HIGH SCHOOL Hot SHOT

Anne over at The Gods Are Bored has a sad, Daddy-War-God tale to tell (aren’t they all). This one’s about her daughter The Heir and the same high-school hot shot we all went to high school with:

The Heir goes to a posh Blue Ribbon School where you're dirt if you're not smart and good at sports. The Heir's class is dominated by a golden boy I'll call Adonis. Adonis is a multi-sport phenomenon, an accomplished artist, girls swoon over him (Heir excepted), teachers suck up to him, he's in the National Honor Society ... and he made a film for the festival [which the Heir also entered, with her film "Static Bliss"].



Festival hour arrives. Five students are present to view "Static Bliss." But when word gets out that Adonis's film is about to air, a couple dozen "populars" file in to watch the Adonis offering. Which, of course to these adult eyes writing this entry, was nothing more than a self-indulgent, glitzy techno-snobbery, poorly filmed and pretentious.



It didn't help that the asshole teacher introduced Adonis's offering by saying, "Now, here's the one we've all been waiting for. It has proven to be very popular."



So Heir and I are sitting there watching this thing, and the substitute teacher in me starts deconstructing it. How did Adonis get free rein in the school to manipulate empty corridor lights and film in parts of the school that are off limits to students? When The Heir left a textbook at school one weekend the janitors wouldn't even let her in the door to go to her locker. Slurp slurp slurp! Someone's sucking up to Adonis big-time.



Didn't you go to school with one of these perfect pricks?



Anyway, Adonis's film just crushed the poor Heir flat. When it was over, she left the room, rushed out of the school, dashed her VHS with "Static Bliss" on the ground, and tore into the park. I let her go. Sometimes we just need to walk off our anger, don'tcha know?



When I got home myself, though, she was sitting in the living room weeping. Mr. Johnson and I just couldn't get her calmed. It sure didn't help that she was preaching to the choir when she said that no matter how hard some people work on perfecting their visions, their efforts go completely unappreciated by the boobs and morons who populate the globe.

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Babies, heres’ the good news: We don’t hafta put up with Adonises spilling their goo all over us and our high schools. Adonises are a product of the Daddy-War-God machine, in which everybody’s ranked, and competition smells up the halls like dead fish moldering for many moons or more. When we finally switch from Daddy-War God back to the Great Mother, we’ll be free of the Adonises of the world – I promise.



Here’s why: Healthy mothers love us unconditionally. (It’s probably biological, so they don’t get a whole lot of credit for it). But anyhoo, if we had Mother as our archetypal role model, we’d all love each other unconditionally too, no strings attached. First, we wouldn’t even have contests that only one can win and everyone else has to go cry their eyes out over, cause they lost.



Second, girls and boys would be equal (as they are in the eyes of all healthy moms). Third, all kids’d be equal -- rich or poor, plug-ugly or knock-down gorgeous, in mum’s eyes we’re all knock-out fab.



“Smart and good at sports” won’t make mom love us
more than “dumb with two left feet.”


So let’s hear it for dumping the War Gods and bringing back the Unconditional-Love Goddess!

TEETH-Rattling TERRIFIED

As many of you know, most older feminists seem teeth-rattling terrified of the Great Mother Goddess. Ms Rosemary Radford Ruether is no exception. Below is a peek at part of a pack-it-to-‘em review of her latest book, Goddesses and the Divine Feminine*. At the way-bottom of the post is a very rough reminder of when all the various "Ages" happened (Neolithic, etc.).

“Ruether totally denies the Goddess of the relatively peaceful and healthy Neolithic and devotes almost her entire book to those goddesses that haunted the hellish Bronze and subsequent ages, all of which have been defined by war, conquest, subjugation, social ranking and poverty - right up to the present day.

“Ruether doesn't seem to want to get to the truth in this book….. A big part of her agenda: We hafta hide the Neolithic Goddess because this goddess will hurt women. She says the Neolithic goddess 'duplicates what I suspect is one of the key roots of the need of males to dominate females -- namely, it identifies women predominantly as the representatives of the "natural." If women, and women alone, personify the forces of nature in the cycles of birth and death, either they need to be dominated by men in order to control these forces of nature, or they are the primary gender that will somehow "save" us from the destructive effects of millennia of male domination of nature' (pp. 39-40).

