L needs to critique a song for music class. He wanted to do "Istanbul" by They Might Be Giants. He asked me what style of song is it? I said, "I'd classify it as swing." He was very disappointed, because swing was not a music style on his list. No swing? What kind of music class lets seventh graders review jazz, but not swing???

Anyway, he asked me what my favorite song was. Yeah, like I can choose just one! I spent the rest of the day with my head full of songs I love. I woke up this morning and told him, "There's one song that I really do like. I can't say it's my favorite, but it's one I've never gotten tired of hearing."
Thanks to sglyrics, here it is:

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Sound Of Silence (3:08)
P. Simon, 1964
Hello darkness, my old friend
I've come to talk with you again
Because a vision softly creeping
Left its seeds while I was sleeping
And the vision that was planted in my brain
Still remains
Within the sound of silence

In restless dreams I walked alone
Narrow streets of cobblestone
'Neath the halo of a street lamp
I turn my collar to the cold and damp
When my eyes were stabbed by the flash of a neon light
That split the night
And touched the sound of silence

And in the naked light I saw
Ten thousand people maybe more
People talking without speaking
People hearing without listening
People writing songs that voices never shared
No one dared
Disturb the sound of silence

"Fools," said I, "you do not know
Silence like a cancer grows
Hear my words that I might teach you
Take my arms that I might reach you"
But my words like silent raindrops fell
And echoed in the wells of silence

And the people bowed and prayed
To the neon god they made
And the sign flashed out its warning
In the words that it was forming
And the sign said "The words of the prophets are written on the subway walls
And tenement halls
And whispered in the sound of silence

I love the harmonics, I love how the music takes you on a walk with it, rising to a crescendo and ending with a few gentle notes on a piano. It's a song that fills me and makes my eyes water. Sigh... Love it.

Late night, odd-word netsurfing

Start with a word, say Submariner. It gets 60,300 Google hits.
Now add a new word, perhaps Tarantula. Google has 53 referents to submariner tartantula.
I now know a new thing. There was a submarine named the USS Tarantula, it was decommissioned twice.

Still have energy to burn? Then modify your Google request. How about tarantula tentacles? 828 pages, not bad. Most of them talk about a giant jellyfish, the Portugese Man-O-War. So now I send to google jellyfish buttons. Yes, someone out there does make them. Weird. That led to a lot of SpongeBob pages, I should have known better.

26 sites of things to do with "button bottoms", none of them kinky.

When you run out of odd words to link together, try misspelling something, and see how many others goofed too.
87 people make reference to a "dressing grown" -that thing you wear over your pj's.
2300 people think small sparkly bits are gliter.
And I just had to share this one "We will consider whether data set selection is implemented via chemical
stimulation of the neurons, possibly in the hippycampus. ..."
Really? I don't think my body has a hippycampus... I never did acid.
'night all.

He he he! I feel like a teenager with her first job. My client paid me with a 20, two 5's and 30 one dollar bills. I wanted to come home and shower it all over my hubby, but then I'd have had to pick them all up. So instead I handed him a folded wad of bills, grinning from ear to ear. It feels so good to earn money. I have always felt like I've really accomplished something when I get a paycheck. Even when we were living in the hellhole of the Midwest (Carbondale Il.) I felt better on payday. There was the thrill of knowing I'd be able to buy diapers once the check was cashed, but the act of receiving pay for the work I do has always been a bigger thrill for me than the amount itself. Cash is a great validation.

WooHoo! I massaged a new client on Saturday, and they called today and want me to come back! Yippee! That's sixty whole dollars towards L's tuition! I'm so happy :) 10 massages a month would cover all my expenses and L's schooling. I'm 2/5ths of the way there if this client continues to want massage weekly.

The nifty thing about massage is that if I do it properly, I end up feeling better than when I started. It's a good workout for my body, the reflexology is a good workout for my mind, and I'm doing something I want to do... healing!

I've always been afraid of reaching out and making a difference in people, although I've been told I do it all the time without noticing. I'm really comfortable with that. If I'm not trying to change them, then I can pretend nobody sees it. I'm not sure what I'm afraid of more, trying and failing or trying and succeeding. I was raised Catholic, so there's a big mea culpa living inside me. I fear not being worthy of my gifts. I fear developing a messiah complex. I'm afraid I'll discover on my death bed that all the times I thought I was helping people, I was really doing them a disservice.

