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Friday, May 30, 2008

Whoah, I didn't see that coming! And Other LOST Reactions

Desmond and Penny unite?!? I thought they would be searching for eachother until eternity! I hope this doesn't mean we won't see anymore of Des, probably not, since Penny's father is still heavily involved in a behind-the-scenes sort of way, and now that Pen and Des are together, Mr. Widmore can get to Des to find out where the island is...or so he thinks. Must see more Desmond future episodes.

John Locke was the man in the coffin! For all of us who thought the man in the coffin from last year's Season finale was Ben, they totally teased us by having Ben appear (live and well) in the Flash Forward Funeral Parlor. And why was John Locke going by the alias Jeremy Bentham? Did Locke really commit suicide? So he can die now too? I did a google on Jeremy Bentham, who happened to be a real historical figure. Ew. Creepy. I think I saw this on TLC or History or A&E or something. If you read the text, you'll see a mention of the real historical John Locke.

OK, where is the tsunami? It's way past time by now. What becomes of Frank, Miles, Daniel and Charlotte? Is Jin really dead? I think Michael is, because Jack's dead father told him he can go now before the explosives on the freighter blew.

Keamy was probably one of the most hideously disturbing villain characters not in a classic hideously disturbing villain way, but in a very average tough guy dork mercenary way, which, IMHO, is more disturbing because at least classic villains have a certain je ne sais quois. He made Ben look hot, well, er, at least tolerable.. In fact, I'm sort of liking Ben now.

Instead of Taller Ghost Walt, I now want my alter ego to be Time Traveling Bunny. Speaking of Walt...um...the boy grew up fast. Note to scriptwriters: always make sure to account for adolescent actors' growth spurts in the storyline.

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Wednesday, May 28, 2008

DREAM: Sentient Tornados

I was in a multi-level house with a lot of other people that I didn't know. The walls were mostly glass which enabled me to see the weather outside. There were these dark brownish/black clouds hanging very low in the sky, nearly touching the roof. The clouds were very turbulent and had pendulous extensions coming down from them which I guess were small tornados, but they moved like animals, like snakes or heads and necks of those large herbivorous dinosaurs...or like Nessie. They would come out of the clouds (but they were made up of cloud stuff themselves) and extend down to a window of the house and touch it with the base of its extension, getting a feel for it. I was terrified by these tornados. The other people in the house agreed that we should go to lower levels. We crawled down stairs which were more like ladders. One of the tornado extensions had gotten inside and was now standing upwards and it had a head comprised of 3 other heads like in a totem pole design. The heads looked like cats. It was terrifying.

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Wednesday, May 21, 2008

Separated at Birth?


Josef Fritzel. Imprisoned and raped his own daughter in a basement dungeon for 24 years.


Drew Peterson. Suspected in 4th wife's disappearance and 3rd wife's murder.

Ew.

Creepy archetypes, anyone?

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DREAM: Flush and Repeat

This is one in a bunch of reoccurring dreams that I've been having in the past 5 years or so.

Last night I dreamt that I went into a public restroom with Stan (odd that there'd be a unisex public restroom, but, whatever). We each went into separate stalls which not only contained a toilet but sink because Stan was brushing his teeth. For some odd reason I had stuffed a bunch of clothes in my toilet, not just clothes but other things like a hair dryer and an old 90s era decorative plastic cordless phone. Another woman entered the restroom and starts talking to Stan, telling him to remove his toothbrush, right as I accidentally flushed the toilet. Somehow the toilet became this huge tub or vat that was very deep, with flushing action. I watched as these clothes and appliances...oh yeah, there was also a cat litter pan that I had flushed, not just the litter but the whole pan...were being flushed away in horror. I could still see them at the bottom of the deep tub; they weren't gone entirely. It was at this point that I called out "HELP!" but the woman was not letting Stan leave to help me, or he couldn't hear me call, or something. I kept yelling "HELP!" and I think Stan finally came, but there was nothing he could do about it. I think we resigned ourselves to having lost these objects, not that they weren't replaceable, although the clothes would have been nice to have back. I was more worried about the plumbing being damaged and causing a big clog than anything, however the pipes seemed as huge as the tub. Very weird.

The other night I think I dreamt I flushed a clear plastic sealable snack bag down our toilet, and in the dream I was thinking that it was just like in my dreams.