“…There's no reason to believe that a strong Neolithic goddess meant women and only women personified nature, or that there were no male gods anywhere in the time/culture period. Does Ruether have a time machine? Did she go back and check?

“I'm afraid Ruether's speaking old-speak. Younger women today know that just because women give birth doesn't mean men see them as mere bodies walking around with no heads, abilities, capabilities, or important place in the larger world.”

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A VERY VERY ROUGH IDEA OF WHEN ALL THE ‘AGES’ HAPPENED

Paleolithic Age: roughly, before 10,000 BC
Neolithic Age: roughly 10,000 – 3,000 BC
Bronze Age: roughly 3000 BC til whenever you began using iron (it’s different in different places)
Iron Age: This has lasted up to the present, but I guess you could say some of us shifted into the Steel Age at points along the way.

I left out a lot of little Ages, like the Calcolithic, Eneolithic, Upper and Lower Palaeolithic, etc. But I'll let you look those up on your own.

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*U. of Cal Press 2006
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thnx to fang for the foto

TIME FOR Burying TIME CAPSULES?

I think we all need to bury time capsules in our back yards. That way, in 6000 years, when the nuclear fallout has finally wafted away, the lone human individual on earth can dig up our messages, read what we wrote, and begin again –- this time with Goddess at the helm. Plus a strong wariness against any War-Gods who roar into town on Harlies.
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thnx to PanamaJack for the foto

FROG IN THE Pot

These days, like the frog in the water pot sitting on the fire, we’re callous to the unthinkable. So another war – Iran this time? – nuclear? – doesn’t faze us. Nor does WWIII with us and the Brits getting slammed to the mat by a tight circle of Chinese (1/5 of humanity), Russians, French and Iranians.

So who gives a fig if WWIII starts next week?

"Operation Bite: April 6 sneak attack by US forces against Iran planned, Russian military sources warn
By Webster G. Tarpley
Online Journal Contributing Writer

"WASHINGTON DC -- The long awaited US military attack on Iran is now on track for the first week of April, specifically for 4 AM on April 6, the Good Friday opening of Easter weekend, writes the well-known Russian journalist Andrei Uglanov…. Uglanov cites Russian military experts close to the Russian General Staff for his account.

"The attack is slated to last for 12 hours, … 4 AM until 4 PM local time. Friday is the Sabbath in Iran. In the course of the attack, code named Operation Bite, about 20 targets are marked for bombing; the list includes uranium enrichment facilities, research centers, and laboratories…."

MORE >>>>>
EVEN MORE >>>>>

So – Planet of the Apes. Who cares. All we can do is what we can do. All I ask is that we arrange things so that when the new human race begins again, they’re aware of the deadly dangers of even having lunch with any War Gods who ride into town.

As might be obvious, I’m feeling a touch cynical this morning. But if ya have any ideas ‘bout what to do here, please. Fill me in.
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Thnx to duff for pointing me to the first article
& thnx to geotrac for the foto

GODDESS Utopia

Two recent emails to my new Goddess Group (which is flowing right along – next week we’ll gather for the fifth month in a row):

“For years, now, a virtual war has been raging over the issue of ancient matriarchy. The warriors: theologians, archaeologists, feminists and prehistorians, primarily. I’ve thought about this less in terms of matriarchy than utopianism. When societies revolved around female deity, they tended to be more peaceful, less socially stratified and more democratic. And 'social stratification' covers a whole multitude of sins -- from sexism, racism and ageism to classism, slavery, poverty and so forth.”

“Goddess devotees have been tricked into believing a Goddess utopia didn’t exist. Many powerful forces want us to believe it didn’t. The fact is, however, much of the evidence suggests it did.”
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thnx to Young and flickr for the foto

TIME TO Party ON DOWN?

Duff thinks it's time we formed a Goddess Party (no, not the kind with Champaign and party favors -- the kind that boxes the Reps and the Dems about the ears).

Whaddya think? Is it time yet?
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thnx to awesome joolie for the foto

3,300 GODDESSES AND Counting

Way-oh to all you Collectors of Goddess Names out there. Here’s a sobering factoid for ya:

“In 1914, Anton Deimel, the compiler of the first Sumerian dictionary, listed 3,300 names of Mesopotamian divinities, and the number known has grown with each passing decade” (Westenholz, Joan, “Goddesses of the Ancient Near East,” in Goodison and Morris, Ancient Goddesses: The Myths and the Evidence, 1998, p. 67).