If you read my other blog, you'll know that hardship makes one stronger. I can see it clearly with my own son. He's not hungry, he has plenty of clothes and games. He has both parents, and we both lavish love on him. I get to stay home with him, so he's not a latch key kid... and he doesn't have the toughness that I developed in my own childhood. I see him going out of his way to create hardships for himself, because I somehow missed out on giving him that to grow on. I don't regret it, either! He is, in so many ways, a normal healthy middle class boy. I'm proud of him, and I wish he had more self-sufficeincy. (sigh) You can't have it both ways, of course. If I worked outside the home, he would have learned self-sufficeincy. Yet middle class children tend to do just fine too. They get their "I can take care of myself" as teens, I guess. Not that L is helpless or anything. He's just not as motivated as I was.

Oh, more on the school clothes rant. This morning, he comes out of his room wearing a dirty school shirt! I don't know where he found it, but there it was, in all it's wrinkled glory hanging on his body. I almost laughed out loud. I said, "Where did you find that shirt?" He replied, "I guess I should have grabbed one of the ones hanging up?"
So today, we go through his drawers and pull out anything that might possibly be less than freshly clean. Looks like I'll be doing laundry all week. ;)

Tonight I was in a towering, redhead-class rage.
L goes back to school tomorrow, so tonight we were packing his bookbag and setting out his school uniform. Guess what? There were NO school shorts hanging in his closet. There were NO belts hanging on the rack. I was pissed! I've spent the last month finding his school clothes under the bed or stuffed in a corner of his closet buried under his toys, and I've washed them all. There should have been 4 pair of shorts with belts hanging neatly where I had placed them. Not one frigging pair! Grrrrr.
I thought, maybe... perhaps I had somehow imagined hanging them up, so I checked all his drawers. Nope. Nada. Then I went to the laundry basket in our room. The one full of clean clothes because no one in this house but me knows how to put away laundry. I sat on the bed, running my fingers through my hair, trying to get a grip on my temper. There before me was 3 day old clean laundry, neatly matched socks on top, carefully folded shirts and shorts lovingly split in two piles. Patiently waiting, as only laundry can, for someone to put them in their place.
I wanted to fling the entire basket across the room, but I pulled my hair instead. Hubby came into the room and slid onto the bed next to me, trying to look charming, and I wanted to bite his face off. I gritted my teeth for a moment and calmly said, "Hon, would you do me a favor and open the sock drawer?" I was thinking this would get him off the bed and out of the danger zone. Nah, he slid on his belly toward the dresser and opened the wrong drawer. As he was stretched out, half hanging off the bed, I saw several good places to whack him with my elbow. I didn't, however. I love my hubby-man, I don't want to hurt him, and I know what happens when I let my temper run the show. He opened the proper drawer next, and I started flinging socks into it. Hubby-Man got up, all affronted, like I was acting childish and stalked off to the living room.
When I was younger, I would have burst out with, "Oh! Thank you so FUCKING much for helping me find those shorts! No no, that's fine! Why don't you call all your friends and tell them how I'm such a fucking bitch for throwing socks instead of breaking something?" And such like that. I gave up the classic redhead temper when L was born. You can't lovingly raise a child and have a temper. It just doesn't work.
I went through the whole pile of laundry (once I had taken care of the pesky socks) and found not a single pair of shorts. I then went into my son's room and masterfully did NOT destroy his closet. I did find one, singular, pair of school shorts. They had gotten pulled off the hangar and buried under some board games. I also found 5 belts, underwear, a pair of shorts he doesn't like anymore and a (very) dirty gym shirt.

I don't have the foggiest idea where any of this stuff came from. 6 weeks ago we thoroughly cleaned his room. Everything was pulled out of the closet so I could vaccuum it. Everything was then neatly put back in the closet. Grrr! !!! How the hell does a gym shirt from last spring wind up stuffed in a toybox in the closet?
No wonder he never plays with those toys, the smell... ok, I'm not even going there. Anyone with a 12 year old boy understands, and the rest don't need me to share.
Anyway, tonight I almost let myself lose my temper. I'm glad I didn't because it would have scared the ones I love. I really would have appreciated some support in the search, though. Thanks for nothing, guys.

Politics Abnormal

I'm on the St. Louis Pagan Discussion list. It started as a way for STL pagans to get to know one another and discuss pagany topics. I think it should be renamed to "STL Pagans and Politics".
I've been reading an ongoing thread about recalling Bush and how unfair the whole political arena is. Someone said their piece then said, "Sigh, politics as usual."

They had chatted themselves into a state of acceptance of the voting abnormalities and problems in many states, including mine. I still say NO! It is not OK, and I will never accept changing the rules after a Democrat (or Republican) has been voted into office. We already have procedures to remove these people, and those procedures should be used instead of ignored. The bullshit in California right now is just one example.
-more on this later-

And I thought America had strange customs

Can you imagine having the tradition of sleeping with the villiage sex cleanser after your husband dies? Not here in America, where the predominantly Christian mores treat sex like a sin.

