Eagles to release 1st studio album in 28 years

Just read this on Yahoo News, courtesy of Liz:

Eagles to release 1st studio album in 28 years

To quote my reaction: "AAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHH!!"

To quote Liz's reaction:
"NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!"

To quote Colonel Kurtz: "The horror, the horror."

Internet outage

On Friday at work, I was looking at some stuff on the Web, and having an IM conversation with someone who works for an ILS vendor. Suddenly, without warning, I was logged out, and I got the “Firefox cannot find this page” message. I asked around a bit, and it turns out that the Internet was down all over the office.

As you know, I work in a library. This is a college library in the summer, which means it’s already dead as a doornail in terms of activity, and now there is no access to any useful applications.

Frantic, I logged onto IM from my phone, and let some key folks know that my Internet was down. I knew I might have to resort to—hold on to yourselves—using the phone for a CONVERSATION.

I wandered out to the circulation desk, to visit with one of our staff. “I can’t do ANYTHING”, she lamented. “I can’t even check out a BOOK.”

I decided that I would go over to the gym at lunchtime. On my way back to my office, I ran into one of our university IT guys. “Is the Internet back yet?” I asked him.
“Nope. It’s a problem on the other campus. The connection comes through there, and the link from there to here is broken. It’s a huge outage though—not just us.”
I asked him how this was affecting his work. “It’s great”, he said. “I can’t do anything. I decided to go for a walk. It’s nice out.”

I returned to my office, where staff were wandering around like lost souls. I ran into our AV person. He looked at me and threw his arms up.
“What am I supposed to do without the Internet? I can’t do anything.”
After a brief discussion of the merits of smartphones, he said, “I think I’m going to go outside, take my shoes off, and see what it feels like to walk around barefoot on the grass.”

One of our assistant directors was grumbling. “I logged out of my computer when I went to lunch, and now I can’t even log into my desktop. Why the heck did I even shut it off?”

I went back to my desk, where I searched around for something, anything, I could work on that didn’t involve the Internet. There were a few things, but not enough to really fill my time. Our assistant came back from her lunch. “I fell asleep downstairs,” she confessed.

I finally asked my boss if I could just leave early, which I was allowed to do. While driving home, I reflected that there was a time when we had no Internet. I was actually alive during that time. What did we do then?

I thought about it—this is what I used to do in the 1980s and early 1990s at my first library job, when I had nothing else to do at work, and there was no Internet:

Read books or magazines
Visit with other staff under the pretext of doing work
See if I could still turn cartwheels down the aisles
Photocopy random stuff
Check the Village Voice for cool concerts
Gossip about other staff members (I don’t know that this has ever stopped, even among the “professional librarians”)
Visit the vending machine in the break room
Have singalongs with the Reference staff (or at least the really cool members of the Reference staff)
Tell campfire-type stories about strange patrons
Do homework (I was in high school/college then)

I would also add “play baseball”, although I didn’t really participate in this. I used to work with 4 guys, and they frequently entertained themselves by taking the magnet off of the photocopier door, and using one of those plastic “lollipop” thingees that were used to identify popular periodicals, would try to hit the magnet as far into the stacks as they could. If you only made it into the 400s, it was a single, the 600s was a double, and if you made it past the 800s, it was a home run. It just goes to show where boredom will take you—and probably would have been fun if you didn’t run the risk of hitting a patron in the head. But some of our patrons probably could have used that.

Back to the present—I was really missing my Facebook and MySpace status updates. It made me think of this article:

MySpace Outage Leaves Millions Friendless

Anyway—as soon as I got home I logged on immediately, to avoid social networking withdrawal. Like a lot of things—you can’t imagine what you would use it for before you have it, and once you have it, you can’t live without it. Weird, isn’t it?

Personal topics

Recently I had a discussion with someone about whether or not a blog should be “personal” in nature or not. Speaking strictly for myself, I couldn’t possibly write a blog that isn’t somewhat personal—I think it would be dead boring otherwise. Maybe you already think it’s dead boring. I assure you it would be worse if I tried to keep it impersonal.

So—speaking of personal topics—I went bra shopping today. I don’t do this often. I have (now I’m getting really personal) very average breasts. I’m not flat chested, nor am I porn star material. I happen to like them just the way they are. I see no need to augment them. Being of an exceedingly practical nature, I not only think breast implants would be painful and expensive—I also don’t need anything else to contribute to the upper back problems I already have, thanks.

Anyway, I went over to Victoria Secret to look at bras. I was hoping they would have a better selection than your average clothing store. As it turns out, they have a huge selection, and nothing that I actually want. All bras now seem to have at least one of two things, if not both: padding and underwire.

As I mentioned, I don’t have huge breasts. I imagine that a woman who is a DD or an E would need iron support. I also imagine that a woman who is flat chested may want something that, well, doesn’t make her look flat chested. I don’t fall into either of those categories, which is why I resent having this kind of a selection. I see all kinds of statements about new “technology” in these bras. I don’t want technology in my bra. I want it in my computer, my cell phone, my iPod, and my appliances. I don’t want high-tech lingerie. Those words shouldn’t even be in the same sentence.

This may seem like an odd topic, but it is one of those things that has always annoyed me, like Paris Hilton, or the Eagles (the band, not the football team). Stay tuned for more strange topics—I feel like I’m on a roll this week.

Sannyasa Sukta

I just read the most amazing thing today. My friend brought me a CD of Hindu chants she picked up at Amma’s Seattle program. One of the chants is listed as “Na Karmanana”, and is also known as the Sannyasa Sukta. It comes from the Upanishads. For anyone who has been to see Amma, and has been around for the beginning of the program, you would have heard the swamis reciting the Sannyasa Sukta while the pada puja is going on (i.e., washing of Amma’s feet, garlanding, aarati, etc.).