Why on earth has this become such a reoccurring motif? Why would I put anything that isn't biodegradable down a toilet, let alone something I need? Simply bizarre.

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Monday, May 19, 2008

Is it Just Me?

Sometimes I wish I didn't have a creative bone in my body. Sometimes I wish I had no desire to create beauty. Sometimes I wish I could be happy sitting down with a ledger of numbers at a safe and secure job and not questioning anything or thinking I could make something better. But I'm not like that.

Herein lies the problem. I'm also very practical and grounded. One time I was taking one of those silly online personality tests and you had to pick one trait from a choice of two that best describes you. The two choices were "practical" and "creative." I guess, according to the makers of the test, you couldn't be both practical and creative. I don't know which one I picked in the end.

So many creative types, or at least those who like to think of themselves as creative, are, to put it mildly, batspit loony. A while back, a (non-art studio) professor that Stan had said that Stan and I are not like other visual artists because we are sensible and practical. This professor seemed to have experience with studio artists as being flakes. Unfortunately, we've had the same experience.

It's not just the visual art that gives me this problem. It's the jewelry. And now it's becoming the perfume research. I make art and jewelry because they're beautiful. That's all it is, a need to create beautiful paintings and designs and work with colors and lovely stones. And with the perfumery, it's the same thing, except it's the desire to create beautiful scents.

And in my research, whether it's for sourcing materials or just learning, I'm constantly running into the same thing over and over. The witchy woo woo factor.

Let me start over from a different perspective.

Is it just me, or...

...is it a little off that someone maybe in their 20s or 30s wouldn't like movies? Any movies? I don't just mean mainstream Hollywood blockbusters, or eurocinema, or slasher flicks, or any specific genre of movies, or movies with certain actors or by certain directors...but ALL movies?

I'm trying to wrap my brain around this. I'm trying to imagine what it would be like to be someone who rejects this contemporary art form and way of storytelling. All movies are are a modern technological extension of storytelling which has been with us since humans could communicate. Movies *are* a part of us, and to deny the urge to hear or see a good story being spoken or read or presented in multimedia is to deny our humanity, right? Am I wrong about this?

Let me start over from a different perspective.

When I was a 12-year-old I found out that NOT all 12 or 13-year-old girls liked boys. It freakin' blew me away. We're not talking latent lesbianism here, at least I don't think so. The person I'm remembering is married now. I don't know if there are kids. I mean I remember being interested in boys since I was like 6. I found out they existed, didn't like any in my class, really, but made some up to like. Moved to New York, found cute ones in my class, got crushes, rinse, repeat in various forms for most of my life until now when I'm just too old and tired and married to get crushes anymore. When I was in New York, I had a friend who had a crush on the same guy as I did, and it was sort of cute. No competition or anything, we were just 9 or 10. I always talked about boys with my girlfriends and soon-to-be-girlenemies. But to find someone who didn't like boys? Blew me away. Just like accidentally happening on someone's blog while doing research on something else. (I call it being "blogboozled"...being misled/confused/cheated by having blog content come up instead of either commercial content or informational content. I'm sure this journal blogboozles people all the time. But ferkryinoutloud, the dumb stuff people search on that brings up my blog...they deserve to be blogboozled. Yet, I digress.) So this person whose blog comes up instead of more relevant content I was looking for doesn't like movies. Can't sit through them. Weird. To me, it's weird. Am I weird because I like movies? I don't think so, I think that's pretty normal. Everyone has their favorites and genres they don't like. But to blanket-statement say "I don't like movies"...because "I can't sit through them"...Weird. We must be talking some major ADHD here.

To me it came off totally condescending, like she was too good for movies (like my 13-year-old friend was too good for stinky boys) because she practiced this Pagan Mother Herb Goddess Shawoman (not Shaman...it has the word *man* in it) lifestyle which looked down on anything that was "Man-ufactured" (womanufactured is ok). I looked at some other blogs by people associated with her (all women, of course) and although they weren't as militantly-anti-movie as she was, they all had that veneer of "I'm Belladonna the Good Wytch" and "I like groovin' with our Earth Mother and singin' songs to my wyld gardyn" almost parodic self-descriptions. No, I take that back. Not almost parodic self-descriptions, parodic self-descriptions. Nothing almost about it.