Speaking of Christian ideals, Chief Justice Roy Moore is still fighting to keep his monument of the 10 commandments on display in the rotunda of his courthouse. I watched his supporters pray intently outside the courthouse, and I listened to a reporter's voice-over about how they were praying for their god to intervene.

I have always thought of the idea of seeing the ten commandments outside a courthouse as being rather appropriate. Perhaps they can modify the existing monument to cover some of the major laws of our country, without imposing their religious beliefs...
THOU SHALL NOT STEAL
THOU SHALL NOT RAPE
THOU SHALL NOT LIE IN COURT
THOU SHALL NOT KILL
Gee, that covers the basics. They can stick
HONOR THY MOTHER AND FATHER
over at the Juvenile Courthouse; and while they're at it, Divorce court should get
TREASURE THY CHILDREN ABOVE ALL WORLDLY POSESSIONS
and
THOU SHALL NOT BICKER

I live in South St. Louis by choice. I'm very happy here. There are a few things I wish were different, and that's my rant du jour.

Tonight I went shopping at the nearest major grocery chain. Being no more than a quarter of a mile away, it's convenience rocks! As a bonus I get to do some neato people watching. Tonight I observed a woman in bike shorts and a baggy white t-shirt, and realized I need to update my wardrobe a bit. It was unflattering on her, so it's probably unflattering on me too. That's a shame, because I like my baggy clothes. I also saw a goofy couple learning how to shop together. They didn't have the foggiest idea what they were supposed to buy for their household. It seemed like every aisle I went down, there they were -discussing the mathematics of food. It was amusing, and brought back memories of my first dozen shopping expeditions as a married woman. "I will eat X amount of this... B will eat X amount... is 2X greater or less than Y amount posted on the box?" The figuring then gets into the ratio of leftovers divided quality of taste, subtracting time as an exponential factor.

That's probably why I get a headache when I go to the grocery store.

My friends are nice people, so they all say it's because I'm empathic.

The Schnucks store in my neighborhood carries a lot of junk food. They also have organic milk, sweetener free juice from concentrate and organic chocolate pudding. The reason behind the miniscule selection is the neighborhood. Some market analyst decided that working class families in South St. Louis don't want healthy things to eat. I think they're wrong.
I used to make a point of asking for organic milk every time I went to the store. They finally either got a clue, or gave in to my demands and started stocking organic milk. I have learned to buy it whenever I see it on the shelves, because they sell out of their entire stock within a week and a half. I asked about it tonight because once again, the section that usually holds Horizon Organic Milk was empty. They have 7 different kinds of soy milk that take up space and expire, yet they can't figure out how to order enough organic milk. I found out they get a shipment of 32 half gallons of Horizon every month. I buy 3 of those. Someone else in my neighborhood is buying the other 29. This looks like a demand to me.
They recently started carryng quarts of goats milk. I've noticed they sit on the shelf until the Horizon is gone, then they move like crazy. I brought home goats milk tonight, and B looked at me like I had grown a second head. I can't even imagine what he would have said if I told him how much it cost. heh.
I hope it's tasty.

They don't carry a single piece of organic fruit. I drive all the way to Sappington Farmer's Market for that. It means I have to sit through the stoplight from hell, but I suppose it's worth it. Sappington offers organic produce, dairy, meat and boxed food in addition to the regular all-American crap. Their organic stuff is pretty affordable too. Most of it is less than twice the price of non-organic. You can visit their website to view photos, get recipies, print coupons and read the extensive list of organic goodies they offer. You also get to enjoy seeing a carrot and bananna dancing to the tune of "Celebration". It's freaky.

I got a lead on their site for a job. Wish me luck!

Right. So I'm looking all over the web for a very specific, rather rare gemstone. I won't even go into my difficulties in finding this particular gem. It's reasonably rare, hard to cut and somewhat fragile. My regular supplier of this stone is involved in the blackout on the east coast, so lords know when he'll get my message. Anyway, my rant is about spelling.

Riddle me this, Batman. How does a lapidary sell a misspelled stone? Answer -They don't! At least not to me! I understand that some countries spell certain cuts differently. Cabochon and Cabachon both mean flat on the bottom, domed on the top. What the hell is a cabation? It makes me think of a tool cab drivers use when their customers won't pay their fare or something. There is a lovely blue/violet stone out there named Iolite. It was very popular about 6 years ago. It's also called the water sapphire because you can dig it out of riverbeds rather than risk death in a mine tunnel. How can any self respecting business person put the tag "Ilote" next to this lovely gem? This was an american gem cutter! It just goes to show you don't have to spell in order to cut stones. (sigh)

There are enough oddly named gems out there already without these fools making up their own names for them. At thaigem.com I came across mangnovesuvianite (and I probably misspelled it here). It's a real gem. So is fluorapatite. See? The names are strange enough as they stand.