I feel totally overwhelmed every time I hear the Sannyasa Sukta, but it was just today that I learned the actual words and their meaning:

om na karmana na prajaya dhanena tyagenaike amrtatvam anasuh /
parena nakam nihitam guhayam vibhrajate yad yatayo visanti /
vedanta-vijnana suniscatartha sannyasa yogad-yataya-suddha-sattvah /
te brahma-loke tu paranta-kale paramrtat-parimucyanti sarve /
dahram vipapam parame’ sma bhutam yat-pundarikam pura-madhya sagmstham /
tatrapi dahram gaganam visokas-tasmin yad antas tad upasitavyam /
yo vedadau svarah prokto vedante ca pratistatah /
tasya prakrti-linasya yah para-sa mahesvarah //

What’s amazing about this chant is that it basically sums up the core meaning of all religious belief and practice in what amounts to one paragraph. It refers to 2 things:

1. The way to “liberation” (or salvation, if you prefer) is the renunciation of the world (i.e., surrendering the ego, or cleansing oneself of sinfulness, or removing attachments to worldly things—whatever terminology you prefer).
2. “There is a lotus situated within the body, in the middle of the heart, a place free from all suffering. It is the spiritual sky, free from all material contamination and lamentation. There resides the object of our worship”. This refers to the fact that there is not a personal God “out there” to be worshipped, but that God resides within the heart, and can only be found there.

I would argue that this is the core of all religions, regardless of any other rules, practices, rituals, or dogma. This is even true of the Western religions. On the surface, Judaism, Christianity and Islam seem to refer to a God “out there” and separate from us (and this is unfortunately how it’s understood in our culture), but if you read deeply into the spiritual writings of saints and mystics in these religions, you will find that the same concept is indicated. It removes the need for a religion that uses its scriptures as a weapon, and eliminates the science vs. religion debate—there is no need to argue about the existence of a state of consciousness. There is no discussion of a separate deity watching over things.

Speaking of "female chauvinist pigs"

You have to hand it to the Onion to jump on this issue:

Women Now Empowered By Everything A Woman Does

Earth-like planet found (Onion opinion)

Earth-like Planet Discovered

Scientists have discovered an Earth-like planet orbiting a red dwarf star 20 light-years away. What do you think?

A Post-Nor'easter Balanced Perspective

A couple of weeks ago, on a snowy afternoon, I posted my top 5 minor evils of the world—at least they were the minor evils of the week. I had promised balance in the form of a post on the top 5 minor (or major) boons to humanity. It’s interesting how it’s harder to think of positive effects than it is to think of negative ones. Nonetheless, over the last couple of weeks I have seized on positive inspiration when it has presented itself, and tackled it to the ground. Hopefully I haven’t killed it.

Here is the short list:

1. Jimmy Page
2. TaB cola
3. The WFMU blog
4. Weird NJ
5. Magic 8-balls

And here’s the rundown:

1. Jimmy Page—IMHO, there is no greater evidence that there is a God than the guitar playing of Jimmy Page. And Jimmy Page himself, let’s face it. The man’s got some sort of manna, even if he hasn’t as much of the mysteriousness that he had in the 1970s. I credit my survival of junior high school to Led Zeppelin. Page was brought to my consciousness again recently when I read this piece in The Onion.

2. TaB—There are 5 potential grocery stores that I can visit within a 10 mile radius. I tend to choose one that is slightly more expensive, because they carry TaB. I cannot go through a week without at least 2 6-packs of TaB. For you young ‘uns out there—TaB was the first diet cola, and is still produced in the U.S. in those hot pink cans (I think the cans are blue if you buy it in England). It’s getting harder and harder to find, though, so I end up driving miles out of the way some weeks to find it. As far as I’m concerned, TaB is the still the best diet cola out there, although the original formula has changed. It contains BOTH saccharine AND aspartame—for double your artificially sweetened pleasure. Originally it only contained saccharine, which is still used in Sweet ‘n’ Low (what’s with saccharine and putrid pink packaging, anyway?). Say what you want about the health risks—it still has no calories, tastes great—and something I eat or drink is bound to kill me one day anyway, so I’m not getting concerned about it.

I know I am not the only person left in the Western Hemisphere who drinks TaB. There is a message board at iloveTaB.com, where dedicated souls provide information on where to find TaB—not just in cans, but in 2-liter bottles. I am hoping that sometime, somewhere, someone on that board can point me to TaB in glass bottles. That’s like finding El Dorado.

3. The WFMU blog—I mentioned WFMU in an earlier post, during their annual pledge marathon. I’m proud that they are broadcasting from New Jersey. WFMU’s Beware of the Blog has the best assorted collection of musical and pop culture oddities. Where else can you find cheesy Finnish videos featuring choreography by former Serbian president Slobodon Milosevic? Or rantings about a Satanic Donna Summer from a guy known as “Mark from NJ?” (No, this Mark is not related to the other Marks responsible for Weird NJ). You could spend days going through posts here, if you’ve never seen it before. I can’t think of a better way to spend a rainy, crappy Saturday.

And..speaking of the Marks..

4. Weird NJ—produced by Mark Sceurman and Mark Moran, what was once distributed as typed photocopies on legal size sheets of paper stapled together, Weird NJ has become a huge phenomenon in this state. It started out as Sceurman and Moran’s accounts of their travels to local “weird” sites. It has turned into a twice-a-year publication, about 120 pages each issue, covering the strange local folklore of the Garden State. My own contribution is in Issue 26, a piece co-written with Mark Sceurman on Aleister Crowley’s burial site that is still in need of future updating. The Marks have also expanded their territory, starting a Weird US site—including a TV show on the History Channel, and a series of books about every state in the union (there are 2 volumes on NJ). Mark and Mark will sometimes have slide shows at local bookstores—these have become immensely popular, and it is almost impossible to squeeze into the Weird NJ Halloween party, or any of the new issue parties. I used to go, but I’m not fond of crowds, and literally hundreds of folks turn out for these events. You can also subscribe to their channel on YouTube.

