Aaron lay slumped in a corner, and Glory crouched beside him gingerly. His hand covered his wound from view, but Glory was loathe to remove it.

"I'm sorry Aaron," Glory whispered. "This is all my fault."

He grunted, his eyes tightly shut against the pain. "Don't flatter yourself. It looks worse than it is.... It's almost healed. Just hasn't sealed over yet." He paused for several seconds before continuing. "And it's not your fault. You know it's not. Not your sister and not this. I'm not exactly the poster boy for morality here. You'd probably spit on me if you knew what I'd done with my life up till now."

She leaned forward with a sob. "It is my fault. All of it. I should have destroyed my book years ago, after she tried to steal it the first time or asked me how to curse someone. I was just... I was just flattered that someone believed in my studies, even her. No matter how horrible she was to me otherwise, I was just glad she believed in me... no one else did."

He groaned as he shifted his weight towards her. She instinctively reached out to help him, but even as her fingers brushed his cheek, he spasmed in agony. Ripping himself from her grasp with a yelp, he curled against the wall, trembling and gasping for breath. "Wh-what did you do to yourself Glory?"

"Sorry! I'm so sorry!" She cried, tears in her eyes. "I wasn't thinking."

"What did you do?" he demanded, shivering. It felt as if someone had jolted him with a cattle prod.

"I, uh, got a few tattoos." She tried to smile ironically but only managed to grimace. "There's a gentleman I'd been talking to about the magickal applications of tattoos for a while now. It was just one more path of interest for me until... all this. I went there and told him about... what my sister did and my book. I'd been working on diagrams whenever you were out... what I thought would be effective protection and more besides. I gave him my mother's ashes, and he ground up herbs and pigments with Dong Chong Xia Cao caterpillars, Kukui nut soot and cane juice, woad.... "

"Your mother's ashes?" he turned to look at her with a sick disgust.

She ran her hand over her shaved head and the runes that had seemingly grown in their place. "The symbols direct the energies and the herbs and other ingredients are just a matter of tradition... If my theories are right, it's the ashes that will really empower the charms because it was her death that started all this. If... Lori had just left her alone...." Glory rubbed at her eyes. They felt hot and itchy. "The most powerful magic is created through sacrifice. My mother's ashes were a reminder of that. The pain of the tattoos, even without the pain from the woad, also empowered them. The power of the tattoos is proportionate to the righteousness of my goal and what I am willing to suffer to achieve it."

He looked at her... she could tell he was speechless with disgust. "I'm... going to leave. Obviously Lori knows I'm here, and I have to get my book back, you know? It's... not's that I'm ungrateful for how you took care of me, but there are things I have to do. And it's obvious I'm putting you in danger by being here."

His expression softened. "This?" he replied with weak chuckle, holding up his blood smeared hand. "This is my own dumb fault, not yours. You can stay here as long as you like. I... can't help you if you leave." Disgust he might feel, but it was self-directed. Compared to Glory, he might as well have crawled out from under a rock.

"I think we already had a discussion that went something like this, and I'm still leaving. It's not... healthy for me to stay here. I'll never be able to stand up to my sister if I use you as a crutch, and I'm not going to put you in danger again. I'll be responsible enough for anything my sister does with my book, I'm not going to watch her pick off people around me just because they try to help me."

He was silent for a long time. She was just about to stand up and leave when he held out his hand. "Here, take it."

"What? After what happened the last time I touched you? Are you nuts? And what about your wound?"

"It's healed. I just need a bath. So, just... take my hand. I'm not letting you leave until you take my hand." When she still hesitated, he sighed. "Look, I want you to know I'm here if you need my help. Just," he lunged suddenly, grabbing her outstretched hand in his own, "take my hand!"

He gritted his teeth as every cell and sinew of his body seemed to catch fire. He had no way of knowing what would happen when the sword left his body, if he could even transfer it to Glory with whatever she'd done to herself, but he wasn't going to let her leave without trying to give her a way to fight back. Her tattoos might give her the element of surprise, but it wasn't going to stop a thug with a knife or a determined demon.

It took only an instant, but it was a moment that seemed to stretch into infinity for both of them. When Aaron finally released her hand, they both slumped against the wall. Glory stared at her hand. There was no pain, though she felt there should be. She supposed she felt a little warm, a little... exhilarated, but that was fading fast. It wasn't until Aaron groaned softly that she came back to herself.

"Aaron!" She crawled over to where he lay, then stopped, uncertain if she should touch him. Aaron was shivering uncontrollably. Though the pain of her touch had ended with the successful transfer of his sword, a new pain had taken over his senses. It seemed to go on and on forever. "What... what did you do?!" she demanded.