I'm entering a new story about walking everywhere on Random Redhead. I just typed in this phrase, "As mom's pay scale rose, so did the distances we'd travel. Finally, we could afford to shop at K-Mart."

Then I busted out laughing. It's a pretty damn sad state of affairs when you treat K-Mart as a step up! Somehow, this is tremendously funny to me right now. Not rolling on the floor laughing funny, but that kind of painful funny where you laugh because it hurts. I really never looked at us as poor when I was a kid. We had limited resources, but so did everyone else. We weren't "poor" we were "struggling". We had shoes and coats and changes of clothing. We had a roof over our heads and enough food to grow on, if not enough to fill our bellies. We usually had gas and electricity, too. Although we did keep the heater at 65 degrees in the winter time, so that helped.

"afford to shop at K-Mart". (sigh) That's just sad.

I love that Comfrey is disease resistant, insect resistant and weed resistant. I've personally noted that mosquitoes like to hide in my comfrey foliage in the evening. Fortunately, spiders have noticed too! My biggest challenge when harvesting comfrey is to give the spiders advance notice that I'll be removing parts of their hunting grounds. My second biggest challenge is not squishing the caterpillars that like to nibble the early spring leaves of my comfrey. It's never a BIG problem, just some of the leaves get munched on. Comfrey is self-healing, so it will re-grow the nibbled bits.

I love comfrey because I have arthritis. An ounce or two of leaves, ground by mortar and pestle and put in a carrier oil for a few days means instant relief from my arthritis at it's worst. It reduces the swelling and the pain is gone for up to 8 hours. It doesn't numb the area, nor does it create a sensation of heat or cold. It just has my knees feel like they did before I developed arthritis. That lack of pain without any side effects is well worth a bit of oil on the skin.

Some interesting things about my favorite herb, Comfrey.

Thank you to Perdue University for an in depth look at Comfrey as a food crop, and many other things on the above linked page.

History
Comfrey has been cultivated since about 400 BC as a healing herb. The word comfrey, derived from the Latin word for "grow together", reflects the early uses of this plant. Greeks and Romans used comfrey to stop heavy bleeding, treat bronchial problems, and heal wounds and broken bones. Poultices were made for external wounds and tea was consumed for internal ailments.

Comfrey (Symphytum spp.) is native to Europe and Asia. Although comfrey has been used as a food crop, and as a forage crop, in the past 20 years scientific studies reported that comfrey may be carcinogenic, since it appeared to cause liver damage and cancerous tumors in rats. Comfrey-pepsin capsules, which are sold as a digestive aid in herbal and health-food stores in the USA, have been analyzed and found to contain pyrrolizidine alkaloids. These alkaloids cause liver damage in people and are a potential carcinogen. Huxtable et al. (1986) cited cases of hepatic veno-occlusive disease that were produced by using these capsules. These reports have temporarily restricted development of comfrey as a food crop.

Three plant species in the genus Symphytum are relevant to the crop known as comfrey. Wild or common comfrey, Symphytum officinale L., is native to England and extends throughout most of Europe into Central Asia and Western Siberia. Prickly or rough comfrey [S. asperum Lepechin (S. asperrimum Donn)], named for its bristly or hairy leaves, was brought to Britain from Russia about 1800. Quaker, Russian, or blue comfrey [S. × uplandicum Nyman (S. peregrinum Lebed.)] originated as a natural hybrid of S. officinale L. and S. asperum Lepechin. This hybrid was called Russian or Caucasian comfrey in reference to its country of origin. Cuttings of this hybrid were shipped to Canada in 1954 and it was named Quaker comfrey, after the religion of Henry Doubleday, the British researcher responsible for promoting comfrey as a food and forage. The majority of comfrey grown in the United States can be traced to this introduction.

I grow the prickly, hairy, purple flowered kind. I bought it from Richter's in Canada and I'm delighted with it!

Weed Control:
Mechanical: Comfrey is an excellent weed competitor due to its rapid and dense growth. Weeds may become established between comfrey plants under a multiple-cut harvesting regime. As a result, two cultivations per year are often required. Rototilling between plants is an effective method for destroying weeds.

Chemical: Comfrey has usually been grown without herbicides. No herbicides are labeled for use on this crop in the Upper Midwest.

