I took the Hogwart's Sorting Test, and I got...


Slytherin! You're classy to the core, favoring the
traditionally finest things the world has to
offer. While you may or may not be evil *wink*
you certainly have the power and attitude to
get what you want. You're clever as all heck,
and tend to be a couple steps ahead of even the
most astute Ravenclaw.


A More Unique Hogwarts Sorting Quiz
brought to you by Quizilla

NO WAY!!! I don't think that's accurate. Then again, I don't think I'm any of the others, so...ah well. Maybe I shouldn't have checked off "assassin" on the "What Would You Be if you were Evil?" question.

MWA-HAA-HAA!. Heh. Pigeons.

I'm speechless.

Recently I've been thinking rather a lot of what I'd like to do with my life. I've even been reconsidering veterinary school, which I haven't thought about for years. But in the meanwhile, here's a list of things that I want to start doing within the next five years:

1) Build or buy a house, preferably with a few acres of land.
2) Become a beekeeper.
3) Take up some form of visual art, either drawing, painting, sculpting, or whatnot. Maybe collage, or decoupage.
4) Start riding again, and this time, learn jumping and dressage.
5) Spend time each month wildcrafting.

I posted Design for Chunks before, but I'm doin' it again because I think it's so fucking cool.

Personally, I didn't think you could make "Red Meat" more disturbing...

My boy Sean is cool. He did this. All hail Sean C. Tenner III, Ruler of Antelope:

"D.C. Will Host 2004's First Presidential Primary
June 23, 2003

By Jennifer Yachnin, Roll Call Newspaper Staff

With the conclusion of a Congressional review period on Friday, the District of Columbia became the official host of the nation’s first presidential primary in 2004.

Organizers were thrilled by the outcome.

"We’ve managed to thread the legal needle," said Sean Tenner, Executive Director of D.C. Democracy Fund, a federal political action committee which led the movement to push the primary date from May to Jan. 13.

Although some voting-rights proponents had said a floor fight over the bill could generate publicity for the District’s status, there was little expectation Congress would seek to overturn the legislation.

Under the legislation, signed in March by Mayor Anthony Williams (D), the District will hold a primary six days before the Iowa caucuses and two weeks before New Hampshire’s scheduled primary.

To avoid being punished by the Democratic National Committee, which had threatened not to recognize a majority of the District’s delegates at the 2004 nominating convention, the city’s 10 delegates will actually be chosen at a March party caucus. Many of the District’s 28 additional superdelegates — elected city officials and party leaders — have vowed to support the primary winner at the convention.

"There’s no way the DNC can say what we’re doing violates their rules," Tenner said.

Because the District’s primary is essentially non-binding, it will not violate national party rules that guarantee New Hampshire’s and Iowa’s first-in-the-nation status.

The District’s Republican Party will not participate in the primary but will hold a caucus in the spring.

Voting-rights advocates assert a first-in-the-nation primary is critical to drawing attention to the push for full Congressional representation in the District — which is represented by a Delegate in the House and has no elected official in the Senate.

"This is really the best option," Tenner said. "If we had done the primary in February ... nobody would care because we’re such a small jurisdiction."

Tenner also insisted that the early primary has already started to generate interest. He said campaign staff for Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) have been in contact with Democratic groups in several of the city’s wards.

"For anyone who thinks the candidates won’t come here, do we really think John Kerry’s campaign staff would be campaigning in Ward Eight in the District of Columbia ... if it weren’t for the primary?" Tenner said, noting that Sen. Joe Lieberman (D-Conn.) has also committed to campaign in the District.

Shadow Sen. Paul Strauss (D), an elected official who lobbies Congress for voting rights and statehood, expects all of the presidential candidates to campaign for the District’s primary.

"Let’s face it, they all campaign in the District anyway, whether it’s here to raise money or to meet with policy leaders, they have a presence in the District. Now they’ll have votes as well," said Strauss, one of the city’s superdelegates.

