"Based upon your actions, you have forfeited your right to live among us in society."

Yes! Yes! Yes!

What I was hoping for two years ago, has finally come to pass.

I even payed the .99 cent fee to watch the bastard plead for his life--and it was worth it! Whining like a little baby--"Drugs were all over when I was growing up!" Yeah, it was that way for a lot of people growing up, but the funny thing about that, you can choose not to take them!

I guess the reason that this whole thing burned my onions so much was that I saw the footage of him grabbing her near the car wash, in the middle of the afternoon. Conducting himself like he had every right in the world to do what he was doing. I hope he drops the soap in the shower and gets broomhandle-fucked and made to head up a fucktrain of big-dicked men.

(Edit on 6/4/06: This was originally a LiveJournal post that started an interesting discussion. In the interest of giving opposing opinions equal air time, I will recreate the discussion here.)

Hravan: theres a candidate for a hollow point bullet and a man sized paper bag if ever I saw one

no point wasting collective resources keeping *that* alive...

Hermgirl: Plus, there is that whole aspect of his whining about his childhood in New York or whatever the problem was (like NY is a huge problem, I'd love living there.)

Ya know, some people have crappy childhoods, and when they get older, they leave it all behind! When you become a grownup, it's amazing what you can do when you leave the crap in the past where it belongs.

Uncleernie50: For someone i dont really know but only know online... I was still shocked to read this post. It should not surprise you that with my affinity for Phil Ochs i am adamantly anti-death penalty. (i.e. Paul Crump and Iron Lady) I too find myself concerned with the ideas of will, intention and motivation.. but i also attempt very hard to live in a world of no moral absolute. Every action from the first person perspective is justified to yourself. No matter how heinous it is to others.. A government has a right to prevent you from committing those acts.. but the moral judgement is the providence of individuals surrounding the action to have for themselves. Institutionalized morality leads to all sorts of dark paths.
Vengeance is not justice...

that being said... i'm sorry for proselytizing in your journal...

Hermgirl: No, that's ok. I can see how you would be surprised and shocked, seeing as I am politically lefty (I'm very pro-labor, for instance, anti-Bush, etc,) in the main.

However, I believe that morality is an individual thing, it cannot be legislated or compartmentalized. We may have laws, but I'm not sure there is such a thing as "institutionalized morality". Look at our president, I wouldn't call him a terribly moral individual, and I don't think he would ever become one, just by virtue of his being president.

As a Thelemite, I live by the words, "Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law. Love is the law, love under will." I believe in tempering my actions using my will and walking in love with all people.

Aleister Crowley wrote some very interesting things about the subject of will and morality, you might be interested in a little work called
Liber Oz, to find out what some Thelemites, including myself, believe.

My personal interpretation of those things, is that everyone has a choice about how they're going to conduct themselves in this world. If you rape an eleven year old girl and take about five minutes to squeeze the life out of her body (That's a long time, five minutes. Long enough to really think about what you're doing and maybe even change your mind), don't come whining to the rest of us about how we should spare your life for the sake of your daughters.

I also believe that just because a person has one thing they believe, it doesn't necessarily mean they have to walk in lock-step with something a person, or a group of people believe. I believe the war in Iraq is wrong, and that Bush and his cronies are war criminals, but that doesn't make me a pacifist (even though I like Phil Ochs too, btw). I don't want to see Roe v Wade overturned, but that doesn't mean I don't consider myself a pro-lifer. Heck, while I'm on the subject of Crowley, someone I consider a metaphysical genius, he was a guy that got enough poon to start his own poon store, but myself I'm as celibate as the day is long.

For me, it is all about choices. Every man and woman is a star. The choices we make are what send us into our respective orbits, into the galaxies of our making.

Uncleernie50: Im finding this really wierd... i agree with your philosophy 100% yet i still cant see how it aligns at all with a pro death penalty stance. If everyone conducts their lifes based on concious choice than isnt every choice justified from the first person perspective? To me the idea of choking the life out of someone is abhorant and something i would never do. To this person it wasnt abhorant and was something that he wanted to do. And while we have a right to feel personal disgust on the action... and we also have a right to prevent that action from being repeated by incarcerating him. Do we have the right to cast life and death judgements on an action he felt justified in doing?

Hermgirl: Liber OZ

"the law of
the strong:
this is our law
and the joy
of the world." AL. II. 2

"Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law." --AL. I. 40

"thou hast no right but to do thy will. Do that, and no other shall say nay." --AL. I. 42-3

"Every man and every woman is a star." --AL. I. 3
There is no god but man.

1. Man has the right to live by his own law--
to live in the way that he wills to do:
to work as he will:
to play as he will:
to rest as he will:
to die when and how he will.
2. Man has the right to eat what he will:
to drink what he will:
to dwell where he will:
to move as he will on the face of the earth.
3. Man has the right to think what he will:
to speak what he will:
to write what he will:
to draw, paint, carve, etch, mould, build as he will:
to dress as he will.
4. Man has the right to love as he will:--
"take your fill and will of love as ye will,
when, where, and with whom ye will." --AL. I. 51
5. Man has the right to kill those who would thwart these rights.
"the slaves shall serve." --AL. II. 58

"Love is the law, love under will." --AL. I. 57

He was not behaving in accordance with his True Will. Love is the law--how is it loving to kill an eleven year old child? "Do that, and no other shall say nay."

And what about Carlie Brucia, and her right to live her life as she saw fit? Wasn't Smith casting a life & death judgement on her?

I hope you don't think I am trying to change your mind here, or castigate you because you believe differently from me. Just trying to help you understand my beliefs. I just realized what a raging harridan I sound like.

I don't know if I've ever revealed this to anyone here on the internets, but when I was a child, I was molested a few times. Ergo, I sort of take a jaundiced glee in seeing guys that do this sort of thing bite the big one.

Liber Spiritus: my take on this:

Judge: "You have been found guilty."

*guards take him out back and promptly shoot him*

justice served - case closed.

Leswamp: Blow his brains out and charge his fmily for the bullet.

My morning, on two and a half hours sleep:

So I'm thinkin', no problem, I'll go down the hill to the ATM and stick my $$$ in the bank before I catch the bus to school. Of course, I get down there, and all the regular ATMs are taken, and the clock is ticking on the bus's ETA, so I think, no problem, just go over to the drive up ATM (bad idea.) I then proceed to not read the flashing notice that it is out of order, and try shoving my card in the appropriate, though woefully unresponsive, orifice. Another bad idea.

Then I go over to the bus stop, to wait for the appropriate transportation. One of these ladies with the Watchtower that does their gig at bus stops comes over and starts chatting. I have no energy to resist, so I figure I'll try saying something really bizarre to her, even if she doesn't get it, just for my own shits & giggles.

Sure enough, she sizes me up, and, figuring me for a high school student (it must be the giant backpack) she tries to show me some article about kids who cut , "and once they start doing it, they develop a habit of doing it that is hard to break."

"One might say they're addicted to pain." Biggest bizarro smile I can manage, hoping this is fraught with meaning.

Yes, as a matter of fact, I could see myself being this mean:

hermgirl's lame-ass excuse to break up: "I just realized that you're ugly" 'What is your lame-ass excuse to break up?' at QuizGalaxy.com

But they would probably have done something really heinous.

Another really important thing, seriously:

Dick Cheney SHOT SOMEBODY! Ok, can we just investigate him, or something? Just, do it really carefully, seriously.

You simply need this in your life:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/6music/shows/bruce_dickinson/

Why? Because when he plays Silver Machine by Hawkwind (which he does, like, every time!) it makes me imagine myself in a silver lame outfit wearing a giant cowboy hat and shaking my boo-tay wildly! In fact it's a good thing that I'm in the room by myself when this happens, because I generally hump things violently when I hear that song, so it might be dangerous for anyone caught in the same room with me.

Man, I drank alcohol this week, (something called a Twisted Plisko, a Peruvian drink, I'm told.) I looked at Hentai porn a little while ago (it's all agent139's fault!) I leave the house tomorrow, so it could be quite dangerous for anyone or anything crossing my path.

Thank the Gods for good vocational school teachers!

So I'm at Regional Occupational Program, taking a class in Computerized Accounting, and my teacher just did a thing where she showed all kinds of websites about doing your taxes and getting academic discounts on software and stuff since we're in school. And I found all kinds of cool places with articles about govt benefits and the board of labor (last year I had to sick the BOL on a rotten employer who refused to pay me what she owed me) and stuff. So I think I'm going to add a lot of these to my daily web reading and get educated.