Diseases and Control:
Diseases have not been a serious problem with comfrey in the United States. Comfrey rust fungus (Melampsorella symphyti) overwinters in roots and reduces yield of old plantings in Great Britain. This disease problem has not spread to the United States due to plant quarantine regulations on the importation of roots or plants.

Insects and Other Predators:
Insects have not been reported to be a problem with comfrey in the United States.

I never added Where's Raed? to my blog links, because you can find links to him everywhere.
I was catching up on his adventures in Baghdad tonight and read this:

The following conversation I was told about by G., but he is so lazy I will tell you about it myself. Inside the Convention Center (or as sometimes called The Iraq Forum), G was at the cafeteria waiting to buy a bottle of water when a man came and asked for a sandwich.

- is it Iraqi meat?
- yes sir it is
- are you sure it is Iraqi?
- Yes it was bought here
- No no, was the lamb slaughtered here in Iraq? Are you sure it didn’t come from Saudi?
- Sir, it is Iraqi. But even if it came from Saudi, the meat is also Halal there.
- No you don’t get it. They are not Shia muslims.

Usually it wouldn’t matter; everyone has his small little weird demands. But the problem was that the guy who doesn’t like Saudi meat because it is not slaughtered by Shia muslims is the head of an Iraqi human rights committee. Yeah, all humans are equal but some are more equal than other, aren’t they?

another little story, Raed’s mother is Shia muslim and they used to live in Saudi (which is Sunni central). One day she was asked by someone who got the courage to come up to her, they asked whether it was true that Shia muslims have little tails and they are allowed to marry their sisters.

Would anyone please remind why we need religions?
:: salam 10:25 AM [+] ::

A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Underworld...

A shaman is a gateway. That's our main skill. We walk with one foot in the spirit world and one foot in this world. I pick up a lot of stuff off of the people I meet. I'm really good at ignoring it. Most of the time I don't even notice it anymore. I'm not particularly interested in seeing how screwed up others are, that would cause me to notice how screwed up I am. (lol) So today I went into meditation, separated my expectations from my goal, and took a walk in the spirit world.

I've been there before, just playing around, you know -getting used to the place. Today was the first time I went there with a purpose.
I always go to my valley first. There is a cave in my valley, and the cave leads to the underworld. The underworld is one way of getting to the spirit world.
Just inside my cave are paintings of big things I've done, things that have caused my soul to grow in big leaps. (there aren't many, maybe a dozen pics) There's a branching to the left that leads to an artesian well of twinkley water. It appeared after Quinn died, when my grief was so heavy in my chest I had trouble breathing. I found it during a meditative wandering, and when I drank from it, I could breathe again. Forward from the cave paintings and down a long way is the heart of Mother Earth. I went there first during a guided meditation at a festival. Today there was a new branch. It led to the right, and the path was bumpy. I walked along knowing full well that I was heading toward the realm of death. As I travelled, I kept thinking, "You shouldn't go here alone. You should always have someone with you." I came to the little old woman who stands between me and my ancestors. Every time I go looking for my ancestors I have to deal with this woman. She is wrinkled and stooped with age, and incredibly strong-willed. (side note on ancestors follows) She orders the whole group around, demanding that the quiet ones come forward to meet me. I think she's my great grandma, except my great grandma was terrifying but nice, and I found myself very drawn to her after she got too old to swing a peach switch at my backside :) She died when I was 9 years old. Anyway, I met this guardian gatekeeper to my ancestors when I went looking for the native-american portion of my bloodline. I already knew the Celtic portion probably had some shamanistic traits, and I wanted to ask if my N.A. side did too. The old woman called a brown skinned, brown haired woman to come forward, and she refused. (!) My guardian pulled her forward, and she turned her back on me. The woman was my great-great grandmother. She was part Irish and part Cherokee. She was abandoned at birth and raised in an orphanage. She clearly wanted nothing to do with any of her relatives. I could see them beyond her, some were smiling and looking welcoming. The lady I think is my great grandma told my GG grandmother to get out of the way so I could talk to the rest, and GG clearly stated, "I will never allow her to talk to these people. She must go through me to meet them, and that I will not do." (sigh) It's not like I wanted to get all into the romanticized native american culture or anything. I knew virtually nothing of that part of my heritage, and wasn't trying to claim it. (some of them have since visited me on their own. Shamanism does, indeed run in that side of the family too.) I didn't think it was "cool" to be a shaman, I thought it was a burden that I carry because I'm strong enough to carry it. I think of it as a responsability and a gift. Not something to be taken lightly, but not a path to greatness either. It just is. I ignored it for as long as I could. I pretended to be "learning" to be a shaman, but not there yet. I did everything I could to avoid taking on shamanism, and sometimes I try to take it off -as one would remove a set of clothes. It never works for long. Something happens to get the ball rolling again, and then next thing I know I'm doing all the things nobody ever taught me to do but I'm damn good at anyway. It's always been like this. I know somewhere down the road I'll get scared that people will start worshiping me or something, and then I'll pretend I'm just a normal everyday person again, and today I'm glad I'm a shaman. I'm learning to trust the world to take care of itself. I'm learning to trust my friends, let them be who they are, and not put my expectations all over them -that they'll stop liking me but start needing me. It's hard for your friends to be friendly when they're trying to live up to your expectations and resenting every minute of it. So to my friends I say this - I love you unreservedly and without expectation. ;)

