http://search.deviantart.com/?q=by:helliongoddess&section=today deviantART RSS for by:helliongoddess en-us Copyright 2009, deviantART.com Sat, 19 Dec 2009 06:49:35 PST deviantART.com http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss http://s.deviantart.com/minish/widgets/apple-touch-icon-precomposed.png http://helliongoddess.deviantart.com/journal/21077173/ http://helliongoddess.deviantart.com/journal/21077173/ Mon, 20 Oct 2008 10:16:47 PDT
As I said to her in her journal, it all reminds me of the opening line of my favorite movie:

“The strangeness of this life cannot be measured…”

Many many thanks to all of you who have been so supportive to her and me both during this trying frustrating period. It's times like this when you truly find out who your friends are and how much they mean to you. Moral support may not seem like much, but it is actually a whole lot when it's all you have. You all are the best.

]]> ~helliongoddess http://helliongoddess.deviantart.com/journal/21006861/ http://helliongoddess.deviantart.com/journal/21006861/ Wed, 15 Oct 2008 18:34:42 PDT
She has a few minutes left on her cell phone, and I have asked her to call me whenever she gets somewhere. She can't even take paypal donations anymore because he bank account is screwed up. I feel like I have let her down, all the things I gave her to look into down there, and none of them worked. She feels like she is letting Nick down. I feel like society is letting us all down, letting a wonderful bright woman like her and her sweet son fall through the cracks, and end up coming to this, with so little to offer her by way of a helping hand, when she asks so little.

]]> ~helliongoddess http://helliongoddess.deviantart.com/journal/20590311/ http://helliongoddess.deviantart.com/journal/20590311/ Thu, 25 Sep 2008 18:53:16 PDT
So with a good suggestion from a friend, I started looking into hostels down around that area Thursday, and found we can get her into a hostel for around half the rent per night of what she is paying now- maybe less. I sent emails to a couple of them explaining her situation, asking if they could maybe even cut her a break on a rate for a whole month, but haven’t heard back yet. Her stepdad made noises about driving her in his van for a day or so, so we got excited about that: cheaper, and she would be able to take more of her stuff, but that didn’t pan out – no big surprise if you know anything about her family. Meanwhile these three nights have eaten up $150 more of the bus ticket money! *Sigh.*

There are two more bits of good news. She did find an excellent rate on a rental car today, $200 bucks, from Alamo. Even with the gas calculated in she will come out with a cost comparable to the bus with $4/gal.gas and the car getting 25MPG highway. Plus she can take more of her things, and thus save on shipping them later or buying them down there, and it will be so much easier on her and Nick than two days straight of riding on a bus. She is more than ready to leave Monday if she can get the money together to go. She is sitting down tonight to figure the finances – what she will have left after paying for tomorrow and Sunday night (she can’t get the bus to the airport to get the car or money out of the bank until Monday) and what she more will need to get there.

The biggest good news at this point is I had a great phone conversation on Friday with Daxzia, one of our LiveJournal Saiyuki friends, who lives down in the area near Kenihiko’s dad in Central Florida. She has been overwhelmed lately with problems with her friends and family, but very much wants to help her with her transition, and really resolved some of our worry with her determination to help out once they get there. She has lots of connections throughout the community, and seems confident she can help Kenihiko and her son find temporary free or cheap shelter somewhere and an affordable place they can rent to live in as well. I told her that at this point the way Kenihiko and I were looking at it, it had come down to “close your eyes and jump”: she has to be somewhere, and she would much rather be there, at least if, god forbid, she ended up on the street there she wouldn’t fucking freeze to death! (That’s gallows humor, folks – something she and I have always had in common. ^__~ ) But Dax put my mind to rest more than it has been since this started, saying she would make sure that it didn’t ever come to that. It’s SO good to know there will be someone down there ready to help them when they get there – the first month will be the hardest.

And many blessings upon any of you that have helped Kenihiko and Nick already – I don’t know what would have happened to them if it wasn’t for all of you. She told me today that her online family was more family to her than her “real” family. I know the feeling. I know you all are tired of me putting the touch on you for this, but if there is anyone who has been meaning to help her out and just forgotten, or hasn’t gotten around to it, now would be a good time. She has got to get out of that motel and on to Florida, and to get by between now and the first when her checks come when she gets there, which is still ten days that she and Nick have to eat, regardless of wherever they end up staying. She is going to be packed and ready to go Monday morning; she is talking about doing one of those “cash advance” things just so she can get the rest of the cash to go (I hate to see her do that because then she will just be short later next month, but I guess if it takes that to her down there, hey, whatever works.) Any money any of you could come up with now would help her get on the road and to Florida, and that’s what’s the most important at this point.

Hopefully the next update you get from... ]]> ~helliongoddess http://helliongoddess.deviantart.com/journal/20452714/ http://helliongoddess.deviantart.com/journal/20452714/ Fri, 12 Sep 2008 10:20:03 PDT
Unfortunately as is happening to far too many people at the moment, Bobbie is a real-life casualty of our crashing economy, and through no fault of her own, and despite doing everything she can do to prevent it, she has lost the little home she was trying to buy to house herself and her adult son, who, like herself is disabled. Bobbie's only income is the disability payments she gets for herself and her son, and I have been amazed at how well she has kept it together this long on so little. But as the inflation rate soared, she like so many others got further and further behind - we all know how easy it is to do, especially now. She was evicted Wednesday morning, and she and Nick are living in a Motel 6.

The unkindest cut of all, as anyone who knows her will understand, was that she had to place her beloved kitties in a shelter – but it was at least a no-kill shelter, and our hopes are that they will all go to new loving homes very quickly, and we all know Bobbie gave them a great time and lots of love while they were with her. Just look at the number of kitty pics in her deviations and you will see how important those cats were to her.