In the past, I have looked at the last 5 bucks in my pocket, and had to decide whether to buy food or get the next issue of Weird NJ. Weird NJ always wins—the new issues are like heroin. Once you start, it’s very difficult to stop. (I don’t know this from experience, BTW—I’ve never done heroin. I imagine it would put me to sleep). It provided a favorite excuse during the latter days of my marriage (“Not tonight honey—I’m reading Weird NJ”), and the day after I buy the newest issue always makes for a tired morning after, as I have to stay up all night reading it.

5. The Magic 8-Ball—Administrators just don’t make enough of this useful tool. Stuck on a big decision? Just try the Magic 8 Ball. Its wisdom is just as useful as anything you’ll get out of a long, droning discussion with your colleagues. Probably more useful, as a matter of fact. It’s ideal for the totally indecisive.

Cheerio.

Hello Kitty knockoffs

I like concepts that are put together, and don't go together. A lot of the fiction writing that I work on involves putting characters together that you couldn't imagine being together in any sort of logical fashion.

Here are a couple of "Hello Kitty" related concepts that don't go together, but are funny:

Hello Cthulhu (for you H.P. Lovecraft fans, unless you're the ones who take the Necronomicon seriously. This concept has been used by more than one artistic soul--one of them, not the one that did the cartoon to my knowledge, has a cafe-press store of Hello Cthulhu stuff. I think I need the coffee mug.)

Hello Kali --as a Kali worshipper, I find the rewritten mantra hilarious. And I don't think Maa takes offense...

"Thelemic Hinduism" -- my take on Mr. Crowley

When asked, I frequently define myself as a “Thelemic Hindu.” Most people get the Hindu part, but they don’t understand the Thelemic part. Trying to explain my interest in Thelemic philosophy is often difficult, especially once Aleister Crowley is mentioned. Many folks do not know who Crowley is, and those who do, unless they are Thelemites themselves, have an erroneous impression of him, due to the rumors that abounded about the man the late 19th and early 20th century.

I used to be a department head in a university library—I now work at the same library in a different job. While I was there as department head, our director at the time had amassed a large number of special collections. One of these contained a number of occult materials.

One of the items in this collection was a first edition of Aleister Crowley’s novel, “Moonchild.” I had heard of Crowley, but had read very little of his work, and I picked up the book to look at. The director came in, and saw me looking at it. “Don’t ever read anything by that man,” he said. “He’s evil.”
“Oh really?” I said.
“Yes,” he replied. He then went on to tell me how Crowley was expelled from a number of countries for his black magic rituals. Our director was a conservative Christian man, and very concerned about what he perceived as evil in the world. I listened to what he had to say. Then I went home, and proceeded to dig out the Crowley books in my collection and read them. Nothing interests me more than someone whom I am exhorted to stay away from.

My interest in Crowley was piqued farther when a couple of years later, when I met my good friend Frater P. We both work in the same field, and found that we were interested in the same type of materials. The Crowley conversation started over the unicursal hexagram pendant that I was wearing that day. He has a very keen interest in Crowley and his circle, and a great enthusiasm for Crowley’s writings that was infectious.

The more I read of Crowley, the more I liked him. He was not evil at all, in my estimation—he was blatantly outspoken about what was wrong with institutionalized religion. When I worked on my graduate degree in religion at Drew University, I found that I had a lot of the same criticisms of modern Christianity as Crowley, and his unabashed style was just wonderful to me. It was no wonder that he was regarded as such an evil personage—those who work towards finding truth, and speak about it freely, are often vilified by those interested in preserving the status quo.

Crowley’s magical writings are rather intense, and even practiced ceremonial magicians have a difficult time gaining full understanding of his writings. For those who have never read Crowley and are not magicians, I always recommend looking to Crowley’s fiction as a first step—The Scrutinies of Simon Iff is a collection of Crowley’s detective stories, and are not as tedious as his novels. Moonchild was a fascinating read, but the ending is disappointing to anyone who doesn’t understand the point Crowley is trying to make about such magical operations.

The most famous phrase associated with Crowley is “Do what thou Wilt,” or the longer version: “Do what thou Wilt shall be the whole of the Law. Love is the Law, love under Will.” The capital letters are important here. Thelema is actually the Greek word for Will.
“Do what thou Wilt” is not a license to hedonism, as many have interpreted it. A man or woman in pursuit of their Will needs to be quite disciplined. In short—the idea of pursuing one’s Will is a very simple axiom for anyone. “Will” can be compared to God’s Will, or the Purpose of one’s life—the reason for being born, coming into existence. Quite simply, to pursue one’s Will is to find out their purpose in this life, and dedicate one’s time to fulfilling that purpose. One should not waste time pursuing things that are contrary to one’s Will. For all of Crowley’s eccentricities, he believed his philosophy fully and practiced it fully—every act he engaged in was to further what he believed his Will to be. He did not feel it was his duty to bow to social norms, or conventional religion. Most folks are scared off by his moniker, “The Great Beast 666.” But Crowley felt it was his duty to bring an end to Christianity, and he saw himself in an anti-Christian role. He wrote a drama called The World’s Tragedy, about the coming of Christianity into the world. In his preface to the play, he explains that he is not against Jesus Christ as a person, or a God, or whatever—he is against what the established order has done with Jesus’s teachings. This is what he wanted to end, and he wanted human beings to fully understand their connection to the Divine—“Every man and every woman is a star”. Institutionalized religion is designed to keep people away from this connection.