Here they are in case anyone's interested:

http://www.servicelocator.org/

http://www.govbenefits.gov/

http://www.irs.gov/

http://www.nolopress.com/

http://www.dol.gov/

Crossposted like a mofo.

Weird Scenes Inside the Goldmine...

Just some stream of consciousness thoughts.

Bill Clinton's words on Coretta Scott King: Something about how she believed in the promise in the Book of Isaiah, and that maybe we should too...

On the Majority Report on Air America: a study that says Americans are extremely dependent on sleeping pills...

I think, "What has gone wrong with the American Experiment?"

The road to Hermworld lies open, Her towers shining in the distance...

***********************************************************************************

A couple weeks ago, I'm cleaning the kitchen like a bastard. I'm emptying old stuff out of the fridge--I found condiments in there from before 9/11!!!

So, naturally, the father isn't happy with this, and we have a shouting match over it. In the middle of it, he says something to the effect of, "You wouldn't last ten minutes in the Marine Corps. You'd get your ass kicked. Then what would you do?"

I wrinkle my nose at him and smile. "Remember what they said in that movie we watched the other night?" We had watched Animal House. "We have a saying: Don't get mad, get even."

He thinks this is funny, then a little more screaming, then I yell at him to get in the fuckin' front room and watch football. He does.

A little later I go in the front room and he is in his chair looking very small, and he (begrudgingly) says, "Thanks for cleaning the fridge out."

***********************************************************************************

This morning at around 3:20, I was trying to get back to sleep for another hour and a half, and I started thinking about the Loma Prieta Earthquake (which was back in '89.) Well, ok, I was thinking about the guy I was in love with back then, then I started thinking about what I was doing when the earthquake hit: I was writing a poem about God (this was back in the Christian days.) Not a very good poem, more like a song-poem (song-poems are always things you think are great when you're writing them, then you read them later and they kind of suck.)

This song-poem sounded in my head like a snarky Ian Hunter lyric, or maybe a misanthropic, Roger Waters from Pink Floyd "Jesus is great but the rest of humanity sucks!" kind of lyric.

I think when I was a Christian, there was a part of me that wanted to effect a kind of Roger Waters misanthropy, and that little part of me will always be kind of bitter because I didn't achieve it.

You Might Be a Fatwa Target If...

You might be a fatwa target if:

• You were spotted hanging out with Salman Rushdie during the Nineties (this list of folks includes Bono, different people are gonna feel different ways about that one.)
• Despite the advice of the local Mullah, you opt to take in that nice young Christian missionary couple for the weekend...
• They find that Osama dart board you've been playing with in the rumpus room.
• Three words: Mohammed mud flaps.

"Our daughters' daughters will adore us, and they'll sing in grateful chorus..."

I would be remiss if I didn't acknowledge the passing of Betty Friedan, author of the Feminine Mystique, founder of the National Organization for Women:

"Men are not the enemy, but the fellow victims. The real enemy is women's denigration of themselves."

"When she stopped conforming to the conventional picture of femininity she finally began to enjoy being a woman."

" The feminine mystique has succeeded in burying millions of American women alive. "

Also on the list of great gals when the role is called up yonder: Coretta Scott King, who married a handsome young theologian...

And lastly, who can forget Granpa Al from the Munsters, who said: "Herman! Herman, please! How many times do I have to tell you not to pound stakes while I'm around? You know it gives me heartburn!"

Friday Night Tarot Hoedown

Tarot In the News: From Vineland, New Jersey--Invasion suspect is collared. It seems there is no end to the connection between Tarot and shady characters, I wonder why?

Practices: Scientific Illuminism, or Something! Well, I've adapted this daily practice to Tarot, rather than gaming dice, utilizing only the Ace through Tens of the Minor Arcana. One of the tools I've used for interpreting the results is "Godwin's Cabalistic Encyclopedia". Been doing this for about a month now, and I've gotta say, I feel like I'm getting cabalistically in tune with my cards. I also recommend getting comfortable with your one to ten cards--it seems that much emphasis is placed on the Majors and the court cards, when the pips are certainly as important tarotistically, and also the numbers one to ten extremely important if you're getting to know the qabalah. I think I owe someone a quarter.

Podcasting: Through the Gate into Tarot is the name of a guided imagery, nlp sort of meditational hypnosis podcast, done by a guy named Brian David Phillips, a hypnosis expert, with several different "hypnocasts" that seem worth looking into.

I have done the meditation and will share my results and impressions with you now, note that this is not a divinatory interpretation, but more of a free-flowing, meditational experience.

The idea is to draw three cards that form the basis for your meditational imagery:

1. The Mentor card--a guide to the experience. I drew the Eight of Swords.
2. The Context or Grounding card. I drew the Wheel of Fortune.
3. The Catalyst card--what puts the Mentor and Context in motion. I drew the Three of Cups.

I saw the Mentor as a sort of Jacob Marley figure--the imagery of the 8 of swords really going along with this, with the figure swathed in some kind of winding sheet-looking tape.

I turned over the Wheel of Fortune. Expect the unexpected! Ok.

The Catalyst card was rightfully named, because I truly didn't feel this meditation experience really taking off til I turned it over to discover the ladies of the Three of Cups dancing away. I noticed that in the Rider Waite Smith deck, the woman in the 8 of swords seems to be wearing the same frock as one of the women in the 3 of cups--surely this is no accident!

As I allowed the two cards to frame the Context of the Wheel, I saw in my minds eye a party like that of the 3 of cups, one of the centerpieces of which was a large Maypole, with people dancing, creating a giant wheel in the middle of the festivities, and had a feeling of the turning earth and the changing seasons that a Maypole signifies.

There were also other, smaller wheels at this party. I saw a table, with folks in lovely RenWear standing around drinking and talking, watching a roulette wheel spin. I even heard Tina Turner shouting, "Bust a deal, face the Wheel!" I saw one of those kind of wheels.

Throughout, I was reminded of my Guide and my Catalyst. The eight of swords woman was there in a corner, silently conveying (it is hard for me to imagine her as speaking) that the power to overcome any bondage is within us, and that our participation in the "Party" of Life is what determines our Fortune.

Christopher Penn: Prime Rib

EDDIE: Daddy, did ya see that?

JOE: What?

EDDIE: Guy got me on the ground, tried to fuck me.

VIC: You fuckin wish.

EDDIE: You tried to fuck me in my father's office, you sick bastard. Look, Vic, whatever you wanna do in the privacy of your own home, go do it. But don't try to fuck me. I don't think of you that way. I mean, I like you a lot--

VIC: Eddie, if I was a pirate, I wouldn't throw you to the crew.

EDDIE: No, you'd keep me for yourself. Four years fuckin punks in the ass made you appreciate prime rib when you get it.

--From Resevoir Dogs

Friday Night (or Saturday Morning) Tarot Hoedown

(Well, I wrote it last night, anyway.)

After a long hiatus, the Hoedown is finally back.

Recommendations: I found a couple of nice things at Barnes & Noble, the first is a very cute little Deck/Book set. "The Tarot Box", with a book written by Juliet Sharman-Burke and a beautiful deck designed by Giovanni Caselli (the link is to the larger Sharman-Burke/Caselli set, which is also a recommendation), the cards being about 2" x 3.5", and the box includes a puzzle that has two spread layouts on it. A nice little gift or treat for yourself.

Secondly, A very good book for beginners, or anybody who just likes tarot books and wants to see a good one, is back in print, "Super Tarot" by Sasha Fenton.

Tarot in the News: From the UK--Palmist in the dock over false statements claim When are we gonna clear junk like this up, people?

From Dover, MD--Dover Store Embroiled in Religious Freedom Controversy It is this Tarologist's opinion that when we start clearing up unscrupulous practitioners such as the one in the first story, we'll have less resistence to our ideas, as in the second story.

A Tarot Reading: And lastly, a demonstration of the Joey Tribiani spread, which I'm not sure if I've given a demo of, but a full explanation of this spread will soon be up on the website.

For this spread, you simply lay four cards out from left to right. A brief explanation of the four positions:

1. What's in the past, recent or otherwise.
2. Where you are today.
3. The issue you are facing.
4. Probable outcome on the road you are traveling on.

And the draw went thusly:

1. Five of cups, rev--There has been some depression in the past, even though there needn't be. I think I have been lately been troubled by the unemployment factor.

2. Eight of swords, rev--I have a chance to beat this depression through hard work (I'm back in vocational school, studying accounting software at ROP!) Although it bears saying here, since some of us have been discussing depression lately, there are many different types of depression, not all of them can be "worked through", and if you are experiencing it, the best thing is to talk with someone about it.