When I talked to her last night (boy am I glad I had had the presence of mind to tell her she could call me collect!) her attitude was still amazingly good, despite the fact that she was down to her last hundred dollars, and she doesn't get paid until the first of the month. That will only cover two nights there, and doesn’t even begin to deal with other essentials of life like food for her and Nick, her meds, and bus transportation so she can get around town and check into the things needs to. Her real hope – her best chance, really – is that she and her son can somehow get the cash together to get bus tickets to get down to Florida (around $350 for both of them) where her dad is. He is the family member that has offered to help her out in terms of shelter until she can get on her feet, but she has to get there first. So she is really thinking about that, but she is more worried right now about just making it through the next couple of weeks … or even the next few nights.

Anything that anyone can do to help her financially, even if it is just sending her five or ten bucks via your paypal account, would be helpful. That would get her around town on the bus for a few days, or a copay on one of her meds. If you can do more than that, so much the better. Anything you can do, she and I both will very much appreciate. Having to ask for help is really hard for Bobbie – believe me, I know. I tried to loan her money one time last summer when I found out she was short the copays for her meds, and not taking them, and she flat wouldn’t take it from me no matter how much I pressured her. She wants very much to pay everyone back every penny they loan her, even if it takes her a long while to do it. I keep telling her this could be any of us, and probably will be more of us before this economic mess improves, and besides, we all know if the situation was reversed, she would give us the damn shirt off of her back, so get over it ^__~ !

Unfortunately, her computer was a casualty of the move, so she can only check email and such on the library computer at the moment for a few minutes here and there. Anyone who wants her number at the motel is welcome to "note" me here or email me, and I will be happy to share it with them – I’m sure she would be glad to hear friendly voices. As far as sending money, there is a paypal donation button someone helped her set up on her last post on her LiveJournal page([link]), but it may or may not be working. If it doesn't work all you need to do is log into your own paypal account, and transfer money to her account at her email: missingkitsune@att.net. If you want to Western Union money to her, email or note me, and I will put you in touch with Bobbie. The website for is [li... ]]> ~helliongoddess http://helliongoddess.deviantart.com/journal/20094184/ http://helliongoddess.deviantart.com/journal/20094184/ Fri, 22 Aug 2008 11:02:17 PDT
As I got into it, it became clear to me (I have this compulsion to do things like this things right, even if it means lots of complications) that it couldn't be done in something short and simple, and it ended requiring a heavily-researched, over 120-page, 12 chapter story to really do the thing in what I considered the best possible manner. My best hope is that it was at least worth it - some of my readers have told me that it is one of the best things I have written so far, if not the best. Sometimes it takes a challenge to really show us what we can do - I don't know anymore, you read it and see what you think! ^__~

Because of the shortcomings of DeviantArt's text posting process, it is almost impossible for me to post the whole thing here, so instead I am posting only the first Chapter in a deviation here along with a description and a link to my journal in LiveJournal. It is not friends-locked there, anyone can read it, I only ask that you honor my request that you be over 18, it is rated NC-17, as it is a yaoi story. If you have any comments, please feel free to leave them here on DA with the deviation and I will respond.

Normally I wouldn't do this, I would post the full story here, but with over 60,000 words full of HTML codes for italic, underline, footnotes, etc, it would take me weeks to enter those all in here in DA's antiquated system, and frankly I'd rather spend the time working on my next story!

Thanks and peace to you all.

hg

]]> ~helliongoddess http://helliongoddess.deviantart.com/journal/18277856/ http://helliongoddess.deviantart.com/journal/18277856/ Sun, 11 May 2008 17:35:58 PDT
First the funny part. This story contains a passing mention of the durian fruit, and its ..er.. distinctive fragrance. My steady readers will know that this is my second reference to the notorious durian fruit. I am pleased to report that in the time since I posted my “A Matter of Taste”, which centered around the malodorous stuff, I have actually tasted the genuine article in the form of a durian smoothie from a Vietnamese restaurant in my area. My daughter recently brought it to me as a surprise ( ! ), and refused to tell me what it was before I tasted it, so I can honestly say I think my initial reaction was objective. The smoothie itself was made of just durian, sugar, and ice, so the only added taste was the sweetness of the sugar. I must admit, it was one of the strangest things I had ever tasted, and my first response was, predictably, “What the fuck is that?” I thought they had taken some obscure entree from the restaurant’s menu and run it through the blender with ice and sugar.

Once my daughter let the smelly cat out of the bag, it made sense; it is a combination of flavors somewhat like strong cheese, garlic and onions (more like shallots, really), and almonds – that’s as close as I can get. I think the smell was partially subdued by the fact that it was freezing cold, but my daughter’s partner, who wasn’t having any of it, still ran away from both of us if we got anywhere near her for the rest of the afternoon. And there were some rather unfortunate after-effects - let’s just say you get to taste the durian more than once when you consume it. All in all, I think I do like the flavor, but I would decidedly not use it in sweet things. My first thought as a chef was that, especially given the creamy texture of the durian fruit’s flesh, it would make a killer dip if blended with a little sour cream or yogurt – it’s definitely better-suited for the savory uses than the sweet, in my book. At any rate, let it be noted that this writer had the courage of her convictions, and tried what she wrote about when given the chance, even in the face of potential gastronomic and olfactory disaster.

Now on to the more serious bit. This is a Saiyuki story (no big surprise there) but this is a SanzoXHakkai story, a pairing one doesn’t see too often. Now, for anyone who has really been paying attention,( and there may be no one with that good a memory, in which case I am ratting myself out unnecessarily, but oh well)… Yes, I did once, not long after I started writing fanfiction in late ‘07, have a journal entry in LiveJournal where I went on and on about how icky and unattractive I thought the pairing of Hakkai and Sanzo was.

As my knowledge of Saiyuki has deepened I have been able to get past the OTP concept and see the interesting possibilities in all kinds of pairings, and even write about several of them. My feeling now is that if we get so dedicated to one pairing that that we refuse to consider any others, we limit what we can learn from and enjoy from the fandom. One of the things that makes Saiyuki so endlessly fascinating, and so perfectly suited for yaoi, is that it does have so many interesting male characters with so many complex interrelationships, and that really does make for lots and lots of believable yaoi situations – and my eternal gratitude goes to Minekura-sensei for giving them all to us.

