Can I Play With Madness?

Te Wiki Wiki Wiki

2007-07-25T09:30:00.000+12:00

In New Zealand, after English (spoken by 95.9 percent of people), the most common language in which people can have a conversation about everyday things is Maori, spoken by 4.1 percent (157,110 people).
(See? Statistics ARE interesting.)

So for those who don't work in a government department, I thought I'd share some new words I'm learning. Next time you go to the kitchen at work, take note of these:

Ti = Tea
Kawhe = Coffee
Huka = Sugar
Miraka = Milk
and of course
Maero = Milo

and now for the harder ones

Pouaka Whakamatao = Fridge
Mihini Horoi Pereti = Dishwasher

But what I _really_ want to know is how to say "@$!! I'm tired, didn't sleep well last night and I think I have a cold. Hope my kawhe kicks in soon."

Actually, there are people here who could tell me that.

Also - it's my first payday. *massive kermit flail*

[Who rememembered that wiki is Maori for "week", as in "Te Wiki O Te Reo Maori" ? Which is, of course, this week.]

listening to The Rapture | Wey Ahh (Claude Somebody remix)

Atheism, Universal Negatives and Stuff

2007-05-29T12:46:00.000+12:00

Have been reading friend Wildilocks' online stuff. Being an atheist (a nice one), she sometimes writes about that. Here's something I replied to one of hers...

The “knowing God can't exist” argument gets people sometimes, and people on both sides of the divide make mistakes in their thinking imo. eg I came across a slightly erroneous article not long ago where the writer says:

Sophomoric critics of atheism often charge that atheism is committed to proving the negative proposition "no gods exist" and, since allegedly no one can prove a negative, this shows that atheism is an absurd doctrine. The first thing to note is that it is often possible to prove negatives. Euclid proved that there is no highest prime number. I can prove that my bicycle is not in the basement by going downstairs, turning on the light, and looking around.

http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/keith_parsons/misconceptions.html

But it's not “proving a negative” that is impossible. It's proving a UNIVERSAL negative that is impossible, and this is both good logic, and misunderstood by the writer in question.

For example, take the statement “no aliens have ever visited earth”. I don't personally believe aliens have visited planet earth – but I can't prove that, because I don't have all knowledge about all alleged visitations on earth at all times (universal knowledge). So if pressed, the best I can do is say “From what I know, I don't believe it likely that aliens have visited earth. But I might be wrong.”

In the same way, I cannot state – in a logical sense – “No gods exist”. If pressed, the best I can do is say “From what I know, I don't believe any gods exist. But I could be wrong.” So technically, it's correct to say only agnosticism is valid. (Epistemology is an interesting, but arcane subject.)

HOWEVER, most of us aren't entirely logical in every single thing we do/think. I think it's perfectly ok to say: “I can't prove there is no god, but I think the evidence is so overwhelming against her existence, that I call myself an atheist. So that atheism might be called the extreme end of agnosticism. I am thinking of Dawkins' chapter title “Why There Is Almost Certainly No God.”

===

Here is the bestest article ever on atheists and christians being nice people to each other because they actually have things in common http://www.pointlesswasteoftime.com/godfuse.html

I also learned a new word: Transhumanism. Generally, the use of technology to expand human capabilities http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transhumanism and http://www.transhumanism.org/index.php/WTA/index

listening to Helix - Afterglow (my new trance track i made - it's good!)

The Dawkins Disillusionment

2007-05-24T23:48:00.000+12:00

Picked up Richard Dawkins' The God Delusion in Borders tonight. I was expecting not to enjoy it, as he has a reputation for being a rude, grumpy bigot in writing (the opinion of a number of atheists I know, ironically) , and the little I've read of his backs this up. EthicsDoctor who I picked up from the airport says he has a reputation for being nice in person.

Anyway, the first chapter was quite warm, welcoming and engaging and I thought "yay, maybe this will be different". So I turned to chapter 3 where he treats philosophical arguments for/against g0d. And he pooh poohed the cosmological argument in less than two pages! With virtually no argument, and weak argument at best.

I immediately lost respect for him. He might be a great scientist, but some basic research would tell him that the cosmological argument is currently very strong in philosophical circles. (Half my major was in philosophy for my second degree.) It wasn't when Dawkins was an undergraduate many decades ago, but it is now. To be fair, he spends a few more pages on the ontological argument, and quite a bit more on the teleological argument - I imagine because it has implications on his own field, of biology. But again, he seems ignorant of how strong the design argument is, and trots out the same lame old arguments that were dismissed twenty years ago.

I'm sure he would rightly be concerned if someone tried to present the evolutionary biology of 20, 30, 50 years ago as current.

I may be premature. Unfortunately i can't quote from the book as g0d hasn't blessed my with the money to purchase it ;) But at some point I will read the whole book, much as I read the Da Vinci Code, because it's trendy. I hope my small delve into it doesn't portend Dawkins' scholarship is as weak as Dan Brown's.

[Edit: Many of the reviews the The God Delusion I've just read online imply that i will be in for more unpleasantness after all, when I do get to read the full thing. One commentator said: "the proportion of insult, ridicule, mockery, spleen, and vitriol is astounding." Oh joy.]

listening to Opeth | Godhead's Lament (brilliant gutteral death metal fused with 70's prog rock)

Satan Wants Illegal Immigration

2007-05-23T01:17:00.000+12:00

Ahh, my dear interwebs. If ever the dictum 'truth is stranger than fiction' needed confirmation, we need look no further than you.

Surfing the net, as you do, when you should really be in bed... and saw a link to this. I shouldn't be astounded by the idiocy of ignorant religious people (matched only by ignorant non-religious people). But I am. Come ON guys, are you serious?

Note that "christians" here may well be "mormons", given this is Utah. (Quite different in belief, in spite of appearances.) But don't worry, trinitarian theists can be just as ignorant as polytheistic do-gooders. *snark*

CALEB WARNOCK - Daily Herald

Utah County Republicans ended their convention on Saturday by debating Satan's influence on illegal immigrants.

The group was unable to take official action because not enough members stuck around long enough to vote, despite the pleadings of party officials. The convention was held at Canyon View Junior High School.

Don Larsen, chairman of legislative District 65 for the Utah County Republican Party, had submitted a resolution warning that Satan's minions want to eliminate national borders and do away with sovereignty.

In a speech at the convention, Larsen told those gathered that illegal immigrants "hate American people" and "are determined to destroy this country, and there is nothing they won't do."

Illegal aliens are in control of the media, and working in tandem with Democrats, are trying to "destroy Christian America" and replace it with "a godless new world order -- and that is not extremism, that is fact," Larsen said.

At the end of his speech, Larsen began to cry, saying illegal immigrants were trying to bring about the destruction of the U.S. "by self invasion."

Republican officials then allowed speakers to defend and refute the resolution. One speaker, who was identified as "Joe," said illegal immigrants were Marxist and under the influence of the devil. Another, who declined to give her name to the Daily Herald, said illegal immigrants should not be allowed because "they are not going to become Republicans and stop flying the flag upside down. ... If they want to be Americans, they should learn to speak English and fly their flag like we do."

Senator Howard Stephenson, R-Draper, spoke against the resolution, saying Larsen, whom he called a "true patriot and a close friend," was embarrassing the Republican Party.

"I agree with 95 percent of this resolution but it has some language that is divisive and not inspiring other people to its vision," he said. "This only gives fodder to the liberal media to give negative attention to the Republican Party."

Joel Wright, a member of the Cedar Hills City Council, was booed as he opposed the resolution.

"This might be the most divisive issue in the Republican Party," he said. "I support President Bush but he needs to support this issue harder."

When Wright said "the economic benefit (of illegal immigration) outweighs the downside" he was jeered. He warned that the Republican Party of California had "killed themselves" by taking a hostile stance against illegal aliens.

He also said the LDS Church has studied the issue and tried to determine whether illegal aliens could be given temple recommends and allowed to serve missions but "gave up" because the issue was too complex. He ended by saying "President Bush needs to fix this now" and was booed again.

Larsen was allowed to finish the debate with a one-minute speech.

"If the Democrats take over the country, we will be dead, and we will have abortion and partial-birth abortion and the Republican Party will go into extinction," he said. "Nancy Pelosi and the ACLU would oppose this (resolution)."

A member of the audience moved that the convention suspend its rules to allow the "objectionable part" of Larsen's resolution to be stricken, retaining only the final paragraphs of the resolution, which condemn illegal immigration. Eventually party officials counted all delegates in attendance, only to discover that, with 299, they were about 30 short of a quorum and could take no action.

"I did ask people to stay so we could have this discussion," said Senator Curt Bramble, R-Provo, who chaired the convention. Bramble had earlier asked those gathered not to thwart a discussion on the resolution, saying it would be "good for the party."

In other business, those gathered voted against removing some of the party's leadership.

Letters supporting the re-election of party chairwoman Marian Monnahan and secretary Susan Bramble were mailed in envelopes bearing the party's return address, causing delegate Russell Sias to demand they be removed from office. A spokesperson for Alexander's Print Advantage, which handled the mailing, spoke at the convention, saying employees had mistaken put the address on the envelopes and the company took full responsibility for the snafu.

In a speech, Enid Greene, state Republican Party chair, announced to applause that she will remarry in a few months. Greene's first marriage came to an infamous end during her tenure in the U.S. House of Representatives when her husband, Joe Waldholtz, who was her campaign manager, was charged with embezzling. He eventually pled guilty to campaign fraud and other charges.

Greene said she was disappointed in BYU professors who protested Dick Cheney's visit to campus, calling them "self-appointed intellectuals."

"I'm not calling for BYU to fire them but if no one signs up for their classes ..." she said. "If they say the Vice President doesn't have anything to say we want to hear, I'm not interested in having my daughter learn from them."

All of the speakers praised those gathered. Lt. Governor Gary Herbert said Utah County Republicans are "guided by correct principles" and are the "best of the best" of the Republican Party.

Bramble assailed those who would called the local Republican Party "broken," saying the party was accountable and accomplishing good work, including the approval of school vouchers and granting UVSC university status.

Congressman Chris Cannon and Utah Attorney General Mark Shurtleff both received a standing ovation from some members of the audience. Cannon said Democrats have just as many corrupt party members as the Republicans but the media does not report Democratic ethics violations.

Shurtleff said that while Americans are divided on the war in Iraq, Salt Lake Mayor Rocky Anderson should not refer to President Bush as a war criminal.

Caleb Warnock can be reached at 443-3263 or cwarnock@heraldextra.com.
This story appeared in The Daily Herald on page B1

from http://www.heraldextra.com/content/view/220065/4

Global Ethics, Stupid Vegans

2007-05-23T00:14:00.000+12:00

I've been reading a little into Animal Ethics, and of course Peter Singer is one of the seminal recent thinkers here. Regardless of whether one finds his ethical theory compelling - here is one easily understandable essay that doesn't - this article of Singer's in New Internationalist impressed me with its clarity on global responsibility.

Somewhere along the way, I bumped into this very sad story of a vegan couple recently convicted for the murder of their baby. It does not prove veganism is bad, only that stupidity is. However, according to this article, while a vegan diet can be ok for adults, it is not adequate for infants.

Best Excuse Ever

2007-05-22T12:21:00.000+12:00

Hee hee hee. Thanks to Wildilocks, get well soon.

re-listening to untitled psy track by Me (inspired after listening to Manmademan). I surprise myself, it's actually not bad.

Intellectual Pursuits

2007-05-21T19:46:00.000+12:00

I've finished reading Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides. Good novel, believable sympathetic characters and settings. It's made me aware of intersexualism and hermaphroditism which, while unusual, is not as rare as one might think.

I've also finished Principles of Druidry by Emma Restall Orr and concluded I don't want to be a druid. It's well written, though descends into waffle occasionally. I found it attractive for a short while. It tickled my fantasy racial memories of noble celtic wise people. But I finished the book feeling repulsed. One of the main reasons being neo-Druidism doesn't seem to have anything to show it is true. I'm sorry to those who bought the once-trendy idea that truth is a relative thing, but i can't get away from that. If someone can't give me more evidence for their spirituality than "it feels true for me", or "I have nice experiences doing it" then i feel like it's a waste of time for me. Much as I'd like to, I can't 'believe' what i know ain't true.

I feel like I'm not putting that across right, or not being senstive, or something. But if other peoples' feelings count, then so do mine. And my feelings say no religion at all is preferable to one that is knowingly made up.

I watched Alien again last night with all the flatmates here and across the road. It was a fun experience, as several hadn't seen it, and Gardenergirl screamed satisfyingly.

My back is sore, my fingers are sore, my arm is sore. My coffee is hissing, gurgling and choking on the stove signalling it is time to consume.

See? Other People Agree With Me

2007-05-18T00:59:00.000+12:00

This goes nicely with this post :)

Bigups sinfest

I Would Like a Great Lake of Beer

2007-05-18T00:23:00.000+12:00

I would like to have the men of Heaven
In my own house:
With vats of good cheer
laid out for them.

I would like to have the three Marys,
Their fame is so great.
I would like people
From every corner of Heaven.

I would like them to be cheerful
In their drinking.
I would like to have Jesus too
Here amongst them.

I would like a great lake of beer
For the King of Kings,
I would like to be watching Heaven's family
Drinking it through all eternity.

Celtic poem from 10th century Ireland

Man, those Irish Celts, eh? Pity I don't like beer.

listening to Hard Hat | Eat Your Head (a track I'm creating)

Spreading the Meme

2007-05-15T23:14:00.000+12:00

Just in case you haven't seen the hilarious Internet vs Real Life

Literacy

2007-05-09T11:20:00.000+12:00

I've just read Thomas Harris' Hannibal in 24 hours. Good book, don't know that I would rave over it the way the reviews on the cover do, but i thoroughly enjoyed it. Have started Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides (who wrote the Virgin Suicides). This also looks promising. The life of the mind is the pleasant life.

listening to Goldenhorse | Cold Mountainside

How to Live Well

2007-05-08T10:30:00.000+12:00

How do you behave when you know the conventional honours are dross? When you have come to believe with Marcus Aurelius that the opinion of future generations will be worth no more than the opinion of the current one? Is it possible to behave well then? Desirable to behave well then?

Thomas Harris, Hannibal, page 164

This is a variation on my long-pondered theme that if there is no ultimate source for ethics (most likely from g0d; there don't seem to be any other options) then there is no real right and wrong, and selfishness is the only rational ethic. I will write more on this one of these days, as so many people are under the illusion - from an unacknowledged theistic past - that people have real value and should be treated well. If we live in a naturalistic 'verse, people have no more value than mud.

listening to Camisra | Solid Ground

It's All About Me

2007-05-04T12:26:00.000+12:00

Uh oh. Yet more online video. Some years ago in a church i was put off by how self centered the "worship" seemed to be. Now someone's decided to market it - check out the rather humorous Me Worship.

Thanks to Saxpest from BLJ for passing this on.

===

And flatmate PoetryMan introduced me to young Lasse. This is a rather clever piece of music, and illustrates how i make music myself - by building it up from samples. Unlike Lasse, I can play guitar passably and piano falteringly.

listening to Cripple Mr Onion | Six Days of Silence

New Favourite Band: Opeth

2007-05-04T02:01:00.000+12:00

Doom Metal meets Blue Oyster Cult meets classical and folk music? I believe it's called progressive metal, although no-one seems to agree. Whatever, it's good. They're from Sweden.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opeth
http://www.opeth.com

And while we're here, check out the hilarious video interpretation of Slayer's Angel of Death. Thanks Tatjna. "Hey, Johhny Depp!"

listening to Opeth | Serenity Painted Death

Getting Off Your Face For Jesus

2007-05-01T11:30:00.000+12:00

Friend pornoculture posted this Huxley quote elsewhere, which has made me think a bit.

A similar conclusion will be reached by those whose philosophy is unduly "spiritual." God, they will insist, is a spirit and is to be worshiped in spirit. Therefore an experience which is chemically conditioned cannot be an experience of the divine. But, one way or another, all our experiences are chemically conditioned, and if we imagine that some of them are purely "spiritual," purely "intellectual," purely "aesthetic," it is merely because we have never troubled to investigate the internal chemical environment at the moment of their occurrence.

Furthermore, it is a matter of historical record that most contemplatives worked systematically to modify their body chemistry, with a view to creating the internal conditions favorable to spiritual insight. When they were not starving themselves into low blood sugar and a vitamin deficiency, or beating themselves into intoxication by histamine, adrenalin and decomposed protein, they were cultivating insomnia and praying for long periods in uncomfortable position in order to create the psycho-physical symptoms of stress. In the intervals they sang interminable psalms, thus increasing the amount of carbon dioxide in the lungs and blood stream, or, if they were Orientals, they did breathing exercises to accomplish the same purpose.

Today we know how to lower the efficiency of the cerebral reducing valve by direct chemical action, and without the risk of inflicting serious damage on the psychophysical organism. ... Knowing as he does (or at least as he can know, if he so desires) what are the chemical conditions of transcendental experience, the aspiring mystic should turn for technical help to the specialists-in pharmacology, in biochemistry, in physiology and neurology. And on their part, of course, the specialists (if any of them aspire to be genuine men of science and complete human beings) should turn, out of their respective pigeonholes, to the artist, the sibyl, the visionary, the mystic-all those, in a word who have had experience of the Other World and who know ... what to do with the experience.

- Aldous Huxley 'Heaven and Hell'

I am not at present sure if we have a spirit as such or where it interacts, but I agree with my friend that we are much more physical than many believe. It's been one of my hobbyhorses for years that, if one accepts Y'shuan theology, Jesus was physically resurrected, now has some kind of body, and there will be a new earth in teh world to come.