"I gave you my sword. Couldn't let you run around without giving you some kind of protection." He chuckled weakly. He knew what the pain was now. He hadn't felt anything for so long, but he was no longer insulated by the sword's power. He was dying, though it might take a few decades. He'd never felt so alive.... so alive it hurt. "Look, I... put you in danger by bringing that woman here. I should have known better. All my life, the only person I've ever thought about was myself. I figure it's time I started acting my age a bit." He snorted, but she just gave him a weird look. She'd learn, in time, what the sword did. Maybe it was better she had it. She'd put it to much better use.

"But you didn't have to...."

"I did." He looked away as he pulled himself up the wall, pushing away her hands as she tried to help.  She'd been determined to go, but now she might seek an excuse to stay, to help him or because she felt grateful or responsible. God, the girl was all about responsibility. He couldn't let her do that. "You should go. Lori knows you're here, so the sooner you leave, the better off both of us will be."

"But... I should help you."

Yup, right on cue. "You're not responsible for me!" He all but shouted, and she flinched. He felt like an ass, but he knew he had to make a clean break with her, for both their sakes.

"I..." she began, then her shoulders slumped. What she wanted was to stay. She might not be used to interacting with people, but despite his less savory personality quirks, he was a decent person and more than anything she wanted a friend, a confidant... she wanted someone to know her. No one in all her life had ever attempted to do anything for her, except now, Aaron had, and she wanted to stay because it felt good to be treated like a person. But what she wanted was really irrelevant, wasn't it? She had to take care of her own mess and staying would only put him in danger, especially now that he didn't really have a way to defend himself. And besides, he didn't seem to want her there any more. "I hope you have a good life Aaron." She pushed herself to her feet, grabbing her backpack even as she walked to the door.

End Chapter 2

The Ancient Mariner’s life-in-death, a kind of zombification in which the outcast cannot touch the world around him, represents a nautical chart of the death trip framed by the horrified fascination of the wedding guest, though in this case the principle at work is a death of affect. Surely Bram Stoker’s Dracula was on a death trip-- the death of those on whom he fed even as he himself remained trapped in the space between death and life. Being deathless, can the undead even know the death tripper’s dark pleasures? 

Of necessity, the death trip is concerned with space and time or, more accurately, a space of no-time, which is the abrogation of a fundamental law: there is no time without space nor space without time, yet the death trip ventures to pry them apart, to locate the point at which death and deathlessness merge.

For the dead death is time’s absence, its cancellation, the nothing at the end of the track where the possibility of change is abolished. When Odysseus enters Hades and encounters Achilles, the first question he asks is what it is like to be dead. Better a poor man’s slave, the warrior drones, than a king among the dead.

Francis Bacon, quoting Seneca, held that “the trappings of death terrify us more than death itself.” It is only the “groans and convulsions and a discoloured face, and friends weeping, and blacks (mourning clothes) and obsequies and the like” that frighten us and “show death terrible.”

Chuck Klosterman’s Killing Yourself to Live a book describing what he claims to be a  “cross-country death trip” is in fact a form of Dark Tourism, which as in all touristic activities is voyeuristic, and thus retains a separation between physical space enshrining death and its visitor. Exploring the cemetery, the concentration camp or the abattoir the Dark Tourist seeks contact with the infinitude of non-being which suffuses their symbols. The instruments and environments of historical genocide, preserved to commemorate an evil out of all proportion to everyday life, are in and of themselves depthless. That strand of barbed wire, the cast iron door of this oven, these killing floors, retain a significance whose specificity can only be abstracted. 

Cinema and music are the cultural forms most suited to representing death trips. Willard’s ritualized assassination of Kurtz, whose obsession with his own looming destruction reveals a death principle at the heart of imperialism which inexorable reverts upon the invaders. The landscape of Vietnam becomes carnivalesque, trippy, distorted by the casual brutality of technologized warfare. Apocalypse Now conjures a nightmare of radical contradictions between image and history: the neolithic terrain of rice paddies flayed by ordnance directed by electronic weapons systems, the burnt husk of a Huey lodged in the jungle’s canopy, a PT boat loaded with an arsenal of automatic weapons attacked with spears and arrows. 

Or Helter Skelter, a song that popular memory still yokes to the Manson Family’s slaughter of innocents. Again there is the presence of ritual, an inversion of logic, that terrorizes. Pastoral flower children bent on acid, the weird charisma of a jailbird Rasputin, and an uncomprehended political rhetoric of revolution imagine their crimes as the spark for a cataclysmic Race War. Or perhaps Manson would better be described as an Acid Era John Brown. 