To be fair, there are many folks who are not anywhere near ready to make this mystical connection, and for them, organized religion can be a safe introduction to these mysteries. But the seeker who wants to break out of the confines of dogma often finds him or herself in a spiritual crisis—Crowley was one individual who hoped to end this crisis. His bizarre behavior was often an attempt to break someone of their worldview. This is not unlike Don Juan in the Carlos Castaneda works—Don Juan gives Carlos peyote in order to shake him up. Carlos is an anthropologist, walking around with his notebook. Don Juan frequently makes fun of him for this, and works to show Carlos that the world is not what it appears to be—and even the “alternate reality” Don Juan shows him isn’t the bottom line. Crowley wanted to serve a similar function in the world.

One of the key Thelemite texts is The Book of the Law, and the Ordo Templi Orientis, or O.T.O. (a magical society that is currently based largely on Crowley’s teachings) has the Gnostic Mass as its central ritual. I have participated in the Mass both as clergy and as an observer, and I can tell you that it is an extremely beautiful ritual with incredible transformative power. I have never been unmoved by a Gnostic Mass. Those who wish to equate it with a Black Mass are totally ignorant, purely and simply. O.T.O. works on the highest level to not only transform its members, but to bring everyone in the world to their true Will. After participating in the Gnostic Mass communion, it is easy to understand how it accomplishes this.

The complaints that I have heard about the O.T.O. are the same complaints that I might hear about any organized group—egos can get in the way, and there are petty squabbles. This is simply human nature, and not the result of any failing in the organization. If everyone in the organization was a fully realized human being, perhaps there would not be such squabbles. Fully-realized human beings are exceedingly rare, and they don’t need any religious organization, because they’ve already achieved the thing that the organization is trying to get them to. To use one of my favorite quotes: “We’re all here because we’re not all there.” In Hinduism, it is understood that yogis do not need to follow the same constraints on behavior that other seekers do, because they’ve already transcended them.

How does this fit in with Hinduism? Really, Thelema fits in with any religion, or none at all. However—the Hindu concepts of maya (the world as we perceive it is an illusion) and dharma (acting according to one’s appointed role in life—i.e. one’s Will) have no conflict with Thelemic philosophy.

There is much more that could be said, but I could probably fill a book, or start an entirely separate blog on the subject.

Some links that I could recommend on Thelema and Crowley for the interested:

http://www.lashtal.com/nuke/
http://www.oto-usa.org/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aleister_Crowley
http://www.egnu.org/thelema/Main_Page

There are many more—feel free to comment with others. 93 93/93

Brigid Nischala

Today's "What do you think?"

If you don't read The Onion, you should. Besides the Daily Show and the Colbert Report, it is my only other news source. You may wonder why I don't watch local news or CNN or (ha-ha) Fox News, and it's because I never get the real story on those shows. Satire has more truth to it than anything that passes for journalism on any of those stations.

I love the Onion's "What do you think?" Here is today's:

Misbehavior Linked To Day Care

A recent study showed that children who attended day care for a year or longer were more likely to be disruptive in grade school. What do you...

Words speak louder than actions

I'll be going to see the Colbert Report in NY in about 3 weeks. This is one of my favorite clips from that show (and there are many favorites). Interestingly--while Google is pulling these things off of YouTube like crazy, they are available on Google Video. Hmm...

George Bush: Words Speak Louder Than Actions

Snow-day randomness

It’s been awhile since I’ve added to this blog. A lot of my recent efforts have been fictional—I do intend to present these, but not as a part of this blog. Hence, the more “serious” musings on culture have taken a back seat as of late.
Speaking of such things—today it is snowing where I am, after having an 81-degree day two days ago. I can’t express in words how this truly sucks. I did not have to work today (off for Spring Break, ironically enough), so I have been trapped in my home with two psychotic cats, a box of Thin Mints, and a bottle of Smoking Loon cabernet sauvignon.
Such a predicament usually drives my mind into bizarre directions, not all of them useful or purposeful. With all of the major problems in the world today—terrorism, war, poverty, illness, to name a few—I have been pondering the seemingly small but potentially deadly and completely random evils of the world. The impact of these evils is inversely proportional to the amount of time spent with nothing to do. Here is the list I have come up with so far:

1. iPod earbuds
2. The Girl Scouts and their diabolical cookies
3. Don Henley (and anything to do with the Eagles)
4. Boolean search engines
5. Lite beer

Not a huge list—I’m sure that some of you could think of others. Here is my explanation of this list:

1. iPod earbuds: Maybe I am the only one with this problem—but I cannot walk anywhere with my iPod without adjusting my earbuds approximately 97 times. No matter how much slack the wires connecting the earbuds to the iPod actually have, it always feels like they’re being torn out when I make any sudden moves. I do not understand how people jog or do upper body workouts with these damn things. And those stupid little black pieces of fabric that are supposed to cover them—they get lost all the time. If you try to put the earbuds in without this flimsy piece of fabric, it feels like you are sticking a knife in your ear. Add that to the hearing loss that is supposed to accompany excessive use of earbuds, and the clever way the wires get tangled within seconds after taking them out of your ears—and you’ve got a pretty good conspiracy theory.
2. Girl scout cookies: A friend of mine recently told me about 2 arrests in the school system she works in—one was a special ed teacher busted for using coke and heroin. The other was an administrator who supposedly locked himself in his office naked and started doing crystal meth. (Geez, whatever happened to sneaking a hit off of a joint in the bathroom?)
In any event—in the category of less serious but still potentially deadly addictions, I add Girl Scout cookies. Girl Scout cookies are pure evil—I don’t know how else to describe it. They are pushed on you by family and friends with a daughter or a niece, or some pre-pubescent female who needs to sell cookies to earn a “merit badge”. For the most part, you don’t see Girl Scouts going door to door anymore. It’s a shame really, because I could actually avoid them that way—most of the time I am not home, or good at pretending not to be home. This was a survival skill learned when the Mormons and Jehovah’s Witnesses started cruising our neighborhood. One of my pet peeves in the world is door-to-door religion sales. I have an unreasonable amount of anger when I see the fake and condescending smiles of missionaries, so it is better for both parties if I avoid them altogether.
But back to the Girl Scouts—unlike the Jehovah’s Witnesses, who are not allowed to spread their literature in the workplace, there is always someone in the office with the order form for Girl Scout cookies. If it doesn’t happen at work, they wait outside of the local grocery stores. This is an immediate gratification scenario—you don’t have to wait for the boxes to come in—they’re right there in front of you. And me, the helpless enraged addict that I am, always walk away with 3 boxes—those peanut butter Tagalog things, the Samoas, and most deadly of all—Thin Mints. I could eat an entire box in one sitting. I did that today, in fact. Shiva, my big black cat who looks like a ferret, came down to watch me. I yelled at him, “Why are you just sitting there, dammit? Stop me!” But Shiva let me down—for a cat that will jump up and grab almost anything out of my hands, he was content to sit there and sniff at the cookie box. I’m betting he gets a commission from the cookie distributors.
Incidentally, I learned that the Girl Scouts as an organization make very little money from their cookies. For the 5 bucks per box (or whatever it is now) that you pay, they usually see less than 1 dollar of the profits. Pretty crappy return on effort, if you ask me.

3.Don Henley : When I was in college, my friend Liz and I came up with the theory that the Eagles as a group are responsible for most of the minor evils in the world, although we also suspected them of causing international terrorist crises as well (this was about 10 years before Sept. 11).
Why Don Henley and/or the Eagles, you may ask? It’s hard to give a rational answer. Like any complex social science problem, it’s a matter of how you interpret the data. What we discovered is that every major thing that went wrong—whether it was the car breaking down, doing poorly on an exam, breaking up with one’s latest boyfriend, or whatever—was always preceding by hearing an Eagles song, usually the dreaded “Hotel California”. You may say it was a coincidence, but it was too common of a coincidence for our tastes. Soon this rumor was rampant on what was then the Montclair State College campus, and you would hear people bring it up at random on the student quad. Many of them tested the theory and found it to be true. Everything really hit rock bottom when Don Henley actually came to a local mall to promote his Walden Woods charity. Liz and I had at least 4 major crises apiece that week, which did not abate until Mr. Henley took off for somewhere else out of state. This led to the modified theory of Eagles-evilness:

1. Hearing any Eagles song is usually a precursor to bad luck, or can at least be considered an inauspicious omen.
2. Hearing songs by individual Eagles is also inauspicious, although there is a sliding scale of evilness. From most evil to least evil: Don Henley, Glenn Frey, and Joe Walsh. In fact, it is suspected that Joe Walsh is not really evil at all.
3. There is an antidote against the evilness of Eagles songs—namely, any Beatles song, or song produced by an individual Beatle, with George being the most auspicious, and Ringo being the least, but still effective nonetheless. I always kept a Beatles tape in my car, just in case we were ambushed by an Eagles song while scanning the radio dial. Led Zeppelin songs also work.

I worked in a public library in Northern Morris County for a few months, and discussed this theory with a young woman who was a library page. She liked the Eagles, and was even trying to learn to play Hotel California on her guitar. I warned her that this was a grave mistake, which she just laughed off. The next day, she was out driving, got into an accident, and broke her arm. Coincidence? Maybe. Liz and I don’t think so.
We have not corroborated our theory of evilness with Mojo Nixon’s. After hearing “Don Henley must die,” we assumed that he may have figured this out too, but maybe he just thinks they suck, or at the very least, are overrated.

Having said all of this, I have to admit to actually liking a couple of Don Henley’s songs. We all have an evil streak in us somewhere…

4. Boolean search engines: You will have to indulge me on this one. I am a librarian by trade, specifically a cataloging librarian. (For those of you who know the stereotype of professional catalogers, you will no doubt develop your own theory of how screwed up I must be.)
As a professional cataloger, the fact that Boolean could be the basis of a modern search engine irks me to no end. Good catalogers strive to make material accessible to the public through good description and subject access. That can be cancelled out by a few lousy prepositions. “Not” is a huge culprit. If you go into a Boolean-based default catalog search, you run into the “not” conundrum. God help you if you want to search for a title that has the word “not” in it. “Not without my daughter” is a good one. Try this in any SirsiDynix Unicorn catalog (usually called iBistro or iLink)—you will get 99,000 hits, none of them what you are looking for. This is because the “not” operator cancels out the rest of your search, and from the system’s perspective, you may as well have done a keyword search on a blank search box. I migrated a consortium of 37 libraries to a Sirsi Unicorn system. I remember talking to our sales rep about the catalog. I wanted to search “The Sound and the Fury” as an example title. “Oh no,” she told me, “That’s a bad example. You’d have to search just the words ‘sound’ and ‘fury’ to get the correct result set. Or, you’d have to search the whole title in quotes.”