And this is just in Mesopotamia 'round about 3000-1000 BC! You know, that little spit of land between the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers in Iraq?

As I’m sure most of you know, the problem is, every town, village and city in the ancient world was the proud possessor of its own tidy little pantheon of goddesses and gods. And of course without cell phones or the internet, who knew who had which or what, and so who could trade or compare?
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thnx to doctian for the foto

BUSH TO CONGRESS: Drop DEAD

CONFUSED about why everyone's biting their nails re: Bush canning eight U.S. attorneys? Put baldly, it's this: Bush has sliced off another giant step toward crushing the presidency and plopping a dictatorship in its place. Bush breaks the law in ways that wound this country badly, and then axes the part of the government that could jail him for it -- like our now-defunct eight U.S. attorneys.

After weeks of administration lies about the "Pearl Harbor Day Massacre" of eight U.S. Attorneys, the Senate and House Judiciary Committees are preparing to subpoena Alberto Gonzales, Harriet Miers, and Karl Rove.

But George Bush went on TV to declare he will "oppose any attempts to subpoena White House officials." Why? Obviously because Bush, Gonzales, Miers, and Rove conspired to fire U.S. attorneys who were prosecuting Republican corruption.

That's obstruction of justice - grounds not only for impeachment but also prosecution.

Bush promised to fight any subpoenas in the courts if he has to. Of course we know the Republican-controlled Supreme Court will take Bush's side, just as it did in 2000 when it threw out 175,000 never-counted Florida votes to steal the Presidency for him.

Ultimately Congress has just one tool to force Bush and Cheney to respect the Constitution: Impeachment and Removal.
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From democrats.com

Unfortunately, I noticed last night that a certain TV newscaster (i.e., one Lou Dobbs) was poking fun of Congress for spending time on this "inconsequential" issue. Lou, sweetheart, who's buttering your bread these days. Hmmmm?
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thnx to dorsia for the foto

VERNAL EQUINOX Woes

Ever wish you could skip the family's Vernal Equinox celebration -- just for one year? If so, you'll appreciate the story of poor Jeff Birch:

Area Pagan Dreading Big Family Vernal Equinox
Celebration

MEDFORD, OR—Despite evidence that the planets are aligned in his favor, local pagan Jeff Birch, 27, said Monday that he would "rather have a peaceful weekend at home" than attend his family's Vernal Equinox celebration on March 21.

"I realize it's supposed to be a festive time of conception and new growth in the womb of Mother Earth and all," Birch said. "But I just know that within an hour of arriving, things will get so bad that I'll be reverting to my 12-year-old self, hiding in the rec room downstairs, wearing my Iroquois false face mask and fingering my runes for comfort. It's not worth it."

SNIP

Most pagans look forward to marking the Vernal Equinox, when the hours of sunlight equal the hours of darkness. Yet for some, like Birch, this sacred springtime celebration of balance and harmony means contending with family infighting and undue stress.

"Talking to Mom the other day, it was the same old manipulative 'You're coming home, right?'" said Birch, referring to a recent phone conversation with his mother, Freyja Birch. "If I hesitate for even a second, she piles on the guilt — like how this may be the last year Nana Hippolyta can perform the garden fertility ritual, or that without my masculine energy, the yin-and-yang balance will be thrown off—until I finally give in."

"But I don't want to have to use up my vacation time and travel almost 300 miles to Portland just to listen to Grandma Moon Odin Rhiannon complain during the sunrise ritual that Mom's not putting enough rose petals in the cauldron or is letting the bonfire get too low," Birch continued.

SNIP

Besides the usual maiden-mother-crone conflicts, the strained relationship between Birch's sister, Pythia, who recently converted to Wicca, and his father, a devout Dionysian, is another source of tension, according to Birch. "Last year, Pythia brought her covenmate home, and Dad's still having a hard time with it," Birch said.

SNIP

Pythia isn't the first family member to stray from the fold. Fifteen years ago, Birch's uncle Jack married a Presbyterian and has raised two children in the faith. While he is still included in family celebrations, his eccentric monotheism is the source of much awkwardness, Birch said.