3. Eight of wands, rev--Look before I leap! In my career planning endeavors (and I'm seeing that this reading is about my feelings about my career) it will behoove me to do my homework.

4. The Hermit--Through all of this I can gain wisdom that I can share with others.

I think it is interesting to note that, qabalistically speaking, we have the numbers eight and five, which are represented on the left side of the Tree as Hod (Splendor), Geburah (Severity), and the the nine of the Hermit is a multiple of three, which is Binah (Understanding).

Because Sunfell reminded me (like she reminds me of a lot of cool things)

Our good friend, Marilyn Manson, and the food pyramid.

(Scroll to the bottom where it says "Pyramid Scheme")

This just in, from the Extinct Marsupial school of career counseling:

I asked the magic cactus, What road do I take to getting a really good paying job? and THE MAGIC CACTUS SAID TO ME: This one time, I dropped a quad of acid in the middle of a presentation on alternatives to modern economic trends - I totally bombed and our major investors withdrew their funding from my proposals, but at the very least I had fun. Just enjoy the ride, dude.

reality subversion @ www.irreality.net

To Trend or not to Trend?

An LJ friend had a thought-provoking post about how it made him feel that he didn't enjoy things like Pulp Fiction and Radiohead as much as other folks do, that caused me to wax long and boring in a comment, thought I'd post my thoughts here and expand the discussion out to you guys. I said:

"I don't think there is any "should" about this. You like what you like and don't like what you don't. I see no reason to downgrade yourself here. You are just a person that has a filter against things that are trendoid. I am with you on a lot of this stuff. Having worked in bookstores, I remember the whole David Eggers thing, and I also remember checking it out and deciding that he was trying way too hard.

I used to have a more pronounced filter against such things, I also have never played any kind of a video game (when I was a kid I thought of it as a plot to separate me from my pot money) and I would never in a million years get a tattoo or a piercing anywhere but the two I have in my ears.

I have relaxed that filter over the years to let in things like Pulp Fiction and Radiohead. Much as I enjoy them, I know they are in fact examples of people trying way too hard to be cool. I will look at that work and say, "Ok, noble effort, I'll allow it." I would probably make a kickback sort of teacher.

Over the decades there has arisen an area of marketing that makes guys like Tarentino possible, call it the Hipster Demographic. It is easy to allow yourself to fall under that spell.

But then, there is also a current that I find myself even more resistant to. It seemed to start back when I was a kid and I had friends that seemed to feel it was their job to figure out exactly what was "poser" and what wasn't. A punk rock friend literally screamed at me over the fact that I liked the Psychedelic Furs, and that "their first couple of albums are ok, but their newer stuff is shit!" I knew a lot of extremely disfunctional people.

What was so wrong about liking something that was made like a well-turned and crafted piece of furniture, just because it happened to be commercially successful, or employed imagery or other devices that were popular at the time?

To me, the movie "Pretty in Pink" symbolized a midpoint between two extremes that I saw myself locked into during that time. I would spend the day at school with my friends, smoking pot and listening to AC/DC and Led Zeppelin, then go home and watch MV3 with Richard Blade
(we didn't have MTV yet in my town), which was a kind of American Bandstand but with videos that was on after school. I would watch Culture Club and Howard Jones videos while eating salad and riding a stationary bike. The only heavy metal they played was the lame stuff like Quiet Riot, never Iron Maiden. Did I secretly like the Cure more than I liked Black Sabbath? I would say it was more a case of liking them both equally, it would depend on my mood.

Molly Ringwald was kind of a doppelganger for me, in that she was an outsider with the rich kids, and had this job at a used record store (In what universe, btw, was owning and working in a used record store a woman's territory? Not that it shouldn't have been, but all the used record stores I went to were manned by men, who probably would have plotzed if they were there to witness Annie Potts stapling record albums to the ceiling.) She also moved in a universe where she actually had the privilege to choose Andrew McCarthy over the Duckman (an unwise move, IMHO), and was followed around by music by Orchestral Manouvers in the Dark and Echo and the Bunnymen.

Doing heroin and turning tricks on the street will also make you hardcore, but I'm not going there either. I had friends in high school that either actually did these things or romanticized the hell out of them. God help me, I actually once made up a story that I had been a coke dealer at the tender age of thirteen, just to feel like I fit in with these people. When I think about making that story up, it embarrasses the hell out of me.

And since I am an occultist, I also find myself witnessing cultural and intellectual wars that seem really silly to me, which remind me of those "heavier than thou" pissing contests that I saw and sometimes took part in in high school. I know this time I won't be making up silly stories about invoking those Goetic demons or whatever.

I had started to make fun of him, but then I decided he's got my vote:

"Mr Sharkey has also pledged to execute convicted murders and child molesters
personally by impaling them on a wooden pole outside the state capitol."

http://tinyurl.com/atagz

I am liberal (with a few exceptions) in everything but my thoughts on the death penalty.

New Year's Resolutions for 2006

I'm not gonna do "Statements of Will" like I did last year, it was pretentious of me and placed too much pressure on myself to be even more spectacular than I already was, so getting fancy like that is out.

Did I do the things I resolved last year?

Did I "stir more meat" into my literary pot with this blog? Um, not really. I got some stuff written, but I still have to edit it into a coherent body of stuff.

Did I become a "raging health machine"? I didn't become Linda Hamilton in Terminator 2 like I wanted to, but I was going to a gym for a while, and I stopped hitting the chocolate quite so hard.

Did I keep a magickal diary? I did, but mostly not online. I have a notebook where I check off everytime I remember to do LBRP and one where I keep my Tarot readings.

Did I become a digital camera expert? Well, I got a new camera that works a lot better, and will be learning more about how to use it.

And now, a list of things I would like to do in 2006:

Clean up the Grotto and put up a couple more articles there.

Mo Tarot! Mo Tarot! Mo Tarot! I need to get back to my pathworking and qablalistic studies, one of the ways I am going get qabalistically in tune is by using a method outlined by a friend, using the 1 - 10 pips in my tarot deck, and a combination of Duquette's Chicken Qabala, Godwin's Qabalistic Encyclopedia, Regardie's Garden of Pomegranates, Crowley's 777 and Bk of Thoth, and anything else that seems good that I can get my hot little hands on.

I would like to either get a job down at Petco, or continue dogwalking and supplement it by starting a small Ebay business.

And finally, I have decided to go vegan!!! You heard it here first, folks. I may have a transitional period where I am lacto-ovo, but I just watched "Meet Your Meat" with Alec Baldwin, and had a good cry, and I can't in good conscience touch anything made by the butchers anymore. I am an animal lover.

Books on My Shelf

I posted this on the Thelema.nu site (I was on there before it started sucking), 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.

Pink Floyd goodness--complete with Syd Barrett!

Go here, buddies!!!

The Coffee Table

The Coffee Table
Originally uploaded by Hermgirl.

Just testing things here--this is my coffee table.

So, what *is* "The Secret"?

A new marketing ploy has been launched upon the masses. In the wake of recent tragedies in the headlines like Katrina, the London bombing, AIDS in Africa, etc., humankind is naturally looking for answers, help, something.

Along come people with a tv show, (which will likely be riddled with interesting commercials!) to tell us about a wonderful secret, which great people throughout history knew. And they are going to share it with us!

They are already gearing up with banner ads interested folk can use, ipod tie-ins, etc. The mind boggles at what future media bonanza will await the creators of this television event.

The most interesting part of the Secret's blog are the comments, complete with some seminar wonk, salivating at future marketing opportunities, sending the same comment over and over again. This could be bigger than the Kabbalah--what WILL Madonna do?

Um, Ok, but, what would * I* use one for?

In the year 2006 I resolve to: Start using a condom. Get your resolution here

Weird Dream

I hardly ever remember my dreams, but when I do, they are usually interesting.

This one had creepy trenchcoat Vince Vaughn in it. Everyone in the dream was a creepy goth trenchcoat type person, and it was kind of like a movie. Vince Vaughn was a detective or something, and we were looking around this weird skinnny house with many floors that had six or eight siblings living there, most of whom wore glasses. I think one of them was James Woods.

Anyway, there were these two rats helping us find a person and we would look in each room and the rats would go through it. One time a rat ripped the corner off a woman's purse and took it outside.

Was there a movie with Vince Vaughn about rats that I saw and forgot about?

Hello world! And Happy Holidays!