D.C. City Councilman Jack Evans (D-Ward 2), who authored the primary legislation, argues that the DNC has sought to "minimize" the District’s election, but said he still expects candidates to begin to focus their attention on the city sometime after Labor Day.

"The primary is the primary, it doesn’t matter if it is a beauty contest or not," Evans said.

Several organizations that pushed for the earlier primary are now working to organization a candidate debate, Evans said.

"Our primary will reflect an urban view of America, and will talk about issues that are important to urban America — and I say this jokingly but seriously — not what the price of soybeans are or how to keep farm credits in place," Evans said."

I find this comic to be absolutely hysterical. It takes old comics and rewrites them.

Oh, and as an interesting sidenote, my great-granddad Shurl came from a family of 13 kids--with TWO sets of twins.

My great-great grandma must have had serious baby mojo.

Odd.

Some dude in Colorado has my family tree. It's accurate back to Christian Hasler, the first Hasler of our family to come over from Switzerland. If you follow it through Christian--Henry--Shurl--Gregory--you get to me and my disreputable siblings.

Christian settled in Claremont, near where a major chunk of my family still resides. He was married to a Swiss woman. Ol' Henry married a Brian, which, according to family tradition, was a cousin of the somewhat-famous William Jennings Bryan (yes, the spelling is different--but then again, Hasler used to be spelled with an umlaut, so there you go. Variation was common 150 years ago, as not everybody was literate.) Miss Frances, I do believe, is also where my family got the Native American blood that threw in the random swarthy genes, making half of my uncles blonde and blue-eyed and very very Nordic/Swiss looking, and the other half dark and almost Italianate. Plus if you look at a picture of my grandpa there's very little doubt in anybody's mind that nobody from Switzerland gave him cheekbones like that....

Henry had a passel of kids--some of which survive--including my great-grandpa Shurl. Shurl married Clara Fletcher, who had a cousin (or was it brother?) with the absolutely musical name Napoleon Bonaparte Fletcher (everbody called him Uncle Nip, apparently), and they gave birth to three sons, my grandpa Keith among them.

Keith moved to Chicago, married a nice Polish girl (my grandma Gertrude--and apparently something was good about those Polish women, as his brother Elwin married Gertrude's sister Anna), produced my pop, and the rest, as they say, is history. I'm gonna have to email this guy, though. He's misspelled one of my uncle's names and he doesn't have some of my cousins in there. God knows there's enough of us...

"To visit Father Lucifer, to have a moment to dance... to go down in the dark, to visit with the dude! Not these Little prince of darkness wannabes...some of them are cute, but to visit the real energy force that has held the darkness: you go there with honor. And that takes a very big heart to hold the place of shadow. When I went to Lucifer I learned many things. But that whole thing of, he didn't see me watching from the airplane, he wiped a tear and threw away our appleseed...there's so much religious reference and metaphor coming back full circle from the myths. A part of her loved Lucifer, a part of her tried to find him in so many men that couldn't carry his energy."
-- Tori; B Side, 05/96

words like violence
break the silence
come crashing in
into my little world
painful to me
pierced right through me
can't you understand
oh my little girl

all i ever wanted
all i ever needed
is here in my arms
all i ever wanted
all i ever needed
is here in my arms

vows are spoken
to be broken
feelings are intense
words are trivial
pleasures remain
so does the pain
words are meaningless
and unforgettable

all i ever wanted
all i ever needed
is here in my arms
all i ever wanted
all i ever needed
is here in my arms

words are very unnecessary
they can only do harm

words like violence
break the silence
come crashing in
into my little world
painful to me
pierced right through me
can't you understand
oh my little girl

all i ever wanted
all i ever needed
is here in my arms
all i ever wanted
all i ever needed
is here in my arms
all i ever wanted
all i ever needed
is here in my arms

vows are spoken
to be broken
feelings are intense
words are trivial
pleasures remain
so does the pain
words are meaningless
and forgettable

all i ever wanted
all i ever needed
is here in my arms
all i ever wanted
all i ever needed
is here in my arms
all i ever wanted
all i ever needed
is here in my arms

words are very unnecessary
they can only do harm
can only do harm

--"Enjoy the Silence"