SNIP

While he treasures happy memories of Vernal Equinoxes from his childhood, Birch said he comes away from today's holidays a few pounds heavier from the rich holiday food, several hundred dollars in debt from buying gifts "that will probably just get returned or regifted at Samhain anyway...."

Much thnx to The Onion for the news on the Birches.

CROSS-Wired IN THE WOMB?

"The president of the leading Southern Baptist seminary has incurred sharp attacks from both the left and right by suggesting that a biological basis for homosexuality may be proven, and that prenatal treatment to reverse gay orientation would be biblically justified."

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Here’s Cousin Doris' 2c worth: “My preacher preaches black people are pitiful. I think we orter peek into the womb afore baby’s born to make sure baby’s not black. If alas and alack baby’s black, I say make those dudes switch that baby to white afore it’s ever ‘lowed to see the lighta day!”

(For those of you come lately to this blog, plug "Cousin Doris" into the search box below for more of her gems of wisdom).
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thnx to mmagallan for the foto

GODDESS WOMAN PAR Excellence

Ayaan Hirsi Ali is untrammeled and unrepentant: "I am supposed to apologize for saying the prophet [Muhammed] is a pervert and a tyrant," she declares. "But that is apologizing for the truth."

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Ayaan Hirsi Ali, you are a heroine. We salute you.

VALERIE TO Squeal ON THE MADMAN

If you can grab a tv this morning at 10, do it. History is being made, and you’ll want to see it. Valerie Plame is going to testify in front of Congress.

Remember Valerie? The CIA agent who, along with her hubby, refused to kowtow to Bushlet? So Bushlet exposed her, putting her life on the line?

Today at 10 am on C-Span, the Sweet ol’ Dems are going to seat her in front of Congress and let her tell her story.

Babies, a mad man’s running our country, and no one will stand up to him ‘cause they’re shaking-in-their-boots terrified. Everyone sayin’ “Whooo-ee! I ain’t touchin’ that boy! Look what he done did to Ms. Plame!”

TIME TO Exit ALL CLOSETS

Whoooo-eee, I say!

Monday, California Representative Pete Stark announced that he "does not believe in a supreme being, making the Fremont Democrat the first member of Congress — and the highest-ranking elected official in the U.S. — to publicly acknowledge not believing in God."

"Fred Edwords, a spokesman for the [American Humanist Association], said non-theistic Americans often faced discrimination for their views."

MORE>>>>

Huzzah! Huzzah! I say this calls for national celebration! Break out the champaign and the wizza-ma-doos, friends and relatives! Let's party!!

Americans brave enough to stand up and say "Poo!" to the War Gods may finally be abandoning their closets. Monday, March 12, 2007, babies -- mark it in your minds. I suggest it's a date that will spruce up our history books far into the future.

And hats off to Rep. Stark! Good job, dude!
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Thnx to jfg for the foto

JONATHAN THE Impaler SHARKEY IN ‘08?

Goddess bless the U.S. Secret Service! What busy little bees they are. Turning over every stone and toadstool for threats to Baby Bushlet.

Latest threat: candidate for U.S. Presidency in ’08, Jonathon 'The Impaler' Sharkey from NJ. Mr. Sharkey promises to run on a platform that includes impaling Bushlet if and when he (Mr. S.) is elected.

Mr. Sharkey had only one complaint about the Secret Service: “They never even asked to see my impaling stick!” Mr. S. is running on the ticket of the Vampyres, Witches and Pagans party. Backing him all the way is his lovely wife, Spree.

For MORE on Mr. Sharkey's campaign go HERE or HERE.

MY QUESTION: Mr. Sharkey is obviously patterning himself after the famous Medieval clod Vlad the Impaler. But was Vlad a pagan -- or a Christian? Should Mr. S. be allowed to run as a candidate in a party of Witches and Pagans? Shouldn't we insist he switch to the "Christian Vampyre & Impaler Party"?
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thnx to scarry for the pic

WHAT CHANNEL DO I Turn TO?

Dear Bunches of Beautiful Blog Readers,

What TV channel do you flip to, to get the daily news about the fighting in Iraq? About anti-war protesters? About how our returning soldiers are cracking up? About our hordes of homeless dudes, battered women, and runaway teens? About New Orleans?

