"Yoga"

Pain and Endurance

"In Search of Identity"

Tom Robbins

"When they tell you to grow up, they mean stop growing"

And another

"Humanity has advanced, when it has advanced, not because it has been sober, responsible, and cautious, but because it has been playful, rebellious, and immature."

Put The Wig Back On

Hey y'all! Up until this point all of my posts have either been poems, pictures, or videos: either stuff that other people have done or stuff that I have done in the past. At this point however, I felt like just writing some thoughts down, impressing the thoughts swimming around in my head onto the electric page.

So I've been thinking lately. About life and stuff that happens when you're a teenager. Stuff that's often cliche, but only because everyone goes through it. I'm talking about drama, identity, and self-doubt. Trying to figure out who the hell you are and how you fit into this crazy jigsaw world. Anyway, I've been thinking, and it seems to me that problems like these aren't things that just go away when you get old. "Poof- you just turned twenty and now you no longer feel self-doubt!" That just doesn't happen. If you feel shitty about yourself, if you're trying to figure out who the goddamn hell you are, if you're dealing with drama seeping in from your various relationship then all that is stuff you will have to deal with for the rest of your life.

You have to figure out how handle those issues. You have to figure how to deal with self-doubt, how to deal with identity, and how to deal with drama in your personal life. I mean face it: you're always going to have bad days. You're always going to feel bad about yourself at times. Stuff like that doesn't go away: its part of reality and its part of life. What that means, however, is that you have to figure out how to handle those feelings. I'm not saying how to handle, I'm still trying to figure that out myself. But you absolutely cannot ignore them or run anyway from them.

I'm sorry if I got too preachy here or anything. These are just my thoughts: ignore them, follow them, do whatever the hell you want with them. Like I said, all I'm doing here is impressing the bare surface of my brain upon the electric page. These are my thoughts, hope they help you or at least stimulate you!

Ladies of the Royal Court

American society is home to a hidden misogyny: unconscious and covert yet existent nonetheless. This misogyny is present both through the disproportional statistics of domestic violence as well as the clearly sexist and degrading portrayal of women in pop culture. A solution to this problem must address the issue from both ends: punishing sexism where it appears while taking proactive steps to replace negative influences with positive ones.

The number one cause of injury among women nationwide is domestic violence. Including such leading causes as heart attack, car accidents, etc, the most prominent cause of physical injury for women occurs in the home. Similarly, women are in nine times more danger in their own houses than they are on the street. Perhaps the most disturbing fact is that when women confronted with domestic violence turn to the law or the police for aid, they are routinely ignored and marginalized. The very forces which ought to protect them ignore their cries for help and punish them when they act in self-defense. These facts point towards a hidden mass of sexism extant in our culture and society.

Such sexism is clearly seen when one considers the ad industry, one of the foremost representations of pop culture. Ads repeatedly and clearly display women are sexual objects. They are portrayed as passive, objects of desire rather than individuals in their own right, while universally they are shown as objects of lust. This dehumanization is seen in other aspects of pop culture, such as music and magazines. Numerous songs portray women purely as objects of desire, referring to them as “bitches” and degrading them. Similarly, popular magazines glorify sexuality and physical beauty in a woman, specifically those aimed at teenagers and developing adolescents.

A resolution of the dehumanization and hyper-sexualization of half the world’s population must include both negative and positive aspects: negative through punishing the old view and positive in pushing for a new alternative view. Elements of pop culture that contribute to hyper-sexualization of women must be boycotted or face some sort of financial loss. From sex-obsessed magazines to degrading songs to objectifying ads, the cultural elements that contribute to this hidden misogyny must be eliminated. Similarly, a real crack down on domestic violence is necessitated. Women must be provided with real and significant resources to protect themselves and their children, and the legal and police systems must be reformed to support the real victims.

At the same time a new viewpoint must be advocated and turned into the cultural norm. This viewpoint and new set of cultural values must reject contemporary society’s obsession with sex and physical beauty, while applying a new set of values in an equal way across gender lines. Companies and elements of pop culture that advance this new viewpoint must be rewarded, either by attracting the purchasing power of reform-minded citizens or through federal grants and support.

The misogynistic tendencies present in contemporary culture, tendencies that dehumanize and hypersexualize women, are serious problems that need to be confronted. The incredible amount of domestic violence present in American and current lack of support for victims is atrocious and intolerable, as is the role that pop culture has played. For real and meaningful change to be achieved however, a new set of values must be fashioned to replace the old. It is up to the people to decide what these values will be, but they must reject the misogynistic failures of the current system. By combining this new value system with serious economic pressure on the vanguards of the current value system, true social change can be achieved.

The Buddha

"No one saves us but ourselves. No one can and no one may. We ourselves must walk the path"

Blew In On The Scene

This is an amazing video from an astonishingly good film. The piano accompaniment is one of my favorites pieces of music- achingly moving. 

 

Beautiful and entrancing. If you enjoy this tiny slice then the watch the entire film: American Beauty. Just be warned- it can be a tough movie to watch.

"Glare"

A molten glare pierces through the window,

The sun castigates, ignoring my plea.

Laughter shatters my silent reverie:

Children dart like rabbits so far below,

Scampering, ignorant of hawks to come,

Shadows to blot out the sky, as I know-

Blue sky betrays a grey, present even so.

The clock chimes noon as faceless time stays numb.

Adrift, awash amid our own debris

Swim through flotsam against a tide too strong.

Anger flowers, filling limbs dead so long,

I know what I do, from the breach I flee.

The door is closed and closed it must remain:

Window and glare gone, instead a light rain.

"No Reason At All"

Flapping, my plaid skirt dances in the wind

Smiling, I relax against the plastic bench

My thoughts loose and phantasmal, unformed and ephemeral

Dust surfing on the breeze

Smiling, I stand upon the plastic bench and spread my arms

Making joyful noises for no reason at all

None needed for Dust surfing on the breeze

The constant stares can’t help but make me laugh

Making joyful noises for no reason at all

Seems to define my curious separation

The constant stares used to bother me

I wave, fingers twinkling, to my awkward brothers

Defining my constant separation

Is my distinct refusal to be anything but myself

I wave, fingers twinkling, to my awkward brothers

They just don’t get it

My distinct refusal to be anything but myself

Scares them in their stereotypes: domineering testosterone and rigid muscles

They just don’t get it

Why would anyone want to be normal?

Their stereotypes- testosterone and rigidity

My thoughts loose and phantasmal, unformed and ephemeral

Why would anyone want to be normal?

Flapping, my plaid skirt dances in the wind

They Say "Groovey"

This is mah second posting, and I'm ready to do some blogging! If you guys haven't figured this out already I am a bit on the liberal side of things, and I'm ready to do some more with that. So in a tribute to skeptics everywhere, I've compiled this series of images commemorating the fails of organized religion. From Raptor Jesus to YMCA Jesus, if you can't laugh at this stuff than you need help.

Short and Sweet

The day is done the earth remains, a cloak of black upon the abyss. Turning, a spinning top, floating on cosmic waves surfing into the night

Swooped the Scene

How's it going hombres! This is the first post for RadiantBlogger161 and I am rearing and ready to get started. What I want to do this blog is just use it as an outlet for my thoughts and laughs: post anything I think is cool, funny, or interesting.

To start off I want to post this video that one of my friends showed me: it is absolutely hilarious and if you've got even a sprinkling of liberalism in your soul than you won't be able to help loving this film.

Anyway that's it for my first posting, hoping someone starts checking it out. In the meantime, "see ya sinners!"