So Tori Amos did a cover of this song, singing it as a straight-up piano nocturne, in the character of an aging Vegas showgirl (because Tori is either a bloody genius or batshit insane, or both, as is often the case), and I am listening to it, and it's pretty damn neat. She had Neil Gaiman write about the showgirl who is singing this song:

"Thirty-five years a showgirl that she admits to, and her feet hurt, day in, day out, from the high heels, but she can walk down steps with a forty-pound headdress in high heels, she's walked across a stage with a lion in high heels, she could walk through goddamn Hell in high heels if it came to that.

These are the things that have helped, that kept her walking and her head high: her daughter; a man from Chicago who loved her, although not enough; the national news anchor who paid her rent for a decade and didn't come to Vegas more than once a month; two bags of silicone gel; and staying out of the desert sun.

She will be a grandmother soon, very soon."

the burning times aren't over...

We All Knew New Zealand was cool, but THIS Takes the Cake....

My little sister lives in Wisconsin, home of QUALITY individuals like this one from her hometown.

I am covered with invisible, radar-avoiding lobsters.

Sarah's Theme Song This Week

I'm not feeling alright today,
I'm not feeling that great,
I'm not catching on fire today,
Love has started to fade,

I'm not going to smile today,
I'm not gonna laugh,
You're out living it up today,
I've got dues to pay,

When the grave digger puts on the foreceps,
The stonemason does all the work,
The barber can give you a haircut,
The carpenter can take you out to lunch,

Now, I just want to play on my panpipes,
I just want to drink me some wine,
As soon as you're born, you start dying,
So you might as well have a good time,

Sheep go to Heaven,
Goats go to Hell,
Sheep go to Heaven,
Goats go to Hell,

I don't wanna go to Sunset Strip,
I don't wanna feel the emptyness,
Old marquees with stupid band names,
I don't wanna go to Sunset Strip,

I don't wanna go to Sunset Strip,
I don't wanna feel the emptyness,
Old marquees with stupid band names,
I don't wanna go to Sunset Strip,

The grave digger puts on the foreceps,
The stonemason does all the work,
The barber can give you a haircut,
The carpenter can take you out to lunch,

Now, I just want to play on my panpipes,
I just want to drink me some wine,
As soon as you're born, you start dying,
So you might as well have a good time,

Sheep go to Heaven,
Goats go to Hell,
Sheep go to Heaven,
Goats go to Hell,

Sheep go to Heaven,
Goats go to Hell...

--Cake, "Sheep Go To Heaven"

and through the life force and there goes her friend
on her nishiki it's out of time
and through the portal they can make amends

hey would you say whatever we're blanket friends
can't stop what's coming
can't stop what's on its way

and through the walls they made their mudpies
i've got your mind i said
she said i've your voice
i said you don't need my voice girl
you have your own
but you never thought it was enough of
so they went years and years
like sisters blanket girls
always there through that and this
there's nothing we cannot ever fix i said

can't stop what's coming
can't stop what's on its way
bells and footfalls and soldiers and dolls
brothers and lovers she and i were
now she seems to be sand under his shoes
there's nothing i can do
can't stop what's coming
can't stop what's on its way

and now i speak to you are you in there
you have her face and her eyes
but you are not her
and we go at each other like blankettes
who can't find their thread and their bare

can't stop loving
can't stop what is on its way
and i see it coming
and it's on its way

--bells for her, tori amos


and sometimes there is that friend. I thought that no matter what we would always be friends I thought nothing would break it. but now there is a chasm and I am on one side and she is on the other and we look across and we're frozen. and as much as i love her and as much as i don't want it to be there

it is

this chasm.

it's been there for years now i thought it would shrink it's not shrinking.

we still look across at each other from time to time. something is frozen in her something is frozen in time something has sucked her dry something has made me hard and immobile.

only our eyes move now.