I have only recently realised i am, by my practice, a supporter of drug-induced happy states. I must be, I drink alcohol, which is a drug. I also take caffeine, another drug, rather more than i used to. My alcohol use is sometimes with the intention of getting tipsy. (I stay away from getting really plastered, but it's a slippery slope definition.) Which is not to say i therefore support ALL drug states; I have never taken any other recreational drugs.

I haven't ever had what i consider a spiritual experience while drunk. And I am still of the opinion that drug experiences aren't spiritual, although will ponder Huxley's point that all our experiences are chemical-physical ones in the brain.

Two of the practicing neopagans i most respect are adamant that drug experiences are not spiritual experiences, and i've already quoted a buddhist monk saying the same thing.

I am wondering if drugs could be a gateway to the spirit, but we are not equipped to handle them in a discerning way, much like we are not equipped to handle encounters with other spirits well. (see http://www.christian-thinktank.com/sh6end.html and http://www.christian-thinktank.com/eyesopen.html for what i think are very insightful discussions of this topic)

listening toSaeed and Palash | Losing Control

People

2007-04-30T12:58:00.000+12:00

What a lovely lot of them I've just hung out with, and a great wedding on Waiheke. But what's with all their mosquitos? My feet were eaten alive, and i had blood trickling down my forehead from being bitten there lots too.

So great to be with people dear to me - HiDive and Ingrid, of course. Kiwi, Kathy, Bruce, Jen, Sam, Poppy, Hana, Heather, artist Abbie and meet some kewl new peeps too, eg Stephen the hairdresser, Kirsten (old aquaintance), Monica, that English guy, that Scottish guy, Michelle from Canada/San Fran... etc.

I had the lovely Tatjna and Mistress Polly staying with us there and back. A drizzly, grey Auckland day coincides with returning to earth and having STUFF TO DO.

But i'm mostly happy.

I'm really craving Tuna or Salmon a lot these days, what's with that? *Goes to find can opener*

listening to the distant sound of children playing

My favourite boy in all the world

2007-04-22T20:12:00.000+12:00

... is DJ Rich D Rich.

He's a very generous chap. He's lent me his nice new DJM600 and 2 X Technics 1200 Mk5 's for a while. He offered, I didn't ask. You rock dude.

With my crappy old belt drive pitch controllable turntable i now have three decks + non-pitch control CD/MP3 player. Three vinyl decks simultaneously is increasingly becoming my default option, I just can't do enough with only two.

May the gods of blessing rain... er... blessings on you. Except i don't think you believe in gods. Come to think of it, neither do i. For those who care, I am still a theist. Not atheist. And if you don't like it, #%$! off :)

Another thing that makes me happy: Going through my fairly sizeable record collection, discovering tracks i've never listened to, or haven't heard for ages. And organising everything so i can find them again. Happy happy joy joy.

listening to Joel Armstrong | Silver Moon (Derek Howell remix) ON VINYL!!! IN SPACE!!! (Burning Man peeps might understand that in-joke) And now i think i might know Joel Armstrong. Hmm...

Stupid Toaster

2007-04-21T13:43:00.000+12:00

It doesn't pop up. So i go down to my room, and get engrossed in something ...

...and after a while i smell smoke...

AAAAAaaaargh!

This is about the 3rd time I've had to throw out a flaming cinder and open all the windows. The other day the smoke was so bad it was literally choking me.

Stupid toaster. It dies tonight.

Or should that be stupid me? ;)

Good news tho'. I found another toaster in our flat. And it works fine. I shall sacrifice the old toaster to Satan at the dark of the moon.

listening to Bloc Party | I Still Remember (a really GOOD dance remix, today's new favourite track)

Musick

2007-04-21T04:21:00.000+12:00

Today was a good day, sunny and fun. Had a good catchup with Designerlady and did a wee bit of IT consulting/training. I've been bery productive musicwise in the last few days. I have four tracks I'm working on - a slow breaks one, some psy trance, my 'Seasons' drum 'n bass track and I've just whipped up a pounding Techno stormer with a killer bassline in the last few hours. They're in various stages of completion and all are showing promise. Yay.

listening to Lemmy | Hi Tech Soul [one of mine! yaaay! :) ]

Blandscapes

2007-04-19T23:21:00.000+12:00

I coined a new word today: Blandscapes.

The endless farmland and dull countryside you see on long boring trips.

Now to search and see if i am truly original or if someone else has beaten me to it.

Oh. Oh well. It's already out there. But i did think of it myself. Truly i am a genius.
Really.

listening to Alex West | Late Nights and Dog (pounding minimal techno. nice)

Muddy Earth : Integrity and Pagan Ethics

2007-04-16T17:36:00.000+12:00

I've just realised that my attending Magick Earth (Neopagan festival) was a kind of unintentional anthropological 'participant observation'. This is part two of my response, the first being my experience and emotional response. This is an incomplete reflection, abandoned, rather than finished. (Long blog warning, grab a cuppa tea.)

===

So. Why does doing something 'reglious' badly rub us up the wrong way? Somehow it seems worse than someone doing something else badly, like lacking integrity at work.

A few at Magick Earth were bothered by integrity. To one friend, there appeared to be a lapse in integrity among those leading the Friday night ritual in that the leaders didn't seem to believe in what they were saying and doing and were merely going through the form of it. Also, the the ritual itself seemed lame. It appeared that way to me too. In a separate example, a husband and wife, one of whom I think was a seminar leader, got drunk and had a long, vocal and abusive fight in the wee small hours. I can't comment as I slept through it, but I'm told they've done it before. Several people there seemed to regard them with some degree of ambivalence, even contempt.

My friend commented that these people should be “living what they believe”. I agree. Most people have a sense that those publicly presenting a belief should have a degree of integrity about them. Here I am speaking of ethical integrity, I consider intellectual integrity below. I think the nature of spiritual belief seems to imply that it is 'more special', that some kind of special effort to be reverent and integral is required. (Why we assume that is an interesting question.) I recall that hypocrisy among the then-leaders of his own Jewish religion was despised by Y'shua (Jesus), and got quite a bit of airtime from him.

My first response, and perhaps that of others is: “Oh, they're hypocrites, I want to distance myself from them.” What makes me hesitate to judge them is twofold: Firstly, I am a hypocrite myself. Secondly, on what basis should I judge them?

1. I am a hypocrite

A hypocrite is someone who doesn't live by what they actually believe. It doesn't matter whether that belief is publicly articulated. Every single person on earth is a hypocrite; at least, I haven't met someone who isn't. One thing I believe is that I should be kind and loving to everyone. I am often unkind and unloving even to people close to me. Hence I am a hypocrite. This is not fun.

Another thing I believe is “do to others what you would have them do to you.” I don't want others to reject me for being a hypocrite. I want them to be patient with me, hope that I improve, and perhaps lovingly help me to overcome my faults when I ask for help. Hence i should do the same for other hypocrites. I cannot help someone remove a speck in their eye if I have a log in my own.

2. How should I decide whether someone is practicing integrity?

I think integrity has to be measured firstly from within someone's own system of belief. Their behaviour as viewed by other ethical systems is also important, but comes second. (Spot the nod to relativism or postmodernism here.) Integrity is measured against ethics and the dictionary definition of ethics is formed around the concepts of morality, behavior and character. I guess 'character' is how ethical one is over a period of time; how one 'usually' acts. So if someone was consistently doing a poor job of rituals we could say they had bad character. But only if 'doing a poor ritual' is already defined in paganism as unethical. So I had to find out what paganism says about how its people should conduct themselves.

There are Neopagans who have written about their ethical beliefs, here's a few sites I found discussing them.

http://www.paganpastoraloutreach.ca/ethics/pagan.htm
http://www.iit.edu/~phillips/personal/grammary/ethics.html - this one in particular i thought was good.
http://www.solitary-pagan.net/Ethics,%20Philosophy,%20&%20Politics.htm
http://www.witchvox.com/va/dt_va.html?a=usxx&c=words&id=8106

Some pagan or wiccan principles that might come into play concerning doing rituals:

1. The Wiccan Rede

The ethics espoused in a particular Pagan tradition may be different, but there is a general common basis in honouring Nature and all Life. The foundation of Wiccan ethics is the Wiccan Rede - "an ye harm none, do as ye wilt" - simple but far-reaching in its implications (both individually and collectively). ... in most Pagan traditions, the individual is responsible for determining how their tradition’s ethic or principles are lived out in any given moment and situation – most traditions do not have ‘commandments’ that direct their personal decisions.

from http://www.paganpastoraloutreach.ca/ethics/pagan.htm

“If it harms none, do what you will”. I can't see how doing a ritual badly harms people. If wasting others' time is 'harming' or if offending the goddess harms someone, then perhaps so. Several pagan writers say that the wiccan rede alone is not a good enough basis for all ethics.

2. What we do affects the deity

After all we generally subscribe to a belief system that supports both immanent and internalized Deity and, to use a theologically technical term, is panentheistic -- we and the Deity are mutually dependent on one another. That is, what we do has a direct effect upon the Deity. If our actions are honorable and ethical the Deity is enhanced by us, and likewise, if our actions are dishonorable and unethical the Deity is correspondingly impoverished.

from http://www.iit.edu/~phillips/personal/grammary/ethics.html (and see note 1)

Hmmm. Maybe a badly done ritual impoverishes the deity. If a ritual gives paganism a bad name, which perhaps impoverishes the deity, this could be the basis for saying they lack integrity.

3. Codes of Conduct

There are differences within paganism (eg druids can have different ethics to witches). Though different organisations have published their codes (see http://www.paganpastoraloutreach.ca/ethics/pagan.htm ), there's no universally accepted code of ethics. A code of ethics could be held by one pagan individual or at most a relatively small local group/coven. Although there are national groupings with developed codes, my feeling is that paganism tries to steer away from highly developed organisation structures. Or maybe that's just my bias against large organisations.

Here is Magdalena Merovingia's local coven code (I think – she's not clear in her otherwise fine article about where this comes from).

A Coven Code of Ethics

While attending ritual or other coven functions you agree to:

* Relate to others with general politeness, manners, and common courtesy as befitting any gathering of friends.
* Abide by any formal rules, covenants, or guidelines adopted by the coven.
* Enter the circle "in perfect love and perfect trust." Settle any differences with other participants beforehand or don't participate. If it is impossible to settle the differences all parties involved must be able to truly set the issue aside and relate to one another "in perfect love and perfect trust" while in sacred space.
* Try to distinguish between having psychological issues come up and truly being in a compromising position regarding beliefs and values. If you feel you are compromising your integrity by further participation quietly ask the maiden to cut a door in the circle and quietly leave. If something comes up for you that has been triggered by the ritual, speak up so those in charge can address the situation in an appropriate manner.
* Commit to thinking for yourself and not just blindly accepting everything said or done.

In general you agree to:

* Follow the Wiccan Rede: An it harm none, do as thou wilt.
* Make a reasonable effort to consider the difference between will and whim and to consider that harm is not always easily pinpointed.
* Commit to opposing patriarchal oppression and strive to counteract it in positive, non-violent ways. Consciously choose to wield "power with" and "power within" and not "power over."
* Observe the legal code of your cultural location except when by doing so you are violating your personal integrity and morality in such a manner that cannot be overlooked or justified and you have considered the effects of your decision on the coven and the broader community and you consciously choose to take full responsibility for those effects.
* Commit to learning the ways of magick and the Craft that work for you and to apply what you have learned to the best of your ability with intent for the highest good of all according to the free will of all.
* Never work magick or offer prayers on behalf of another without their knowledge and consent.
* Commit to respecting the environment and working towards its recovery.
* Promise to maintain a policy of non-discrimination based on race, age, gender, occupation, physical ability, or sexual orientation.
* Promise to maintain a policy of non-discrimination based on religion as appropriate. Maintain an awareness of Wicca as a religion and the legal and social repercussions of religious discrimination both toward Wiccans and by Wiccans. Be aware of your own biases in this area and walk this line very carefully.
* Commit to remaining open-minded in your contacts with organized religion and seek to "take what you need and leave the rest" realizing that opportunities for encounters with Deity are limited only by yourself.
* Refrain from "Christian bashing" or arbitrarily condemning other religions or religious peoples.
* Refrain from graphic or offensive sexual behavior in public or semi-public situations and maintain an awareness of the changing definitions of graphic and offensive in varied situations.
* Commit to taking responsibility for all aspects of your life, physical, psychological, and spiritual.
* Commit to taking responsibility for your own psychological healing and to overcome the internalized effects of social programming in accordance with Wiccan teachings.
* Commit to the spiritual path and to continued growth and learning.
* Encourage fun, beauty, and play in your personal life and in the lives of others in accordance with Wiccan teachings.

Again, I stress that this is just the code for one group, and that wiccans don't represent all pagans.

However, if it applies to the group in NZ, “Commit to learning the ways of magick and the Craft that work for you and to apply what you have learned to the best of your ability with intent for the highest good of all according to the free will of all.” would certainly apply to doing a ritual at less than the best of your ability. For example, the male leader in the Friday night ritual acknowledged he made mistakes because he hadn't read his part before the ritual.

As an aside, I also noticed that “Refrain from "Christian bashing" or arbitrarily condemning other religions or religious peoples.” wasn't followed by everyone at the fest.

Some other ideas:

* I think it's crucially important to realise that modern paganism has as it's background the modern Western world, much of which is (arguably) based on christian theism, Greek philosophy and classical law. So a lot of ethics are assumed from there, eg those about patriarchy and discrimination against minorities. These assumptions perhaps should be more explicitly acknowledged.

* If paganism comes to hold a set of beliefs that excludes – as the article on the impossibility of Christian Wicca by a fellow Wiccan suggests – then it will become as intolerant as the christianity it despises. I suspect there is much intolerance under the surface already, purely based on my observations of people both pagan and non-pagan. Intolerance seems to be in our human blood.

* HOWEVER, this should be carefully nuanced. I think it's perfectly sensible, even essential that a belief be able to set boundaries around what is and is not orthodox. Christians should be able to define their religion so that COSMIC CHICKEN WORSHIPPERS cannot be considered christian. Satanists should be able to exclude nice people who are not selfish enough. Buddhists who believe in no g0d and many reincarnations should not be required to consider g0d-bothering one-stop-and-then-you're-off Muslims as part of their fold. Of course, those who believe that all is "one" can try to define how all these mutually exclusive concepts can logically be the same. Good luck.

* Based on my workplace experiences and some theory, I currently believe the inherent nature of organisations – including religious organisations - is to become inhumane. By which I mean they come to serve the rules of the organisation itself, rather than the people within the organisation – who, in a young organisation, may even have created the rules in the first place.

Finally,

Even if I decide they are hypocrites, what does this mean about their beliefs?

What does "living what they believe" mean in practice? Someone who is living a religious belief will probably do something like having a ritual. (It would possibly be lacking integrity for them NOT to have a ritual. See note 2)

But what happens if they make a crap ritual? And what happens if we know there are other parts of their life where they are unethical? Does that mean their beliefs themselves are invalid?

By analogy, let's imagine an atheist tries to "live" their beliefs and does something others don't like (lying, stealing, abusing their spouse or similar). Does that invalidate the belief system itself? Does an atheist's hypocrisy mean atheism itself as a religious choice is invalid?

Or perhaps we just say they are a poor example of an atheist.

===

Here is where I'll abandon this section. Comment welcome.

Notes

1. “What we do has a direct effect upon the Deity” is not an exhaustive definition of panentheism and I'm not sure how many witches would agree with it. I think some definitions of panentheism are compatible with traditional theistic thinking. If god is there, a transcendant AND immanent god as per Eastern Orthodox christian theology makes more sense to me than a strict separation of god and nature. This is not saying nature IS god, only that god indwells all nature. I may be muddling things a bit here.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panentheism
http://www.frimmin.com/faith/godinall.html
http://www.pantheist.net/society/panentheism.html
http://www.websyte.com/alan/pan.htm

2. If I understand one friend, she prefers people who don't talk about their beliefs but just get on and 'do it'.

I wonder, What does “do-ing” a spiritual belief involve? There is always a thought-part or theoretical part to doing. Having a ritual is a way of expressing that thought-part. Perhaps it's possible for a religion to develop which involves no public expression, merely private in-one's-head stuff.

===

Another question: Intellectual Integrity

I have a separate question to that of strictly behavioural ethics around intellectual ethics. Or maybe congruency is a better word.

I want my religion to be reasonable. Note this does not necessarily mean prove-able, but it does mean that if someone asks me for a rational explanation of what it is, how it works and most importantly WHY i believe something, i want to be able to explain that. Among other things it should not have any insurmountable internal logical conflicts.

At present I conceive of intellectual integrity as a subset of ethical integrity. It may be the other way around.

The main question I want to ask NeoPagans around this is: “If you know that your spirituality was 'invented', how does this impact your intellectual integrity?”

I cannot (at present) “believe” or gain satisfaction from something I know to be untrue. I can play it as a game and enjoy it as a fantasy or intellectual exercise. But that is quite different from experiencing something real. If “true for me” is not congruent with “true out there”, then it is not true at all.

listening to unknown techno track

Electric Bicycles + Blog Praxis

2007-04-16T12:35:00.000+12:00

Friend Wildilocks is about to cycle from Melbourne to Sydney to publicise electric bicycles. I didn't know they existed. So in the interests of promoting another option in sustainable transport, I'm telling you. :)

Have a look at
http://www.suitabletransport.com

I've been thinking about my blogging practice. (Praxis is a cool word, i just felt like using it.)