And then it hit me. This woman is a fundamentalist. No, not a FLDS or Pentacostal. Not Christian of any stripe. She's a fundie crunchy pagan herbie. Wildcrafting plants is her Sunday morning service. Organic tinctures is her holy water. One fundamentalist movement is patriarchal, the other is matriarchal.

Look, I love the smell of plants and the smell of natural essential oils, but I also love movies that love the smell of napalm in the morning. And you know what? Putting that citrine stone in your herbal blend isn't going to make you more clairvoyant and blending Patchouli and Ylang Ylang isn't going to bring you love especially if your intended lover doesn't like Patchouli. It's all bunk and hogwash. A stone cannot infuse any mystical power in herbal oil. And as much as I loved buying oils at Isis the other month when I was in Colorado, I loved buying them for their SCENT. I love stones because they are visually beautiful, not because wearing one makes me wiser, or richer, or whatever.

Gaaah. Glad I got that off my chest, it's been bugging me for a while now.

And how could anyone not like movies?

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Tuesday, May 13, 2008

The Real Problems

I feel compelled to write more on the topic of the Duggars, not because I'm negatively obsessed with them--well, maybe just a little in the way I'm negatively obsessed with all cults and tyrannical leaders--but to clarify the issues I have with them *and* the issues I have with some of the banal commentary I find about them on blogs. Too much of the insidious commentary about them is based on the superficial, not on the real problems. IMHO the people who would criticize the superficial, their hair, for example, is completely missing the big picture.

What's this? Ann, a blue-city-living liberal secular humanist childfree atheist coming out in defense of the Duggars? No, not quite. I'm just clarifying. Please read on.

Example 1: Hair and dress. Yes, they have hair and clothes from another century. So what? How does this affect you? Not one iota. And why is the only criticism about the hair directed at the girls' hair length? Why does no one ask "why aren't the boys allowed to wear their hair LONG?" Hmm...I see a bit of a double-standard directed toward people with double standards. Pot kettle black? There are plenty of hairstyles I've seen in my 5 decades of living that have been really dumb looking, especially the way so many guys just shave their heads now. Yuck. If you've got it, flaunt it, don't shave it. At least the girls in this family can flaunt their hair, if nothing else...so to speak. For the record, I too have long hair...not Duggar style long, but it's longer than most mid-40-somethings. I think a lot of animosity towards long hair comes from jealous people who can't grow it long themselves. Just my opinion, of course, and the opinion of others I've spoken to who have long hair and have felt the scornful wrath from those who don't have it.

The real problem: The fact that the girls are all *made* to wear their hair long (except for the bangs) and the boys are all *made * to wear their hair in that clean-shorn 1950s way is an example of how controlling their parents are and how the kids are not allowed to have any say. That is the real problem. It wouldn't matter if they had Duggar hair styles, or they were all shaved like the Heavens Gate cult or they all had B52 beehives. The fact that no one is allowed to make a simple choice about their own clothes or hair is sad (and picking the brown skirt instead of the blue one isn't the kind of choice I'm talking about). All children should be allowed to make more and more choices as they grow older and become more independent, and by denying them that right the parents are denying any mature development. Their decisions as adults will not be based on reason and logic and personal preference, but on what is done because that is what is done. I also have a problem with not allowing the girls to wear pants, especially when doing physical activities. Can someone explain the logic of this to me? There is none. It's all about keeping the girls in line as demure baby-making machines who never spread their legs even to do sporting activities--except to make babies for God . And that's the big problem.

Kids naturally want what other kids have, and since these kids really only socialize with eachother and maybe another fundie family or two, there's no wanting for hair like Amber's or jeans like Tyler's. They're only mirroring eachother which helps keep them clone-like. Yes, mom and dad are trying to keep bad outside influences from coming in, and that's commendable only to a degree. They won't have to worry about Jessatessaannabanana's butt-crack oozing out of her low-rizers. Or JumpinJehosephatbillybob's baggy pants exposing his ModestWear boxers as they fall down to his knees. And you know what? I think those hip hop pop fashions are every bit as awkward, dare I say--retarded--as their LittleHouseonthePrairieWear in this day and age. But here's the big problem...they're preventing their kids from dressing like that by keeping them in a unhealthy closed carbon-cycle bubble. I feel it's better to allow the outside influences in, and have an open discussion why these things are bad or good or uncomfortable or cool or unwearable, or whatever. Let the kids as teens wear silly fashion statements of their own choosing, then allow them to decide as they mature that yes, those clothes were silly...or maybe not. Maybe some fashions will stick. But that will be their choice, not the parents. But that's where the problem lies. This dictatorial household will never allow the kids to decide on their own. Or the kids might think they're deciding on their own, but they know of no other alternative from which to choose. And that's the big problem.