Like, uh, I wanna be able to turn on some channel whenever and get news about not some, but all of my people. Not just the ones Big Bro wants me to see, but the ones who show how we might be blowing apart at the seams. I know that channel's out there somewhere, 'cause everyone's always talking about 'the liberal media.'

Love always,
Athana
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thnx to mintchocice for the foto

Z Budapest: New Website

Z Budapest, a beloved early leader in the Goddess Movement, has revamped her website and begun a new blog. Take a stroll on over and check it out.

"Come hither Boomer Women, Goddesses of our times, you with a bit of life's mileage on your soul! Come, Maidens with rosy cheeks and tumbling curls! Come Crones and Wisewomen, you who guard the secrets of life! Come Mothers and Daughters! Come Tough Girls and Tomboys! Come Vixens and Vamps! Global Women: Chinese, Latina, Japanese, German, Dutch, Portuguese, come women of the world! Come if you feel empty inside, there is soul food for you here. Come in all sizes: fat and skinny; in all kinds of magical traditions: Wiccans, Witches, Bitches, Middle aged she-fairies, Madonna worshippers, Virgin lovers, there are sympathetic hearts for you here."

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BABY BUSH Bombs IN GUATEMALA

Mayas Will Ritually Cleanse Site After Bush's Guatemala Visit ~ BBC News, UK -"We will burn incense, place flowers and water in the area where Mr Bush has walked to clean out the bad energy." MORE>>>>
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Thnx to HotGoddess for this tidbit of religious news

ANNE BARING'S WEBSITE

I just discovered Anne Baring's website. Here's a tidbit from it:

"But the predominant mythic image of the age - which could be characterized as 'the god without the goddess' - continues to support the very oppositional and mechanistic paradigm that the latest scientific discoveries are refuting.... It may seem a lot to claim that mythic images are so important to all areas of human experience, but the discoveries of Depth Psychology have shown how radically we are influenced and motivated by impulses below the threshold of consciousness...."

Anne, along with Jules Cashford, wrote The Myth of the Goddess: Evolution of an Image , a fine resource offering an historical, scholarly look at what's known about Goddess.

Return OF THE GODDESS AKA HANLEY DENNING

I’m feeling haunted. Last night the Merrill Auditorium in Portland, Maine, was packed, all 1900 seats filled. When I got there an hour early, they were already turning people away.

What was the attraction? An unlikely combo: A hell-hole in a pit in Guatemala City filled with mountains of rotting, stomach-wrenching garbage; tiny tots picking food from this garbage; a 36-year-old Maine woman named Hanley Denning who, in 1999, sold all her possessions to open a rescue center for the kids; an Academy-Award nominated film about all this; and, finally, the sudden mind-wailing death of Hanley in a car crash in January.

The life of the “Angel of the Dump” snuffed out in an instant by a truck that lost its brakes and slammed in to her car.

Here’s what’s eerie: before her death, Hanley went to the budget director of Safe Passage (her organization) and said, “If anything should happen to me, I want Safe Passage to keep on going. Will you make sure it does?”

To start Safe Passage Hanley sold her computer and her car for $5000. With this she kept the organization going for a year. Then she bagan drawing in volunteers and money like the sun draws worshippers. Now the SP annual budget is 1.6 million. Last night at the end of the program I talked to one of Hanley’s volunteers, a fifty-something guy. “How’d she inspire people?” I asked.

“She’d just say, ‘Do you think you could do that?’ And I’d think to myself, ‘For you, Hanley – anything!’”

The Dump is a deep, open sore in the middle of Guatemala City. It’s so big it’s divided into zones, and it’s filled with thousands of tons of garbage riding in on trucks every day from all over the country. Sometimes kids are buried in the garbage and never found again – not even their bodies or clothing. The methane is so bad that cancer’s rampant among dump residents. A few years ago the entire dump caught fire and burned for days.

But before this, the granddaughter of Ub Iwerks, one of the two men other than Walt Disney who started the Disney Corp., went down to Guatemala to make a film about the gorgeous Guatemala countryside. Once there, however, Leslie Iwerks, like Hanley Denning, got lured to the dump. And like Hanley, once she'd seen it, she couldn't leave. She knew she had to make her film about the people trapped there. Leslie's Academy-Award-nominated film debuted last night in Merrill Auditorium.

