Feminism

Yesterday I read a rather disturbing blog entry that slandered feminism, depicting it as a type of sexism or female chauvinism. As I slid down the lines, my eyes grew wider until they were about to pop out. The comment I left lead only to quoting of the text itself, as if an undeliable truth were being revealed in them that my feminist eyes couldn't grasp. I felt the impulse to reply "Honey, I can read". The writer called to turn to "humanism" and leave "machism" and "feminism" aside for "as things are going, in 100 years maybe a group of machists would raise and fight for their rights".

Ever since women started to break from their imposed "inferior condition" they were satanized, their claims and goals diverted and turned into a threat to men, if not to the whole of society. It is known that those women charged with witchcraft in the medieval ages were often free thinking women who didn't abide to the roles society wanted them to assume. Feminists have often been accused of being manhating lesbians, family haters, children haters, bitter, incompetent, unable to find a man, or "women in need of someone to fuck them". It's not a new phenomenon, as we can read it from the Encyclopaedia Britannica, from where I transcribe:

 In the 3rd century bce, Roman women filled the Capitoline Hill and blocked every entrance to the Forum when consul Marcus Porcius Cato resisted attempts to repeal laws limiting women’s use of expensive goods. “If they are victorious now, what will they not attempt?” Cato cried. “As soon as they begin to be your equals, they will have become your superiors.” (Taken from Encyclopaedia Britannica, History of Feminism)

As a fear projected by those who really consider themselves better or superior to women simply for being men, the threat of "women paying back", "women seizing power and condemning men to stay at home, take care of the children and be obedient" has been voiced as if these were the true goals behind fighting for our right to formal education, our right to work, our right to equal labor conditions, our rights to vote and be elected. Have black people pushed after they were recognized by the white as equals, for superiority? Catching white people and sellign them as slaves, taking their property, changing laws and making them pick cotton? Black people are people just like anyone of any other color. Well, women are peopel too, just like men.

This sort of projection of the "reversal of roles" is quite common in the case of a relationship between an abusive partner and an abused counterpart. The more the abusive one abuses thge other, the bigger the fear grows of it coming back to them. The cheating partner becomes more and more suspitious of the cheated one, and throws fits of jealousy thinking they are being cheated too. The boss who constantly harrasses their subalterns fears the moment they will have freedom thinking they will take them down, be bosses and harrass them the same.

The sole thought that those who fight and win their equality won't give a damn about them, would put the past injuries behind and do their own lives, follow their own paths isn't only inunderstandable, but in a way could be seen as offending to the abusers, for that might mean the freed one won't pay attention to it anymore, and actually have a life and goals outside the limited cage set previously for them. So yes, for a cultural frame as the male chauvinism, which builds up entirely on the debasing of the woman and an imagined superiority of the man, when the women disappear as inferior, but not stands in front of it as enemy, but carries on as an equal, the system as a whole collapses. These ideas need desperately of the women either as born slave-animal or as archenemies that seek to take power away from them. Just look back at consul Cato's cry.

Put feminism against male chauvinism, say they are both two sides of the same coin is as misleading, shortsighed and limited as saying that love and jealousy are the same thing, that crimes of passion are comitted from love and rape is the fault of the victim, because they aroused love into the rapist.

The way this topic had been approached in that particular blog entry was quite misleading - perhaps there was some amount of ignorance about the topic of, maybe some amoung of unfortunate wording - aiding to the general satanizing of a movement that's not about reversing traditional roles between the genders, but make sure everybody - regardless of their gender - are considered equal, considered people and get the same rights and the same responsabilities.

Today still there is high discrimination between the genders. Estimates published by UNIFEM indicate that women represent around 70% of the people living in poverty around the globe. The same site indicates that sadly, women have the greatest chance to become poor. The percentage of women who own a mobile phone is lower than the percentage of men who own one. There's also a gap in the access to technology, favoring men over women. The gaps in wages, job opportunities, political participation, access to promotions and leading positions are still there. We have fough, but the fight isn't over yet. It's not a matter of raising to opress men, isn't a race to "get back at men", it's a fight, a struggle to be equal to our fellow men. We are both people, so why are we being treated differently from other people based simply on our gender?

This isn't only about feminism, as I honestly believe we are stronger, seasoned in the fight and we take things from where they come, but it's a sad reflection about all other movements that fight to get the same rights their oppresor ones have. Satanizing, rather than rational, up-front debate is not the way to answer, but a coward, irrational, dirty way to fight back when you know you are not right.

