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Category: PSA

Hailstones and Tornado Warnings

Hailstones and Tornado Warnings

Some excitement. Hailstones! Look at these!

Three Hailstones
Three Hailstones

I rushed out and made room to shelter one of the cars in the garage. That was something else! I never knew I could move all that stuff so fast!

Tornado Warning until 6:30 pm EST Wednesday

A tornado has been sighted or indicated by radar in your area – seek shelter immediately!

Oops! Better run!

Democratic Party and Democrat, not Democrat Party

Democratic Party and Democrat, not Democrat Party

I’ve been noticing an upsurge lately in the frequency of some Republicans referring to the Democratic Party as the “Democrat Party.”

It’s not the Democrat Party. It’s the Democratic Party.

A member of the Democratic Party is a Democrat.

I don’t know what the right-wing imagines might be gained by referring to the Democratic Party as the Democrat Party. The far right seems to think that this terminology works as a pejorative. It doesn’t. It just makes you sound a little bit stupid, and not in a way that makes anyone want to hang out with you.

It’s just silly.

I’m grateful that no-one on the other side seems to have fallen for any mirroring. The “Republic Party” is even more absurd than the “Democrat Party.”

I’ve heard this a lot lately, even on relatively reputable news programs.

What baffles me is why no-one ever seems to correct the person who says it. They just let it slide, and I suppose it’s meant to affect us in some subliminal fashion.

Word to intelligent Republicans, talking-point authors, and assorted blowhards: It doesn’t work.

Inside of insidiously slithering into our minds, it only just makes the speaker seem even more annoying.

Time to retire it.

This has been a public service announcement.

The Multi-faceted Goddess Prayer

The Multi-faceted Goddess Prayer

This most astounding of Goddess prayers is from Rob Brezsny’s book Pronoia Is the Antidote for Paranoia: How the Whole World Is Conspiring to Shower You with Blessings– the latest addition to my wishlist. You may know Rob Brezsny if you follow his witty syndicated column Free Will Astrology. Thanks to sweet Nessa for suggesting it – I found it posted at Killing the Buddha.

Prayer for You

How do you get God’s attention? Try sweet talking his girlfriend.
by Rob Breznsy

This is a perfect moment. It’s a perfect moment because I have been inspired to say a gigantic prayer. I’ve been roused to unleash a divinely greedy, apocalyptically healing prayer for each and every one of you — even those of you who don’t believe in the power of prayer.

And so I am starting to pray right now to the God of Gods… the God beyond all Gods… the Girlfriend of God… the Teacher of God… the Goddess who invented God.

Dear Goddess, you who never kill but only change:

I pray that my exuberant, suave, and accidental words will move you to shower ferocious blessings down on everyone who reads this benediction.

I pray that you will give them what they don’t even know they need — not just the boons they think they want but everything they’ve always been afraid to even imagine or ask for.

Dear Goddess, you wealthy anarchist burning heaven to the ground:

Many of the divine chameleons out there don’t even know that their souls will live forever. So please use your brash magic to help them see that they are all wildly creative geniuses too big for their own personalities.

Guide them to realize that they are all completely different from what they’ve been led to believe about themselves, and more exciting than they can possibly imagine.

Make it illegal, immoral, irrelevant, unpatriotic, and totally tasteless for them to be in love with anyone or anything that’s no good for them.

O Goddess, you who give us so much love and pain mixed together that our morality is always on the verge of collapsing:

I beg you to cast a boisterous love spell that will nullify all the dumb ideas, bad decisions, and nasty conditioning that have ever cursed the wise and sexy virtuosos out there.

Remove, banish, annihilate, and laugh into oblivion any jinx that has clung to them, no matter how long they’ve suffered from it, and even if they’ve become accustomed or addicted to its ugly companionship.

Please conjure an aura of protection around them so that they will receive an early warning if they are ever about to act in such a way as to bring another hex or plague into their lives in the future.

Dear Goddess, sweet Goddess, you sly universal virus with no f*cking opinion:

Please help all the personal growth addicts out there to become disciplined enough to go crazy in the name of creation, not destruction.

Teach them the difference between oppressive self-control and liberating self-control.

Awaken in them the power to do the half-right thing when it is impossible to do the totally right thing.

Arouse the Wild Woman within them — even if they’re men.

Dear Goddess, you pregnant sl*t who scorns all mediocre longing:

I pray that you will inspire all the compassionate rascals communing with this prayer to kick their own asses and wash their own brains.

Provoke them to throw away or give away all the things they own that encourage them to believe that they are better than anyone else.

Show them how much fun it is to brag about what they cannot do and do not have.

Give them bigger, better, more original sins and wilder, wetter, more interesting problems.

Most of all, Goddess, brainwash them with your freedom so that they never love their own pain more than anyone else’s pain.

Oh Goddess, you wildly disciplined, radically curious, shockingly friendly, fanatically balanced, mysteriously truthful, teasingly healing, lyrically logical master of rowdy bliss:

I ask you to give your unconventionally unconditional love to all the budding messiahs who read this prayer; love them with all of your ocean and sky and fire and earth.