Sometimes what I write are the beginnings of some thoughts. They're often not complete, but I record them while they're on my mind. This is both the nature and the danger of a blog. My thoughts may be criticised by myself or others, and I may decide to amend them. One day I may encounter a past reader who says, “ah, you think x, y and z”. But my thoughts develop over time. I'd hate to be hung by what I believed 20 years ago.

Every now and then I also have a dilemma as to how much personal information to reveal given the very public nature of the internet. For now, I choose to err on the side of caution by not using real names and not revealing every detail of my life. Not that i have anything in particular to hide right now.

listening to Master T strumming badly on my out of tune guitar

Celtic Reconstructionist NeoPaganism

2007-04-15T13:31:00.000+12:00

How's that for a title?

In thinking about the dark side of spirituality, I was wondering if the ancient Celts were violent, and if so, why that isn't part of an honest attempt to honour those traditions.

It doesn't take much hunting to find the ancient celts were violent, patriarchal and practiced human sacrifice, as documented in The Religion of the Ancient Celts
By J. A. MacCulloch (1911) and other places http://www.sacred-texts.com/neu/celt/rac/rac19.htm

The Semites are often considered the worst offenders in the matter of human sacrifice, but in this, according to classical evidence, they were closely rivalled by the Celts of Gaul. They offered human victims on the principle of a life for a life, or to propitiate the gods, or in order to divine the future from the entrails of the victim.

Reading further in the chapter just quoted reveals a way of life that seems incredibly bloodthirsty, eg

Among the Celts of Britain human sacrifice still prevailed in 77 A.D. Dio Cassius describes the refinements of cruelty practised on female victims (prisoners of war) in honour of the goddess Andrasta--their breasts cut off and placed over their mouths, and a stake driven through their bodies, which were then hung in the sacred grove. Tacitus speaks of the altars in Mona (Anglesey) laved with human blood.

It was a culture of violence, human sacrifice, head collecting (the houses of chiefs and kings were decorated with possibly hundreds of human heads) and cannibalism.

Yet modern Celtic reconstructionists do acknowledge this.

eg, in the very good introduction http://www.witchvox.com/va/dt_va.html?a=uswa&c=trads&id=6645

CR makes no claims to being a True and Authentic Survival of any Celtic tradition. We acknowledge fully and openly that what we practice are a set of modern creations, based in and inspired by early Celtic beliefs. We follow our inspiration while remaining as true as we can to the guidelines we find in early texts, the work of scholars and archaeologists, and the practical aspects of what works well for us.

...

Most of the founders of CR ... [from the mid 70s to late 80s] worked to gather enough material to create the groundwork for a modern Celtic tradition that respects the ancient sources while rejecting those components of early Celtic religions that are inappropriate for modern worshippers, such as human sacrifice, slavery, and other strongly patriarchal elements of those early societies. Ethical concepts were sought out, sorted through for relevance, and applied to daily lives.

My question is: In rejuvenating even a modern 'version' of an ancient religious system, how honest is it to pick and choose among the elements we choose to 'bring back'? Is this not disrespectful of the culture and the gods we claim to revere? Is there an ethical system from outside Celtic culture being followed here? And if so, where does that ethic come from?

listening to more Bassnectar

Blah

2007-04-15T13:26:00.000+12:00

Recovering sickness. Sitting at home rumpled and unshaven. To rebalance myself away from intellectualism I'm reading "A Civil Campaign" by Lois McMaster Bujold - good, as usual.

listening to Bassnectar | Track 13 of Mesmerising the Ultra disk 2

Cold

2007-04-13T11:29:00.000+12:00

1. Low temperature.
2. Mild illness involving a chest cough, occasional muscle aches and wooziness.

My external, and internal environments are both suffering a cold. Staying wrapped up and reading. Craving imaginary food and coffee. Brain still working.

listening to (in my head on endess repeat) The Front Lawn | We don't know how lucky we are EDIT: It was Fred Dagg, thanks to BeKitty for correcting me.

Ama et quod vis fac

2007-04-12T22:01:00.000+12:00

Having nearly completed Garry Wills' biography of Augustine which I blogged earlier, I agree with the reviewers who say it's not really an introduction. Short it is, but it seems to move at an unclear pace and assumes knowledge of philosophy and theology that a lay person might not have. Having said that, it's well enough written and has been reasonably diverting.

I particularly liked these words of Augustine

Because of various circumstances, we see one man looking harsh because he loves and another looking pleasant because of vice. The father gives a son blows, the whoremonger gives blandishments. Consider them in themselves, blows or blandishments – who wouldn't take the blandishmenst and duck the blows? But look at the motives – they are the blows of love, the blandishments of vice. You see my point, that human acts should be judged by their basis in love. Many things have a surface appearance of good, but are not based on love – like blossoms on a thorn plant. Other things look hard, look forbidding, but they instill a discipline informed by love. Once again, to put it simply: Act as you desire, so long as you act with love. If you are silent, be silent from love. If you accuse, accuse from love. If you correct, correct from love. If you spare, spare from love. Let love be rooted deep in you, and only good can grow from it.

(Interpreting John's Parthian Letter 7.8)

I'm conscious I'm writing on academic topics a lot these days; I must find something trivial to comment on next time. It's blinkin cold tonight ;)

listening to Glad I'm Not A Kennedy | Shona Laing

Esoteric Secrets of The Evil Christians

2007-04-11T22:29:00.000+12:00

(For those who have no idea, Nicea is in modern day Turkey, and the first Nicean council was a major gathering of christian leaders in 325 CE with the support of the Roman emperor Constantine – a nice change as many past emperors were as likely to have christians killed in gruesome ways.)

One of the things that was presented as a short story at Magick Earth (in an informal context, but with academic authority) went something like: “Here is how the list of what books should be in the Bible got created. Constantine called a council at Nicea, and they decided what books should go in the Bible, and got rid of all the ones they didn't like”. Along with various, sometimes true and sometimes plain wrong facts about Constantine himself, who I couldn't care less about so will say no more.

That “story” didn't accord with my reading of history but I said nothing as my memory was vague and I wanted to check my facts. I read the appropriate chapters of a couple of history books on my shelf, and surfed the net a bit.

Cutting it short, deciding the canon (list) of books which belong in the bible was never on the agenda at Nicea, and never happened there. Furthermore, the only book burning that was commanded were those of Arius. None of what are now called non-canonical books (such as the Shepherd of Hermas or Gospel of Thomas) were burned or prohibited there.

===

While I'm here, apparently some people believe the idea of reincarnation was in the bible, but was removed at this first council in Nicea. Again, this was never discussed, and never happened at this council. Or any other one, for that matter.

I've decided to quote Roger Pearce's footnote in full

This idea [about reincarnation being removed at Nicea] may derive from some confused statements in Shirley MacLaine, Out on a Limb, Elm Tree Books, London (1983), ISBN p-241-11106-6. Unfortunately the book seems to be a fictionalised autobiography, so all the personae are more or less fictional, as a note on the frontispiece makes clear. (MacLaine is apparently a New Age propagandist). The book is without any footnotes, index or bibliography. Quotations are typed from the original.

"So, are you religious, Kevin?" I asked.
He choked involuntarily on his tea. "Are you kidding? What church would have me? I'm treading on their territory. I say folks have God inside them. The Church says it has God inside of it. There's a phrase in the Bible which states that one should never countenance spiritual entities other than God. Most Christians go by that. But then the Bible says nothing about reincarnation either and it's quite well known that the Council of Nicea voted to strike the teaching of reincarnation from the Bible."
"How do you know that?" I asked.
"Well, most serious metaphysical students of the Bible know that. The Council of Nicea altered many of the interpretations of the Bible. The man Jesus studied for eighteen years in India before he returned to Jerusalem. He was studying the teaching of Buddha and became an adept yogi himself. He obviously had complete control over his body and understood that the body was only the house for a soul. Each soul has many mansions. Christ taught that a person's behavior would determine future events--as karma, as the Hindus say. What one sows, so shall he reap."
I didn't question these rather sweeping assumptions. I offered Kevin a cookie. He seemed to like sugar. He ate it in two bites.
(p.182. 'I' is MacLaine's persona - 'Kevin' is a medium).

And another later on:

"... He said that when Christ returned to Israel he taught what he had learned from the Indian masters, that is, the theory of reincarnation.
"But David," I said, "why aren't these teachings recorded in the Bible?"
"They are," he said. "The theory of reincarnation is recorded in the Bible. But the proper interpretations were struck from it during an Ecumenical Council meeting of the Catholic Church in Constantinople sometime around 553 A.D., called the Council of Nicea. The Council members voted to strike those teachings from the Bible in order to solidify Church control.
"The Church needed to be the sole authority where the destiny of man was concerned, but Christ taught that every human being was responsible for his or her own destiny -- now and future. Christ said there was only one judge--God--and he was very opposed to the formation of a church of any kind, or any other kind of ceremonial religion that might enslave man's free will or his struggle for truth."
This confirmed what Kevin had said, but it seemed logical that anyone heavily into reincarnation would have read about that famous Council.
The sun began to set behind the waves now, sweeping a pink-purple slash across the clouds above the Pacific. (pp.236-7.
'David' is another persona, identified earlier only as 'a painter and a poet').

The occasion referred to here is clearly not the First Ecumenical Council - the First Council of Nicaea - but the Fifth Ecumenical Council (the Second Council of Constantinople). This council condemned the propositions known as Origenism, and with them the pagan idea of the transmigration of souls (not reincarnation), which some writers had picked up as a technical idea from Greek philosophy without realising all the implications. The idea that the bible was edited to remove the idea in 553 is not consistent with the extensive manuscript evidence for the text (including complete codices) from the 3rd century onwards.

It would seem reasonable to propose that a hazy recollection of these passages lies at the root of this legend.

In conclusion,

From [all of these collected documents] there appears almost no evidence that the council of Nicaea made any pronouncements on which books go in the Bible, with the ambivalent exception of Jerome, or about the destruction of heretical writings, or reincarnation. However it did condemn Arius and his teachings, and the Emperor Constantine did take the usual Late Roman steps to ensure conformity afterwards.

from http://www.tertullian.org/rpearse/nicaea.htm

but you could also look at http://www.columbia.edu/cu/augustine/arch/sbrandt/nicea.htm or even (shudder) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Council_of_Nicaea#Agenda_and_procedure

listening to Buzzcocks | I don't mind

The Earth is Magick. And Bloody Cold.

2007-04-11T17:54:00.000+12:00

It's been a few years since I did a little reading around modern paganism (also called neo-paganism), notably Margot Adlers' sympathetic overview Drawing Down the Moon.

For those who are unfamiliar, the wikipedia article is a useful place to start, bearing in mind the dangers of relying on Wikkipedia too much. (There are Wikipedia articles on other topics I've read which have, if not error, a misleading use of language.)

I'm not a pagan but I went to a pagan camp/festival near Levin over the Easter weekend to hang out with some friends. I've been thinking about the experience, partly in response to other participants' responses. I will divide my response in two, namely my experience and my reflection on the long weekend.

My experience and feelings while there

Disclaimer: I'm well aware that a non-adherent of a religion usually makes mistakes in emphasis, nuance and understanding when writing about it. My apologies for any factual errors.

There were about 70 people or so there for the whole weekend, and i imagine with visitors the numbers would have been over 100. The whole thing reminded me of a slightly tacky christian church camp of the kind I used to go to. (Note, i do not identify as a christian any more, although even that simplifies things too much.) Most people camped; it was nice to be out under the stars drinking wine or cider and chatting. There was lots of free time to socialise, communal breakfast and evening meals, seminars and workshops and a sort of market where people were selling items like herbs, candles, jewelery and old-style “witchy” brooms (seriously). This was derided as Pagan 'bling' or 'tack' by one or two I was at the festival with. Pentacles abounded. (Star-like symbols, they can be six sided but the 5 sided pentagram type was more common. Not upside down tho' - only naughty people wear those.) I went to 3 seminars that were focused on the academic or theoretical end of things which I really enjoyed. It was clearly stated several times by one seminar leader: “Modern Paganism/Witchcraft was invented by Gerald Gardner in 1954”.

Each night there was a ritual, followed by drumming and dancing around a fire. The rituals were not well received by a minority. Some had issues with the ritual elements themselves (eg, “I didn't like it 'cos they used four watchtowers which is from Freemasonry and they had a priest and a priestess leading it”). To be fair, the organisers were trying to do their best to make the rituals inclusive of the diversity that is neopaganism (see below.) Some people simply found the rituals tacky, contrived, unconvincing, fake or couldn't respect those leading them. I was in this second group. Whatever its failings, one thing Episcopalian christianity has learned is how to do robed-up liturgical rituals well. The second night's ritual was very late, and long. Fortunately I missed that as the second two nights a small number including myself chose not to go to the rituals because of our dissatisfaction.

The second and third nights were used to celebrate Samhein (pronounced “Sow-win”) two weeks early, the organisers acknowledged. The third night, the ritual was led by someone else and appeared to be much more satisfying. I liked the sitting around the fire talking, drumming and dancing and joined in that afterwards, tho' it was much more restrained than i would have liked. For Samhein in remembrance of his Irish Celtic ancestors one guy painted his face and arms with woad. OK, it was acrylic paint and mud. Needs must. I thought it was cool. No-one was nude (“skyclad”) at the fest by the way.

At Magick Earth I was trying to understand paganism, participate where I felt comfortable and simply experience, not to criticise. Sometimes that was hard as some of it seemed rather silly to me. But then much human behaviour is silly, and certainly other religions do silly stuff. What matters, is whether it is true. ('True' is a loaded word, for some. More on that another time.)

Robes were the fashion du jour, although mainly at night. At first I thought the robes were a bit silly, but they're very practical when your religion involves standing outside in the Autumnal cold for hours. Some robes were in crushed velvet. I saw one woman in a native South American traditional costume. I should also add the couple of women who were into belly dancing and dressed er... pseudo Persian at night. (There was a seminar on belly dancing too.)

It's fascinating, i am at a unique point in history where i can watch a religion birthed and develop. Neo-paganism is a young spirituality, with the concomitant challenges baby religions face. Or rather, it's a family of religions as Paganism is not a single unified entity.

Paganism is fairly diverse, although the Wikipedia article above does mention common threads. There are wiccans, who are pagan, but not all pagans are wiccans, and druids who can be pagan, but also can be christian or buddhist or other. Most people seemed to believe in a goddess. The goddess is often paired with a god. The exact cosmology, and how the world got here I can't comment on. I got the impression some believe the goddess/god are like Jungian archetypes “made real” somehow. Some seem content to acknowledge their beliefs are “made up”, but it's obviously still valid to them. I'd like to hear more of their opinion on that.

Some happily derive their beliefs and practices from a mixture of sources. Others are “reconstructionists” following mainly one type of spirituality, eg Celtic reconstructionists who are trying to reconstruct what we know of ancient Celtic religion. A small number were Christopagans and/or Christian Wiccans, trying to syncretise Christianity and Pagan beliefs. I learned New Age beliefs are not necessarily pagan, but many practices of New Age followers are also used by some Pagans, eg the tarot, astrology and the belief in the beneficial powers of crystals. No pagans are practicing satanists as such; nor do most believe in satan as they don't believe in the christian worldview. These were generally what might be called 'humanitarian' pagans, although I'm interested in how a “dark” or “shadow” side might fit with this, and why it is not also practiced. There was the occasional belittling and discussion of christianity, with varying degrees of accuracy. Which might be expected if christianity is considered the dominant religious influence in New Zealand - a thesis which is arguable in my opinion.

And then there's the sociocultural blends which are not explicitly pagan – or are they? Many festivalgoers seemed to be into tie dye or medieval clothing – 1 or 2 there were part of medieval reenactment groups. A few were in jeans and heavy metalish clothing. Plenty of tattoos and piercings, so i fit right in ;-) A few dressed pretty plainly. I couldn't help thinking Paganism's dress sense is remarkably similar to Boganism. Or hippiedom. Oh, and many of the pagans there at least had a sense of humour about all this.

I did think, if Magick Earth is representative of modern paganism, the people who write scaremongering books have nothing to fear.

Another thing I came away with was a renewed conviction that religion, spirituality and belief is something that should be discussed in the public domain. There is something in Kiwi culture that says it should be private in the same way most people don't discuss their sex lives. I think open, respectful and frank discussion is vitally important both for society and to enrich/critique those who hold spiritual beliefs. Which, let's face it, is the vast majority of people, much to many atheists' disgust.

So much for this limited account of my experience. Overall I enjoyed myself, especially the chance to socialise and relax, and learn something new. Something I want to explore further is the concept of integrity and how it relates to pagan ethics. And perhaps a few other things.

I will save that for next time.

Warm Fuzz

2007-04-05T13:34:00.000+12:00

Firstly, I have to express my disgust with the management at Hoyts new cinemas in Sylvia Park. Turned up just before movie start on Tuesday only to find Hot Fuzz was sold out. "Fair enough", I thought, "it's cheap night, it's nearly start time and it's a popular movie". Turned up Wednesday night at least 15 minutes beforehand only to be told the same thing. Turns out they'd scheduled it in a 36 seat cinema, surely one of their smallest. While walking away I spoke to a small group who were also turned away because of this utter stupidity in scheduling a popular movie. Their next screening of it was 9:45 on a school night. And they don't take phone bookings.

After rearranging my plans for the second night in a row, I finally saw Hot Fuzz at 9pm in Wairau Park - only because I had a free ticket. There would have been less than twenty in the 100+ seat auditorium at Wairau Park.

