During my childhood, I did not have choices. I had things forced upon on my little childlike body. The word “no” did not exist in my vocabulary. I had never heard the word boundaries. Let alone know I could have them.

However, within the past year I have figured out that now, I can choose things. I have chosen to return to school. I have chosen not fight therapy and to just let professionals help me. I am starting to choose who I show love to.

The most important thing that I did choose was to start my journey of healing. I could have picked a very different path than I did. I could have become an addict, or a criminal. I could have chosen to stay a victim but I decided to call myself a survivor.

Recently my mother told me “I am self-centered and selfish for not giving someone a hug”.

I thought about what she said, I realized something. The first 22 years of my life, it was about everyone else.

While I experienced long-term sadistic abuse as a child. I kept my abuse a secret unconsciously because I was worried about how it would ruin the family image. My family stole my childhood away from me because of the unrealistic image they choose to show others.  They enabled my abusers for years until one of them died.

Selfish actually means caring only about oneself and I do not see anything wrong with that. At this point in my journey, I need to work on self-care. I am learning that it is ok and very healthy to establish boundaries.

I will not let others control my life. I will not do anything that I do not feel comfortable doing. If someone gets offended by not getting a hug, too bad. I am an adult now and a survivor. I make decisions for myself based on what makes me feel safe.

Therefore, “Self-centered” and “selfish”…damn right I am!

Families are supposed to protect each other. However, sometimes, they do not. Sometimes families do not do what they are supposed to do and that means someone gets hurt.

Abuse is part of a bigger picture. Abuse is all about secrets. Covering up, being told to shut up, and portraying the image of the “perfect” family.

When I eventually decide to accept the abuse, I will also be accepting that “my” family is part of it. The abuse did not happen solely because of me. “My” family helped enable my abusers. The people that fractured life also provided the abusers with the means.

My family system is based on a secret, lie, and an image.

The other day her phone call sent me to the bottom of the darkness. My heart ached for her, and wanted to reach through the phone and give her hug. I tried with my words to keep her calm, to let her know she was loved, and to let her know she is never alone. She calmed down, but after we hung up, I fell apart.

That night as I drove to pick up my husband, I played my favorite crying songs. Sarah MacLachlan’s Angel and Answer, along with Evanescence’s My Immortal. They played as loud as I could handle and I sang just as last. The tears streamed down and those passing by in the other cars just stared, but I needed it. I also knew I needed a “happy face.” It is drink at one of the local steak houses. So that night I had crying music and happy faces… Not your usual therapy, but it helped…

I’d like to lay open a topic for discussion involving the enablers of the alcoholic in a verse that I’ve read many times before but never seen what I’m about to reveal to you. I’ve often called the Bible the “Incredible Pop-up Book” because it does reveal certain things to us at times of the Holy Spirit’s choosing that we at first miss. This is one of those times. And, this message can also echo to the drug addict as well.

Proverbs 23:29- “Who was woe? Who has sorrow? Who has contentions? Who has complaints?” The next two lines of that verse deal specifcally with the alcoholic as does the first line of the next verse when it says- “Those who linger long at the wine”.

But the first four questions of Proverbs 23:29 also addresses the enabler! Enablers are those people often called “loved ones” who get caught into the mire of the alcoholic because they love them. What they fail to recognize at the time is that they are doing more harm than good by sanctioning their loved one’s addicition. Most do not confront their love one for fear of losing them if they object. Yes, prayer is offered up for them but no direct “in your face” contact.

As such enabler’s have woes. “Why won’t they listen to me?” Alcoholics can be manipulators and that only increases the woes. They know how to manuver their loved one’s to get what they want. They even sometimes cut off contact with their loved one’s for a time willingly to get what they want. They know full well that will only increase their loved one’s woes of inner torment. “Fear involves torment. There is no fear in love but perfect love casts out fear” 1 John 4:18. That specter of fear cropping up must be dealt with by the enabler. “God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind” 2 Timothy 1:7. When the enabler learns this full well and allows it to permeate their soul, they will no longer have woes but a sound mind that can deal effectively with their alcoholic.

