Monday, April 26, 2004
My Secret Life by Walter (The Sex Diary of a Victorian Gentleman) These feelings got intensified when I thought of my aunt's backside, and the cunts of my cousins, but when I thought of the heroines, it seemed strange that such beautiful creatures should have any. The cunt which seemed to have affected my imagination was that of my aunt, which appeared more like a great parting, or division of her body, than a cunt as I then understood it; as if her buttock parting was continued round towards her belly, and as unlike the young cunts I had seen as possible. Those seemed to me but little indents. That the delicate ladies of the novels should have such divisions seemed curious, ugly, and unromantic. My sensuous temperament was developing, I saw females in all their poetry and beauty, but suppose that my physical forces had not kept pace with my brain, for I have no recollection of a cock-stand when thinking about ladies; and fucking never entered into my mind, either when I read novels or kissed women, though the pleasure I had when my lips met theirs, or touched their smooth, soft cheeks, was great. I recollect the delight it gave me perfectly. After having seen frigging, it set me reflecting, but it still seemed to me impossible, that delicate, handsome ladies, should allow pricks to be thrust up them, and nasty stuff ejected into them. I read Aristotle, tried to understand it, and thought I did, with the help of much talk with my schoolfellows; yet I only half believed it. Dogs fucking were pointed out to me; then croaks treading hens, and at last a fuller belief came.
Friday, April 23, 2004
The Depressive and the Psychopath - At last we know why the Columbine killers did it. By Dave Cullen: In popular usage, almost any crazy killer is a 'psychopath.' But in psychiatry, it's a very specific mental condition that rarely involves killing, or even psychosis. 'Psychopaths are not disoriented or out of touch with reality, nor do they experience the delusions, hallucinations, or intense subjective distress that characterize most other mental disorders,' writes Dr. Robert Hare, in Without Conscience, the seminal book on the condition. ...'Unlike psychotic individuals, psychopaths are rational and aware of what they are doing and why. Their behavior is the result of choice, freely exercised.' Diagnosing Harris as a psychopath represents neither a legal defense, nor a moral excuse. But it illuminates a great deal about the thought process that drove him to mass murder.
Diagnosing him as a psychopath was not a simple matter. Harris opened his private journal with the sentence, "I hate the f---ing world." And when the media studied Harris, they focused on his hatred—hatred that supposedly led him to revenge. It's easy to get lost in the hate, which screamed out relentlessly from Harris' Web site:
He is disgusted with the morons around him. These are not the rantings of an angry young man, picked on by jocks until he's not going to take it anymore. These are the rantings of someone with a messianic-grade superiority complex, out to punish the entire human race for its appalling inferiority. It may look like hate, but "It's more about demeaning other people," says Hare.
A second confirmation of the diagnosis was Harris' perpetual deceitfulness. "I lie a lot," Eric wrote to his journal. "Almost constantly, and to everybody, just to keep my own ass out of the water..."
Diagnosing him as a psychopath was not a simple matter. Harris opened his private journal with the sentence, "I hate the f---ing world." And when the media studied Harris, they focused on his hatred—hatred that supposedly led him to revenge. It's easy to get lost in the hate, which screamed out relentlessly from Harris' Web site:
"YOU KNOW WHAT I HATE!!!? Cuuuuuuuuhntryyyyyyyyyy music!!! . . .It rages on for page after page and is repeated in his journal and in the videos he and Klebold made. But Fuselier recognized a far more revealing emotion bursting through, both fueling and overshadowing the hate. What the boy was really expressing was contempt.
"YOU KNOW WHAT I HATE!!!? People who say that wrestling is real!! . . .
"YOU KNOW WHAT I HATE!!!? People who use the same word over and over again! . . . Read a f---in book or two, increase your vo-cab-u-lary f*ck*ng idiots."
"YOU KNOW WHAT I HATE!!!? STUPID PEOPLE!!! Why must so many people be so stupid!!? . . . YOU KNOW WHAT I HATE!!!? When people mispronounce words! and they dont even know it to, like acrosT, or eXspreso, pacific (specific), or 2 pAck. learn to speak correctly you morons.
