one of my friends said this, once upon a time, and it resonates sometimes.

I stopped at Albertson's to buy paper towels and a nectarine last night. Sitting in the parking lot just before I turned the engine over it popped into my head, and it stayed there:

"some days it doesn't pay to chew through the leather straps."

maybe it's low blood sugar. maybe it's ennui. maybe it's the heat, or maybe it's lack of exercise.

or maybe it's not, and it's me, and there's nothing to be done.

we'll see.

"at the center of all things is spirit. In other words, there is a central underlying unifying force in the Universe that is sacred."

The economy is in shambles.
The international community hates us.
We are no farther from ending attacks on our country, despite the "war on terrorism".
Tax cuts for the rich mean that I get no more tax relief than before--despite the fact that I make less than fifteen grand a year.
We have cut protections for clean air, clean water, and important natural habitats.

for all these reasons and more.

bush lies. bush lies. bush lies. bush lies. bush lies. bush lies. bush lies. bush lies. bush lies. bush lies. bush lies. bush lies. bush lies. bush lies. bush lies. bush lies. bush lies. bush lies. bush lies. bush lies. bush lies. bush lies. bush lies. bush lies. bush lies. bush lies. bush lies. bush lies. bush lies. bush lies. bush lies. bush lies. bush lies. bush lies. bush lies. bush lies. bush lies. bush lies. bush lies. bush lies. bush lies. bush lies. bush lies. bush lies. bush lies. bush lies. bush lies. bush lies. bush lies. bush lies. bush lies. bush lies. bush lies. bush lies. bush lies. bush lies. bush lies. bush lies. bush lies. bush lies. bush lies. bush lies. bush lies. bush lies. bush lies. bush lies. bush lies. bush lies. bush lies. bush lies. bush lies. bush lies. bush lies. bush lies. bush lies. bush lies. bush lies. bush lies. bush lies. bush lies. bush lies. bush lies. bush lies. bush lies. bush lies. bush lies. bush lies. bush lies. bush lies. bush lies. bush lies. bush lies. bush lies. bush lies. bush lies. bush lies. bush lies. bush lies. bush lies. bush lies. bush lies. bush lies. bush lies. bush lies. bush lies. bush lies. bush lies. bush lies. bush lies. bush lies. bush lies. bush lies. bush lies. bush lies. bush lies. bush lies. bush lies. bush lies. bush lies. bush lies. bush lies. bush lies. bush lies. bush lies. bush lies. bush lies. bush lies. bush lies. bush lies. bush lies. bush lies. bush lies. bush lies. bush lies. bush lies. bush lies. bush lies. bush lies. bush lies. bush lies. bush lies. bush lies. bush lies. bush lies. bush lies. bush lies. bush lies. bush lies. bush lies. bush lies. bush lies. bush lies. bush lies. bush lies. bush lies. bush lies. bush lies. bush lies. bush lies. bush lies. bush lies. bush lies. bush lies. bush lies. bush lies. bush lies. bush lies. bush lies. bush lies. bush lies. bush lies. bush lies. bush lies. bush lies. bush lies.

My friend Sam has a new livejournal. He's smart, it's cool, and it has a picture of ZEKE at the top, so what more can you ask for?

(Zeke is the best dog in the universe.)

So I went to the Tori Amos/Ben Folds concert on Sunday.

It rocked.

Ben Folds plays the piano like he's trying to crush something on the keyboards. Quite entertaining. And he did a Liz Phair cover, for which I give him molto props. He played a lot of my favorite tunes, including "Zak and Sara".

Tori Amos rocked, as per usual. The woman is just hella good with a keyboard. The show was remarkable, but I think my two favorite moments were her improv and her new version of "Sweet Dreams".

First, the improv. She told a little story about her daughter seeing two women sweetly kissing, and asking about it, and then telling Tori that she wanted a prince...so Tori told her daughter that her Uncle Don and her Uncle Kevin wanted princes, too....but they'd settle for a queen (grin).

