Squirting lemon juice on your face makes you invisible to video cameras.
Our friend Biogant sent us a link to this video, which talks about the fact that incompetent people are often unaware of their own incompetence. It’s interesting. We all have our blind spots, but it’s scary to realize that we’re often blind to our blind spots.
This video, on the other hand, talks about the same thing, but is even more amusing.
5 Concrete Things You Can Do to Improve Your Relationship
Kyeli wrote a guest post for Out In America. You can read it here! (:
Andy Hayes
Today is a big day for our freaky revolutionary Andy Hayes. It’s his first day of self-employment as a travel writer and photographer! Let’s give him a big round of applause! (So that he can hear you over the internet, leave him a comment with *clapclapclap*)
Jonathan Mead
Andy’s not the only one! Our friend Jonathan Mead quit his day job earlier this week! Way to go, Jonathan! *clapclapclap*
Decluttering Goddesses
Our darling and dear friends, Leonie and Lisa, have joined forces to create a smashing decluttering program to help people get unstuck and cleared out. From the site:
There are adventures to be had, projects you’d love to dive into, and people you want to have time for. You want room to breathe, to think, to play. You want to shine as the amazing Goddess you are.
Yet, there it is. The stuff in your home, the paper piles in your home office, and the 101 things on your to-do list, all clamouring for your time and attention. Even thinking about it can be overwhelming.
But you know there’s more to life than managing stuff. You know that your time and your energy and your special light are your most precious resources. And you know that life doesn’t have to be so complicated.
Are you signed up yet? Kyeli’s in!
Athena Bradford
Our friend Athena wrote a very sweet post about giving her daughter a vibrator for her 15th birthday. Unsurprisingly, a right-wing blogger took offense at this, saying “This is the kind of thing that kids end up going through years of therapy for.”
I think the poster on that blog are making the usual error. Since it would be inappropriate and possibly traumatic for their daughters (more than likely because they’ve been “properly” raised with the “sex is dirty and bad” meme), they’re assuming that it would be inappropriate and possibly traumatic for everyone’s daughters.
It’s the same as when people get all hot and bothered about nudists. Since nudity is tied to sex in their minds, they assume it would be inappropriate for a child to be around naked people all the time. But in fact, it’s completely normal and natural if the child doesn’t see nudity as sexual.
(Favor request: Please don’t get into any arguments with these folks. It won’t do anyone any good and has the potential to cause unnecessary drama.)
Toilet Lid Mystery
Night before last, I went to the bathroom in the middle of the night. It being all dark and scary, when I used the last of the toilet paper, I opted not to go into the garage and get more. I left Kyeli a signal – I put the toilet lid down and stood the empty TP roll on top of it.
It failed. She wound up stuck for quite a long time the next morning, getting increasingly mad at me for not leaving her a signal. We have cats, so that explains the TP roll having fallen to the floor (being knocked, no doubt), but how did the lid get raised? Neither I nor Kyeli have any recollection of raising the lid, and Dru doesn’t ever use our bathroom – and said he didn’t on the night in question.
I realize our cats are interesting, but opening the toilet? It’s a mystery, and we can’t figure it out.
A-kon
We had fun at A-kon, mostly by spending lots of time with our friends: Marty (he was all zombi-fied and terrorizing children), Megan, Kathy and her husband, and Frank and Kori.
The Kon itself was fun, but this year there was a distinct lack of anime we were interested in watching more than one episode of – which is the entirety of why we go. Kyeli’s saving her money for our Irish honeymoon, so she didn’t shop like she usually does, and Dru bailed at the last minute, having mistaken A-kon for AggieCon in his mind til the morning he was due to join us.
All in all, we came away with a single question: Does anyone know of a Netflix-like thing that’s good for anime?
Oceana
All three of us went to see Oceana yesterday. Our friend Kira is in it – the same Kira who co-taught Iron Pentacle class. It was incredible. Awesome. World-view transforming. If you’re in Austin, get thee to the Vortex! Show ends this weekend!
Your turn!
That’s it for us this week; what’s going on with you?
Have you read the Connection Manifesto? It tells the story of why there is so much hurt and sadness in the world, and how we can heal through connection.
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GreenCine has anime. I don’t know how good the selection is, but it’s certainly better than NetFlix! They have porn, too :)
Heather Freeman’s last blog post..Dragon vs. Monkey
I graduated from massage school, completed a 9-month training process in Small Group Leadership at my church, accepted a position with AmeriCorps working at a local HIV/AIDS community center, and now I’m getting ready for a big road trip on Monday! It’s been an intense week.
The garage seems like an odd place to keep toilet paper. Do you often wipe your butt in the garage? ;-)
Yay! Sounds very intense and very eventful.
The garage is where we keep our extra toilet paper. We use it for storage space. Sorry, not the interesting answer you may have been hoping for. (;
No, that was what I figured the answer would be. ;-) I always think it’s silly to store things far away from where I use them, but of all the things to do that with…toilet paper has to be the worst one! Even if I had to store other things in the garage, I couldn’t imagine storing extra toilet paper anywhere but under the sink. Do you just not have space under the sink or in the bathroom somewhere? Or a shelf or closet that’s at least near enough to the bathroom that in an emergency someone could sneak out with their pants around their ankles easily?
