roseembolism: (Totoro)
So this Christmas, because it is a holy day at the end of the year, when the nights are longest, I decided to do something special for [livejournal.com profile] racerxmachina . I decided to do something I haven't had the courage to do in ages. I descended the 99 stone steps to the unlit cavern carved out of the living earth, I removed the ofuda, I broke the seals, and I opened the vault. With my left hand, I removed the recipe for EL GUAPO. With my right eye closed and wearing only red, I made one, this my signature drink.

And we survived to tell the tale of EL GUAPO.

There are skeptics out there, I know. "It's just a drink" they say "So what?" They can say that, they are safe in their own houses, with their whimsical and innocuous drinks such as martinis, mai tais and Long Island ice teas. They've never had an EL GUAPO in their hand, seen the earthy deep brown fluid inhabiting the glass staring back at them.

This is EL GUAPO: the mysterious drink that kills with it's love. The drink that Racerxmachina calls "The universal panty solvent. She says the ladies love EL GUAPO...they think. What they can remember of it anyway.

I share the secret recipe for EL GUAPOwith no one.
Well, unless they ask me. Then I tell as much of the recipe as I can remember when sober.

To tell the truth, I'm normally not even completely sure what the recipe consists of. I just wake up in the morning to the smell of cinnamon and chocolate, and I notice the blender is pitted and it's gaskets need replacing.


I do know that a chemist once tried to analyze EL GUAPO; all we know of the aftermath is they never did locate his pants.

You do not have an EL GUAPO as a "Hair of the dog". Because if it were a hair it would be a hair twenty feet long weighing 300 pounds.

Anyway, the recipe (more of a list of suggestions and warnings, really) is back safe in it's vault. I have sworn off EL GUAPO for the next solar cycle. Except as a toast to departed friends, I may bring a small sample to Dundracon. Those who are brave may have a sip.
roseembolism: (Default)
So it's Easter Sunday, the most important holiday on the Christian Calendar, and it's a rainy afternoon.  So there's nothing to do but curl up on the couch and watch TV.  But what can you watch that's appropriate for this momentous holiday?

Not to be contentious or anything, but here are my choices for primo Easter Sunday viewing.:

Walking with Dinosaurs

Cosmos

Connections

The Day the Universe Changed


Night of the Lepus



Happy Easter Everybody!
roseembolism: (partycat)
Very pleasant indeed! 

I spent all of Sunday, and much of today recovering from THE PARTY, otherwise I would have posted earlier.  I had a fantastic time hosting THE PARTY, in fact I think everyone had a pretty damn good time.  And I think I owe it really to the fantastic people who came.  I never really did affairs like THE PARTY in Santa Barbara, and so I'm still looking at it all with wide-eyed wonder that so many people can have such a good time for so long.  Of course THE PARTY was also helped by the pinata, and the food- thank you EVERYONE who brought stuff, and the tequila.  Glorious lovely tequila.  And the Indestructable Pinata of DOOM.

But really, THE PARTY was made by the people who came to it, and I'm honored, amazed  and thrilled once again by the incredible people I know.

Thank you all, and I'm looking forward to the next one!

roseembolism: (Default)
Just in time for Easter, Rob of One Bad Egg, tells us exactly what sugary, oozy, marshmellow-y evil lurks in your local tomb, in One Bad Easter Basket.   Complete with D&D 4E game stats.

So now you can have your wandering monsters and eat them too!
roseembolism: (Default)
I am writing this post on my laptop, which I have back again after months of it being out of commission. Racerxmachina did me the huge favor of taking it to the campus repair shop, and they kindly rebooted the system and kicked Norton Anticomputer of it for me at no charge.

So finally I'll be able to write again without wrestling over the computer with RxM. This means I'll be able to churn out even more crap then ever!

I am utterly thrilled!
roseembolism: (Default)
Sadly, we all can't have grown up Irish, with a poetical soul that's been nurtured by a childhood of grinding oppression, poverty and tragedy. But thanks to Francesco Marciuliano (author of Sally Forth and Medium Large) that shouldn't keep you from writing as if you did!

So, in honor of St. Patrick's Day:

Write your Own Irish Memoir!

It's like Mad Libs for the James Joyce fans!
roseembolism: (Default)

AGAIN we celebrate the victory of Light over Darkness, of the God of day over the hosts of night. Again Samson is victorious over Delilah, and Hercules triumphs once more over Omphale. In the embrace of Isis, Osiris rises from the dead, and the scowling Typhon is defeated once more. Again Apollo, with unerring aim, with his arrow from the quiver of light, destroys the serpent of shadow. This is the festival of Thor, of Baldur and of Prometheus. Again Buddha by a miracle escapes from the tyrant of Madura, Zoroaster foils the King, Bacchus laughs at the rage of Cadmus, and Chrishna eludes the tyrant.

This is the festival of the sun-god, and as such let its observance be universal.

This is the great day of the first religion, the mother of all religions — the worship of the sun.

Sun worship is not only the first, but the most natural and most reasonable of all. And not only the most natural and the most reasonable, but by far the most poetic, the most beautiful.