Against the schismatic ripple of psychosis underlying the Freak’s dream of play and psychedelic innocence the Velvet Underground-- more urban hipster than idyllic hippie, quasi-Gothic yet absolutely modern, celebrating the decadent pleasures of sado-masochism, gender confusion, and heroin-- posits a morbid chic. Despite the strange tentativeness of the band’s percussion and vocals-- its almost vulnerable quality-- the music produced is Baudelairean, a late-capitalist Romanticism stripped of its youthful ardor, fascinated by the monstrosities of stew and the street.

The Death Trip of the hardline Left is most notably associated with groups such as the SLA, WUO and in particular Germany's Baader-Meinhof and its successor the Red Army Fraction, which was perceived almost immediately as fated. Yet the insularity of this group, its unity of purpose, and rigorous ideological purity cannot be reduced to nihilism. “The death instinct,” Herbert Marcuse writes in Eros and Civilization, “is destructiveness not for its own sake, but for the relief of tension. The descent toward death is an unconscious flight from pain and want. it is an expression of the eternal struggle against suffering and repression. And the death instinct itself seems to be affected by the historical changes which affect their struggle” (29).

Ashes Of Blood

Whispers wash in,
The red stream runs free.
Into the Ash,
Of the dead willow tree.
With the taste of sour,
The souls set free.
Ashes to Ashes,
The red stream runs free.
Branch after Branch,
The ashes fall down.
With the red stream at its base,
With a soft sound.
Into the ash,
Of the dead willow tree.
The ashes of blood,
Let the souls set free.

Copyright ©2008 Jake Alexander Cruse

Most of day six was spent waiting for Aunt J to arrive.  She'd spent the first week of her vacation in New England, and was in Boston for the 4th of July.   When she arrived we had a good time listening to her tell stories about her adventures.  I love to listen to my aunt tell a story.    

Hearing her talk about New England made me want to go, too.  It's definitely on my list.   But the way things are going, I don't know how I will come up with the time or money.  I mean, I just used up all vacation for the rest of the year on this one trip.   

Day 7 was all about errands.   Since my aunt hadn't been in Washington for years, there were some things that she needed to do.  One of the top things on her list was going to the DMV to get a change of address and a new picture.   So I spent two hours in the DMV in Washington.  Not a very vacation-y activity.

The other thing that need to happen was that my grandfather's ashes had to be scattered.  A tradition was started with my grandmother.  A bit of her ashes were scattered into the ocean at a particular beach, and the rest were taken and buried in the churchyard in Cambridge, England where she was from.   The family decided to do the same with Grandpa.   So we went to the beach.  This is just a little illegal, so I don't really recommend it.

We never really had a memorial for Grandpa, so it was nice to be able to send him off somehow.

And then we went for a decent lunch with a really crappy waiter.    How much does that suck?   

Then we went home and had some grilled goodness on the deck.   I used to have a huge deck, but my parents' deck puts that one to shame, I have to say.

It took Glory a few seconds to catch her breath as she stood there. Her heart felt like it was going to hammer its way out of her chest. She wasn't brave... she wasn't powerful... she was just very, very lucky, and she knew it. For all her bravado, she was virtually helpless. When she finally managed to pull her eyes away from the corpse, she dragged herself to her feet to check on Aaron. She couldn't tell if the pain in her skin had faded from adrenaline or if some of the tattoos she'd chosen for their healing symbolism had kicked in. Though initially reluctant to tattoo her entire body, Mr Motou had finally acquiesced. He had been as intrigued by the idea as she had been, and also, he understood her commitment when she explained what she wanted mixed with the ink. It had taken hours of grueling work. He had turned away two scheduled clients in order to devote all of his energy and skill to her tattoos.

The loss of her hair was a blow to her pride. She'd shaved it not only for the sake of tattoo placement, but because it had always been a source of pride for her, and her pride was what had gotten her into this mess. She'd never been vain like her sister, but if there was one physical thing she liked about herself, it was her hair. Aside from her intelligence, her hair was the one thing she took pride in. The former had suffered in the wake of her sister's malicious use of her book. Obviously Glory was not as smart as she'd thought.

Shaving her hair off was symbolic, as was burning it to ash. Mixing those ashes, and the ashes of her mother, with the ink Mr Motou had used to tattoo her skin... that had been a vow. She wasn't going to cower and stumble over her modesty any more. Her pride and her aversion to conflict was what had gotten her into this mess in the first place. She had to be bold, she had to be strong, and most of all, she had to arm herself with the tools she had spent her entire life researching.

She stood up straight. Her skin no longer stinging from the ink, though she could feel the raised forms under her fingers like welts. Before he would even begin, Mr Motou had warned that it would take days to heal, that he would be irresponsible if he didn't warn her that sleeping... would be quite difficult in the coming days to say the least. She had insisted, and really, it hadn't been that difficult to convince him in the end. He was an artist who knew the value and meaning of his work, in a world where most just saw something stylish or barbaric. Every tattoo should have meaning and in that meaning, power. In some cultures, it was a right of passage, a milestone. In others, it was a way to fix a memory or moment in time. Tattooing was a sacred art form. They both knew that the pain of the tattoos was part of the process. Just as one usually had to suffer in society in order to do what was right. Nothing worth doing was ever easy.