Lipstick

Part of the daily routine of a large percentage of women - at least those like me who work at an office in metropolitan areas - is the make-up ritual. (Have no statistics at hand about how women who live their lives in other regions, work in other industries or areas, have different levels of education relate to their make-up, but that certainly would be a very interesting research!) It's like those first minutes from the movie "The Devil Wears Prada", where we raise from bed, alone or leaving there a lover, hubby, boyfriend who can get ready in a fraction of the time we do, and thus can afford to raise later, run to the bathroom, shower, rub soft, scented body milk or cream into our skin, from toes to the base of the neck, put on the deodorant, body splash, comb our hair, pin it up, dress into something that has taken us time to plan almost as if we've had been strategizing for war, and then go to our face. Cleaning cream, then wash it off with plenty of water and face wash special liquid soap - because every woman knows that body soap doesn't go on the face - then dry, rub with tonifying liquid, put on the medicated creams for pimps or protection against all sorts of allergies, or that cream the doc send us for a certain blemish nobody can see but us, moisturizer, eyecream, face cream - the day cream, mind you - and the sunblock. This all to prepare the skin for the make up.

Where to perform the next part of the ritual depends on culture and the woman herself. Still at home, replacing breakfast time for make-up time, in the car, jugling poweder and mascara with a cup of coffee and a bagel, or at the office, either bent in the cubicle using the camera of the computer for mirror (it happens not only in "The Devil Wears Prada", but also in real life and it's great because usually you don't have a mirror fixed to the wall in your cubicle and the camera allows you to use both hands while doing your make up insteand of occupying on in holding the mirror, and when eyelining that counts a freaking lot!) or in the bathroom, a place that can look more like a locker room in the morning than anything else, where a rather large number of women nearly fight for a square inch of countertop space for their make up bags and another square inch of mirror to see what the fuck they are doing. Yes, being a woman in this society isn't all laugher and songs, it's a long sequence of preparation. It starts with concealer to erase imperfections, followed by foundation to turn our human skin into a porcelain doll complexion, twizers to shape our eyebrows into arches so sharp and so perfect like you'd hardly see in nature, most of us already unable to remember what our real eyebrows look like, eyebrow pencil to mark up these formed creations, eyeshadow, eyeliner, mascara, sealing powder, blush and then the pièce de résistance: the lipstick.

Though not a few of us leave out this step, or put on some chapstick or lip gloss, truth is that a large number of women hold this last item as an iconic element of womanhood. It's the one part that smears and wears off quicker, the one that leaves our mark on water bottles, coke cans, coffee or tea mugs, the cheeks of the people we greet, the lips of those we kiss, spoons and forks and the edge of sandwiches, if we don't care to eat in a particular way, keeping lips from food. At the same time, lipstick is the mean through which women also express their sexuality. Lipstick is what allows us to leave that sensual, trademark kiss brand of a napkin, a shirt collar, a letter, a mirror. It's an unmistakable sign of femininity and sexuality. The tomboy girl refuses it often or wears only chapstick, the young girls play with lip gloss, the shy with light pinks, the sober with nude tones and beige, the femme fatale with cherries and ruby tones, the dreamy with violets and chocolate browns, the rebel with blacks and  deep purples. Back in my days, then in the 90's the electronics wore blues and greens. It's said that among lesbians, those who dress and behave very femenine, and are difficult for the average straight fellow to set apart from the average straight woman are called "lipstick lesbians". Be it as it may, the applying of no other piece of make up holds such a sensual aura to it as the lipstick. No man or woman would think as a woman of particularly sexy or seductive when outlining her eyes or applying blush, but the image of the parted lips patiently still as the colored, creamy bar rimms it does have some effect over the desire of those inclined - even if passingly - towards the pleasures a woman's body can yield.

In a way, the tone of lipstick a woman picks tells to the world how she relates to sex, perhaps to the point of telling them openly she doesn't think of it too much or doesn't feel the need to broadcast it (nudes, beiges and chocolates), if she's shy and romantic (pinks, light violets), if she's dreamy and rather go for kissing (lip gloss, and shimmery lipsticks), if she's unafraid and in your face telling you she loves it and wants it a lot (reds, cherries, rubies) or if she likes it but keeps it to herself, doesn't request it because she has out-of-the-norm tastes (dark tones like purples, burgundies, coffee browns). If you ask me if there's a particular lipstick that shows which woman is lesbian, I'd say there isn't any, I believe they relate to their little tubes the same way straights do. Perhaps the only tale tell would be the mingling of two shades in a way that doesn't seem specifically planned. ^_^ No, there isn't any particular color - to my knowledge - that would give a heads up about the sexual orientation of the wearer. Though the relation of the woman to sex is often symbolized through it. Not one of us have heard and can recognize in a dark room the infamous "whore red" lipstick, or would look down on the well known husband-stealer who wears baby pink and think "does that bitch really thinks she's so innocent?". Lipstick sets the tone, so you wouldn't feel comfortable with a woman in a sober power suit with big fire red lips at a meeting. You'd hardly take anything she says seriously. It would look like a prostitute dressed up as an executive.