So then she sang this sweet little song about how

"your prince might not look like Daddy
your prince might only have one beard
your prince might be
like you"

which I thought was a cute way of talking about non-heterosexual relationships with a two-year-old.

But the version of "Sweet Dreams" was great. She's not the most political performer--she will say fairly liberal things in interviews, but musically she's no Ani DiFranco. Way back in the day when Bush Sr. was president, she recorded this song with the SubDudes that referenced that ridiculous "points of light" nonsense that Bush used in his speeches at the time. I've never seen her perform it live, but she resurrected the song (lyrics below)...with the addition of a chanted chorus of "Who's your Daddy?" introducing the song and sprinkled throughout appropriate places within...:

"lies, lies, lies ev'rywhere," said the father to the son
your peppermint breath gonna choke 'em to death,
daddy watch your little black sheep run
he got a knives in his back ev'ry time he opens up
you say, "he got be strong if he wanna be a man"
mister i don't know how you can have

sweet dreams, sweet dreams

land, land of liberty
well-run by a constipated man
when you live in the past
you refuse to see
when your daughter comes home nine months pregnant

with five billion points of light
gonna shine 'em on the face of your friends
they got the earth in a sling
they got world on her knees
they even got her zipper between their teeth

sweet dreams, sweet dreams

you say, you say, you say that you have 'em
i say that you're a liar
sweet dreams, sweet dreams

go on, go on, go on and dream
your house is on fire
come along now

well, well, summer wind been catching up with me
"elephant mind, missy you don't have
you forgettin' to fly,
darlin', when you sleep"
i got a hazy, lazy susan
takin turns all over my dreams
i got lizards and snakes runnin' through my body.
funny how they all have your face

sweet dreams, sweet dreams"

A good show. Here's a pretty good picture of her saying goodbye.

EEEEEE!

I added comments to the page! So now y'all can directly comment on my posts. The forum will of course still be kept, as it's usually full of totally unrelated stuff, which is great.

I'm also tired of people complaining about how crufty and old my blog looks, so I'll probably do a major overhaul soon.

This week I went blackberry picking.

I do miss Chicago. But the nice thing about Eugene, Oregon is that I can be at work, and think, "Y'know, I wanna go pick berries", get done with work, grab a friend, and be kneedeep in a berry bramble in less than forty minutes. That sort of thing, in Chicago, would have taken planning. Here, I followed a whim.

And, of course, the blackberries are wonderful. Succulent, gorgeous colors, and I've frozen almost a half-gallon of berries for use later. For those of you what like my Christmas truffles, I'm fairly certain there will be a dark chocolate blackberry truffle this winter....I know, I know, the HORROR. I torture my friends, I really do.

I've also been walking several miles a day, so I don't have that lack of energy that I've been suffering from due to the time spent with my ass glued to my desk chair. And I get to have sushi for dinner with friends tonight, I had sushi for dinner yesterday, and I haven't had a bad sunburn all summer.

Life is good.

There is a broad, powerful bill being presented by Dick Durbin that would severely infringe upon the ability of most companies to produce dietary supplements. It's draconian, it's unneccesary, and as one of my friends said, "it's a pretty blatant greed-grab on the part of big pharmaceuticals".

So go here if you use herbs, have taken vitamin C, use a multivitamin, or just think that it's YOUR RIGHT to be able to purchase these things if you want to.

PLEASE go view this wonderful (short) movie, Technical Difficulties. It's faboo.

I'm not a virgin anymore.

I just thought you should know.

(With apologies to Poe.)

If I ever join a religious order, it will be this one. These nuns are COOL!

Read this and be afraid.

Be very afraid.

I'm glad that I can do without television. But without a computer? Urgh.