That's it, and I hope you all enjoy the story!

]]> ~helliongoddess http://helliongoddess.deviantart.com/journal/17361418/ http://helliongoddess.deviantart.com/journal/17361418/ Sun, 16 Mar 2008 11:01:57 PDT
Anyway, four terrifyingly rabid Saiyuki yaoi-lovin' LiveJournal-ers have started a new Community for anyone 18 and older who likes to read and write Saiyuki yaoi works. The guilty parties are 2light4dark (who is The Mastermind of the devious plan, bwahahaha...), JessieDark, Kansouame, and myself, who happen to portray - respectively - Son Goku, Sha Gojyo, Cho Hakkai, and Genjyo Sanzo in the 3-D Wetpaint Sha Gakjyo X Genjyo Sanzo thread ( and other roles on two, soon to be three additional threads at the same site. See earlier listing in this journal for links to the 3-D Wetpaint site.)

We welcome anyone over the age of 18 to read and comment on the fics posted in the comm (no flaming or spamming, please.) Any adult who would like to join the comm, and/or post on it, is welcome to send a message to the mods and one of us will friend you back shortly.

We will each be posting some of our favorite fics of our own on there just to get things rolling, (and would encourage new members to do the same,) but even more so are looking forward to seeing new Saiyuki yaoi works show up on the comm from our friends for us all to enjoy and share.

Here's the link- hope to see you there soon!

[link]

]]> ~helliongoddess http://helliongoddess.deviantart.com/journal/16521981/ http://helliongoddess.deviantart.com/journal/16521981/ Tue, 22 Jan 2008 14:08:01 PST
If anyone wants to see what we have been up to, here is the link for the second volume of our thread:
[link]
There is also information there about how to read the first volume if you want to get all the backstory, too (all 97 pages of it! -- See, this group really is dedicated!)

If you want more information or are interested, please message me here on DeviantArt or over at the Bishi Board and I'll get back to you pretty quickly.

By the way we also welcome any other characters anyone has any burning desire to play as well, not just monkeys.... We just really want to get a full Sanzo Party as soon as possible!

]]> ~helliongoddess http://helliongoddess.deviantart.com/journal/16225274/ http://helliongoddess.deviantart.com/journal/16225274/ Wed, 02 Jan 2008 14:03:50 PST
But it did feel strange to be not writing about my beloved Saiyuki bishies... But fear not, the Goddess has many more hijinks in store for them and several stories in process at the moment, when I can tear myself away from my exploits playing Sanzo-sama on the 3-D Bishi Wiki Genjyo Sanzo X Sha Gakjyo thread, that is...

We have been having so much fun over there I hesitate to tell anyone about it, for fear the dreaded THEY will decide it's either illegal, immoral, or fattening. Anything that is that much fun usually is at least one or two of those three things! And in case anyone is interested in seeing what's going on in our SanzoXGojyo thread (definitely rated NC-17) or starting a thread of their own, here's the link:

[link]

Ours is the one whimsically called "Genjyo Sanzo 3D X Sha Gakjyo 3D" (And, yes, we know it's spelled wrong... who cares...we're having fun!)

Anyway, here is my first non-Saiyuki piece, "Revenge is Sweet", submitted for your approval...I have to admit, I am kind of happy with it.

And, last but not least: Happy New Year everyone!

]]> ~helliongoddess http://helliongoddess.deviantart.com/journal/15621968/ http://helliongoddess.deviantart.com/journal/15621968/ Thu, 22 Nov 2007 13:41:17 PST
As I drove back from having Thanksgiving lunch at work with my husband this afternoon, and looked at the beauty of the fall foliage on our Colonial Parkway here in Williamsburg, I was struck with how much more I am enjoying the holiday this year than I did last year, and how many things I have to be thankful for.

This time last year I was mired in a morass of sadness, and while I am sure I still had numerous things to be thankful for, I was far too sad to be able to see them. I stayed home by myself and just waited for the day to pass. This year when I got back from my lunch, I had nine emails waiting for me from my various friends from my new interest in the world of fanfiction, and several more still waiting for me from yesterday. This year I have a support system of like-minded friends that I did not have a year ago – they care about me, stimulate my mind, support me when I am down, encourage my creative endeavors, and best of all, they make me laugh. I am sure life will still have more unpleasant surprises in store for me as time goes on, but I am stronger now, I have things that interest me and make me excited about getting up in the morning, and I have friends that I know will be there to support me through whatever problems I will have to face.
That is a helluva lot to be thankful for, especially when I contrast it to where I was this time last year.

Thanks y'all.

]]> ~helliongoddess http://helliongoddess.deviantart.com/journal/15577976/ http://helliongoddess.deviantart.com/journal/15577976/ Mon, 19 Nov 2007 14:36:34 PST [link] But the sheer gall of it just infuriates me. Would they have made a male participant ask Barack Obama if he prefers boxers or briefs instead of a question on his stance on drivers licenses for illegal aliens? Somehow I doubt it.

On another subject, my dear friend Pan-Zareta noted in a comment on my journal entry from Saturday that " a refrigerated truck which held decomposing Iraqi bodies for two weeks was given a lick and a promise and then loaded with food and ice which was intended for the consumption of our troops. The man who blew the whistle was fired for 'not being a team player.' " I

I am dumbfounded. I can only think that the sheer horror of what is going on over there, of being caught in the middle of this violent deep-seated ages-old fight that is not theirs, combined with the fact that they are commanded at the top by immoral officers and being kept there for far too long away from their families, with inadequate equipment and supplies, has driven our soldiers do to things they would not otherwise do. They are being dehumanized by being in an unacceptable intolerable situation - the same thing happened in VietNam. It doesn't necessarily mean the boys that did it are bad kids, it means it's an immoral war and we need to get our ass out of it and bring them home, NOW.