“Who has sorrow?” I know of one particular enabler who has had so much sorrow that it caused a recent heart attack. The alcoholic’s love for his mother is so pathetic that he doesn’t return her phone calls purposely in order to get her to worry over him. That is selfish love to the maximum and it is the enabler that gets extreme sorrow due to the manipulations of the loved one over them.

“Who has contentions?” Enablers and alcoholics go back and forth for the alcoholic knows that the enabler will in time cave in to their demands. Contentions work to their advantage in time and they know that even though they are unpleasant at the time but to the alcoholic the end justifies the means. They either get the money to purchase the alcohol or get money for groceries to accomplish the same goal. Even if groceries are brought for them they can barter with friends for their booze. Contentions with their enablers always works to their advantage for they know how to manipulate their loved one’s.

“Who has complaints?” Yet the various complaints that the enabler has turmoil over are self induced because they don’t have the capacity within them for some hard love. “Open rebuke is better than secret love. Faithful are the wounds of a friend, but the kisses of an enemy are deceitful” Proverbs 27:5-6. The enabler has to ask Jesus for the fortitude of an open rebuke being more a friend to their loved one than an enemy. When they kiss up to their loved one they are actually doing more harm than good to them. A friend in Christ wounds when necessary to brng back the straying loved one. Remember that Jesus left the flock to search for the missing one that had strayed away.

If you truly want to turn around your alcoholic loved one, don’t enable them in any way, shape, or form. When you do such a thing, the alcoholic will always say- “When shall I awake that I may seek another drink?” Proverbs 23:35. Enablers continue the addiction and actually support it in varying ways and that is not love whatsoever. If you think that by confrontation you’ll lose them, well, what have you gained by enabling them? I’ll tell you! “Woe, sorrow, contentions, and complaints”!

Thoughts?

Is positivity ever faked?

This strange question came into my mind today. It cannot be answered at this point but it will be explored in this article.

We know that when one is in around certain people, one feels like a bird that wants to chirp. This particularly holds true for the expressive people, who are a focus of this article.

Where does this desire come from? Perhaps it is a desire to share, or perhaps it something not so noble, such as a desire to exhibit – to hear one’s own voice? Is it a way to make others happy or a way to seek their approval? Is it done to declare a happy defiance or is it simply a channel for releasing energy that is built up in silent seriousness, throughout the day/week in a constructive way?

The sequence of events is as follows:
1. Trigger desire to express: The company of a person or some people can be the trigger or motivation to switch on the fountain
2. Find a point focus for expression: There could be multiple points of focus, or just one. There would usually be one primary and multiple secondary foci, each fulfilling a different purpose for the the “expresser”.
3. Finishing: The experience once delved into seems to end only with sleep, return to the previous state, or removal from the company that was the trigger.

There are, however, inhibitors of this chirpiness. Some are partial constraints and some are full constraints.

Partial constraints would only allow a subset of the “chirpiness” to come out, or only for a subset of the audience to be addressed. They can be due to a variety of factors:
- insufficient build up of the energy during downtime
- previous dipping into reserves to cope
- shyness due to embarrassment or attraction
- overwhelming ambient noise interrupting thoughts
- dislike or resentment
- limitation on time and access
- limited common topics of interest
- preoccupation of the mind with external matters

Full constraints simply do not permit the individual to enter the new expressive state. It can be as a result of any of the above factors or even as a desire to be somewhere else.

So: is positivity ever faked?
Does this depend on the motivation?
Can it be forced even when motivation is not there?
Is it visible if it is forced without the presence of motivation?
Is there a positive correlation between positivity and expressiveness?

This snaking path is left open for others to consider and share their insights…

Some People wonder wheteher she’s insane, doing the same stupid thing over and over again. After all, why would anyone want to marry even one alcoholic? Yet this woman does. In the end we all do what we know, good or bad.
http://www.associatedcontent.comarticle/2142945/why_a_woman_keeps_on_marrying_an_alcoholic.html

**To Read All My 263 Articles Go To:

http://www.associatedcontent.com/hannahnow

*8This is a Safe Site!