Example 2: Sex. I have actually read commentary that this couple needs to find another hobby other than sex, that they like sex too much, that they're oversexed, etc. etc. I have to check my calendar to make sure this is 2008 and not the Victorian era. Let me get this straight, people are complaining, in this day and age, that a couple is having too much sex? What? Hey, these Duggars aren't geniuses, they're not working on novels or scientific inventions or art. Let them have their sex hobby. It's not the sex. It's what they're allowing the sex to become. And that's the big problem. Ground control to the Duggar Clan, take your birth control pills and put your condoms on.

Example 3: Arkansas. Is. Not. The. Midwest. It is the South. Get over your geographically-challenged "if it isn't NY or LA, it's midwestern hicksville" condescending elitist coastal selves. Enough said.

Example 4: They like big families. So what? Look, I don't want kids myself, but there's nothing wrong with the fact that some people like big families. But here's the big problem: Every single child that they have, they bore. There are so many unwanted kids in this world they could have adopted. Go ahead, have a couple of your own, then adopt the rest. But no, they've been brainwashed by some fundamentalist movement that says you will be closer to God the more kids you bear. And that's the real problem. These patriarchal fundamentalist sects seem to be more about the male proving his penisworth by fathering large litters and giving no consideration to either a) the health of the mothers who have to suffer through these double-digit pregnancies or b) the Earth, its diminishing resources and the carbon bigfootprint that all these mega families stomp on it. This is where it starts to effect YOU. This is no longer about an eccentric family who dresses weird and keeps to themselves except to appear on Discovery Health when they pop out a perennial young-un. This is about the Earth and its future. You have a family of 20 driving huge SUVs, and, worse case scenario, their 18 kids go on to marry and have 18 kids each, each family having multiple SUVs and consuming large quantities of tatertot casserole and all the commercial processed junk that is in their family recipe book and doing 10 loads of laundry a day and throwing away exponentially large amounts of disposable diapers...this is not good.

Now if I were a believer in a god or any magical, powerful entity that supposedly "created" the Earth, this is certainly not what I would think it would want to see happen to its terrestrial creation. It would not want people who are perfectly capable of planning smaller families to procreate to this unhealthy degree(and this doesn't just apply to American fundies, but people of all lands). It's hurting these mothers and it's hurting the Earth. There is no sense to it. None.

If there was a family of 20 that were independent-minded with a low-carbon-footprint and not out to overpopulate the world with the agenda of spreading their religious zealotry and creating more voters who will eventually vote in representatives who would make all birth control illegal, I wouldn't have quite as big a problem with it. But independent-minded and religious fanatics are anathema. We as a country are so scared of terrorists that go boom, but what about this silent terror right here on our own soil cleverly packaged into a "gosh gee whiz, what a well-behaved large family"? Shouldn't we be concerned that as these kids are becoming young adults they have no education, no experience dealing with anyone outside of their family or tight-knit sect, no marketable skills or trade and no hope for college, not because they made bad choices and dropped out of high school, but because this was done with their parents' moulding and blessing? What about the young women in the FLDS sects in Arizona and Texas who become nothing but baby factories to polygamists at the age of 13, 14 and 15? These women are "married" in the eyes of their church, yet legally are unmarried so they can collect welfare from our government, a government which they otherwise detest and have no regard for. Then there's the "lost boys", the teenage boys expelled from the FLDS because they are competition for the Alpha Males and their "prophet" says they must leave. They have no future, no home, no where to go. What the hell is wrong with a culture that treats its young people like this? I find it outrageous that we can sit around and snicker at irrelevant superficial things like their clothing and hair, but not be outraged by the real problems that are taking place inside these compounds and homes-declared-as-churches. Thank goodness the government raided the FLDS ranch in Texas and thank goodness they prosecuted Warren Jeffs.

