pit of my stomach

can't tell, really, whether it is the latest conference, the garlic ravioli, or the mix of night time medicines I've taken that has tied a knot in my stomach. I think it's the BlogOn conference, but it might be mixing Levaquin and Celexa, or it might be the cheese Ravioli from Bergamos. What do you think? I think it might be the conference. Whatever it is, it hurts like hell just now, and I'm lying on my side typing for lack of a better way to handle it. Dearest brethren. I take wing when I read how much you care about what we say, what we do, who we are. You still care. I care too. Except the words. They too make knots in my stomach. Every day something ties knots. Everyday I try to write them free. I used to be able to write them untied. But now I can't seem to untwist the double-knots. It's not every day I read about a BlogOn conference, nor is it every day I have to take Levaquin at night, and this is, after all, the first time I've had Bergamos ravioli. So, I'd like to think of this most recent pain as an anomalie. But it's been coming. Little knots, tighter knots, all trapped up inside this editing window, this screen.

I used to see inside the screen. I used to see beyond the white and blue to a new world outside of any familiar dimension. I used to see you and you and you. I used to see everything--every single thing--and nothing, and both had meaning.

Now I see pixels and letters and words.

Yes, it is probably the Ravioli.

I think you're right.

Write Now

Dear Jeneane,
You have my vote for sticking a fork in blogging and calling it done. The post mortem will probably show the time of death as somewhere about the time I started blogging. certainly it was dead by the time of the bizarro Blogger-Con, that event where creativity, authorship, and the craft of writing were subordinated to the ego and get-rich-and-powerful fantasies of the Big Gouda himself.

Recently, when Gary Turner's Memoria Technica went white-screen, I stole a good line from somewhere and suggested that "not blogging is the new black." By this I meant of course, that if Gary Turner was (not) doing it, then it was high avant fashion.

I like these little on-line spaces that people have labeled blogs. They're a convenient place to hoist first drafts into the light of day. For some, they're a medium and for others they're an intermediate step to the final product. Regardless, they really beat the ruled pad and the number two pencil.

I have been so happy to hang out with a set of genii and excellent writers, people who basically get what I'm saying when I say it and are fairly accepting of much of my more nonsensical and outre utterances. I don't think community necessarily dissolves as boundary conditions shift. But I could be wrong. Look at the cities, the suburbs and the motor car.

For now, thank you Nina June. Thank you for the reminder that it is really about the writing. After a few years anywhere we get so stuck with cliches and commonplaces rattling around our brains that we need a good shake or an ultrasound treatment to chip them loose. High time I took the old cranial unit into the hygienist and swept out the dusty corners of my (don't call it a blog!) online publishing space.

Bada bingo... best regards from the spill-chucker,

fp

Blogging is Dead. Long live Writng

Dear J.
I received your email. Much thanks. Much love to you.
Blogging is dead you say. Yes, we buried Blogging a long time ago. Fishrush was one of the first who buried blogging. Others followed. Most are still trying to reinvent blogging. It will not be so. Blogging is dead. There is no going back.

Writing is alive you say. Yes, we are writing again. Writing about dreams and fears and spanish guitar sounds and moss covered trees and sex and love and loneliness and angst.

Solution is poetry. It remains so. It's always been this way. Is poetry solution?

Somewhere in between there is resignation, cynicism and love and hope. All practical and completely impractical things that humans have always done and will continue to do.

And we constantly rediscover ourselves. Gain answers. Loser answers. Search for answers. Curse that we ever found those answers. Then found out the answers were not the answers to find. Then found out there are no answers to have. Then found out that the answer about the answers was not the answer to have as an answer, which begets more questions. But as long as the music is on we dance. And we dance. And we dance.

...solution is poetry the solution is poetry the solution is poetry the solution is???

Signal. Signal. Sendig Signal.

Ba Ba Bidi Bi Blocks.
Bird changes Gold Cage's Golden locks
Birdy, bi, ba bada bi bi!!!!
You got got got a new gold key.

For you new golden cage, age age.
Ba Ba Bidi Bi Ba.
Keep on changing keys keys keys
Bada bi bis bis bis

Peekaboo! to you all.

Letters to Brethren, Part 1

Dear Ones,

I have been receiving the emails. I understand the passion, the mission, and who it is we should piss on. The problem, really, is this: meaning.

I understand.