Anyway, the film: Now I am questioning my own sense of humour. I found it amusing, but not a constant barrel of laughs. I thought Shaun of the Dead was much better. Other friends have found it hilarious. I kept waiting for it to get better, to get funnier. It wasn't bad. It just wasn't as good as I'd hoped. I know I have a pretty high standard when it comes to humour. So I will put it down to my present low mood.

Blue Oyster Cult Don't Fear The Reaper

Burn civilisation down, then you're free of it.

2007-04-03T17:41:00.000+12:00

One way to reach complete freedom from the restraints of civilisation, is to burn civilisation down, then you're free of it.

[Marc Pauline of Survival Research Laboratories, a US industrial arts group].

Makes me think of Burning Man. And sure enough, I think they've been involved there. I found the quote in this article http://www.birgitrichard.de/texte/e_indust.htm, a slightly academic but readable analysis of industrial music and culture. (It's translated from Prof. Dr. Birgit Richard's original German.) The article is heavily reliant on early acts such as Throbbing Gristle and Einstürzende Neubauten, and neglects later musical acts such as Skinny Puppy and Front Line Assembly but it does shed a lot of light on the earlier period. It focuses more on the art than the music but I found useful insights among the ivorytowerspeak.

One thing that has occurred to me for many years, is that nothing is original in music or performance. For years I've intended to have disturbing AV shows as part of my live experience, but it's all been done. There is nothing shocking i could do that hasn't already been done. And much that i wouldn't want to do.

So, given that I would only be reproducing variations on a theme, I have to be comfortable with my own small piece of originality; tiny variations, and the fact that it's ME, and MY BAND doing it and not someone else. That's what originality comes down to now; origin, not novelty. I need to focus on creativity - production of works - not originality. Nobody in New Zealand is doing this stuff that I am aware of; not even Welly's Gugonix who I saw a few years back.

The flat stinks of leather and glue as PoetryMan creates his artwork for the upcoming Easter "thing" at Cityside. I'm off to see the film Hot Fuzz tonight. Some light relief will be most welcome.

while readingwriting i am listening to Felix Da Housecat | Harlot (Justin Robertson remix), Mr Bungle | Stubb (A Dubb), Matt Bentley | Savannah, Altered Images | Happy Birthday, Front Line Assembly | Sex Offender, Clear Stream Temple | Pentagonium (Buried in Concrete Remix), random breakbeat sample, Nik Kershaw | When A Heart Beats

Sex, Angst, Repression and God

2007-04-02T12:10:00.000+12:00

That's what the few people who know anything about him usually associate with the North African writer Augustine (354-430). A native of Algeria, he was a thinker who had an incredible impact on the Western world, but i suspect many today won't know much about him.

I've started reading Garry Wills' biography, Saint Augustine which I picked up in Wellington's Arty Bees secondhand bookstore.

One thing is certain, Augustine was an incredibly prolific writer. Wills writes that Augustine was an ever-developing thinker, unsatisfied with even his own formulations to the end of his life, so that those (like Calvin) who attempt to make a system from his writing at a particular period in his life do him an injustice.

Wills argues well that "The testimony" is a much better rendering of his well-known confessiones.

[In the fourth century] the penitential system of the church "confessional" did not exist... Augustine was not confessing like an Al Capone, or like a pious trafficker of later confessionals.

On Augustine's supposed sexual obssessions Wills writes

We must be on guard for such misreadings... [People] are convinced that Augustine was a libertine before his conversion, and was so obsessed with sex after his conversion that they place many unnamed sins to his account - though his actual sexual activity was not shocking by any standards but those of a saint. He lived with one woman for fifteen years "and with her alone, since I kept faith with her bed" (T 4.2). This kind of legal concubine was recognised in Roman law... Even the Church recognised the legitimacy of such a relationship (Council of Toledo 400, Canon 17).

Yet the expectation of sexual excess in Augustine's life leads people to add sexual scenes and themes to his story.

Nothing like a little truth to ruin our salaciousness, huh?

Peter Brown's bio seems to be the more critically acclaimed.

Nevertheless, the reviews of this short book acknowledge that it has good points, notably in Augustine's early life and his relationship with his concubine. I've just started it. We shall see what other interesting things come up.

cor inquietum "the unstable heart", drawing us ever onward. One of Augustine's themes. i like that.

listening to Argyle Park | Doomsayer

Down Loading

2007-04-02T10:45:00.000+12:00

Looks like Russell Brown has taken my lead and published on the same topic (wry grin).

Haven't read it all yet, but here's the article and discussion, thanks to Rich for alerting me to this.

http://www.publicaddress.net/system/topic,318,hard_news_the_public_good.sm

listening to NIN | Closer

The Downward Spiral

2007-04-01T15:49:00.000+12:00

Questions. How to manipulate negativity for positive purposes. What do i want. How to be in public and preserve my innner life. How to arrest the downward thoughtrend. How to leave my room. How to love the big world. How to find a book i want to read. How to avoid thinking i'm fatally flawed. What do i want. How not to be bored. How to cure my back pain. What do i want. How to avoid information overload. How to avoid information underwhelm. How to find inner peace. How to cut my nails. How to monetise misanthropy. How to care.

==

Unrelated news:

Apparently NIN's new album is out this month.

==

Now go away and leave me alone.

listening to NIN | The Hand That Feeds

More Music Doom

2007-04-01T11:15:00.000+12:00

Two articles that confirm what I've already posted some time ago:

http://www.nzmusician.co.nz/index.php/ps_pagename/obpost/pi_obpostid/39
which in turn references
http://online.wsj.com/public/article/SB117444575607043728-DA_Xj6UYVkdAlYagcxinszyQOKE_20070420.html?mod=tff_main_tff_top

Essentially, CD sales are beginning a death plumment, and artists who want to make a living from music will have to play live and sell merchandise to make a living. I wonder if live venues realise this yet? Will NZ culture change so that people go out and see bands 2-3 times every week instead? And then go out and hear DJs later in the night?

NZ band guy Blink reckons midweek band nights in NZ need to start early and finish early like they do in Aussie, so that people know they can go out and party on a school night and still get to bed at a reasonable hour.

Tatjna put me onto this rather cute article http://kimihia.org.nz/how/raving/ Apart from wondering about the innocence and trepidation with which some people approach the world, it contains this immortal line

The mark of being in a club or a rave is that the person playing the music has (at least) two turntables and spends a lot of time bent over them to get them mixed together without gaps between tracks. If there is a guy pulling out CDs and taking requests then you probably aren't in a rave.

Go the vinyl!

Strangely, vinyl could be a small exception to the plummeting sales of CDs and lukewarm digital music sales. I don't know what the actual figures are, but they probably aren't good. Those, like myself, who still prefer vinyl over CD/digital at least show that we support the artist/record label by purchasing their product.

I'm very suspicious of the number of people I see playing off CD these days. I do wonder how many CDJs actually pay for their music. I recall a minor wannabe DJ in Wellington a few years ago proudly telling me how many thousands of MP3s he had available for a set. Most of which he hadn't even listened to. All acquired without giving anything back to the artist who created them. I left him feeling angry and sick. Interestingly, he swopped to vinyl a while later. Maybe he realised he had no credibility.

With CDJs and tools like Tractor and Ableton Live becoming so much better in the last few years, it's no wonder some DJs are changing formats. It's purely for practical reasons - the weight of large numbers of tunes on vinyl versus MP3s, and those producing their own tunes choosing to play them out in digital format rather than putting them on acetate. Carl Cox reportedly played only off CD in NZ recently. Et tu Carl?

The challenge will be, with so much 'help', to separate out the good DJs from the merely blend-one-tune-into-another DJs. The DJs who push the boundaries, use the new features and create something unique that you can't get simply by queuing MP3s in Winamp. Mind you, whether their audience actually notices how innovative they are is another thing.

Most of the old school DJs I speak to still prefer vinyl for the playing experience. Hence Final Scratch, and the reportedly much superior Serato Scratch (a New Zealand product) will probably be the way I go MP3 wise, in order to retain that vinyl feel. I play CDs when I have to, but only on good CDJ setups like the Pioneer CDJ 1000s. The others are @!$#!.

Big ups to NZ Musician too, it's a damn good mag which has been slogging away for years and consistently publishes worthwhile stuff.

See also http://xhile.blogspot.com/2007/03/stealing-music.html and http://xhile.blogspot.com/2005/08/sounds-like-stealing-to-me.html

listening to Erik Prydz vs Pink Floyd : Proper Education (on vinyl)

Spotting Spiritual Reality

2007-03-26T14:07:00.000+12:00

Sadly, it's easier to spot fakes, charlatans and plain lame-o s than the real thing. Some people I know are hosting a spiritual type guy for a speaking/workshop thingy. I read the blurb about it, and it bothered me.

One big clue for me: He's charging significant $$$ per day. If any of that money goes to him, or to some 'charity' that is actually funding him, to support his lifestyle, that's a big warning bell.

There's an interesting connection between the few spiritual leaders I respect: Y'shua (Jesus), Gautama (called the Buddha), various lesser sages and leaders (Ghandi, Mother Teresa, Martin Luther King Junior) etc:

They didn't charge money for helping people.

Consequently, some of them lived very frugal lives. Even Paul (an ex Jewish rabbi who wrote many of the letters in the Second Testament) insisted on working for his living wherever he went, even tho' he acknowledged he had a fair case to be hosted for free.

(Incidentally, Mohammed was always a businessman and later a warrior, and got rich off his first wife. No comment.)

So yeah. Having been around spiritual stuff for most of my life, I am thinking "X and Y, you are lovely people... how have you let yourselves become duped by this guy?"

As another friend pointed out, in practical terms it costs a bit to hire out the venue, but realistically, you can talk to people (which is essentially what he's doing) anywhere.

And that's my thought exactly. There are plenty of little halls and spaces that don't charge much at all. To be honest, why not host him in your living room? That's what the early christians did, they didn't have big, lush, pointless meeting places.

True spirituality doesn't require a beautiful, comfortable, catered conference centre to connect with g0d (or become enlightend, or whatever). Ironically, things like deserts, storms and poverty seem to do a better job. If one MUST have beauty, why not find a friendly farmer, hire a small marquee ($1000) and do it there?

An expensive workshop also means only true believers are likely to be there. This makes it safe for the speaker, because otherwise people like me might stand up and say "BULL****!" ;) But a spirituality that can't stand challenge maybe isn't worth the saffron robe it comes in.

I'm sure the guy is a nice guy. I just don't think he's really "got it". Just a gut feeling.

listenig to Mortal | MuJo (uncertainty mix)

Four Day Work Week

2007-03-17T12:19:00.000+13:00

At last i've remembered to check up on how the French are doing since introducing a 35 hour work week. Seems the jury is still out.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/1859891.stm - note from 2002
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/35-hour_workweek - more critical
http://www.sergetheconcierge.com/2006/05/the_four_day_wo.html - ideas

increasingly i don't want a five day work week any more. But then there's that money thing.

listening to Coldplay | Talk (Thin White Duke remix) AWESOME!

How Do You Decide Who To Marry?

2007-03-17T12:08:00.001+13:00

HOW DO YOU DECIDE WHO TO MARRY? (written by kids)
----------------------------------------
You got to find somebody who likes the same stuff. Like, if you like sports, she should like it that you like sports, and she should keep the chips and dip coming.
-- Alan, age 10
----------------------------------------
No person really decides before they grow up who they're going to marry. God decides it alway before, and you get to find out later who you're stuck with.
-- Kristen, age 10
----------------------------------------
WHAT IS THE RIGHT AGE TO GET MARRIED?
Twenty-three is the best age because you know the person FOREVER by then.
-- Camille, age 10
----------------------------------------
HOW CAN A STRANGER TELL IF TWO PEOPLE ARE MARRIED?
You might have to guess, based on whether they seem to be yelling at the same kids.
-- Derrick, age 8
---------------------------------------
WHAT DO YOU THINK YOUR MOM AND DAD HAVE IN COMMON?
Both don't want any more kids.
-- Lori, age 8
---------------------------------------
WHAT DO MOST PEOPLE DO ON A DATE?
Dates are for having fun, and people should use them to get to know each other. Even boys have something to say if you listen long enough.
-- Lynnette, age 8
----------------------------------------
On the first date, they just tell each other lies and that Usually gets them interested enough to go for a second date.
-- Martin, age 10
----------------------------------------
WHAT WOULD YOU DO ON A FIRST DATE THAT WAS TURNING SOUR?
I'd run home and play dead. The next day I would call all the newspapers and make sure they wrote about me in all the dead columns.
-- Craig, age 9
----------------------------------------
WHEN IS IT OKAY TO KISS SOMEONE?
When they're rich.
-- Pam, age 7
----------------------------------------
The law says you have to be eighteen, so I wouldn't want to mess with that.
- - Curt, age 7
----------------------------------------
The rule goes like this: If you kiss someone, then you should marry them and have kids with them. It's the right thing to do.
-- Howard, age 8
----------------------------------------
IS IT BETTER TO BE SINGLE OR MARRIED?
It's better for girls to be single but not for boys. Boys need someone to clean up after them.
-- Anita, age 9
----------------------------------------
HOW WOULD THE WORLD BE DIFFERENT IF PEOPLE DIDN'T GET MARRIED?
There sure would be a lot of kids to explain, wouldn't there?
-- Kelvin, age 8
----------------------------------------
And the #1 Favorite is........

HOW WOULD YOU MAKE A MARRIAGE WORK?
Tell your wife that she looks pretty, even if she looks like a truck.
-- Ricky, age 10

Posted on the BLJ forum. Classic!

Getting better slowly, drinking Jack Daniels (yuck! why don't i have vodka in the house?) and taking vitamins. I don't know if I will have the energy to make my 2 DJ commitments tonight. Anyone out there want to massage my achey back?

Stealing Music

2007-03-16T17:49:00.000+13:00

I'm still sick, my back still aches. Blah. I'm staying home tonight and sleeping. And 'cos my brain is tired, i'm simply gonna steal this from teh blog of Bassnectar. I totally support what he's saying.

wah wah wah

(cue heartwreching violin strings)

hello!!!!

and thank you for joining us for another episode of YAN CAN COOK!

Today Yan will be divulging a rarest Californian recipe for: how to totally rip off an artist!!!!

ARE YOU READY!!??! ok, lets go!

First, come across a full length version of unreleased music. Mix that up with some excitement.
Next, rip that music to your computer. Mix that up with a few doses of technical savy.
Now toss it in the oven and set to bake.
Remove and put up the music for FREE download on some file sharing programs.
Send links to your friends.
(careful becuase some people will hear about this, and just go do some basic searches on their own, and they too will find it!)

...next, send out some emails telling people about the album being available for FREE.
Mix that up with playing it at parties, and burning it for friends.

And PRESTO!!!! You've potentially ruined someone's career!

So a word to the wise friends, in the age of entitlement and A.D.D., if yu enjoy music, SUPPORT the musicians, go without a lattee for 3 days and save your 15$ for their CD. DONT burn it and DONT download it for free. Dont support people who do, and spread the word.

Its one thing to illegally distribute someone's OLD music, but whoever thought it was cool in any way to post those links up and offer my brand new, unreleased, 3-year-in-the-making record for free, did something VERY wrong. As for the several hundered people who i KNOW downloaded it.

Shame On You in a deep way.

Let me break down the conundrum:

A record label MUST get press to support their release.

Press needs a full copy of the release 3-4 months in advance for adqueate coverage.

Press does NOT want clips or samples, they want the FINAL CD for review.

So when OM RECORDS sent out 400 select copies to press around the world, somehow, somewhere, someone took one of those copies and not only stole it but PUT IT UP FOR FREE DOWNLOAD!!!!!!!!

And the album isnt even out yet.

This kind of action can result in the creative death of an artist.

Let me say this is not about me making money.

I dont want to sell units to cash in, get rich, and sip bichz and roll 'roun inna benz. or whatever.

I want my LABEL to sell units, so that it is worth it for them to invest more time, energy and money into promoting, circulating, distributing and SUPPORTING my art (and the messages inside my art) worldwide.

So by simply buying a CD for yourself, or buying it for a friend, its not "Oh cool, im giving some cash to Lorin, who i like to support"...cuz if that was the case, id be taking donations for personal money.

Its about supporting this dope label OM, which has been working with me doing back breaking work for a year to make this release huge, so that it can be a springboard for the NEXT release, and the one after that, as well as what we are hoping will be a new Bassnectar record label, and lots of other stuff in the works.

PLEASE DONT STEAL MY MUSIC>
PLEASE DONT STEAL OTHER PEOPLE'S MUSIC
PLEASE DONT LET OTHER PEOPLE STEAL MY MUSIC (it hurt so bad to look online and see my own friends had downloaded the cd!)
IF YOU DONT LIKE ME OR MY MUSIC, thats fine, just leave me alone.
IF YOU DO: SUPPORT.

that means if you DO burn someone's CD, and you like it:
find them on myspace, or the web, write them a letter, send them a donation, offer to help the record label with street team or promo when the artist tours, line them up a gig, or USE YOUR OWN ADULT BRAIN to figure out how to support, but dont just go around sucking people's life force.

im serious. i dont wish to preach or bich... i wish to educate first hand so you understand HOW IT FEELS TO BE ME.

well first off, it feels great, i am constantly meditating on things that are going well in life, and loving the spring weather, and feeling soo inspired to do the work i am on this planet to do!
:)
FULLY!

but, i gotta call a spade a spade.

And that goes for DJS, in 2007, putting out mixes digitally or on CD with their name on it, but no tracklisting...come on folks, support.

I would rather not waste precious bandwidth of your attention span on trivial matters like this, when there is so much more going on.

but my career is in jeopardy if people don't support.