It was not an aspect of his art that Mr Motou had had the opportunity to exercise for quite a long time. She'd offered him what money she still had in her savings, knowing it was inadequate for the extensive work he was about to undertake. He barely acknowledge the amount with a grunt as he looked through her diagrams and symbols, suggesting some revisions in those he was familiar with and some additions. Since her mother's death, Glory had worked on nothing else. But Lori knew her too well if she'd sent the vampire to get her new work before killing her. She resolved to burn her notes and when she did, vow again to bring her sister down.

Glory knew she should ache from the beating she'd just taken, but that was also fading quickly. The healing symbols on her shoulders or hands at work...? She had no way of knowing really. All of her research, all of her accumulated rituals and speculations, most of it guess work and instinct. She'd always believed they would work, every single spell she'd created, it was why she'd always kept them away from her sister. But she'd never put any of it into use for herself either. She'd always felt that to do so would be irresponsible.

It wasn't like she could afford to be so reticent any more.

Mr. Motou had brought out an odd accumulation of herbs and ground them into the inks. Glory had no doubt that the health board would not approve, but she trusted his knowledge, even when he took out what looked like dried caterpillars with mushrooms growing from their heads. She might know more about the symbols she wanted engraved into her skin, but he knew the traditions that empowered them.

She heard Aaron groan in the kitchen and shouted, "Aaron! I'm coming!" It was time to see if her tattoos could heal more than just herself.

"Nice try sucker!" growled the vampire as she grabbed Glory by the back of her sweatshirt and swung her across the room and into a wall.

She unsteadily climbed to her feet and staggered away from the wall. "Sorry... I think that's my line." Unfortunately it wasn't all show. She suspected her shoulder might be dislocated this time.

The woman just stood there in the middle of the room, waiting. Her shirt was a mess and the table leg still stuck out a good three or four inches. She was shaking and making a gulping noise which Glory quickly realized was laughter.

"I have to give you credit. Your sister said you were a weakling, but I haven't had this much fun in years! A little hint though," she said snidely as Glory approached, "most people don't have the upper body strength to penetrate more than a few inches into the body. 'Specially with your little bit of broken wood." She flicked it which her hand. " And you know, this was my favorite shirt, so I'm going to have to take it out on your hide."

"Thanks for the tip." Glory growled as she got closer. She wasn't going to be fooled twice. At least her shoulder was already letting up a bit. Maybe it wasn't dislocated after all. She took a swing at the vampire but knew she wouldn't connect. She hadn't planned to. The vampire laughed at her and attempted to grab her, but Glory ducked and cringed, then fell to her knees. When the woman stood back to gloat, as Glory had guess she would, Glory fell onto her back and kicked with all her might. "I'll remember that in the future." She hissed as her foot hit the wood sticking from the woman's belly.

Arching her back as the wood finally pierced her heart, as if that would drive it back out again, the vampire stopped making her gulping noise, though she did flop around like a fish for a few seconds. When the woman finally stopped moving, Glory went and stood over her, waiting for the smallest twitch to prove the woman was playing possum again. Finally, when she was almost certain that the body would not move, she lifted her foot and brought it down on the inch of wood still sticking out of her gut and drove it right through her back. She would not be getting up again.

Glory leaned down and stared at the corpse for several more seconds. Then knelt and whispered, "I don't know you. I don't know who you used to be or if you were ever a good person, but I promise I'll make my sister pay for everything. Even this."

to chapter 2, page 6

That is not to say that England are not a decent bunch also, but I feel that England are still trying to find the right blend to truly move on to the next level.  And once that level is achieved, it is about staying there.

With the Ashes series coming up next year, it looks like England are shaping up nicely.  The saying, "It is a marathon, not a sprint", comes to mind.

Still, the first of the test matches starts today, and South Africa should prove to be worthy opposition going on their current world standing and incredible (experienced) talent.

I for one am looking forward to some amazing cricket!

Girl, moral degenerate

“Girl, age 13 years, had an extraordinary physical development for her age; the mother had married again. The girl was brought up by grandparents who lived in a factory town. The child early showed vicious instincts which frightened the family. She was arrested for a series of thefts of goods displayed at stores it was a case of precocious puberty. She went to a convent with the formal promise that she could leave after three months. As the time approached she declared if she was kept any longer she would set fire to the building. Then she was placed in several institutions, but all were glad to get rid of her. At one convent where she remained forty-eight hours she refused to eat; pretended there was something the matter with her eyes, so she could not sew. At another place where she remained but one night she frightened the sisters and boarders by twisting herself so when laughing that they though ther insane. At the convent where she remained some time she acted still worse; she would attack the sick and scandalized the personnel by her words and jests. She was vicious by nature. She suffered from a cerbro-spinal trouble and excessive sexuality.”

