Of an evening stroll...

I was on my way home tonight by foot, naturally, going the same way home my feet always take me. I don't know why I looked up, but suddenly a figure caught my eye. Catlike by round, a Racoon lumbered down the sidewalk. He stopped a moment and looked back at me, paying no head to the couple moving forward across the street and beyond. He watched me watching him, then wnet on his way, fluffy tail and glowing eyes daring me to follow as he waddled along. I did.

I followed the fuzzy bandit to an black iron fence alongside a rather nice looking apartment building. The kind you might nto associate with a racoon's hiding place, but to each their own, even in the animal kingdom. He paused one last time, watching me watching him. I told him I cold not follow him further tonight. a blink, and he was gone.

I continued down this new path, new architecture to take in in the quiet night, when silver light caught my eye. the moon, just coming into fullness, lay over my new path, leading me on, all but taking my hand for the journey. I wondered that She would take such time for me, but I smiled back at Her as I walked, content that she thought of me even if only for a moment.

and a moment was all it took to follow Her glow to a tiny house, gently situated back from the urban street, of no consequence to any but those who know to look. Lamplight on the cobled path to the door, the sound of running water heralding a starnge presence, palpable yet elusive. I wonder at seeing it again without the Moon to Guide me...

I wandered on only to have a black cat emerge from the streetlamp night, well-fed and fluffy in the last of his winter coat. He paused only a moment before rambling on in his sure-fotted kitty cat way.

A corner turned, homeward bound, I was caught enthralled, a garden of light. Tiny litted flowers, garish colors coming together in a goldwash of light, happily playing across dew-strewn grass, new leaves in colors only moonlight and streetlight can show.

Gentle intrigues all as the Moon rolls on, and the tides roll in, and the nodding night wind blows. But why the Lady fishes the streets, only the Lady knows...

Apple's Revenge: We all get it in the end

As many of you are no doubt aware, an interesting story hit the news late last week about a blogger, Jason Chen of Gizmodo, who paid $5000 for a ‘found’ prototype of the 4G iPhone that was left in a bar by one of the researchers. His home was raided by police in san Mateo county and he could be facing felony charges.

This brings up a series of arguments and thought processes when it comes to bloggers. California does have laws in place that shield journalists from revealing their sources, but are bloggers journalists? What does and does not qualify as journalism?

As someone who was once bouncing around the idea of a career in journalism, this strikes a deep cord in me. Free speech is in fact protected under the First amendment, but how far does that really extend? There’s Free speech, then there’s threatening the life of the President (you WILL do Federal time for this, even if you don’t mean it. After Kennedy, the Treasury Department does not mess around). There’s free of speech, then there’s trade secrets, state secrets, and medical information. Even if you have access to this information, sharing it, regardless of free speech laws, incurs penalty by law.

So where is the line drawn? This is something people have been kicking around the past few years and the blogosphere has expanded into view-shifting territory. There’s a blog for quite literally ever palette, and that leads to many of the same questions that the internet has faced about free speech, privacy, and in the end, accountability.

My opinion, what Jason Chen did is stupid. Just plain stupid, to say nothing of questionable. I mean, whatever happened to finding something dropped in a bar and giving it to the bartender in a ‘lost and found’ type gesture? I appreciate iPhones aren’t cheap since I KNOW what I just paid for mine, but doing anything else is theft, by law. Taking an object, regardless of intent, and reconfiguring it for your own purposes is theft in the eyes of the law, as it should be. Can Chen then be held accountable for willfully buying stolen property? It’s entirely possible.

This is going to be an interesting story to follow, not only for the sake of bloggers, but journalists in general. Lines will be drawn by this criminal suit, even if a civil suit is not filed.

Convention Attention!