This is a comprehensive list of Senators and House Reps who voted against defunding the corrupt organization, ACORN.  You might want to bookmark this page and pull it back up next November at election time.  These folks need to HIT THE ROAD, like a hooker with a fresh pack of condoms:

SENATORS

Burris (D-IL) – not running for re-election in 2010
Casey (D-PA)
Durbin (D-IL)
Gillibrand (D-NY)
Leahy (D-VT)
Sanders (I-VT)
Whitehouse (D-RI)

House (all names listed are Democrats)

Baldwin
Becerra
Brady (PA)
Brown, Corrine
Butterfield
Capuano
Carson (IN)
Castor (FL)
Cleaver
Clyburn
Crowley
Cummings
Davis (IL)
DeGette
Delahunt
Doyle
Edwards (MD)
Ellison
Engel
Fattah
Filner
Fudge
Green, Al
Grijalva
Hinchey

Hirono
Holt
Honda
Jackson (IL)
Jackson-Lee (TX)
Johnson, E. B.
Kilpatrick (MI)
Kucinich
Larsen (WA)
Lee (CA)
Lewis (GA)
Lynch
Markey (MA)
McCollum
McDermott
McGovern
Meeks (NY)
Mollohan
Moore (WI)
Moran (VA)
Nadler (NY)
Neal (MA)
Olver
Pallone
Pascrell

Payne
Polis (CO)
Price (NC)
Rahall
Rangel
Roybal-Allard
Rush
Sánchez, Linda T.
Schakowsky
Scott (GA)
Scott (VA)
Serrano
Sherman
Sires
Slaughter
Stark
Thompson (MS)
Towns
Tsongas
Velázquez
Waters
Watson
Waxman
Wexler
Woolsey

Voted “Present”

Hastings (FL)

Watt

Cette musique est belle, frappante par son incroyable élegance.

Enablers continue son petit bonhomme de chemin et, après un sublime “Output Negative Space“, remet le couvert avec “Tundra“, troisième album du combo. Et rien a changé. On retrouve le quatuor de San Fransisco là où on l’avait laissé; deux guitares, une batterie, un poète, et toujours cette même et fascinante capacité à magnétiser et hypnotiser. Entrelacs de mélodies magiques, enivrantes, d’une exquise mélancolie, se dressant alors, fières, subtilement dynamisé par la batterie de Byrnes, au jeu toujours aussi fin, lorsque la machine s’emballe pour relacher toute la tension accumulé par la voix de Simonelli. Une voix dont je n’arriverai jamais à me lasser, d’une classe sans pareil. Posé, chaude, suave, chargé, s’insinuant doucement et lentement dans ton cerveau afin d’en captiver tout l’attention requise, contant alors ses histoires de la vie quotidienne, brumeuses, donnant l’impression de sortir d’un bar obscur, enfumé, terni par la nuit. Celle-ci s’élève alors, et, tel un chef d’orchestre, Simonelli permet à ses trois compères de se déchaîner dans un fracas sonore intense. Le système se répète alors inlassablement, continu, infini, magnifique. Cette musique est belle, toujours la même, toujours aussi difficilement cernable, particulière, presque mystérieuse, mais simplement majestueuse, d’une grâce aveuglante. Longue vie à Enablers

Enablers – Tundra (2008, Lancashire & Sommerset)

1. A Blues
2. The Destruction Most Of All
3. Carriage
4. -
5. New Moon
6. Februaries
7. Tundra
8. The Achievement
9. Kosovo
10. Bells
11. Four Women

Enablers

When you look at the latest innovations in the mobile space they are hardly coming from operators. Apple has set a new level of user experience and introduced the concept of the on-device application store; Google created the Mobile Linux that operators never succeeded to deliver through their various initiatives; RIM invented the mobile email; etc.

Now operators are dreaming to come back at the cutting edge of innovation and it is for them a question of survival.