     That motto was written by Father Gabriel Richard when the school that he had built in Detroit was destroyed by a fire that destroyed the city in 1805.  Obviously, the people of Detroit took that motto to heart and have rallied, to rise from the ashes more than once.  It is time to fight again from recent news reports.

       Wayne county prosecutors are preparing to amend the charges against Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick for perjury in the text messaging scandal; that has all but, tied up the city of Detroit with it's complications.  It seems that the prosecutors have discovered new text evidence that underscores the mayor's alleged extra-marital activities; and the fact that, they were not limited to his former aide Christine Beatty.  It makes you wonder if she knew of the others; and how she feels about their relationship now.  It also makes you wonder if his wife knew of the others before it came to light in recent days; she has shown great forebearance by standing by him;  when the other accusations came to light about Ms. Beatty.  Mr. Kilpatricks personal and public relationships are appearing to be very complex; and the text documentation could prove to be his legal undoing.

       If prosecutors do amend the court documents to include the words "and others"  along with Ms. Beatty's name, in regards to the mayor's denial of any alleged extra marital affairs...then, it would broaden the perjury charges, if the text messages on the phones prove his denials as false; and, the judge accepts the additional texts into evidence. 

        Why Mr. Kilpatrick continues to drag out the issues before the court is a matter of contention.  Whether he steps aside willingly; or, whether he is forced out of his position...it appears that the city is more than ready to move on.  Where the legal wrangling goes, from here, remains to be seen; however, it would be nice if the city could be spared any more extra expense from having to force the issue.  That money could be put to better use; if Mr. Kilpatrick cares about the city of Detroit as much as he says he does; then it would be a blessing to end this now.   

       We can only hope that Detroit's motto will be a self-fulfilling prophecy..." We hope for better things; it will rise from the ashes".  See previous story: http://writeasrain.wordpress.com/2008/05/29/heck-nohe-wont-go/

"In many cases my children have ceased to live holy lives. They don't care about pleasing me, only about pleasing themselves. They want all the time - more toys, more stuff, more fun - yet they seek after things that mean nothing and will disappear like dust, end up in landfills or just cease to satisfy in no time flat.

My own children, who call themselves by my name do not seek me with their whole hearts. They seek things pertaining to me like church services, the blessing of the pastor, books, other people's opinions but they don't seek me. People have forgotten how, or they never knew how, to seek me for themselves, so they don't try. They pay lip serivce to being believers but their hearts are empty and their mouths are hungry only for more goodies and treats. No one wants to consecrate himself or herself because they don't want to look too religious. It is more important to them to look right or to have friends or to be accepted by others than to please me.

Yet did I not say that you must deny yourself, sacrifice families and homes and lands to come after me? This life is temporal. Soon everything as you know it will be gone and all those things that you lusted after will vanish like a mist. Then your hands will be empty and your hearts will be filled with ashes in the place where you first invited me to live.

What is to be done?

Turn you heart toward me. Seek me first. Seek first the kingdom of God and righteousness. Do you think I lied when I told you that everything you could ever want will be added unto you? I do not lie, neither do I violate my word. I am the Lord and I do not change.

Your first thought in the morning should be of me - what do I want you to do today? If you seek me first I will see that you are provided with everything that you need. You need not wonder how I will do that. It's not your concern. Seek me in everything you do, every choice you must make, everything you want, need, care about. You have no idea how much easier I can make your life when you are totally submitted to me. Does that mean that life will always be fun and easy? No, that's not what I mean. I mean that when you are submitted to me, your life is no longer yours. Your decisions are no longer yours. Obedience is your way of life. Do you think that I will not lead you into what I deem to be your best? Of course I will and I will lead you through difficulties and tribulations with joy and peace. Seek first the kingdom of God and my righteousness and everything that I know you need will be added to you."

"The clip itself is fairly revolting, rather like watching Hitch get his cherry broken on the set of a pornographic film. The alacrity with which he addresses one of his torturers as 'sir', the way he gives himself over-- vulnerable, trusting-- to these defenders of civilization, is embarrassing and distasteful. There's a psychology here peculiar to the middle-aged male, I'd suggest, the deference of the 'soft' man (of letters) to the 'hard' man (of action), that seems to offer a key to the GWOT imaginary. Both sets of combatants traffic in violence: the nefarious Al Qaeda (whom, we are assured, are pitiless, lethal, their tentacles curling around the heart of the West) and the clear-eyed professionals (perhaps bearded to provide a dash of color-- no starched automatons these, but warriors willing to 'go native' in pursuit of their quarry) opposing them. Between the two contenders stands the true subject of the Terror War narrative, the one for the sake of whom the drama is enacted and thus its narrator/protagonist: Hitch (or his various counterparts) quivering maiden-like in expectation, repulsed by the brutality of the swarthy interlopers and equally ardent for the magnificent bravery of his champions-- the SAS, CIA, Blackwater, etc.-- in spite of the fact that their methods are virtually indistinguishable."