We need to rethink our laws on tax-exemption for churches. Why do churches need to be tax exempt? Why can a mega-church gobble up acres and acres of land (often times good farmland!) and not pay a dime in taxes on it while the old and very modest single-family homes in my neighborhood pay 3-4K a year for a tiny little 40x120 foot plat? If you want to build your mega-church on 17 acres, you should be taxed for the 17 acres. Can't afford it? Then build it on a smaller lot. What is truly egregious about Mega Churches is that they are built in the middle of nowhere, so they are only accessible by a long (usually SUV) drive. It is truly sickening.

We need to regulate home schooling. Why are people with no experience as teachers and hardly any education themselves allowed to teach children? It seems to be so rampant now. I never heard of it when I was going to school, and as much as school was unbearable for me at times, I'm glad that the thought of homeschooling didn't exist back then. And please, no tax-vouchers for home schoolers or private schoolers! If you don't want to take advantage of free tax-supported (by many people who don't even HAVE kids anymore or ever had them because it is for the public good) public schools, that's your choice, but don't take money away from the public sector for this!

And now you see my thoughts on the matter. I just hope more people will look behind the veneer of hair and outdated dresses and see the real problems beneath.

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Friday, May 09, 2008

Vagina: It's not a Clown Car.

Image-Google that title and you'll see what I'm referring to.

Now cut and paste the URL below:

http://health.discovery.com/convergence/duggars/baby-name-poll.html

If you've run out of ideas for new names and have to make a poll to have other people decide your baby's fate, maybe you should just stop breeding. Ones ability to breed should never surpass ones ability to come up with ideas. If I had a religion, that would be one of its laws.

What's so odd about this overpopulating resource-exhausting entire-school-of-Jesus-fish family is that they love the limeiight that Discovery Health and TLC gives them, which seems odd since they don't own or watch TV. Ironic, isn't it? TV is the work of the devil except when it pays you to continue in your breeding-addicted SUV-driving millennial consumerism-based lifestyle. Don't let the quaint Little House on the Prairie dresses fool you...they're not plucking raspberries and pulling rutabagas from their garden...there's more brand name non-organic canned products in their pantry than in my local neighborhood grocery store. Watch one of their TV specials...the resources this family consumes is astounding.

What's also ironic is that their family website is now hosted on Discovery Health. Well, I don't see anything "healthy" about having 17 (working on 18) kids.

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Black Lodge Cabin Fever

The scene last night where Locke goes into the cabin reminded me so much of the season finale of Twin Peaks where Special Agent Dale Cooper goes into the Black Lodge opening/gateway under the Sycamore trees. First you have Locke going into the cabin and Hurley and Ben stay behind, just like Cooper going in and Sheriff Harry Truman (and was Andy with him, or did he come later?) stayed behind in TP. Then when Locke's in the cabin, he's met with whom I assume are dead people...Christian (Jack and Claire's dad), who by all accounts is dead (of course we don't really know!), and Claire, who is either dead (Stan thinks she is, but I don't know) or, like Locke and Jack and Hurley, can see dead people, and for some unknown reason followed her biodad into the cabin, leaving her baby behind. Of course the TP scene when Cooper is in the Black Lodge is incredibly terrifying and the people he sees, dead Leland Palmer, dead Laura Palmer, The Little Man from Another Place, SeƱor Droolcup/The Giant, Windom Earle, Bob, and Cooper's Evil Shadow Self are much more scary due to all the screaming, backward talking and white contact lenses, but the LOST scene was still quite engaging. Then outside, you've got Hurley and Ben sitting waiting for Locke like Harry and Andy waiting for Cooper. Except when Andy asks Harry, "would you like pie?" "would you like a plate special?", Ben and Hurley are completely silent the whole time, and Hurley actually grabs what is probably an Apollo bar out of his pocket and offers some to Ben. I wonder if the makers of LOST did this scene as a nod to Twin Peaks? It was very deja vu!

