Yeah, yeah, I know it must have cost her a fortune, but it was worth it!
Paris Hilton responds to the unauthorized use of her image in John McCain’s attack ad against Barak Obama:
The original McCain celeb ad can be found here.
BB,
Vivienne D’Avalon
Update on the Sanford/Casselberry Vampire and Shadowlore Meet Up
I’m so happy about how well this meetup has been developing over the last several months! We’re getting more and more people in attendance and pulling in people from around the country and around the world through the talkshoe conference call set up! (I’m so happy I went to the effort of getting that set up and so grateful that I have such tech savvy members to help me keep it up and running and continually improve the sound quality. Thank you Magus and Kirra!) The comments people have been making about the quality of the content are also quite encouraging. So far it is everything I hoped it would be, and that makes me even more ambitious for what we can achieve for our members in the future.
Panera Bread worked out quite well last meeting. It was indeed quieter for our recordings, and the microphone Kirra brought worked wonderfully well. We had Doktor call in from Kansas — before his cordless phone died. Let’s all remember that technology doesn’t always work well around vampires and try not to drain the batteries on our communications equipment, shall we??? 
We also had a guest call in from NORWAY!!! We have gone international! And so dedicated was our guest Folksome that he stayed up until 2:20 a.m. his time (quite a time difference between Florida and Norway). Yay, Folksome, and yay Doktor for making the effort to join us in the midst of moving. (Sorry about your friends’ phone!)
I hope we have more and more national and international members and guests joining us in future; please do encourage any friends you have online around the world to join us for a meet up whenever they can. Talkshoe chat is free, and skype is relatively inexpensive for calling in over long distances. Please also make use of the downloadable recording of the meeting at the talk shoe site; July’s meeting is MUCH easier to hear and has lots of interesting information.
VOLUNTEERS NEEDED! - Haunted Attraction Crew
For event happening the weekend of October 17-19, 2008
In the Orlando/Casselberry/Sanford central Florida area
Nephilim United Productions, Inc., a corporation not for profit dedicated to promoting “dark” art, fashion, literature, film and music, is planning our first event for October 2008. Volunteers are URGENTLY needed as we create a charity haunted attraction to serve as both a fundraiser and our first edutainment introduction to the community. This will be a multi-element haunted event, and we need dedicated volunteers at all levels of experience and skill sets to bring everything together.
The attraction will combine educational, historic and cultural content with classic handcrafted scares, keeping tech effects costs to a minimum while relying on artistry, enthusiasm, and old fashioned fun and showmanship to provide family entertainment value and personal service unequaled by large “mega haunts” in the area. The event is presented for entertainment purposes, and as such will call for the creation of “sideshow gaffs” and oddities created through a variety of means. Local artists will also be needed to create the event, which will showcase the work of these artists.
Funding for the event will be secured through individual donations and sponsorship by businesses and organizations. Sponsoring organizations receive acknowledgment, advertising, and promotion as outlined in our sponsors’ information packet (available upon request).
The primary theme for the guided-tour haunt is “The History of Halloween and Horror.” Scare-laden rooms will illustrate key points in this timeline: the Celtic origins of Halloween; early horror literature; a homage to the circus sideshow; classic movies; and television. The overall framing script will be the operation of a “Traveling Spook-Show Carnival” of the style popular in America from the 1940’s to the 1960’s. Rooms in the sideshow will therefore also include a spook show séance, a museum of art and oddities, a “Treasures of Egypt” room, a chamber of horrors, a freak show, and a stage area for live performances of magic and theatrics. That’s the plan. We will need a lot of help to build the sets and staff these rooms.
Over the weekend I posted a new paper to our literature section: “Are things worse in America now than ever before?”
Are things worse in America now than ever before? Barak Obama doesn’t think so. In his book, The Audacity of Hope (review coming soon) he comments that when he hears liberals complain because America is slipping dangerously toward fascism, and our Constitution is being shredded beyond all recognition, he reminds them of darker times our country has faced.
The paper contains my remarks thereon. Once you’ve read it, please add your comments to this post and let us know what you’re thinking. Are things worse in America now than ever before?
Barak Obama’s book is available here:
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BB, and have a wonderful Independence Day weekend.
Vivienne
These words should be remembered not as dirty words that one shall not say on TV but words that must be remembered as words that represent free speech and that which the FCC has taken away. And as for the man that said them George Carlin, he is most likely yelling them in heaven if it is as stuffy as people seem to think it should be. Rest well old solider of freedom, rest well.
-Magus-
Vivienne D’Avalon // Jun 24, 2008 at 12:29 pm
For Penn and Teller’s take on profanity, look at their second season of Bullshit for a fabulous episode on same:
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.