A movie I resently watched again places this connection between the woman and her sexuality shown through her lipstick is "Niagara" by Henry Hathaway, with Marilyn Monroe. In it our beloved sensual blond is always depicted with luscious, bright red lips even in bed when allegedly sleeping. Against her fair, pale skin, pale hair and general pale make up, her sensual lips stand like a flag of her desire, her wanton for affair, for a handsome, passionate lover who can spin her head. Whatever she wears, from the white night gown, going through the mauve dress to the black suit and white scarf, it all plays with the image her lips give. In the end, as a reminder of her Joseph Cotten (plays George Loomis, her husband), picks up from all the scattered things that have spilled out of her purse her lipstick. Jeweled, cherished, he opens it up revealing the color she wears, as a reminder of the woman she is: beautiful, exhuberant, out of reach and full of passion.

Some women have trademark tones, but most of us have several shades for different occasions. Sober for the office, lighter for day events, darker for night events. We usually carry some in our make up bags, but if any were to get into our bathrooms or to our dressers, the number of lipsticks found would send their heads spinning. From tiny lipbalm pots and tubes of lipgloss to those trademark lipsticks they run across our things and lives in a large assorted range of shades far bigger than anyone could imagine. The irony of it is that often we can find ourselves at loss, missing that exact shade we love, or get disheartened when our favorite color is discontinued by the brand we use. Wonder how many of us still remember the name of that shade we loved so much, we missed so dearly when it was taken off the shelves. I can't recall the names now, but I had back in the last millenium two Revlon lipsticks, one with a name like Deep Diamonds or something like that, which I loved to madness. Those two were my first serious, expensive lipsticks, the ones with which I set my determination that would push me through life: it doesn't matter how poor or how rich I am, I will never settle for anything but the best. Two lipsticks that cost me what could have cost me 20 of a no name brand, and yet those I loved and with those I made my mark.

Since then I casted away that brand, particularly due to the unreliability of the brand to be provided in any of the two countries I'm most often in (there was a period in the begining of this millenium when you couldn't simply find a single piece of Revlon make up in Costa Rica or Hungary. Running out of make up, desperate to get my supply and utterly hurt by the loss of them, I tried with other brands finally settling with the two I have trusted since: L'Oreal and Oriflame). Since then my collection of lipsticks have always hoovered in the lower tens, and though I may not wear lipstick so often, whenever I get to a cosmetics store or get my hands on a make up catalogue, the one think my eyes linger the most, the one thing I buy the most are, precisely, lipsticks. So fetiche, plaything, tool, or symbol for a whole gender, just as much as high heeled shoes and skirts, but even more because it states more sensually the sexual element of the woman, the seductive shades of the lady, the lipstick reminds always of us, more than an eyeshadow or an eyeliner.

Apps

Those who have iPhones - or many other smartphones with similar bahavior pattern - know about apps, those little programs that you download onto your phone for free or a fee, and help making your mobile phone into a device that does much more than just calls and SMS, to the point of almost making the calls and SMS into another of the apps - basic apps. The whole point of them also is to customize them, to have on your handheld - hardly even worth calling it a phone, for you basically use it to LIVE in it, rather than simply make a call - the apps and thingies You want to have. Not the preordained goodies the manufacturer decided to include. Your games, your outlook, your calendar, your clock, your calculator... often for a price. You didn't really thought you'd get the goods for free, right? Some are free though, so don't fret it.

The advertisement of Apple reminds you every now and then, that ther are apps for anything and everything. Games, maps, measurements, weather, step counter, sound recorder, calorie counter, music player, internet browser, spotlight... you name it. Some are probably even stupid apps you wonder who the heck would even think getting them. Just Google "useless iphone apps" or "stupid iphone apps" and you'll see. Allegedly Apple does check them - when it gets to them - and rejects some. What's the criteria we don't know, but after the one released today on the news, we'd sure want to.

As an act of Hyne-knows-what it seems that a Christian group  - not my kind, I would like to point that out right now - released an app to "cure homosexuality". In the sweet name of chocolate, what the fucking hell where they thinking?? I assume it comes from the same morons who say Global Warming is a myth and all that's happening is because The End is Nigh. Well, certainly no self-respecting gay person would take this crap seriously, but what raised many eyebrows is how Apple hasn't rejected it. I mean, it's not funny, it's insulting, and it's insulting not only for the gay community, it's insulting for the straight community as well, and the Christians all across the globe.

Sorry, I don't fuck women, but that doesn't mean I'm not sensitive to the issues of those women who do, or the men who choose to fuck men. You can't cure homosexuality as much as you can't cure your skin color or gender, and anyone would think that this far into the XXIst century people would know that much. It's already  abhorrent how a group of close minded people take for themselves the right to uphold from others the right to marry whomever the fuck they want, but to come up with an app like this? Really, get a brain.

Honestly I am offended, and the only Apple product I have is iTunes, yet still, the company should know better than lending space for this sort of display of bigotry.

