Satan, Get Thee Behind Me

(Satan Sowing Tares–Félicien Joseph Victor Rops 1833-1898) Sometimes I look at other people and think, it must be easier for them than it is for me, they’re always so happy. I’m really picky. I only like certain things, at certain times, in certain colors, and they have to smell good. When things go off and [...]

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you eat bugs, you just don’t know it. (til now)

(Inago no Tukudani: Locust with sweet soy sauce savor) Aside from in the United States, Canada and Europe, most cultures eat insects for their taste, nutritional value and availability. (from HowStuffWorks.com) It’s called entomophagy, literal translation from Greek entomos, insect and phagein, to eat…and it happens all the time. All you picky Canadians, Europeans and United Statesians who [...]

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the oil spill is darwin’s fault.

(Jean-Baptiste Lamarck) In the last month I have witnessed a lot of death in nature. There was the green snake killed by the scrub jay (an experience on which I wrote a blog entry). Then two weeks ago I saw a little brown bird being pecked to death by a crow. Over the weekend I [...]

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nuclear power is not the devil. maybe.

(photo courtesy of Pacific Northwest National Laboratory) In the book Dreaming the Future, Clifford Pickover describes a few themes recorded during several future life progressions (as opposed to past life regressions): 21st Century-World peace is attained and lasts three thousand years. Hunger, greed and prejudice are reduced. 22nd Century-Solar power is part of daily life. [...]

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isaac newton was a sinner.

Once recently, a friend mentioned offhandedly that she was trying to stop talking about people behind their backs. I thought to myself, wow! that’s neat! I wonder how she’ll do? It didn’t really occur to me until about an hour later, when I noticed myself talking about somebody behind his back, that perhaps I should [...]

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the natural burial.

Yesterday I went and spoke with an engaging woman who is finishing up her schooling in embalming. The woman, despite the fact that she is learning how to embalm/preserve bodies in the “traditional” method, is a proponent of a newly re-emerging burial method called the natural burial. Human beings have been burying their dead for [...]

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overcoming the fear of death, without an invisibility cloak.

As a part of my religious studies major in college, I took a class called death and dying. I didn’t want to take it, I had to to complete the coursework. The best thing I remember about that class was when I ran into the class professor at a PRIDE parade and he was wearing [...]

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solve et coagula: rip it open, let it heal.

The other day I was talking to my lady and I told her that sometimes I go through periods of feeling bad inside. I told her that I felt like I had wound inside me that needed to be cauterized. She winced a good deal at that revelation. Once when I was in high school [...]

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ok then, the ghosts: on death and dying.

Surely you’ve got to go somewhere when you die. Most of the ancient cultures had a place where they stuck the souls of folks who weren’t of the most savory classes (i.e. weren’t gods or directly related to gods) after they die. The Sumerians called the underworld Irkalla and it was ruled by Nergal, the [...]

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“Decay is the midwife of very great things…” Paracelsus

Paracelsus was an alchemist and physician from the 1400′s. He was a very unusual character, accused of being a drunkard and and a knave by many upstanding citizens in many countries in and about Europe. He happens to be one of my favorite characters, mostly because he said that you can make a “little man”–a [...]

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