It’s a very boring reason. When they took the cabinet out to replace it because of all the mold, I had to empty it completely. I took the toilet paper, of which there’s a lot, into the garage (it’s all wrapped and sanitary), because there wasn’t anywhere else to stick 30 still-wrapped rolls. And it hasn’t made it back into the bathroom yet.
We usually keep 8 rolls or so in the cabinet, but for the same reasons, we’d run out. It’s not a standard issue.
Oh, good! I’m glad. I know you didn’t ask for all that advice or anything — I just felt so sorry for you stuck on the toilet with no paper and didn’t want you to have to go through that again! And I know sometimes people do things like store toilet paper in the garage because that’s just how they’ve always done it, and it never occurs to them that it’s a silly thing to do. My mother, for instance, used to have a set of bowls of various sizes that fit all inside each other, but she only ever used the largest one…so, for years, every time she wanted to use the bowl, she had to get on a stool, lift all the other bowls out, set them down, get the bowl she wanted, set it down, put the other bowls back in the cabinet, and then she could use this huge heavy glass bowl. She just kept doing it that way for years, because she never thought to do it another way! I think what eventually happened was that one day I was putting away the dishes, and a lightbulb went on in my head, and I found another place to stick those extra bowls. I think she has probably saved several hours of her life by now, with all the minutes that add up each time she would have to move those bowls to get the one she wanted!
Pace, darling. I have 3 kittys. My matriarch kitty said the pencil lists and logic half of your brain was dreaming ..she said it was probably in its eraser phase. The non-linear half that was tossing toilet paper rolls around inside your head just wanted more litter in the box but the eraser phase is like a communications blackout ..so there you have it. This is kitty logic ..hope this helps. Yours truly, Desirae
oh, yeah, there was one more thing …meow.
Oliver – I do things like that for myself on a regular basis. If something is in a spot that makes it inconvenient to use as often as I need to use it, I find a different place for it. And if something never gets used and where it’s being stored would be a better spot for something that gets used frequently, I move things around.
The only problem is then communicating to everyone else who uses the kitchen where it goes now!
*clap*clap*clap* to all the accomplishments this week!
kitties can be pretty amazing and do things you would never really imagine… when we were growing up my mom had one of those headboards for her bed with little shelves with slidey doors. She would keep a ‘secret’ stash of hershey’s kisses and noticed that they were disappearing. Of course, us kids were like ‘no WAY would we ever snag the chocolate with out asking!’ she did NOT believe us… until she WITNESSED the cat pulling them out one at a time by the little tags – and dropping them over the bed to the DOG who was then opening and eating them.
now that’s team work!!! and a mystery solved – hope yours gets solved!
You have ripened before my eyes
Where I see flowery language, the hard right folks see pedophilia?
What’s weird about this is that I see pedophilia in a lot of places, so that means they’re being REALLY paranoid.
Because I want you to discover the wonderful point of orgasm when your mind ceases to function and the growing ripples rise and erupt into shudders that will transport you.
Ok, a flowery description of your daughters orgasm is kind of off putting, however this is pretty much it. The rest of the letter is completely clean.
Wait, wait a second. I almost missed something. The part of the letter that I’d actually go so far to describe as “creepy” isn’t in the letter…
I’ve already selected the perfect vibe and written my accompanying letter. Although we have several years to go before she reaches 15, I’m ready.
This is “creepy”. The excuse that she has is that that she’s a feminist blogger and spends a lot of timing thinking about female sexuality, and thinking about raising daughters.
I wouldn’t use such harsh language if the letter was written before hand, and this was something planned for the future. However, the fact that she actually has already selected and purchased the vibrator “several years” in advance, crosses the line.
Do I think this woman would ever harm her daughter? No, the reason for this is because you’ve told me she’s a good person and I trust you.
Do I think the daughter is being “harmed” by such an act? I have no idea, such things are impossible to predict. There’s probably some precedent to this, but I don’t know what it is. Based upon my opinions of related matters though, I’d say no.
Would this evidence count against her in a pedophilia witch hunt trial? Yes, if I were the evil judge. Or if the hard right blogger you linked to was the evil judge.
Would this evidence count against her in a count of law? I would certainly hope not.
scwizard’s last blog post..Follows from the previous entry
Oh wait, it doesn’t say explicitly that she purchased the vibrator. Well that could change everything, because that’s where the line is.
If it wasn’t purchased, then I wouldn’t use “creepy” and I wouldn’t count it as evidence against her in a witch hunt.
scwizard’s last blog post..Follows from the previous entry
Also what’s interesting, is that if you look at the comments of the right wing blog, a lot of them are perfectly fine with the gift. Some of them say that the gift itself is fine, but the language is evil (“how can you tell?” “I don’t know, but its evil”).
scwizard’s last blog post..Follows from the previous entry
I’ve been researching women’s sexual satisfaction for over 15 years
Ok, that clears her of everything. She’s allowed to be obsessed even with this type of thing because she’s an expert and she’s just weird like that.
The people talking about a her letter giving off a vibe of “latent lesbian incestual tendancy” should probably ask themselves what makes them jump to such conclusions.
scwizard’s last blog post..Follows from the previous entry