To make meaning of the agony, something beyond/outside/other than/more than/for him/her/them// untangling the mass in the gut and splitting it up, like a cheese pizza, to share with you and you and me.

We eat off one another, soul food, relaying what we can one from the next. SOS. Watch out. I don't want this for you. My brothers. I don't want this for you.

I want that for you--hot sun turns your forearms brown, browner still, sea salt and mountain trails new with rain.

The point of it is that when we come this far--to the place where only our pain holds meaning, we unfold.

Show that. Write that. Tell that.

Show yourself. Let her see you.

In love, dear brothers,

Jeneane

geatest story ever sold

Mel Gibson's first serious foray into splatter genre cinema, The Passion of the Christ, opens on thousands of screens worldwide today. As if you didn’t know. Named by one US critic as “fetishistically violent” and by dozens of biblical scholars as anti-Semitic or just plain historically wrong, there’s no escaping a vanity project the auteur himself once identified as a potential “career killer.”
This spiritual Ishtar, financed by Gibson, seemed at one interval doomed to fail. It contains no stars, it’s not in English and the likelihood that it would be anywhere near as good as the book was always remote. Yet, media observers are predicting that Passion will enjoy enviable success in its opening pre-Oscar weekend.
"People think I'm crazy, and maybe I am," Gibson said in September 2002 at a news conference in Rome prior to commencing production. "But maybe I'm a genius.”
Whatever the case, modest Mel, who wrote, directed and produced this hulking gore-fest, is set to make a profit befitting a mastermind.
Why!? By many accounts, this product is difficult to endure. If ten minute long flagellation burlesques don’t send you home annoyed, there’s a good chance that dealing with the sound of a rather guttural dead language as interpreted by someone with a face-full of Special Wound Effects make-up will.
Passion should not be an easy product to shift. Yet it is poised to turn a remarkable profit. Marketing graduates of the future will almost certainly study the success of Gibson’s cultural warfare and agree that this is the Greatest Story Every Sold.
Gibson's film company, Icon Productions, may have given exemplary lessons to students of guerrilla marketing.
Last month a widespread and persistent rumour arose that Pope John Paul II was so moved by the flick that he uttered "It is as it was" after credits rolled. This was later denied by the Vatican. The Holy Father, said a secretary, did not give this nor any other feature the two Papal thumbs up.
Icon has eagerly welcomed large group bookings made by clergy. Its Australian website states that the company will liaise “with cinemas on behalf of individual churches” to ensure seating. Gibson’s mass-to-grass approach has also seen many preaching for the film worldwide from virtual pulpits. Emails, websites and faxes overflow with filmic faith and fury.
Investigation of the film’s merchandise reveals a natty “Nail Pendant” . Just like the ones Jesus wore at Easter. Made of pewter and available in two sizes, each with Isaiah 53:5 inscribed on the side, they will set you back $12.99 and $16.99 respectively.
Classiest of all, perhaps, was the appearance a Chevrolet at the 2004 Daytona 500 featuring a special Passion paint scheme.
“I got a kick out of the NASCAR stock car hood. I always suspected that Jesus loved hot rodding, and this only confirms it” says freelance journalist Christopher Noxon from his in-laws’ home in Los Angeles.
Noxon’s interest in publicity strategies deployed by Gibson for Passion is quite personal. For the better part of a year, Noxon himself has functioned as one of Icon Productions most successful marketing implements.
Noxon’s role in the relentless promotion of Passion is curious and complex. This is the guy who first shed a little light on Mel’s faith, Catholic Traditionalism, and the Gibson financed Malibu Church, The Holy Family. He rose to national prominence last year when he shed a little more light on the peccadilloes of one of the Catholic Traditionalist movement’s more vocal commentators, Hutton Gibson.
The freelance journalist, to use Mel’s own analogy in his recent conversation with US journalist Diane Sawyer, is the very same who first tried “to drive a wedge between me and my father."
In stirring up publicity for Passion, Mel has been eager to make enemies. (Of American columnist Frank Rich, Gibson was reported as saying, "I want to kill him. I want his intestines on a stick. ... I want to kill his dog.".) Noxon can lay legitimate claim to being the first “enemy” accused by Mel of attempting to discredit his faith and his film’s pro-Christian message.
Just how was Noxon initially drawn into playing Lucifer to Mel’s marketing martyr?