So, I had a nice Christmas, I spent time with my mom and sis and her two kids. One of my dogwalking friends gave me a Barnes & Noble giftcard (yay!)

Also, a couple of days ago, I was Googling myself and I found out that I'm on a blogroll for the local news. So, hello out there, I'm just checking to see if this entry shows up. Hopefully soon I will have some interesting stuff to post (I am still working on that series of essay entries, maybe in the next couple of weeks it'll be here, stay tuned.)

My dad the collector...

My dad has developed a habit of sending away for knives and swords from cutlery catalogs. He has so many now, he could almost start his own shop.

I'm waiting for the F.B.I. to come busting through the door, thinking they have the latest terrorist on their hands, when all it is is a 71 year old man.

LJ Interests meme results

1. birth control:
   The best form is the pill. You hold it between your knees...
   On second thought, I shouldn't be so flippant about this. This is a very important issue in every woman's life, and the fact that in America they are slowly rolling back the ability to teach about this in favor of that "Abstinence" crap is indicative of the war on women.
2. creative visualization:
   by Shakti Gawain--the best book for anyone beginning their magickal journey, IMHO. Yeah, so it's a little New Age cheesy, so what?
3. feminism:
   I used to think it was presumptuous of Gloria Steinem to say, “In my heart, I think a woman has two choices: either she’s a feminist or a masochist.” But the older I get, the more it rings true.
4. index cards:
   They're not just for breakfast anymore.
5. kids in the hall:
   "I'm your cousin, Jerry!"
6. middle pillar:
   http://tinyurl.com/bk85h
7. quentin tarantino:
   JIMMIE: "I'm not a cobb or corn, so you can stop butterin' me up. I don't need you to tell me how good my coffee is. I'm the one who buys it, I know how fuckin' good it is. When Bonnie goes shoppin;, she buys shit. I buy the gourmet expensive stuff 'cause when I drink it, I wanna taste it."
8. soundgarden:
   "Everything I've held is what I've freed
   Everything I've held is what I've freed
   Everything I've shown is what I feel
   
   Buying lies and stealing jokes
   And laughing every time I choke
   
   Biding all the time you took
   Now I know why you've been taken
   
   Now I know why you've been taken
   
   So bleed your heart out
   There's no more rides for free
   Bleed your heart out
   I said what's in it for me"
   
   --Slaves & Bulldozers
9. the who:
   "Happy Jack wasn't old, but he was a man
   He lived in the sand at the Isle of Man
   The kids would all sing, he would take the wrong key
   So they rode on his head on their furry donkey
   
   The kids couldn't hurt Jack
   They tried and tried and tried
   They dropped things on his back
   And lied and lied and lied and lied and lied
   
   But they couldn't stop Jack, or the waters lapping
   And they couldn't prevent Jack from feeling happy
   
   The kids couldn't hurt Jack
   They tried and tried and tried
   They dropped things on his back
   And lied and lied and lied and lied and lied
   
   But they couldn't stop Jack, or the waters lapping
   And they couldn't prevent Jack from feeling happy"

--Happy Jack
10. Θελημα:
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law. Love is the law, love under will.

Ooohhh mahahan, is it late...

But I managed to get something done on my website!!! Just for my special peeps, here is the first gander at my first article on my website. Some of you guys may remember this from the blog, but I embellished it a little.

The page itself is perfect, but I have not yet placed the link for it on my main Tarot Page, so there is a link back to the homepage and a link back to the Tarot page, but not yet a link from the Tarot page to the article--I just want you to know that I know this, ok, but the HTML for the main tarot page is sooo fucked up, I have to redo the whole thing, which is gonna have to wait til later this week.

I neglected to pay tribute to Richard Pryor this weekend:

Back in the days of vinyl I had a copy of "Are You Serious?" and I used to do this bit from it for my friends, an old negro preacher bit (which is funny if you imagine a silly little suburban white girl doing it), that had a funny exchange between God and Richard:

"He walked up to me and said, 'Can I have a piece of yo' bread?'

I looked at Gawd, and I looked at Gawd good. Coz I was hungry!"

Thanks for giving us a piece of yo' bread, Richard. You were the funniest muthafucker around.

Well, it's been a stressful couple of days. Actually, I think I may be getting kind of depressed lately, so I hope I'm not too whiny. Maybe it's the onset of winter, maybe unemployment, something, I dunno. I think that's why I haven't blogged very substantively lately, I gotta get it together.

Thursday I went to go take a needlepoint class that turned out to cost more than I thought it did, I went down the street to the library and found a bunch of books on it and I'm going to teach myself.

Then later Dad and I were grocery shopping and some junkie beggar asked us for money. She was just skulking around the store, approaching people. I could tell she needed it for drugs, so it just really bugged me.

People that are obvious heroin addicts really squick me out. A couple weeks ago, I was walking the dogs in the park and one of them approached me. It was a girl that I had gone to Jr. High with. She started talking to me and I noticed the trackmarks on the backs of her hands and wrists, and how skinny she was. Later I saw her making a drug handoff to some other girl, who naturally came over and tried to talk to me--which is something else that freaks me out a little, why do these people always feel the need to talk to me?

What's up with that? And then there is the factor of the age of these people. I am noticing that an awful lot of them are my contemporaries. I'm like two months older than Kurt Cobain--is everyone trying to identify with him? Because frankly, I don't see the benefit. This is another reason why Morrisey is so awesome as a model for depression and antisocial feelings, he's in touch with all that, but you know he would never wimp out and shoot himself.

Anyway, Dad and I had a difference of opinion on the junkie chick, he got very passive/agressive about it. He occasionally tells me he worries about someone coming behind me and hitting me over the head with a lead pipe, but he's actually the one who doesn't have the ability to avoid certain types of people.

Then on Friday, I found out that Cole, one of the dogs I walk, passed away the night before. Wednesday, they had taken him to the vet, Thursday morning the vet called and said he had cancer in his lungs, and of course, that evening he walked up and layed down at his master's feet and expired.

I had just helped these people put their potbellied pig to sleep a few weeks ago. I also know that they will take some of Cole's ashes and keep them on a shelf somewhere, next to the ashes of every pet they've ever had.

Well, I felt so depressed on Friday I was exhausted. I feel better now.

And I used to like Beck...

Beck is a scientologist.

There is also some info here about Beck and Scientology and a deeper look at what this cult is really like.

Because I harbor secret fantasies of building my own house someday...

...this sort of thing really turns me on.

Recent Aquisitions

I got a new camera!!! It's a Polaroid PDC 5070. I am just learning to use it, so there will soon be better quality pics up.

These are recent used bookstore finds. All of them, exept for KoIA Vol 1, at Green Apple books in SF, for trade:

1. The Legend of AC by Regardie
2. Wheels of Life by Anodea Judith
3. Postmodern Magic by Patrick Dunn
4. High Magic by Frater U.D.
5. The Key of It All 2 - D.A. Hulse
6. The Key of it All 1 - D.A. Hulse
7. Qabalistic Tarot by Robert Wang

Trying really hard to be nice and not laugh...

OK everybody, um, Anne Rice is a Christian!

Oh, wait, who was that in the scene with the Sanhedrin? It was Anne Rice!!!

Oh, and when they sent the prophet Jeremiah into prison, Anne Rice was in a cell a couple doors down from him, yeah!

"Getting healthy, finding God."

--In which Anne looks very much like the Aunt that converted me all those years ago (spooky!)

And sometimes

you're just in the mood for a little singalong.

And one of the SAD things about the internet...

...is that it gives know-nothing whelps like this a forum to take pics of their fancypants yuppie "author" meet and greets that they have the unmitigated nerve
to desecrate the hallowed floors of the City Lights bookstore
with.  I was traipsing around the checkered floor there before
some of these people were even born.  And the ones that do look like they're from my generation were still too busy acting cool to even think of picking up a book at that time.



You really must witness the pic of the semigoth/yuppie look chicklit
bitch that they thought important enough to include here:  Adam
Duritz (one of the great Loves of My Life), would have called this a
display of "Brand New Attitude."  The perfect low-rise jeans, not
too faded, not too nouveau, tank top with the ever-so-tastefully exposed
brastrap coming out. 



"Writers do it better," I'm told--well, what
do they do better, darling?  One answer to that which comes to
mind is "Spell."  Another is "Have a nodding aquaintance with
grammar and syntax."  Them:  "However this evening we dining
well." 