In a way, for me, it was interesting how this article came in the same paper, in the same issue where not much appart a movie was discussed which presents the topic of gay couples to children, "Le Baise the la Lune". This attitude, both promoting it as well as allowing it, generates only hate, and not only homophobia, but also heterophobia. Personally I find it real stupid to make a war about who we choose to love and who we choose to sleep with.

Apple should know better, and some Christians should make everybody a favor and either shut the fuck up or hasten their own Apocalypsis and drop dead.

Religion and Modern Times

Through the podcasts of iPod Witch I came to discover Drake Atlas, a quite smart, thorough modern witch, who recently came back online with a brand new, exciting blog. Still in this researching of religions - since no research could be considered complete or well managed if only one source is analized - I checked his brand new site (so happy he decided to go on the cyber-space again!) and readied mind and notepad to distill the laces of the human self living with the religion - you know me, I've such a fascination with the human soul and spirit! - from his words. The exercise is quite exciting and it gave me a really good lot of ideas, concepts and angles to eventually develop in the religion series.

One of the entries he posted that snapped my eyes open was about what a modern witch was about. The glimpse into this fascinating religion left me in awe. It's so live and so vibrantly human! (Well, when you cast away prejudices and openly approach a religion, with a heart filled only with the desire to learn and understand, you realize that all religions are so deeply, sweetly human and moving. They deal with the "Higher Power", but still, being religion the human connection with the divine, it has such a strong, moving human feel, almost as if it would strip humanity to it's essence and in honest openness would invite the guidance and touch of the divine. It really summons tears to anyone's eyes ^_^.)

In this post Drake Atlas made mention about what could be considered a philosophy of some Wiccans, according to which their religion can't be practiced, or shouldn't be practiced, surrounded by modern artifacts.  It kinda made me frown a little, feeling a bit confused and lost, because as a Christian, I never stop to thing whether the mobile phone radio signals are interfering or not in my talks to God. Nor would I start moving around the church to see where do I have "the best reception" when praying. So, as a Christian it suddenly sounded strange. I imagine Muslims' wouldn't either give it a thought, for instance saying that wireless internet get in the way of the qiblah (qiblah: direction in which the Muslim pray. It's the direction of the Kaaba in Mecca) or something of the sort.

As I understood Drake Atlas, well, honestly neither does for Wicca, but some practitioners  - and I can see actually where they come from - consider modern artifacts like an unwelcomed element that can interfere with their circle. From my understanding so far, Wicca - at least some of its branches - concentrates strong on   Nature and its power, so the waves and power of man-made elements - many of which are intrinsecally a symbol of the destroying human hand upon Nature itself - could pose a negative influence on the circle casting, maybe not in the light of the religion itself, but the person practicing it. Now, before non-Wiccan people go around giggling about witches worrying an SMS can get in the way of their spell - that's not pretty, people, this is not the point - I'd like to remember you that this sort of thing happen in (almost) every religion. I can't talk of other religions, but I can tell you about the looney things Christians come up with. So, before you giggle about this particular segment of witches and their position regarding electronics, remember that Catholics have issues with condoms - Hyne, kids! Freaking condoms! -, that certain branches of Christianism consider certain types of clothing "evil" (dude, really, that's soooooo stupid! Are you really trying to sell us that not only "The Devil Wears Prada", but that "the Devil IS Prada"?), that the Smurfs are evil, Dragon Ball is a work of the Devil (Mr. Akira Toriyama, I think you better check that over with the patent office and sue the devil), Metal music is the way the devil talks to the youth and on and on and on. Or what about the Christians that reject the "existence of Global Warming" and say that those things are lies, and it's all signs of the end of the world. (Can I donate a thermostate to them?) So, paraphrasing Jesus you don't go pointing at the straw in the eye of your brother when you've a whole submarine cable mesh in yours.

However, as you look at the matter, there's a thread that stands out in the topic, which is basically how modern age advances - shall we say the scientific advances - seem to clash time and again with religion, being this religion any of the many we can find. It's almost as if religion would feel reticent before all these changes, these "improvements" to life. Certainly all these modern advances are about change, about ripping the human from where it stands and place them somewhere else, while - in my personal conception - religion seeks to give the same human a sort of feel of comfort and security, a place where the spirit and soul of the person can catch them breath, calm down, cool down, charge up before stepping into the whirlpool again. In this sense, there's a certain "logic" from religion to seek keeping the whirlpool out of it.

At the same time, with the speed of changes, there's the sense that all these new advances and all this artifacts, conveniences, appliances, apps and shortcuts are nothing but layer upon layer of crust that do nothing but rip people from one another and choke off their humanity, their sensitivity. So, if we go back to the idea of religion being the place where the human strips to its skin and stands honest and uncovered in the presence of the guiding divine, the layers and wraps these modern things pull on it could be clouding this human-divine contact.