And the careers of thousands of mindblowing artists who are alive right now and probably in their studios working, think about them, send them a prayer, and show them your love.

not just now, but from now on.

NOTE: this applies to all artists you like. and anything you like. VOTE WITH YOUR DOLLAR.
And in reference to file sharing and CD Burning PLEASE dont think i am hypocritically judging anyone.

i mean come on, its 2007, i am realistic. i have burned CDs, i have traded music, etc. On one hand, i feel more justified because i am in the bizness, and i support artists so much. But on the other hand, as i have grown, i have understood how sensitive this issue is, and how fundamentally dangerous it is to creativity (and all that creativity brings: inspiration, emotional health, social change, new thought, empowerment) for piracy to become normal. Not only has is stopped being a personal practice of mine, but i feel obligated to voice this all publicly.

THINK ABOUT IT NEXT TIME YOU DO IT.

You want that music cuz it feels so good.

Well if it feels so good, its probably is good, and its worth your support.

And if you cant afford it, then wait till you can and enjoy it that much more.

Support artists.

Im open for discussion, hit me.

- Lorin

listening to that stupid milkshake song, it's stuck in my head, aaaaagh!

Silly Me

2007-03-12T01:07:00.000+13:00

Had a big weekend out ... bed 4:30 Sat am, still somewhat sick, maybe 6 hours sleep. Bed 7am Sun am (after big club night out), not a helluva lot of sleep thanks to flatmate using power tools on the wall outside my bedroom at 11am. It's now 1am Monday. But i had fun! And on nothing but a couple of coffees and the occasional wine... am i hard or what!? Or just stupid.

Yeah, i had GOOD reasons for doing so, insuring i will earn money, didn't really have a better option. Otherwise i woulda' preferred to be in bed. But will be taking it easy the next few days, my horrible horrible cold is much better, ironically.

AND i lost my brand new cellphone tonight. Aaargh! Have blocked it and will get another soon, hopefully. The number will remain the same.

NOFX shut down in Wellington

2007-03-08T13:17:00.000+13:00

The promoter emailed me this:

Hi everyone,
I heard about what happened last night in Wellington from my Dynamo peoples plus the NOFX road crew/tour management as I'm currently in Australia.
I wanted to give you guys the facts so you hear it straight from us and not some chinese whispers rumour about what happened at the Wellington NOFX show and why it turned to shit and people were shut out...

We were instructed that Victoria University Student Union Hall had a certain capacity (as per any show we do anywhere) BY Victoria university... This is what I set the ticket allocation @ ticketek to (which sold out), midway through the night the building owner arrived and decided that we had "over-sold the show" (despite there being a whole ton of room at the back of the room). We sold the same amount of tickets as Pennywise did (a little less even), we were instructed as you guys saw on here to release a further 25 door sales on the night... Which didn't happen.

The venue owner after a running battle with us decided she was going to shut the doors on the show and shut us down, we told her that in doing so - it would cause a riot... And sure enough it did.

I want you guys to know that I/we had NOTHING to do with shutting the doors, nor did we do anything wrong in our ticket allocation. We sold out the show to the capacity instructed to us by VUSA, I've busted my balls for nearly 10 years now booking shows often footing the bills out of my own pocket, I'm proud of the reputation that I/we've built in NZ as a legitimate touring destination with trustworthy and honest promoters.

I would hate for someone else's bad calls to affect my reputation and I'm sure that in this case that's probably exactly what will happen.

I can't refund tickets as the agreed capacity and ticket sales related to it have been accounted for, contracted and forwarded to NOFX and the various people involved in booking this tour - nor should I have to do when I have done nothing wrong.

Once again - I apologize to those who were stuck outside and missed the show. If you do want to try and get your ticket refunded I would suggest contacting the VUSA as it was at their end where the capacity was set and at their end where the show was needlessly "shut down".

Please pass this on to the dozens and dozens of pissed off NOFX fans who may not understand what happened and won't read this...

Unfortunately I doubt very much we'll be sending bands the size of NOFX down to Wellington, unless an appropriate venue pops up which sucks for all of us.

- Dave McDermott
Dynamo Promotions guy

listening to White and Dean | Out of Knowwhere

Herpes, STDs and Ignorance

2007-02-26T13:53:00.000+13:00

I was on a dance music site i frequent, and was surprised at how ignorant people were, even those who consider themselves well educated on things sexual. I realise by posting this some people may think I have an STD. I don't as far as I know, 'tho will be getting tested again soon. And frankly, i don't care what people think. There is too much stigma associated with these diseases, which doesn't help the control of their spread imo.

Anyway, as far as Herpes goes, most people know there are two types, oral (HSV1) and genital (HSV2). What many people don't know is they don't spread purely by oral-oral or genital-genital contact. It can be spread through oral sex which is where many people don't protect themselves.

Both viral types [Oral and Genital] are easily transmitted to their site of preference, and can also be spread to other sites. Both are most contagious during active outbreaks, but are often spread through viral shedding when there are no recognizable symptoms. According to Spruance, people with recurrent oral HSV-1 [Oral herpes] shed virus in their saliva about 5% of the time even when they show no symptoms. In the first year of infection, people with genital HSV-2 shed virus from the genital area about 6-10% of days when they show no symptoms, and less often over time.

...

While HSV- 1 (Oral Herpes) can be spread from genitals to genitals, "we think it is spread more easily through oral sex because HSV-1 reactivates more frequently in the oral area," says Wald. However, she warns, "transmission of genital HSV-1 during asymptomatic shedding has been documented." In other words, genital HSV-1 can be spread through genital sex, even when there are no symptoms.

...

If HSV infection is as easily transmitted from the mouth as from the genitals, then why do people take steps to prevent genital but not oral infection? Why don't we kiss through dental dams ?

"It's ironic, isn't it?" says Wald. "It's not about health, it's about social acceptability."

from

http://www.herpes.com/hsv1-2.html

There is plenty more out there including a number of herpes forums where you can get accurate information, and support, from people who have it.

Many herpes sufferers aren't aware there are now drugs that can control the severity of outbreaks, lessen their frequency and reduce the amount of viral shedding when you're not actively symptomatic. Shame prevents many people from taking care of themselves and their partners.

Knowledge is power. Power doesn't lead to happiness, but it's useful stuff.

listning to normal sounds of life, still letting my brain recover from too much noise.

Bruised, Battered, We Go On

2007-02-26T11:43:00.000+13:00

Monday morning, probably the first truly "free" Monday I've had for three weeks. Three weeks of burning, partying, people-ing, DJing, stressing, job-quitting, late-nighting, cuddling, overspending, back-aching.

time for some Me-time.

really looking forward to getting my physical health back. I thought my back was getting better, but it just took one weekend of lifting light stuff and partying to make it ache again.

mentally, i'm at a low point which i know is purely due to the aftermath of tiredness and stress, and residue of past self-doubt. With intentionality at my side, i will not slide into depression, just quietly allow myself to feel a bit down and nurture myself back up again.

lots of food, vitamins, massage and quiet home time sounds nice to me.

listening to a confused mixture of sounds in my head

I Quit My Job

2007-02-20T16:14:00.000+13:00

Yes, it's true.

After kiwiburn, a week of niceness in Wellington and WDC's first party which was FTW cool,

i've come back to Auckland and quit my job.

Does Burning Man/Kiwiburn change your life? Hell yeah!

To those who worry, it was in the works anyway.

Sooooo.... anyone want to pay me to hang around? Will DJ for food. Heh heh heh.

For those who don't know (ie most of you), I'm considering a move (back) to Wellington. Likely timeframe will be Bliss March 23 (Auck), Bliss July ?? (Auck) and move after that. Or maybe go overseas, go to Greenbelt, Cornerstone, Canada, Burning Man Nevada, and move after that.

Anyway. Still thunking about it.

Any Dorklanders want to make it worth my while to stay up here?

:P

Plans Are Afeet

2007-02-20T16:10:00.000+13:00

Right. Back in Orky-Dorkyland.

I may write myself, but here are two great reviews of what Kiwiburn was all about

http://www.kathysgetaways.com/212/kiwiburn07/

http://people.tribe.net/f5c80bc8-0f43-40b5-a2d4-881254100d81/blog/6267b91e-9164-4898-af85- 1010d1e01e39

I met, hung out with and hugged both Kathy and Cass. That's the kind of place it was.

So.

My plans for next year's contribution to kiwiburn include:

* Pink Moa
* Radio Insomnia
* Band Camp
* Evil Playground + LemmingSpace
* Camp Cannibal
* Fred Dagg Camp

They are all do-able, provided I allocate my time and resources wisely. Besides, I'll be looking for slaves, gimps and masochists to help me pull them off.

:-)

*sounds of evil laughter fading into the distance*

listening to Massive Attack | Teardrops

Kiwiburn, Pink Moa and lovely people

2007-02-17T11:33:00.000+13:00

I've been on holiday for the last week.

It's been great, truly re-recreational although perhaps not very restful at times.

Kiwiburn was absolutely beautiful. I met so many wonderful people. I can't really describe it, but i am now on the executive committee and will be helping making next year's happen. All i can say is, if you can possibly make it in February next year, do. You will never regret it.

Pink Moa went OFF!! Good sets by all. Big ups to DJ Dee and Nat for making it. Big ups to Sam (it's his photo) for being the backbone of Pink Moa setup. You rock, dude.

I played several times, but the highlight had to be my 4 hour set on the night of the burn, which was incredible in terms of crowd response and my own performance (especially considering my back was severely playing up that night). I played "Seasons", my Xhile industrial dnb track which was very well received. It's still very unfinished, so i will be finishing it this week for Club Bizarre on Saturday 24th.

And tonight, I play an outdoor party at the Massey Memorial in Wellington for the Wellington Dance Collective, the fluffiest loveliest people i've met in a while. Life is good.

listening to Boards of Canada | Triangles and Rhombuses

I'm going to Burning Maaaaan This Weekend!

2007-02-08T11:25:00.000+13:00

Well, the New Zealand one anyway.

So excited.

Three days of debaucherous partying. I get to perform at least six times, in my pink dress, lei, and fluoro pink hair.

Yay yay yay.

listening to Front Line Assembly | Beneath The Rubble (their recent album is growing on me)

NZ Independent Music Marketing

2007-02-07T09:45:00.000+13:00

An industry body representing dozens of independent music labels expects hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of licensing deals to flow to local artists through the formation of a global group to represent them.

Independent Music New Zealand joins similar trade groups from a dozen countries in joining Merlin, which will negotiate music licensing deals on behalf of its thousands of members with music download sites like Apple's iTunes.com and mobile phone service providers.

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/3/story.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=10422741

listening to Anti Kati | He Seemed To Have a Lot of CDs

Girls Are So Like This

2007-02-07T03:28:00.000+13:00

listening to The Mercy Cage | Hymn 0.1

Flame Warriors

2007-02-05T09:56:00.000+13:00

http://redwing.hutman.net/%7Emreed/index.htm

I've been on the net, and in various forums for years. I think I've met some of these people...

I want to add "Immaturitron". The 19 year-old whose daddy is very rich, knows it all, has never had a real job, likes to say lots and has an opinion on everything. When confronted with his rudeness and mean spirit will fight back with "it was only a joke, where's your sense of humour?".

listening to the neighbour mowing their lawn. so over it.

Party Now While You Can

2007-02-02T16:35:00.000+13:00

... but maybe consider doing it with the power off without driving anywhere or consuming anything.

The world's leading climate scientists said global warming has begun, is "very likely" caused by man, and will be unstoppable for centuries, according to a report obtained Friday by The Associated Press.

The scientists — using their strongest language yet on the issue — said now that world has begun to warm, hotter temperatures and rises in sea level "would continue for centuries" no matter how much humans control their pollution. The report also linked the warming to the recent increase in stronger hurricanes.

"The observed widespread warming of the atmosphere and ocean, together with ice-mass loss, support the conclusion that it is extremely unlikely that global climate change of the past 50 years can be explained without external forcing, and very likely that is not due to known natural causes alone," said the report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change — a group of hundreds of scientists and representatives of 113 governments.

The phrase "very likely" translates to a more than 90 percent certainty that global warming is caused by man's burning of fossil fuels. That was the strongest conclusion to date, making it nearly impossible to say natural forces are to blame.

What that means in simple language is "we have this nailed," said top U.S. climate scientist Jerry Mahlman, who originated the percentage system.

The 20-page report, which was due to be officially released later in the day, represents the most authoritative science on global warming.

read the rest here http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070202/ap_on_sc/france_climate_change

Al Gore, i'm sure will be saying "See - I told you so".

listning to some psychedelic trance track i don't know

More on Buddha and Wealth

2007-01-30T15:55:00.000+13:00

Friend Adrian read my last post and wrote me this (he was gonna comment it). I think this is worth posting.

You can find (as the guy in the link did) stuff that the Buddha apparently said about money if you look for it hard enough, but it wouldn't be right to say that there's a big emphasis on it. The only part of the main teachings I can think of that relates much to wealth is the bit in the Eightfold Path about 'right livelihood', which essentially just says that whatever job you do, try to make sure it doesn't do unnecessary harm to yourself or others. There is also a precept on not stealing, which would be relevant to some kinds of wealth creation...

I don't think making money is seen as inherently 'good' or 'bad'- it all depends on a) how you got it, and b) what you do with it. If you can get disgustingly rich in an honest way and then do something really good with it, then fine. In practice I'd say most people have found that getting very rich usually involves either dishonesty or a lot of work (sometimes both), either of which will distract you from the things that really matter. (Winning Lotto might be another way, but not too reliable.)

Someone was saying that the Buddha was a privileged prince who needed to live in a rich enough society that he could drop out and seek enlightenment. The story goes, he was born a prince, but left home and lived on alms for the rest of his life. So not exactly a life of luxury. When times were hard the monks and nuns went hungry too. According to the stories they were sometimes offered animal fodder if things were bad, but they refused it if it was going to cause animals to go hungry. Once they are supposed to have experimented with eating bits off trees but found it didn't really do the trick. The Buddha apparently died as a result of eating something dodgy that someone had given him.

For more stories of his life, written in a pretty thorough but readable and unembellished way, I'd recommend Thich Nhat Hanh's book 'Old Path White Clouds'.

Mohammed, Buddha and Jesus on Wealth

2007-01-29T17:18:00.000+13:00

So I got thinking the other day about the influence on praxis around materialism, poverty and riches by 'respected' religious figures. I'm fairly familiar already with some of what Y'shua (Jesus) taught.

So i thought i'd find out some of what Gautama (Buddha) and Mohammed taught. I was suprised that in my (brief) searching, they both seemed much more supportive of business and maybe even getting rich than i thought they'd be.

A couple of friends commented the following on a forum i hang out in

Gautama, if i recall, grew up as a very privlaged prince. The ability to dropout and seek enlightenment, requires a society that produces enough exess to facilitate such life styles.

Muhammad, I believe, lead a merchant caravan, and so probably had a strongly bourgeois (at least for his place and time) out look on life. Mohammed ran a business owned by his first wife. Strange to see how his example is ignored by some parts of the Islamic community as they restrict women's right to work.

http://www.globalwebpost.com/farooqm/writings/askme/islam/poverty1.htm

http://www.sut.ac.th/engineering/electrical/faculty/nimit/
articles/what_the_buddha_taught_about_money.htm

Is anyone more enlightened than i able to comment?

Looking in My Bin Today

2007-01-24T15:27:00.000+13:00

Looking in my bin at work today

i see:

* two caramello wrappers
* a sushi takeaway box
* empty wrapper from my drugz
* printouts of interesting forums i was surfing
* a banana skin

And at lunch I went out and bought 68.5 metres of fluoro pink linen and a gothic cross.

It's been a good day :-)

listening to The Cardigans | Paralysed

Desiderata

2007-01-22T22:49:00.000+13:00

I thought this was originally written by Francis of Assisi, but don't really know. Either way, I've always liked it so will post it here.

Go placidly amid the noise and haste,
and remember what peace there may be in silence.
As far as possible without surrender
be on good terms with all persons.
Speak your truth quietly and clearly;
and listen to others,
even the dull and the ignorant;
they too have their story.

Avoid loud and aggressive persons,
they are vexations to the spirit.
If you compare yourself with others,
you may become vain and bitter;
for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself.
Enjoy your achievements as well as your plans.

Keep interested in your own career, however humble;
it is a real possession in the changing fortunes of time.
Exercise caution in your business affairs;
for the world is full of trickery.
But let this not blind you to what virtue there is;
many persons strive for high ideals;
and everywhere life is full of heroism.

Be yourself.
Especially, do not feign affection.
Neither be cynical about love;
for in the face of all aridity and disenchantment
it is as perennial as the grass.

Take kindly the counsel of the years,
gracefully surrendering the things of youth.
Nurture strength of spirit to shield you in sudden misfortune.
But do not distress yourself with dark imaginings.
Many fears are born of fatigue and loneliness.
Beyond a wholesome discipline,
be gentle with yourself.

You are a child of the universe,
no less than the trees and the stars;
you have a right to be here.
And whether or not it is clear to you,
no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should.

Therefore be at peace with God,
whatever you conceive Him to be,
and whatever your labors and aspirations,
in the noisy confusion of life keep peace with your soul.

With all its sham, drudgery, and broken dreams,
it is still a beautiful world.
Be cheerful.
Strive to be happy.

What America Thinks About The World

2007-01-18T00:00:00.000+13:00

Friend Bex alterted me to this one. I find this video hilarious - and staggering. If it's fairly edited footage... the world is in big trouble.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HCkYfYa8ePI

My apologies to any of my US friends who are offended by this. I love you. You better move to a safer country sometime soon though.

