Burma

Today I thought to comment on something I honestly think the whole world should be watching and lending support to, which are the Buddhist monks leading protests against the totalitarian military regime of their country of Burma. Monks have been marching by the thousands after fuel prices in their country doubled without warning last month. Most affected are Burma's poor, a country where 1 in 3 children are malnourished.

Monks, who are highly respected in Myanmar, have energized a protest movement that began a month ago after the government raised fuel prices, sparking anger over economic hardship in the impoverished Southeast Asian nation.

The demonstrations also reflect long pent-up opposition to the military regime and have become the most sustained challenge to the junta since a wave of student demonstrations that were put down by force in December 1996.

The government appeared to be handling the situation gingerly, aware that any action seen as mistreating the monks could ignite public outrage. They are aware that restraining monks poses a dilemma, because monks are highly respected in predominant Buddhist Myanmar, and abusing them in any manner could cause public outrage.

We talk a lot about encouraging peace and democracy in the world, but this is the sort of change that occurs only with widespread global care and support. These monks are some of the bravest heroes you will see on television, but their struggle is likely to end in blood shed and tragedy, and go unrewarded at next year's Emmy's.

BSG Pet Fan Day

Now I post regular on the Okay Thread of the Science Fiction Channel's board for Battlestar Galactica, founded by the incredible wife of it's director, MrsRon. Today, we held an Okay Pet Fan Day, to post pics of everyone's pets to share... and here's mine.

Pumpkin, emulating his favorite BSG character, someone else who wears orange all the time!!

The (Female) Body Politic

Now I should not have been watching all the court room drama over the body of Anna Nicole Smith, I'll agree to that one right off. Plenty of other things were more important, right now down to ensuring I have clean and matching socks. However... I couldn't resist. Blame it on MSNBC doing continuing coverage of the whole week long affair, or the shade of lavender Anna Nicole's estranged mother chose to wear. So watch I did, although I had to mute and gag on several occasions. To recap for some of you, Anna Nicole is a tabloid trashgirl and a former Playboy model, whose son died last fall and who has a newborn baby girl Dannylynne. Horrid name. Anyways. Anna Nicole died of undetermined reasons a week ago (still no official report) and there is a 4-way circus court case over who is going to bury her body and where Anna Nicole will be buried. Her current (maybe husband) lawyer boyfriend wants her buried in the Bahamas next to her son, in the plot that Anna Nicole bought for herself. Her ex-boyfriend insists that he is the father of Dl. and should decide, being Dl. legal guardian. The lawyer boyfriend insists Dl. is his daughter but won't submit to a paternal test. The estranged Texan mother insists that Anna Nicole should be buried in Texas... and the body of Anna Nicole's son should be exhumed and reburied in Texas also. Crazy. There is also a court appointed guardian of Dl. who won the lottery Thursday, when Anna Nicole's deteriorating body forced the judge to give up the spotlight and render the decision to Dl.'s court guardian.

End Result: Anna Nicole will be buried in the Bahamas next to her son. After the Texan mother looses her appeals, which she began filing the very next morning. The ex-boyfriend and the lawyer boyfriend have made noises about doing the funeral jointly, for the sake of Dl. Then they will fight over the baby and the vast fortune that is now hers. Why was this drama so addictive and why did I find myself caring about a woman I would have walked across the street to avoid? I suppose it was the thought of having this judge deciding the fate of my body. Although the facts stand that Anna Nicole was estranged from her mother, and had fled an abusive family situation as a teenager, the judge fell in love with her crocodile teary mother. The judge took it as an opportunity to rant about how no one appreciates the stress and pain of being in law enforcement (Anna Nicole's mother was a highway deputy). He ranted on and on, with Anna Nicole's mother just sitting on the witness stand agreeing. He was deciding questions that could be asked and doing the examinations and crosses himself, practically. When one of the lawyers asked the estranged Texan Mother if she had ever made money selling information about Anna Nicole to the tabloids, the judge insisted that no one could imply anyone had financial motives in that trial or face damnation and hell fire. How could they treat that sweet little (abusive and money-hungry) old lady like that?