Drake Atlas' point, on the other hand, states that appliances have grown to be part of the human, which, well, it's true. We are not born with a SIM card attached - how much easier would that be - but just as the language (basically a man-made evolutionary feature) was incorporated into us after birth, and we use it as tool to stand before our deities (all our prayers, including our signature ones, are composed of words), so why would be cut out pieces of us and stand in a mangled shape before them? Sure, one thing is to go to church and spend the whole mass tweeting, sms-ing and talking your head of, or playing Solitary on your iPad, but another is to claim cellphones are the instruments of the devil and their presence on you cast you from your religion and your deity(ies).

As humans, as people, I believer we are not only the meat and bone lump that was born from our mothers, but also what we do, what we think, what we believe and what we incorporate in our lives. We are the language(s) we speak, the words we say, the music we like, the life we live, the pen we use, the paper on which we scribble, the blog we read, the podcast we make. So am I a modern Christian, as Drake Atlas is a modern witch, or are we just a Christian and just a witch, and "modern" is just a flimsy label  to merely represent a feature about the things that make us?

Someone, when I commented this matter, giggled. This person said something in the lines of "A modern witch? What's that? She ( this person thinks witches are all women) replaced the broom for a sweeper swift?" Yeah. Well, I asked them "I dunno, are modern Christians replacing the sign of the cross for waterboarding?" (This person is a tecno-junk, who's always on top of what are the latest gadgets and takes pride of having always the latest and most modern, so that you understand the sting of the remark.) The point is, what is "modern" anyways, and does religion really have to be always in war terms with anything scientists come up with? If the root of both of them is the human - one reaches for the solace of the divine, the other runs on the wings of curiosity and self-achievement - why both of them have to rant against each other?

I believe the trick is in the person, and how much do they know themselves. It's not a matter of what others say, but what you feel, what's right for you, what feels honest for you and what makes you honest and comfortable. Do you rather download weekly podcasts of the local church or you rather attend mass in real life? Does the iPod bother you in prayer, or you are totally cool attending jumaa (Friday, but also Friday prayer in the Islamic religion) placing your laptop in the place of qiblah and have your imam online. Do you harness the technological advances into the service of your religion, just as we have done with language, or you rather keep the whirlpool out of your safe place?

Weekend Activites

I've spent the whole day - or almost the whole day - listening to podcasts by iPod Witch, my current favorite Pagan. In case you are wondering, no, I'm not giving up my religion for Wicca or any other, though I have come close to lean into the Wiccan Path or the Islamic Way, I'm quite attached to my Christian heritage. Sure, there have been times when a few pharisees - like Pat Robertson (I always get his name mixed with Robert Pattinson's, only Robert is a pale, hairy, corny vampire and Pat is a pharisee who really needs Jesus in his life) - but still, I believe in God - and most importantly God believes in me and I'd like to make Him see His investment profit (hey, He made me an economist!) - so a few rotten apples won't spoil the whole bucket for me.

Anyway, I have been dying to write to her, but I'm soooo far behind with her podcasts, I believe it would be a bit stupid to send her a comment NOW about something she mentioned two years ago. So yes, I'll wait until I catch up to write to her. I finally dowloaded all the episodes I had missing from the last I heard yesterday to the current one (still a freaking lot of episodes, but I guess I better count my blessing while I have podcasts to listen to, for onces I catch up I'll have to wait until she uploads a new one again, instead of having always something fresh to listen). Probably I won't have time tomorrow to listen to her during the day as in the morning we have a meeting with the boss, and we are supposed to talk about the year's workplan - which we (the team) should have put up, but we didn't and I actually have a plan, but I don't know how it would come out if I present this plan without their previous knowledge, evidently worked out by me and me alone.

I'll make a small break here to explain the team's dynamics. We are basically a four-member team, called among ourselves as "Prices" as that's our main task: work and check over the fee proposals and service price proposals other areas come up with, as also prepare the fees from scratch. However, thanks to the latest developments our roles are to be changed - basically everybody will do their own prices and they'll be fully responsible for them - thus what shall we do now? This is the great question that we should have answered a while ago, but the "head" of the team  - the one "oldest" in the team - was too lazy to take care of the topic, and the other two devised a plan that included Hyne-knows-what, so I retrieved, and thought that I would leave my idea in the drawer, to be pulled out only if their "team work" didn't get through. Well, it seems it didn't so I'll probably have to pull of the proverbial rabbit out of the hat tomorrow and save the day... if my idea pulls out, that is.

This will pretty much occupy me for the longest time, presumably, so no podcasting. This means that probably I'll be listening to her on my way home, and on my way to my super-hot dentist, and perhaps - if the dentist is okay with it - during the dentist visit. I'll have to ask though, as dentist happent to need the attention of the patient by keeping the mouth open all the time, rinse and other stuff. So we will see about that.