“My Dad retired a few years ago and bought a house in the countryside near LA. He was out hiking one day and he saw some surveyors’ stakes” says Noxon.
“(Dad) is part of a local neighbourhood group that looked at new developments, mainly big tracts of mini-malls and such. (He) set up a meeting with the developers and found they were called the A P Reilly Foundation, a non profit group. He was curious about it and asked some questions …. They said it was (run by) ‘a very spiritual figure on the world’s stage’. They wouldn’t name the benefactor.”
“I ran the tax information about A P Reilly…and it turns out….. A P Reilly is the name of Mel Gibson’s deceased mother.”
Noxon learned that Gibson financed a church that “didn’t seem like Garden Variety Catholicism.”
“At the time I thought ‘that’s an interesting celebrity titbit’ but it really wasn’t anything I was inclined to write about.”
Then, “news of the movie percolated out of Italy and then I found out about Hutton Gibson while poking around on the internet.” Noxon felt he had the makings of a story and successfully pitched to the New York Times.
While Noxon was preparing the article for press, he attempted contact several times with Mel Gibson via publicist Alan Nierob. Repeated requests for interview explained that the article sought to explore Mel’s faith within the context of his Passion movie project. Noxon requested that Mel discuss his faith “explicitly so there’s no misunderstanding. They ignored that letter. So I just went about interviewing people. Then I located Hutton Gibson down in Texas and he invited me to visit him. I spent the weekend with him. … I went down, I interviewed him and clearly it was pretty explosive stuff. I came back to LA and wrote a letter saying that I had spoken to Hutton, other members of the Traditionalist community and that I had attended a service at Mel’s Church.”
Noxon interviewed Mel’s father early in 2003. With doddery zeal, Papa Gibson questioned the veracity of the Holocaust, denied that Al Qaeda hijackers had anything to do with the September 11 attacks and called the Second Vatican Council ''a Masonic plot backed by the Jews”.
“I wrote to Mel’s people and said I’ve interviewed the father and I wish you’d weigh in. I included some quotes from the father expecting to get a public statement if not a direct interview. Instead I got an eight page single spaced letter threatening to sue me. This came From a guy named Marty Singer who is a notorious journalist suppressor here in LA He is used by Schwarzenegger and J Lo and others who are mainly trying to stop stalk-a-razzi. I think he charges $400 an hour.” Singer, as it happens, is sometimes known as Mad Dog.
None of Noxon’s investigations had been published when the cease-and-desist novella arrived on his doorstep.. After initial shock from the legal volley wore off, and he was assured by the New York Times that his “ass” would be covered, Noxon resumed work on his piece.
A week or so later, Noxon turned on FOX News program The O’Reilly Factor only to find himself being directly addressed by Mel Gibson.
This, says Noxon, “was the first big public explosion. It was insane. I was sitting at home in my pyjamas gob smacked. There was some horrified screaming and jumping around. I couldn’t take it in.”
Noxon, his piece still unpublished, was called by anchor Bill O’Reilly a “slimy hit man for the left”.
“I really wanted to put that on a t shirt” Noxon says.
During the interview, which became fodder for future news programs,. “Mel looks into the camera and he raises his eye brows and says ‘watch out!’ It’s so cheesy.”
One has to wonder about the upshot of a threat, however theatrical, made by Mad Max himself.
“It was deeply surreal. It was very strange. But also kind of cool.” Says Noxon.
The story Is The Pope Catholic…Enough? appeared in the Times. Noxon “kept waiting for the summons to arrive.”
It didn’t. A year on, Noxon is not too anxious, figuring “ there’s so many targets that I’m just one amongst them.”
On the eve of the film’s release, Noxon observes that “the primary reason the movie is going to open so big is all the publicity. So much publicity and so much controversy and now everyone wants to know what the big deal is about. Every evangelical minister in the country is publicising from the pulpit.”
Noxon is ambivalent about his own role in fanning the flames of debate. He is uncertain if Gibson’s reaction represents radical paranoia or acute marketing savvy.
So, is Mel a genius, or is he crazy?
Noxon is unsure.
“I should make the point” says Noxon “that I didn’t ever intend to write the story “Mel’s a loony Christian”. I don’t believe that all Catholic Traditionalists are necessarily insane. I don’t even know that Mel Gibson is insane.”
Perhaps, theorises Noxon, “all of this has been a pre-planned publicity stunt. And if so, it was a master stroke.”