For the “7 words you can’t say” sketch:
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RIP, Mr. Carlin. We’ve come a long way since you were arrested (over and over again) for exercising your free speech and using those words in your act. Now people just get fined hundreds of thousands of dollars. I guess free speech isn’t free, after all. It’s very, very, expensive.
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BB,
Vivienne
Rep. Dennis Kucinich has filed articles of impeachment with Congress and Robert Wexler has co-sponsored.
Though the argument against impeachment is that it is too late, millions of people across the United States feel that the principle of justice, the preservation of our Constitution, and the prevention of a nuclear war with Iran before November are more important than “political timing.” “Impeachment is necessary.” says Stephen Heller. “It is not a matter of politics, of right versus left, Democrat versus Republican. Rather, it is a matter of law. The current administration has repeatedly violated the Constitution and civil law. If there is no accountability for these violations, then why have a Constitution? Why have laws?” “Without impeachment hearings, the full spectrum of the crimes of the Bush administration may never be known,” notes Barbara Bowley, “and many of the incursions it has made on our democratic society will be hidden in the legal and bureaucratic structures they have developed….. [F]or the sake of the maintenance of our democracy, we must impeach this administration.” Richard Mathews points out that “[u]sing impeachment to get Bush out of office is not what is most important since he is going out anyway. I want to see him impeached even if it happens on his last day in office because we need to set a precedent that this abuse of power will never be considered acceptable.” Bush’s arrogance and hatred for our democracy must be punished. “It is unthinkable” says Tobi Dragert, “to have a president who calls the Constitution, the same one he sends our young men and women to kill and die for, ‘just a goddamned piece of paper.’” (emphases added).
Among the crimes of which Bush stands accused:
Article IX: Failing to Provide Troops With Body Armor and Vehicle Armor
Article X: Falsifying Accounts of US Troop Deaths and Injuries for Political Purposes
Article XIV: Misprision of a Felony, Misuse and Exposure of Classified Information And Obstruction of Justice in the Matter of Valerie Plame Wilson, Clandestine Agent of the Central Intelligence Agency
Article XV: Providing Immunity from Prosecution for Criminal Contractors in Iraq
Article XVII: Illegal Detention: Detaining Indefinitely And Without Charge Persons Both U.S. Citizens and Foreign Captives
Article XVIII: Torture: Secretly Authorizing, and Encouraging the Use of Torture Against Captives in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Other Places, as a Matter of Official Policy
Article XIX: Rendition: Kidnapping People and Taking Them Against Their Will to “Black Sites” Located in Other Nations, Including Nations Known to Practice Torture
Article XX: Imprisoning Children
Article XXIV: Spying on American Citizens, Without a Court-Ordered Warrant, in Violation of the Law and the Fourth Amendment
Article XXV: Directing Telecommunications Companies to Create an Illegal and Unconstitutional Database of the Private Telephone Numbers and Emails of American Citizens
Article XXVI: Announcing the Intent to Violate Laws with Signing Statements
Article XXVII: Failing to Comply with Congressional Subpoenas and Instructing Former Employees Not to Comply
Article XXVIII: Tampering with Free and Fair Elections, Corruption of the Administration of Justice
Article XXIX: Conspiracy to Violate the Voting Rights Act of 1965
and many others totaling 35 articles of impeachment, any one of which would be enough to impeach. The full text of all 35 articles can be found here. Call your congressman today to demand he or she supports Rep. Kucinich’s articles, or sign the petition in support found here.
As an additional note, according to Robert Wexler, on June 20th, 2008 at 10AM, Scott McClellan, author of
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What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington’s Culture of Deception
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There is hope for justice yet.
On Thursday, May 15, 2008, the Supreme Court of California came down with a momentous ruling that’s reverberating around the country: it is illegal to discriminate against gays’ and lesbians’ civil rights, including the right to marry, based on sexual orientation. The court ruled that the state Constitution of California made such discrimination illegal, and suggested that the laws against same sex marriage were equivalent to the anti-miscegenation laws of the 20th century that made it illegal for mixed race couples to wed. They also suggested that the difference between civil unions versus actual marriage is the same “separate but equal” mentality of the notorious Jim Crow laws that relegated African Americans to the back of the bus and to their own segregated schools and water fountains.
Right wing bigots have vowed to put a constitutional amendment on the November ballot in California. Changing the state Constitution to make same sex marriage illegal would have the effect of negating the Supreme Court’s decision, which is based on the existing law as represented by the current Constitution. 694,354 names are required on a petition to get the amendment put on the ballot for November. Governor Schwarzenegger, however, supports the court’s decision and has vowed to uphold the ruling, declaring that he will not support an attempt to amend the state Constitution.