I got to talk to Leslie afterwards, too. I asked her if she'd ever gotten used to the stench of the dump while down in it filming. She said she never quite did entirely.

It’s astounding to think that one 36-year-old woman living right around the corner from me in Yarmouth, Maine, could do what Hanley Denning did. The church she borrowed to work and live in was next to the dump and infested with roaches, flies, and other vermin, all of which Hanley had to clean up herself. And I’ve heard through the grapevine that at first the dump people -- who included drug addicts and criminals -- didn’t accept her. They smeared feces all over the walls of her church.

I suspect Hanley was The Goddess come just long enough to clean up one of the worst sores on the surface of Her earth. And after She got things going, it was time to head for home again.

Go HERE to read more about the event last night. Go HERE for more about Hanley Denning. Go HERE for more on Safe Passage. HERE is the Safe Passage website.

INTERNATIONAL GODDESS FESTIVAL

Another Goddess gathering to add to our list:

The International Festival of Goddesses will be held on the 21st - 22nd April at Brighton Racecourse in the UK.

LET'S Kiss AND MAKE UP

If we'd let Her, the international Mother Goddess could pacify and unify our entire world.

Every country in the world is blessed with its own ancient Mother Goddess to return to. Before being forced underground by the bogus War Gods, She was our natural guiding light

The Great Mother Goddess shivers at the idea of war, social snobbery, self-inflicted wounds, and/or a lack of a sense of humor. She adores us the way a healthy mother adores her children: with no strings attached. You don't have to kill your son Isaac to win Her love.

When we centered ourselves around Her, we had no wars. We were all freedom-loving, non-violent, generous, playful, creative risk-takers. She teaches us to love each other with stars in our eyes -- just the way She loves us.

In some ways the international Great Mother Goddess is like the virgin Mary. But unlike Mary, there's no War God looming behind Her holding rabbit ears up behind Her head. Our Mother don't 'low no wars between Her kiddies; there's no War God pushing Her around!

Also unlike Mary, our Mother Goddess is full of playfulness. She loves a good joke and some clowning around here and there. And to Her, sensuality is a sacrament -- Her gift to us. She urges us to enjoy all our senses.

So people, what is our problem?!? Why are we carrying snooty-snob, bully-boy, me-first, uptight godlets like Jehovah, Allah, Yahweh and Vishnu around on our backs when we could be enjoying sensuality, unconditional love and permanent international peace by booting these bully boys and returning to our true guiding light, the International Great Mother? Jeesh!
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Thnx to irinsmith for the foto

Holy DRINKING WATER FOR THE TROOPS

Who else but the Land of the Military-Industrial-Christ Complex would come up with ...

Ta Da!

Holy Drinking Water for the Troops! However: Let this be a ...

"Warning to sinners: If you are a sinner or evil in nature, this product may cause burning, intense heat, sweating, skin irritations, rashes, itchiness, vomiting, bloodshot and watery eyes, pale skin color, and oral irritation."

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Thanks to Echidne of the Snakes for this, who got it from JR on Eschaton

ANYONE ELSE Heard THIS?

Before he was even elected Bush told his biographer that he wanted to be President and start a war with Iraq -- ‘cause that would cement his place in history. He also said if he became President he would scrap the entire US government – except for the military.

Anyone have a source for this?

R U Hardwired for God?

Anthropologists and evolutionary biologists say you are. Author-anthropologist Scott Atran is fond of performing the following experiment in his classroom:

“... He presents students with a wooden box that he pretends is an African relic. 'If you have negative sentiments toward religion,' he tells them, 'the box will destroy whatever you put inside it.' Many of his students say they doubt the existence of God, but in this demonstration they act as if they believe in something. Put your pencil into the magic box, he tells them, and the nonbelievers do so blithely. Put in your driver’s license, he says, and most do, but only after significant hesitation. And when he tells them to put in their hands, few will.

“If they don’t believe in God, what exactly are they afraid of?”

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As we're fond of saying here, it’s not a matter of choosing to believe. It’s a matter of choosing to believe in a violent, bully-wimp, snooty-snob war god like Jehovah, Allah, Yahweh or Vishnu -- or in an everyone’s-equal, unconditionally loving, courageous, risk-taking Mother Goddess who will heal our world.