YOU KNOW WHAT I HATE!!!? STAR WARS FANS!!! GET A FaaaaaaRIGIN LIFE YOU BORING GEEEEEKS!
He is disgusted with the morons around him. These are not the rantings of an angry young man, picked on by jocks until he's not going to take it anymore. These are the rantings of someone with a messianic-grade superiority complex, out to punish the entire human race for its appalling inferiority. It may look like hate, but "It's more about demeaning other people," says Hare.
A second confirmation of the diagnosis was Harris' perpetual deceitfulness. "I lie a lot," Eric wrote to his journal. "Almost constantly, and to everybody, just to keep my own ass out of the water..."
Goodness Versus Morality and the Bible - Suite101.com: So much of what is preached and publicized on behalf of Christian churches today consists of encouraging and sustaining morality as a basis of Christian theology. In fact, one might hear the proposal that morality is theology.
Morality is not theology because it consists, as Alan Watts wrote, “of telling people how to behave.” Focusing on morality - telling people how to behave - does not impact public or private thinking except as it relates to control of behavior. So long as the emphasis is on morality the emphasis is on control.
Preaching morality rather than the virtues of goodness – particularly the common good we all ought to be seeking – gives us mostly sermons and exhortations limited to issues that are defined entirely by judgmental thinking.
Judgmental thinking in a religious or spiritual context drags the positive and negative aspects of human behavior into moral areas where actions are governed out of a concern for reward or punishment.
Judgmental thinking has at its core the idea of worthiness based on reward and punishment. Reward/punishment tools of fear, shame and guilt if ever used successfully, always result in the right things being done for the wrong reasons.
There is value in reward and punishment if the only goal is that of deterrence, intimidating those who would commit acts that would harm another person. In that regard deterrence is a device intended to discourage criminal activity.
This sort of spiritual construct only works if God is likewise viewed as judgmental and punitive, responding to human behavior in a manner that creates deterrence and control. Whether spiritual or civic, this control is legalistic in thinking – it is both spiritual and civic governance by the letter of the law.
It also exaggerates and escalates sin into the realm of criminal activity.
Subjugation to the letter of the law is precisely the environment into which Jesus was born and ministered, teaching the Christ Path as a divine alternative for a society totally immersed in literal and letter-of-the-law thinking. In that society, spiritual leaders had done something terrible to scripture, turning it into something primarily used as a device of control and deterrence.
Scripture had become formally canonized and was therefore primarily a tool of control. Sacred writings that inform humanity of its relationship to God lose most of their power to spiritualize individual lives when reduced to a canon of inflexible statutes, rigidity and possessed of a very narrow range of interpretation.
Because a canon is essentially a conservative document, a document that has been canonized is a document of censorship. It preserves the benefits of those already in authority at the expense of the culture itself. It lets the controllers retain control.
The Bible as we have it today was an instrument of control for that portion of early Christianity that won a victory of political survival. The Bible became a tool of those specific victorious Christian leaders and a means by which conservative manipulation of the status quo was more important than the spread of the philosophy of the Sermon on the Mount, The Prodigal Son and the Good Samaritan.
The controlling priests ignored that philosophy, building instead a monarchical vision of God that capitalized on the wrathful God of the Old Testament and blended it with the imperial power and imagery of the Caesars and Roman civil administration.
Jesus did not preach a Compassionate God in the punitive monarchical sense that pervades Christianity even today. The monarchical god as seen by fundamentalist and literal-minded Christian practitioners today is an inheritance passed on from the original Roman Priesthood augmented by the governance model of the Roman Empire...
Morality is not theology because it consists, as Alan Watts wrote, “of telling people how to behave.” Focusing on morality - telling people how to behave - does not impact public or private thinking except as it relates to control of behavior. So long as the emphasis is on morality the emphasis is on control.
Preaching morality rather than the virtues of goodness – particularly the common good we all ought to be seeking – gives us mostly sermons and exhortations limited to issues that are defined entirely by judgmental thinking.
