One Beat by Sleater-Kinney

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ol6OXGXDwWc

I’m a bubble in a sound wave
A sonic push for energy
Exploding like the sun
A flash of clean light hope
All you scientists can hold your breath
Can I decide to show myself, oh oh

Oh oh oh…
(Take me to the source of chaos let me be the butterfly
oh my, imperfect symmetry has underlying poetry in rhyme)

If you think like Thomas Edison
Could you invent a world for me
Now all that’s on the surface
Are bloody arms and oil fields
Could I turn this place all upside down
And shake you and your fossils out, oh oh

Oh oh oh…
(You can’t predict everything with Newton like certainty, why
Oh my, cause it floats around all we see with oscillating energy on high)

And you soothe yourself with the sounds you know
You tune out out out the hypnotic drone
Perfect hexagon of the honeycomb
And you soothe your soul with the shapes you know

Should I come outside and run your cars
Should I run your rockets to the stars
Could you invent a world for me
I need to hear a symphony
If I’m to run the future
You’ve got to let the old world go, oh oh

Your word for me is fusion
But is real change an illusion
Could I turn this place all upside down
And shake you and your fossils out

If I’m to run the future
You’ve got to let the old world go
Could you invent a world for me
I need to hear a symphony, oh oh

I’m ecstatic with how the election went . . . except for CA (FL, AR and AZ weren’t that surprising)

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That’s right, I saw kd lang in concert!  For my birthday!  For free!  With Sheraden!  Oh my god!

It was incredible, she has such a powerful voice and charm with the audience and . . . other qualities I won’t say here!  Oh man . . . two encores!

I went with Sheraden since she won 2 tickets through a raffle at my internship and it was my birthday (which was awesome!) and it’s hers today (HAPPY BIRTHDAY SHERADEN)

Sher and I were amongst the very few young people at the concert, though.  We saw one other person our age and apparently two friends of mine were there, too.  Most of the audience were people twice our age.  Which I think is disappointing, it is so important for younger generations to learn about the accomplishments of their elders – especially for LGBTQs today.  There are no mainstream, openly gay musicians our age with their target audience as people our age (Clay Aiken’s target audience is twice his age.  Yes, he is FINALLY out of the closet).  A lot of my peers didn’t know who kd lang is; I became a fan of hers when I was first exploring my sexuality, but tried to convince myself that I liked her only for her music.  And then I saw the pictures of her in drag and that self-deception quickly ended.

Anyway, at least everyone knows who Melissa Etheridge is.  She and kd are exactly the same age!  They just target different audiences and have completely different styles.

Other people I’ve seen in concert: Smokey Robinson, Gym Class Heroes (members of Cobra Starship, Fall Out Boy, and The Academy Is also appeared), Paul McCartney, The Cliks, Josh Groban, . . . and I think that’s it?

I volunteered to make five paintings that will be put up on campus and I FINALLY finished them!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MB4yFuWS85w

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bFqV3iH24WU&feature=user

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fh5hG8yz0ns&feature=user

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vb-UVATMbYM&feature=user

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BtT-n9JDSe8&feature=user

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QUhwA-C-ACg

I recently rented Mary Poppins and it was the first time I had seen it in over a decade.  Very little of it made sense to me at that age, mostly because their accents are so thick and corny!  I loved it and it has retained its quality unlike other children’s movies and shows (original animated Transformers, for example).

As you can see in this video provided, Mrs. Banks is a suffragette.  This takes place in London in 1910, so that is historically accurate.  And it is historically accurate that suffragettes were outspoken and arrested in public, but were submissive and meek at home to their husbands – just like Mrs. Banks

I wonder what the creators of Mary Poppins were thinking when they created Mrs. Banks and this song.  It doesn’t appear to be either honorable or insulting, just as what was going on at the time.  Which I think is most respectful and appropriate in the context of the movie. 

But the line of, “Our daughters’ daughters will adore us, and they’ll sing in grateful chorus Well Done, Sister Suffragette!”  That . . . hasn’t entirely happened.  Let’s say that Jane, the little girl of this movie, was ten years old.  She would have been twenty five in 1925 and probably would have started having children then (women of that class usually had SOME education).  Let’s say she had a daughter right away.  In 1950, that daughter would have been twenty five.  Women in 1950 cared little for their suffragette grandmothers and rarely voted (when they did, they usually voted along with their husbands’ views).  Sadly, Mrs. Banks’ song was not fulfilled until the late 1960’s and the 1970’s . . . which is another story that makes me want to rip my hair out (militant lesbian feminists completely missing the point of equality)

My mom always took me with her to vote when I was little and told me every time to take pride in it.  She said that her grandmother had been a suffragette in spirit (but had nine children on a poor farm to take care of, so could not afford to parade in city streets) and had great pride when she first began to vote in her mid 30’s.  I vote and I am proud to do so; I am grateful for the suffragettes.  WELL DONE!!

I’ve been reading “When God Was a Woman” by Merlin Stone.  I’m only on page 66 but it’s been fascinating thusfar. 

There has been a question raised by/within the NeoPagan community for years.  I sought out answers for the question when I was NeoPagan (’98-’05) and I’ve still been wondering about it.  The question is: why have patriarchal cultures/religions prevailed over matriarchal cultures/religions?

Finally, the answer has been revealed!!!!

Early matriarchal cultures were agricultural and patriarchal were nomadic (this is in the Middle East thousands of years before Jesus).  Agricultural cultures valued fertility, growth, nurturing, etc. because that was what was required to live.  Nomadic cultures valued strength, brutality, and domination because that hwas what was required to live.  Women gave birth and nursed infants so they were more valued in agricultural cultures.  Men have more upper body strength and testosterone, so they were more valued in nomadic cultures.