Random Technospeak

"Developing enterprise-scale applications today requires an approach to software architecture that helps architects evolve their solutions in flexible ways. This approach should permit reuse of existing efforts in the context of new capabilities that implement business functionality in a timely fashion, even as the target infrastructure itself is evolving"

Badabing World! The Struggle Continues! For Clear Communication! For Life! For Breath of Fresh Air! For badabing and BadaBing! For Peekaboo Moments of Clarity! For Love.

What if the eyes can't see?

"   Lear.   

O, ho, are you there with me? No 

eyes in your head, nor no money in your 

purse? Your eyes are in a heavy case, your 

purse in a light: yet you see how this world 

goes. 



   Gloucester   

I see it feelingly. 



   Lear   

What, art mad? A man may see 

how this world goes with no eyes. Look with 

thine ears: see how yond justice rails upon 

yond simple thief. Hark, in thine ear: change 

places; and, handy-dandy, which is the justice, 

which is the thief? Thou hast seen a 

farmer's dog bark at a beggar?"

William Shakespeare, King Lear, Act IV, Scene VI:

Where in Amerika is Captain Brierly these days?

' "Ay, sir, Captain Brierly will be remembered here, if there's no
other place on earth. I wrote fully to his father and did not get a
word in reply--neither Thank you, nor Go to the devil!--nothing!
Perhaps they did not want to know."

'The sight of that watery-eyed old Jones mopping his bald head
with a red cotton handkerchief, the sorrowing yelp of the dog, the
squalor of that fly-blown cuddy which was the only shrine of his
memory, threw a veil of inexpressibly mean pathos over Brierly's
remembered figure, the posthumous revenge of fate for that belief
in his own splendour which had almost cheated his life of its legitimate
terrors. Almost! Perhaps wholly. Who can tell what flattering
view he had induced himself to take of his own suicide?

' "Why did he commit the rash act, Captain Marlow--can you
think?" asked Jones, pressing his palms together. "Why? It beats
me! Why?" He slapped his low and wrinkled forehead. "If he had
been poor and old and in debt--and never a show--or else mad.
But he wasn't of the kind that goes mad, not he. You trust me.
What a mate don't know about his skipper isn't worth knowing.
Young, healthy, well off, no cares. . . . I sit here sometimes thinking,
thinking, till my head fairly begins to buzz. There was some reason."

' "You may depend on it, Captain Jones," said I, "it wasn't
anything that would have disturbed much either of us two," I said;
and then, as if a light had been flashed into the muddle of his brain,
poor old Jones found a last word of amazing profundity. He blew
his nose, nodding at me dolefully: "Ay, ay! neither you nor I, sir,
had ever thought so much of ourselves."

- Chapter 6 from "Lord Jim" by Joseph Conrad

To think so much of yourself never to be able to just be yourself, the way you are, the way you are not. Cheating life of its opportunity to let you know that life itself is your greatest partner in what so many times seems to be a bloody fight of mere daily existence.

Yet the formidable opponent is but a cloaked friend for should you ever know his true nature you might want to stop your daily toilings and give up, and then cheat life itself from the opportunity to be engaged with you.

Let the mystery stand then. Let the blood be spilled and to the end keep giving up the desire to know. In not knowing there is a space to breathe and continue the conversation.

So, don't be like Captain Brierly my friend, that narcissistic motherfucker.

Quixote and Sancho Conversationalists

Hello all Conversationalists of Planet Earth
(yes, it's still called planet Earth but known only as such to poor children of Ethiopia. To the rest of us known as Underdeveloped Land with Real Estate boom potential)
Anyway, the following from Terry Castel about Cervantes in The Atlantic. and I repeat it here for you, all you conversationalists thus attempting to save us from the lunacy of shared barren landspace of Amerikan Kultural Landscape.

"Cervantes had a faith in conversation, in paying attention to others, in bonding with strangers, in speaking, reading, and writing across all kinds of human barriers. The sharing of stories—stories of real life, not the fabrications of romance—had the power, he grasped, to assuage madness, loneliness, and pain. Quixote and Sancho are great, life-saving conversationalists. Their friendship lives on and dilates in the absurd, meandering, yet touching debates they have with each other. At bottom both seem to want to prolong their chivalrous adventures precisely in order to prolong the pleasures of listening and speaking, speaking and listening. And in turn they speak—and listen with attention—to every "noble stranger" they meet on the road.