]]> ~helliongoddess http://helliongoddess.deviantart.com/journal/15555136/ http://helliongoddess.deviantart.com/journal/15555136/ Sat, 17 Nov 2007 22:27:08 PST
Rush Limbaugh, Head PooBah of the first wave of the NeoCons, took it upon himself to play the audiotape of this sweet young Indian girl's testimony on his radio show (thank heaven at least he isn't on tv anymore.) He interspersed his sarcastic and highly inaccurate and inappropriate remarks with her speech, and encouraged some idiot caller to harass and ridicule her right along with him. Rather than go into an extensive rant about it myself, I instead offer some websites with the actual evidence and allow you to check it out. See for yourself from the first link just how bad it was, and then go on to check out from other sites and my quote some other interesting tidbits on what venom this man and one of his cohorts are spewing out into the airwaves.

Here is the link to the article about Limbaugh's shenanigans with the poor young girl - it includes a transcript of the fiasco, and a link to the audiotape if you are feeling really masochistic

[link]

This is a fun one that documents some of his racial slurs and his ideas about Indian stereotypes and team mascots. You'll love this.

[link]

And last but not least: (this is a great site, by the way) The first part, towards the top, is largely recap of the recent incident with the Native Alaskan girl and his assholery in relation to her, and their advocacy of a boycott. (Somehow I SERIOUSLY doubt if every single Indian in the US that currently listens to Limbaugh now started boycotting him, that there would be much of a dip in his listenership. )

But read a little further and you will be treated to a description of a earlier incident where Limbaugh's hijinks were even more ... distasteful is not a strong enough word. You just have to read it.

[link]


Pretty disgusting stuff. In the process of looking into this I encountered a rant from Paul Harvey (I thought he was long dead - apparently his brain already is) that was so fascist and disgusting in its nature I was truly appalled, as were a number of other Native American and Black organizations. Here is my favorite quote:

"But we didn’t come this far because we’re made of sugar candy.

Once upon a time, we elbowed our way onto and into this continent by giving small pox infected blankets to native Americans.

Yes, that was biological warfare!

And we used every other weapon we could get our hands on to grab this land from whomever. And we grew prosperous.

And, yes, we greased the skids with the sweat of slaves.
And so it goes with most nation states...."

Fun stuff, huh? This guy is still listened to and considered gospel by over 22 million Americans a day in over 1500 radio stations, and he goes out all over the world. And on the ABC radio network, folks - American Broadcasting Corporation, who should truly be ashamed of themselves for allowing this to be carried on their airwaves. At least Limbaugh has to find stations willing to carry him now - he instigated his own network trying to compensate for all the ones that dropped him with his drug problems and all the lawsuits that have been filed against him. And he is STILL said by Wikipedia to have an average of 13.5 million viewers weekly, which I find truly frightening. I was also quite disappointed to see Barnes and Noble as a sponsor of his website.

As always, a laurel wreath goes to MSNBC's Keith Olberman - he is the only mainstream media person who calls these two out on the carpet regularly for their ridiculous brand of narrow-minded arrogance and sheer stupidity - usually in his "Worst Person of the World Segment." I just feel sorry for the person on his staff designated to listen to these morons every single damn day so they can report their latest idiocies to Keith. What a job.

I guess the answer really is that there is there are no easy answers. Boycotting is a tool of limited use with radio zealots like these. But the one thing I DO know is that we can't be asleep at the wheel. We have to continue to vigilantly pay attention,... ]]> ~helliongoddess http://helliongoddess.deviantart.com/journal/15524026/ http://helliongoddess.deviantart.com/journal/15524026/ Thu, 15 Nov 2007 17:34:49 PST
[link]

This one claimed to be the "World's Shortest Personality Test," which intrigued me. This was my result:

"You are elegant, withdrawn, and brilliant.
Your mind is a weapon, able to solve any puzzle.
You are also great at poking holes in arguments and common beliefs.

For you, comfort and calm are very important.
You tend to thrive on your own and shrug off most affection.
You prefer to protect your emotions and stay strong."

I think the jury is still out on the "brilliant" part, and anyone who has ever seen me first thing in the morning might debate the "elegant," but the rest of it is pretty on the nose.

It also sounds exactly like I would describe my father, which is kind of heartbreaking today, because I just got official confirmation that he- who truly was a brilliant, elegant man, has Alzheimers Disease. Now we have a name for the thief that has been stealing his short-term memory for the past several months. My father, for all our differences over the years (his politics are somewhere to the right of Atilla the Hun) has always been the most intelligent human being I have ever been privileged to know. He may not have been the most involved or caring father in middle-class America, but he was definitely one of the most intellectually challenging. Growing up at his dinner table I learned the value of debate and rhetoric. As a child in that household, while probably too frequently left to my own devices for most people's tastes, I was always surrounded by a variety of interesting books - on all subjects - to lose myself in, and I learned to be independent and self-sufficient early, skills that have aided me well in my not-always-easy adult life.

He started life a dirt-poor South Carolina farmer's kid, was an Army pilot at 19 and a German POW at 20. He was one of the Civilian Directors in charge of Army Research and Development for Helicopter Aviation throughout the Vietnam War period, an important and stressful job to say the least. When he took an early out in 1975 he got his PhD in Education. He got intrigued with the early personal computers in the process of doing his doctoral thesis, and started a computer consulting business and eventually ended up writing reviews of software for some of the bigger computer magazines. I used to tease him that his study looked like the bridge of the starship Enterprise, he had so many computers in it. Now he has one laptop and can barely remember how to check his email. And when he does check it, he has forgotten what was in it before he gets back downstairs to inform my mother.