Name: The destruction of the city from Godzilla

Author: Tyler Bingham

Comment:
- What have you seen, old man?
- Godzilla, Godzilla!

Extraction Site

This video from El Paso, Texas is informative.

http://medianewsgroup.a.mms.mavenapps.net/mms/rt/1/site/medianewsgroup-tnmnp-elpaso-pub01-live/current/launch.html?maven_playerId=timesmedia&maven_referralObject=e9184947-d40f-4ae8-99f9-17861b424b8f

If you prefer to read an article here is one.

http://www.elpasotimes.com/news/ci_9712934

More information on Lower Cost Cremations can be found here:

There are Four benefits of a low cost cremation funeral.

1. A lower burial cost option.

2. A no burial cost option

3 A Scattering of Ashes at a later date.

4. A burial of ashes at a later dare.

Rest in Peace: Insider’s Tips to the Low Cost Less Stress Funeral by R Brian Burkhardt and Matt Bacak. #1 International Best Selling Author also gave thumbs up to this book. This book is published by Morgan James Publishing.

Your Funeral Guy, R Brian Burkhardt, Funeral Director, Author, Blogger, State of Illinois

The "Google Books Search" give a look inside the book.

http://books.google.com/books?q=r+brian+burkhardt&btnG=Search+Books

So we are alive,are we?
Then we all should live.
So we all exist.
We all just need to survive.
We all just need to thrive,
to help cover our insecure selves.

So every one has there own problems,
everyone has them,just that it is different.
So we all think of dieing,
because that is what we all are ultimately
going to do-die.
For death is a part of life.

So everyone who is alive has a life,
yet all of us were once dead-
unborn in the mind of the universe.
So all of us will be dead-
a dead thought buried in the universe,
far forgotten but suddenly remembered.

So we all need to do something,
for we all feel ,we feel,
that when we die,more than our ashes,
our deeds and doings should have
spread far and wide.
So we all don't hide.

So we all did once hide,
but we don't.Yet the past remains,
if not dead ,dormant because
once the world is spoken,
whether revered or blasphemously ,
it remains recorded vividly.

So we all do,do something.
And that we say is our worth.
We either preach virtue,
or we all say, let do.
So we all think we are right-
barking dogs seldom bite.

So we all can think!
And so we think,think about
everything,for we all
think we can think out anything.
And so we sit and wonder-
who cares what is right?

So we all think we are right.
And so we all think others are wrong.
We all care for we want to prove,
to ourselves that we were worth
and not just a penny in a ocean,
that we are not charity.

So we are all humans!
And we can do a lot,yet
we all talk,talk and talk.
All our actions are grave,
for everything leads to our
grave.Life is made,for
we have a purpose,
disastrous or lustrous,
we make or brake
for destiny's sake.
And so we are all humans,
we think,think and ponder,
we all sit and wonder,
yet time is quicker and better.
So,go and put a thought but also
act,for time will not wait,
we have to run faster than it.

So keep living.
So keep trying.
So keep smiling.
So keep life.
So keep remembering.
So,so you are alive.

the light shines the brightest

Traveling through the United States in 1890, Rudyard Kipling, whose jaunty doggerel concerning the White Man’s Burden would resonate with imperial longings for the vivifying violence of splendid little wars, sounded a rather snide note of caution: 

"The bond between the States is of an amazing tenuity.  So long as they do not absolutely march into the District of Columbia, sit on the Washington statues, and invent a flag of their own, they can legislate, lynch, hunt negroes through swamps, divorce, railroad, and rampage as much as ever they choose.  They do not need knowledge of their own military strength to back their genial lawlessness" (American Notes).

Despite his deepening annoyance at being informed repeatedly of the charm of his “English accent,” a phrase he places in ironic quotes, Kipling’s views on the United States were not entirely negative. He was struck by the amiability of those he encountered, from the members of San Francisco’s Bohemian Club to a bunco operator who attempted to lure him into a fixed poker game. Yet the incessant optimism of his acquaintances began to grate fairly quickly, particularly when it took the form of breathless pronouncement. Stopping over in Chicago he chatted with a cab driver who extolled the anarchic development of the city in the long wake of its famous fire as “proof of progress,” a statement, Kipling informs his readers, indicating “the cabman... had been reading his newspaper, as every intelligent American should. The papers tell their clientele in language fitted to their comprehension that the snarling together of telegraph-wires, the heaving up of houses, and the making of money is progress.” Extending his visit a few days Kipling begins to realize that such journalistic cliches have not only entered popular consciousness but have in fact come to dominate it: 

 "All that Sunday I listened to people who said that the mere fact of spiking down strips of iron to wood, and getting a steam and iron thing to run along them was progress, that the telephone was progress, and the net-work of wires overhead was progress. They repeated their statements again and again."