===

I've just been booked to play Darkwave/EBM/Industrial at Club Bizarre on Feb 24. Cool!

listening to Front Line Assembly | Plasticity

MySpace, Cold Fusion and Asp .Net

2007-01-15T12:20:00.000+13:00

I didn't realise Myspace has actually been in .Net for 9 months. I had assumed that its suckiness would go once they dropped CF 5.

From a user point of view, it's WORSE. More outages, more broken pages, more ugly fugly pages. And today it seems to be down altogether, 9 months after they moved to ASP .Net

I've been doing a little research, here's some excerpts from some forums. I will see if i can find any more recent comments. I realise these need to be read in context, but it's these ones that particularly interested me.

====

Comment from April last year

Myspace is not Cold Fusion anymore. The have rebuilt it on ASP .NET v2 with the help of BlueDragon to maintain integrity to the old Cold Fusion Fusebox links. It looks like CF on the surface, but it is now 100% ASP .NET v2

Comment from March last year

===
Hi everyone,

I work on the MySpace C# codebase...

To clarify, we wrote a custom configuration section that maps "fuseaction" URL parameters to ASPX extensions so that we'd maintain link integrity. The only place we aren't doing this is 'Browse' and certain other new features. Meanwhile, as Scott said the parts of the site that are running in ColdFusion are essentially doing so in ASP.NET 2.0 (via BlueDragon).

Thanks for the mention, Scott. It's been an exciting time putting this together and I can't imagine pulling this off on another platform.

Chris

===

Comment from June last year

Thats right, MySpace made the mistake of moving to .NET, and now it's researching the next move since .NET has global reliability problems. MySpace is looking at Tomcat - Java - Hibernate - Wicket as a serious contender! Praise Java!

====

from http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/archive/2006/03/25/Handling-1.5-Billion-Page-Views-Per-Day-Using-ASP.NET-2.0.aspx
and http://blogs.business2.com/business2blog/2006/03/how_myspace_bea.html

Basically, MySpace needs a complete rewrite of the codebase from the ground up. If they haven't done that in .Net, then either

a) the decisionmakers are clowns and are listening to bad advice
b) .Net really doesn't cut it at that level (unlikely, given other big sites are written in it)
c) their developers and technical architects are crap.

It doesn't really matter so much which backend technology they use, they will all do the job one way or another. But they can't keep limping along trying to patch things.

I'd like to add that from a coder's point of view (having used .Net and learning PHP):

Cold Fusion 7 rocks.

Cold Fusion 5 was good, but not object-oriented. CF 7 is amazingly fast to code in, fully supports OO coding techniques and n-tier frameworks and seems to perform well at an enterprise level, so far. You can even get down and dirty and hack/code the Java engine which it's now based on. Can't wait to see what extra goodies Adobe pack into version 8. I am guessing there will be even more integration with Flash and Ajax technologies - which are already pretty darn cool in 7.

listening to Metallica | Enter Sandman

Blog Journalism | Cartoon Lust

2007-01-15T11:23:00.000+13:00

Internet bloggers will be allowed to cover the criminal trial of former White House staffer Lewis "Scooter" Libby alongside reporters from traditional media outlets, a court spokesman has confirmed.

The arrangement is believed to be a first for a high-profile court case, although trade shows and political conventions have issued media passes to bloggers in the past several years.

more here

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm?c_id=5&objectid=10419169

===

I confess to lusting over 'nique from Sinfest. Was talking about this with Felyne.

One thing about art characters. They are always perfect. They never sweat, fart, leave their socks on the floor or get moody. (Except as far as their character normally does.) The perfect partner... a fantasy one. There's a lot to be said for that, given my sad love life over the last few years.

listening to Minuit | Claire

Goals for 2007

2007-01-13T10:27:00.000+13:00

Friend LadyOfTheShadows from the US was hassling me about not having New Year's resolutions. I don't do NYR but my goals for this year, in no order are

1. Get completely debt free apart from debt to parents (that's for 2008)

2. Get a new, higher paying job.

3. Found BLISS and throw 2 - 3 successful parties.

4. Get at least 1 track released on an MP3 label.

5. Start my [censored-secret] metal covers band and get booked for the Movember gig in November.

6. Keep the fantastic progress up on improving my mental/emotional health.

7. Find some bandmates for my industrial project.

8. DJ Industrial/Goth/EBM regularly at Club Bizarre. Including my own production.

9. Restart and make money off my artist management agency.

10. See my son for longer periods and keep loving him deeply (not a hard one!)

There are others I may add later. Several of these I'm already on track with.

listening to xhile | liar (my own production, version 0.6)

Slayer Are Coming

2007-01-11T08:39:00.000+13:00

I saw them at the town hall about 10 years ago and they are overpowering live. Also Mastodon are touring with them, who are the trendy new thing in metal. St James, April 21.

woohoo!

==

Edit: Talios has kindly let me know that Lamb of God are also playing at the Power Station on April 25. Thanks dude! April's gonna be a ROCKIN month.

listening to Primus | Professor Nutbutter's House of Treats

Avatar Movie Filming in New Zealand

2007-01-10T10:58:00.000+13:00

Let's hope it's as good as the hype suggests it will be. The key thing will be a good story and direction, which is where King Kong fell down. I've generally liked James Cameron's stuff.

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/1501119/story.cfm?c_id=1501119&objectid=10418452

listening to the bustling sounds of my workplace

Jesus With Rifle

2007-01-08T16:40:00.000+13:00

listening to Cerebral | Kaline

Decisions Decisions

2007-01-08T15:01:00.000+13:00

Back at work for day three. One of my goals this year is to save more money - I did pretty well last year, bought a car out my savings. Long term savings will be for a property methinks, but I also need some money in the bank if I'm gonna pay my remaining debts, promote any events and travel overseas this year too.

So I'm thinking... Big Day Out is coming up. And more and more, the only bands I really want to see are Tool and Trivium. So maybe I'll skip it and save $100. I've already been taking bus/train to work consistently which saves me big $$ each week.

I potentially have four events I will be running in the next 3 months. That's what happens when I get passionate about the music I'm involved with. My private party this Friday 12th (easy). Club Bizarre - industrial/ebm/goth - on Feb 23 (easy-ish provided I get some helpers from CB). Pink Moa at Kiwiburn Feb 9-12 (major mission). BLISS pre-launch party on March 23 (a significant amount of work). I will learn from past enthusiasms though. I want to be ready to drop the middle two lest I take on too much.

Deadline is fast approaching for Pink Moa at Kiwiburn too; if I don't get enough volunteers to help and to contribute money in another week, Pink Moa will be extinct until next year. I will still go to Kiwiburn, just as an ordinary camper and hope to meet some potential campmates for next year.

===

oh, and a nice blast from the past for me. Someone on a dance music forum posted asking about Wonderland (the last one was 3 years ago now). "I never got to go to Wonderland but am still hearing alot about it." Nice to think something I created made an impression.

listening to Tool | Sober (live)

Update on Iraqi Death Toll

2007-01-04T11:22:00.000+13:00

A New Zealand academic has challenged the widely quoted estimate of a 655,000 death toll in Iraq, which was a US-led study's estimate, published in the Lancet, a British medical journal.

They say the study, by researchers from Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore and Al Mustansiriya University in Baghdad, overestimated Iraqi deaths by a factor of three.

About 218,000 would be "closer to the truth," said Dr Gourley.

The Lancet study - attacked by President George W. Bush and others in his Administration - said between 392,979 and 942,636 Iraqi deaths had occurred because of the war, which began in March 2003.

The research was based on a survey of 1849 Iraqi households in 47 randomly selected clusters around the country, asking about death numbers in each of the homes before and after the war started.

These figures were multiplied to produce a number for the whole of Iraq.

Dr Gourley is a physicist who has been studying statistical patterns in financial markets and civil conflicts.

He said the flaw of the Lancet study was that it polled too many families who lived on main streets or their feeders, where bombings and shootings were more common than in back alleys.

Families living near main streets would have a higher death rate than those in more isolated areas, distorting the national estimate.

The authors of the Lancet study have defended their research methods, saying that they sampled deeper into residential areas than their written report suggested, and that areas other than obvious sites of violence had been included.

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/category/story.cfm?c_id=82&objectid=10417599

listening to Front Line Assembly | The Blade

Twisted Sister?

2007-01-03T21:55:00.000+13:00

OK. I admit it. I was a Twisted Sister fan when I was 15. They were everything a 15 year-old boy could want in a band. They were loud. They were rebellious. They wore funny clothes. They were the first ever live concert I went to - and are STILL the loudest. I can vividly remember my chest shuddering when the drummer thumped the kickdrums.

They eventually split up, and Dee Snider did some interesting stuff with movies, and appears to be a fairly intelligent guy. Although this latest episode makes me wonder. Unbelievably, they seem to have reformed and made - wait for it - a Christmas album. Sadly, they sound worse than when I was 15. And whoever edited their song and video needs to recall the phrase "less is more". Still, they are a legend in my own mind.
Check this out

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=De47fjH6RKY

listening to Twisted Sister | We're Not Gonna Take It (in my head)

Another New Year of Death

2007-01-03T17:20:00.000+13:00

Back from the beach. I'm not ready for work yet, it'd be nice to have another week to feel really rested.

DiscoSis bought a paper yesterday. It has some really disturbing stats. 3000 US solders killed in Iraq, 22,057 wounded and

655,000 Iraqis believed to have died as a direct result of the the US-led invasion.

I couldn't quite believe that. But the figures are from an October report by John's Hopkins University, so I guess there is some credibility to them. Wow. How many people did Saddam kill? Surely this matches or even beats him (not counting the people killed in the Iraq-Iran wars).

And in the Independent, a writer alleges that the US, with UK support surrounded Fallujah in November 2004 and used chemical weapons - white phosphorus.

Two rather sobering things for me to investigate.

Addendum: After doing a little investigating I've found the following.

Saddam's Death Toll?

This website
http://www.moreorless.au.com/killers/hussein.html
seems to have actually done some research. They suggest Saddam was responsible for up to two million deaths. However, I am discounting those killed in the Iran-Iraq wars which - while horrible - are not necessarily the actions of an evil dictator. After all, many 'democratic' Western nations have killed lots of people in war.

The figures on the killing of political dissidents are more, er, interesting.

Mass graves discovered following the US occupation of Iraq in 2003 suggest that the total combined figure for Kurds, Shias and dissidents killed could be as high as 300,000

If this is accurate, then the western invasion has caused the deaths of twice the number of Iraqi citizens that Saddam did. In perhaps one tenth of the time. Perhaps pacifism isn't such a stupid position to hold after all?

Secondly, turns out the US did use white phosphorus bombs in Fallujah. Some suggest that white phosphorus bombs are 'chemical weapons', but the semantics are debateable. They are supposed to be just illumination devices, but there is evidence that Iraqi civilians were burned to death by them.

http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/1108/dailyUpdate.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Phantom_Fury#White_phosphorus_controversy

Eighty countries have signed Protocol III of the 1980 Convention on Conventional Weapons, which bans its use as an incendaiary weapon against civilitan populations. The United States has refused to sign the treaty and is officially exempt - according to this http://www.nonviolence.org/2005/11/us_admits_to_chemical_weapons.php This website also has links to information on white phosphorus.

===

Welcome to the new year all. On the upside, it looks like musically it might be a good one for me. I propose to party lots and not think about anything that might trouble me; I declare this the year of the Ostrich.

listening to Tool | Right In Two (prompted by n.e. lyfe)

Masculine Thoughts

2006-12-30T10:08:00.000+13:00

I bought Sonboy The Dangerous Book for Boys (by the Iggulden brothers) for Christmas. There's something about the simple innocence of a 1920's style "boy's own" manual that makes me feel more masculine. I guess it says something about the nature of 21st century men that we need books like these to help us figure out who we are.

Having an 8 year-old I can cuddle, tickle, wrestle, play with, swim with, cook with, laugh with is a wonderful experience. I like being a father.

Dunno yet what I'm doing for new year. I'm either going into the city for a psytrance party - I may be DJing the morning after - or I'm just gonna have a quiet fire on the beach with a couple of family and friends. We'll see how I feel on the night.

I've been catching up on my rest; I fell asleep half way through "Ring", the original Japanese film. Perhaps I'll be awake enough to be scared tonight.

But for now, I'm off to the beach to kick sand in some wimp's face.

Spong Sung Blue

2006-12-29T16:32:00.000+13:00

At the beach, doing busy, stressful-type things like play poker, watch Sonboy kayak, lie on the beach and read while Sonboy boogie-boards, and drink wine. And of course, read.

I've been neglecting the books I brought in favour of John Spong's áutobiography 'Here I Stand'. If you haven't heard of him, he's America's most famous liberal bishop in the Episcopalian (Anglican) church.

It's interesting. I haven't read much of his other works, but now I guess I''ll have to, to put flesh on the ideas he proposes, and see if there's any backbone to them.

Spong is wonderfully open to ideas of social justice while seeming to be oblivious to the inherent classism of the Anglican style of doing things. He seems, to this quasi anarchist, to be overly comfortable with hierarchy and power. It's not surprising he's so political when his church is so full of rich folks trying to be good.

He writes quite openly of the rudeness of others, notably the 'fundamentalists' both within and without his church. Yet he makes rude comments about them. Perhaps that's the result of years of being insulted for his beliefs. Nevertheless, one wishes for more graciousness from one who supposedly preaches grace. He also has an unsettling certainty he is right that smacks of a liberal fundamentalism in its own right.

Still, Judeo-churchianity - as any human group - has always had flawed leaders from Moses through Paul, Augustine, Luther, Martin Luther King et al.

He has lots of worthwhile insights into leadership, and i liked his ideas of church leadership thinking through issues in public rather than trying to pretend they have all the answers from day one.

One thing I identified with:

In my typical left-brained way I retreated to my library. I must master my inner debates intellectually before I can master them emotionally.

This indicates to me that on Enneagram terms, he's a typical 5. A healthy 5 moves to the leadership of the 8, which also makes sense of Spong's life.

Again, one wonders what differentiates him from the Glen Benton's of this world when one reads his "twelve theses", in an appendix - Spong does insist they be read in the context of the book they come from, which I shall do in due time.

Nevertheless, the first two being (in my words):

1. There is no theistic God
2. Jesus, as expression of said God, never existed.

It's hard, in the light of those two, and the rest of his theses to see how, in any sense, he can be called "christian". He insists he loves the "church", which I can only guess means a kind of social club for people who want to do social justice and be nice to others. Why not ditch the ecclesiology and just join Rotary then?

If I don't get back to the 'puter beforehand, Merry New Year, all.

Merry Crassmas / Canada The Warmonger

2006-12-25T21:16:00.000+13:00

I've had a relaxing, lovely Christmas with my family which included exchanging presents (my son, of course getting the lion's share), playing cricket on the lawn, poker in the dining room, and much eating. Yum yum.

As usual, the adult presents were modest in line with our collective decision some years ago to avoid the hype and materialism of Crassmas. My personal favourite pressie was a Concise Oxford Dictionary (second hand) which I actually bought for myself. It feeds my writers' ego/lust. Cool word of the moment: pertinacious

Anyway, I thought after putting Lord of War in my top films for 2006 I would do some research to see if there's any investment in Hollywood studios by arms dealers. No results on that yet, but I did find some other fascinating - or disturbing - information.

Canada is a Warmonger

Now, I have several friends in Canada who i love dearly (hi guys), and I don't like pointing the finger at someone else's country. After all, there's enough wrong with my own to keep me busy ;-) Still, I was very surprised to discover that Canada - a country I perceived as 'nice' and 'peaceful' - is actually a major player in the global war industry.

This, from a much longer 2003 article by Paul Martin

CDIA [Canadian Defence Industries Association] figures show that Canadian 'defence' industry revenues grew 35% between 1998 and 2000, far outpacing growth of the rest of the economy, which grew at approximately 3%. Canada's 'defence' market grew from $3.7 billion in 1998 to $4.08 billion in 2000, up 22.6%. Exports to the USA grew by 17% from just under a billion to $1.25 billion. And our arms exports to the rest of the world grew a staggering 75% in the same period from $798 million to $1.5 billion.

Meet the Canada you never knew, the global arms dealer with a heart of gold.

Most Canadians don't know that much of the Canadian arms trade is guaranteed by the Canadian government through the Canadian Commercial Corporation (www.ccc.ca) and other government agencies. Our ignorance is the result of a total failure by the media to report basic facts about the Canadian arms economy.

The CCC, "Canada's export contracting agency" does more than $1.2 billion in business annually, approximately 70% of it weapons, weapons components and services to the Pentagon and NASA, just in case 'force must be used to resolve conflicts between states.' Making weapons is big business in this country. Canada's defence industry accounts for 650 firms, and 57,000 direct jobs, says the CCC, while the Canadian Defence Industries Association puts the figure at 1,559 firms. CDIA employment numbers roughly match those of the CCC. The Canadian defence industry sells about $5 billion dollars of goods and services per year, half of which are exported. Though weapons account for just over 1% of economic output, it is one of the most heavily subsidized and protected sectors of the Canadian economy. This reflects the political importance of arms, and their role as a bargaining chip in Canada US relations for the Canadian elite. It is also a reflection of the connection between militarism, imperialism and Canada's need to force weaker states to accept heavily subsidized Canadian exports.

It's worth reading the whole piece here http://paulmartintime.ca/mediacoverage/000008.html If you'd like another opinon, try this href="http://www.perc.ca/PEN/1995-10/s-bishop.html from 1995 about Canada's arms exports to Central America. And there's much more out there on the net just a few clicks of a search engine away.

