I never tire of these cuddled-together shots
Archive for Deborah Lipp
Friday Catblogging
Ten Things
When I saw the title of this article: Then Things to Do to Get Ready to Join a Coven, I was sure I’d dislike it. When I read the first paragraph or so, breezy, fashion mag tone and all, I was absolutely sure I’d dislike it.
But I love it. I adore it. It’s one of the best things I’ve read on the topic. Sample:
1. Learn how to cook.
All Pagans and Witches love to eat. In the twenty-plus years I’ve been practicing Paganism in both coven and community settings, I have rarely if ever attended a ritual that didn’t have some sort of pot-luck feast or meal afterwards. And if everyone brings a lovingly prepared home-cooked dish to the feast and you show up with a bag of potato chips and a container of store-bought dip, it shows a certain lack of maturity on your part. Your willingness to contribute your fair share to the ritual feast may, to others in the coven, reflect your willingness to contribute to coven life as a whole. If you can read, you can learn how to cook.
And it goes on like that. Ten practical, non-spooky, non-oogy, totally smart things you can do with your life to move yourself into a position where you can be a mature, contributing member of a connected group of people.
Read the whole thing.
Answers to Orgasm Trivia
One unsolved this week. Thanks for coming!
“Partial-birth abortion” and the uncertainty of medicine
There are so many things wrong with the recent Supreme Court decision banning “partial birth” abortion that it’s hard to know where to begin. But what’s on my mind today is that there is no exception for the health of the mother, just for the life of the mother. In other words, if giving birth, or having a different, less safe abortion procedure, will make a woman sick, or infertile, or blind, that’s okay, as long as she won’t die.
And in addition to the fact that it’s just a heinous thing to say, that it’s just an evil thing to value a fetus that won’t survive anyway over the health of a human woman, it’s also not what medicine is.
We like to think that it is. We like to think that medicine is the thing where they figure out what’s wrong and what will happen, and they tell you, and that’s what will happen, and they tell you how they’re going to fix it, and they do. But often it’s not like that.
We’re going through a thing in my family now, I don’t want to go into it, but it’s a diagnosis, and then a recovery period, and then a relapse, and then it turns out the first diagnosis was wrong, and then tests, and then more tests, and still no information. But discarding that first diagnosis, throwing us back into uncertainty, that’s what a lot of medicine is like. It’s like “We don’t know so let’s try this and if it doesn’t work we’ll try that and if it doesn’t work we’ll think some more.”
So a woman is bleeding out or septic or whatever. A doctor has to look at the decisions he could make: If she has this procedure she has a really good chance of being fine, and if she has that procedure there’s a greater risk of blood loss but probably she’ll still be fine. And the Supreme Court wants to be a fly on the wall and say, “That’s not a ‘life of the mother’ situation. That’s greater health risk versus lower health risk.” But in fact, the doctor isn’t certain, and in fact, the woman might die.
A year from now, we’re going to have dead women who might have survived had they had the intact D&E procedure falsely named “partial birth abortion.” They will be women who appeared to have a health risk and not a life risk by the uncertain close-one-eye-and-aim world of medicine, and they will be the tragic and enraging posthumous flag-bearers of the fight for reproductive freedom.
Because five men on the Supreme Court decided that health isn’t life. And decided it was up to them to make that decision.
Tuesday Trivia 4/24
Orgasmic hints are up.
Non-ode to Roberta
Today is my sister Roberta‘s birthday. Yay Roberta.
On her blog, Roberta does “birthday odes.” As it happens, I have never mastered the art of silly rhyme. So, no ode.
But here’s the thing. Take two people who are really intuitive, really get each other, love to talk, love to interact, and are sisters, and they will be very close, and really love each other. Take two people who are both very verbal, very in-your-face, have intermittently functioning mouth-brain filters, are sarcastic, strong, interesting, challenging, dynamic, and exciting, and they will surely fight and have conflict.
And here are my sister and I. We love each other. We get each other. We enjoy talking with each other. We’ve had spectacular, scary conflicts. And often I am on tiptoes with her because I am, in fact, scared of that level of conflict. I feel ill-equipped for it. Which is stupid, because in fact, Roberta and I are probably way better equipped than most for handling conflict in a grown up way. Also, it’s worth it, because she’s amazing, and because we’re both amazing and we want and deserve and get huge value from a good relationship.
So here’s to Roberta, born on the same day as Ella Fitzgerald, Hank Azaria, and Al Pacino. She is smart, funny, interesting, pretty, and sings like an angel. She is difficult. It is possible that the fact she is difficult makes her even more worthwhile and more wonderful to know. I’m glad she’s my sister. Happy Birthday.
Tuesday Trivia: Orgasms
1. A woman has an orgasm in the act of performing for a man who doesn’t notice because he is watching TV.
Solved by Roberta (comment #3).
2. A woman has an orgasm when excited by a man who doesn’t notice because he is innocent and interested only in flying.
Solved by Ben (comment #5).
3. A woman has a fake orgasm in public.
Solved by Evn (comment #1).
4. A teenage girl slips out of an open dorm room to masturbate to orgasm in the hall.
HINT: A gay satire.
Solved by Evn (comment #8).
