my journey, but I'm not quite where I want to be.

ROP has students with different levels of education and job experience, many of them with much more of both than I have. I just went straight to work after graduating high school, and I had a lot of things going on in my twenties. So I've basically been trying to rebuild my life/career for the past seven years, through fits and starts.

Right now I'm looking at the possibility of going to work part time at KFC so I can pay for my classes and the few little bills I have to pay. I'm very lucky in that my parents let me live with them rent-free, although sometimes it is not so lucky, if you know what I mean.

So I get to school today and unfortunately I arrive a little late, so I have to sit near these gals, who, though I like them well enough, really bug me because they talk a lot, and they seem so nice I get drawn into conversations with them that prevents me from doing my schoolwork.

Thank god I have this home computer, or I might not get anything done. And then of course, there are the inevitable questions about how my job situation is going.

I had made the mistake of telling one of them that I had mild Attention Deficit Disorder, and now she wants to make a project out of me. She wants me to do all these things that would ultimately make me a lot less happy and much worse off than if I just did things my way. Why must everyone achieve and acquire things at the same level as everyone else?

And then there is Anita. She and I had a mutual friend in High School, someone who manipulated and used me for ten years until I finally kicked her to the curb. My life has gone nowhere but up since, it was one of the best things I ever did. I pretty much don't think too much about her, except when I am yelling at her to myself and pacing around my room.

Imagine my surprise when Anita showed up at ROP. And of course, it seems like her favorite topic is former friend, Andrea. I'd rather not discuss that with her. So I need to not get too close to her.

One of the themes of this journal is probably going to be antisocialness. I am really happiest when I am all by myself, and thankfully, from time to time I get to have that.

Can't Change Me

"Suddenly I see everything that's wrong with me
But what can I do?
I'm the only thing I really have at all..."

So I dropped by the library and checked out this excellent Chris Cornell CD, got a lot of good ones, David Bowie, Henry Rollins, etc, gonna tape them--one of my favorite cost-cutting measures.

I was hugely into Soundgarden; this guy is a tremendous songwriter.

Lollapalooza is back, Audioslave will be there and Jane's Addiction & Queens of the Stone Age, both of whom also rock my socks off, but unfortunately there are no funds for concerts this summer, otherwise I would be SO going to Counting Crows, which really sucks.

I will be back within the next couple of days to get into more depth about things other than music, I'm just tap-dancing around before I really get goin'.

Audioslave Video

OK---Chris Cornell is just a SHMOKIN' HOOOOOTTIE!!!!!

Let's just get that straight from the outset--in addition to the sexalicious Adam Duritz & David Immergluck, I am a fan of the former Soundgarden frontman.

Tom Morello, I advocate your peacenikism, dude, and you are an excellent guitar player, but it’s all about the Cornell...

"Trust me, you're gonna want more cowbell."

My nephew IMs me, and the first line he writes is:

"I need more cowbell, babe."

I answer:

"I've got a fever. And the only cure for it is more cowbell."

Anyone who did not get that NEEDS to watch more SNL reruns.

I haven't been posting as much as I should have because I have been training at work and having to study produce code all night--I will try to post more this weekend.

Magical Personality Quiz Results

[music|Every CD by the Foo Fighters (Courtesy my generous nephew.)]

Here are the results from taking this quiz:

Your Primary Mythical Creature

Air Types
The main strength of the Air types is intellect. The second element indicates the most probable focus for this intellectual activity.

Unicorn
Air with Water

Astrologically associated with Gemini and the Third House

Unicorn types are very concerned with the communication of ideas. They are witty and likeable but can also be quite shy. They are easily bored and easily distracted, and may seem unpredictable and superficial for this reason. Actually they are very deep and are usually trying to find the connections between the people and things around them. They are highly imaginative but not very practical. They love knowledge for its own sake and are not concerned about putting it to use. They are socially astute and sensitive to others’ feelings, but may still appear somewhat aloof. They are drawn to grand schemes for unifying people but these often don’t extend beyond the initial idea. Very logical and rational, Unicorn types are also unconventional and even bizarre. Other people may regard them as fey or just strange.

Your Shadow Creature

Fire Types
All the Fire types have problems relating to anger and aggression. The weakest element indicates the main focus of these problems.

Phoenix
Fire and Earth

This shadow is prone to a sense of stagnation due to lack of motivation and laziness. Nothing durable is ever produced. Practical activities may never be embarked upon. There is an underlying sense of futility and hopelessness. Disillusionment results from their lack of confidence that they can change anything for the better, and in any case they do not have the will. At the same time there is an underlying grandiosity and even megalomania reflected in their dreams and aspirations. They need to feel special. Instead, they may simply overindulge or neglect themselves physically. The biggest obstacle of weak Earth is to overcome self-centeredness and greed; the biggest obstacle of weak Fire is to overcome anger and aggression.

This didn't really tell me anything I don't know--although spot-on about me being a Gemini.