The sun is the god of benefits, of growth, of life, of warmth, of happiness, of joy. The sun is the all-seeing, the all-pitying, the all-loving.

This bright God knew no hatred, no malice, never sought for revenge.

All evil qualities were in the breast of the God of darkness, of shadow, of night. And so I say again, this is the festival of Light. This is the anniversary of the triumph of the Sun over the hosts of Darkness.

Let us all hope for the triumph of Light — of Right and Reason — for the victory of Fact over Falsehood, of Science over Superstition.

And so hoping, let us celebrate the venerable festival of the Sun.


Robert Green Ingersoll - “The Agnostic Christmas” (1892)


I wish to all my  friends and loved ones blessings of the season, and the hope for the new year. 

Happy holidays, to everyone.
roseembolism: (Default)


As in Pre-Christian Santa.  As in Pre-Christian, Shamanic, reindeer urine-drinking, tripping his eyeballs out Santa


I've been seeing this statement of the orgin of Santa floating around the interwebs recently,  the argument basically being:
  • Old time shamans used Amanita muscaria mushrooms in hallucinogenic rituals.  It was too toxic to take directly, so the 'shrooms were fed to reindeer and then the shamans drank the urine, 
  • The Christmas tree is representative of the World Tree, and the Star is the Pole Star.
  • The sleigh represents either the Big Dipper, Odin's Chariot, or both.
  • The flying trip aropund the world is well...the shamans tripping and thinking they were flying.  

OK, so it's from a pro-cannibas magazine, and it is about as fanciful as the Thomas Nast version.  And I can even find pages that go further, that had shamans dressing in the color of the mushroom (red and white), going to snowed-in huts and entering through the roof smokehole, to deliver bags of dried mushrooms to the community, which would be dried by hanging in front of the fire....

Isn't it just the perfect Just-So Story?  Really it's too cute to be believed, and probably has a similar origin as "A Visit from St. Nicholas".   Obviously there are elements of Germanic folk customs surrounding the story of Santa Claus, but  there's no real evidence linking the tale to shamanic traditions, mushrooms, or anything of the sort.  But it IS a tale that's making the rounds of the New-Age and occult websites, so it's interesting to meditate this winter, on how legends can evolve and be distorted or flat-out appropriated according to the agendas of given groups.  From a Christian parable, to an icon of middle-class comfort and then commercialism, and now a pro-drug symbol for New-Age religion. 

It's a reminder that nothing, not even classic legends, is static; over time, everything changes.
roseembolism: (Grubs!)
Normally when it comes to [livejournal.com profile] racerxmachina and I, our being so sympatico in tastes is an advantage.  But not this time.

I think everybody's been in this situation.  I thought of a most excellent gift for RxM today, and I nearly rushed out and bought it, when it occured to me that it would ALSO make an excellent gift for me.  And RxM knows this.   In fact, she might have already bought it for me, and it would be pointless to have more than one of this gift.

So I am going to have to do some delicate questioning to find out if she's bought me this item, without revealing to her what it is I wantto buy her.  Hmm.  Tricky....
roseembolism: (Default)


Not so good a weekend, one that involved searching for a hat, LARP stuff, and a car accident involving me.

We spent a large chunk of the weekend frantically writing for the LARP; My main contribution was working on the system, one that's borrowed from the Lloegyr LARP.  After some additional inquiries to Ryan about his system, it's starting to look good.  I just hope explanations will go easily.

Sunday involved going shopping for a hat for the LARP that is oncoming like a freight train.  As a passenger, I appreciated the ride, however as it turned out, no stores in Fremont had skadelic hats.  They do however have a number of pricey antique stores, crammed with tables towering with fragile expensive bric-a-brac, just waiting for an errant elbow or knee to brush against them and cause the whole delicately balanced mass to topple.  I am absolutely full of random knees and elbows, by the way. It was nerve-wracking. 

The sheer volume of bric-a-brack terrified me as well.  I mean, we talk about consumerism, but then here it is, stores full of stuff that nobody in their right minds would buy.  How do the antique stores stay in business?  We decided they sell it to each other, in some sort of modern tulpa ring.  I'm also pretty sure that someday far in the geologic future our era will only be known by the huge amount of ceramic and glass gewgaws we produce.  It will be known as the bric-a-brac layer, and will be tens of meters deep of glass deer, ceramic santas and gnomes, letter openers, and velvet paintings.  It will be considered to be the work of some kind of social insect.

I'm uninjured as regards to the car accident anyway, there's that to be said.  It was a fender-bender in a residential parking lot, and I have no idea whether the insurance company will find me at fault or not.  I was so shaken I had to have help with basic things like pens, and exchanging infirmation.  It didnt' help that the other guy was new to this sort of thing, and was wondering if the police should be called before moving the cars out of the way of traffic.  The whole thing left me with frayed nerve endings- thankfully palecur came around and helped out.

And incidentally, on the way home, I stopped at a vintage clothing shop on San Carlos st., and immediately found a cheap hat that's perfect.  *sigh* So it goes.

roseembolism: (partycat)
Some cynical person just told baronlaw that one of our cherished childhood icons doesn't exist. so, in the spirit of the season, I present a little editorial to raise the spirits.