The controversy started in 2004, when the mayor of San Francisco had his city hall start issuing marriage licenses to same sex couples, and marriage ceremonies continued for about a month before the state supreme court stepped in to put a temporary halt to the issuing of licenses pending Constitutional review; the state courts invalidated all the licenses that had been issued. It has taken until this past Thursday for the matter to final resolve in this historic ruling.
Let this be a reminder to everyone: this November’s presidential election is of crucial importance, because of the U.S. Supreme Court justices that the next President will be choosing. Unlike Califorinia, we currently have a conservative majority on the Court; if we don’t get a liberal in office, further conservative appointments may result in the overturning of Roe v. Wade, Brown v. the Board of Education, and any number of other 20th century victories for our civil liberties, rolling us back to the dark ages.
See also: Tom Paine
National Organization for Women (NOW)
The text of the California Supreme Court’s historic 4-3 decision can be read here.
Other sources: The Progress Report [progress@mx3.americanprogressaction.org]
Here we go the first Dark of the Moon Crone Cast. Vivienne D’Avalon and I’s first podcast together, we go over things from this Election, to Nanobots, to Scientology vs. a group called anonymous, to the FBI taping your Tubes. For the music clip “W’s Duty” by Jonathan Coulton go here.
Feel free to assemble? To associate with whatever activist group supports a cause near and dear to your heart? To sound off in your blog about corporate greed, evil oil cartels, and genetically modified food? Prepare to be boarded! Ex-CIA agents may steal the subscription lists of your favorite magazines, get your name and address and go through your trash. Is the U.S. Government blatantly breaking the law by invading our privacy yet again? No, this time it’s Corporate America hiring the government’s discarded spooks to trample our rights as citizens.
James Ridgeway at Mother Jones broke the story. A corporate spying outfit staffed by ex-Secret Service, ex-CIA, and ex-police personnel — Beckett Brown International, a/k/a S2i (”BBI”) — has been utilized by corporations like Halliburton, Wal-Mart, even the Carlyle Group (what a boon to conspiracy theorists!) to spy on their worst enemy: activist America. So far, Greenpeace and other environmental groups have been targeted; who knows which progressive organizations will be next? Air America? The Huffington Post? The Interfaith Alliance? After all, if Halliburton and Wal-mart can hire BBI to go after Greenpeace, what’s to stop Pat Robertson or John Hagee from hiring such a firm to go through the trash at the Interfaith Alliance or steal the membership lists of the Freedom From Religion Foundation, so they can start harrassing you or me?
“The company paid private spies to collect phone records and other private information on prominent activists, to root through dumpsters and infiltrate the staffs of environmental organizations,” says the FreePress. Mother Jones noted that “[R]ecords include[d] internal and confidential financial reports of a local bank that had been the subject of a takeover.” One of the firms BBI targeted suffered a break-in that included the theft of laptops and file boxes.
The unethical, immoral propietors of BBI bascially killed the company while snapping at each other, but they have since been snapped up by other security firms and are presumbably still doing essentially the same illegal things. And let us not be fooled by the fact that corporate espionage is pervasive, even expected — it is still illegal. Did BBI have limits, ops that were too black even for them? “On the advice of Cannistraro and Bresett, BBI turned down a $1 million job with the Church of Scientology, according to Dodd.” So I guess even they have their limits. Thank Xenu for small favors.
So if you’re ever daring enough to have an independent thought for yourself and <shudder> actually share it with another human being, congratulations — apparently you have just invited corporate America to go dumpster-diving in your organization’s parking lot, or to go on a panty raid in your daughter’s dorm. Meet the love of your life at your local ACLU meeting? Watch out — he may be an ex-spook assigned to infiltrate. Start campaining for net neutrality? Comcast has got your number, baby! Your credit card number, your pin number, your social security number…. Invested in that paper shredder for your mail yet?
BB,
Vivienne
The compendium for the 2007 New Orleans Harry Potter symposium, Phoenix Rising, is out and my paper, “Sirius Black: the Face of Eleggua in the Potterverse” is in it. The table of contents is here. It can be purchased here.
The film legend passed away this past Saturday, April 5, 2008, at the age of 84.
In the past he was most famously known for saying “let my people go” and “soylent green is people!” But most recently he was better known for saying that his musket would be taken “from my cold, dead hands.”
A hero to the NRA (National Rifle Association), a bane to gun control lobbyists, Heston fought hard and long to protect his Constitutional right to bear arms. Not everyone agreed with his stance, but he worked hard for what he believed and he did it larger than life, as grand a figure as any of the characters he played on screen.
The number of culturally relevant films he starred in is staggering, from Moses and Ben Hur to Planet of the Apes. I highly recommend checking out the filmography and renting any of the most important films you haven’t yet seen, to remind yourself of the impact this one man’s film career had on our culture.
Mr. Heston, you have earned a well-deserved rest.
See his Wikipedia entry here.