I stand in a wide flat land
No shadow or shade of a doubt
Whore the megaphone man
Met the girl with her hand that's
Covering most of her mouth

Fall in love with a bright idea
And the way a world is revealed to you
Fat man and dancing girl
And most of the show is concealed from view

Monkey in the middle
Keeps singing that tune
I don't want to hear it
Get rid of it soon

MC on the stage tonight
Is a man named Billy Purl
He's The International Fun Boy
And he knows the worth of beautiful girl

Stand on the tightrope
Never dreamed I would fall

Monkey in the middle
Keeps doing that trick
It's making me nervous
Get rid of it quick

I stand in a wide flat land
No shadow or shade of a doubt
Where the megaphone man
Met the girl with her hand
That's covering most of her mouth

Does she tell the truth?
Does she hide the lie?
Does she say it so no one can know?
Fat man and the dancing girl
And it's all part of the show

Stand on the tightrope
Never dreamed I could fall

Monkey in the middle
Keeps singing that tune
I don't want to hear it
Get rid of it soon

Monkey in the middle
Keeps doing that trick
It's making me nervous
Get rid of it quick


--"Fat Man & Dancing Girl", Suzanne Vega

What Makes Herbalists Swear

I'm making a fluid extract for a customer today. Fluid extracts are kinda tricky; Em and I are awfully good at them, hence the reason we're running an herb business and you aren't. Anyway. Part of the process is slowly running an ethanol/water solution through a mass of ground herb. (We use IV tubing for this.) The rate of flow is quite important--it needs to be slow enough that the solution is just barely trickling. I get everything all set up, things are looking great, I start running it through....and there is some sort of leak. A messy blend of alcohol, water, and plant guts is gushing everywhere. And the kicker is--due to the nature of the leak, there's nothing I can do. Can't turn it off. Can't reverse the flow. I could dump the whole mess out--maybe--but chances are I'd just end up making an enormous mess and wasting about $30 worth of herbs and $15 worth of alcohol.

Well, shit. Now I have to let the whole thing run through, fix the bloody hose, and then run it through again. The funny part is, this is the first time I've had any problem with leaks. It's also the first time I've had any sort of time constraint on making an extract. Murphy's fucking law.

I love independent radio. I got in the car this morning, and they were playing the German version of the Spice Girls "If You Wanna Be My Lover". (It was every bit as completely wrong as you would expect. And because I've had enough German, and the lyrics are really, really sophomoric, I understood nigh every word.)

When I got back *in* the car about an hour later, I was subjected to the South Park classic "Kyle's Mom is a Bitch". In French. With sitar music in the background. If I hadn't been gleefully giggling like some sort of maniacal freakshow, I'm sure it would have threatened my sanity.

Oh, and this cartoon is absolutely hilarious.

Auntie Sarah says:

...that you should never drink something called an "Irish Car Bomb".

Trust me on this one, kiddies.

My head STILL hurts, two days later.

Well, this is interesting....

It was recently pointed out on my forum that Wal-Mart is evil. Now, most of us already know that, but I thought that a few gentle reminders of why Wal-mart is an evil scourge that must be wiped from the surface of the planet were in order. So here are just a few reasons:

1) They negatively affect the artistic freedom of musicians.
2) They tried to refuse to pay for prescription contraception for their female employees AND they're being sued for gender discrimination.
3) Wal-Mart is absolutely infamous for its rampant wage-slavery practices.
4) And here's a little more information on how they screw their workers.

Things are busy around here. I've finally got a bike, and it's REALLY fun to ride around again, even if my bike is old and crusty and has only 2 working gears and makes all sorts of really unhealthy sounding noises when I do anything like brake or shift. But it works, kind of, enough to get me to and from work. So that's good. And it was a *free* bike, so I'm not complaining!