Cultivate in yourself a fervent yearning for their companionship. Play with them every day. Answer their questions. Listen to their stories.

Inspire them not just to nag you for what they want, but also to thank you for the uncanny gifts you flood them with.

And if there are any pockets of ignorance or hatred these insanely poised creators might be harboring, any inadvertent idiocies that keep them blind to your blessings, please flush them out as soon as possible.

Dear Goddess, You psychedelic mushroom cloud at the center of all our brains:

Bless all the inscrutable creators out there with lucid dreams while they are wide awake, and their very own spin doctors, and solar-powered sex toys that work even in the dark, and vacuum cleaners for their magic carpets, and a knack for avoiding other people’s hells, and a thousand masks that all represent their true feelings, and secret admirers who are not psychotic stalkers.

Arrange for a racehorse to be named after them, or an underground river, or a boulevard in an exotic vacationland, or a thousand-year-old storm on Saturn or Jupiter.

Teach them to push their own buttons and unbreak their own hearts and right their own wrongs and sing their own songs and be their own wives and save their own lives.

Dear Goddess, You fiercely tender, hauntingly reassuring, orgiastically sacred feeling that is even now running through all of our soft, warm animal bodies:

I pray that you provide all the original sinners out there with a license to bend and even break all rules, laws, and traditions that keep them apart from the things they love.

Show them how to purge the wishy-washy wishes that distract them from their daring, dramatic, divine desires.

And teach them that they can have anything they want if they’ll only ask for it in an unselfish way.

And now dear God of Gods, God beyond all Gods, Girlfriend of God, Teacher of God, Goddess who invented God, I bring this prayer to a close, trusting that in these mysterious moments you have begun to change everyone out there in the exact way they’ve needed to change in order to become the gorgeous geniuses they were born to be.

Amen. Awomen.

Wow. That really charges my battery – how about you?

Tip for the sniff snuffle cough wheeze COUGH

Tip for the sniff snuffle cough wheeze COUGH

It appears as though my “get sick for Christmas” tradition is active again this year. Can’t blame the tree, since it started before I got it. I’ve got to work tomorrow, but that’s my last day. I’m hoping to get ecards out – at least – before Christmas. I managed to send out a box to my mom and grandma – who are adjusting to sharing a house again after all these years – but that’s about it. So today the plan is to putter around very slowly, and catch up on some work that needs to be done around the house.

I think I still have some Swiss Kriss – my secret weapon – around here somewhere. This stuff is the only thing I know about that might help, since I’ve started wheezing now. Swiss Kriss is a laxative tea. I’ve never actually tasted it, but the combination of herbs is powerful.

Swiss Kriss

Here’s what to do:

  1. Prepare a space on the counter, and grab a big towel.
  2. Get a nice wide pot and boil some water in it.
  3. Throw in a bunch of the Swiss Kriss tea.
  4. Turn the heat down to a simmer.
  5. Make it at least double the strength of tea that you’d drink, steeping for at least five minutes.
  6. Carefully transfer the pot onto the counter.
  7. Drape the towel over the back of your head like a parachute, to catch as much of the steam as you can.
  8. Be careful not to burn yourself. Gradually move into the steam.
  9. Take regular, deep breaths through your nose and mouth.
  10. Almost immediately, your sinuses will drain.
  11. Then your face will sweat, and you’ll start coughing.
  12. Continue to breathe in the herbal steam for at least 10 minutes.

This clears out all the gunk in your sinuses and in your lungs, and it’s even good for your skin. I usually follow up with a nice long shower to amplify the effect.

I’m really sensitive to decongestants and antihistamines and I try to avoid both. This more mechanical method has always been a lot more effective for me.

Psyche Up Music

Psyche Up Music

For steppin’ and movin’ into the day – Happy Friday!

Hold On by KT Tunstall

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DhEDbqktSEM[/youtube]

Say you to me
You’re a bird with an eye for anything shiny
Searching the land
For a hero of a man

You say I need
More than my fair share of attention
But I think you know
That just isn’t so

Underneath
I felt the fire of a burning question
Tearing me apart
Right from the very start

And now I see
That it don’t take a trick of the light to excite me
So strong, So long,
You’ll see

Hold on to what you’ve been given lately
Hold on to what you know you’ve got
Hold on to what you’ve been given lately
Hold on cos the world will turn if you’re ready or not

Simplicity
A heart of gold
An old head on young shoulders
Quiet and lovely
Becoming part of me
And now I see
From a handful of names and a thousand faces
One light, burning fiercely

I was tired of January
I was tired of June
I felt a change coming
I was tired of January
Tired of June
I felt a change a coming

I felt a change a coming
I felt a change a coming
I felt a change a coming
I felt a change a coming soon

Hold on to what you’ve been given lately
Hold on to what you know you’ve got
Hold on to what you’ve been given lately
Hold on cos the world will turn if you’re ready or not

Hold on to what you’ve been given lately
Hold on to what you know you’ve got
Hold on to what you’ve been given lately
Hold on cos the world will turn if you’re ready or not

Well the world will turn if you’re ready or not
Yes the world will turn if you’re ready or not