Dear Editor—

I am on Livejournal. Some of my little friends say there is no Magnum P.I.. Papa says, “If you see it in roseembolism’s blog, it’s so.” Please tell me the truth, is there a Magnum P.I.?
baronlaw


Baronlaw, your little friends are wrong. They have been affected by the skepticism of a skeptical age. They do not believe except they see. They think that nothing can be which is not comprehensible by their little minds. All minds, Baronlaw, whether they be men’s or children’s, are little. In this great universe of ours, man is a mere insect, an ant, in his intellect as compared with the boundless world about him, as measured by the intelligence capable of grasping the whole of truth and knowledge.

Yes, Baronlaw, there is a Magnum P.I.. He exists as certainly as love and generosity and devotion exist, and you know that they abound and give to your life its highest beauty and joy. Alas! how dreary would be the world if there were no Magnum P.I.! It would be as dreary as if there were no Baronlaws. There would be no childlike faith then, no poetry, no romance to make tolerable this existence. We should have no enjoyment, except in sense and sight. The eternal light with which childhood fills the world would be extinguished.

Not believe in Magnum P.I.! You might as well not believe in fairies. You might get your papa to hire men to watch in all the bbeaches on Hawaii to catch Magnum P.I., but even if you did not see Magnum P.I. coming out of the surf, what would that prove? Nobody sees Magnum P.I., but that is no sign that there is no Magnum P.I.. The most real things in the world are those that neither children nor men can see. Did you ever see fairies dancing on the lawn? Of course not, but that’s no proof that they are not there. Nobody can conceive or imagine all the wonders there are unseen and unseeable in the world.

You tear apart the baby’s rattle and see what makes the noise inside, but there is a veil covering the unseen world which not the strongest man, nor even the united strength of all the strongest men that ever lived could tear apart. Only faith, poetry, love, romance, can push aside that curtain and view and picture the supernal beauty and glory beyond. Is it all real? Ah, Baronlaw, in all this world there is nothing else real and abiding.

No Magnum P.I.! Thank God! he lives and lives forever. A thousand years from now, Baronlaw, nay 10 times 10,000 years from now, he will continue to make glad the heart of livejournal.
roseembolism: (Default)
I survived Thanksgiving holiday, though I got about as much done on the LARP as I should have expected from the other times I've tried working on projects during holidays. Thursday, I went over to Casa de Slothman, for a thanksgiving party that involved good company from people I haven't seen in a while. Friday involved a trip down south to SB, where between dinner's with relatives, I visited and commiserated with a friend who lost her father's house in the Tea house Fire.

In one respect it was a great visit; I ate way too much sushi (It's a sad truth that SB has much better sushi restaurants than San Jose), ate too much omelet at my favorite beach restaurant ( remodeled and rendered once again worth visiting), and ate way too much turkey in a pleasant dinner with my mother, wife, sister and her boyfriend. It was also nice to see my niece, who I am convinced is the most wonderful and brilliant niece in the world.

But Sunday, I felt anxious, and started tending toward having a panic attack for the first time in nearly a year. Searching for the reasons why, I concluded that part of it is the new asthma inhaler I'm taking, but a large part of it is that being in Santa Barbara for a long time brings up old bad feelings of anxiety. I reminded myself that no, I wasn't trapped in this town any more, that I've grown since then. But still, I didn't truly feel better until I was on the road.

Disturbing, but I can turn this into a positive. This really means that I don't feel like I belong in Santa Barbara. Where I belong is up here, this is my proper place where I can thrive. And that's a pleasant thing for me to remember in the ups and downs of my life.

Now time to get back to work on the LARP!
roseembolism: (Dr Strange)
Courtesy of [livejournal.com profile] seawasp and the oddballs at the various rec.arts.sf groups, comes the finest in speculative fiction. I mean I found it funny, at least.

The true Fate of the One Ring )

This had its origin in a Usenet discussion, as have many other twisted and depraved ideas.
roseembolism: (Default)
...in part because I have (u)two(/u) wish lists on amazon.com.

Way back when, I opened a wish list on amazon.com using my old hotmail account. Time went on, and I forgot about the hotmail account, until I recently decided to update my long-neglected list. As it turns out, Amazon won't accept the password, so I have no way of revising or deleting the old account. So I ended up making a new account. Just to confuse people, both accounts are under my name- the current one is the one that DOESN'T have "Santa Barbara under it.

Like so. This is the real one. For anyone who's interested.

Then again, I'm updating the thing mainly because RXM insisted- I'm a bit amused by how difficult it was to actually think of a fair number of things to put on it- I guess my material desires are winding down. Not that I don't want any of that stuff, but I've hit the age where I've started to appreciate the sweaters that mom gets for me. Now if only she didn't buy sweaters that were two sizes too small...

Profile

roseembolism: (Default)
roseembolism

December 2018

S M T W T F S
      1
2345678
9101112131415
16171819202122
23242526272829
30 31     

Syndicate

RSS Atom

Most Popular Tags

Style Credit

Expand Cut Tags

No cut tags
Page generated Jul. 4th, 2025 10:01 pm
Powered by Dreamwidth Studios