I just finished watching "My Big Fat Greek Wedding", and after the graduation party on Saturday, the resonances with my own family are fairly amusing.

We don't roast whole lambs on the front yard, and you're free to marry any ethnic group (Polish or Italian preferred, of course), and we're not quite as fresh-off-the-boat...but we're pretty similar. Definitely as loud. Definitely as into over-feeding as a sign of affection. And I'm fairly certain that if a pair of middle-aged WASPs were dumped into our family, they'd feel approximately the same as the fiance's family in MBFGW. Granted, nobody in my family speaks anything but English in anything but a Western Suburb accent, but the hugging? The kissing? The death threats to new men daring to touch the women? Yeah. We got that. And, like the huge dysfunctional family in MBFGW, we're also awfully darn nice in the end, if a little too overzealous sometimes.

It's definitely getting watered down. My generation isn't nearly as bad as my parents, and I'm old enough to remember what my grandparent's generation was like. Hell, I'm old enough to remember my dear old Polish Catholic grandma trying desperately to save my heathen soul (my parents converted to Episcopalianism as a middle ground between my Dad's Catholicism and my Mom's First Church of the Nazarene Protestantism) by teaching me to cross myself and showing me her rosary. I think I got a lecture once on how Catholic boys were preferable, but I was pretty young. I know one of my aunts wishes they'd never stopped with the Latin Mass. And I have seen the way my aunts turn into Wedding Mothers overnight. My mom won't do that--THANK SWEET (insert deity of your choice)--so my sister is safe from that nonsense.

But I do have seventeen zillion cousins. We are REALLY loud. Some of my aunts (who shall remain nameless) are DEFINITELY of the "when are you producing offspring so that I may be a grandmother?" school. And the Polish still shines through. To this day if I go to a family funeral and it doesn't end up with us eating pierogi, pork, dumplings, and sauerkraut at some tiny little Polish restaurant with flocked wallpaper and dirty crystal chandeliers in Berwyn or Cicero, it just doesn't feel right. To me, the dead must be finally put to rest over tears and heavy Slavic food. It's insane, but it's also...family.

My entire family is still extremely sketched out about the whole becoming-an-herbalist-and-*gasp*-moving-to-Oregon thing. I've noticed an unfortunate distancing that has happened. They are treating me less and less like their cousin and more and more like some exotic stranger. They still don't know what the hell I do, and it's awfully hard to explain it to them. It's obvious that they're very proud of me, in a reserved sort of way, but it's a bit like I have some sort of tragic disease, which, while probably not contagious, isn't something they wish to risk.

I can understand it. In a way, I've abandoned them. I've abandoned the values and the lifestyle which they share--namely, get an education in some sort of upper-middle-class trade, get a good job, get a house in the suburbs or a decent condo, and then settle down with a couple of cars, a kid, a mortgage, and all the trappings. Be available for frequent family gatherings. Make a good potato salad. Be a good person, but it's not necessary to rock the boat. I moved away, by myself, and did something that they don't understand. So I'm kind of outside things now, and it's hard. My politics are different, I tell people to eat better rather than taking more medication, and I don't wear much makeup. And I'm a single girl living on her own, with no sign of a family on the horizon.

But, dammit, I can't help it. I've been mushing up plants since I could walk. I made my first herbal tea (catnip, for a stomachache) when I was thirteen. I spent most of my adolescence reading about just about every subject I could, and nothing fascinated me enough to make me want to do it for the rest of my life until I thought about using plants as medicine. So I really don't think it's something I chose, exactly. It was more like something that just fit. And perhaps my family is worried that I won't fit them anymore.

If you truly love me, dear readers, then somebody will buy me this lunchbox.

It's only a lousy eight bucks. One of ya'll can afford that, right?

'K, I probably already blogged this, but it's just so damn funny....