Now about Claire, Stan's theory is that when that blast occurred a few episodes ago and Sawyer goes to rescue her from that house, there were biological weapons in that blast that have affected both of them, and they are dying. He says that explains that she is dead. Also, Sawyer is dying. Of course that doesn't explain why baby Aaron isn't dead...we know that he he's a living, breathing, apparently healthy toddler from flashforwards. Wouldn't a baby be first susceptible to biological agents than healthy adults with developed immune systems? Yet, death would explain Claire's actions. Usually she's so cautious with Aaron, why would she leave him alone in the woods to follow her biodad that she doesn't even like? Of course Sawyer and Miles were nearby, but they were asleep. It's not like Claire.

Weird advice dead Christian gave Locke about "moving the island." I wonder if the Tsunami will play into this? Certainly the Tsunami should be happening soon... How weird it is that after this series was already being made, the Tsunami happened and it has got to force them to write it into the script.

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Wednesday, May 07, 2008

They Shoot Mourning Doves, Don't They?

I saw the oddest bird at our birdfeeder today. It had a white body with black head, black wings and black tail. It sort of looked like it had a skunk stripe down its back, but it was just because the body was white and the wings were black. On the black wings and tail were a few random white spots. It had a gold beak and was eating sunflower seeds from our feeder. I've never seen anything like it. I tried to shoot it (with a camera, that is) from the bedroom window, but it flew away, of course. Maybe it's a migratory bird. It returned again this afternoon and I noticed it also had a reddish-orange breast. I tried to shoot it again, but could only get the picture below which I had to crank up the brightness and contrast on. I couldn't get any closer to it, and shooting it through a window without it seeing you is a little difficult.

Mourning doves have to be the stupidest birds in the world. A few days ago I saw one land on top of our feeder. It's one of those feeders that hangs from a fishing wire and is supposedly squirrel-proof. It has a bottom part where the seeds go in, and a top covering that deflects rain and jumping squirrels. The dove was standing on this top part, making those jerky head strutting pigeon movements, looking around, wondering where the food was. Well, at the time, there might not have been food in the feeder, but if there was, it wouldn't have been on top. But it happened again today, shortly after the mystery bird sighting. It landed on top of the feeder, wondering how to get at the food which was in the level below. The stupid bird could not figure out how to get to the food. All our backyard birds, from large crows to baby sparrows learning to fly figure out how to fly into the bottom level, except the Mourning Dove. Such a stupid bird. They have such small heads in comparison to their body size. If a chickadee had a body the size of a Mourning Dove's, it would have a head the size of a tennis ball. Wisconsin recently passed a law that allows people to shoot Mourning Doves. I guess they are overpopulated, yet I thought it was a stupid law. But considering the skyrocketing price of food, our doves might look pretty good when gas is $60/gallon and bread is $15/loaf and chicken is $30/lb. Actually, we have an overpopulation of Allium in our backyard which started from a few bulbs. Each year there's more and more and they're taking over the tulips and everything else in our yard. Allium are from the onion/garlic family, so we can cook the doves with the allium bulbs.

I don't know if I could actually kill a warm-blooded creature. We caught our own crawfish and carp and ate them once (Stan caught the fish with his bare hands). But a bird? You can't catch a bird with your bare hands. You might be able to ambush them with a net...they're pretty slow and tame...and stupid. But I refuse to have any sort of gun.

What will we be willing to do when the food crisis gets bad?

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Monday, May 05, 2008

Ginger

Recently I have been researching natural perfume-making and have been collecting essential oils to work with. Like any topic, there are blogs devoted exclusively to the subject, so I feel a little hesitant on adding to the mix since this is not something I have a lifelong experience with. My comments and thoughts on the matter may sound uneducated and naive since I am just beginning. But at least I admit that. I have no desire to become part of the online perfumerati, or part of an online anything anymore. Those days, the 90s and early 00s of web communities and cliques are so old and tired now. I just want my own little journal here where I write about my life, be it my animals, movies, music, art, plants, whatever.

And lately I really want to write about scents. I've already made some concoctions that I feel smell as good as anything commercially available. There are so many essential oils I'm unfamiliar with, so I add a small bit to some carrier oil and wear them as a single note perfume so I can take them in and "learn" them. Then there are some EOs I had been hesitant to get because I have a prejudice about them from my past.

I started obtaining my own perfumes when I was in Junior High. It began with some cheap mini bottles from Woolworths, plus some Avon solid sticks...they were sort of like lip balm, but scents. They came in little decorated tubes, Lilac, Hyacinth, Lily of the Valley and Hawaiian White Ginger. I didn't care for the Hawaiian White Ginger, but I wore it anyway. Then my 8th or 9th grade art teacher, a curmudgeonly old white-haired woman near retirement, wore the same scent. I really had a hard time wearing it after that.