Yup, it’s that time again. Con season, though it didn’t take MUCH of a break, it’s about to break me in new and wonderful ways. THIS is why you should never let anyone see that you’re responsible. They start putting you in charge…

Shibaricon – I’m really looking forward to this. A lot of good panels, some of which I’ll actually get to attend between security duties and making sure the heads of security do things like eat and sleep. It’s always so nice when my job is to make sure other people don’t fall over. :) I also need to pick up a ton of rope beforehand to make sure I have enough for later on in the weekend. Can’t show up to one of Midori’s panels without supplies. That’d just be rude. That and if a certain someone decides to do something stupid at this particular event, I need enough extra length to leave him strung up like a piñata, but that’s another entry entirely…

Duckon – Ah, Duck. The gateway drug of Chicago cons. I’m bringing in 2 newbs this year, which should make things interesting if Eric tries to pull me up on stage again. That’s also what I get for opening my mouth in front of Eric. Anywho, it’s all about the party. That’s right, it’s Kyttin’s birthday, and the resident 1920’s bouncer will be working the door of Speakeasy central. And all that only after I get 3 Batman villainess costumes done ala Sew-a-palooza 2 weekends from now. I love my life. :)

Faerie Worlds – honestly, it doesn’t look like it’s happening this year. With London next spring and everything else going on, I have to cut something I’m not actually responsible for facilitating, and I do believe this is where the line gets drawn. Shame, I was looking forward to it, though I do hope they get the layout fixed this year. Having performers in direct sunlight in the middle of the afternoon in August? Really, are you TRYING to kill these people? And now I’ll have to find somewhere else to get my costuming together for Windycon. Bristol, here I come!

Bristol – annual Ren Faire, always a pleasure, especially when it’s not hot enough to fry human brains in their pressure cooker skulls. The visual is interesting, but in practice it really just smells. I’m likely going twice and only twice this year. Once to scout and once to buy for costumes. We’ll see. I also HAVE to see Kamala. I’m out of several oils, and I need her to construct one for me. I’ll see about opening weekend to put in my thoughts for an order. Anyone care to join me?

Pixies in St. Louis – I have no earthly idea how I’m getting there OR getting back, to say nothing of where I’ll stay, but I’m going to try my worst! Pixies in October. What could be better? Besides, you know, lavender pudding and pillow fights in green wigs…

WindyCon – Oh, dear fandom, why do you keep trying to stomp me into oblivion? Tricky Pixie is the awesomesauce that got cooked up in the kitchen of Win and curry and fiendish siren bliss, but getting there may well kill me. I have 2 costumes to finish, Vlad’s and my own, and I STILL don’t have his wings prepared. I need an engineer for wings this large. I wonder is my cousins are Purdue are doing anything this summer… (evil grin laced with baked goods). To say nothing of the Con Comm juggling act being committed by the Con chair. I love getting ringside seats for a good slugfest, but not when it involves my boyfriend. *sigh*

Midwest Furrfest – Once again, responsibility rears its annoying little head. I got tapped for Dealer’s room, which is VERY good if I’m going to helping run things for WindyCon in the future. I dare not speculate, but I do love furries so. And it gives me an excuse to do more of what I love: keep the head of Security from falling over due to exhaustion or hunger. Whee!!!

Continental divide… and road trips

So, as some of you may already know, my girlfriend, Kyttin (WyldeKyttin on LJ) has been going through a mess recently. Her older brother, Rich went into the hospital, and we were getting some very, VERY bad medical news. So we hopped a flight down to see what was what, and promptly got dumped into a Springer-worthy power struggle. Ah, the wonders of man (or in this case woman) and the need to never ever share anything with anyone even if what they are doing is the worst thing possible and people who know what the hell they’re doing aren’t allowed anywhere within range. (breath) Yeah, it was a bitchfest, but in the end I was happy to be by Kyttin’s side. I just wish driving over the continental divide hadn’t been quite so stomach-dropping. Felt so bad for Vlad…

And as these situations tend to, it brought up my own thoughts on medical need and what might happen to me if it was me laid out in a bed without means to dictate my thoughts. It always seems to take looking into someone else’s peril to recognize our own, so I’ll bite this hook and see where it takes me once I clear the water’s edge.

I’ve never wanted to be kept on life support. It just feels… without purpose. If I can’t get out a sarcastic quip now and then, there’s no reason to keep me around simply because heart and lungs are still going. I’ve also decided that my sister, Alexis, the perpetual pre-med who has more knowledge than most acting residents, is the best equipped to handle the task of corralling both our family and certain persons of fandom in a time of crisis. Gods help her, however, if she has to do both at ONCE…

Of course, all this is going on paper and being appropriately notarized and blessed and smudged and so on, but I figure a relatively secure public forum that very few people read of care about is a good place to archive these musings. Or let them putrefy, one of the two...