Judgmental thinking in a religious or spiritual context drags the positive and negative aspects of human behavior into moral areas where actions are governed out of a concern for reward or punishment.
Judgmental thinking has at its core the idea of worthiness based on reward and punishment. Reward/punishment tools of fear, shame and guilt if ever used successfully, always result in the right things being done for the wrong reasons.
There is value in reward and punishment if the only goal is that of deterrence, intimidating those who would commit acts that would harm another person. In that regard deterrence is a device intended to discourage criminal activity.
This sort of spiritual construct only works if God is likewise viewed as judgmental and punitive, responding to human behavior in a manner that creates deterrence and control. Whether spiritual or civic, this control is legalistic in thinking – it is both spiritual and civic governance by the letter of the law.
It also exaggerates and escalates sin into the realm of criminal activity.
Subjugation to the letter of the law is precisely the environment into which Jesus was born and ministered, teaching the Christ Path as a divine alternative for a society totally immersed in literal and letter-of-the-law thinking. In that society, spiritual leaders had done something terrible to scripture, turning it into something primarily used as a device of control and deterrence.
Scripture had become formally canonized and was therefore primarily a tool of control. Sacred writings that inform humanity of its relationship to God lose most of their power to spiritualize individual lives when reduced to a canon of inflexible statutes, rigidity and possessed of a very narrow range of interpretation.
Because a canon is essentially a conservative document, a document that has been canonized is a document of censorship. It preserves the benefits of those already in authority at the expense of the culture itself. It lets the controllers retain control.
The Bible as we have it today was an instrument of control for that portion of early Christianity that won a victory of political survival. The Bible became a tool of those specific victorious Christian leaders and a means by which conservative manipulation of the status quo was more important than the spread of the philosophy of the Sermon on the Mount, The Prodigal Son and the Good Samaritan.
The controlling priests ignored that philosophy, building instead a monarchical vision of God that capitalized on the wrathful God of the Old Testament and blended it with the imperial power and imagery of the Caesars and Roman civil administration.
Jesus did not preach a Compassionate God in the punitive monarchical sense that pervades Christianity even today. The monarchical god as seen by fundamentalist and literal-minded Christian practitioners today is an inheritance passed on from the original Roman Priesthood augmented by the governance model of the Roman Empire...
Tuesday, April 20, 2004
Monday, April 19, 2004
Ananova - Top doc backs picking your nose and eating it: Picking your nose and eating it is one of the best ways to stay healthy, according to a top Austrian doctor.
Innsbruck-based lung specialist Prof Dr Friedrich Bischinger said people who pick their noses with their fingers were healthy, happier and probably better in tune with their bodies.
He says society should adopt a new approach to nose-picking and encourage children to take it up.
Dr Bischinger said: 'With the finger you can get to places you just can't reach with a handkerchief, keeping your nose far cleaner.
'And eating the dry remains of what you pull out is a great way of strengthening the body's immune system.
'Medically it makes great sense and is a perfectly natural thing to do. In terms of the immune system the nose is a filter in which a great deal of bacteria are collected, and when this mixture arrives in the intestines it works just like a medicine.
Innsbruck-based lung specialist Prof Dr Friedrich Bischinger said people who pick their noses with their fingers were healthy, happier and probably better in tune with their bodies.
He says society should adopt a new approach to nose-picking and encourage children to take it up.
Dr Bischinger said: 'With the finger you can get to places you just can't reach with a handkerchief, keeping your nose far cleaner.
'And eating the dry remains of what you pull out is a great way of strengthening the body's immune system.
'Medically it makes great sense and is a perfectly natural thing to do. In terms of the immune system the nose is a filter in which a great deal of bacteria are collected, and when this mixture arrives in the intestines it works just like a medicine.
Ananova - Man cuts off penis and testicles: A man who cut off his penis and testicles, was found running naked down a Canadian city street screaming 'Repent, repent, fornicators.'
The man was spotted running down the street in Penticton, British Columbia, wearing only a woolly hat.
Paramedics covered him in a sheet before taking him to hospital.
His severed penis and testicles were later found in his home.