According to this article in Wikipedia, Canada exported a greater value of arms in 2004 than either China or Israel:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arms_trade#Top_Arms_Exporters

Not very Christmassy you might think? Think again. Y'shua of Nazareth, called the Christ, was born to a people oppressed in their own land which had been invaded by a global power some years before. This Middle Eastern province of an expanding empire harboured a lot of terrorist/resistance movements until long after Jesus' death some 33 years later. Shortly after his birth his parents were forced to flee with him after the government decided he was a political threat. He lived as a refugee in a neighbouring country for the first few years of his life. Less than forty years after his death the capital city would be razed to the ground in war and the diaspora begun.

So for all of us who wish for world peace at Christmas, perhaps we can start by calling our own goverments to account for their non-christlike war agendas. As the famous quote says, "Peace on earth to men and women on whom [God's] favour rests". (Luke 2:14 from the nude testament)

Shalom, peace to all, no matter what race, creed or religion.

xhile

listening to theme from The Phantom of the Opera ('cos the family are watching it on telly)

The Best Films of 2006 - Porn, Zombies and War

2006-12-24T15:22:00.000+13:00

I was thunking about all the good movies I've seen this year, so, in no particular order, here's my top 13 for 2006:

As It Is In Heaven
A romantic, uplifting, redemptive film from Sweden. I especially related to the theme of being burned out and losing your creativity, as that's what happened to me over two and a half years ago. And the idea of finding your own voice... magical and healing.

Lord of War
Lord of War deserves an oscar. Why it came and went so quickly with barely a mention belongs in the realm of conspiracy theory, in spite of having Nicolas Cage starring. Perhaps one of the big film studios is financed by an arms company. If the world is anything like this film, we live in scary, scary times.

Brick
Man. What an amazingly good film. If you're a fan of 40's film noir, detective thrillers, murder mysteries or California youth culture see this. Great acting, great story, great filming, satisfying ending. The only imperfection I spotted was it's filmed on video instead of 35mm, hence grainy on the big screen. But that's being really picky.

Paradise Now
A movie about two Palestinian Arabs preparing for a suicide bombing in Tel Aviv. This is not a documentary and the film is sympathetic to their cause without promoting suicide bombing as the only answer. Very thought provoking, highly recommended for all to see no matter what political or religious persuasion you are, in a world where political fundamentalism has made it's mark.

Solaris
Solaris came out a few years ago, but is the best Sci-Fi film I've seen in ages. A psychological thriller investigating the nature of love, the alien and of humanity. A major reason I like this is for the soundtrack. It's beautiful, and the space photography is beautiful, evoking scenes from 2001.

Together
A Swedish comedy-drama about a commune trying to relate and keep it together. Especially relevant as I live in a tiny intentional community, so perhaps I found it funnier than others would. You'll only find this one in Videon, but it's worth hunting out.

American Hardcore
Documentary shown in the Film Festival featuring members of Blag Flag, Cro-Mags, Minor Threat, Bad Brains and many more. What was most poignant was the perspectives of various bands on the end of the 80's US hardcore movement. As one member says, 'punk is dead, hardcore is dead. The bands of today are a shallow copy of something that is no longer around.'

Princess
A violent Norwgian cartoon looking at the effect of the porn industry on one man, his sister and her child. Sobering, tragic and hopeful all at the same time.

Cabin Fever
Ah, yes. My obligatory zombie movie. Well, not exactly a zombie movie, more a moral warning about being nice people. Good gory effects, believeable story, obnoxious characters you WANT to see die, and an environmental subtext.

Akira
I saw it at the Bridgeway years ago when it first came out and watched it again not long ago with Felyne. Perhaps the first, and arguably still the best of the Anime movies. It has a story you can understand, characters you can empathise with, and the animation still stacks up. Plus lots of weirdness and ultraviolence.

An Inconvenient Truth
I was already a convert, but now I'm a follower of the gospel according to Gore. A little too US-American in places, particularly the hype at the end. But that's the audience he's trying to reach - the US, so in context it makes sense.

Thankyou For Smoking
The funniest movie of the year is not a hollywood canned laughter flick featuring Chevy Chase or the Winan brothers. No surprise there. TFS features moral ambiguity as comedy, is well acted and scripted. A wry laugh for hypocrites, and fans of hypocrisy, like myself.

listening to the Solaris soundtrack, in my head

The Dangers of Love

2006-12-22T18:26:00.000+13:00

Moved rooms into my new separate bedroom and STUDIO! I LOVE it. Speaking of love, my old flatmates left this on the wall. No idea where it's from. I'm gonna leave it there.

To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to be sure of keeping your heart intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully around with hobbies and little luxuries. Avoid all entanglements with others. Lock it up safe in the casket or the coffin of your selfishness, but in that cold casket, safe dark, motionless, airless, it will change; it will not be broken, it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. The only place out of heaven where you can be perfectly safe from all of the dangers of love, is hell.

listening to Sneaky Alien | The Lesson (Deep mix) on VINYL. I have decks set up to DJ again for the first time in nearly three years :D

Pink Moa Wants You!

2006-12-22T00:47:00.000+13:00

Wow! There is a Burning Man-inspired festival on Waitangi weekend next year! Check out
www.kiwiburn.com

I am so there! I'm organising a theme camp:

Pink Moa

We aim to make a lush, comfortable space with everything in pink - preferably fluoro pink. Surrounding this will be our tents/dwellings.

We aim to have music - lots of house, uplifting trance and psy trance music, some industrial/ebm (by DJ Xhile) but other music/bands may be welcome - we have the amazing DJ Dee (Auck), DJ Maslow, DJ Helix (ex Welly) and DJ Qua May (Wellington) booked already.

We aim to give gifts to all who attend, we will dance, and generally be nice people.

We aim to dress up in fake fur, spangles, way-out hair, body paint, piercings, tattoos, and sexy costumes. As much pink as possible, of course.

We aim to welcome all who enter our magical pink space.

If you'd like to join us and camp together, post here, ask questions... or email jon.beza [at] ya hoo [dot] com

thinking about NIN | Closer

I Want To Draw You Like An Animal

2006-12-20T14:36:00.000+13:00

So, Felyne alerted me to this

[Click to see it larger; Note the byline in the 'toon title]

This led to a little creative editing of one of my fave NIN songs (which the wonderful Tatsuda Ishiya is obviously referencing):

You let me illustrate you
You let me innovate you
You let me-create you
You let me generate you

Help me
I broke apart my pastels
Help me
I’ve got no ink at all
Help me
The only thing that works for me
Help me get away from myself

I want to draw you like an animal
I want to paint you from the in-side out
I wanna touch you in your ink well
…My whole canvas is flawed

You get me closer to God

(apologies to Trent Reznor)

listening to LTJ Bukem Our World

God Loses Out To Fame

2006-12-19T23:12:00.000+13:00

From the Independent

[from research carried out through schools for National Kids' Day which was at the weekend.]

The children put God in tenth place of the best things in the world, the supreme being losing out to families, friends, pop music and watching films. He did, however, come first in the list of the most famous people, beating US President George W. Bush and Madonna into second and third place. Father Christmas is number five, with Jesus at number four.

Children may have relegated God for worldly pleasures but their parents haven't. Eight out of ten Britons believe that celebrating the birth of Christ is an integral part of Christmas, according to another poll.

And 90 per cent of those polled complained that Christmas has been too commercialised.

Nearly two thirds - 62 per cent - said that Christmas made them think about spiritual things, and 77 per cent said that Christmas made them think about what was important to them.

listening toBanco de Gaia | Coming Down the Mountain

Crazy World

2006-12-16T10:15:00.000+13:00

You may have heard the Prodigy song Fire and wondered where the sample came from. It's from The Crazy World of Arthur Brown's song Fire released in 1968.

"You fought hard and you saved and earned
But all of it's going to burn"

I like the way it brings reality to our chase for material possessions, it's one of the things i miss about the oh-so-brief hippy movment.

I am the god of hell fire, and I bring you
Fire, I'll take you to burn
Fire, I'll take you to learn
I'll see you burn

You fought hard and you saved and earned
But all of it's going to burn
And your mind, your tiny mind
You know you've really been so blind
Now 's your time, burn your mind
You're falling far too far behind
Oh no, oh no, oh no, you're gonna burn

Fire, to destroy all you've done
Fire, to end all you've become
I'll feel you burn

You've been living like a little girl
In the middle of your little world
And your mind, your tiny mind
You know you've really been so blind
Now 's your time, burn your mind
You're falling far too far behind

OOhhh

Fire, I'll take you to burn
Fire, I'll take you to learn
You're gonna burn, you're gonna burn
You're gonna burn, burn, burn, burn, burn, burn, burn, burn, burn, burn, burn

Fire, I'll take you to burn
Fire, I'll take you to learn
Fire, I'll take you to bed

listening to Faithless | Bombs (Benny Benassi mix)

End

2006-12-16T02:25:00.000+13:00

It's the end of the week, the end of busy-ness, and the start of sleep. Yay!

I've just come home from the Deicide concert. It was good. Incomprehensible, but good. They created a wall of sound with deep grunting and screaming; I got thoroughly satiated with loud crunchy music. Bandmeister Glen Benton was mostly amiable, as were the rest of the band, smiling and interacting with the crowd. In fact, Benton looked a lot like Billy Connelly, which made it hard for me to take him seriously. I ended up beside the sound engineer and had a good chat to him between songs.

The highlight of the night was wandering past the ex-mercury theatre afterwards, hearing house music and wandering in. I got chatting to DJ FamilyGuy who was very nice and let me play a couple of tunes. We exchanged numbers and will be in touch again.

listening to The Cure | Lullaby

Sigh. Workmates.

2006-12-11T22:31:00.000+13:00

So I work for a large corporate right? I'm employed mainly because of my expertise in things webby and IT-wise. So I heard we are about to host an outside reporter, who is very IT-savvy, to look at our not-quite-ready flagship system pre-launch. I thought it was prudent to ask a certain co-worker "Will you be asking him to leave his cellphone, ipod, USB memory stick and similar at the front desk?".

She kinda smiled at me in an "oh-you-can't-be-serious" sort of way. I felt humiliated for even daring to suggest that a complete stranger, who has published potentially damaging "unauthorised information" about us before, might try to take away information we don't want him to have.

Silly silly me.

I guess the kind of articles I've linked to below are just scaremongering, and IT experts should be ignored when talking about their field.

Sigh.

PC World, June 2006: The 10 Biggest Security Risks You Don't Know About
http://www.pcworld.com/printable/article/id,126083/printable.html

Two security-related articles about portable storage devices
http://www.forensics-intl.com/art22.html

http://www.infoworld.com/article/06/08/04/32OPsecadvise_1.html

listening to Laurie Anderson | Oh Superman (and remixes)

Sex and Hell

2006-12-10T23:54:00.000+13:00

(click to enlarge)

from the wonderful Sinfest http://www.sinfest.net Can't remember where i first saw Sinfest - possibly in LA at Hazey's?

Testing the Blogger Beta

2006-12-10T23:20:00.000+13:00

I've transformed my blog into the Beta. It got rid of a couple of third party add-ons - notably my "email this blog to me" option. But I expect to have normal service resumed soon enough. Initial verdict on the beta after a brief play: Hmmm... interesting, i think this could be good... show me more.

You'll notice some new features, like labels (aka tags).

listening to Jaques Deladde | Another Lonely Day

Saint Paul's Tomb Found

2006-12-10T20:11:00.000+13:00

The present St Paul Outside-the-Walls was built in 1823 on the remains of earlier churches. The first was erected by the Emperor Constantine

The tomb of St Paul the Apostle has been found under one of Rome's largest churches and the stone coffin will shortly be raised to the surface to allow pilgrims to see it.

The remains of St Paul, one of the Christian Church's most important leaders and the supposed author of much of the New Testament, have been hidden under an altar at St Paul Outside-the-Walls for almost 200 years.

The present St Paul Outside-the-Walls was built in 1823 on the remains
of earlier churches. The first was erected by the Emperor Constantine

"I have no doubt that this is the tomb of St Paul, as revered by Christians in the fourth century," said Giorgio Filippi, the Vatican archaeologist who made the discovery.

Dr Filippi will present the results of his scientific tests on the remains of the saint on Monday at the Vatican. St Paul's sarcophagus was found after five years of extensive excavations at the church, which is second only in size to St Peter's in Rome. Dr Filippi began looking for the tomb at the request of Archbishop Francesco Gioia, within whose jurisdiction the church falls. ...

St Paul Outside-the-Walls has been rebuilt several times since it was erected by the Emperor Constantine, most recently in 1823 following a fire.

The archaeologists had to descend into a series of tunnels and chambers that dated to the fourth century. There they found a marble plaque inscribed with "Paul the Apostle, Martyr". St Paul's remains lay underneath a stone slab ...

The sarcophagus is thought to date from AD390, when the Emperor Theodosius "saved" the remains and moved them to the site, near the Appian Way. St Paul, was born in Tarsus, a city that used to stand in the Mersin province of Turkey, shortly after Jesus.

Originally named Saul, and Jewish, he converted to Christianity on the road to Damascus. He was arrested in Jerusalem for being Christian and subsequently exercised his right as a Roman citizen to a trial in Rome.

According to the Bible, St Paul was imprisoned in Rome.

The traditional legend states that he was beheaded in the city around AD64. The head is not thought to be with the rest of the remains.

Instead, it is supposed to be located inside a silver bust at the St John Lateran church on the Celian hill. St Peter's head is also thought to be there.

from the Daily Telegraph, December 8 http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2006/12/08/wstpaul08.xml

Wow. It's eerie for me to realise there may be actual physical remains of people who knew Y'shua. I remember feeling somewhat awed when visiting the Basilica San Marco in Venice (where the remains of Mark are). I had no idea Peter and Paul had been beheaded either. I have heard the tradition that Peter asked to be crucified upside down, because he didn't consider himself worthy to die in the same way as his master. The first inverted cross, perhaps.

listening to Metallica | Nothing Else Matters (in my head, 'cos i pulled out my battered old guitar and tried to play it)

Why Satanists Should Burn Churches

2006-12-10T11:19:00.000+13:00

Now I am decided. I must go to Deicide to exorcise my demons. All my blogs for the past few days have been about Stantanism. I must resist!

(Stantanism being the worship of a mythical being called 'Stan'. Not to be confused with Santanism, which is a materialistic religion corrupted from churchianity, involving hedonistic orgies of buying stuff in preparation for the return at the winter solstice of an evil and ancient demigod in a red suit.)

Anyway, on to the issue at hand: Satanists SHOULD burn churches. If they won't, christians should.

A few Satanists have already tried it on, mainly in Scandanavia. Although it's likely that most of these burnings were simply bored teenagers trying to keep warm. It's freakin' cold up there.

I think church burning is a good thing. Apart from buildings with architectural/historical beauty which i kinda like, most of these buildings either have little utility or are easily replaceable. Note that burning churches with people still inside them is extremely bad form.

Churchianity has nothing to fear. If their g0d is real, they will survive and flourish. A buildingless faith will purge and improve churchianity. After all, it started as a buildingless faith, hovering around the temple of the 'old' faith and largely meeting in peoples' houses or catacombs full of dead bones (very satanic), until after a few hundred years churchianity became so successful that it took over state temples formerly dedicated to Roman gods. And speaking of which, "mergers and acquisitions" is another approach Satanists could take.

You see, i think this church burning thing is a form of jealousy. Satanists are a group of small, and kinda disenchanted cults infighting with each other. Just like any other religion. They're jealous 'cos they don't get to have cool buildings dedicated to the propagation of their worldview. Apart from the so-called "Hollywood Satanists" who follow Anton La Vey (R.I.UP.). Brian Warner (aka Marilyn Manson) is a Holywood Satanist. I think the H.S sect probably has enough money to have a building, or maybe a bookshop, or a cute little roadside shrine on Sunset Boulevard. But I digress. Again.

Taking over another religion's worship places is a well established g0d-thing to do, dating back thousands of years. Take, for example, the muslims. When violently conquering Byzantium (formerly Constantinople, now Istanbul in Turkey) they took over the Hagia Sofia basilica and turned it into a supermosque. Or the fanatical atheists running the USSR who turned many Russian Orthodox churches into museums or bingo halls. The hostile takeover has a proud and ancient precedent when it comes to competing religious business.

I mean, how cool would it be if in Scandanavia you could find a beautiful old church that's been painted entirely black and had all the crosses inverted? Hell, I'D go there to worship, and that's saying something.

===

[removed] In a massive cultural blunder - or was it? - a Japanese Santanist cult once produced plastic effigies of St Nick (aka 'old Nick') crucified - what more evidence do we need? After investigation, I discovered this is probably an urban myth, although strangely, Santa has been crucified on at least one occasion in the USA. http://www.museumofhoaxes.com/hoax/weblog/permalink/crucified_santa

listening to Def Leppard | Animal !? Aargh! Felyne likes DL. Hmph. Changed the station to something playing Pink | It's Just You And Your Hand (All this in an attempt to get death metal out of my head. )

Fromage for Satan

2006-12-09T15:41:00.000+13:00

I am going to write a satanic death metal song. It's going to be about cheese.

That's it. Tired.

Over and out.

listening to: Front Line Assembly : Vanished (Illusions of Grandeur Remix)

Anger Management

2006-12-07T17:36:00.000+13:00

i don't know what it is... maybe it's seeing that Deicide are playing in Auckers on the 15th, but i was in a mood for INTENSE aggressive music when I arrived at work this AM.