The choice is ours. What kind of world do you want?
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Thnx to Victor for the foto

Smashing THINGS

Kudos to anyone who can put a finger on something The Bushlet has done right since taking office in 2000.

Better, kudos to anyone who can find something he's not smashed. Baby is well below par re: doing anything right. But is there anything that was working the day he took office, that is still working?

Iraq? No. U.S. international relations? No. New Orleans? No. The U.S. Constitution? No. Separation of church and state? No. Our VA hospitals? No. The drug trade in Afghanistan? Aha! Yes.

Now here's something Baby can take credit for! The Afghan drug trade had its best year, last year, and we can thank Master Bushie for it, indeed we can!

LESSON: Plug your ears and go "Nanananananana" when a politician tells you what she's going to do once in office. Instead look at what she's already done.

Anyone who looked at Bush's past (from torturing frogs in childhood to being number-one among state guvs for electrocuting people) coulda seen in a trice that he'd wreck the world once he set foot in the White House.
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Thanx to greenpeace.org for the foto

Fairy Tale

Once upon a time, Little Tiny Town lost its mayor in a plane crash. Belinda Bright and Sue Shiny were super excited about running for the vacant mayor's seat.

Billionairess Winona Wiley of Winona's Widget Factory called Sue into a back room : “Sue! I’ll give you a half a bill’ to campaign for mayor. But -- ya hafta promise that after you become mayor you’ll look the other way while Winona's Widget keeps on killing Little Tiny Town’s water and air.” (The Factory's pollution had put Little Tiny Town on the map -- for having the nation's highest cancer rate.)

For the months leading up to the election, Sue’s face is smashed onto the TV screen 24/7. Belinda Bright's funds pay for one ad a week -- on the cartoon channel.

After Sue becomes mayor, she gets a gleam in her eye, “Aha! Now I can do anything I want! I’m gonna smash Winona and her pollution!” She tries. And lo and behold, on a vacation flight to Florida, her plane mysteriously crashes; she dies….

Winona to Melinda Mild: “If you look the other way while we pollute, we’ll give you a half a bill’ to campaign for mayor of Little Tiny Town.”

And so it goes.

THE SOLUTION: (1) The boring, boring [excuse me while I yawn], boring, boring thing called “campaign finance reform.” No one who runs for office should get any more money than anyone else. Even playing field and all that.

(2) The US of A used to have other laws in place to keep the filthy rich from being filthy. "Trust Busting" laws etcetera. We need to bring back those laws.

Unless of course we all want to become slaves to Winona Widget -- which is where we're headed.
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thnx to kjirstin at flickr for the foto

GODDESS TV SERIES Pushing Off

Last night I caught the opening episode of a brand new Goddess TV series! Dudettes and dudes! Whether you’re left or right, this show will rock you! For righties, it’s about battling Big Taxes; for lefties, it’s about battling the rich while they bleed the poor.

Of course we Goddess people know it’s really about the Goddess Mari, or Marian, and Her band of Merry Men, all of whom have learned to be good Mother Men, i.e. egalitarian, democratic, generous, independent, smart, playful, generally non-violent and peaceful, caring courageous risk-takers.

Playing the Goddess is Lucy Griffiths. Playing Robin Hood is Jonas Armstrong. Playing Sir Guy of Gisborne is Richard Armitage. Go HERE for more.

I watched the first episode last night at 9 pm EST, on BBC America, channel 74; it’s good; I think I’m hooked already.
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Thnx to Ariel for the foto

Bring BACK MAMA

Kiddies, the good news is we can save the planet! How? By bringing back Mama Goddess. Evidence is strong that the entire world used to revolve around Her. And when it did, we lived and basked in utopia. Archaeological, historical, linguistic, biochemical and biological evidence all point to this.

When we welcomed the Mother Gods, we were egalitarian, democratic, non-violent, peaceful, generous, independent, smart, rich, playful, creative, sensual risk-takers. Our men were manly-men, our women forceful femme-fatales.

Keeping our male war gods on board isn’t cutting it, people. The war gods just can’t love us as hard as Mama can.
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Thnx to lakepeople for the foto

JESUS' SON JUDAS' Bones

Oh, fun! They’ve found a pile of bones labeled “Jesus” and “Jesus’ son Judas,” and now everyone’s all stewed about whether Jesus had a son.