In this troubled day and age, many people are finding that Good Ol' Fashioned Traditional Values are being trod upon like a discarded peanut wrapper at the State Fair. But we can always count on Our Hero, the Rev. Pat Robertson, to provide us with kind of Traditional Values that made the 1950's the era it was--the era that spawned Miltown Wives, the childhoods of more serial killers than any other time, and the three-martini lunch. Let's look at some of the valuable advice we're gifted with in his pamphlet Love and Marriage:

First off: Divorce: "...[B]eyond abuse and adultery, there are no other grounds for a Christian to divorce another Christian." That's right. He may have gambled all of the kid's back-to-school money so that little Timmy has to go to school in his sister's old "Strawberry Shortcake" t-shirt and a pair of tennis shoes you found out back behind the Safeway, but you're stuck with him. And yes, she might be a raging schizophrenic that refuses to take her medicine and has created an entirely artificial reality for herself based around the Mary Tyler Moore show, but it's till death do you part. And even if s/he IS beating the shit out of you on a regular basis, you should "look for ways to redeem your marriage and make it work". Choose wisely, kids!

(For the record, I think that marriage SHOULD be something that is entered into with a "till-death-do-us-part" attitude. But I'm also a wee bit more pragmatic than good ol' Pat.)

The divorce business isn't all THAT ridiculous, I suppose, but then we move on to a juicer part (after skipping a whole bunch of let-Jesus-be-first-in-yer-heart claptrap)....

....this being, of course, the subject of the Natural Right of the Man to Rule Over His Family. Although he tones it down a bit and says that you're not supposed to be a TOTAL dickhead, he does say, in italics no less: Wives are to be submissive to Jesus and to their husbands.

Fabulous. So not only do I have to submit to a guy who hasn't been seen on the planet in 2,000 years, I'm also supposed to submit to my husband? Um. That's a helluva lotta submission for me, personally. I have trouble submitting to traffic laws, let alone a religious concept AND the guy I'm hitched to. Not crazy about that part. Now, in the next paragraph, he goes on to say that it's a partnership...but...but....um....see, I had this idea that maybe if I was married we could both be equal partners? Um, if that's not a problem for Pat, anyway. Because, silly me, I've been corrupted by the whole nasty "Woman's Lib" thing, and see, I *like* being able to vote, and own property, and keep my paycheck, and HELL, even WORK without anybody's permission. And last time I checked, the people that were really, really, really dead-set against that kind of thing? They used a lot of arguments from the Bible. So excuse me if I see this whole submission-in-marriage thing as a slippery slope. Sorry, Pat, but I think I'm gonna have to respectfully decline giving up ANY of my autonomy to a system that was a really big fan of subservience.

Now the next part isn't too bad. It's about maintaining your interests, and sharing things, and realizing that you're both going to grow as people. That's damn fine advice in any system, and I must say that people who make a lifelong committment would be well-served by paying attention to this. The bit about reading the Bible to your toddlers is something I'll pass on, though. But the part about "build[ing] a relationship of mutual respect and admiration", that's fine.

Then we get wonky again. There's a bit about disciplining your kids, which is pretty standard, but, um, "The goal of discipline is to make sure your children come to Jesus Christ"? Shit. The people I've known who've had Jesus forcibly rammed down their throats usually turned out to be HUGE problem teens, complete with rebellious drug habits/shoplifting problems/music collections with A LOT of stuff written by heroin addicts, and when they got older, they either totally rejected their religious upbringing and became really cool people, or remained sort of weird and resentful and fucked up a lot about sex.

I do agree that you shouldn't let your kids see naughty movies, though.

The next part is about financial responsibility. Good stuff, really. Can't find fault in it, he even mentions setting aside money for recreation/vacations as a way to get away and decompress.

Then there's a whole bunch more Jesus crap and a Prayer Line to call their ministries. Ten bucks says it asks for a donation.

Here endeth the epistle.

I opened a box at Warehouse 23 and found this:

You open one of the 1005 boxes on this floor and find...

Two cups of steaming, dark brown liquid. Drinking from one will cure fatigue, heighten mental alertness and improve motor response. The other is marked Decaf.

For those of you who have been living in a sealed cardboard box or kept your head in the sand, the following information about President Chickenshorts should be read immediately.