Sirsi insisted that they do this because they “are creating a search engine for the public, not for librarians.” Sounds like the opposite to me. If you don’t know Boolean logic, you’ll never find a damn thing in the catalog. In an era of natural language searching and Google, this is just plain laziness on the vendor’s part. Google does have a Boolean option, but it’s usually in the advanced search, not the default. Hence, it leads to a greater evil in my opinion—the loss of access to relevant information. Maybe it’s meant to give reference librarians job security. But, as it turns out, most of them don’t know how to use it, either.
This rant comes in the wake of the news that SirsiDynix is no longer developing either the Unicorn or Horizon products, and they’re focusing a on a new platform code-named “Rome.” According to Sirsi’s release, forwarded to me by a former colleague, “Rome” is based on the Unicorn system. The release says it is because of the “quality, stability, and reliability” of the Unicorn platform. Which says to me that their company is sunk, and anyone on any Sirsi system should start working on their RFP for a non-Sirsi system now.

I hate to be so negative about this—I used to be the one who tried to put a positive spin on this system for the libraries I used to work for. I like all of the folks at SirsiDynix, but it is clear that some of the key decision makers are not living in the real world. Maybe working off of the Unicorn platform is the cheapest thing to do, and they are looking at the bottom line. But it’s a case of penny wise and pound foolish. I worked extensively with Unicorn’s last 2 or 3 releases, including the much touted GL3.1, which was supposed to solve all library consortia system issues, and apparently cure cancer and bring world peace in the bargain. All sarcasm aside, GL3.1 was not what it promised at all—it had a better interface, but beyond that, all it did was piss off circulation staff because it kept freezing in the middle of transactions. Some knowledgeable folks outside of Sirsi told us that this was a very stable release of Unicorn, but these were folks who apparently did not use the Reports module, which was totally f**ked up. To make this increasingly long story short—Unicorn is buggier that a wheat field during a plague of locusts. They did fix a few things, but they broke countless other things. They also promised a “fix” for the Boolean problem, but is has never worked—implementing the fix crashed the quick search feature on the catalog.
So—I consider it a great evil that a company that has 40% of the library automation market share has decided to move ahead with outdated technology, which will further drive users away from libraries using these technologies.

5. Lite beer : Yes, time to get away from the trauma of my last job, and move onto something else with less significance. I suppose lite beer is a boon for those who want to go out, have several beers, and not get wasted as quickly. Personally, if I was going to go out to drink lite beer, I’d stick to soda, because that at least has flavor. God bless the makers of Guinness, and save me from Anheuser-Busch.


Now that I’ve had a chance to complain—I will provide a list of top 5 redemptions of this Earthly life. But that'll have to wait til the next post.

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Female Chauvinist Pigs

I recall a book I read a few months ago by Ariel Levy, “Female Chauvinist Pigs”. She discusses the idea that there is a new idea of an “empowered” woman who is not only not afraid to take her clothes off or be sexually risqué, but also women who go to strip clubs with their boyfriends to look at other women taking their clothes off. Somehow all of this proves that a woman is not meek or prudish—it’s a statement of “confidence”. Levy questions this idea, and doubts that this is really any kind of feminism or empowerment. I think I would agree with her.

You might think that I’m a bit of a prude. I suppose I would say “yes” and “no” to that. In my opinion, there is nothing wrong with a woman wanting to be attractive, nothing wrong with the very real fact that heterosexual men like to look at women as a matter of course, and that women like to be looked at. There’s also nothing wrong with women being attracted to women, or men to men—when one gets past our external identities, all men and women are both Shiva-Shakti (i.e., have male and female qualities). Sexual fantasies, of any and all kinds, are very normal. However, I also cannot get sexually involved with someone just for the sake of having sex—there needs to be a deeper attraction, a sense of friendliness and compatibility as well. This is my “hang-up”, if you will.

I think I have been always concerned with the idea of “objectifying” women. Certainly attractiveness to the other person does play a role in “love” relationships, but the idea that your worth is judged by your face and your body type is nothing less than de-humanizing. At best, it has little to do with love. What is love? Something based on trust and respect, in the context of human relationships. How do you respect someone who is just a sex object to you?

Levy talks about teenagers and the current environment of sex education. Sex is everywhere in the media, but the current line of thinking is that teenagers should be taught abstinence, rather than being introduced to concepts like birth control. Levy does ask what I consider to be the all-important question—why are we not equating sex with love? The message teens get is that to really be special or of value, they need to be sexy—but they shouldn’t have sex because it’s bad. Sex isn’t bad—it’s the separation of sex from love that can be bad, and lead to so much emotional damage.
Teenagers, however, are dealing with that great tsunami called “hormones”. Trying to stop that tsunami by just standing in front of it and saying “no” is ludicrous—you’ll be drowned instantly or lucky if you survive it. Some are disciplined enough to be abstinent (whatever that means), but one needs to face the reality of this use it as an opportunity to talk about what’s right about sexuality and sexual feelings, as well as the reality of the potential consequences.

This strict dichotomy between sexuality as raunchy and a stiff, controlling morality can’t possibly cause anything but a schizophrenia in the soul. How can anyone possibly learn to love someone else in this kind of environment? It is interesting that married couples no longer are in the majority in this country. If you have been broken in this way, how can you possibly love someone once that initial lust is gone?

The dichotomy has to disappear, and the only way to heal it is to accept whatever it is you feel without guilt, while learning respect for others and yourself.

Science and Religion

Recently, I have spent my weekend mornings reading Huston Smith's "Why Religion Matters"--not a new book, but an interesting one, from a religious scholar who writes very accessibly.

The book seems to have come out of a concern about the discarding of a "traditional" worldview, and replacing it with a "scientific" worldview. The concern is a real one, but also a puzzle to me.

The public "battle" between religion and science is extremely evident in controversies in our educational system, and with such issues as a woman's right to choose. "Intelligent design" theory is one example of how science clashes with religion. But I don't think this is a battle between God and the atheists, as it were--it is a battle of worldviews, and both are incomplete.

