I aint God.....Yet

These are the ranting and dialogues of a high-strung, neurotic and semi-off-the-wall Historian and Educator. As a Virginian/Arizonan I strive to corrupt America’s youth by making them free thinking heathens and demigods. Here, you will hear the omnipresent, benevolent and omnipotent Viceroy Barbarossa. You will be enlightened or maybe just a little annoyed by his discourses on war, education, religion and the debauchery that is American politics.

Friday, March 31, 2006

From the Fairy King

The Theory of Cloyance:
The Effects of Earth’s Rotation on the Intellectually Challenged
For the past several years I have watched and learned how stupid people,
particularly those who have absolutely no business behind the wheel of a
motorized vehicle, tend to cut corners when turning to the east or the
west. This results in hitting curbs or cars in oncoming traffic lanes,
plus the occasional phonepole and pedestrian.

The reason? These people are trying to compensate for the rotation of
the planet when they turn. The result is a person too stupid to drive
but too ignorant to realize it. This is a naturally occurring effect on
stupid people, which I refer to as Cloyance: the effects of Earth’s
rotation on the intellectually challeneged.

Do you suffer from Cloyance?
The effects of Cloyance are fairly easy to spot. Symptoms include:
Confusion when dealing with animate or inanimate objects.
General stupidity when interacting with people.
Overcompensation when turning east or west, resulting in collision
with inanimate or animate objects (such as curbs) or people.
Sudden loss of gravity, resulting in spontaneously being thrown into
the air for no apparent reason… usually the direct result from an
unexpected impact with an inanimate or animate object or person,
whether real or imagined.
Sudden overcompensation or undercompensation with the rotation of the
Earth… resulting with unexpected impacts with doors, walls and/or china
cabinets (particularly with the toe).
Spontaneous combustion do to natural occurring phenomenon… such as
breathing.
Spontaneous combustion when employing open flames near flammable
objects or materials… such as lighting a cigarette at a gas station
while pumping gas.
Opening a door on a passenger airliner to smoke a cigarette while in
flight… at several thousand feet above sea level.
Choking on pretzels…I mean come on, who the hell chokes on
pretzels???

In some field studies, participants have undercompensated in relation to
the Earth’s rotation and had to hold on the objects such as flagpoles
and cars to keep from being violently thrown into walls and other
inanimate or animate objects. In a lot of field studies, most
participants have been unable to form a single intelligent or coherent
thought.

Through careful analysis of this naturally occurring affect I have come
to the conclusion that all stupid people must die. Otherwise, we will
continue to experience stupid people driving on the wrong side of the
road, smashing into our homes, generally being morons (both in public
and in private), and with willfully choosing to become a republican or
a democrat.

Lobby your congressman today to put an end to stupid people.
Do your part in helping to make a brighter, more intelligent future for
our country and our world.

Wednesday, March 29, 2006

Truth not Lies!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

BS Protection

Bill Moyer, 73, wears a "Bullsh*t Protector" flap over his ear while President George W. Bush addresses the Veterans of Foreign Wars.

Friday, March 03, 2006

- Sacred Ground -

By: Starhawk

When I was eight years old, the librarian at my elementary school handed me "The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe." The book took me into a magic world, where animals talked and nature was shimmering with enchantment. I devoured the book and avidly read the rest of the series, over and over again. Narnia was my comfort when I was sick and my escape when life was boring and dreary.
The books made me aware that something was lacking in my daily routine of school and Hebrew school, of TV cartoons on Saturday mornings and games of handball in the apartment garage. I longed to step into another world, one that would be wilder, more fluid, and more infused with wonder than the decidedly unmagical San Fernando valley where I lived.

That longing began my own spiritual search. I had a strong Jewish upbringing, and many years of Jewish education. I read Bible stories in the original Hebrew, and learned the wisdom of my ancestors encoded in the Talmud. But there was a different kind of Mystery I sensed in the Narnia books, something that was less about study and prayer and more entwined with nature and wildness, freedom and courage.