Once again, I’m far too tired for this kind of talk, so I’ll leave you with this tidbit that my dear Raven and the lost girls of House Cerulia inspired in me on my trip to Seattle recently:

“Are you all right?”

“Headachy with forgotten epiphany and heedlessness.”

Blink. Blink. “Cup of tea will fix that right up.”

“Have I told you how much I love you even though I’m an unspeakable horror?”

“Yes, but you’re MY unspeakable horror. Sugar?”

Lost girls. They are made of win and pie and pirate. Ravens are made of song and story and curry, you see….

So passeth a woman of integrity and grace…

… who knew how to ROCK a hat.

Dorothy Height was a pioneer in the pursuit of civil rights for all, not only blacks but all oppressed peoples. "Civil rights are civil rights. There are no persons who are not entitled to their civil rights. We have to recognize that we have a long way to go, but we have to go that way together." - speaking to the Human Rights Campaign in 1997. She died April 20th at the age of 98.

A truly brilliant, passionate, yet understated lady of grace and charm who was more than willing to step up and fight for what she knew to be right. May we all be as brave, as fashion conscious, and as resilient in word and deed as this lady was.

Anne Coulter, put the crack pipe down....

Excuse me? Since when does the walking hate crime herself get to call victim here? She was scheduled to speak at the university of Ottowa, and they had to CANCEL her engagement since the protest outside was bordering on riot. The entire reasons she’s calling foul here is because the University official overseeing her speech sent her an email stating that she should use ‘respect’ when metering her words because the hate crime laws are more strict in Canada than they are here.

Ok, so this guy is trying to be nice and warn her off of getting arrested and causing an international incident because of her inability to not spout lies, and she’s bitching? Classy, Anne, in your classic classy fashion, you hopeless degenerate scarecrow.

This is just one more symptom of the festering cancer that is what’s left of the GOP. They are in shambles as a group, fractioning off within the confines of the far right into varies grades of violence, lunacy, and bigoted hypocrisy. They honestly will fight long and hard against anything this President says or does, even if it is exactly what the people need/want. They care nothing for the people, they care about telling the people what they want and need, not letting them make up their own minds based on actual fact. It’s amazing to me the amount of abject bullshit these people will just make up on the fly and call it fact. From the birthers (wow, fail) to the Tea Baggers (still laughing) to the right wing in general, these people are dangerous. Their ideas are poison, and they sit gleefully steeped in their own hatred, refusing anything even resembling reason.

Then you have the riot inciters, the Rush’s and Glenn’s and Anne’s of the far right that love nothing more than being loud and obnoxious and spouting absolute shit, anything to get attention, money, and make people squirm. There’s a word for that: Bully. And we all know how I feel about bullies. I request no violence toward these people. I request only that they be held responsible for the words they say, for the hate they spread, and for the people who’s lives are trampled under the tiny but spiked heel that is the Wingnut Militia within the US. They were more than happy to let the government have full reign when it was their side on top. Now the tiny barking minority is crying out for justice. Justice, you say? Let’s put you on trial for the murder of abortion doctors, the erosion of the middle class, the protesting at the funerals of soldiers (Westboro is a whole other line of thought that I will not dive into this round. Way too angry), screaming hate while their families grieve when all these men and women did was DIE FOR YOUR FREEDOM. Fuck you very much.

See, this is why I'm not allowed to have Henry Rollins' children. Short, highly intelligent, foul-mouthed, ANGRY, tattooed children with no neck to speak of who would take over the whole damn planet. no one needs little clones of me running around. Humanity just isn't ready for that much bottled rage. Vacation blog to follow soon! :)

Here it comes again.....

The sun has risen, the Fog has not. I listened in the Dreamtime to its rhythm and its rhythm, floating on its grey waves even as I stay anchored. A rock in a silver sea, the graffiti left behind a scar, a story, a memory, a song. It took me by the hand as it washed away the world. I wonder what else it has to share?

The sun is obscured, as if the day is merely and afterthought. The waterbeat rhythm still shifts my feet. I want to walk it back to its source. Not yet.

It hangs above the remaining snow and newly revealed grasses. It knows what we are coming to understand. All things end, and all things come back, and the stories between are worth telling, worth listening to, worth keeping. So too, then, are we.

Here it comes .....

The Fog rolls in like dragon’s breath, thick and rich and sweet. In the short walk from the train it has cast over the streets and between the buildings, so dense its hard to know that stranger drifting out of the grey mist before me. Is he from around here’ Does he know where here is? Do i? Curious.