Knut Hamsun’s account of his two year sojourn in the states, The Cultural Life of Modern America, is even more dour than Kipling’s irritable assessment. He notes “the intense noise, the restlessness, the hectic life in the streets, the nervous, bold dispatch with which things move along everywhere” (5) in New York and concludes that it is not the nation’s institutions that galvanize Americans into action but ruthless economic necessity. “Everywhere there is the same bustling hurrah in things, the same steam-hammer din, the same clamorous activity in all that goes on,” he writes. The immigrant family who “lived on two crowns a day” in Norway “needs a dollar and a half” in New York “and for the great majority it takes considerable doing” simply to stay afloat (6). The frenetic economic life of the city, for Hamsun, takes on the character of a relentless, uninterrupted assault on the senses: “People are in a constant state of alarm; they feel pressured... astonished... confused.... They get upset if they are simply going to get a new pair of shoes, dreading that they may not know enough English to haggle.” This anxiety, provoked by a sense of inadequacy, of not yet being fluent in the language or customs of the assimilated and native-born, rapidly contorts into disbelief at “Americans’ enormous patriotism,” a love of country so pronounced it seems to the author deranged. “It is incredible,” Hamsun complains, “how naively cocksure Americans are in their belief that they can whip any enemy whatsoever. There is no end to their patriotism; it is a patriotism that never flinches, and it is just as loudmouthed as it is vehement” (7). Sucked into the life of the city as if by centrifugal force, derided as foreigners or greenhorns, pummeled by market forces, immigrants and visitors  are “frequently amazed at the ignorance, the gross unenlightenment on which this national pride rests” (8). Americans seem to be entirely insulated against even the very existence of life beyond the national borders, and “this ignorance of others... pervades every social class, all ages, everything” (9). It is a disregard so enormous that Hamsun can only conclude that it must be cultivated, a collective narcissism ranking as “one of the national vices of the American people.” Americanization, then, proceeds at a breakneck pace. Socio-economic pressures-- the bludgeoning rhetoric of national pride and the desperate rush to survive-- are so pronounced that immigrants are pushed “to erase every last trace” of their origins (11). Soaked in an effluence of nationalist fervor, relative newcomers begin to espouse the doctrine of reduced immigration, nativist sentiments which, for Hamsun, “are simply green fruits of American patriotism.... the result of the Americans’ strongly developed celestial belief in themselves” (13). For natural born citizens “penny-whistle patriotism has permeated their thinking since childhood, transforming a justifiable national pride into an unjustifiable arrogance that nothing and no one can shatter” (20). Even the poorest seem to wallow in this complacency, and to see “the aristocracy of fortunes, of accumulated capital” as a kind of divine hierarchy, a belief “which the entire nation cultivates with out-and-out religious fervor” and smacks of “the medieval power of the ‘true’ aristocracy without possessing any of its nobility; crudely and brutally, it is a certain horsepower of economic invincibility.”

From Life Gems:

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I think it's a great way to deal with one's pain of losing a loved one.

It's almost like getting a tattoo to get over pain from various reasons.

Might seem creepy to some though.

I'm actually more worried that it might not sparkle as much as I would have liked it to..or worse if they had some mis-match..and I got someone's else loved one.

On one level of course, these cranks contend, Race is in fact a fiction. On another, however, they immediately add, Race carries social weight. In the 18th and 19th centuries scientists of all stripes sought to unravel the mystery of human identity, from Cuvier through Blumenbach to Agassiz, Gobineau, Spencer, Morton, and beyond-- aided and abetted by dubious methods and reflexive prejudices, rambling from polygenist theories of the races as separate species to climatological speculations about the effect of ambient temperature, terrain and rainfall on groups degenerating from an original pair. The christian genesis myth proved hard to dislodge from these accounts, at least until Darwin popularized and gave preliminary evidence of the idea of evolution in 1859, with all manner of side-tracking and obsfucation further clouding what were already notably murky waters. As Genesis relates the making of only one couple, Adam and Eve (though it's important to note that the story of creation as it appears in scripture is a twice-told tale) monogenists (one-racers) argued, it is impossible that human difference is a matter of species. (Strangely enough, many of those who defended slavery were also advocates of One Race; just as odd there were abolitionists who held with polygenesis.) Still, one-racers continued, it's obvious to even the most innocent eye that there are fundamental differences between, say, Blacks and Whites: Negros are a supple people, prone to cantankerous laughter and incapable of abstract reasoning while Caucasians, especially of the Anglo-Saxon variety carry a peculiar affinity for democracy and conquest in their germ-plasm. And if ever the two should meet in order to reproduce, while in the short term the hybrid product of their union, the Mulatto, might kick up a notch in terms of native abilities, left alone without regular infusions of White blood he or she would inevitably revert to type and descend back down into the mud.

