Thank Fuck the Rich are Cowards

See Marcus’s post about Caesar for an example of what courage looks like.  Courage is a virtue, in the sense that “virtue” originally meant manly qualities, and while it can sometimes be good, it can also be decidedly evil.  From the time those American nazis entered the Capitol Building, all it would take to snuff out the already miserable vestiges of US democracy would be a rich person exercising evil courage.

I say a rich person rather than a politician because they’re the ones with all the levers.  If a Koch grew a pair and took a risk, they could grab Trump’s ear, tell him all the right things to say, grease the right palms, pull the right levers.  Trump has very little control over his messaging because he’s an impulsive dipshit with a paper-thin concept of reality.  But if the right rich person sidled up like the serpent and told him what he had to gain from following a script?  He could be far more dangerous than he is now.  He could actually be effective, instead of just being a half-assed stochastic terrorist.

But late capitalism is all about playing it safe.  Don’t take risks, even the bare minimum ones necessary to maintain control.  Just keep ratfucking everyone in sight and hide when you get spotted.  Cowardice.  They know they own Biden, that he’s the safety, the security, so while they’ll boost the Trumpism that lets them run riot over the natural resources and slaughter-me sheep of red states, they won’t help keep Trump himself in power.

Nothing good will come of today, but the worst case scenario will not either, and for that I’d like to thank our country’s rich for being more Antoinette than Machiavelli.  Stay down, cowards.

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Latin Heat

Content warning: Misogynist Magic

Back on that Latin shit.  I was translating a spell and one particular scribal abbreviation was giving me the business.  It looks like “heat” with an arc over it.  I couldn’t easily track it down on internets, was looking for second opinions.  On the other hand, I think I’ve gotten a lot better at the transcription / de-abbreviation process than I was.  Check me out…

Including any grammatical and spelling mistakes of the original writer and likely adding my own, here you go:

“…et per omnes virtutes celorum , ut in hoc speculo hanc virtutem venire faciatus : et infundatis : ut quecunque mulier ut virgo , ut vidua intuita fuerit , ut nullam requiem sui corporis he^at : neque sedendo , neque stando : neque dormiendo , neque vigillando , neque comedendo , neque bibendo , neque aliquid faciendo : donec meas omnem voluntatem impleat :- ”

This is a spell to dominate women, because Renaissance wizards were incels.  Lacking any Latin skills, bouncing between wiktionary and google search and google translate, this is my rough interpretation of this part of the spell, slightly rearranged grammatically for ease of reading:

“…and by all the heavenly powers, as bound and established in this mirror: Whatsoever woman observed within, be she virgin or widow, shall not rest her body (he^at), shall not sit, not stand, not sleep, not see, not eat, not drink, not do a thing, until all satisfy my will.”

So what is the Latin “heat”?  Based on the usual way these abbreviations go, “hemat,” but what would that mean here?  This grimoire often reduces compound vowels from Latin to a single letter, for example turning ae into e, like in “celorum” from the first phrase.  The closest word then that I could find was “hiemat,” which would turn the phrase into something clunky like “shall not rest her body though it be winter.”  Also if this was a dip into Greek, it could be something to do with blood.  “Shall not rest her body though it bleeds.”

What do you think?

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Mortal Jelly

Humans are just piles of jibbly meat, highly derived structures propping up a primordial worm / digestive tract.  Our overdeveloped sensory processing node/brain wants something more.  In their earliest form, brains would have more basic info to process – dark/light, pain/satiation, things like that.  Is the human desire for a transcendant experience a misguided version of some kinda worm drive, wanting to move into the light inside the light?

Sometimes experiences feel like they’re touching on an abstract higher realm, like getting closer to god or transcendance or nirvana, whatever.  When I’ve felt this it’s usually from music or film, more rarely from physical experience.  It’s kind of like buzzing.  Like if your thoughts are all wave forms and they’re peaking.  Maybe transcendance is just your mind’s wave form hitting a ceiling, like a mistake in audio editing that causes a loud part of a song to turn into an obnoxious rattle.  We don’t like hearing that audio track, but if it had a sense of self, maybe it would feel pretty cool.

Anyway, listening to The Doors veers between wondering why you’re listening to this clownish nonsense and feeling like true magick is about more than just casting spells, maaaan.  I put my finger on the veins of the cosmos and find the pulse uncanny, retract.  Back to work.

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A Bad Dream

Content Warning: Gore, COVID

In my waking hours, I’m not concerned about COVID.  My household is fortunate to be able to isolate well, we live in a state doing better than most (though one of the worse cities in our part of it), and there’s very promising vaccine news floating about lately.  I think we can hold out ’til the stuff comes available, and while I can feel bad for victims, it’s not a very deep sorrow for me.

But apparently when I’m asleep it’s a different story.  I had a dream where COVID symptoms included hemorrhagic sores, open wounds, and plague-like swelling.  For unclear reasons the bodies of victims were in chopped-up chunks.  Still-living victims were burying the dead in mass graves at the sides of the road while the rest of us drove by.  There was blood soaking the ground in large patches.