Except Jesus is just a Fig Newton of everyone’s imagination. Which kinda kills the fun a little.

Jesus did not exist. Well, actually, to be exact, hundreds of Jesuses existed. It was A Thing around the year zero for everyone to go around saying they were sent from god to save the world.

“The Jesus who was called Christos, ‘Anointed,’ took his title from Middle-Eastern savior-gods like Adonis and Tammuz, born of the Virgin Sea-goddess Aphrodite-Maria… ‘Iasus’ signified a healer or Therapeuta, as the Greeks called the Essenes, whose cult groups always included a man with the title of Christos.

“The literal meaning of the name was ‘healing moon-man,’ fitting the Hebrew version of Jesus as a son of Mary, the almah or ‘moon-maiden.””

For a dude who supposedly used miracles to heal all those giant crowds of sick people, isn’t it a might curious that no one in Jesus’ time ever mentioned him in any known writing?

And, “Healing the sick, raising the dead, casting out devils, handling poisonous serpents etc. were so commonplace that [the Roman scholar] Celsus scorned these ‘Christian’ miracles as ‘nothing more than the common works of those enchanters who, for a few oboli, will perform greater deeds in the midst of the Forum….” (Walker’s Woman’s Encyclopedia)
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Thnx to pixelbase for the foto

THE OCCUPATION PROJECT

Yesterday I spent the day camped out in my congressperson’s office. Mainers are planning to stage sit-ins every Wednesday until Tom Allen agrees to refuse to fund the War.

Last Wednesday, a friend’s friend Natasha was arrested and spent the night in jail. You can read all about it HERE. What you won’t read is that Tom’s Communications Director, a big burly man with black hair, burst into tears when the police came to haul everyone away. Natasha said that made everything all worth it.

This “Occupation Project” is spreading across the good ol’ US of A. So far, in addition to Maine, “sit-ins have led to arrests at the local offices of U.S. Sens. Barack Obama, D-Ill., and Claire McCaskill, D-Mo.”

About thirty of us packed like sardines into Tom’s little waiting room. Five read prepped statement to the big, burly black-haired Communications Director, who stood patiently and silently facing each reader with a resigned look in his eye.

An old white-bearded man named George used scotch tape to stick 20-30 pictures of him and his grandkids all over Tom’s freshly painted walls, along with flowered silkscreens filled with husky magentas, lime greens, yellows, and anti-war slogans.

I sat next to Looki from Holland, about 80 years old, her grey hair pinned back in a bun and held there with a barrette, her eyes rheumy. Looki looked like she might weigh all of 80 pounds.

Natasha and the other 12 arrested last Wednesday are not allowed within miles of Tom’s office, on pain of death.

The head of Peace Action Maine was with us: big guy in his thirties with his hair tied back at his neck and pulled into a bun.

Another of our fearless leaders was a young guy, thin as a carrot and with a halo of curly red hair. His wife was also thin as a carrot but she had black hair and glasses with thick black rims and manages the best Goodwill store in the area, the one across the Million Dollar Bridge in South Portland.

We all sat on the floor, read poetry and talked.

Tom’s staff refused to give us the key to the bathroom. But we outfoxed them; went next door to the Immigrant Legal Aid Fund and got their key.

Around 5 pm, a camera man from Ch. 13 News, and a slinky young reporter with long black hair came and interviewed four people out in the hall, a Sociology Prof from USM, two other guys and a woman who sneaked over from New Hampshire.

At 5:30 we unwilling to be arrested left, and six stayed. Among them were three old men with white beards and moustachios who, as we left, were lined forlornly in a row on Tom’s off-white waiting-room couch beneath an oversized, neon-orange Georgia O’Keefe flower.

My friend Jan poked her head back into the room and said, “Don’t worry, it’ll be alright.” (Jan’s been arrested three times). One guy said, “Don’t you worry about us.” I.e., you’re giving off fear vibes in our direction, don’t do it. Jan looked appropriately chastened, and we punched the elevator down button and left.

Nothing in the paper this morning about our six heroes. Hope they’re okay. And I hafta wonder if the big burly guy managed to get through the ordeal with shedding tears this time.
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thnx to maineinfo.net for the pic of Exchange Street where we picketed, and where Tom Allen's office is.