So far we're on what ought to be familiar ground: the repulsive and often bizarre claims of scientific racism essentialize whole groups of people based on phenotypical traits. Combined with an ideology of inevitable progress, with a teleological conception of history, this sort of pernicious nonsense led to eugenics (65,000 people were forcibly sterilized in the US as late as the 1960s) Bergen-Belsen, and apartheid. But wait: cue the sound-byte from MLK's "I Have a Dream" speech and-- poof!-- racism's over! Fast forward to 2008: there's a Black guy running for president! I mean he seems pretty Black. But "is he Black enough"? (And what about that crazy reverend with his "hate-filled" church. Even Spike Lee said Wright's over the top!)

The denial of race is form of racialist discourse. Accusations of "playing the race-card" or invocations of some "race industry" are the form that racialist and racist thinking have taken at present. According to this script any invocation of race, even in the service of anti-racism, is racist. As with so much of "liberal" thought it depends on a deep confusion between the individual and the structure, between personal beliefs and social conditions. We can imagine somebody whose grandparents had a lawn jockey and voted for Wallace. Perhaps this person secretly harbors fears of the "Mexicanization" of the United States. Maybe they look twice at the airport when a man with a beard and a turban steps in line. Yet when asked they will likely claim to be free of any speck of prejudice-- hell, they don't even think about race!

Unofficial funeral directors let folks know they can scatter ashes where it is not allowed.

Several years ago Channel 6 in Orlando Reported:

"Possible Scattering Of Human Remains On Disney Rides Reported
Ride Closed, Police Alerted After Woman Seen Dumping Substance On Ride

Disneyland workers were recently forced to close the "Pirates of the Caribbean" attraction after a ride security camera caught a woman apparently dumping human remains, in what may be a growing trend.

Workers at the Anaheim theme park spotted the woman sprinkling an unidentified substance into the water on the "Pirates" ride. Anaheim police were notified of the incident.

The woman told Disney park workers that the substance she dumped was baby powder, but officials are investigating the possibility that she sprinkled human ashes, Local 6 reported.

Some Disney watchers said park-goers tell them that people smuggling in the cremated remains of their loved ones and then sprinkling ashes on rides has been going on for a while.

They said it started at the Haunted Mansion, but now the "Pirates of the Caribbean" ride is growing in popularity.

...

Disney officials said they were unaware of any confirmed ash-scattering incidents in the park and didn't believe it to be a problem, the Los Angeles Times reported.

Park officials said there was no real way of knowing if cremated remains were dumped into the "Pirates"ride."

Simply Google scatter ashes at Disney World for more information.

More information can be found here:

Rest in Peace: Insider’s Tips to the Low Cost Less Stress Funeral by R Brian Burkhardt and Matt Bacak. #1 International Best Selling Author Jason Oman also gave thumbs up to this book. This book is published by Morgan James Publishing.

Your Funeral Guy, R Brian Burkhardt, Funeral Director, Author, Blogger, State of Illinois

feeding on lust

that does not satisfy

licking a skank

who’ll suck u dry

angel or whore?

don’t wanna care

what’s da difference

as long as she’s there?

love lies beside u

but u don’t wanna see

plunging into the abyss

denial’s sweet misery

numbing ur pain

cheap sex & wine

drinking in poison

soothe ur tortured mind

once tender soft soul

now without hope

u cannot face love

nay u just can’t cope

so on and on you go

living ur lies

ignoring the anguish

of ur heart’s deepest cries

perhaps one day

Love higher than mine

will reach out n grab u

intervention divine

nothing but a miracle

will stop u in ur tracks

veil of dank depression

torn from front to back

cos I’ve seen inside

dark ocean deep

shimmering pure soul

in restless fitful sleep

call me silly or stupid, it’s ok

u’ve called me many names

deride my tender whisperings

yet i love u all the same

and despite my fears and doubts

hopelessness and grief

from the ashes of my pain

for u I’ll find strength to believe

A Pembrokeshire man has had his father's ashes turned into a teapot.

John Lowndes, 54, says it's his way of remembering his dad who used to love putting the world to rights over a pot of tea. "I think he'd understand. The only thing more appropriate would have been a pint glass," he told the Daily Mail.