He hid the early stages of his mental deterioration behind his reclusive lifestyle and a rigid daily routine, but by the beginning of the Spring was quite noticable, and I confronted my mother about the changes I saw in him. Since then it has been relentless in its progress, and he has already become somewhat childlike in his demeanor and abilities. In a very real way the man I knew as my father is already gone. I don't know what the next years of months have in store for him, but this seems to be a particularly cruel and ironic trick that fate has played on him. For this dignified man, for whom the pursuits of the intellect were of supreme value, to be losing both his mental abilities and his dignity leaves me feeling bereft and angry at the fates. It's hard to cling to the belief that "everything happens for a reason" in the face of something like this.

]]> ~helliongoddess http://helliongoddess.deviantart.com/journal/15397215/ http://helliongoddess.deviantart.com/journal/15397215/ Tue, 06 Nov 2007 19:06:45 PST Monday, November 5th, 2007.
I know this is long, but it is worth it, trust me-
this is extremely important.

If it was up to me I would nominate him for a
Nobel Prize in Journalism

"It is a fact startling in its cynical simplicity and it requires cynical and simple words to be properly expressed: The presidency of George W. Bush has now devolved into a criminal conspiracy to cover the ass of George W. Bush.

All the petulancy, all the childish threats, all the blank-stare stupidity; all the invocations of World War III, all the sophistic questions about which terrorist attacks we wanted him not to stop, all the phony secrets; all the claims of executive privilege, all the stumbling tap-dancing of his nominees, all the verbal flatulence of his apologists.

All of it is now, after one revelation last week, transparently clear for what it is: the pathetic and desperate manipulation of the government, the refocusing of our entire nation, toward keeping this mock president and this unstable vice president and this departed wildly self-overrating attorney general, and the others, from potential prosecution for having approved or ordered the illegal torture of prisoners being held in the name of this country.

"Waterboarding is torture," Daniel Levin was to write. Daniel Levin was no theorist and no protester. He was no troublemaking politician. He was no table-pounding commentator. Daniel Levin was an astonishingly patriotic American and a brave man.

Brave not just with words or with stances, even in a dark time when that kind of bravery can usually be scared or bought off.

Charged, as you heard in the story from ABC News last Friday, with assessing the relative legality of the various nightmares in the Pandora's box that is the Orwell-worthy euphemism "Enhanced Interrogation," Mr. Levin decided that the simplest, and the most honest, way to evaluate them ... was to have them enacted upon himself.

Daniel Levin took himself to a military base and let himself be waterboarded.

Mr. Bush, ever done anything that personally courageous?

Perhaps when you've gone to Walter Reed and teared up over the maimed servicemen? And then gone back to the White House and determined that there would be more maimed servicemen?

Has it been that kind of personal courage, Mr. Bush, when you've spoken of American victims and the triumph of freedom and the sacrifice of your own popularity for the sake of our safety? And then permitted others to fire or discredit or destroy anybody who disagreed with you, whether they were your own generals, or Max Cleland, or Joe Wilson and Valerie Plame, or Daniel Levin?

Daniel Levin should have a statue in his honor in Washington right now.

Instead, he was forced out as acting assistant attorney general nearly three years ago because he had the guts to do what George Bush couldn't do in a million years: actually put himself at risk for the sake of his country, for the sake of what is right.

And they waterboarded him. And he wrote that even though he knew those doing it meant him no harm, and he knew they would rescue him at the instant of the slightest distress, and he knew he would not die & still, with all that reassurance, he could not stop the terror screaming from inside of him, could not quell the horror, could not convince that which is at the core of each of us, the entity who exists behind all the embellishments we strap to ourselves, like purpose and name and family and love, he could not convince his being that he wasn't drowning.

Waterboarding, he said, is torture. Legally, it is torture! Practically, it is torture! Ethically, it is torture! And he wrote it down.

Wrote it down somewhere, where it could be contrasted with the words of this country's 43rd president: "The United States of America ... does not torture."

Made you into a liar, Mr. Bush.

Made you into, if anybody had the guts to pursue it, a criminal, Mr. Bush.

Made you into, if anybody had the guts to pursue it, a criminal, Mr. Bush.

Waterboarding had already been used on Khalid Sheik Mohammed and a couple of other men none of us really care about except for the one detail you'd forgotten — that there are rules. And even if we just make up these rules, this country observes them anyway, because we're Americans and we're better than that.

We're better than you.

And the man your Justice Department selected to decide whether or not waterboarding was torture had decided, and not in some phony academic fashion, nor while wearing the Walter Mitty poseur attire of flight suit and helmet.

He had put his money, Mr. Bush, where your mouth was.

So, your sleazy sy... ]]> ~helliongoddess http://helliongoddess.deviantart.com/journal/15301476/ http://helliongoddess.deviantart.com/journal/15301476/ Wed, 31 Oct 2007 12:33:32 PDT
"Assumptions --October 29, 2007

