Ask a few questions here and there, but do it casually.
The Politics of Daily Life
by Lydia Eccles
Think of your direct bodily experience of life.
No one can lie to you about that.
Do you hear insect sound of drones clickering keyboards
in a fluorescent hive of fabric-padded cubicles?
How many hours a day do you spend in front of a TV screen?
A computer screen? An automobile screen? All three screens
combined? Is software your supervisor?
And how many hours a day do you sleep?
How are you affected by sound?
How are you affected by light?
How are you affected by warmth and touch?
How are you affected by music?
Is a good record better than live music raw?
Is it simply sound you want? Or shared ritual magic?
How many of your rituals come at you through a glass, vicariously?
What are you being screened from?
Does it bother you if the windows don't open,
and even your air is "conditioned"?
How about your degree and variety of body movement?
How do you feel in situations of enforced passivity?
How are you affected by a non-stop assault of symbolic
communication, audio, robotic voices video, print, billboard,
as you stumble through the forest of signs?
What are they urging upon you?
Do you need contemplation? Do you remember it?
Thinking from inside, rather than reacting to stimuli?
Is it hard to look away?
Is looking in the very thing that cannot be permitted?
How are you affected by being in crowds?
How much bodily space do you need?
Do you find yourself blocking
your empathetic responses to other humans?
Do you find yourself committing acts of symbolic violence?
How are you affected by the size of the room you're in?
By living in two and three dimensional grids?
And by the visual space?
Do you need to see the sky? Water?
Foliage? Animals? Glinting, glimmering, moving?
(Is that why you have a pet, an aquarium, and fernplants?)
Or is video your glinting, glimmering, moving?
Who prepares your meals? Do you eat standing up?
Do you trust what you're eating?
How are you affected by standardized time,
designed solely to synchronize your movements with those of
millions of others?
How long do you ever go without knowing
what time it is?
Who or what controls your minutes and hours?
The minutes and hours that add up to your life?
How are you affected by being moved around
without control, in elevators, subways, escalators, conveyor belts?
How are you affected by waiting?
Waiting in line, waiting in traffic, waiting to pee, waiting...learning
to discipline and punish your spontaneous urges?
How are you affected by being immobilized and scheduled
rather than wandering and roaming freely and spontaneously?
Scavenging? (Shoplifting?)
Can you use your hands creatively,
building making touching a variety of materials?
How are you affected by holding in your desires?
By sexual repression, by the delay or denial of pleasure,
starting in childhood, along with suppression of everything in you that
evidences your wild nature, your animal life?
Is pleasure dangerous? Is danger joy?
What are we deprived of by labor-saving devices?
And thought-saving devices?
How are you affected by the efficiency requirement that puts the
end product ahead of the process, that values only the future
and never the moment, the present moment that gets shorter
and shorter, as we try to speed to the future endpoint?
Are you saving time?
Are you lonely in a way that language can't allay
or even express?
Do you sometimes feel yourself ready to
LOSE CONTROL?
from www.churchofeuthanasia.com
A scary site but has some worthwhile shit on it..
. . . Don't miss out on a good thing because it isn't packaged the way that you expect.
Expect the unexpected....
And here are some beauty quotes from the many seasons of Buffy The Vampire Slayer
Spike aka William the Bloody: The last time I looked in on you two, you were fighting to the death. Now you're back making googly eyes at each other like nothing happened. Makes me want to heave.
Buffy Summers: I don't know what you're talking about.
Spike: Oh yeah, you're just friends.
Angel aka Angeles: That's right.
Spike: You're not friends. You'll never be friends. You'll be in love 'til it kills you both. You'll fight, and you'll shag, and you'll hate each other 'til it makes you quiver, but you'll never be friends. Real love isn't brains, children. It's blood. It's blood screaming inside you to work its will. I may be love's bitch, but at least I'm man enough to admit it.
Xander Harris: I don't get this. The candy is supposed to make you feel all immature and stuff,
but I've had a ton and I don't feel any diff-- nevermind.
Spike: If every vampire who said he was at the Crucifixion was actually there
it would've been like Woodstock. I was at Woodstock. I fed off a flower person
and I spent six hours watching my hand move.
Buffy: Does it ever get easy?
Rupert Giles: You mean life?
Buffy: Yeah, does it ever get easy?
Giles: What do you want me to say?
Buffy: Lie to me.
Giles: Yes. It's terribly simple. The good guys are always stalwart and true.
The bad guys are easily distinguished by their pointy horns or black hats,
and we always defeat them and save the day.