This person has the gall to call Kerouac and Ginsberg bad
authors (and frankly, I'm sure they had it coming, darling, being
exceptions to that whole "doing it better" rule--one of them being a
zen buddhist semibisexual given to periods of celibacy, one of them
actually being GAY!  Well, they weren't very good yuppies, were they?) hence my whole reason for being so incensed.



I looked at the profile of the gherkin who posted this travesty of
blogdom and was shocked to learn that some of his favorite music
included:  Counting Crows, Bob Dylan, Neil Young (he spelled the
first name "Neal"!!!), and Johnny Cash!!!  How
could the cool not have rubbed off, at least a little?  I blame
the early to mid Nineties, who made this kind of thing possible with
their cheap alterna-consciousness and their Rolling Stone magazine, Gap
ad marketing.

Well, hello, everyone!!!

Well, hello, everyone!!!

This is my first page, in'it speshul?
It just makes me wanna turn purple.

This was a post from the new Writely website.

Just surfing around...

And came upon this.

The gal who does these is actually a good friend of mine--she's practically my cousin.

Anyway, those beads on her site? She actually makes them. Local celebrities, like one bay area news lady that I know of, buy her beads. She teaches classes all over the world. She studied glasswork under Dale Chihuly, who was named one of the top ten modern artists in Art for Dummies.

When we were kids she was always drawing and always had markers or pencils with her. Her eyes seemed to seek out color wherever she could find it. My mother has always been a very colorfully dressed woman and it was interesting watching her eyes dance over my mom's outfits.

In more recent times, I was able to see her workspace in the garage of her home, with all of her glass rods and her flamethrower and her gas masks--it seems like a very dangerous undertaking, but I'm sure she wouldn't be doing anything else with her life. I've looked at the way she has grown up into a very professional artist--one who is actually able to make a living (yes, Wirewoman, it can be done!) doing art.

It's something that has inspired me, when I think of writing, or illustrating or anything like that.

Cool Interest List idea:

I don't know why I never thought of this before: how about using your blog interest list (or interests you have ganked from others) for two different things:

As a writing/journaling prompt generator--write each interest down on its own 3 x 5 card.

• If it is an object, use it in a story
• If it is a person, pretend to be Larry King and interview the person
• If it is a band, pretend to be a member and write from their perspective
• If it is an author, try to write an entry in their style
• If it is a concept, write an essay paragraph about it

As an oracle deck. Shuffle your cards, ask a question, or not, and see what you get.

• If it is a person, try to channel them and ask questions
• If it is a band, listen to some of their music while you meditate and see what happens
• If it is an author, open one of their books and read the text under your finger

Swinburne Fun

When you see this, post a poem in your blog:

The Higher Pantheism in a Nutshell
by Algernon Charles Swinburne

One, who is not, we see: but one, whom we see not, is:
Surely this is not that: but that is assuredly this.

What, and wherefore, and whence? for under is over and under:
If thunder could be without lightning, lightning could be without thunder.

Doubt is faith in the main: but faith , on the whole, is not doubt:
We cannot believe by proof: but could we believe without?

Why, and whither, and how? for barly and rye are not clover:
Neither are straight lines curves: yet over is under and over.

Two and two may be four: but four and four are not eight:
Fate and God may be twain: but God is the same thing as fate.

Ask a man what he thinks, and get from a man what he feels:
God, once caught in the fact, shows you a fair pair of heels.

Body and spirit are twins: God only knows which is which:
The soul squats down in the flesh, like a tinker drunk in a ditch.

More is the whole than a part: but half is more than the whole:
Clearly, the soul is the body: but is not the body the soul?

One and two are not one: but one and nothing is two:
Truth can hardly be false, if falsehood cannot be true.

Once the mastodon was: pterodactyls were common as cocks:
Then the mammoth was God : now is He a prize ox.

Parallels all things are: yet many of these are askew:
You are certainly I: but certainly I am not you.

Springs the rock from the plain, shoots the stream from the rock:
Cocks exist for the hen: but hens exist for the cock.

God, whom we see not, is: and God, who is not, we see:
Fiddle, we know, is diddle: and diddle, we take it, is dee.

Meme: Fifteen Fun Friendly Facts about Hermgirl

Be lookin' at your friendslist. Notice that friend stonemirror
has tagged you for a meme on twenty random facts, which he has done a lovely, complete job on (no wonder he's a great captain of industry!)

Think about it for a while. Wind up with only fifteen, and then tag fifteen friends who seem like they don't have anything better to do <;P.

Blame The President.

1. I sometimes feel like a woman without a country, I don't seem to fit into neat categorizations. You know, those things where some kind of "expert" says, "If you do a, you fit into this category, b, you belong to this category, c, this category," etc. I'm always going, "Yeah, but what about people like me?" Not that this makes me feel inferior in any way, on the contrary, it tells me that those kind of tests are bullshit.
2. I am fairly antisocial. Not because I hate anyone, but because I am often very disappointed in people. Often, my radar goes off, and I have to drop people like a bad habit. I generally keep things to my family, a few family friends, and you wonderful online people. Even the people that I am friends with at work or whatever, I don't see very often, and I like to keep it that way.
3. This is probably because I prefer books to people. I have not counted my books, but I probably have four or five thousand. All jammed into my little bedroom.
4. On June 13th of next year (the same birthday as W.B. Yeats, I like to tell people,) I will be a REAL "Forty Year Old Virgin". I don't need a silly movie, I am living it, buddies! This is not because I am unattractive and can't get a man, but because I have made a commitment to celibacy. I would rather be alone than with the wrong person, and I also feel that my time and energy are better spent on other things. Also, I feel that magickwise, your sexual energy is a powerful thing that should be directed purposefully.
5. Having said that, I am actually very pro-sex. I sometimes (make that, somewhat often) enjoy seeing good looking men get naked. I also enjoy what I like to call, "comic book porn", of the type done by artists from Heavy Metal magazine, such as Guido Crepax, whose version of de Sade's "Justine", and Réage's "Story of O" is on my shelves somewhere.
6. I stay up into the wee hours way too often (this item written at 3:50 in the morning.) I attribute this to having had jobs where I had to work all manner of goofy hours. The clock workings have finally sprung into a mass of debris. But then you knew I was a little "off" didn't you, buddies?
7. Like a lot of eccentric pack-rat types, I'm extremely messy.
8. In my head, there really is a place called Hermworld, it's one of those sci-fi utopia/dystopia type places, like Dune or something. It was discovered by me with the help of an otherwise incompetent therapist I went to when I was 23. I remember a guided visualization thing he led me through, and there it was, real as the table I'm sitting at. I remember telling the therapist, "It looks like an old junk shop."
9. I'm aware that this is kind of a narcissistic exercise, in which I share things that make me seem more interesting than I really am. To the contrary, I am actually kind of a boring person and I sort of like it that way. I enjoy the fact that I'm turning into a boring old fart. Because not getting older would be sort of a bummer.
10. Having said that, Neil Young once said hi to me (and my brother-in-law has been to old Shakey's farm on a couple of occassions.)
11. I once pissed off Todd Rungren during a show, and if enough people are interested, I will dig up the story from an old journal somewhere and post it here if I can find it.
12. Once, when I was at a Counting Crows show(a group I've seen nine times), Adam Duritz (one of the great loves of my life--and I'll brook no comments from the peanut gallery) got so pissed off and told me (and nobody else--seriously!)to zip it. I had had a little too much to drink and was being disruptive.
13. To round off my stories of brushes with rock star greatness, I was at a radio station seeing the great Alex Bennett perform radio magic. It was the asscrack of dawn, and in waltzes Art from Everclear. They were touring with an English band called Kulashaker, who also showed up. About a year later I was at a Kulashaker show and got to talk to Paul the drummer and told him, "Now, I hope you guys are gonna keep making those great records and keep coming over here and touring." He looked me straight in the eye and said, "Well, we'll do our best." Three weeks later, the group had broken up. You betrayed me, Paul Winterheart.
14. I'm an extreme procrastinator.
15. I also sometimes leave things unfinished, as in a list of twenty things that somehow turns into only fifteen.

Bob Larson and the Devil in New Orleans, and Gettining Paid vs. Dogwalking

It has come to my attention, via the fine folks at "A Current Affair", that evangelist Bob Larson is at it again. This time he isn't just trotting out his old bag of cheap exorcism tricks, he has stated that he is going to go to New Orleans to cast himself out a bunch 'o devils down there.