In the fantasy of shared authorship Cervantes would seem to allegorize a broader vision of human fellowship. Hearing another voice, taking in another's story, is the essential thing—the humanizing component in an otherwise bleak landscape. It saves us from our lunacy and pride, both personal and cultural. "

Let our BadaBing save us from the personal lunacy and our Peekaboo! from our Cultural Lunacy and Stupid Pride.

What's practical about Love?

I fell in love. - There I was minding my own life. Scratching my ass from time to time. Caughing. Eating. Sleeping. Having Sex. Jerking Off. Some more eating and some more sleeping and some driving to work and back from work and going to the store and paying my bills and listening to music and reading books. All this time not knowing why I had such a hard time falling asleep. Not wanting to get up in the morning. And then I fell in love. So impractical. So impractical.

I fell into an impractical life. Being in Love type of impractical life. Worst Practices Type of Impractical Life. - Yes, definitely worst practice and did I mention how impractical? So impractical.

I have also seen the end of my life tonight. It was very impractical. Perhaps more impractical than falling in love. The end of my life was that it wasn't there any more. I died. There I was no more. Very impractical way to be, no? So maybe falling in love is much less impractical than being dead. I think I will stick with falling in love. Falling by itself is impractical too. Standing would be more solid, more practical but when you keep on standing the view never changes around you. It's like being dead. So falling in love may be the opposite of being dead, the opposite of standing. Anyway, I was just amusing myself with these impractical notions of putting words together, word after word typed up in a string of letters with spaces. Yes. I did fall in love. So impractical.

Reusable Construction Materials for Humans

I have already posted a couple of quotes from Joseph Conrad's "Notes on Life and Letters" and having read the volume (online, thanks to Project Gutenberg I would like to quote one more passage if you allow me. This passage sums up for me why I love writers like Joseph Conrad, not only because he was born Polish, like me; not because english is his second language, as is mine; perhaps because in this passage taken from the author's introduction to this volume of scribblings from 1898 to 1920 one can not help but to see a man fully aware of the passing of life, fragile skeleton we all build with our relationships to others, the others' skeletons of life; and then to know that our constructions were only a mere temporary housing for the humanity we only have had glimpses of, and perhaps some of our pieces of construction material and methods shall be used as building blocks for others that will come after us to afford them better glimpses of humanity within themeslves, chance will tell.

"This volume (including these embarrassed introductory remarks) is
as near as I shall ever come to DESHABILLE in public; and perhaps
it will do something to help towards a better vision of the man, if
it gives no more than a partial view of a piece of his back, a
little dusty (after the process of tidying up), a little bowed, and
receding from the world not because of weariness or misanthropy but
for other reasons that cannot be helped: because the leaves fall,
the water flows, the clock ticks with that horrid pitiless
solemnity which you must have observed in the ticking of the hall
clock at home. For reasons like that. Yes! It recedes. And this
was the chance to afford one more view of it--even to my own eyes"

~ get the text at gutenberg.net

Brothers in Arms. Sisters of Avalon. Get to Work.

"Work is the law. Like iron that lying idle degenerates into a
mass of useless rust, like water that in an unruffled pool sickens
into a stagnant and corrupt state, so without action the spirit of
men turns to a dead thing, loses its force, ceases prompting us to
leave some trace of ourselves on this earth." The sense of the
above lines does not belong to me. It may be found in the note-
books of one of the greatest artists that ever lived, Leonardo da
Vinci. It has a simplicity and a truth which no amount of subtle
comment can destroy.

The Master who had meditated so deeply on the rebirth of arts and
sciences, on the inward beauty of all things,--ships' lines,
women's faces--and on the visible aspects of nature was profoundly
right in his pronouncement on the work that is done on the earth.
From the hard work of men are born the sympathetic consciousness of
a common destiny, the fidelity to right practice which makes great
craftsmen, the sense of right conduct which we may call honour, the
devotion to our calling and the idealism which is not a misty,
winged angel without eyes, but a divine figure of terrestrial
aspect with a clear glance and with its feet resting firmly on the
earth on which it was born.

And work will overcome all evil, except ignorance, which is the
condition of humanity and, like the ambient air, fills the space
between the various sorts and conditions of men, which breeds
hatred, fear, and contempt between the masses of mankind, and puts
on men's lips, on their innocent lips, words that are thoughtless
and vain."

~ Joseph Conrad on Tradition

There is work to be done. An Honourable Tradition. A BadaBing work of Entropy Reversals.