I'm still new on this "podcast" thing - I really don't consider three days in this anyway near "initiatied", so yes, I'm still new on this thing - and so I had a few ideas about how should I go about it. My main concern was to not be able to listen to the podcasts outside the iTunes (or the iTunes store site), so I considered purchasing an iPod. Now, after the horrendous experience with my first and last iPod, to say that I was adamant about it would be a crass understatement. However, what could I do? I researched the current available iPods and set my decision on a green shuffle. I was still rather unhappy about it - it is an iPod after all, and I'm a hard to bring around customer, when the brand has failed me in such a HUGE way - so after some thought and talk with my friend and coworkers, Smurf, I tried uploading the podcasts to my phone - a lovely Sony Ericsson. Sadly my current phone is not as friendly as all my other ones, so though I loaded them on the memory card, under a predestined folder labeled "PODCASTS", it took me for ever and then some more time to find it on it.

Anyway, the thought of the iPod was in my mind, and as wanted to check a branch of my favorite bookstore in pursue of the religion books I want to research for my post-series, I decided to go to this mall at the Western side of the city. However, this mall is a bit far, and me not taking my car still anywhere (Dad is taking it to the mechanics tomorrow to fix the little mess on the right side) it meant getting home late. Then, as I left the office late, there was no chance for me to go there, so I ended up making up my mind and going yesterday. Now, weekends are my rest-days, so I don't usually go anywhere that far (or anywhere at all), yet since I had to research the books and check on the iPods, I picked up myself and went. I had already checked up the shuffle both on Amazon.com ($45) and Apple.com ($49), but these would entail for me shipping&handling fees as well as taxes, so I wanted to see how much could I get it for at the iCenter. About the books, thanks to listening to Brook, the iPod Witch, I've got some titles (I actually have some of them, but they are in Hungary now, like Uncle Bucky's Big Blue Book) which I already added to my Amazon.com cart to sum up an outrageous amount that would certainly set me back, but would really send Kari howling - if $500 and 23 items is anything to go by, hehehe.

I also contemplated the idea of going to the movies, as I haven't been in a while since the local movie theatre complex has been presenting only crappy movies I wouldn't watch not even under torture. This other mall is somewhat bigger, has more movie halls, and thus more films present. There wasn't really anything in particular I wanted to see, though The Rite and Black Swan did linger in my head. Black Swan particularly, as Grouser/Grouch, a blogger chick from Asia I'm avidly reading made a fantastic review on it. However, since Black Swan won Oscars (or was it only one?), I wasn't really feeling it for the movie - I have the tendency to pull away from anything famously awarded, as I'm suspitious of all these awards and am usually convinced they are not granted on merit or quality, but cocksucking or political agendas.

Anyway, I went to the mall, checked the schedules for the movies and between The Rite and Black Swan, the later seemed more accesible, not to mention Anthony Hopkins was looking so scary I - the coward - decided I would go watch that - if ever - with a friend. However I left it to fate. I went looking for the iPod shuffle first. I was horrified. Not only the service at the iCenter was catastrofic (and I hope it wasn't because I wandered in in faded, bleach stained, frayed jeans and a loose cotton, traditional Native cut shirt with no make up on - full on "chancletuda" or eco-activist style), but the prices were in US$, not local currency (that pisses me off) and the prices themselves were higher. I'm certainly not paying THEM $85 for a shuffle, when they don't pay as much as I do in s&h and taxes because they bundle. So no. Besides, by then I figured out the podcasting from the phone, so why on Earth would I need a shuffle? If it would have been under $50 I would have purchased it, just 'cause, but pay $85 for something that might pull the funny on me like the previous one? No way, José.

Next stop was the bookstore. Now, since the moment I crossed the threshold of that sacred place I knew I would not emerge from its bowels empty handed. Well, I didn't. Sadly I didn't get anything on Wicca or any really worthy books on Islam, Judaism, Budhism or any other that would set me on the right way to get what I need for the posts. However I've got a D.H. Lawrence book - nobody would say I'm a fan of Anaïs Nin ^_^ -, a book by Jiang Rong titled "Wolf Totem"  - inspired by Episode #26 of my favorite witch and her love for wolves - and a fluffy book by Lauren Weisberger, writer of "The Devil Wears Prada" - I love the movie - titled "Chasing Harry Winston". All in all I was really happy with my purchase and even browsed other things, like - prepare for this - cookbooks. No, I'm not going Julie Powell in here, but I was thinking that maybe my cooking capabilities need improving and my cooking range extended further from fried eggs, mashed potatoes, dill-seasoned meat and pasta (express service food excluded), being that in the near-to-mid future I might be managing my own household and cooking skills well honed would be a blessing. No good cookbooks though. 