When historians glance back at 2007 through the haze of their coal-fired stoves, they will mark this year as the onset of the Long Emergency – or whatever they choose to call the unraveling of industrial economies and the complex systems that constituted them. And if they retain any sense of humor – which is very likely since, as wise Sam Beckett once averred, nothing is funnier than unhappiness – they will chuckle at the assumptions that drove the doings and mental operations of those in charge back then (i.e. now).
The price of oil is up 53 percent over a year ago, creeping up now toward the mid-$90-range. The news media is still AWOL on the subject. (The New York Times has nothing about it on today’s front page.) The dollar is losing a penny a week against the Euro. In essence, the American standard of living is dropping like a sash weight. So far, a stunned public is stumbling into impoverishment drunk on Britney Spears video clips. If they ever do sober up, and get to a “…hey, wait a minute…” moment when they recognize the gulf between reality and the story told by leaders in government, business, education, and the media, it is liable to be a very ugly moment in US history.
One of the stupidest assumptions made by the educated salient of adults these days is that we are guaranteed a smooth transition between the cancerous hypertrophy of our current economic environment and the harsher conditions that we are barreling toward. The university profs and the tech sector worker bees are still absolutely confident that some hypothetical “they” will “come up with” magical rescue remedies for running the Happy Motoring system without gasoline. My main message to lecture audiences these days is “…quit putting all your mental energy into propping up car dependency and turn your attention to other tasks such as walkable communities and reviving passenger rail….” Inevitably, someone will then get up and propose that the transition to all-electric cars is nearly upon us, and we should stop worrying. As I said, these are the educated denizens of the colleges. Imagine what the nascar morons believe – that the ghost of Davey Crockett will leave a jug of liquefied “dark matter” under everyone’s Christmas tree this year or next, guaranteed to keep the engines ringing until Elvis ushers in the Rapture.
The educated folks – that is, the ones subject to the grandiose story-lines of techno-triumphalism taught in the universities – are sure that we’ll either invent or organize our way out of the current predicament. A society that put men on the moon in 1969, the story goes, will ramp up another “Apollo Project” to keep things going here. One wonders, of course, what they mean by keeping things going. Even if it were hypothetically possible to keep all the cars running forever, would it be good thing to make suburban-sprawl-building the basis of our economy – because that’s the direct consequence of perpetually cheap energy. Has anyone noticed that the housing bubble and subsequent implosion is following the peak oil line exactly?
It’s a bit harder to discern what the assumptions really are among leaders in the finance sector, since so much of their activity the past ten years has veered into sheer fraud. The story line that everyone is putting out – from the Fed chairman Bernanke to the CEOs of the Big Fundz – is that American finance is a python that has swallowed a few too many pigs, but if we jigger around interest rates a little bit more, and allow some more money to be lent out cheaply, the python will eventually digest the pigs and go slithering happily on its way along the jungle trail with a burp and a fart. From this vantage, one sees a rather different story: more like a gang of human grifters sweating through their Prada suits as it becomes increasingly impossible to conceal massive losses incurred through overt reckless misbehavior. My own guess is that a lot of these boyz will be in line for criminal prosecution before too long.
The political assumptions one hears are the most astoundingly naïve and ridiculous, especially the ones that involve other countries and our relations with them. NY Times followers no doubt believe, along with Tom Friedman, that the global economy is now a permanent fixture of the human condition, and that soon it will transform itself into a colossal engine of “green” (i.e. benign) commerce. Friedman and his followers tend to forget the second law of thermodynamics when spinning their fantasies of a world that can harmlessly manufacture and market an endless numb... ]]> ~helliongoddess http://helliongoddess.deviantart.com/journal/15060589/ http://helliongoddess.deviantart.com/journal/15060589/ Sun, 14 Oct 2007 15:01:29 PDT
As I pondered this subject I remembered something I had not forgotten, but it had sort of gotten filed away under piles of other stuff in my memory and not been seen for a while. I remembered how my roots of activism on the subject of the environment went deeper than I had been giving myself credit for. I had forgotten about something that happened when I was fourteen years old, in my Freshman year of high school. After a lifetime of being the perennial misfit, I had that year finally found some measure of social acceptance with loosely-formed group that hung out on one of the school’s porches christened the “Smoking Lounge” because it was the one place the administration would permit students to smoke on campus. (That pretty much dates me right there doesn’t it?) This was 1971, and the smoking lounge crowd was a ragtag assemblage of latter-day hippies, long-haired greasers, and other assorted non-conformists who failed to fit into any of the other school cliques. I was definitely soundly in the latter-day hippie category ideologically, having been born about ten years too late and about 3000 miles too far to the East in Virginia. It was only due to dire threats of bodily harm from my parents that I had not joined some of my older compatriots and gone to Washington, DC that Spring for either of the two large protests against the Viet Nam War. In the spirit of brotherhood I wore my black armband and protest buttons, and helped organize walkouts of the school.

That Spring I remember feeling a driving need to participate in a larger way somehow, to do something more. In Eighth grade I had learned of the environment in peril in Earth Science class, and a gifted geography teacher in Freshman year had given me an increased sense of the world as an ecosystem, and our role in the community of Man. I decided that we as students needed to do something for our environment on the local level, something to help save our planet and demonstrate the courage of our convictions. Pretty big talk for a fourteen-year-old.

We came up with a catchy name for the group, which I now can’t remember (probably just as well), and looked around our town to see what needed to be done. My hometown has done one thing – and possibly only one thing - well in its headlong rush into urbanization in the past fifty years. It has one of the highest ratios of urban parkland to developed land of any city in the country, if not the highest, and its city parks are numerous and beautiful, especially the waterfront ones. We could plainly see that trash in the parks was an obvious problem, and that the source of most of it was the public’s casual careless littering. We suckered some print shop into printing up “anti-litter pledge cards” for us, bought rubber gloves and trash bags, and off we went.

We spent many Saturdays, Sundays, and afternoons after school trolling the city parks hectoring unsuspecting park visitors, discussing the trash problem with them, getting them to sign our pledge cards, and, yes, picking up trash. Bags and bags of trash. The reactions we received from people we spoke with while on this quest were varied: some just blew us off, some were politely amused, and some were genuinely impressed, even giving us money to help pay for supplies or buy ourselves refreshments on the warm spring days.

I suppose today’s teens would look at this voluntary action of ours and be appalled, considering it a chore they would only do if punished, if held “feets to the fire” by a community service order by the court, or a high school principal. We didn’t know any better – we did it, and would survey the improvement we saw when we would look around and see a lakefront or playground free of trash and looking pristine once again, and we would get a huge sense of satisfaction and accomplishment.

The school year ended and my little group ended up scattering to the four winds as people got paying jobs, went to visit divorced parents, and so on. But I think that early experience had a profound effect on me, both on my dedication to the environment (which I admit I don’t do nearly as much about as I should), and on the idealistic belief I still have over thirty-five years later, that even in this screwed-up cynical world, with enough hope and dedication one person can still make a difference.