Back to today's journey...
My guardian great grandma was standing before a pea soup fog. This was the "veil between the worlds". I had to pass through the fog to reach my goal. I thought again how I shouldn't walk through here alone. I didn't have enough experience, it was a bad idea. I did it anyway. ;)
There were people in the fog, the recently deceased I guess. I've hung out in the fog before, and I usually get folks coming up and getting in my face and asking me to pass along a message of some kind. Today there was only one, and her message was for the person I was walking for. She followed me all the way through the veil, and finally left when I reached the other side and I had promised her I'd give the message. On the other side were more people, and there, shining like a beacon in the night, was my target. I did what I came to do, then abruptly snapped back to this mortal plane. I got a nasty headache and something felt not-right. Yep. I snapped back so fast I'd left myself there. So I had to go back under and retrieve myself. It was not as hard as it sounds. Thank the Gods I didn't freak out and not go back, though. The person I had gone to see walked me all the way back to the entrance to my cave, and left a little "tag" so I could find them easier next time. It was a very thoughtful gesture.

Kudos to Rex Stetson, Armchair Vigilante for sharing this with the world:

Monday, August 04, 2003
Sunscreen Sissies At Greater Risk For Skin Cancer
Hilarious findings today from the European Institute of Oncology in Milan, Italy. Sunscreen, designed to protect skin from harmful solar radiation known to cause sunburn, freckles, moles, and cancerous melanoma, ironically increases the risk of skin cancer! Since those most susceptible to sunburn are also the most likely to develop skin cancer, it was believed that sunscreen would reduce that risk. Researchers now believe sunburn and skin cancer are caused by different types of solar radiation, and that by preventing a sunburn from occuring, the sunscreen only encourages lengthy sun exposure that otherwise would have not occurred. Sunburn acts the as body's natural warning system for excessive radiation exposure- similar to the dosimeter radiation badges work by nuclear technicians. When too much radiation has been absorbed, the skin changes and begins to hurt- sending a warning to its owner. Unless, of course, he is wearing sunscreen. Whoops!
No word on any industry-crippling class action lawsuits yet. Similar charges have been weathered successfully by the "antibacterial soap" industry after researchers discovered increased illness among its users, many of whom suffer from weakened immune systems from lack of germ exposure-except for the soap-resistant strains of super-bacteria that now populate their homes.

// posted by Rex @ 8:48 AM

I'm just doing my part to counter stupidity in the world. -S

As long as I'm in a mood for pseudo-science, let's cover oxides too!
Have you heard how beta-carotene binds free radicals in our bodies, thus preventing cancer and premature aging, and all sorts of other maladies? It's true!
Those free radicals are mostly oxygen. Oxygen is a lonely little molecule. It likes diverse company. When oxygen bonds with hydrogen, it does so with a bang. Giving off energy and producing water as a result. Neat huh? Oxygen will bond with pretty much anything, given any opportunity. This process is called "oxidation". Ring any bells?

Iron oxide is better known as rust. Titanium dioxide (along with iron oxide) gives sapphires their lovely blue color. Oh! and remember the whole dioxide controversy? Three guesses what the main ingredient is!

In really laymen's terms, we are rusting ourselves to death!

Thanks to Chasmyn, I was news-surfing tonight, and found many interesting things. Firstly, I like Dean more and more as my potential President. Secondly, never stick a weiner through a fence. And thirdly, people are too short sighted.