The curious connection between "Calvin and Hobbes" and "Fight Club"

Saint Johnswort is a little bit of a wonder to me. We just got in a nice bunch of fresh St. Johnswort courtesy of one of our herbalist wildcrafter friends. For those of you that haven't seen the plant, it's a weedy looking plant about knee-high or less, with tiny star-shaped yellow flowers. Bright, bright yellow--quite beautiful. They aren't red, or purple...but if you bruise St. Johnswort it turns your hands purple, and when you make a St. Johnswort oil the oil turns out a beautiful ruby red--quite the surprise from a little, yellow flower. Interestingly enough, only the fresh plant yields this red gold. If you use the dry plant, you get a fairly worthless muck of yellowish something.

I had to prepare the plant to make oil, which meant that I had to handle it a great deal. Within a few minutes the plant had stained my hands a grape purple. These little yellow flowers! Grape purple?!? My hands are still vaguely purple.

Plants are awesome.

I have been needled in the recent past by a friend complaining that my blog wasn't personal and informative enough.

To which I reply: Boo-fuckin'-hoo.

But in order to placate this individual, I shall regale the events of the last weekend for those of you what care. If you come here for herb info and pithy observations about the sociopolitical climate, skip this entry.

So this last weekend was the Oregon Country Fair, which is basically an excuse for shameless hippies to come together, sell each other cool shit, and basically wander around being gigantic freaks. I highly recommend it.

Apparently, the fair has toned down CONSIDERABLY in the past few years. Used to be that it was TRULY a giant hippie fest--complete with mind-altering substances freely imbibed in public. One of my good friends here has pretty excellent tales of dropping you-know-what and running amok.

So what I saw, to those who've been there, was much more family-friendly. Still, there were plenty of freaks, topless hippy chicks (my business partner Em was one of them. We hennaed her breasts and belly and arms and away she went), and assorted oddballs, enough to make it feel homey. I just wore blue glitter and a tribal henna and a tank top, so I was definitely pretty tame.

The best part (aside from the Very Special Baklava that some nice friend-of-a-friend gave me...Very Special Indeed) was the sheer amount of beautiful handcrafted work there. In a world where we've gotten used to mass-produced crap, it's exhilarating to see something as simple as a bowl made with the kind of skill, time, and care that I saw at the fair. There were many things that I would have loved to have, and not in the normal consumerist "gottahaveit" mindset either, but more as a conscious choice to trade my hard-earned cash for something of great intrinsic beauty and value.

So that kicked ass.

I also got to hang out with some of my cool friends, which was neat, and meet some equally nifty people, which was great, and walk around in a beautiful wooded area. It's also good to be reminded that I am just One Freak Amongst Thousands.

The other bit of note was that Emily, my business partner, hand about seventeen zillion people at her house for a weekend long party. This was good, but I think we're getting old, as not nearly as much mayhem as I would have expected was had.

And you should all check out the band Hamsa Lila which is an awesome band.

"Embedded within the underlying epistemologies of the vast majority of nonindustrial cultures are the components of this other way [e.g., non-scientific] of gathering information. While containing numerous variations, themes, and differences these nonindustrial epistemologies do contain a basic framework that is very similar in a number of areas. Most assert that:

*At the center of all things is spirit. In other words, there is a central underlying unifying force in the Universe that is sacred.

*All matter is made from this substance. In other words, the sacred manifests itself in physical form.

*Because all matter is made from the sacred, all things possess a soul, a sacred intelligence or logos.

*Because human beings are generated out of this same substance it is possible for human beings to communicate with the soul or intelligence in plants and all other matters and for those intelligences to communicate with human beings.

*Human beings emerged later on Earth and are the offspring of the plants. Because we are their offspring, their children, plants will help us whenever we are in need if we ask them.

*Human being were ignorant when they arrived here and the powers of Earth and the various intelligences in all things began to teach them how to be human. This is still true. It is not possible for new generations to become human without this communication or teaching from the natural world.

