What's My Type?

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

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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

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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.

Death of an icon, and a new icon reborn...

At 12:24 PST, there was a little rumbler, just before I started this entry.

In a world where Avril Lavigne is considered punk, the rock world grows a little colder with the death of Joe Strummer.

I wasn't the biggest Clash fan in the world, but I do remember that when I was twelve the song "London Calling" made my heart race with the thought of Anarchy...And that is sadly something that is in very short supply for the twelve year olds of this day. There is a great big world beyond what is spoon-fed you on MTV, kids. Don't be satisfied until you can grab yourself a big piece of it.

In Other News: One of my favorite bloggers, Tangerine Girl, has returned from a long hiatus. This is someone who inspired me when I was first learning about computers and the Internet. One of those people that I looked at and said, "Damn, I wish I could do that!"

Happy Days Are Here Again…

This just in: I have gotten a job at Whole Foods Market, where I will be making a much higher hourly wage than I have ever made. The employment gods have smiled upon me! I even have a week or two to relax before I actually start working there. If that doesn't rock, I don't know what does!

My Eighth Time

[music|The music in my head(sigh.)]

Monday, Dec. 16
The Place: The Warfield Theater, San Francisco
The Event: Counting Crows & Toad the Wet Sprocket

“Such a rainy night,” I thought, “This is a night for pilgrims only.” Down by where I live, there were power outages due to the stormy weather. I grabbed an umbrella, put on my heavy Eddie Bauer jacket, donned a wide brimmed hat, and headed out. I needn’t have worried, when I came up the stairs from the BART station on Fifth I was pleased to note that while the ground was wet, the sky was clear.

As I walked up to the venue, I heard the strains of Toad the Wet Sprocket music coming out of the building (I was ten minutes late.) I saw a large group of people standing outside, but the doors were open and no one seemed to be going in. I approached the guy at the door. “You can just go in if you got a ticket.”

I fall back into the group of people to fish the ticket out of the pocket of the Eddie Bauer, and who do I see walking past but Matt Malley, Counting Crows bass player extraordinaire!

Knowing him to be “the Spiritual One” of the group, I had a greeting all planned for just such an occasion. Placing palms together, feet firmly planted in a yogic mountain pose, I bowed towards him and intoned “Namaste!” I think I may have jumped out at him a little.

First he asked me if I was spiritual, and if I meditated, to which I answered yes, and a little bit. Then he was going to offer me a ticket—no need, I already had one. I happily shook his hand and wished him a good show. That makes two times now I have had a 30 second meeting with a member of the Crows. I know some people are lucky enough to talk to them for a long time, but I’m so scared I’m going to act like a dork all I can manage is 30 seconds.

So I go in, very stoked, Toad the Wet Sprocket rippin’ it up by this time. Got my seat up in the lodges, which was actually a very nice place. There is a beautiful fresco on the ceiling and lovely architecture. The people next to me complained about their seats and left and two girls jumped on them, and we bonded over what good seats they really were, they seemed like fun people. In a shameless ploy to expand my readership I gave one of them the URL for this journal. Hey, if you’re reading this, drop a line my way, send a message and tell me what you think.

So, Toad (I feel like a person that was into them would shorten the name to Toad.) rounds off their set nicely by playing their two hits which I don’t know the name of but I will call them, “Walk on the Ocean” and “All I Want” Those are the songs that get played on the radio.

So the lights went out and Counting Crows take the stage. Lights slowly come up and they start with a very Byrdsy-sounding rendition of the old Scott Mackensie tune, “If You’re Going to San Francisco (Be Sure to Wear Some Flowers in Your Hair)”

Then: Hard Candy
Mr. Jones
Goodnight Elizabeth—a VERY good version with lots of audience sing along parts and a smokin’ guitar jam with Dan, Immy, and Dave all riffing up a storm. Adam added some parts (“I know you think its alright, It is not alright with me, etc”)
Richard Manuel is Dead—Adam sang up close with Dan in his face and then he shoved him away. I love those little comedic parts.

Adam was not talking very much. He came to the front of the stage and started mumbling incoherently at the people in front, then shouted, “Just be quiet!” at them. Then they did Omaha with more audience singing. Then he talked about the people at Project Open Hand and how cool they were. Then Immy said something about one of them being his friends mom, but he said it in a mocking, falsetto voice, so Adam said, “You’re such a dick!” Then he said something else that I can’t remember, and ended by saying, “We’ve established what a dick you are, this is a song about what a dick I am.”

American Girls—again, not my favorite song, but I got over myself and got into it.
Rain King—Oh Susanna part in the middle and lots of audience singing.
A Long December
Big Yellow Taxi
New Frontier
Good Time—I could swear Adam was looking at me here.
Miami—During the middle, Adam went back and lay down under the piano with a towel over his head. I pointed this out to my new buddies, and I swear when he got up he jumped up like he was gonna jump at me.
Round Here—another song in the middle of a song here—something about “That was the river, this is the sea.” If anyone knows what song that is, clue me in if you would.
Then they left.

Encore #1

Time and Time Again
Hanging Around
Then they left again.

Encore #2
This time only Adam and Immy came back and Adam said, “We’ve lost our band! Dave, Dan, and Charlie went off to Vegas, and Matt and Ben think they’re the rhythm section for the Dixie Chicks!” Then they did Blues Run the Game.Then it was almost over. Adam was trying to talk, but losing his voice. The rest of the band returned for Holiday in Spain, and it was over.

The lights came up, and they filed out as silently as they had filed in, Charlie and Ben wistfully trailing behind, then only Ben. I was screaming and gesticulating wildly, and I actually managed to get Ben’s attention from as far away as I was. He acknowledged me by making the same hand gestures (rock-n-roll horns salute). Then I turned it into a Princess Di wave, and plaintively said, “Bye, Ben!” He smiled and nodded. This is Ben’s last week with the band, he will be moving back to Athens, Georgia, where he is from.

My thoughts overall: It would have been SO cool if I could have gotten up front—this was one of their BETTER shows. Although I would not have been able to chill out and take notes for this review—I’ve tried it that way, it doesn’t work for me. And apparently, Adam, my sweetie and the love of my life, was a little under the weather—and they still played an almost two hour show, and at no time did he hit a bum note. That’s professionalism.

Whatever...

So, the night before last was the Counting Crows on Jay Leno. My thoughts: Once again a fine performance of BYT. I notice Charlie is chewing a lot of gum these days--I think somebody quit smoking. Adam got to go to THE COUCH and was quite humorous. I felt like a teenager waiting for the Beatles to come on the Ed Sullivan Show.

In Other News: Yesterday I had a very enjoyable job interview, where I think I killed. If I get this, I feel like this could be the job where I finally make the transition from being a retail prole to something where I can actually use the skills I've been training for. I don't wanna say any more about it till I find out next week.