Just look at Al Gore if you don't beli... ]]> ~helliongoddess http://helliongoddess.deviantart.com/journal/15006865/ http://helliongoddess.deviantart.com/journal/15006865/ Wed, 10 Oct 2007 20:04:10 PDT But Itainohime tagged me and I can't say no to the Itai, so here goes-- First, the rules.

1. Post these rules.
2. Each person tagged must post 8 random facts about themselves.
2. Tags should write a journal/blog of these facts.
4. At the end of the post, 8 or more persons are tagged and named.
5. Go to their page and leave them a comment telling them they're tagged. (or be lazy like I am) XD


1. I am left-handed, my daughter and only child is left-handed, and my husband (her step-father) is left-handed. What are the odds of that? And we all, of course, are exceedingly brilliant.

2. My wonderful daughter is a male-to-female transsexual. She is beautiful, brave, smart, and a second-generation activist with more courage than I can imagine. She and her partner are on their way right now to Colorado to meet with Dr. Marcie Bauer, the world's first surgeon doing gender reassignment surgery who is herself trans. You go girls! Love ya!

3. I have a bad case of Salieri Syndrome (anybody seen Amadeus?) I can recognize and appreciate greatness in others, but am constantly frustrated by my own inability to achieve it.

4. I am now two inches shorter than I was ten years ago when all my health problems started. I don't know if it's due to the deterioration in my spine or the surgical fusions they have done in my neck, but I find it very depressing. I liked being a 5'10" tall woman. I just have to somehow keep that height in my head.

5. I used to be a dog person, specifically a weiner-dog person. Then a little orphaned calico from the SPCA named Katerina took over our household and my heart. Now I am a dog AND cat person.

6. Although I don't do it as much as I used to, I love to cook, especially Greek Cooking. I make the best Baklava I have ever tasted. Seriously.

7. I was a 10-pound baby, the fat kid in my class, and have needed to lose around a hundred pounds most of my adult life. Ask me if I care?

8. The first time I ever sang and played my guitar solo in front of people was at an all-woman show in a gay and lesbian bar in 1976. I was scared shitless, not because it was a g/l bar, but because I am shy and was not confident of my singing. I was unaware that the custom was to put money in the pockets of the <"clothes"> of performers they approved of, and was unnerved when people came up and started putting money in the pockets of my overalls. (I hadn't been there on strip nights.)

9. Somewhere in Washington, DC there is a picture in a little folder of me in standing in front of our local shipyard gate protesting the commissioning of yet another nuclear sub with nuclear weapons aboard, circa 1980 - the year my kid was born. The FBI guy somehow thought we wouldn't see him in his unobtrusive bright blue leisure suit with his giant camera, systematically snapping pics of all of us. Does this make me a terrorist?

10. I still speak a little French, from my college days, and a little Lakota that I learned from my husband who speaks it fairly fluently. So toksa ake, folks. (Pronounced Doke-sha ah-kay, that's "See ya later.")

I don't know how to put the cute little graphics in my journal with your avvies, so all of you that get this because I friended you, CONSIDER YOURSELF TAGGED with this damn thing. I only have about ten friends anyway, so that works out about right.

]]> ~helliongoddess http://helliongoddess.deviantart.com/journal/14987866/ http://helliongoddess.deviantart.com/journal/14987866/ Tue, 09 Oct 2007 16:09:57 PDT
If not for the bullets from the handgun of one misguided and mentally ill young man back in 1980, John Lennon would have been 67 years old today. It's strange how when one dies young like that they are frozen forever in our memories at that age, perpetually youthful, and they never age. But today I can't help but think about the things that John Lennon was robbed of by that early death as well. I think of how he would have loved the Cirque du Soleil show, Love, now being done with the Beatles music; and how the widely-acclaimed recent movie movie Across the Universe has brought the Beatles music to a whole new generation of movie-goers and music lovers; and how his children Sean and Julian have grown and thrived since his death, and recently were even on tour together briefly, music apparently a forming bond between them in addition to shared heredity. I don't believe he has any grandchildren yet, but given what a devoted father he was and how much joy he got out of that facet of his life, I can only imagine how much he would have enjoyed watching his grandchildren grow up when he did have them.

After twenty-seven years I still miss John Lennon, his honesty, his integrity, and his humor, and I always will. Thankfully we will always have his music to remember him by.

Happy birthday, John. Strawberry fields forever,

]]> ~helliongoddess http://helliongoddess.deviantart.com/journal/14969017/ http://helliongoddess.deviantart.com/journal/14969017/ Mon, 08 Oct 2007 10:52:19 PDT
Seriously though, we still need LOTS more voices on that thread to get the mods attention. It needs to get HOT. Please post info about it anywhere you can think of. I know everyone is busy - every night when I finally get around to trying to go to sleep, I realize there are about ten things I forgot to do, emails I still need to respond to, and don't even get me started on the story ideas waiting to be fleshed out. And because I am on disability and my daughter is grown, I have a lot more time on my hands than most of you with RL jobs, small children, college classes, and so on. I know how hectic it it for you all, and I am constantly impressed with how much you all do manage to get done.

I push this because it is important to me, because I sort of see it as a way to pay it forward. It is ten years this month since I first got the stabbing pain that first took me out of work one day from my library job of 17 years. Turned out I was never able to go back after that day, and seven surgeries and ten years later, it looks like I will never go back. I stay at home all the time, alone most of the day, and live with constant pain. As of last Fall I had pretty much adjusted as well as could be expected to all of that. I've always been independent since I was a small child, and I am basically an introvert, so being isolated and keeping my mind occupied was not that much of a problem. Having a wonderful daughter, a sweet husband, and two great pets helped tremendously.

Last Fall the dominoes started to go down. My daughter, who is 27, started to have panic attacks at work and admitted that she was in a deep clinical depression, something she and I both have wrestled with over the years. We got her in therapy and on meds right away. Three weeks into this our eighteen year old dachshund, who had been incredibly robust and sprightly up until then, suddenly failed dramatically and had to be put down. It hit me and my daughter extremely hard, and one year later we are only now able to talk about him without completely losing it. He was a great dog and a big part of our lives for so long. Only another pet lover can truly understand how traumatic it is to lose a beloved animal - to say they are part of the family is an understatement.