So after that, up until this day, I have not been able to wear any Ginger. Nonetheless, last week I ordered a 1/6 oz size of Ginger Root from an online EO company. I thought I'd give it a second chance. I tried it in carrier oil. It smells nothing like my grumpy art teacher, or the cheap Avon scent. It smells like...crystalized Ginger. It's wonderful, and would make a good scent on its own.

The unfortunate part about natural perfumery is that the scents don't last as long as with synthetics, which is most everything on the commercial mainstream market today. But at least this gives me a way to sample more of my essential oils during a day, than having to wait until I shower next to try something else.

And here's one final thought for the day: I absolutely abhor all the silly Divacelebs with their fragrances. These chickies had absolutely nothing to do with the perfume other than lending their name to it. They probably know nothing about notes and fragrance families let alone tried their own hand at blending. And if anything, it would make me want to try it *less* than something with an abstract/non-celeb name (that is if I were still buying commercial perfume, which I'm not). The thought of a Br*tn*y Sp**rs perfume makes me wretch as I think of horrible smelly things I don't want to mention. Yes, some EOs have quite the...odd, if not downright unsniffable, waft to them. Valerian Root, even diluted, takes my breath away not in a good way. Black Currant bud, which is supposed to be so prized in perfumery smells like cat piss to me. I had such hopes for Galbanum, but I tried it diluted the other night and it left nothing but the smell of paint brushes that had been sitting in mineral spirits for a week. I need to try it again--that just can't be right! But I'd wear those any day before I'd put on any P*r*s H*lt*n. Yuck.

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Thursday, May 01, 2008

Context is Everything

Hey, addictionary word submitters: Would it kill you to use your word in an example sentence? Or can't you think beyond just the definition of your brainchild? I mean, it's *your* word, FFS, use it! I subscribe to addictionary, and it bugs me to see a fairly decent "werd" w/definition arrive in my inbox...but there's no example, no context. How hard is it to frame your "werd?"

Reminds me of Freshman Art History at CSU when we only had to remember the artist, the name of the work and the year it was produced. No, nothing about the context in which the work was created or the culture of the country and the era. The first test was a total shocker. I think I got a D. It would've been a boon for Rainman and Aspies who get off on that trivia date stuff. This is probably one of the underlying roots of all my anxiety dreams about not studying for tests. I pulled my grade up to an A for the second semester, but only after cramming to remember useless and irrelevant trivia that I soon forgot after the test. That's what fact- and data-based tests do, make you forget after you no longer need the data--unless you have Asperger's and you thrive on that--but for us Neurotypes we want to go beyond: "32. Artist: Max Benkelman; Title: "Sunflowers in Evening with Farmhand"; Country: Germany; Year: 1927; Genre: German Expressionism. In fact, I don't even think in my class we had the Genre or Country. The instructor didn't care that you studied--as well as a freshman could study given the reading material that was given for the course--about German Expressionism, or Max himself and that he soon emigrated from Germany to the United States, Southwestern Nebraska, specifically, where he set up the Sunflower Institute that was sort of like a Van Gogh cult for suicidal artists. No one cared that Max's fixation on Sunflowers was obsessive to the point that he painted nothing else, not even starry nights. No one cared about how colorless Max's paintings became throughout his years until finally his canvasses were nothing but thick black paint. No, there was no context back in Freshman Art History.

(Sound of current and former art and art history students Googling Max Benkelman because they can't remember studying him in class).

I didn't think about it then, but now I realize it was probably so that the TAs could grade the papers easier since there were hundreds of people in these classes. Wouldn't want a TA to have to mull over essay answers and different TAs give different marks for similar responses.

Why not simply give multiple choice, for that matter? That'd make it even easier and the university could forgo employing TAs as test graders altogether and implement the tests with the number 2 pencil where you fill in the circles and have a computer read it?

I never met a TA that didn't feel a sense of entitlement. Grrr.

So, if I say the work was created in 1788 but the work was actually created in 1787, does that make me every bit as wrong as the bozo who said it was created in 1632? Yup, according to the way Art History 101 is graded.

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