The dreams com slow and wild, drifting in and out of the moving grey like figures on strings, the silver curtain the only veil between our worlds. What becomes of the ones caught still walking when the Fog lifts? This is the kind of night where people disappear and reappear at will, though by their own or another’s is a matter of perspective.

Ashen and expectant, it rolls on, beyond and through me. Dare I follow, either to its source of along its journey? Nah, I stay behind this time, drinking in the newcomers and watching that which is taken drift along, freer than it will ever be again. Perhaps one day I too will join it, but this night is not for me. I close the door just to, letting the Fog roll in as it Will. What stories have you brought to share tonight, Old Wise One? What more have you seen in the wide Worlds?

White Ribbon, White Trees

So, saw ‘White Ribbon’ yesterday. AMAZING film. It’s the kind that movie buffs will be analyzing for years to come. It’s about a small village in Germany just prior to World War I. a series of strange happenings, nothing of the supernatural, simply tragic and close together, spin the village into a quiet frenzy of suspicion and conspiracy. The film ends just at the beginning of the War, and many of the deep-seated tensions of this village mirror those of the region at the time. It’s a microcosm/macrocosm mirroring that is truly lovely. I just wish the damn movie had as ENDING.

This is the second time in as many weeks I’ve come across a story that has no ending. I’m currently torturing myself with the “Incarnations of Immortality” series by Piers Anthony. Book 3 , no freakin’ ending. Almost as bad as the movie “Sex and Breakfast.” It’s rash inducing how badly that sucks. The story (in the book, not the movie) is wonderful, the world he builds is exquisite in it’s simplicity laid over such a complex framework that is beautifully easy to grasp. It’s just such a shame about his writing…

But be that as it may, the company of yesterday was excellent. Intelligent and sarcastic in delicious ways, all while being warm and snuggly. Quite a pleasure, one I wish I could share more of, but alas, I longed for a social life and got one. Blast it all.

And yet, for all my doubts and worries and trials and schedules, all I can do is watch the snow dust onto the streets as I wait for my laundry to be done so I can sleep. Time passes so slowly as the white dances down from the sky. I wonder what its like, to live so short a life. To fall from the heavens to the earth in a single bound, carried to your resting place by the winds.

The Leaving

And so begins another adventure. Balance is a thing of perspective, yet as perspective evolves, balance must be maintained. Or tipped entirely on its ear, one of the two.

So, regardless of practically untenable (and thankfully soon to be EXITING) roommates, I’ve managed to get settled. It took me almost a year, and the roommates didn’t help at all, but I’ve managed at last to settle in to what has become my own piece of life. And yet I’m antsy. Expectant. Wanting. As usual, the Leaving is creeping in again.

Catherine Valente actually articulated this better than I could ever hope to in her book, In The Night Garden. She spoke of a sensation unignorable, a calling of sea and adventure and movement, called the Leaving. It has followed me most of my adult life, this need to go, to see, to find, to move about. It took me across state lines, into the arms of various lovers, and yet always my eyes on the horizon, westward, wanting. And this is the first time in my life I’ve ever truly want to drop kick the Leaving. I don’t want to go.

I know where I would go, which doesn’t make this any easier. I’m visiting there next month, seeing friends and brothers and sisters, comrades in trickster mischief, set in the Pacific Northwest, 4 hours by plane away from everything I have built and know and love. And yet how much I would be leaving behind if I DON’T go. I’m leaving something behind either way, visiting instead of living. Yet which family do I cherish, and which do I allow to fly free? Part of me has made the choice, brushing aside illogical, irrelevant fancy, giving way to tenable joy, to tangible existence. And yet the Leaving hungers. It longs for the road, longs for the freedom of complete autonomy.

And this is where my being wants to say fuck it and go on tour. I’ve been considering putting an ad in Craig’s List for quite a while, something to the tune of, “Singer Seeking Songwriter.” My music has always been such an integral part of my life, and yet I don’t give it enough attention. I realized that at Capricon just 2 weekends ago, singing on stage with Eric Coleman. It made me realize how much I want this, to be able to share this gift, to let it warm the hearts of those around me, their smiles and laughter warming mine.

It’s a long way to find out who we are. The Waiting sucks.