So I listened to Slayer's latest album - Christ Illusion. Deicide may be interesting in their own genre, but Slayer kick their B*tt for sheer aggression any day imo.

It’s weird to be quietly calmly coding and testing web links to this kind of music. Especially as I consider myself a pacifist. Although I suppose personal anger and aggression don’t necessarily have a bearing on intra-country politics. Or do they?

I try to work out any aggression/anger i may feel in appropriate ways. And I’m basically not an angry person, more passive-aggressive.

I am a pacifist who likes energy. “Anger is an energy” sang PiL. I love paradoxes. Maybe i just need to go for a run. I have a badminton game booked for Sunday with EvolutionGuy.

And then after a while, I got tired of all the intensity, and elected a varied diet of Duran Duran, Deep Purple, Jeff Buckley, Johnny Cash, Iron Maiden, Eminem, Helmet, Jane’s Addiction and AfroCelt Sound System.

The whole interface between anger, violence and music is an interesting one – I did a study on it for my undergrad sociology degree, using Megadeth’s “Holy Wars” as a case study. Can’t remember much of what I concluded now. I do remember an interview on NZ TV with Dee Snider from Twisted Sister many years ago. He said he thought it was much healthier for a kid to go to a concert and punch their fist in the air, than to go punch somebody out.

was listening to Slayer | Jihad now listening to … Aaargh, my music hard drive has disappeared!

Decide - Deicide?

2006-12-06T18:03:00.000+13:00

Wandering back from the train this arvo, I noticed again the sticker on the pole

The week before this Christmas
Christ Will
Die Again

At first glance i thought it was probably some weird christain sect's propaganda. But no - it's the venerable Glen Benton and the new version of his pals, Deicide, coming to our town to do their oh-we're-so-scary satanic death metal show. Given that I narrowly missed going to see them in Atlanta last year, I'm tempted (sic) to go.

Before I do, I want to read up a little more on them. (One can always start with our friend Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deicide_%28band%29)

Bands that do the Satanic thing both fascinate and bore me. They're kinda like teenagers who haven't grown up. And, for the record, I do know quite a bit more about Satanism than the average joe schmo.

They want to be taken so seriously. "We're so baaad, maaaaaan. We don't believe in god so much that all our songs are gonna be about hating his followers." Hmmm. If that isn't a religious obsession, I don't know what is.

Still, could be a fun show. Wonder if I can get myself kicked out?

listening to Deicide | Homage to Satan

Fun Links for Literate Geeks

2006-12-06T17:44:00.000+13:00

Today's been a good day for dredging up cool stuff on the net.

While searching for evidence of the rumour i've heard that emitted light (from CRT screens) reduces our ability to concentrate, I found
Reflections on the Computer Screen
http://www3.iath.virginia.edu/pmc/pmc-talk/essays/heim.pt1

The Feng Shui of Virtual Environments
http://dc-mrg.english.ucsb.edu/research/Heim.FengShuiVirtualEnviron.html

and - way cool! USB Rocket Launchers (thanks Felyne!) Dear Santa... i WANT one!
http://www.cherryflava.com/cherryflava/2006/12/nasa_staff_part.html

listening to System of a Down | Viscinity of Obscenity

LOL @ KoL

2006-12-05T13:37:00.000+13:00

Found this link to Kingdom of Loathing on Radioguy's blog

http://www7.kingdomofloathing.com/static.php?id=whatiskol

The Kingdom of Loathing (or KoL, as it has come to be known by its player base) is a free, comical RPG...
An Adventurer is You!

Choose from one of six intoxicating character classes, including:

The Seal Clubber
Seal Clubbers hail from the frigid Northlands, because one character class always hails from the frigid Northlands. They rely on their Muscle to survive.

The Accordion Thief
The scourge of mariachis and polka bands, the Accordion Thieves have plied their malign craft since time out of mind. Their Moxie serves them well in both their adventures and their interactions with "the ladies."

...

...and there's much more.

I'm not a hardcore gamer, but used to play D&D when i was a spotty teenager and i am so tempted to play this. i'm afraid i might get addicted tho...

listening to AfroCelt Sound System | Sure As Knot

Happy Tuesday

2006-12-05T08:43:00.000+13:00

Arrived at work today to find a small bottle of bubbly on my desk. This is to say I've been nominated for another well done award, which will be presented at our Christmas party if I win the overall award. Yay me, and yay for a nice workplace. A nice way to start the day.

listening to Rotor | Reel to Reel

The Spirituality of Dating

2006-12-04T12:54:00.000+13:00

Reading the mystics can help us to understand the impermanence we sometimes experience from loving another, the insecurity, and the unfulfilled longing that accompany any relationship. But they also convince us that despite these difficulties, moments of love, however short or long they may last, are worth all the risks we take on their behalf. If we never open ourselves to the possibility of love, we will never experience the transformation possible when it walks in, and sometimes out, of our lives.

From http://www.beliefnet.com/story/160/story_16055.html channeled via GoodMateTim. Thanks!

Dreams

2006-12-04T11:23:00.000+13:00

Good weekend in spite of having to spend a lot of it at work. Weird dreams tho' - I dreamed that Mr Foosball - the head of our section - had been fired. And then unrelated to that, i dreamed I had cut my right arm off, just below the shoulder, about the bicep level. And then sewn it back on, but the doctor wanted to remove it permanently. And i was really sad, 'cos i couldn't play guitar and do all kinds of things any more.

And then i seemed be wearing this weird, and very heavy frankenstein's monster suit.

Bizarrre.

Interpretations, anyone?

listening to Quench | Dreams (in my head - AWEsome classic trance track, must dig that out)

Nice people

2006-12-03T13:56:00.000+13:00

I have some lovely friends. They are a large part of what makes life as good as it is. A long time ago I decided i would only deal with nice people in business, and even more so in life. This from Theatregirl in Chicago, who i haven't seen for 5 years. I'm a bit uncertain whether to share it, but it really made my day

I really believe you were blessed with an amazing gift of creativity! You are the most creative person I have met - always coming up with ideas whether it be for music, your writing, your thoughts ----- you have so much energy and enthusiasm, which I'm sure is contagious to others around you. :-)

Thanks gurl (blush).

listening to Motorhead | Killed By Death (live)

Single women - man drought in New Zealand

2006-12-03T12:37:00.000+13:00

Is it a myth? I thought so, but for anecdotal evidence, check this out

Single women ask 'Where have the good fellas gone?'
Sunday December 3, 2006
By Jane Phare

Reannan Tyson is already lamenting the man drought - and she's only 22.

The MAC make-up artist, who turns heads when she poses for a photo in Auckland's Chancery courtyard, puts it in plain language.

"There are just no guys around. There's a definite drought."

The shortage of decent men to date is one of the most popular topics among the dozen women who work with Tyson. Eighty per cent of them are single, and they have all noticed the shortage of men.

"And they're all gorgeous, they're all smart," she says.

Tyson's ideal date would be in his late 20s or 30s, smack in the middle of the worst age group for the man drought. She admits she is picky. Many New Zealand men lacked style and confidence, she said. They weren't ambitious and didn't set goals.

And what else?

"They need to have good taste in music ... and shoes. They have to have the whole package, and they rarely do."

Forty-year-old Maree, a researcher, remembers being picky in her 20s. Now she looks at women in that age group and wants to advise them, "If you find someone, go for it. Don't muck about. Get in quick".

While Maree is now dating, she spent many years as a single woman hoping for Mr Right. The lack of eligible men was "a huge issue", she said.

"When I was young and in my 20s, I never thought I would end up like this. I always thought that finding the right person was only a couple of years away. Now I look back and wonder how I got to this point without meeting that person."

Maree and her many single girlfriends in their late 30s and early 40s have all noticed the shortage of eligible men.

"A lot of my single girlfriends are really beautiful, intelligent girls, nothing wrong with them. But they just can't find a man. [The men are] all taken or else total geeks."

Maree is currently dating a divorced man, something she had vowed she would not do when she was in her 20s.

"It's a terrible thing to say, but divorced men are a good thing. For us single older women, we'd be history if it wasn't for marriage breakups and divorced men, because there would be none there."

And foremost in many women's minds are their biological clocks. Says Maree: "Losing the chance of having children was a bigger deal for me than finding a man because I have a biological clock. I can still fall in love when I'm 50, but I can't have a child when I'm 50."

I was about to comment unkindly about the quality of single women out there, but will restrain my harsh tongue ;-)

===

Addendum:

Apparently her friends are "really beautiful, intelligent girls". I think the interviewees' (admittedly) picky stance betrays them. They'll be too busy checking the man's shoes to see if they match to notice if he's a nice guy. And don't they know "Blessed are the geek, for they shall inherit the earth"? Bill Gates - "Be nice to nerds. You never know, one day you may be employed by one."

listening to Buzzcocks : Orgasm Addict

Bad Sex Awards

2006-12-02T16:07:00.000+13:00

Someting us aspiring writers can aspire to

Writers put brave face on bad sex awards
LONDON (Reuters) - There cannot be much good in bad sex, unless maybe it wins you a prize.

Two authors put on a brave face at being recognised for one of literatures most dubious accolades -- the Bad Sex in Fiction Award -- in a ceremony at In & Out Club in upmarket St. James's Square late on Wednesday.

The prize was presented by American singer Courtney Love.

What organisers call Britain's "most dreaded literary prize" went to first time novelist Iain Hollingshead and "Twentysomething" for the "passage considered to be the most redundant in an otherwise excellent novel"...

Past nominees and winners have included Irvine Welsh, Tom Wolfe and Sebastian Faulks.

more at http://news.scotsman.com/latest.cfm?id=1778852006

giving my brain a rest from loud music, headache coming on from too much sugar and wearing headphones

Paris Hilton Sex Tape Number 3 But...

2006-12-02T14:16:00.000+13:00

Sex tapes no match for geeks in viral video stakes
article Wednesday November 29, 2006

Sex may sell, but geeks embarrassing themselves is the order of the day when it comes to viral videos.

American company The Viral Company has compiled a list of the top ten viral videos with some surprising results.

Paris Hilton's sex tape and Kylie Minogue's revealing Agent Provocateur advertisement both made the top five, but it was a Star Wars wannabe and a lip-synching nerd who claimed the top two spots.

With an estimated 900 million views, Canadian high school student Ghyslain Raza, aka Star Wars kid, topped the list with a video of him attempting to master the art of the jedi - using a golfball retriever as a stand in light sabre.

Best known as the 'Numa Numa' dance, 19-year-old Gary Brolsma's enthusiastic lip-synch and dance to Dragostea Din Tea, by Romanian pop band O-Zone, came in at number two with 700 million views.

Paris Hilton's infamous sex tape rounded out the top three videos with 400 million views, closely followed by Kylie Minogue's lingerie-clad romp on a mechanical bull, at 360 million views.

Check out the top ten videos below. No, we haven't linked to Hilton's sex tape but if you're one of the three people out there who hasn't seen it, one word: Google.

Warning: *** indicates viewer discrection advised

Top Ten Viral Videos:

1) Star Wars Kid (900 million)
2) Numa Numa (700 million)
3) One Night In Paris (400 million)
4) Kylie Minogue for Agent Provocateur*** (360 million)
5) The Exploding Whale (350 million)
6) John West ad (300 million)
7) Trojan Games ad***(300 million)
8) Kolla2001 (200 million)
9) AfroNinja (80 million)
10) Shining Redux (50 million)

- NZHERALD STAFF

PS: I'm one of the three people who hasn't seen Paris doing the wild thing. Thank God.

listening to Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds | Stagger Lee

He shaved others but cannot shave himself

2006-12-02T10:53:00.000+13:00

I think this blog is in a very sad state of affairs when I am giving updates on the state of my facial hair. Still, that's all over for another year now, I did enjoy being Lemmy and raised approximately $130 for the NZ Prostate Cancer Foundation. Thanks to all who donated. Some people said I should keep the mo, they liked it. But nah.

I did get to go down to the Boardroom Club last night and have my beard shaved off by five gorgeous women, while sipping Jack Daniels. Oh, the trials us hirsute types have to go through. After that I watched episodes 2-4 of Extras series one at my place wiv a friend. Soooo funny.

It's an ecstatically happy Saturday morning. Sun is shining, life is good. I'm at work, working all this weekend (big deadline coming up), but we're gonna have pizza and foosball for lunch. I've got free tickets to MINT tonight at Calibre (nightclub) so am trying to find someone to go with.

listening to Solar Stone vs Scott Bond | 3t

sooooo beautiful. Good trance ROCKS.

The Priorities of a Dictator - Rugby (Racing?) and Beer

2006-12-01T14:43:00.000+13:00

This, from the NZ Herald today, says SO much about Fiji (ahahaha)

Fiji coup delayed for rugby match

2.30pm Friday December 1, 2006

SUVA - The Army will not seize power in Fiji this afternoon because of a rugby match with the police.

A midday deadline (1.00pm NZT) imposed by Army Commander, Commodore Frank Bainimarama, to agree to the military's demands has passed quietly and the Commodore has said he will not extend the deadline.

Cdr Bainimarama has told fijivillage.com that now the deadline has passed he intends to begin a "clean up" campaign of Government and he will now decide what steps to take.

However, he told the website that the clean up would not happen this afternoon as his soldiers were getting ready for the big Army v Police Sukuna Bowl rugby match.

According to fijivillage.com: "He also added that the military will host the Police tonight at the Officers Mess and have a few bowls of grog in what he believes is the only way that will bring the two forces together."

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm?c_id=2&ObjectID=10413232

listening to Deep Purple | Child in Time (live)

Movember Party

2006-11-30T23:05:00.000+13:00

I went along tonight and was amazed at how much effort guys (and gurlz) had gone into with their costumes. There were teams like "Steal, Pillage Root" (guys dressed as vikings), The Village People (who won their category). There were individuals like "Policeman in undies" (what the f@?#!?) and even "Mo Man" - a guy in superman type suit complete with external undies and letter M on his chest.

I tried to take a few pics, but most weren't much good. Apparently over 11,000 men registered and $500,000 has been raised which is far more than organisers hoped for.

Here's some dodgy character dressed as Lemmy from motorhead.

listening to Unknown | Let's Get Down (in my head - great house track from Ministry of Sound compilation)

She's trapped in a wheelchair upstairs. He's dying of cancer downstairs.

2006-11-30T10:25:00.000+13:00

Wow. Now THAT is good writing. That one line certainly caught MY eye this AM.

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm?c_id=1&ObjectID=10413122

listening to Cradle of Filth | Hw2

Dead at His Desk

2006-11-29T21:53:00.000+13:00

Worker dead at desk for five days

From the New York Times: Bosses of a publishing firm are trying to work out why no one noticed that one of their employees had been sitting dead at his desk for five days before anyone asked if he was feeling okay. Goerge Turklebaum, 51, who had been employed as a proof-reader at a New York firm for 30 years, had a heart attack in the open-plan office he shared with 23 other workers.
He quietly passed away on Monday, but nobody noticed until Saturday morning when an office cleaner asked why he was working during the weekend.
His boss, Elliott Wachiaski, said: "George was always the first guy in each morning and the last to leave at night, so no one found it unusual that he was in the same position all that time and didn't say anything. He was always absorbed in his work and kept much to himself."
A post mortem examination revealed that he had been dead for five days after suffering a coronary. George was proofreading manuscripts of medical text books when he died.
You may want to give your co-workers a nudge occasionally. The moral of the story: Don't work too hard. Nobody notices anyway.

Source not checked
Your Dad Wed 29Nov06

thanks Dad :-)

listening to Billy Idol | White Wedding (original long version)

Jar Jar Jargon

2006-11-29T17:35:00.000+13:00

I love random word generators. I’ve even coded one myself. Today I came across this one

http://www.egowar.com/management_statement_generator.htm

“We need to matrix viral platforms”
“We need to monetise plug-and-play infrastructures”

Which leads me nicely to my new favourite graph…

Thanks to the Know HR Blog

listening to Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds : Death Is Not The End

PML

2006-11-29T10:02:00.000+13:00

Bit tired today. I blame xxxxx who i was up late Skyping last night.

She has this TLA, "PML" which i haven't come across before in my ??? (strokes grey beard) years of being on the net. It's kinda like LOL. Obviously I am no longer hip with the young crowd of netizens. Even though I'm "Possibly Mensa Level".

So anyway. I invite comments to guess what exactly this bit of netiquette means. Warning: RUDE entries will be deleted. This is a tasteful blog.

So I'll start it off with "Please Meet (4) Lunch". Ideas?

Me so confuzzled.

listening to NIN | Closer

What it's REALLY like to work at Microsoft

2006-11-28T13:31:00.000+13:00

Geek alert: skip this if you're not into software project management/development

A fascinating blog and opinions at http://www.drizzle.com/~lettvin/2006/11/windows-shutdown-crapfest.html

I was interested by those who diss the ubiquitous Joel Spolsky - I like what Joel writes but, like all of us, he's not perfect.

Reminds me of Conway's Law: "Any piece of software reflects the organizational structure that produced it".

IMO it is also a law that "Any piece of software reflects the organizational CULTURE that produced it."

Happy, cool, innovative, high morale teams produce correspondingly nice software.

(See here for more http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conway's_Law )

listening to Air | Modular Mix

	The Seal Clubber Seal Clubbers hail from the frigid Northlands, because one character class always hails from the frigid Northlands. They rely on their Muscle to survive.
	The Accordion Thief The scourge of mariachis and polka bands, the Accordion Thieves have plied their malign craft since time out of mind. Their Moxie serves them well in both their adventures and their interactions with "the ladies."