To begin with--the entire conflict is predicated on the idea that there is some being sitting up in the clouds, directing Earthly traffic remotely. I don't know that anyone really believes this except for hardcore literalists and maybe young children.

Scientific approaches are empirical in nature. They rely on sensory and mathematical data. Scientific method requires a reasonable hypothesis for which measures/experiments are selected that prove or disprove the hypothesis. That may be a bit of a misnomer as well--one doesn't set out to prove that they are right (that represents a bias), and even if experiments go well, they need to be repeated many times before something is accepted as scientific fact. Frankly, there is hardly anything accepted as scientific fact--it's mostly theory, albeit theory well supported by empirical evidence.

So--if you are trying to use scientific methods to prove that there is some being out there in the sky on a golden throne, you will fail.

Smith points out the fact that emotions and emotional experiences (including religious ones) are often discarded in a scientific worldview as being non-objective, and therefore unreliable. This is similar to complaints about psychology, if one takes an extreme Freudian view--religion is merely a wish for a return to an innocent state, or whatever. "Mere" is the key term here--it tries to cut down the power of the experience by dismissing it as something insignificant. Erik Erikson is a bit kinder, distinguishing between those things that are demonstrably true, and those that are felt to be true through internal experience.

Let us turn to the East for a moment. In Buddhism, there is no god-concept. Hinduism has many deities, but they represent one Reality. There are actually 3 types of Hindu worship—bhakta (devotion), tantra, and vedanta. Vedanta is very similar to Buddhism in this respect—there is no-thing to worship. Ammachi has said that atheists are no more right or wrong about God than religious folk—no one has a true “image” of the Ultimate (as that would limit the Ultimate—and break the first commandment, if you are Christian or Jewish), so having no concept may be closer to the truth.

Jewish mysticism has an interesting metaphor for this—the Kabbalistic Tree of Life. The menorah displayed at Hanukah is one version of the Tree of Life, but more often it looks like the picture shown above.

The Tree of Life is made up of 10 “vessels”, or sephiroth. The Tree technically hangs upside down, and is light at the top, and dense at the bottom. Malkuth, the bottom sephiroth, is the Kingdom—it is where we are now. Directly above Malkuth is Yesod, which is represented by the Moon. The Moon reflects the light of the Sun, and is representative (among other things) of one’s Intuition.

Above Yesod are 2 sephiroths—Hod on the left, and Netzach on the right. All of the sephiroth have many qualities, but it may be easiest to think of Hod as Intellect, and Netzach as Emotion. Directly above these 2 is Tifareth, which is a very complex sephiroth—it is the point of realization that one is “connected to God” (we are special), but it is also dangerous—one can start to think they are more special than everyone else. One can rise to spiritual heights, or fall down from here.

Here is the relevant metaphor: If our physical life can be represented as Malkuth, then the 3 sephiroth above represent our “tools”—the Intellect/Rationality, our Emotions, and our Intuition. Useful tools, but each limited in their own way.

In the bigger picture—the Tree of Life is one, and represents the Ultimate in its entirety. And that’s the key—EVERYTHING is part of the Ultimate, and one sephiroth is not more important than another sephiroth. Rationality does not overshadow the others.

Back to the East—to “know God” is to be aware that one is a small part of a larger system, of Primal Consciousness (adiparashakti). To re-use a metaphor—it’s recognizing the strength of flowing with the entire Ocean, rather than struggling to maintain an identity as a wave. One is much more powerful with the whole than as a part.

The problem is that Western religion frequently separates God from the world, and we start looking for something transcendant that can only be realized immanently. There is nothing for “science” to prove. In the divination system of Norse runes, Ralph Blum’s “Book of Runes” notes for the rune Sowelu (wholeness)—“What you are striving to become is what, by nature, you already are. Become conscious of your essence and bring it into form, express it in a creative way."

Namah Shivaya.

Getting this show on the road..

It's hard to believe that this is only my first post. I've had this blog since November, but I have this thing with time--I never seem to have enough of it. Of course, the only way to get time is to make time.

This blog will primarily be focused on comparative religion and culture (one of my favorite topics), but I also have several other disparate areas of interest that I will discuss in another blog, or on another page. I will link to those when they are up, for anyone interested.

I should also note upfront that I am a devotee of Satguru Mata Amritanandamayi Devi, better known as Amma or Ammachi, or "the Hugging Saint" (http://www.amma.org or http://www.amritapuri.org ). Ammachi supports all religious beliefs, as do I--but like her, I primarily practice Hinduism. So, if there is a heavy slant towards this in my writing, you know why. I also have a Masters degree in Religion and Society from Drew University, hence the somewhat academic tone of the discourse.

OK, moving on...

I am not a huge TV watcher, but I was scanning the channels on a crummy Northeast US afternoon, and caught the latest Religion and Ethics Newsweekly, which had a profile on preacher Gardner C. Taylor in honor of Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthday. Taylor was involved with King in the civil rights movement.

Taylor said two things in the program that struck me: When a pulpit becomes an echo of the pew, it loses, I think, almost all of its reasons for existence," and, to a class of preaching students: "You do not want to strive to be known as a great preacher. You do want to strive for people to feel when you have tried to preach what a great gospel it is."

The first quote is in reference to his concern about modern churches, and their focus on raising money over fighting poverty and injustice. I reflected on the truth of this, and realized that it goes even further--when the churches cease to inspire their congregants to strive for spirituality over materialism, they also lose their reason for existence. Fighting poverty and injustice are two very important facets of this.