*Parts of Earth can manifest more or less sacredness, just like human beings. A human being can never known when some part of Earth might begin expressing deep levels of sacredness or begin talking to him. Therefore it is important to cultivate attentiveness of mind.

*Human beings are only one of the many life-forms of Earth, neither more nor less important than the others. Failure to remember this can be catastrophic for individuals, nations, and peoples. The other life in the Univers can and will become vengeful if treated with disrespect by human beings."

--The Lost Language of Plants, Stephen Harrod Buhner, pg 37-38.

Fuck The Pretend Counterculture

or

Your Prepackaged Rebellion Fools No One

I recently got subtly dissed by some wanky little moron in a 311 tshirt and a hemp necklace driving a Honda CRX with alloy rims. I'm sure he thinks, like many people, that he's all Cool Like That and Against the Power, whilst I am UnCool because I was wearing business clothes. I have news for you, fartknocker: Your wardrobe does not make you counterculture. You aren't cool because you went to a reggae show once, one with real actual black people, and you aren't going to change the world by buying Rage Against the Machine albums. And while blue hair looks nifty, it really isn't social statement anymore. Once the MTV crowd apropriated body mod it became a cool new trend, not something that makes you The Other, okay? Tattoos and piercings and loud music are great, but they do NOT, repeat NOT, mean that you are rebelling. Yes, it might--MIGHT--piss off your parents. So what? That's your job as an adolescent.

I posit, for the record, that I am MIGHTILY more counterculture and wacked-out than most of the people dressing up to "scare the straights". You wanna know something? I don't dress like that because I want to be able to INFILTRATE the straights. I don't want them to see me coming. I want to be in the door and sitting in their office before they even suspect that I might have the intellectual equivalent of a neutron bomb in my briefcase. You want counterculture, mofo? Then you try living on $400 a month for three years to get a degree in something that you believe in--fuck the economics--instead of buckling under the pressure and getting a "real" job as a techinical editor for firms trying to clean up the mess left from the 1940's-era nuclear weapons program in New Mexico.

(That was my choice, at one point. I could have made fairly good money, too, but I would have had to sit and read about carbon tetrachloride-soaked rags being buried in shallow ditches in the desert for eight hours a day. You wouldn't believe the stuff I saw--and it was declassified. One shudders to think about the crap they're not letting anyone see.)

You want rebellion? Move to the third largest city in America, in the heart of the conservative Midwest, and try to tell people that they might want to consider growing their own medicine rather than swallowing pills. Watch your good friends--smart people, too--struggle like fuck to be teachers, or volunteers, or whatever, making not nearly enough money to pay basic expenses but DOING IT ANYWAY because they can't imagine doing anything else, while you watch rich selfish motherfuckers your own age roll up in brand new cars they got from working for huge nasty polluting corporations. Listen to music that is published on little tiny independent labels by people who love music, not prepackaged crap designed to make you buy more prepackaged crap.

In short, get a fucking clue.

Everybody has to have a Desert Island Album List. Mine changes from time to time. The immutable core is the Beatles' White Album, Tori Amos' Boys for Pele, Camper Van Beethoven's Key Lime Pie, and the Bach Suites for Unaccompanied Cello as performed by Mstislav Rostropovich. There's always a Led Zeppelin album in there, although which one changes, and I would probably go slowly insane if I didn't have some Ween to scream to every now and then.

This week, anyway, the Top Ten list is as follows:

The Immutable Four
5. Show of Hands, Robert Fripp and the League of Crafty Guitarists
6. Led Zeppelin III
7. Verdi's Requiem as performed by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and Chorus with Leontyne Price soloing
8. BloodSugarSexMagic, Red Hot Chili Peppers
9. The Night, Morphine
10. Ruby Vroom, Soul Coughing (tied with Are You Experienced?, Jimi Hendrix)