Is it me or every cookbook has recipes with weird ingredients you have no idea where to get or even how the hell they look like? Maybe it's because I live in Latin America and in here the wide arrange of versions of Spanish slowly threatens into breaking one language into 35 different ones. Besides, what you can get in Mexico isn't the same you can get here, so yes, book after book I paged looking for ONE where I knew all the ingredients or at least could substitute them properly  - then thinking about Hungary, where I'm not sure I can get shrimp, crab, lobster, langostine, oysters or squid as they call the all "sea fruit" and can't tell the difference from one to the other, let alone if you go as "Oh yes, I would like fidel shrimp, not camel shrimp". Then avocado in Hungary? Mango? Pineapple?  - fresh, I mean. In Hungary their idea of pinapple is a thing stuck in a can, white and slightly scented.

So I gave up the books and decided to stick with the good ol' Internet for my recipe scouting.

Next stop was food. This was difficult. I did felt a bit hungry, but when making up my mind about what would I really like to eat, I sometimes take quite long and can't decide. I ended up with a fresh, green, healthy food joint my friend Shimmy and I love to bits: The Green Olive (LOV). There I tried out a delicious Pineapple & Ginger smoothie that made me feel alive. I took my time eating, and when I was finally done, the movie Black Swan was supposed to have started some 10-15 minutes ago. I still went to the ticket sellers and asked them, and they said it would start in a minute. So I bought a ticket. The previews were about to start in  a minute, so I went for a drink and some popcorn (part of my movie ritual), which then set me back because the monkey-freakers before me had trouble with their order and seemed to be unable to understand the selection. Either way, I've got to the movie, maybe lost the first two  minutes or so, but still got to the whole feeling of it.

The movie was great. (Spoilers follow from here on, so watch it!!!) The movie proposes the idea of the duality - Black Swan/White Swan - where the white is the pure and the black the bad, the rotten. It takes on the idea that good girls are shy, obedient and silent, very child like, while bad girls are loose, very sexual and drawn to vices, very whore like. Through dance and artistical interpretation the main character must find both these sides inside her for the performance, but as you watch the movie, everything seems to be a swirl of swans, black and white, either pulling the white swan further deep into the white or coying it into the black path.

There are several rings of abuse around the white swan - Nina - that blind her, for instance, to realize and react against harrassment, thus she takes it in a different way. Through the movie her body is handled as if she had no rights over it. Her body is always treated as a tool over which others have a more valid say than she has. It fits well with the portray of the artist, the dancer, the ballerina, pushing her body to the limits to fit the vision of a director, a master. As a white swan, she is visibly uncomfortable by the use of her body, the stripping of her privacy and decision making, but as she slips slowly into the black swan side, curiously kickstarted the presence of a new dancer of loose work ethics and aggresive sexual behavior, as well as masturbation. In a way, these represent the emotional transition, from child to adult, unfolding through a roughed up, complicated emotional teenager stage.

She tries to pull together the white, the child, and the black, the adult, but often gets caught in the awkward teen stage, seeking a sort of solace in her corruptors, falling for the black swan - Lily - and developping lesbic fantasies about her, but also turning to lesbic moves in a quite clear attempt to hold onto the only known element in a sea of unknown. The movie quickly fills in with many sexual elements, like fondling, which made hiss many people in the theatre.

The swan slips into a whirpool of madness, everything slipping from her hands, seeing enemies everywhere, in everything, particularly in herself, and while she gets more tangled into these, unable to healthily deal with these perceptions, the stiffling relationship with her mother only ads more fuel to the fire, eventually pushing her to an end clearly not fully grasped by her and quite confusing for her environment. It's not clean cut for the audience either, as you must sit for a while and muse upon it.

Cliché theories fit the frame: kids too controlled by their parents, overprotecting, emotionally immature parents mangle their children, and blah, blah, blah. But if you detach from these, other also surface: unability to deal with the environment, to cut out what's not good for you, unability to defend your point of view, lack of strenght to stand your ground, fear, mangle you.

Honestly, the sexual scenes where all beautiful, built on the sense of transmuting, moving from child to adult and allowing natural growth. The first time Nina masturbates in earnest has a soft yet powerful beauty about a topic requested from her: she lets go, and does so in a very human, intimate, natural way. The dance of the black swan is powerful and gathers that final step, that fulfilling transition into an adulthood that, for Nina, is to never be achieved.

It's a good movie, but if you are going to watch it, I recommend you to do it when you have plenty of time to give it thought and sip in the extent of it.

What Defines Who You'll Be The Rest of Your Life

Recently I heard someone (around my age) say something really, really stupid. This person said that who you are in highschool defines who you'll be the rest of your life. At first I thought this person had seen some highschool drama movie or sitcom and was quoting from there, but sadly it was not the case. It was a case of truly believing that the experiences of highschool, and whether you were popular or not, a good student or not influenced greatly on the rest of your life and your personal success. To add insult to injury, I must add that this person works as a teacher in a highshool.