If you've never heard of the Good Mr. Larson, you've actually missed quite a laughfest. His radio show, "Talkback", ran during the late '80s and early '90s. This guy was actually kind of entertaining, conducting exorcisms via telephone! And he would bait people, choosing a different group every day to pick on, "You people with multiple body piercings, call in and tell me why you do this to yourself!", etc. So he would get punks, goths, straight ahead metalheads, occultists, polyamorous, and what have you to call in, and eventually he would get one that needed an exorcism.

I recall one guy, a musician in a death metal band, talking to him in a goofy accent, claiming to be possessed by a demon that called itself something that sounded like, "Chicken Gita". I remember thinking, "Now, who is pulling whose leg here? Or are they both working together on this?" And of course, Larson went to commercial break, commanding, "I want someone to call in with a thousand dollars for Bobby the possessed death-metal guy!" The balls!!! It was high-larious.

* * * * *

And in the Suck My Ass, You Heartless Gibrones Department: Well, last week they had me working at the bookstore, and then they put me on a call in basis, and this morning I was told that they were making cuts, and one of the things they were cutting was me.

(Sigh)Well, at least I made a few bucks to cover my school expenses. So I picked myself up off the floor, dusted myself off, and waltzed on over to my neighbors and asked for my old dog-walking job back. One of whom so far has taken me up on it, so I will at least have monthly travel $$$.

Things are not as black as they could get. Last week as well, the psycho I was working for before actually paid me the money she owed me. There is something to be said for a mother who has friends she can talk to so she can call the person on the phone and say, "Now you know, if you don't pay her, that you're in violation of state law number XYZ? And we will be seeing you in court."

I found out on Friday that the bookstore hired one of my friends from Book Market. If they don't treat her right, I'm just going to go postal on them.

Doing the dance of the happy book people!!!

I have just gotten the job at my local bookstore!!!

I will be working full time, and taking classes on bookeeping and accounting software on Saturdays in the late fall.

I am still only seasonal Xmas help, but I can probably get my option picked up at the end of the year by being a wonderful employee. And if that doesn't work out, the class I take will help me to get some kind of office job. So the rest of my year is set.

Yes, I WILL play the blame game!

Current Mood: Aggravated

This could have been prevented. (Warning: You might have to cry when you see this.)

While That Little Honey was playing his guitar, and his mother is making cute little remarks about how wonderful things are for the evacuees, people are going through heartbreaking terrible things. Well, if it doesn't break somebody's heart, I don't know what to tell you.

I can't see how anyone can sit on the fence, clinging to political correctness after this. You can't appoint unqualified people to run things as important as FEMA, just because they're your friends.

Bush is a robber baron who made his money (not that he made a lot of $$ without help from Daddy, or that he was the most tremendous businessman,) in Texas by stealing land from people, and I guess he's going to do it again.

At a news conference, Pelosi, D-Calif., said Bush's choice for head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency had "absolutely no credentials."

She related that she had urged Bush at the White House on Tuesday to fire Michael Brown.

"He said 'Why would I do that?'" Pelosi said.

"'I said because of all that went wrong, of all that didn't go right last week.' And he said 'What didn't go right?'"

"Oblivious, in denial, dangerous," she added.

--From SFGate.com

It seems to be following me...

And now for a pause in the coverage, to acknowledge a bizarre recurring theme...

Thanks for the comic relief, 14theditch.

Bush Buddy Michael Chertoff's idea of "Homeland Security"...

Pat Robertson? Really? You thought that was a good idea?

More evidence of President Tweedledum's incompetence:

Link.
He needs to be sat down in a playpen away from the sharp objects, like authority to appoint judges...

In the Court of the Crimson King...

Current mood: I don't know...

The wall on which the prophets wrote
Is cracking at the seams.
Upon the instruments of death
The sunlight brightly gleams.
When every man is torn apart
With nightmares and with dreams,
Will no one lay the laurel wreath
When silence drowns the screams.

Confusion will be my epitaph,
As I crawl a cracked and broken path.
If we make it we can all sit back and laugh.
But I fear tomorrow I'll be crying.
Yes I fear tomorrow I'll be crying.

Between the iron gates of fate,
The seeds of time were sown,
And watered by the deeds of those
Who know and who are known:
Knowledge is a deadly friend
If no one sets the rules.
The fate of all mankind I see
Is in the hands of fools.

Confusion will be my epitaph,
As I crawl a cracked and broken path.
If we make it we can all sit back and laugh.
But I fear tomorrow I'll be crying.
Yes I fear tomorrow I'll be crying.
King Crimson: Epitaph

Today I went into a record store, thinking, "I should get a King Crimson cd."

I kid you not, when I went in, what was playing but "In the Court of the Crimson King"? Not something people just pull out and listen to these days. Seriously, that's the way it happened.

But that's not all. Check out what I tossed last night for The I Ching of Mi-Lo:

"51--The Arousing (Shock, Thunder)
Blitzkrieg! Neighbors are blown to smithereens.
If you can walk, you may get to safety.
Bam! Bam! Bam! Nonstop shocks! It's irritating, but you don't really get hurt. (!!!--Me)
Stuck in the mud. Nothing to fight. Nowhere to go.
Wow! That was a wakeup call! Change your ways and don't get caught snoozing again.
A shocking loss. It's terrible. There's nothing to do now but write it off (you'll get it back.)
Oh, man! That nearly scared me to death.
Haha. Thought you had me there, didn't you?"

I have been spending most of my time the past few days just reading blogs and surfing the net. I wish I could think of something pithy and wise to say, but words fail me. I'll bet Dubya is sorry they diverted those funds to repair the levee last year over to the war.

One of the people on my f-list had some very well-thought-out thinkin' that I thought I'd share with you.

To Phoebe, the Totally in Charge of Herself Bunny I Took Care of Last Weekend

Because I can.

Over the weekend I petsat, a rabbit and a cockatiel. The owner had told me to let the rabbit out and go ahead and let the bird out of the cage too if I felt like it.

The rabbit was kind of an independent lady. She would come if you rattled her box of treats, but other than that, she was aloof. The cockatiel, named Rocky, was of course a prisoner in a cage. I saw no reason to let him out, what was he gonna do that was interesting? Birds don't excite me that much. What I really don't understand is people that insist on providing birdseed to the wild ones in their backyards. So you're saying you want a festival of white poo all over? Whatever floats your boat, Chachi.

On the last day they were both quite animated, pets tend to know when their owners are coming home. But Rocky was absolutely going nuts, so I figured letting him out would be a good idea, let him fly around the place and work some of that off. He very happily flew around, pooed on things a couple of times, and lighted on my shoulder then flew away again several times. Even the rabbit got into the act, jumping on the couch and crawling on my lap.

What can I tell ya? I got animal magnetism.

"Where have I been?!"

"Out of my brain on the 5:15!" (Guess the song lyric, budddies!)

So long time, no postee.

Sometimes life takes very swift turns.

My mom informed my dad that he has to move upstate with my brother, or she would get a lawyer. She is going to come home, which will be nice, and then she and I will be spending about six months or so getting the house (the house I've lived all my life in, the house my dad's lived in for 50 years) in shape to sell.

They are going to split things two ways, and apparently help me get some kind of place on my own, etc, til I can get on my feet or whatever. Or maybe she is going to buy a place and let me have a room, I don't know. As far as my own financial situation, money will be tight. The bail bonds office that I was working at turned out to be a bust. I worked there for about three weeks and the lady went psycho on me. I was too embarrassed to say it here. I have recently been doing house/pet sitting for friends and made a fair amount of $$$ that way, but I am hitting the job trail with even more earnest than I was before.

On that score, I recently had a very positive interview experience with Barnes & Noble. I am going to try to parley my four years of experience in various bookstores into a full time position at the new store opening up near my home. So I was at this job interview, and the guy was going around the room talking to people and while he was talking to me the woman who he'd just talked to leaned over and told him that I'd helped her and her daughter find books at the bookstore that I'd last worked at, and apparently I'd sent her on her way a very happy customer. I should possibly find out if I have the job sometime this week.

One of the upshots of all of this is that I won't be able to do the thing I've been talking about recently. I will have to spend all my time helping my mom or working. At the very least that means, with the exeption of private studying on my own, the other thing will have to go on the very back burner until my life is stable enough to take another stab at it in a year or two.

My mom and I usually get along pretty good, but with her Capricornian control-freak issues, I may wind up feeling like killing her, who knows. Keep on the lookout for some very interesting "venting" posts on that topic.

Why Kathy Griffin is just cool:

Kathy Griffin's husband: "Where are we going again?"

Kathy Griffin: "Some bullshit Kabbalah party!"

She's definitely D-List. She's no Madonna. (Did I ever tell you guys that I really hate Madonna? I do.)