This of course doesn't include Glenn Miller, The Clash, They Might Be Giants, Poe, Ani Difranco, The Cure, Dead can Dance, Erin McKeown, Beethoven, Corelli, Prodigy, Moxy Fruvous, Tom Lehrer, Meryn Cadell, Peter Gabriel, Nick Cave, Radiohead, George Thoroughgood and the Destroyers, Elgar, Berlioz, Gershwin, Metallica, The Strokes, Weird Al, Tom Waits, Paul Simon, Garbage, Joan Osborne, Janis Joplin, Etta James, Cracker, Belly, Pink Floyd, David Bowie, Johnny Cash, Beck, XTC, Santana, Rage Against the Machine, Porno for Pyros, Jane's Addiction, Tool, Nine Inch Nails, Tom Petty, Bjork, PJ Harvey, Chemical Brothers, Crystal Method, Lauryn Hill, and all the other artists without whom I would have left my sanity at the door years ago. I hope I'm never forced to go to a desert island without at least 10 gig of mp3's and a solar-powered stereo.

Sigh.

So my lovely business partner called me this morning with a minor Child Emergency, so I had to open the store on short notice. This is no big deal--I was planning on being there around ten thirty anyway.

However, I was in the middle of shaving my legs when she called, and didn't have time to finish. So I have one leg that is nice and smooth and one that is all stubbly. It's a bit odd.

Went camping for the Fourth. Okay, it wasn't really camping so much as it was pulling the truck over, drinking and grilling and bullshitting around a fire next to a beautiful creek, and then sleeping in the back of the truck on a futon mattress. Which, by the way, is the way to go if you aren't backpacking. Because you are warm, you are dry, and you are not sleeping on rocks. I would compare it to dragging your bed outside on a nice summer night.

The creek was lovely. I went wading in its clear cool waters, found little fish, watched beautiful blue damselflies flit about in clouds of frenzied iridescence, startled a frog, and identified new plants that I'd not yet learned (hooray for Mister Michael Moore and his wonderful books).

The Pacific Northwest still is amazingly lovely. Our little campsite had tiny little miniature daisies strewn amongst the grass.

My dear friend Sarah (not me, another Sarah) now has her very own blog. Ya'll wander down there and check it out, y'hear?

MD Hysteria Against Herbs Reaches Epidemic Proportions: Threatens Nation's Health

Interesting. Concerning hormone replacement therapy, Peter H. Gann, MD, ScD, and Monica Morrow, MD, from the Feinberg School of Medicine at Northwestern University in Chicago, Illinois comment that "...alteration of a woman's basic hormonal physiology over decades in the interest of long-term disease prevention is fraught with hazard."

I took a quiz to find out what flavor I was and I got:

"Groovy Grapefruit

With a laidback style and anything-goes outlook, your groove is mellow yellow. People enjoy hanging out with you for your calming vibe and unique perspective on life. That's probably because you aren't one to let everyday stress get you down. In fact, your pals would say they've rarely seen your feathers ruffled. But as much as you enjoy the company of your compadres, you're just as happy to spend time solo. Why follow the crowd when you can chill down your own path?

Chances are, traditional success has never been a huge priority for you. With your groovy outlook, we'd guess you're more interested in the journey than the destination. This type of thoughtfulness extends beyond your inner circle to the world at large. Whether lending a helping hand to others or getting the word out about social causes, your caring nature is punctuated with a zing that never fails to get people's attention."

This article on soy and isoflavones is cool, too. Jim Duke is calling into question whether or not soy is even that big of a deal, isoflavone-speaking, when compared to other beans.

Yet another fascinating example of how big money (in this case, the HUGE soy industry) can sway research, or at least weight certain items.

Michael Tierra's Online Articles are really cool. I just finished reading an article about Arjuna that I found really interesting. It seemed to have a lot of similarities to good old Hawthorn, but with a few very interesting differences. Tonic herbs are often really complex; but they're usually really safe, too, so THAT'S some sort of argument for the intrinsic intelligence of Creation.

In any case, I liked it, and I also read this article on Li Dong Yuan's Spleen and Stomach School, and I think I am finally kind of, just maybe, perhaps starting to get the faintest glimmer of understanding of Chinese medicine--or rather, its terminology.