With concern I have noticed how this message is sent to the population through movies of all sorts and all kinds of popular sitcoms, and teens are subjected to these. In momenty like this I can't be more grateful of the path I choose, remain Childfree, or I would have to deal with kids traumatized everyday with this sort of mental crap. It's particularly mean to divulge such false statements precisely to such a sensitive population as teens, specially coming from grown up that should know it's not true.

People always seek to get a glimpse about their lives, know if they are gonna be rich, successful, happy and all that. A lot of games and rituals are invented to try and earn a glimpse of this future still to come. I don't know how many of you know this - certainly some of my friends do - but I used to read cards as well as hands. I believe that if I basically "tune" myself to some tool, I can read the future from anything. Gift or developed sense, who knows, but as such I know also that whatever I see is only a possibility of the many laid ahead of the person I'm reading. The future isn't really a thing written down, but on the writing, where even if God holds the pen, our hands have the tip of the pen and can choose a path that suit us better. I believe the will of God and the path God has chosen for us to be broader and more free than we usually imagine it to be.

Highschool, in many places, is indeed a really difficult period where people go from children to teen - not yet adults - and seek desperately to be adults. It is the time when insecurities are the strongest and the opinions of others tend to form the opinion of oneself. All this already heavily aided by the constant bombarding by the media about teen-years being the time of confusion. Also this is usually the time when people become more aware of their sexuality. But is it the time that defines who you'll be for the rest of your life? Not at all. As a matter of fact, people tend to become something entirely different from that they were. Not always the opposite, but something different.

As you walk your path through life, you certainly find milestones that form the person you'll become, though that person is hardly ever fully formed, unless you decide to stop building it. Highschool's importance lies basically on your preparation to enter university or to take whatever step you take to define who you'll be professionally. Your grades, your studying, your choices set you on a professional path and define where can you go from there. But whether you are the school's laughing stock or the most popular one, the prettiest or the ugliest, the saddest or the happiest, it doesn't really matter. Not one of us can tell you about how the super-hot cheerleader captain ended up with no profession, fat, ugly and breeding kids. Or how the quaterback is the new Physical Education teacher, and still roams the highschool looking for his old glories now burried under a beer belly. Not one invisible kid is remarked now as the CEO of some important company, now traveling offshore, while the King of the Prom ended up working in some call-center now as the oldest phone-guy mocked by a generation of vampire-kids who cruelly laugh at how he things himself so hot flapping his grayhaired, dated bangs like some reject of an old movie.

As a matter of fact, not even what you do in college, or how you live your University days bear any mark for the rest of your life. Truth is that the only thing that defines the rest of your life is your attitude. Plain and simple. It's always time for a change, if you want a change and are willing to do it. But really do it, not only the threat or the mockery of a change only to fall again into the same. If you studied engineering in your young days, and now you realize you'd be happier with chemistry, go and do it! As long as there's a will, there's a way.

Nothing determinates the path your life will take, nor the success and richness you'll have, but yourself. It's all up to you, so grab hard the tip of God's pen and decide, where's your life going to go.

Blogging of Others

As of yesterday I started a loose kind of research about this topic of the Serial Posting I intend to do on religion, clawing into a particular one I find rather interesting: Wiccan. As part of a general scooping, I found this blog by a Solitary Wiccan Witch I started reading and can't really stop since. Is it a spell placed on the blog? Is it witchcraft? Well, it's more the small dabs in which she writes what entice me. I jump chronologically from one post to the next quite easily, with really short postings and all of them with quite a lovely happiness flair. It's the kind of blog that makes you smile. ^_^

So far (I've read about 2 years worth of posts) it has all been Wiccan themed, which I believe is the witch' intent with the blog, but you don't really mind it. If you are not fully familiar with a more extended version of the English language (and mine is basically street, internet and movie based, so...) as well as the basic witchcraft terms, then you'll need a profuse use of search engines of any sort you favour to make sense of some things. (Today I learned the word "besom" which is the twig broom of witches.) However the bits and snipets as well as the witchy-memes she publishes keeps you fairly entertained. 

Reading her it came to me that actually short posted blogs can be just as body-full as long-post blogs (such as yours truly always seems to write... when she does), something I hardly considered due to my well known unhability to keep my musings short, as well as my tendency to dig into stuff, thus usually preferring the long and detailed rather than the summarized and simple (when it comes to readings - I'm rather lenght-intolerant when it comes to verbal explanations in long formats). This very thing, as a matter of fact, is what's behind my disregard for poetry and screenplays and my overly imposing like for prose. However, as I read the witch, I wondered about the fullness of shortness, the broad meaning behind the scarce words, the moods, the thoughts and all those things that remain suspended in the air, if the words are properly chosen.

I won't seek to try out that path. It would be like asking me to reply a letter in an A5 on one side only, but I guess as I read I become more aware of the turns and extention of communications, not only between people, but also from the person to him or herself and the person to the unexplorable nothing and darkness.