We staggered through November - I had a birthday, but didn't feel much like celebrating turning fifty, a milestone I had been dreading since I turned forty. Maybe it was because of all the other crummy things going on, but fifty hit me very hard, and I was not a happy camper .

Shakespeare says sorrows come not as single soldiers but in whole battalions, or something like that. The next invasion came hard upon, when my husband's mother, who we had theorized we would have to hit with a sledgehammer when she turned one hundred, she had always been so disgustingly healthy, got sick and died quite suddenly in early December. My relationship with her had always been somewhat problematic, but she was his mother, and it hit my husband quite hard. Then as if he needed more grief, she left her estate set up in such a way that it was the biggest possible slap in the face to him, her only child, that it could have been. The month as I look back is a blur of arrangements, anger, church people, lawyers, and driving. The only good thing about it was that my husband, who had been working two jobs for years, took time off from both to deal with it all and we spent more time together than we had in years, and actually got to know each other again.

January was the month for the Joys of Parenting. My daughter plummeted and admitted that was she suicidal, and had to be institutionalized. My husband's son, then 16, had been testing the patience of the juvenile justice system with his escapades since he was 13 and finally ended up in Juvenile Detention - about two years too late as far as I was concerned. At any rate for one hellish week there both of our children were in institutions. It was not something I care to repeat. But life does go on, Cami came home and fell promptly into a relationship that has proved to be her salvation, and has found her life partner. My stepson was not going to be allowed to move back in with his mother because if the instability of her situation, so he moved in with us, which was not the best thing for us for a number of reasons, but there was nothing else for it apparently.

This was when I finally cra... ]]> ~helliongoddess http://helliongoddess.deviantart.com/journal/14958454/ http://helliongoddess.deviantart.com/journal/14958454/ Sun, 07 Oct 2007 15:53:58 PDT
There is a thread going currently on the Adult Swim board titled "Saiyuki Should Be Brought Back to the Adult Swim Line-up" - here is the link: [link]
This will at least get you to the list of the current threads, and the Saiyuki thread is the third or fourth one down under the pinned ones depending on how hot the thread is -- lets get it hot!!

Believe it or not, the mods there really do watch those boards to see what the activity is, what people are interested in seeing. Myself and many others lobbied the AS board pretty heavily to bring back Fullmetal Alchemist when they pulled it last Fall, and darned if it didn't get brought back a lot sooner than some of the blowhards over there on the board said it would.

I am just enough of an old hippie at heart to believe a small number of dedicated people acting in unison can affect real changes in society. If each of us that love the Sanzo-ikkou joined the AS board (it's easy and painless) and commented on the thread, AND put an entry like this in any communities in they are involved with that have Saiyuki lovers, and everybody that saw those did the same thing, and so on... well, you get the picture.

I have two reasons for this. One is that I have the sense that Saiyuki is at a critical point in its lifespan as an anime series. I can't remember the details, the Saiyuki-Media-experts can fill that in for me, but I know that one of the studios that produced either Genso or Reload has gone under, and my understanding is that interest in Saiyuki in Japan is flagging. I think for us to get a run of any of the three series on something as prominent as Adult Swim would be a big boost to the show's popularity, and might go a long way towards maybe even getting new anime episodes made someday. I know if nothing else it would certainly be a wonderful way to show Minekura-sama how much we still love her and need her and "The Boys."

The other reason is that there are a lot of terminal smart-asses and blowhards on the Adult Swim Board, and one of them is on that thread. I have been (politely, in as Hakkai-esqe a manner as I can summon) been doing battle with her to defend Saiyuki's honor, but I frankly would love to send a shot from the banishing gun through the 'net right about now. She has a firm conviction that Gensomaden is crap for a number of reasons, and that Reload and Gunlock would be the ONLY episodes worth showing at all. I would love a little help in standing down this opinionated fool. She has been dominating the thread and making it look like her opinion is gospel, when in truth, only one or two other AS boarders have weakly agreed with her. I need some help dealing with her just on General Principle do defend the Boys honer - the bitch is really start to piss me off.

Thank you, folks.

]]> ~helliongoddess http://helliongoddess.deviantart.com/journal/14933182/ http://helliongoddess.deviantart.com/journal/14933182/ Fri, 05 Oct 2007 21:11:56 PDT Here is the link for her first entry, and a damned fine one, too, if I can do this right: [link]

I am in the process of setting up my account at LiveJournal, which looks like it will be my main home as a fanfic author. I have two Saiyuki stories finished now, and three or four ideas in various stages. After all my years of thinking about writing, I am indebted to Minekura-sama, creator of the Saiyuki series, for giving me such inspiration. Somehow the Sanzo Party have finally awakened my muse, and now that the genie is out of the bottle, she apparently isn't going to go back in. Bitch won't let me sleep, either! I'll be cross-posting here on DA - with a mature filter, because so far my muse is a smutty one - and probably AFF.net as well.

I want to recognize DA deviant Itainohime for her vigilant campaign against shota and rape-related policy violations here on DA. Too many were slipping through the cracks, and she and several other dedicated folks have been working hard, and taking no small amount of flack for doing it. They are trying to make DA a place that lives up to its own standards, and trying to make the world a safer place for young children.

I also want to thank Itai for all the kindness and support she has extended to me over the past several months. She has been very patient with innumerable questions that I am sure sounded dumb to her, and has been very supportive of my forays into this strange new world of deviance, fanfic, smut, etc. I first encountered her and her wonderful stories on y!gallery, and she I believe is the one that steered me here. The high quality and integrity of her fanfic is one of the reasons I wanted to pursue this interest myself, and for that I will always be grateful. You are the best, Itai.

]]> ~helliongoddess