They want to be able to achieve what any internet start-up is able to do: deliver a new service from inception to delivery within 6 months. Whereas Operators service life-cycle is much longer than that today. It is roughly around 18 months which is 3 times longer than the Internet life cycle.

The real issue for operators is that they are now competing with Internet companies which have a dramatic competitive advantage of being able to launch a service 3 times faster than they can.

Operators are process oriented as they have built their business skeleton around the billing process: from Call Data Records to invoices. During the years of their exponential growth they have strengthen this process to cope with the flow of new customers but now there are like dinosaurs: very strong but not able to adapt to their surroundings any more. They are rich but their growth rate is flat and they start to see a fall in their margin. The data communications may allow them to offset the voice decline for a while but if the operators aren’t providing the service they will become just pipe providers and the main value will be going to Google like in the fixed broadband business.

What operators are (or should be) trying to do is to organize their business around enabler bricks. Once the enablers are in place, the internal teams should be able to assemble the bricks to create the services as Internet companies create mash-ups with the APIs of the services. The key challenge here is to be able to connect those bricks with the ‘billing’ brick in order to get a revenue stream from it.

And what could be even a stronger value proposition would be to open these APIs to partners to develop new services around: location, authentication, payments, etc. In doing so Operators would leverage the creativity of the whole ecosystem and would be still at the centre of the game.

Michael Jackson’s Death a Message to Medical Community

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I cannot believe she said it. No, I guess I can believe it. A comment made without thought to what was being said… that is what she does.

Who is she? My ex-mother-in-law. What did she say? She asked my middle daughter if my youngest daughter (her little sister) still says her dad molested her. When my daughter replied with yes, my ex-mother-in-law went on to ask/state how she wondered who put my youngest daughter up to saying that her dad molested her and how her mom (me) must have done it. My daughter told her that she did not want to talk about it.

I heard this directly from my middle daughter whose voice went teary as she told me what took place. It stirred up the muck that had settle for the last little bit. For the rest of the day the murky waters haunted me and brought back feelings I had not had to deal with for a while. Later in the day I slid down in the chair and cried. I did not cry for myself or over the words said, but for my youngest daughter who is not believed…

I can believe that she would say this as it is her son, but she should not have addressed it with my middle daughter. I further realized that once again my name, my life, my reputation has been slandered. When we were married, I was the blame for everything that was wrong or went wrong. After we split up it continued. Now I am the blame for my daughter stating that her dad molested her.

She has stirred up the muck… the waters are now murky… I am once again struggling to breathe…

Did any of you happen to watch the Martin Bashir interview with Michael Jackson this weekend on MSNBC?

I didn’t see the interview when it first aired some years ago and I still didn’t get to watch the entire interview but the parts I watched were excruciating because Michael Jackson clearly needed therapy and over the years it seems he was allowed to get worst and worst.

Of all the signs Jackson displayed, that seem to indicate he needed some type of therapy, the one that leaped out at me was the answer he gave to Bashir about his plastic surgery. Jackson seemed to believe that he could actually convince Bashir and the world that he only had two operations and that he was born with pale skin and a dimpled chin!  He even tried to convince Bashir that the changes occurred because of puberty and him ‘changing’.  Whoa!

It was also hard to watch Jackson become visibly upset when it looks like his fans had turned against him after the Berlin baby dangling incident.  And how abruptly his body language changes when Bashir starts to talk about the treatment he received from his father while growing up and why it’s understandable he would want to change his appearance because of all the teasing he received.  And most adults that were tormented as children can definitely sympathize with Jackson here but it’s evident that even after all this time, some thirty to forty years later, Jackson had yet to come to terms with the treatment he received at the hands of his father Joe Jackson. 

I don’t know if  Jackson had ever been to or sought therapy or  mental health treatment because the topic of therapy is still a big taboo in the black community however his behavior went beyond eccentric and his family and friends should have convinced him to seek help.