Today's Geology Lesson
People live on a hundred year scale. We can all easily picture 100 years. It has meaning for us.
This planet, and for that matter the universe, does not move on a hundred year scale. To us, geologic time moves very slowly. I don't believe the planet bothers to mark time.
Here's where I'm going with this: Carbon Dioxide -2 oxygen molecules bonded to one carbon molecule- likes to sit and be stagnant. It's it's nature, one could say. The CO2 we've been putting in the atmosphere since we figured out how to make fire goes somewhere. We were taught in school that it gets separated by plants as they create food -according to their nature. The textbooks lie.
Most CO2 goes into the ocean. A lot of it is processed by plankton, our main source of free oxygen. The rest settles to the bottom of the ocean. The pressure of the water is so great down there, that the CO2 can't re-enter the cycle. Instead, it happily nestles itself into the earth's crust. When it does this, a strange thing happens... It cools the earth by a miniscule amount. That's right! You read it here first, folks. "Global Warming" will kill this planet by freezing it. It's all about energy, and where it goes. A side effect of energy transferrance is heat (In imprecise terms), when energy stagnates, there's no heat.
This won't happen in the next thirty years. It will take tens of thousands of years to be noticeable. And it's already happening. We can't stop the damage we've already done with current technology, so suck it up and try something new if you wanna save the planet. By the way, don't blame America. Don't blame Europe. Blame the industrial revlution.

When my mother was a child (1950's) one of her chores was to wash the windowsills every day in the winter. St. Louisans burned coal to heat their homes. (so did everybody else in any industrialized nation) The pollution was so bad, you could literally wipe it off any surface. It turned everything black. People swept their sidewalks, not because they were neat-freaks, but because they wanted to see their sidewalks.

Not that pollution levels are acceptable today. They're not. But the damage has been going on for a long time, and the Earth in her gentle, subtle way has been picking up after us -though it costs her own life force (heat) to do it.
What a good mother we have.

Did I disturb you? Well, don't worry about it. I'm just one more internet fruitcake trying to get my version of reality across. Your children's children will have plenty of ocean to play in before it all reverts to ice. And think how few earthquakes and volcanoes our far-flung decendants will have to worry about. After all, heat is what makes the plates shift. If it cools down enough, the whole process will grind to a halt.

Blogrolling here and there led me to one of those ridiculous surveys about yourself. You know, the ones with about a hundred questions and you're supposed to e-mail it to all your friends...? Yep. One of those. This one actually has a few questions I haven't read a billion times already, so I'm swiping the unusual ones and putting them here. heh. Enjoy!
Good Gods! It is 220 questions! Who needs to know that much about anyone?

SOME QUESTIONS
4. What do you like most about yourself?: That I glow

5. Pick a song that describes yourself: now this is a good one. A says everyone has a theme song. A song that comes on the radio and never fails to put you in the best mood possible, because it's yours. I haven't found mine yet really. It's a toss up between the lion king's "circle of life" and Sinatra's "I did it my way"

7. What does your name mean?: please don't laugh. no kidding- it's Princess Light the Sensible One Cold Water. yeeesh.

8. Do you believe in yourself?: abso-smurfing-lootley!

24. What kind of Deodorant do you use?: it changes from month to month. This latest attempt at masking my personal scent makes me smell like fresh sweat.

32. What's under your bed?: probably dust bunnies warring with cat fur over the ancient pair of dirty underwear I can't find to wash. I'm afraid to look.

38. When you notice somebody of the opposite sex what do you notice first?:energy

57. Do you eat the stems of broccoli?:yep!

60. What color is your toothbrush?: White and green with blue and white bristles. It vibrates too.

61. What color is your toothpaste?: you've got to be kidding me.

62. What's on your walls in your room? paint

82. What do you think of people who drink?: I think they're doing what's necessary to maintain their bodies...oh, you mean ALCOHOL :)

85. Do you blush during naughty scenes?: Not usually.

90. Who is the loudest person you know? Heh! My mother.

120. What's your favorite color to paint your toenails?: butter yellow

160. Who's the prettiest Disney movie gal?: Belle

180. Favorite sound?: music

192. If you could be anything in a kitchen what would you be?: food

193. If you could be one gardening tool what would you be?: This one is just plain odd. I'd be the seeds.

201. If you were to kill someone, which method would you choose?: If I were to kill someone I'd be defending my child, so the quickest way possible.
Although the idea of a psychic blast, or sprouting wolverine-like adamantium claws is pretty nifty too.

206. You are a virgin. You're going to die in one hour. That's right! You have ONE HOUR TO LIVE!!! So...you lose your virginity as fast as you can? or you call all your close friends and relatives to say goodbye?: say goodbye. absolutely.

208. Your favorite STD and why?: And you thought the other questions strange!

210. What would your porn name be? Princess Light the Sensible!

213. Full body massage or dry sex?: WTF?????

220. Premarital sex?: it’s only premarital sex if you’re going to get married

I've added some new links. And I found a ring of redhead blogs. This is not as nifty as it sounds, tho, because they count dyed redheads. Now, I don't have any real problem with people who choose to dye their hair red... of course they all want to look like me! However there is a significant difference between a bottled red head and a natural red head. A natural redhead has lived with day glo hair all her life. We have suffered through endless repititions of "carrot top" and "red" from the moment we've been able to understand a spoken language. We have been assaulted by well meaning old ladies who have to stop us on the street to tell us they once had hair just that color.
When you're 5 years old, you don't want some white-haired old geezer scaring the heck out of you by letting you know you'll look like her some day.