Writing & Blogging

"Writing is not necessarily something to be ashamed of -- but do it in private, and wash your hands afterwards." -- R. Heinlein

On Action and Voice

"Action in its essence, the creative art of a writer of fiction may
be compared to rescue work carried out in darkness against cross
gusts of wind swaying the action of a great multitude. It is
rescue work, this snatching of vanishing phases of turbulence,
disguised in fair words, out of the native obscurity into a light
where the struggling forms may be seen, seized upon, endowed with
the only possible form of permanence in this world of relative
values--the permanence of memory. And the multitude feels it
obscurely too; since the demand of the individual to the artist is,
in effect, the cry, "Take me out of myself!" meaning really, out of
my perishable activity into the light of imperishable
consciousness. But everything is relative, and the light of
consciousness is only enduring, merely the most enduring of the
things of this earth, imperishable only as against the short-lived
work of our industrious hands.

When the last aqueduct shall have crumbled to pieces, the last
airship fallen to the ground, the last blade of grass have died
upon a dying earth, man, indomitable by his training in resistance
to misery and pain, shall set this undiminished light of his eyes
against the feeble glow of the sun. The artistic faculty, of which
each of us has a minute grain, may find its voice in some
individual of that last group, gifted with a power of expression
and courageous enough to interpret the ultimate experience of
mankind in terms of his temperament, in terms of art. I do not
mean to say that he would attempt to beguile the last moments of
humanity by an ingenious tale. It would be too much to expect--
from humanity. I doubt the heroism of the hearers. As to the
heroism of the artist, no doubt is necessary. There would be on
his part no heroism. The artist in his calling of interpreter
creates (the clearest form of demonstration) because he must. He
is so much of a voice that, for him, silence is like death; and the
postulate was, that there is a group alive, clustered on his
threshold to watch the last flicker of light on a black sky, to
hear the last word uttered in the stilled workshop of the earth.
It is safe to affirm that, if anybody, it will be the imaginative
man who would be moved to speak on the eve of that day without to-
morrow--whether in austere exhortation or in a phrase of sardonic
comment, who can guess?"


From "HENRY JAMES--AN APPRECIATION--1905" by Joseph Conrad.

The skill of blogging

"The skill of writing is to create a context in which other people can think."
~ Edwin Schlossberg


The skill of blogging is to create a context in which other people can blog.

Jesus Bunker Messiness at Joho Blog

"I always like weblogs being a perfect messiness of life unfolding in real time. Love and hate and petty theft and flame wars and civic movements and complaints and love affairs and crying and death and beer drinking. All faces of humanity all at once in real time. Quite overwhelming it seems. That messiness of life. Pretty fucking exciting. I hope we can sustain this messiness for a long time before somebody starts writing dissertations on blogging and what it is and what it all means.
I would vote to keep the messiness going. Let's see some more humanity at play. Some more exploring, endless not-knowing of rediscovery of seemingly well known life lived in real time before somebody writes 'Definitive Guide to Blogging'.
Some think it's anarchy but it's just freedom to have one's voice speak back to us again after it was initially expressed. A chance to step in the same spot in the river one more time and fall in love with the world again. "

Jesus Bunker Notes commenting at Joho the Blog

Keep the Messiness Going!

If value's only measure is Money then we are Fucked as a society

"(...) I'm 43 years old, I have five children, the youngest son is 10 now. (...) I'm very glad that finally someone has thought about women, who have drudged for many years receiving nothing in return from the state, government. Nobody, in any government, has thought about us, mothers, who dedicated years, twenty in my case, for bringing up children, for family.

You write that a woman at home works from 4 to 9 hours a day. I worked for 17 hours and not always slept nights. You know how it is with infants and small children.

Right now I look for a job but I can't find it anywhere. Either I'm too old or a break (I worked 25 years ago in a glassworks in Poznañ) is too long. I finished vocational school but I didn't have a chance to decide about my life, the decisions were taken for me.

Like they say, I'm in the lurch. I feel useless and without a penny. My husband is the only family's provider. Now there are six of us because my son got married and so did a daughter. It has been very difficult for us. No government has done anything for us, mothers.

I don't know, maybe it would have been better if I left my children without care, for a street to raise them. I would have then years of work and money, though I don't know what would have happened to my children.