Who Am I?

I am the girl kicked out of her home because I confided in my mother that I am a lesbian.

I am the prostitute working the streets because nobody will hire a transsexual woman.

I am the sister who holds her gay brother tight through the painful, tear-filled nights.

We are the parents who buried our daughter long before her time.

I am the man who died alone in the hospital because they would not let my partner of twenty-seven years into the room.

I am the foster child who wakes up with nightmares of being taken away from the two fathers who are the only loving family I have ever had. I wish they could adopt me.

I am one of the lucky ones, I guess. I survived the attack that left me in a coma for three weeks, and in another year I will probably be able to walk again.

I am not one of the lucky ones. I killed myself just weeks before graduating high school. It was simply too much to bear.

We are the couple who had the realtor hang up on us when she found out we wanted to rent a one-bedroom for two men.

I am the person who never knows which bathroom I should use if I want to avoid getting the management called on me.

I am the mother who is not allowed to even visit the children I bore, nursed, and raised. The court says I am an unfit mother because I now live with another woman.

I am the domestic-violence survivor who found the support system grow suddenly cold and distant when they found out my abusive partner is also a woman.

I am the domestic-violence survivor who has no support system to turn to because I am male.

I am the father who has never hugged his son because I grew up afraid to show affection to other men.

I am the home-economics teacher who always wanted to teach gym until someone told me that only lesbians do that.

I am the man who died when the paramedics stopped treating me as soon as they realized I was transsexual.

I am the person who feels guilty because I think I could be a much better person if I didn’t have to always deal with society hating me.

I am the man who stopped attending church, not because I don't believe, but because they closed their doors to my kind.

I am the adolescent boy who committed suicide because my priest told me I would be better off dead than a sinner.

I am another adolescent boy who was molested for years by the another priest who all the while told me God hates homosexuals, but I never mentioned it because he convinced me it was my fault.

I am the person who has to hide what this world needs most, love.


Repost this if you believe homophobia is wrong.

"Any secret worth keeping is worth killing for."

Or so said the billboard that has been confronting me at the BART station the past couple of times I took the train out to Castro Valley.

It was a billboard for the new Jeffery Deaver mystery, "The Twelfth Card."

Guess what card graced the cover of the book?

The Hanged Man. Of course, as a tarot reader, I look at this advertisement and think, "Shame on you, Jeffery Deaver!"

Last night, I had gone to another Pathworking meeting. This time, the path was Netzach to Tiphareth.

This path can be easily understood by its corresponding card, Death. It must be understood that death is a part of life. It does not serve one well to go frolicking in the Forest of Dingley Dell (spot the old Prog Rock reference, buddies!) and just forget that death happens.

Much like the Tower card, my thinking is, "If you're gonna make an omlette, ya gotta break some eggs." But Death takes this idea even further than the Tower, it doesn't just break the eggs, it obliterates them. There is a chance that they will completely relinquish their inherent "eggness." We do not yet know what we will be "when the roll is called up yonder."

Having said that though, another aspect of it is rebirth. Scorpio, in its capacity of being the stinging insect as well as the eagle, reminds me of the process from larva to pupa to adult butterfly. Once the old is cleared away, there is room for the new life.

In related news, some of you will have a new sister by the end of the year.

So I live with these concepts of death and new life, until next pathworking, when I will be guided by the twelfth card, the Hanged Man.

To paraphrase (and correct) the Jeffery Deaver ad, "Any secret worth keeping is worth dying for."

"There is nothing in me that is not of the Gods!"

Well, I finally went to my first Gnostic Mass!

It was just an amazing experience. Words fail me to describe it, and most of you know I am rarely at a loss for words (exept when it comes to actually posting my own entries--gotta get on that.) Beautiful would be a good word, there's a word for you.

Of course there was an embarrassing/humorous moment when I went up to eat the cookie/drink the wine (this is me we're talking about here!) After watching everybody take the elements and "communicate", my mind was spinning so fast that when I took the wafer I blanked out, and had to whisper, "What do I do?" The lovely priestess leaned forward and said, "You eat the cookie!"

This I did, and then for some reason I drank the wine like I was in a beer-chugging contest. I had been thinking of that scene in the Joan of Arc movie where she drinks from the cup till it runs down her face, so thirsty is she for God.

I remember wanting God like that. And now I am God and Godly and Godlike and I give all good things to my children and them that love me. God is in all, through all, I am God, God of God-Hall, God of the mountains, God of the seas, just beatifically Godlike.

When I left I don't think I stopped smiling til I got to the BART station.

There is no god but man.

Here is my personal Declaration of Independence.

It was penned by Aleister Crowley, a very bizarre, extraordinary, Victorian Englishman. If anyone has any questions about this, I'd be glad to answer them.

Here's wishing all my buddies a very safe, and happy 4th of July.

And it's ok to like the BeeGees...

So yesterday, I'm watching Pulp Fiction, one of my current favorite flicks, and I start thinking: You know what? A lot of the things I like really are mainstream and predictable (someone said this of me recently, it matters not in what context.)

And you know what? I don't care. I don't give myself extra cool points for being obscura or uber-anything.

Maybe I was inspired into this line of thinking by the way Uma Thurman was acting (before she snorted the heroin.) Her demeanor seemed to say, "Lighten up, enjoy yourself. You like the Beatles? You like Elvis? You like five dollar milkshakes? Who cares?"

If you think about it, she and Travolta were both having vanilla drinks. Him: Vanilla Coke. Her: Martin and Lewis. Both in congruity with each other.

Vanilla: a word that can be used to mean plain, boring. Vanilla sex.

And yet, they were both enjoying a delicious beverage.

I'll just leave it at that, buddies.

Listen, punk:

If you could go back and talk to yourself at age 16, what 5 things would you say?

1. Quit smokin' that damn dope!
2. Do your homework!
3. Kick that manipulatin' bitch you call a best friend to the curb, she will cost you more money, time, and tears than she is worth.
4. Ya know, boys are not really evil. You are gonna really like them someday. Get your nose out of the weird books once in a while and find one to talk to. No, screaming at Ian Gillian from the edge of the stage does not count.
5. Put the damn bong down, hippie!

They say I'm a cheap date...

So Mom and I are going out to luch on Saturday to celebrate my birthday. Where do I want to go? Subway.

I talked with my sis about it, then I emailed her:

By the way, Sis, I really love these pics of Jeff. Thanks.

Quiznos is a pretender to the Subway throne. Eat a meatball sammitch and be happy.

Love,
Your Sister, the Hermgirl

Dissemble/disassemble...

Dear President Bush:

"...people that had been trained in some instances to disassemble—that means not tell the truth."

I really think a block of muenster cheese could do a better job of being president than you're doing.

After a long day of not getting the country embroiled in a pointless war, the American people could make a delicious sandwich with the president.

Your friend,

The Hermgirl


(president@whitehouse.gov)

So here's the full scoop:

I am now working as an office clerk for a small business, a bail bonds/traffic school/insurance broker/ DMV registration service/uhh, dessert topping and floor wax...

My job is to answer phones, take messages, send faxes, and file papers. I am the ONLY one in the office, the few people that work there breeze in and out occasionally, on their way to somewhere else apparently.

I had my only interview for this job last night at 8:45 pm--the gal was on her way somewhere and had found the resume I dropped off. Gave me the key, I came in this morning,. I talked with one guy who came in for about a half an hour to inspect some papers.

I sent two faxes, I separated some files and put them in different piles (are we sensing a pattern here? This is an easy job!) I "familiarised" myself with the filing system by snooping through it, and found some interesting stuff in the bail bonds section on "interviews and interrogations" that talked about how to tell if someone's really telling you the truth--I'll be reading that one thoroughly later, I'm sure.

I'm sensing that whatever work they give me to do will probably take about three hours at the most to complete, then the rest of the day is mine. I anticipate doing a lot of reading, like Henry Winkler did in "Night Shift", before Michael Keaton came along and spoiled everything...

I am going to make it my business to be the best office clerk these people ever saw. Regular, daytime hours (hello, bodyclock realignment!), fairly good money. Last night I was so excited I could hardly sleep. Tonight I am so tired I don't think I will have that problem, 'nighty-night all.

I mean, I'm two doors down from a place that serves chili cheese fries, could things get any better?

Tighten up your wigs, buddies!

So, bing, bang, boom, I now have the office job I have been trying to get for years.

No more dead end retail. No more smelling like dog poop. No more paychecks that are gone after two little books, one CD and a nice lunch.