We are an extremely materialistic culture, and we haven't figured out that the pursuit of wealth is not going to lead to anything more than temporary happiness. It's like waking up on Christmas morning, and experiencing the joy of opening the present you desperately wanted--only to get bored with that same present a week or a month later. Romantic relationships can be like this, too--we often think that if we just found the perfect partner, everything would be solved. We fall head over heels in love--and then if we actually get together with that person, they ultimately don't live up to our expectations. Why? Because you expect to find the peace and happiness in them that you don't find in yourself. If you don't find it in yourself, you won't find it in anyone else. When I think about how we can get swept up in our emotions when we are attracted to someone, I think of Ammachi's story about Pumpum It illustrates the point beautifully.

People today are desperately in search of peace, and more importantly, that rare and elusive thing called "love". All love is selfish to some degree--the closest one might get is the love of a mother to a child. But even the mother has expectations for the child, and may stifle the child's spirit as the child is growing up, in her effort to be protective. One's minister, priest, or rabbi may advise you with good intentions, but even they have an agenda, as they must fall in line with the theology they are bound to uphold.

This makes things incredibly difficult for anyone attempting to find a true spiritual life. When I say "spiritual", that does not necessarily mean one who goes to church every week, or attends temple regularly. Spiritual means turning towards the Ultimate, however that is defined for that person. It does not require a personal god, although it may. I have observed that the following qualities seem to be associated with this:

• Selflessness (hence, service)
• Stillness (not roused to emotional extremes)
• Detachment (not trying to control)
• Sense of the "present" (as opposed to lamenting or being nostalgic for the past, or worrying about the future)
• Compassion (NOT pity--compassion has the quality detached love. Pity says "I'm sorry that you're not like me").
• Love (the selfless kind)

So, to be spiritual is to strive to live life with these qualities, which are present in everyone. My own experiences tend towards stillness and detachment--if I have these 2 qualities present, everything else seems to flow from that. This may not be true for everyone, but they are the qualities that meditation tries to establish.

When I first received a mantram from Ammachi, I was happy to start meditating, as I have always been a pathetic meditator. I have so much going on in my life that I can scarcely focus for more than 10 seconds. My mind is always running like a perpetual motion machine, or an irritating relative who never shuts up. I practiced mantra japa (reciting one's mantra while counting on a mala, or string of rudraksa beads) for about 6 weeks. On new year's eve that year, I went to a nearby Catholic college to walk the labyrinth that they had available around Christmastime every year. As I walked, I recited my mantra to myself, but found that I was too enmeshed in nonsense going on at work, and other petty things. Frustrated, I was shouting at Ammachi in my head: "What the hell is the point of all of this? I've been engaged in various practices for 17 years now, and I still have no idea why the f**k I am doing this. I'd like to know for even just 5 minutes what I am supposed to get to!"

I walked out of the labyrinth, and back towards my car. At that moment, something happened--I stood still for a moment, and suddenly everything was--well, still. I went back to work with this feeling--the various dramas of the day were still going on, but somehow it didn't matter-it was like watching a still pond, and having someone throw little pebbles into it. I just watched the ripples. I felt no animosity at all towards everyone--in fact, I felt quite content. And I was only concerned with the present--what I had to do tomorrow or next week was not on my mind at all. Everything seemed to move effortlessly.

This feeling did not last, but I have been graced with it several times since then, and a more intense meditation has increased its frequency. It occurred to me that this was what the Buddhists mean when they talk about being totally in the present moment, and what St. Teresa of Avila referred to as the "prayer of quiet" in The Interior Castle.

Why do I mention all of this? If material things and people do not provide permanent happiness, then what does? We are so used to thinking in concrete terms, that we cannot contend with something non-concrete, something that is impossible to explain. The prominence that mental health professionals have in many of our lives, whether it be therapy or taking antidepressants (or both) shows how deep the unease runs. The world around us is not providing the answers, and our religious institutions aren't providing them, either. The rise of fundamentalism is a symptom of our unease, our need for something definite and concrete to point to with regard to the Ultimate. But you will never find the Ultimate in the concrete--it would cease to be Ultimate if you did. Alan Watts put it well when he said that many Western religious people don't follow the finger pointing the way, they suck on it for comfort. Ammachi put it similarly, when she said that murthi (images of deities) are like ladders to the Supreme Consciousness--the deity is only an image, but it helps us focus on the right thing.

For many years I practiced the Wiccan religion, because my personal concept of divinity has always been female. It occurs to me that many seekers turn to Wicca and other occult religions because they are looking to make that connection with the Divine, and they feel that the mainstream paths don't take them there. Unfortunately, many occult religions suffer from the same problems that mainstream religions suffer from--politics and personalities. Carl Jung once said (and I'm paraphrasing) that you can take almost any group of intelligent, well-spoken individuals, and when you put them into a group, they fall quickly into a mass-psychology pattern of, well, stupidity. Groups and organizations will always be fallible. Even groups headed by a realized spiritual master will be this way--after all, the Master is the only one who has succeeded in overcoming the trials of the spiritual path. Everyone else is still struggling along.

Having meandered along on the first quote, let me say something about the second. Humility should probably be added to the list I have above. It is not about you or I as individuals--it is about the Whole. Humility means recognizing that in the big ocean, you are not the little wave that makes it all happen--you are part of a bigger system. For a Christian, to preach the gospel should be proclaiming the message of Jesus, not putting on a one-man or woman show, to show how charismatic or witty one is. One should be driven by a desire to do good for everyone, not to fulfill one's personal ambitions. Life in the spirit has no goals. At the same time--we must recognize that those who are trying to guide us are often as fallible as we are, and should have some compassion. This is not true only of clergy, but also of our parents, our bosses, our friends--those who influence our lives. Unless you are taking instructions from a fully realized Master, take the guidance of others into account, and use your discrimination in deciding your own course.

Those are my thoughts for now. Namah Shivaya.