I do have a little hope that the foundation will achieve its goal and will help poor Polish mothers. I would like to support you but I feel helpless. (...) "

by El¿bieta, Gniezno

Women Finding Their Voices

We decided to do something about it. DONE - PAID, we call it. We run a campaign called "WOMEN'S HOUSEWORK - HOW TO REWARD IT?" When we write to politicians we use the same wise words that are used on international conferences. We say that productive and reproductive work must be treated equally. That women working at home should have a right to a pension, somebody should pay a pension contribution for them, think about fixed salary. Think about different taxing for women working both at home and outside it, maybe give them more tax-free income. Everything - considering macroeconomic effects of these actions.

It's hard to talk about it publicly. Our civilisation is based on the myth about Eve being created from Adam's rib. So a woman is a part of a man, is second, is worse. Erich Fromm, who was investigating the prechristian myth about the fall of Mother of Everything - Goddess Tiamat said: "Six thousand years ago patriarchy conquered a woman - society was based on a male domination. Women became man's property and they had to be grateful for every concession made by him" .Our "gratitude" often leads us towards feminism. But still, forced to choose between the left and the right, we can't find our own voice

The right wants to close us at homes, make us always-caring housewives, kissed on a hand and given a faded flower on Mother's Day. The left shouts that we must be active, we must learn and work, work, work - if we want to be free. And we between the two sides - confused, shouted down, uncertain. All we really want is the right to choose. To choose the way we want to live. Do we want to be at home and take care of our family? Do we want a career? Or do we want to connect these two things in a way suitable for each one of us? Politicians should just make sure that economic system doesn't choose instead of us."

by Anna Mieszczanek in Polish magazine for women "Zwierciad³o" ("Mirror"))

Thanks for writing Anna. My sincerest BadaBing to you.

Woman is the nigger of the world. Better scream about it.

"We make her paint her face and dance
If she won’t be slave, we say that she don’t love us
If she’s real, we say she’s trying to be a man
While putting her down we pretend that she is above us

We make her bear and raise our children
And then we leave her flat for being a fat old mother then
We tell her home is the only place she would be
Then we complain that she’s too unworldly to be our friend

Woman is the nigger of the world...yes she is
If you don’t belive me take a look to the one you’re with
Woman is the slaves of the slaves
Ah yeah...better screem about it"

~ John Lennon

Women's house work - How it should be rewarded?

"Day by day, no matter we work either out of home or not, we work in house. Not for money.

Our husbands or partners, our children are given that way free of any costs a lot - not only our love and care. They are given also very concrete "goods and services" in the economical terms. All that, what has been delivered from the shop, washed, cooked, cleaned, tidy-managed, planned, working as in efficient enterprise.

That's the rule: When people get something for free, they tend not to treat that seriously. They do not make any value of that. They do not treat this seriously up to the end. They disrespect. Our domestic co-habitants have their ultimate assurance that always, no matter what happen, we will lead our house works, everything what is necessary to do in the house. Sometimes maybe we cry or shout a little.

If we by ourselves start to think and talk about our house job as something what is valuable, after some good time also our families start to think about this that way."

more at "Done-Paid" or Women's Housework campaign

Another Day in the Toiletless Empire

"The Romans managed to provide sanitation for people thousands of years ago, and yet millions of people today still do not have access to a toilet."

...from "Global trade keeps a billion children in poverty":

Amerikan BadaBing to You, the Toiletless Majority of Planet Earth.

Strong Signal from All Noise All The Time

Rageboy's Signal : "It is my contention, demonstrated fairly well here I think, that the New Age, of which Steiner is a shining pillar, is not merely fucked in part -- say, due to some of the more weirdball practices it's so easy to make fun of -- but that it is fucked in toto (and your little dog, too!), from the ground up and the sky down. As above so below. And it is my contention, moreover, that narcissism is not merely an unfortunate error on the part of those Seekers a bit too zealous in their lofty pursuit of 'self-knowledge,' but that it is the very goal and grail of all this self-important self-referential self-absorbedly numinous Gnostic Nosferatu-lookalike New Age horse shit."