How indeed. It's gotten me to thinking. Beyond a $10,000 life insurance policy through the government, I have no plans for my own death and no will at all. Of course, I really have nothing at all to will away, except a Ford with 156,000+ miles on it, and a spoiled cat. My mother has agreed verbally with me that if I die before she does, she won't arrange a Christian funeral for me behind my back.. corpse.. whatever. I had always thought that such things would be handled by my coven, but I left them over a year ago following the death of my student Foxglove. She had joined a Universal Unitarian Church which accepted wiccan members attending with their Christian families, and it's a really nice church with a really nice pastor. Her parents had her funeral there, and I spoke. Lovely, all of it. But I don't know what I want done. Organ donation and cremation, certainly, none of that bothers me. I suppose what leaves me trembling is facing how easily by existence will just be erased, people will forget, delete me off email lists and phone books. One of the things I most regret is that I never saved a voice message from Foxglove, and the only pictures I have are the ones I started taking after she got sick. I never imagined how important mere pictures could ever become, until I have none to remember her before her fate was clear.

Barbaro Laid To Rest

Now people always swear you can learn things from what happens to you in life, and yet sometimes all you can do is put your head down into the wind and endure. And sometimes you just don't make it. At 3PM last Monday, my beloved racehorse Barbaro and fellow invalid was euthanized, following a resurgent infection in his injured legs. Barbaro seemed bound for recovery after 8 long months cooped up in a stall and in casts and a sling, enjoying even winter holiday gifts made of carrots. And then things just went down hill, his days blurred into suffering, they had to cut off parts of his hoof, and finally it was time for his owners to do the right thing. I know that no matter how hard it gets and how bad the days can be, my mother never thinks about doing the right thing for me. Yet it's like reading about a cancer patient who has died when you are a cancer patient. Even if Barbaro was just a horse.

new year and one day

Now how far am I going to get trying not to explain what I've been doing with myself since... however long it's been. Sigh. mmmm... Due to the current economic situation for poverty level wage earners in the United States coupled with the rising cost of health care even for OJI's who are supposed to be having the federal government pay for the cost of fixing your funny-bone nerve, I have closed up shop in my apartment and boomeranged back to my ancestral home. Sigh. In plain English, I don't earn enough money to afford $800 in rent, especially if I'm not going to get paid while I might be out of work due to surgery from an injury at work last year, so I gave up independent living and am now blogging from my childhood home. In short, it's cheap to live with your mother. But a lousy way to start off your new year.

In truth though, I thought moving away and getting out of retail would bring all sorts of joys and riches, none of which seemed to materialize over the last year. No boyfriend, for instance. No sex. No feeling like I am getting somewhere saving the world. No closet full of pretty things to wear. Still haven't learned how to turn my hair up like the other girls in the street and I still have not tried sushi.

I ended last year in more debt that I started out with, due to interest rates on my student loans and being out of work for 108 days, most of which I earned nothing in worker's comp or injury pay. Savings wiped out. Very depressed over the modern state of paganism, for reasons that shall go in another post. Very annoyed over the general stupidity of the average American who does not know that cell phones are made of metal. If you're getting down just reading this, I'm getting down just writing this, which is not what I really intended for a new years resolution.

My last three new years resolutions were: start running as a way of life, eat sushi, stop having to pay those check-cover fees because I'm too lazy to balance my checkbook. Nope, nada, and cha-ching!! So I've decided that instead of being healthy, cosmopolitan or responsible, that my new years resolution this year will focus on being horribly shallow and trendy and vile. I will focus my goals this year on becoming the kind of girl who boys want to date. For I assure you, that given the grand total of numbers given to me or ask of me last year stands at 2. So, if I get 3, then at least I can tell myself in a year that I've somehow become more dateable?? lol.