India was having some success training animals like monkeys and wombats to help care for children with the disease, which was heart-warming.  I wondered in my dream if I should pay money to that charity, or if it would be better spent in helping research a cure.  I somehow ended up in an isolation cell with one of those plague children, which was sad and horrid, but I half-realized I was dreaming and was able to logic myself out – not fully awake, but to a previous area from the dream.

Somebody wondered on a previous post what a bad dream looks like to me.  This wasn’t the worst, but it was bad.

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Random Thoughts on Ethnic Stereotypes

The title of this post probably makes it sound like it will be more substantial.  No, this a Random Thoughts from Satan post, and not that deep.  I was just looking at the search “Hayden Christensen Movie Trailer” on youtube for laughs, and laugh I did.  But it occurred to me that in “Little Italy” he was essentially doing brownface.

As many people have pointed out, across the world there are varying definitions of white.  To a Persian guy in Iran, he’s white.  To a Berber in Egypt, she’s white.  It’s defined by having somebody darker than you, and usually further south.  So to some Germans, I expect, Italians are not white.  And by that definition, a Scandinavian Canadian with his hair darkened rocking a tan to flip pizzas would be doing brownface…  Although I found out he’s like 1/4 Italian, so *chef’s kiss* mama mia!  Uncancelled.

In all this I caught myself being amused at the cute ethnic stereotypes of the world, which is, I expect, not SJW kosher.  And yet, how can you not automatically be charmed by people with funny accents?  So cute.  One time I was in a basic English class at the community college, while I was reading aloud some depressing stuff I wrote, it prompted my teacher to say “My God man, are you a drinka?”

It was one of the highlights of my life, honestly.  He was so Jewish his name was Murray and he was from Brooklyn, where in the summers it was like a foinace, oy vay.  Freaking delightful.  I wonder, in places less mainstream blando Anglo-American, would my accent charm and amuse?

As an exemplar of the most over-represented culture on the planet, I kinda doubt it.  C’est lavie.  I’ll have to be cute in some other way.  Maybe my taste in shoes…

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Not a Bad Dream

Content Warnings: Surreal Violence, Death, Drugs, Prostitution, Deformity.

I had a dream I was Blixa Bargeld of Einstürzende Neubauten fame, though the rest of the band didn’t enter into it.  Me and some artist / drug friends were living in some kind of underground ruin over the course of a few decades.  In later years it also became a brothel and I was arguing with my best friend about allowing caning in the S&M action.  I don’t remember why I opposed it, but my friend the art pimp said we needed it to stay competitive.  The main points of action in the dream were when cops tried to raid us and it turned into big siege situations.  I killed a few cops in self defense and the defense of others, and somehow legally got away with it both times.  Those parts of the dream weren’t bad.  Later in the dream a sad prostitute with a elephant man-like skin condition and semi-liquid flesh started chasing me around and dividing like an amoeba, which wasn’t cool, but not as scary as it should have been.  I woke up to a day off from work, so not a bad time.

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Gonna Work on a Screenplay

Content Warning: This could be perceived as making light of gun violence and that ain’t cool.  But I’m an action movie fan, and this came to me in a dream, so I’m obligated to do what I can to make it a reality.  Unless, like, that ain’t cool.  Damn I could use a nap.

How do you like my screenwriter name?  The T is for Train.

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You Couldn’t Pay Me

Watching the debate?  Paying any attention whatsoever to the shitshow that is US politics, outside of the bare-ass minimum it takes to vote?  You couldn’t pay me to do it.  Not a fucking chance.  Not happening.  It’s all too upsetting and vile and fucked up.  But you know, maybe that’s an exaggeration.  Maybe somebody could pay me to do it.  Let me figure out how much…

I would have to quit work in order to make mental bandwidth for it, so you have to pay enough to cover my expenses for two years in case it takes a while to get rehired.  I make about $30,000 per year, so $60,000 is the price floor.  But exposing myself to this would make me less emotionally available to my family, so you gotta pick up the therapy bills for them.  Assuming two hours a night at $90 an hour from now through mid November (assuming this isn’t gonna go smooth), another $8,100.  And that’s just getting by, if I want compensation to make it feel like I came out ahead in the deal, how much will I charge to feel like it was worth it?

$100,000.  Anybody want me to cover the election, or even look upon the faces of our rock ’em sock ’em wannabe lich kings?  Full payment in advance, or you get nothing.  Thank you for your understanding.

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Edit to Add:  I forgot about the cost of healthcare in the US – going out of pocket for health insurance.  $400 a month for that Obamacare, $9600 more.  Assuming some medical expenses actually will come up, even with insurance I’m currently paying a few thousand a year for dental and such.  Let’s bump this up to $125,000, just for incidentals I haven’t planned for.