Stephen Greenblatt on Rabelais and carnival

Stephen Greenblatt on Rabelais and carnival: "Festive laughter - popular, universal, ambivalent in its triumph and derision, gaiety and degradation - has at its center what Bakhtin calls the 'grotesque body,' ever unfinished, ever creating, ever exceeding its limits in copulation, pregnancy, childbirth, dying, eating, drinking, and defecating. The grotesque body - open to the world in all its orifices, unbounded, abusive, devouring, and nurturing - receives its fullest visual representation in the art of Bosch and Breughel, its most masterful literary expression in Rabelais' Gargantua and Pantagruel. Rabelais's scatology, Bakhtin suggests, must be understood in the context of rituals like the mock mass, in which excrement was used instead of incense, or processions in which the festive clergy, eating boudins, rode in carts loaded with dung and tossed it at the crowd"

Forgotten Miss Sarajevo

"Here she comes, beauty plays the clown
Here she comes, surreal in her crown "

Miss Sarajevo - by The Passengers:

And the night is set to freeze

Not Cool but Not Wroffle Yet

"Elvis...with God on his knees
Elvis...owned three TVs
Here come the killer bees Head full of honey potato chips and cheese
Elvis...the bumper stickers
Elvis...the white knickers
Elvis...the white nigger
Ate at king burger and just kept getting bigger

Elvis...sang to win
Elvis...the battle hymn
Elvis...the battle to be slim
Elvis ate America before America ate him"

U2 - Elvis Ate America lyrics:

Not Cool but Not Wroffle Yet

Not Dark Yet. Not Light Yet.

Bob Dylan: Not Dark Yet

"Well my sense of humanity has gone down the drain
Behind every beautiful thing there's been some kind of pain

I've been down on the bottom of a world full of lies
I ain't looking for nothing in anyone's eyes

I was born here and I'll die here against my will
I know it looks like I'm moving, but I'm standing still"

Not Angst but Not Happiness Yet.
Not Depression but Not Peace Yet.
Not Dark but Not Light Yet.
Not Murder but Not Forgiveness Yet.
Not Animal but Not Human Yet.
Not Mad but Not Crazy Yet
Not Loud but Not Silent Yet
Not Child but Not Adult Yet
Not Jerking Off but Not Fucking Yet
Not Numb but Not Alive Yet
Not Without A Job but Not Employed Yet
Not Alone but Not Lover Yet
Not Tears but Not Laughter Yet
Not Hungry but Not Satified Yet

Not Blogging but Not 404 Yet

And BadaBing to you too motherfuckers!
Hej Koleda, Koleda!!!

10 reasons why investors are illiterate

Ten reasons investors would rather stay ignorant: "Most of us just don't care to learn
Please face facts, folks: The vast majority of America's investors fit in one of these 10 categories. And legislation certainly won't change things.
I suppose I could be more tactful and politically correct and say Americans are 'teachable' and 'potentially literate,' but that would be pie-in-the-sky wishful-thinking.
It won't happen. It's not that people can't be taught ... it's that they don't want to be taught. Consequently, the vast majority will fall outside the radar of any well-meaning effort to reach them with an 'investor literacy' program. So why waste more of the taxpayers' good money?"

Voices from bmoeasy

"The Internet - and I am especially thinking here of blogs, a term I hadn't yet run across in the year 2000 - is a network of particulars: of very singular voices. When I read a 'good' blog I hear a sincere voice. I am engaged by the passion or knowledge or rage of that voice. I am persuaded and seduced. I see the words, the text, the style, and I hear a voice.
When I listen to 'good' radio, I hear a voice. I listen to that voice if it is sincere, if the voice is being truthful - even if , no - especially if - the truth is subjective, if the voice has integrity, passion, knowledge - no matter what the subject. I am uplifted. I am persuaded and seduced. I see a face. I feel I have met someone.
I imagine Better Radio to be a place where the object offered up - the voice - is made subject in my mind. I appropriate that voice, much as I would appropriate the voice of a favorite authour, or musician, or blogger. It informs me at worst - which is nevertheless good., It transforms me at best. I see and hear and feel better.
I seek a better world.
-
bmo"

Like a car crash

"Dressed up like a car crash
Your wheels are turning but you're upside down
You say when he hits you, you don't mind
Because when he hurts you, you feel alive
Hey babe, is that what it is"

U2 Stay (Faraway, So Close!) lyrics:

Stay. Stay.
As an Angel hits the ground.

What a lonely night to be
in the presence of love not lost
and not yet found.

In the jungle of humanity
there is time to find each other
It's not too late

If I could Stay
and I don't have to stop the Time

Stay
Dressed up like a car crash
As an Angel hits the ground
Just a Bang

Rupert?

Who is Rupert? and what is 'watched Survivor'? is it an Alarm clock? And is it possible that Rupert is in fact the Bada Bing conspiracy agitator who stole the Blue Diamond that Stealthy Steve is now going to recover for Mlle. Beaufort.

The plot thickens.