I knew with this place lightning was either gonna strike or it wasn't.

How do you like that? More on this story as it develops.

I got this email from a friend:

One of my friends in real life (really.)

In it she said: "There is alot more that happened but I do not waht to board you."

I am going to convince her to start a blog!!! (Seriously!)

Hermgirl,

Waiting to be boarded...

The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Tarot Mages

I hope everyone was good to their mom this weekend.

My sis and I took Mom to a nice restaurant in Half Moon Bay, right next to the beach. It was nice seeing my niece, who is a little punk rocker with her pink and black checked vans (oh, the memories that brings back!)

Then yesterday, I met with my friend Cerulean from the Aeclectic Tarot message board, and we had the first meeting of the San Mateo County Tarot Association, which at this point, and maybe for the first few meetings, consists of just us, and maybe a couple of others, that didn't show yesterday.

We had coffee at Kepler's, and discussed all manner of things. We then did a reading on the future of the group, which I am going to post my interpretation of, both here and on the AT board sometime at the end of the week, because it was one of those big spreads that I really have to chew over.

She also again very generously gifted me with a new tarot deck, the Tarot of the Secret Garden, which I will post a review of sometime soon.

We then went to Feldman's Books, a nice used bookstore near Kepler's, where I purchased The New Tarot for the Aquarian Age, a deck from the sixties. Look for a post on that one soon as well.

Slamdancing With the Angels, or, "At my left hand, Uriel..."

"Zeus speaks: Drink my friends, drink with the gods of Olympus and become one with them. Be one of us and part of all that has been in this beautiful land. I will make you all gods and goddesses, with powers and realms of your own. I ask only that you acknowledge me as ruler of Olympus and all who belong to it. (He holds out the cup and waits.)"
--D.A. Nowicki, The Shining Paths

The week before last, I was offered a similar cup to drink from. I can't quite name it exactly at this juncture, but I've been invited to do something.

I have been hoping for this opportunity for a while and been preparing for it, but naturally now that it's here I am beset with niggling doubts.

Do I take the red pill or the blue pill?

After living under that question for the past week, Sunday night I'm doing my nocturnal thing in my room, listening to one of those college radio stations. The kind that plays the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, b/w Screaming Jay Hawkins, b/w Diamondia Galas, b/w Anton LaVey doing torch songs with an organ, b/w some kinda ambient stuff that sounds like breaking glass and people screaming mixed together.

So, I got very confrontational with my Spirit Guide.

My eyes fell on my Doreen Virtue Healing With the Angels and Archangel Oracle cards (I was ridin' the razor's edge the other night, buddies!) and I said, "OK, baby, let's dance! You TELL me what I should do!"

I threw the big cards on the bed, mixing them violently. This was how the draw fell:

1. Trust
2. You Know What to Do--Archangel Uriel: Trust your inner knowlege, and act upon it without delay.
3. Forgiveness
4. Relationship Harmony--Archangel Raguel: We angels are opening the hearts of eveyone involved. Arguments and conflicts are being resolved now.
5. Abundance

Just as I laid these cards out and was looking at them, the radio show hostess came on. Her voice was deep, throaty, and suitably gothy. Her name (I am not making this up!) was Ophelia Necro.

She was saying something about getting mentally prepared: "For some of you, this will mean going to sleep. For others...You know what to do!"

Astrology Quiz

Your Rising Sign is Pisces Dreaming and introspective, you're often lost in your thoughts. Which is okay by you... you're inner world is pretty darn awesome. And while you are inwardly confident, sometimes you seem a bit unsure. People often handle you more delicately than they need to. You love luxury, and even if you're a bit broke, you want things to look "rich." Mysterious and demure, you keep secrets about yourself to remain an enigma.

What is Your Rising Sign?

This is so true, especially the part about how I'm inwardly confident, and people often handle me more delicately than they need to. Plus this factor is exacerbated by how I look so much younger than I really am.

Recent Bookstore and BATS Aquisitions

• Lon Milo DuQuette--The Book of Ordinary Oracles (Very cute, and indeed quite useful, and I got a very nice autograph!)
• Hello Tarot (What happens when you mix Sanrio and Tarot?)
• Gerald Suster--The Legacy of the Beast (This one, and the next three, gotten at Green
  Apple Books in San Francisco)
• Aleister Crowley--The Heart of the Master
• DuQuette--Angels, Demons, and Gods of the New Millennium
• Franz Bardon--Initiation into Hermetics (only fifteen bucks--SCORE!)
• Laura Scott & Mary kay Linge--Divining the Future (I found this at the Book Market after I went to BATS--apparently, I hadn't spent my last available dollar yet.)

So, that gives me something to do, in addition to the philosophy homework I have to get back to...

Adventures in the Tarot Brigade

Lately I have been attending Tarot classes taught by the weird and wonderful Thalassa, where I made many new friends.

An interesting highlight from the last class was an exercise she called the "Carnack" exercise, in which we acted like the Johnny Carson psychic character, putting a card up to our forehead with eyes closed and talking about the impressions we got. Actually, this seems like a pretty good thing to do, to help open the psychic center of one's brain--I think I will do this once a week.

What really baked my noodle about this was that the guy sitting next to me in class immediately named his card and the colors and emotions evoked by the card. Woo, scary. This is a guy you definitely want reading for you because he's got mad skills.

Anyhoo, on completion of that, it was on to the great celebration of all things divinatory, SFBATS!!!

And of course, I got to hobnob with the hoy and the polloy, first and foremost being the lovely and talented (and one of my favorite people) Lon Milo Duquette, who introduced me to one of the guys working on the upcoming Crowley film and I found out there was no room in the budget to have Jude Law in the starring role (crestfallen though I was about this, at least that means that the Johnny Depp money is also out of reach. Johnny Depp would just be wrong, I think.)

Other highlights included Rachel Pollack, the Joseph Campbell of Tarot, who told a wonderful fairy tale, and then expounded on the commonalities between Tarot and fairy tales. I asked her what she thought about current pop culture and things like comic books and movies like the Matrix having more metaphysical content--I didn't know at the time that she had actually done some comic book art--I read about it later and felt like an idiot.

Then I was having a good discussion with a lady for about a half hour when she revealed that she was Valerie Sim, author of Tarot Outside the Box and creator of the Comparative Tarot.

On the whole, I had a tremendous time, meeting famous authors and getting to talk to them, and totally acting like a book groupie. I made printouts of a couple of my spreads and passed them out liberally to my friends.

I can't wait for the next one. I feel like these are my people--I like them so much and want them to like me too--kind of a dorky thing to say, but that's how I feel.

Five of Cups--I think this means I needn't feel like such a dork up against these Tarot biggies. If I look around me I will see my own potential and the resources that are there for me to be a great writer someday. I must not overlook my inheritance.

And with that, I must go do homework. My sadistic philosophy prof has me reading about something called "hard determinism" which I do not like very much at all.<|P

Train Home

So the other night I went to my Tarot class up in Berkely, and on the train home I saw something interesting.

Getting on the train just ahead of me were these two girls who had the same kind of hair, it was cropped short and very light blonde. They had the same style sense about them, but they weren't dressed exactly alike.

They were like a personification of Gemini, exept they were Sagittarius and Pisces(I asked them--I know, I'm weird that way.)

The Piscean had a scarf on, just like the one I was wearing that night (and I know this is a very bad pic, but it was a ten-dollar digicam.) exept hers was varigated white and green--very nice, but not homemade like mine.

I just thought it was an interesting bit of synchronicity.

You scored as Spanish. You should learn Spanish. It can be useful especially if you live in the United States. Spanish 67% Latin 53% Arabic 40% French 40% Chinese 33% English 27% Japanese 13% What language should you learn? created with QuizFarm.com

Actually, I might do that next, after Philosophy. I once took a course kind of half-assedly, and now I know how to use el banyo when I need the WC, and I got to where I could communicate a little with people I worked at McDonald's with. Un poquito Espanol, es muey bueno! I must pick it up again.

So, anyhoo, I've been busy studying my philosophy, which is why I haven't posted in a while. I just took a midterm, which I just barely scraped through with a decent grade, I think.

In other news, I've been going to a Tarot class up in Berkeley, tomorrow night is the final one. Also, I will once again be attending the wonderful SFBATS, so I'm a happy camper about that.

At this juncture I have nothing else to report. I have a full day ahead of me tomorrow in the City, so I best be hittin' the hay.

Just felt like checking in.

No wonder he wanted to kill his father and fuck his mother...

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I am Hermit, Hear Me Roar!

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