It's not known if the body parts can be re-attached.
The man was spotted running down the street in Penticton, British Columbia, wearing only a woolly hat.
Paramedics covered him in a sheet before taking him to hospital.
His severed penis and testicles were later found in his home.
It's not known if the body parts can be re-attached.
Saturday, April 17, 2004
CONTENDER MINISTRIES MAIL BAG: You asked a second question in your email, which you did not answer: 'The more complex objection is whether these books are in fact scripture and who has the athority to 'add' them.' Like the Hebrew scribes (and initially, St. Jerome), I contend that as God is not the author of error, we can not rely upon these books as being divinely inspired, and they should therefore have not been canonized. May God bless you.
Friday, April 16, 2004
Ananova - Penis explodes during sex: Penis explodes during sex
Doctors in Romania are treating a 28-year-old whose penis exploded while he was making love to his girlfriend.
Ilarie Coroiu was taken to hospital in the Transylvanian town of Cluj after his girlfriend, Magdalena, 18, "felt something strange" and noticed that the bed was covered in blood.
Dr Angela Domocos, head of the accident and emergency department at Cluj General Hospital, said: "It is very rare for this to happen. We call it an exploded penis because it happens when the blood cavities in the penis burst.
"I don't know what this couple were playing at, but there must have been tremendous pressure inside the penis to make this happen."
Mr Coroiu is now recovering after an operation to stop the bleeding.
Doctors in Romania are treating a 28-year-old whose penis exploded while he was making love to his girlfriend.
Ilarie Coroiu was taken to hospital in the Transylvanian town of Cluj after his girlfriend, Magdalena, 18, "felt something strange" and noticed that the bed was covered in blood.
Dr Angela Domocos, head of the accident and emergency department at Cluj General Hospital, said: "It is very rare for this to happen. We call it an exploded penis because it happens when the blood cavities in the penis burst.
"I don't know what this couple were playing at, but there must have been tremendous pressure inside the penis to make this happen."
Mr Coroiu is now recovering after an operation to stop the bleeding.
Thursday, April 15, 2004
Faith No More News: Reykjav?k, Iceland
Almost a decade after a once-controversial music video gained popularity and success for now-defunct rock band Faith No More, the video (for the band's 1990 hit 'Epic') returns from MTV purgatory to reap all-new controversy, thanks to techno-pop queen Bj?rk.
'Yes, it was my fish' the spacey, brunette Icelander told CNN on Friday.
'There was a party at Roddy (Bottum, ex-Faith No More keyboardist)'s mansion in Berkeley and I was just coming from a poetry reading in San Francisco. I had been given the fish (which she admits to having named 'Linear Soul Child') from a person at that poetry reading, and brought it to Roddy's party. That's the last time I ever saw him.'
The fish, a common 3-finned goldfish, caused a media uproar from animal-rights groups the same year for supposedly being 'flopped' on the ground during the video shoot. Faith No More insisted that the fish 'flopped only once' despite allegations of animal mistreatment.
Bj?rk, despite becoming emotionally upset in our interview over the loss of her would-be pet, comes to the defense of the group. 'I know those guys, I know they wouldn't do anything to harm [him]. But I know, if I had gone home with MY fish, which was given to ME, none of this would have ever happened.' The former members of Faith No More declined to comment further on the incident.
Wednesday, April 14, 2004
Amazon.ca: Books: Spells
a bi-sexual, post gothic, coming-of-age revenge fantasia set in rural Canada in the 1970's, following the exploits of a fat kid who experiments with witchcraft, drugs, sex, more witchcraft and Egyptology. Bad things happen, very bad things. #
a bi-sexual, post gothic, coming-of-age revenge fantasia set in rural Canada in the 1970's, following the exploits of a fat kid who experiments with witchcraft, drugs, sex, more witchcraft and Egyptology. Bad things happen, very bad things. #
The Horse Hospital: Die Cheerleaders: 'Catastrophic cheerleading injuries' is not a title to ignore.
Of 39 incidents reported to the National Center for Catastrophic Sports Injury between 1982 and 2002, the authors reviewed 29.