I know "The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe" is seen as a Christian story, and certainly C.S. Lewis meant it that way. Sometime in my ninth or 10th reading of the book, I suddenly caught the echoes of Jesus’ story in Aslan’s sacrifice. Being Jewish, I was probably slow to grasp this, as the whole story of the crucifixion was alien territory to me. I was dismayed, and immediately felt guilty. Would Narnia have to go into the category of attractive but forbidden Christian things, like the beautiful carols I didn’t sing at school, or the Christmas trees I secretly desired? My mother would never have forbidden me to read the books any more than she would have stopped me from helping a friend to decorate a Christmas tree. It was my own sense of exclusion—that if the essence of this secret world was Christian, it could no longer be my secret world.

No, I swiftly decided; the Christian imagery was only one part of the book, after all, and subtle enough that possibly no one but I had made the connection. I could ignore it and continue loving the books and slipping between their covers into Narnia.

Grasping the book’s underlying symbolism didn’t make me a Christian. Perhaps it made me a writer: It was my first realization of the multiple layers of meaning that literature can convey. And "The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe" conveys more than Lewis may have intended.

Edmund is a child, who betrays his family out of just those childish impulses that we’ve all felt at some time: resentment, spite, the urge to get back at an older brother. He gives in to the worst side of his nature, with dreadful consequences that require a huge sacrifice to redeem.

Aslan chastens, forgives and protects him, as adults do for children. Like the God of my own upbringing, he functions as a protective father. And like Christ--but also like all the dying and reviving Gods of nature--he is resurrected.

But Lewis is a mystic, and Aslan is a deity who bursts out of the confines of any dogma. His sensibility is as Pagan as his theology is Christian. The book is steeped in the imagery of nature, and while the Christian mythology is covert, the Greek mythology is front and center, with fauns, naiads, dryads, and centaurs playing starring roles. God is a great lion you can romp with--what a powerful image of deity-in-nature!

What I miss most in Lewis’ books, now, is some powerful, positive woman figure. J.R.R. Tolkien gives us Galadriel, Arwen, and Eowyn who chafes against the restrictions of her gender. But for Lewis, positive visions of female power are limited to little girls and mothers.

And yet the White Witch is also, ironically, an icon of the White Goddess, the ancient, pre-Christian Goddess of Old Europe, in her death aspect. She is evil, but she is also powerful. And somehow, as a young girl reading these stories, I took away some hint that it is possible for a woman to be something radically different from a mom, a social worker, a teacher, a nurse, or any of the role models around me.

And it is Lucy, a young girl, who opens the door to Narnia and leads the others in, who holds to her own truth against opposition and betrayal. Although her brothers fight the physical battles, Lucy fights a moral battle with her own family, staunchly defending the truth of her experience in the face of their united disbelief, and Edmund’s outright lies.

I can look back from an adult perspective, now, and see all the ways in which Lewis’ vision was constricted by the attitudes of his time, his fear of women’s power, his unquestioned assumption that people of his own race and class were the only ones who really matter.

But what stays with me are the deeper lessons in the books, the values that still, today, transcend denominations and offer a needed antidote to a world of reality TV shows, cutthroat businesses, and attack-dog politics. The books teach us that courage, friendship, and loyalty are good, and sneaking, lying, sniveling, and betrayal are bad. That people need to take care of each other, stand with each other, and look out for those who are younger or weaker. That sacrifice is sometimes necessary to save what we love.

That book the librarian handed me, so long ago, set me on my own spiritual journey. Whenever I caught a whiff of Narnia, of a world behind the world, more fluid and magical than this, I pursued it. I read fantasy, mythology, history, anthropology. I went out into nature, listened to the wind in the trees and the waves on the shore. And ultimately, I found my way to the Goddess, the great cycle of birth, growth, death, and regeneration that moves through nature and human culture. For me, Aslan is one of her names.

Now, of course, I know that that magical world exists, right here. Animals do talk: All it takes is the will to listen and the ears to hear. All of life is constantly communicating, and magic is simply the training of the mind to be open to the conversation going on all around us. Nature does shimmer with enchantment, and her powerful but fragile life does require all of our courage and loyalty, and sometimes great sacrifice, to protect.

I’m looking forward to the movie. I hope it does justice to the book. And I hope it introduces a new generation of children to enchantment, and to those values of caring, courage, loyalty and truth that are necessary to preserve a world where true magic can flourish.