Of course, the deities of agriculture-based religions were usually female and deities of nomadic-based religions were usually male.  The nomadic societies were usually more territorial because they relied so heavily on animal herds and the like.  They invaded agricultural societies because, well, it was easy!  Nomadic tribes were more advanced in warfare because they had to live by it every day.  They invented horse-drawn chariots. 

Switching these agricultural societies over to patriarchal religions and culture was easy, too.  They were matrilineal – the family’s bloodline was traced through the mother, her mother, her mother’s mother, etc.  By destroying that tradition, the people of the invaded societies lost their identity.  When you crush a collective identity of a people, you can do ANYTHING to them.  Holocaust, much? Spanish Inquisition, much?  Japanese internment camps, much?  Anyway, replacing the matrilineage with patrilineage shifted power and also made a powerful impact on religion.

There you go.  Politics and religion intermingle YET AGAIN!!  Only instead of “again,” it was one of the first times . . . UGH

Quote of the Day: “It is better to die on your feet than live on your knees.” – Delores Ibarruri

AARRGGGHHHHHHH I am pretty pissed off by three things, the first 2 of which are directly related to the third:

1) A friend of mine has made a pretty stupid decision about her life.  And she knows it.  But she’s somehow convinced herself that all the misery is her fault and it’s her responsibility to make it change through giving a lazy bum yet ANOTHER chance.  She’s decided to turn away from her own happiness to keep someone else content – and he is content in controlling her.

2) My high school has gone to shit.  The current headmaster (headmistress?) has her head so far up her ass, she honestly thinks that Bush is too liberal.  She doesn’t wany anyone talking anything gay-related because that’s how people become gay . . . yeahhhh . . . and she doesn’t want the history teachers to teach WWI . . . and she’s pretty anti-Semitic.  My high school as it was when I was a student there (when it kicked ass!) no longer exists 😦

3) I’ve been reading a lot about sexism in Christianity.  I don’t mean the dogmatic laws, I mean the very mindset that men are more deserving of authority than women.  I just finished reading “The Halved Soul” by Judith Pintar (it takes apart myths of romantic love such as Adam & Eve, Lancelot & Guenevere, Beauty & the Beast, etc.) and now I’m reading “When God Was a Woman” by Merlin Stone.  It pisses me off how politics and religion have worked together – religion hasn’t just come out and had an immediate influence on people, conquering tribes/empires/etc. just have brought their religion with them and used it as a way of exerting control. 

The connection between this political/social influence on/by religion is apparent in 2, but not so much in 1.  This friend of mine takes it as her responsibility to make her boyfriend happy, that his displeasure is her fault, that she hasn’t been patient enough, that his controlling behaviors aren’t that bad; she’s not religious, but that gender socialization (perpetuated greatly by religion) is apparent in our culture.

I’m, in general, pissed off that these people – this friend, the headmistress of my high school, and much of Western society for centuries – have been making such STUPID decisions!

I’m altogether fed up with religion.  No religion has ever escaped politics.  Whether or not you’re religious, it pervades your life and it always has and it always will. 

Quote of the Day: “Life isn’t all beer and Skittles!” – the character Puddle from Radclyffe Hall’s “The Well of Loneliness”

Time for a crash course on Liberal Quakers!  There are Moderates, Evangelicals, Conservatives, Liberals, and everyone in between.  I’m just going to stick to Liberals because it applies to me and it’s what I know.  But what I explain here doesn’t apply to all Liberal Quakers since it’s so loose.

Liberal Quakers believe that God (which is not a gendered term) is within all living things.  Therefore, most Quakers are pacifists.  A lot of Quakers are vegetarians, too, and I was for a few years; I came to believe that being an omnivore is part of the evolution process and is not a spiritual issue for me.  I won’t eat meat that involves torturing the animal such as veal, duck foie gras and kobe steak.  Killing people isn’t part of evolution, therefore it’s immoral.  And most Liberal Quakers are very politically active, especially with civil rights issues, because we should all be socially equal since we’re all spiritually equal.

There are Christian Liberal Quakers.  The Society of Friends started as a Christian denomination but it’s not a requirement to be a Liberal Quaker to believe that Jesus was a/the savior.  I believe he was just a really wise guy, but no more or less special than anyone else.  There are Quakers from all backgrounds and they may or may not integrate anything from Islam to Confuscianism into their beliefs.

The Society of Friends has no set dogma, no hierarchy.  There are meetinghouses in which there are weekly/quarterly/etc. meetings (and some of those might have a pastor).  People come and sit together in silence.  They’re supposed to be having a spiritual experience, reflecting on God within them.  If someone feels that God wants her/him to speak, she/he does – but most Quakers actually prefer silence.  I have yet to attend a meeting and I would like to eventually . . . but I don’t see why this spiritual experience has to be at a certain time in a set building.

There’s no set belief about the afterlife.  I think that our bodies and individual selves die, but the strand of God in us just goes back to this ephemerial God and then just goes back into another living being – Universal Soul reincarnation rather than individual soul reincarnation.

The general belief is that there is no evil being or force.  People just do bad things for psychological reasons and natural disasters are just part of meteorology and plate tectonics.

I’ve come a loooooonnnngggg way from Conservative Catholic to Agnostic/Catholic to NeoPagan!!  The difference here is that I followed what these religions taught because it’s what they taught.  I quit all that, I got away from the hierarchy and the pointless details that come between the individual and God (and I’ve had too many spiritual experiences to believe that God doesn’t exist) and formed my own personal beliefs.  It just so happened that I discovered that my personal beliefs were those of Liberal Quakers.  I joined because Liberal Quakers fit me, I haven’t had to fit into them.