Fourth Horseman

Now we lost a planet. Granted, the ball of ice had only been around for some 76 years and was created after an observatory decided that a ninth planet existed, and then lo!

Olive predicts: publishers reaping the profits of billions of new science textbooks for colleges only, astrologers reaping the profits of thousands of Scorpios with sudden onsets of inferiority, Christian evangelicals reaping a new sign of the coming end of days. Pluto’s fall from the heavens already garners thunderings that this vote by a bunch of geeks has invoked down the Fourth Horseman of the Apocolypse. You will also be interested to learn that Pluto’s rider is none other than Osama bin Laden. What- you didn’t guess?

Just because the horse of the 4th is supposed to be green. Which makes this whole nonsense that the rider is OBL instantly disprovable. Who could mistake green meaning anyone other than Al Gore?!

Allow me to correct a little more. The 1st Horseman appeared as Clinton, cleverly disguising his bow and crown as the saxophone and the condom. 2nd Horseman: the Dalai Lama. Does he ever dress in anything other than red? Does he not invade college campuses in our nation and seduce away rich white kids with chanting and a stupid bell? For the 3rd Horseman, one looks to all the poor black people who didn’t die in Katrina and now expect hard-working American taxpayers to rebuild their city. Now isn’t this list just way more trendy?!

Speaking of lists, now that Pluto’s been downgraded, perhaps a name change is in order. Since it’s an ice ball, how about Vodka or Snowball? Given the weight people give to a name, one type of crazy to another, perhaps we should go through society and find alternate names to everything people insist has some adverse affect on humanity. Would be a lot cheaper than foreign aid or the global eradication of Tuberculosis (which is the #1 killer on the African continent). Venus could be Blueberry and Mars could be Apple. Instead of recognizing the state of Isreal, it would be the state of Sandcastle. Could a new name project be worse than another season of American Idol?

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Asatru in Black and White

Now it's a very easy thing to rant. Easy to rave. Easy to take a stance or a position or to polish an opinion and toss it up in a blog. Unfortunately, we rant and rave most of the time about pre-ordanined greivances spoon-fed to us by the risen American Conservativism. We rant about the bias in media coverage. We rant about the Southern Poverty Law Center. We rant about liberal professors and whatever they may profess. Nowhere do we mention how we really feel.

I waited up last night for news confirming the execution of Michael Lenz by lethal injection for the murder of another prisoner over the control of his prison Asatru group, the Ironwood Kindred. I've been following this story for about a week now after first reading about it on Frost and Flame, where I found myself at a loss on how to really convey racial realities in the American South. I discovered Lenz's story posted over at The Wild Hunt, where people were pretty open with the opinions of the supposed press bias against Asatru, and closed mouthed over Lenz himself. After pointing this out in the comment section, I did get a thoughtful reply by MacRaven.

Under all the polish and spin, what are we really thinking about this? Do I want Lenz denounced for nothing more than political convienence? Because in truth the first thing I thought was at least he wasn't scheduled to be executed during Kaine's run for Govenor. Hard but true. I'm not a bleeding liberal against capital punishment on the grounds that my heart goes out to cold-blooded pre-meditated murderers who play warrior by stabbing to death an unarmed man on the grounds that he was a threat to one's popularity. (Even if he took the time to read the guy some nice poetry first.) Which turns out to be the underlying bedrock for Lenz's protestations of defending the Asatru faith.

Lenz's time of death was 9:07 EST. Although others held out hope that he might receive a last minute pardon from Kaine, and I join the Democratic Govenor in being personally against the death penalty, I cringed at the thought his execution might not take place. And my feelings are wholy about the desire to retain a Democrat as the executive head of a Southern State. I do feel mildly disturbed about my lack of desire to support clemency for another pagan, and on the other hand I do not think a cold-blooded killer should be able to make us an election issue. And I will be really sore if Lenz's poetry starts getting published and he gets a record company named after him. Rant off.

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