No one ever dies... and everyone lives happily ever after.
Buffy: Liar.
Xander: Giles lived for school. He's still bitter there were only twelve grades.
Buffy: He probably sat in math class thinking, "There should be more math! This could be mathier."
Spike: What's this? Sittin' around watching the telly while there's evil still afoot? It's not very industrious of you. I say we go out there and kick a little demon ass! What, can't go without your Buffy, is that it? Let's find her! She is the chosen one, after all. Come on! Vampires! Grrr! Nasty! Let's annihilate them, for justice, and for... the safety of puppies... and Christmas, right? Let's fight that evil! Let's kill something! Oh, come on!
Giles: I have a friend who's coming to town, and I'd like us to be alone.
Anya Emerson: Oh, you mean an orgasm friend?
Giles: Yes, that's exactly the most appalling thing you could have said.
[After finding Spike outside her house.]
Buffy: What are you doing here, Spike? Five words or less!
Spike: [counting on fingers] Out... for... a... walk... bitch.
The 17th Rambling
I just turned 17. And I feel old. Do you ever get the feeling of being really really alive? You think that if you just close your eyes you�ll be able to hear your own heart beating, your blood flowing through your little veins, and if you open your eyes, you will see your exhaled breath floating away from you. And it scares you. As cool as it is you can�t help thinking about the flip-side, the acute fear of death. Of how mortal and fragile we are. Which gets you thinking; If I were to die today, what would be one thing I wanted to do? What would I be sad about doing? It�s hard to think about and I�m sorry if I�m upsetting or depressing you. I just want you to think about all the stupid things like I do. Like how weird it is that when you cry really hard sometimes it sounds like your laughing. Or how about the fact that we�re all puppets sometimes. Living out our lives according to our parents, or teachers or bosses or whoever else stops you from being yourself. Does death matter to a soul like this? A soul that�s just existing? Do these souls care about what happens to the body? Do they just have faith that this is how it is supposed to be? �When
you�ve come to the end of the light that you know and need to step into the darkness of the unknown, faith is knowing that one of two things will happen. There will either be something solid to stand on, or you will be taught how to fly.� I like that quote. Do you have to be content to be happy? One of the biggest things I�ve thought about is this: Do you have to live longer than 16 years to know what love is? Is life always going to be as complicated as it is now? I hope not. I want it to be easier. But I�ll never call it easy. Remember to really think about something before you label it with a single word. That
goes for pretty much anything. Everyone wants to be remembered by somebody. The
problem is I have a terrible memory. But I�ll remember you, If you remember me too.
FAIRY TALE FOR WOMEN OF THE 21st CENTURY
Once upon a time,
in a land far away,
a beautiful, independent,
self-assured princess
happened upon a frog as she sat,
contemplating ecological issues
on the shores of an unpolluted pond
in a verdant meadow near her castle.
The frog hopped into the princess' lap
and said: Elegant Lady,
I was once a handsome prince,
until an evil witch cast a spell upon me.
One kiss from you, however,
and I will turn back
into the dapper, young prince that I am
and then, my sweet, we can marry
and setup housekeeping in your castle
with my mother,
where you can prepare my meals,
clean my clothes, bear my children,
and forever
feel grateful and happy doing so.
That night,
as the princess dined sumptuously
on a repast of lightly sauteed frog legs
seasoned in a white wine
and onion cream sauce,
she chuckled and thought to herself:
I don't fucking think so.
"We do not stop playing because we are old; we grow old because we
stop playing. There are only four secrets to staying young, being
happy, and achieving success. You have to laugh and find humor
everyday. You've got to have a dream. When you lose your dreams, you
die. We have so many people walking around who are dead and don't
even know it! There is a huge difference between growing older and
growing up. If you are nineteen years old and lie in bed for one
full year and don't do one productive thing, you will turn twenty
years old. If I am eighty-seven years old and stay in bed for a year
and never do anything I will turn eighty-eight. Anybody can grow
older. That doesn't take any talent or ability. The idea is to grow
up by always finding the opportunity in change."
Anagrams for my full name: The Ebb Energy, Beg Rye Then Be, Get Herb Be Yen, Be Beth Energy, Erg Hey Be Bent, Gent Be Bye Her, Be By The Green, Hereby Beg Ten, Beg Herb Teeny, Get Ye Herb Ben, He Bet By Genre.
and for Dark Angel: A Grand Elk, Ranked Gal, Edgar Klan, Darken Gal, Grad Ankle, Drag Ankle
.. ooh the pointless and stupid things i do ....
