I have seen many movies, and of those, only a small handful have I considered to be perfect. The 2007 documentary Man on Wire has joined this small list. It chronicles Philippe Petit's 1974 walk across the Twin Towers on a thin wire illegally strung up by a small group of friends and accomplices. The story itself is astounding, but everything about ( Read more... )

Excepting this cold I can't kick, this has been one of the best holiday seasons I've ever had. Being here with Janet, watching the snow come down, seeing the Revels and the incredible Boston Nutcracker, well, it's been magical for me. There's a bright blue sky out today, lots of sweets around the house, and music in the air. Xmas for me has always ( Read more... )

A huge international survey by David P. Schmitt at Bradley University looked at sexual attitudes around the world. Part of this was ranking attitudes and behaviors in regards to sexual promiscuity, number of partners, casual sex, marital fidelity, sexual freedom, prostitution, and divorce. The researchers call this the Sexual Permissiveness scale. ( Read more... )

1) Ferris Bueller's Day Off ( Read more... )

Click to view

Obama will be doing these weekly. It's such an obvious thing to do, but it took BHO to make it happen.

Well, it looks like Begich might win in Alaska after all. I think the Dems can chalk up one more win...

Edit: From the "About Fucking Time Department"...

Plasma Turns Garbage into Gas

Every year 130 million tons of America’s trash ends up in landfills. Together the dumps emit more of the greenhouse gas methane than any other human-related ( Read more... )

Okay, I've made up my mind. Right now I have three journals and that makes no sense. So, I am combining my personal Psykhosis LJ with my Ash93 account, giving you Ashkosis. Ash93 will automatically forward to this new account, which I will use for all personal updates as well as any Thelema-based ideas I feel like expressing. Psykhosis will no ( Read more... )

There is within Thelema a strong adherence to the notion that spiritual advancement is tied to various forms of discomfort, such as social isolation or persecution, dissolution of identity coherence, aggressive conflict, loss of reason, and the endurance of phenomena that tests one's physical, emotional, and cognitive fortitude. On the flip side, ( Read more... )

An interesting conversation...in thykaaba's journal, I wrote the following:

Now then, with all the above in mind, it makes sense to me that Thelema would initially appeal to liberal humanists. After all, human sacredness, self-rule, the right to develop as unique individuals, empiricism and anti-superstition, "There is no god but man", and so on, all ( Read more... )

A question for thykaaba (and anyone else who wants to answer)...

Let's say, just for the sake of argument, that you are absolutely right, that Thelema offers a scaffolding that provides for cultural continuity, at least for people you describe as secular. I have posited in another post that, as an example, a major reason why Wicca has been so successful is ( Read more... )