Another entry for the department of "Gee, I wish I had your problems."
No reply.
(This is sort of meta and existential, isn't it?)
My personal theory is that women's sizing is designed to induce brain damage.
I guess that's why the term Wiccan is so much more popular these days. It makes it harder to mix up, and has more the image of someone in sync with nature (and other things, but that was the one that stayed with me as my main appreciation of them).
It's also worth noting that "witch" is not intrinsically a religious term -- there are many people who consider it a term for a particular type of craftsman, and also that Wicca is not the only religious witchcraft religion, just the best known.
In my mind, it was always about secrecy - if things happen within the confines of the "church" that you are not allowed to mention to someone who is not a part of the faith (or even not a part of the ceremony in which said thing happened), then you belong to a cult.
One of my friends is basically having to go through cult-recovery therapy; she was in one, and she's trying to get herself fixed from where it broke her.
There were no secrets. The things that the organisation in question does are all pretty much public knowledge in our religious community. It is even known that there are a lot of ex-members with significant personal issues with the organisation. The organisation publically dismisses these ex-members as malcontents and rabble-rousers, as a general rule.
The feuding is all public. And was, in fact, stuff she knew about before she joined the organisation, though she acquired more specifics once there. This did not prevent her from having cult-indoctrination problems that she now recognises, or from taking the SAN damage she took.
Ahhhh. An open thread. I need to augh.
I had an argument with an acquaintance the other day about "You have to have published short stories to get published." Which she had learned from Sources In The Publishing Industry, and was trying to foist off on me.
Augh! Augh! And other frustration noises!
*goes back to working on the novel*
I know I was at an iteration of "Harry Potter and the Bridges of Pokemon County" as apparently-to-me spontaneously generated on a panel at . . . Arisia? Boskone? One of them, a few years ago.
Incidentally, a friend suggests that Dan Brown would be a better authorial choice for it. It would be one way of assuring the quality of the writing was in keeping with the vision.
Simstim wrote
Only slightly related to the topic, but I've always wandered why those who believe themselves to be reincarnations always seem to be the reincarnation of a princess, or a high priest, or suchlike? Surely, given the occupational distribution of the past human population they'd most likely to have been a peasant (or a hunter, or a factory worker...) It can't be because they think of themselves as somehow "special" can it? Noooo....
Someone recounted once a story (I believe on one of the pagan snark communities on livejournal) of how she went through a "past life regression" or something like with someone who was supposed to be skilled at such things.
She opened her eyes in the vision, looked down at her bare, dirty feet and ragged hem and the pounded dirt floor beneath them, and exclaimed, "Oh, thank the gods. I'm not a flake."
I think this is one of those cases where it's the attention-seeking maladaptives who define the generalised perception, partly because they're attention-seeking, and partly because the maladaptives are much more visible than the people who are just quietly using their systematisations.
'Tis worth noting that there is evidence that the brain structures of transgendered folks are, in fact, not in accord with their external genitalia, and that when they go on hormones their brain function improves (because it's being submerged in the chemistry that suits its structure better).
So it doesn't strike me so much as a "somehow", but as a "we know how already, because we can point at the different brain structures on a CAT scan, what we don't know yet is how that happens".
As to otherkin and multiplicity and similar things: I don't, as a general rule, think of any of the various metaphors people use to systematise their experiences are intrinsically sillier than others. Some folks adopt certain systems in response to a feeling of alienation or a need to feel special or different; others just find them, y'know, functional.
(I am, as a general rule, as much an agnostic about whether or not these systems function because they're factual or because they're a convenient metaphorical shorthand or because they're a useful thought-hack or some other reason as I am about the nature of the divine.)
The functional folks who use these structures tend to be much less visible than the wacked-out ones, for a number of reasons probably easily extrapolatable. The functional ones are also more likely to have the "we're insane, not stupid" sensahuma about things, in my experience, and I consider that a reasonable rough guideline for which folks I'll wind up getting along with.
Though I do feel reminded of "Tor Books, Tammany Hall, and the First Armoured Division".
Adeste Fideles
Laeti triumphantes
Venite, venite in Bethlehem
Natum videte
Regem angelorum . . . .
(From memory, probably badly spelt.)
Have you seen the Real Live Preacher's Christmas Story?
This article got posted to a pagan discussion forum I read, and promptly got terribly whimsical, with various posters trying to out-conspiracy-theorise each other about why there wasn't a 'Great Goddess' figure in the findings.
I believe they got as far as Bill Gates being responsible for the black helicopters before it all broke down.
Completely oblique from the ongoing discussion, I started reading "The Game of the Gods" last night. I finished some time after Kevin's alarm first went off so he could go to class, because could . . . not . . . stop . . . reading. So funny.
However, I wrote over a thousand words yesterday before getting distracted by the shiny object, so I can't feel -too- guilty about that couple of hours.
My guess would be "Because those are the stories they want to tell."
About half an hour ago I was exposed to a Harry Potter/LotR fanfic which I shall not specify the horror of because I know Jo Walton might come through here and read this comment and I don't want to give her an aneurysm.
This has left me with an urge to write a Legolas-gets-married fanfic that's actually consistent with how I understand the canon, which is terribly, terribly peculiar as an impulse for me, as I haven't written fanfic since I was five or six and that involved Smurfs.
I'm sorry about that -- I only noticed the capitals thing a fair bit after I posted. Glad that it was figured out before I re-accomplished useful consciousness.
Completely ignoring the established Open Thread conversation, I post to note that my father sent me an email earlier today containing the command
Type "Speed of sound in smoots per second" into google
which, when fulfilled, generates results quite ticklesome in a "must tell Teresa about" sort of way.
So I post about it in your direction rather than merely noting it down in my journal.
So, I was adding a book I saw recommended to Electrolite to my wishlist (which is really mostly a list-of-books-to-get-sometime-from-somewhere-all-in-one-place-so-I-don't-lose-them-list rather than a wishlist, but whichever) and got that little 'People who bought this book also bought. . .' page.
One of the items was related. One was the Two Towers Extended DVD. And one was the Franken book. I cackled, and mentioned this to Kevin, suggesting that this was probably attributable to anyone who buys anything getting one of those. He sniggered, and then asked me what the Franken book was.
He didn't know.
I just spent a gleeful fifteen minutes or so giving him the precis of the situation and reading choice bits at him while he was playing computer games. I think the laughter made some of his combats a little more fraught than would otherwise be the case.
His comment as I was reading the judge bits: He was having fun, wasn't he?
His comment as I was reading one of your summaries: She was having fun, too.
Thank you for providing such an entertaining and hazardous to the survival of my husband's Diablo characters resource. We are much amused.
| Year | Number of comments posted |
|---|---|
| 2006 | 3 |
| 2005 | 3 |
| 2004 | 5 |
| 2003 | 17 |
Total: 28 comments. View all these comments on a single page.
The most recent 20 comments posted to Making Light by Darkhawk:
Show all comments by Darkhawk.