I totally agree with this quote:

"It's little moments like these that I appreciate all the time my dad spent teaching me about the fine art of screwing with people."

from Something Positive.

Thanks, Dad. I miss you.

Graduation ceremony today.

In an unbelievable display of idiocy, the administration decided to hold the ceremony outside DESPITE the fact that it poured rain for almost two and a half hours.

Of course, my mother had sent my sister Emily and I ahead early--by almost two hours--to save seats in the bleachers for herself, my grandmother, and two of my aunts. It started to rain almost as soon as Emily and I were joined by the rest of my family. The administration, in a burst of genius, decided to delay the ceremony to see if it would stop raining. It didn't. In a further moment of brillance, they decided to go ahead with the ceremony, anyway, even though a) it was pouring rain, and b) the family and friends were already completely sodden from sitting in the rain for a half hour.

Joy. This is the high school I graduated from. It's good to know that they haven't gotten any smarter since I was there. I suspect it was a decision made by committee.

In any case, the weather was so horrific that family members were climbing over the fence around the football field to run umbrellas out to their graduating children. The valedictorian, no doubt demonstrating the intelligence and aplomb that got him his position, shortened his honors speech to something along the lines of, "Let's do this as quickly as possible and get the hell out of Dodge." They skipped the entire role call, and the principal started his speech with, "I was going to say a few words, but now I'm not". In many ways, it was FAR more amusing and interesting than it would have been otherwise.

Unfortunately, Emily and I were wearing cute little summer dresses, and had been (when all was said and done) sitting on a metal bench in the wind for almost four hours, and we were soaked, bored, and freezing fucking cold. We spent the entire first part of the ceremony itself text messaging our friends on her cell phone. A couple of them even responded.

The best part was watching the mortar boards of the graduates. The cheapo mortar boards nowadays are just fabric-covered cardboard, so Emily and I had fun observing the progressive deterioration of the mortar boards, which started off very crisp and ended up looking extremely comical. My sister Rachel's looks a little bit like a badly designed minature bean bag chair this evening, having been thoroughly soaked and then very unevenly dried.

Graduation was followed by a dinner at Buca di Beppo, which is a restaurant that I heartily detest, it being part of the Lettuce Entertain You chain (a Chicagoland monster, you know who I'm talking about if you've spent any time here), and therefore completely kitschy and without redeeming value either socially or culinarily. But it was the graduate's choice, so I shut up and ate my indifferent chicken marsala. It wasn't awful, but I would have much preferred Meson Sabika or La Sorrenta.

In any case, with luck I'll be spending tomorrow from eleven a.m. to four p.m. getting my Chicago fix (like a true junkie, I moved heaven and earth to weasel my way into that) and if I am extremely lucky there will be shopping and lunch at Russian Tea Time. If somebody decides that I've been a REALLY good girl, I may even get sushi. I have almost no money for shopping, but I think if I play my cards right, and the clearance racks are kind, I'll have enough dough to find at least one good outfit. Now I have to decide whether to be responsible, and get an outfit appropriate for work, or have fun and get something slinky and cute for going out.

Life has demonstrated to me, in many ways, that my fate is inextricably linked with that of the geeks of the world. While I am not an avid science-fiction fan, I don't know jack about Star Wars vs. Star Trek technology, I've never spent all night programming anything, and I refuse to work out what my "geek code" would be, most of my friends are big, fat, geeks, with reams of old D&D books, the complete run of Babylon Five on their hard drive, one or more videogame platforms, and a sneaking fondness for Dr. Who reruns.

While I don't count myself among their numbers, being largely indifferent to video games, roleplaying games, science fiction conventions, and the like, I certainly know enough about their care and feeding to have more than a passing knowledge of the various Geek Entertainmet Genres. So when one of my High Geek friends sends me a link labelled
"OH MY GOD THIS IS SO FUCKING COOL OH MY GOD!", I know something's up. It was. This is pretty fucking cool, folks, and if you've got a nice fat network connection, you should check it out.