5. A woman and a man are in bed together, the man has a leg suspended in a cast. When the woman discovers that the man isn’t really all that injured, she moans his name aloud in pleasure.
HINT: One-word title.
6. A man masturbates in the shower, meanwhile narrating the experience for the audience.
Solved by Evn (comment #2).
7. “Ah, sweet mystery of life, at last I’ve found you!”
Solved by Roberta (comment #3).
Victory in the VA Pentacle battle
This is huge.
The Bush administration has conceded that Wiccans are entitled to have the pentacle, the symbol of their faith, inscribed on government-issued memorial markers for deceased veterans, Americans United for Separation of Church and State announced today.
This settlement happened because of the persistence of Roberta Stewart, widow of slain Iraqi war veteran Patrick Stewart, and of Selena Fox, Circle Sanctuary, and of thousands of Pagans who wrote letters, signed petitions, blogged, and more. They all deserve enormous praise. I hope Ms. Stewart rests easier tonight.
Sadly, the lawsuit was settled because Americans United for Separation of Church and State was able to discover a specific pattern of discrimination against Wicca in the handling of the Pentacle petition.
Even some Pagans have kind of sneered at this case, and suggested that it was ridiculous to think it was discrimination when it was probably nothing more than beaurocracy or some failure to follow a particular rule or something equally “innocent.” The Libertarian set was quick to bitch about our litigious society and impugn the motives of those who carried this fight forward. But Americans United proved that discrimination was at the root of the problem, forcing the government to settle.
A Wiccan group first petitioned the VA for approval of the pentacle years ago. Officials at the agency dragged their feet on the request but in the interim approved the symbols of six other religions and belief systems. Among them was a Sikh emblem, which the VA approved in just a few weeks.
This is a huge and sorely needed victory for religious freedom. We see so little of the good stuff. Yay!
Monday Movie Review: Mysterious Skin
Mysterious Skin (2004) 9/10
Neil (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) and Brian (Brady Corbet) couldn’t be more different. Neil is a tough, angry, gay hustler. Brian is a nerdy and kind of goofy young man obsessed with UFOs. But their shared history draws them together.
Mysterious Skin is a movie about child molestation, make no mistake. You may see it listed as a “gay” movie, because Neil is gay, but it is not about being gay any more than it is about UFOs. Mysterious Skin is about surviving the experience of child molestation, and what it does to the children, and to the adults they become. Neil and Brian react in ways absolutely opposite of each other, and yet in ways absolutely consistent with their experience. The writers certainly did their homework. In mannerisms, memories, and attitudes, these are definitely abuse survivors. Neil is hypersexual and disregards his own safety, by the time he is eleven or twelve he has abused another child. Brian is asexual, awkward, obedient, and lives at home; he blacks out and is plagued by dreams disconnected from his spotty memories. Each boy took the tools he had available to him in response to his trauma, and built a life as best he could.
I like that Neil was already gay, and was attracted (in his eight year-old way) to his abuser, and yet the film never suggests that the abuse is somehow “about” Neil being gay. It just gives Neil a different way of processing the experience. Neil was gay before and after, but after, his sexuality became something that could only be used to gain or lose power, to give or receive pain and threat.
Joseph Gordon-Levitt is building a hell of a career. He is incredibly inward; everything happens behind his hooded eyelids, and yet he gives so much. Between this and Brick he has become an actor I want to see in everything he does.
Michelle Trachtenberg, on the other hand, lives to prove the mystery that, despite the many talented actors who can’t get work, the untalented and wooden still manage to do so. I just don’t get it.
Anyway, this is a very well-written, mostly well-acted, and kind of beautiful movie, but it is an extraordinarily painful one. It has a rape scene more brutal than anything I’ve ever seen, more disturbing, bloodier, and with Psycho earmarks all over it. I’m not ashamed to say I covered my eyes. So, not for the faint of heart, not a date movie, not a light evening of vegging out in front of the tube. But an excellent film.
Sunday Meditation: Meditation Room #2
This is part 2 of working with your meditation room. This room will become a place you can return to whenever you wish.
Return to your outdoor place, and take a moment to settle there, and breathe in the peaceful beauty of it.
Now you’re ready to go to your cottage. It looks just as you remembered it. As you reach the door, you find the key in your pocket, and let yourself in.
Look around the room. You recognize it, and the sense of familiarity feels wonderful.
Your task today is to make a comfortable spot in which you will sit. It might be cushions on the floor, or a couch, or a rocking chair, or whatever you choose. Arrange the furnishings and cushions. Do you have someplace to rest your feet? Do you have a blanket to wrap yourself in? Make the colors pleasing, and the textures comfortable.
When your comfortable spot is ready, sit in it and find where your gaze rests. Now is the time to prepare a view to enjoy from your comfortable spot. Go to the closet and open it. You’ll find a painting propped up there. Take it and hang it up so that it is in view of your spot. What is it a painting of?
Return to your comfortable spot and look at the painting. What is it? What does it mean to you?
Meditate on the painting while you experience the relaxed comfort of being in this special place you have created.
In the future, you can find other paintings in the closet, and meditate on different images from your cozy seat.
When you are ready, leave the cottage, locking the door behind you and taking the key. You can return whenever you wish.