Twenty seven of the injured were women, and the rate of injuries among college cheerleaders was five times that among high schoolers. The most common injury provoking stunts were a 'pyramid' and a 'basket toss.' The injuries included 17 severe head injuries leading to 13 skull fractures and two deaths, eight cervical fractures, and three spinal cord contusions
( American Journal of Sports Medicine 2003 ;31:881 -8 )
Of 39 incidents reported to the National Center for Catastrophic Sports Injury between 1982 and 2002, the authors reviewed 29.
Twenty seven of the injured were women, and the rate of injuries among college cheerleaders was five times that among high schoolers. The most common injury provoking stunts were a 'pyramid' and a 'basket toss.' The injuries included 17 severe head injuries leading to 13 skull fractures and two deaths, eight cervical fractures, and three spinal cord contusions
( American Journal of Sports Medicine 2003 ;31:881 -8 )
Monday, April 12, 2004
The Seattle Times: Nation & World: In Romania, pre-emptive strikes on 'vampires': MAROTINU DE SUS, Romania — Before Toma Petre's relatives pulled his body from the grave, ripped out his heart, burned it to ashes, mixed it with water and drank it, he hadn't been in the news much.
That's often the way here with vampires. Quiet lives, active deaths.
Villagers here aren't up in arms about the undead — they're pretty common — but they are outraged that the police are involved in a simple vampire slaying. After all, vampire slaying is an accepted, though hidden, bit of national heritage, even if illegal.
"What did we do?" pleaded Flora Marinescu, Petre's sister and the wife of the man accused of re-killing him. "If they're right, he was already dead. If we're right, we killed a vampire and saved three lives. ... Is that so wrong?"
That's often the way here with vampires. Quiet lives, active deaths.
Villagers here aren't up in arms about the undead — they're pretty common — but they are outraged that the police are involved in a simple vampire slaying. After all, vampire slaying is an accepted, though hidden, bit of national heritage, even if illegal.
"What did we do?" pleaded Flora Marinescu, Petre's sister and the wife of the man accused of re-killing him. "If they're right, he was already dead. If we're right, we killed a vampire and saved three lives. ... Is that so wrong?"
Sunday, April 11, 2004
Chocolate and Vodka :: Travis - 12 Memories: I don't know what it is about heartbreak. Maybe it's just that it's so familiar. Strangely comfortable in the way that old, ill-fitting shoes are. You know that you should get rid of them, but the constant pain is at the very least a reminder that you are alive, because you can't feel pain when you're dead and feeling pain is better than feeling nothing at all.
Take me away, take me away
You said that you were gonna stay
But you’re always lying anyway
You’re gonna suffer if you don’t start breathing now
Now that I need you
You’re going away
Every day, sinking into quicksand
Follow me down the drain
- Quicksand
Twelve Memories, last year’s offering from Travis, has taken a while to impinge on my consciousness. No surprises there - it was released just after I went through a total life meltdown, plummeting through Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs like a dead seagull. I had other things on my mind back in October, like how to retain sanity, how to put back together the remnants of my life (an ongoing project), how find a way forward.
Thus it was only last week, after regaining daily access to the wonderful XFM, a London indie radio station that I used to listen to all the time back when I lived in Reading, that I was reminded of what a wonderfully beautiful voice Fran Healy has.
Take me away, take me away
You said that you were gonna stay
But you’re always lying anyway
You’re gonna suffer if you don’t start breathing now
Now that I need you
You’re going away
Every day, sinking into quicksand
Follow me down the drain
- Quicksand
Twelve Memories, last year’s offering from Travis, has taken a while to impinge on my consciousness. No surprises there - it was released just after I went through a total life meltdown, plummeting through Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs like a dead seagull. I had other things on my mind back in October, like how to retain sanity, how to put back together the remnants of my life (an ongoing project), how find a way forward.
Thus it was only last week, after regaining daily access to the wonderful XFM, a London indie radio station that I used to listen to all the time back when I lived in Reading, that I was reminded of what a wonderfully beautiful voice Fran Healy has.
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