My family is crazy.

Got off the plane and into my sister's car. Horribly sad episode there involving hedgehog with possible neurological problems--which might sound funny but when your pet can't walk it's not--and then dropped off at the house. People there already. Uncle Joseph the Baker begins his patter. Somebody hands me a phone, it's my mom, directing me to do things as the guests are expected any second. I tell her I'm doing nothing until I've washed the airport grunge out of my face, and hand the phone off to my sister.

I get ready. People are swarming in and by the time I'm downstairs the living room, dining room, kitchen, family room and deck are swarming with relatives, my sister's friends, neighbors, and assorted other visiting dignitaries. My mother is, as usual, in the kitchen preparing enough food to feed the Fourth Reich. Billowing steam rises from the vat of pasta, the fridge is laden with cold cuts and potato salad, and I'm seeing at least three kinds of dip.

Then again, there are enough people to fill the house to overflowing, and when the food was served it was a locust swarm, so maybe it was called for.

Hanging with family was fun. I got to talk to my dad's old hunting buddies, my favorite uncle was there, and I only got zinged about being a "hippie" once, when my Uncle Dave asked me, "So, are you a treehugger?" (I asked him what he meant. He sputtered. I said, well, I do understand that we need paper mills, but I'm a big fan of clean water, too.) My cousin Erik took me for a ride on his new Harley. I heard more stories about my fathers' generation--now that I'm of "an age" I get to hear how they once raised hell, and I must say, it's not a patch on what I've done, but still impressive. They're good people. Stolidly Midwestern, and I wonder if I have anything in common with them, but they are good people and I love them all.

The actual graduation ceremony is tomorrow. It's at my old high school. I'm going to wear my tie-dyed dress and bring a stack of business cards--it'll be interesting to run into old teachers.

"Just As A Casino in Las Vegas, She Boasted the Loosest Slot in Town"

--Number One on my list of "Things I Don't Want On My Tombstone", thanks to this livejournal

A Bunch Of Cats Wishing Death on Their Owners. Oh, yes. You can see the hatred in their eyes.

Do you blame them?

how can I go home
with nothing to say
I know you're going to look at me that way
and say what did you do out there
and what did you decide
you said you needed time
and you had time

you are a china shop
and I am a bull
you are really good food
and I am full
I guess everything is timing
I guess everything's been said
so I am coming home with an empty head

you'll say did they love you or what
I'll say they love what I do
the only one who really loves me is you
and you'll say girl did you kick some butt
and I'll say I don't really remember
but my fingers are sore
and my voice is too

you'll say it's really good to see you
you'll say I missed you horribly
you'll say let me carry that
give that to me
and you will take the heavy stuff
and you will drive the car
and I'll look out the window making jokes
about the way things are

how can I go home
with nothing to say
I know you're going to look at me that way
and say what did you do out there
and what did you decide
you said you needed time
and you had time

"you had time", ani difranco

This is beyond weird. That's Part One, this is Part Two. Freaky shit abounds, folks, and if you refuse to hold at least a small portion of your mind open to Things that Go Bump in the Night, you're just as much a Believer as the person who's convinced of the "truth" of UFOs. The simple fact is, if you really use science as a tool and not a belief set, there are a helluva lot of crazy fucked up things that we have NO idea how to explain under our current framework. Disregarding evidence that doesn't fit your paradigm as "nonsense" or "superstition" is just as bad as cooking the data.