We have had our hair pulled, we've been laughed at, called names and stared at. We come through this childhood of torture and make it to adolescence to find that we draw a kind of attention that we want. Usually. Suddenly we are seen as attractive. That alone is very hard to cope with. Our peers have pointed out our ugliness through our entire childhood, then over the space of a month we become seen as "gorgeous". Most of us don't believe it. We keep waiting for the laughter to start. Oh, ha ha, fooled you! Had you thinking someone liked you for a minute there! How funny! But the laughter doesn't come. Pleasant though it is, it kinda shakes your world. There's no security in the unexpected.
Oh, yes, and then there's the joy of having a total stranger ask you if you pubic hair is red too. Not to mention having people reach out and touch your hair while you're standing in line for something. What makes these fools think it's ok to touch my hair? I can understand a child wanting to touch this rarest of colors, but an adult? Puh-lease!
Through these trials we have earned our hair. By the time we're adults, we own it proudly. But to get there, we had to endure a kind of prejudice that a caucasion brunette or blonde will never understand. When you walk out your front door, you are a redhead. There's no hiding it, except during winter, if your coat has a hood. We, as redheads, stand out in a crowd and we always will.
Y'know what? I do resent bottled redheads. They haven't earned it, they haven't owned it, they put it on for a while and change it when they get tired of the particular kind of attention a redhead draws. They don't deserve it.

(my ire does not apply to red highlights, only to people who go totally red but still get to have a tan. s'not fair)

And now for something completely different

I'm actually going to post something pagany!

A simple pre-ritual cleansing. When prepping for a ritual, most people I know use scented bath salts or smudge with sage. I prefer to grab a coffee filter and fill it with a tablespoon or two of basil, a pinch of ginger and a few twists of fresh ground pepper. I tie all this up with cotton embroidery thread and basically make tea. Then I soak in the water for a few minutes, clearing my mind. I take the sachet of herbs that's been steeping in a coffee cup, pour the water (tea) in the tub, then press the sachet against my forehead. I draw the sachet down my nose and exhale. I draw it down each arm, press it against my palm and release whatever I've been holding. I do the same with my legs. I draw little patterns, usually spirals, wherever I need to really focus my attention. Spirals starting in the center and working out counter clockwise will scatter bound-up energy. Spirals starting at the edge and working inward focus energy. When you reach the center, if you pull the baggie of herbs away slowly, you'll pull any "crap" out with it.

I use basil for purification, ginger for revitalization and pepper 'cause I like it.

I'm having a blast playing DandD. Up 'til recently I haven't really played since L was born. There is so much I've forgotten!
When I was teaching L how to play, I gave him examples from my own experiences and told him about my most successful characters. Yeah. Smooth move, ex-lax! He wanted to jump right in and go through the same kinds of stuff... at !st level.
(sigh) It doesn't work that way, of course.

I also told him some stories about the evil things my DM had done to my characters, and included how my druid character got a bunch of staves that were pretty much useless to her. One of the staves would transform into a tree (and back again) when the proper command word was spoken. Since my druid could grow trees pretty much at will, I only used it for shade while I was eating lunch and such. L came up with a billion uses for it. Like leaning it against a wall and uttering the command word. Poof! No more wall, the tree would grow right through it and knock it down. Or pointing it at an onrushing horde of beasties and stabbing them all with branches, etc. Ye Gods, he wanted that staff sooooo badly.

Muahahahaha

So I sent him and several others on an adventure to retrieve a black staff... from an island...that was owned by a powerful druid... heh heh heh. He had his suspicions, then they passed a pool with a blue staff in the middle of it. The blue staff appeared to be producing all the water for the island. Then he knew who this druid was and that she had 10 knifty staves altogether, but his character didn't!
-pardon me while I laugh long and loud-
Ha haha haha ha ha!
ok. As it turn out, his character ran right past the tree staff, and didn't even notice it.
I'm so cruel to my son.
He told me later, "Oh! That was evil! That was mean! That was smart! He got a really big kick out of it.
Now it's hubby's turn to torture me. :( I'm playing with the group, and He's the one being the DM. It's lots of fun. I'm playing a cleric, because he's running us through the original Raven'sLoft module, and they need a cleric to help then fight the vampire at the end. I spent today blessing everthing in sight and driving the two evil characters up a wall.

Muahaha