In a weird way, this article, and the way the scientists are trying to deal with all the weirdness in the most objective way possible, reminds me of the way scientists handle herbal medicine. A great many of them (in the U.S. at least) refuse to look at plants as anything more than "little drugs", which cripples their ability to structure their research in a meaningful way, and reduces their ability to explore the true therapeutic potential of plants. It's about arrogance. If you refuse to admit that your paradigm--your knowledge structure--may be inadequate to deal with certain forms of information, and that you are going to have to expand your methods and stop making assumptions, you are inherently limiting yourself. If you cling to your paradigm and refuse to examine data that doesn't fit because it "doesn't make sense", then you are betraying Science for Belief, which unfortunately is how many researchers work whether they're aware of it or not. It's human. It's very hard to overcome that. Paranormal researchers are often viewed as crackpots, which I feel is shameful. A big part of the human experience, across all cultures, concerns ghosts, visitations, unidentified objects, weird phenomena, and assorted Fucked Up Shit. It can't all be explained as hallucination or an artifact of human psychology. Or, at the very least, it has not been satisfactorily explained as such. When scores of people see something weird and the answer is given as "mass hallucination", that sounds a lot more like explaining away than actually exploring the possibility that a truly new set of data about our world--or at least the way we perceive it--has been presented to us. Explaining the effects of herbal medicine as "placebo effect" or due to the action of a single alkaloid in a plant is akin to this shortsighted and incomplete way of approaching things.

A chapter of Trease and Evan's Pharmacology that I just read deals in part with the difficulty of researching herbal medicines under the methods currently available for researching the actions of drugs. In researching a drug, you have one chemical, (usually) one receptor, one or two main detoxification pathways. A lot of plant research focuses on finding the "active constituent", which is sadly and woefully reductionist. With an herb you have multiple chemical constituents acting together. These chemical constituents may do one or more of the following: a) Slow down the absorption of one or more other constituents, either physically in the gut or by competing for the same receptor sites b) Speed up the absorption of one or more constituents, c) Increase or decrease the metabolic halftime of one or more constituents, d) Cause synergistic activity (activity of AB is greater than the activity of A+B)....and there are more possibilites. Even more problematic, herbalists rarely use single herbs, but combinations of herbs. No wonder herbs make people used to working with relatively predictable chemical drugs shit a brick. Of course, humans have been successfully using quite complicated herbal medicines for millennia, but if we want to talk about the way modern medicine treats traditional practitioners we'll have to go on a whole big rant about cultural arrogance, and we don't want to go there (today, anyway). All I know is, somehow the medicine men of the Amazon basin knew to combine MAOI-containing plants with DMT-containing plants in order to produce a more powerful effect, which is incredibly subtle biochemistry, and as far as I know nobody told them anything about the monoamine oxidase pathway....which leads us to surmise that perhaps there are other methods of obtaining really stunning plant technology besides laboratory science, which leads us full circle to the paranormal, because paranormal experiences, if viewed with agnosticism rather than disbelief, open up a lot of doors about the way we perceive what is "possible" and "impossible" and tell us that perhaps, just perhaps, we know jack about what is "possible".

*end rant*

My friend Sam sent me this very cool William Gibson link. It's an excellent and thought-provoking narrative and ya'll should read it.

A Smiths track that I haven't in forever came on this morning. Reminded me of the first time I listened to "louder than bombs" on my walkman on my way to my grandma's house. Borrowed it from cute gymnast Adam in my math class, who really sweet and so fucking gorgeous it made your teeth hurt, but not the brightest bulb in the box by a long shot, which meant that I couldn't even develop a crush on him (but didn't stop me--or the girl next to me, with whom I shared a sort of Adam Early Warning system for whenever he was going to do something that showed off his bod--don't think that only high-school aged BOYS are hopeless lechers--from staring at him--and if you can follow this meandering sentence you get a gold star)

and then the dj, who is my Personal Pocket Jesus of the day, followed the Smiths with something beautiful by Bob Mould, who can create the most lovely shimmering guitar melodies to back his fantastic lyrics sung in that only-Bob-Mould-sings-like-that-voice.

but anyway. Remind me to spend way too much money on CDs next time I get a little extra cash. I was looking thru my CD collection the other day and I'm missing far too many CDs. The attrition rate that occurs from frequent moves is awful.