Many of those around him will now have to come to terms with the fact that Michael Jackson may have been crying out for help all this time and none them were able to or allowed themselves to hear his calls. 

enabler- one that enables another to achieve an end ; especially : one who enables another to persist in self-destructive behavior (as substance abuse) by providing excuses or by making it possible to avoid the consequences of such behavior (Definition from Merriam-Webster)

The publicity stemming around Michael Jackson’s memorial service today at the Staples Center forced me to acknowledge MJ’s fans enabling ways in my column today. Michael Jackson always left me bemused by his incredible talent, his strange behavior and his fans blind acceptance of all things Michael. And make no mistake about it but the adoring fans did enable Michael Jackson’s bizarre behavior. Their blind acceptance of Michael Jackson enabled his bizarre behavior and hastened his very death. Had the fans reacted early on in his career in repulsion to MJ’s bizarre self-mutilation with numerous plastic surgeries, germaphobic behavior, skin bleaching, his predilection for young boys perhaps Michael Jackson would have tempered his behavior and would not have been so deviant later on in his life. But if you are an enabler and accepting of bad behavior it is not surprising that the aberrant behavior often spirals into new and ever more grotesque and destructive gyrations.

To assume that enabling is a one way street is also wrong. Fans and sycophants, such as the Reverend Al Sharpton, took advantage of Michael Jackson’s foibles while seemingly championing his cause. In general, the enabler or codependent wants to feel needed and enabling validates their own existence or in some instances serves their own selfish goals such as a hefty contribution to one’s church. Moreover, enablers don’t want to change the dependent behavior nor do they want to participate in the exercise of self-sacrifice.

Fan’s often argue that Michael Jackson’s excesses were the idiosyncratic behavior of an eccentric musical genius as though being a genius exonerates you from acknowledging the norms of a society. I’m sorry, Einstein and Mozart were geniuses, Michael Jackson was just a very talented entertainer, perhaps the best of his generation but he was still just an entertainer. Okay, Einstein married his cousin and he did have that wild hair style yet he didn’t go off the deep-end but, in fact, Einstein became a great humanist in his later years long after his intellectual skills had peaked. Michael Jackson could have done the same, after all he had the following but instead he just sung deeper and deeper into his drug induced haze enabled by an adoring fan base that could see no wrong in their self-proclaimed king of pop. For one to suggest otherwise one would have to incur shrill, vituperative rebuttals from those very same adoring fan base.

But Michael Jackson is just the tip of the American enabling iceberg. Americans are engaging in enabling like they never had before. Obesity runs rampant as children and later the morbidly obese adults are enabled by numerous family members. When somebody weighs close to half a ton you know somebody is diligently shopping, buying and shoveling a never ending supply of food into the obese shut-ins mouth. It’s so easy to say to someone here eat this and watch television, it’s not your fault your overweight and then pass off the enabling as love! You can weigh in pounds their enabling love!

Moreover, American enabling has a far darker side than just Michael Jackson and obesity, just witness the drug cartel wars that plaque Mexico. What the hell does that have to do with enabling you may ask? Any fool can argue that the failed political and judicial systems of Mexico are the root cause of the drug violence but our drug habits and the ensuing money enable this corruption. Without the billions of American drug dollars you can’t buy a Mexican judge nor can you corrupt a local politician or police chief. Yet we smoke our pot as though there is no consequence to our seemingly benign but cool drug usage and go into instant denial when somebody has the temerity to suggest otherwise. In any case, a successful war on drugs is an impossibility when so many of our fellow Americans are collaborating with the enemy, enabling the enemy so to speak. (By the way, the libertarian in me says legalize the dope to take away the corrupting influence of the drug money while the social conscious part of me recognizes the vast pitfalls of what legalizing drugs will do to an addictive personality.)

The enabling and denials don’t end there. Our love of cheap oil, of course, enables all sorts of horrendous behavior in the Middle East. Without our oil dollars to fuel a building boom in Saudi Arabia Osama Bin Laden would never have the money to fund the Taliban and 9/11. Instead of selling the rope to hang ourselves, as the communists had hoped, we instead send oil dollars to fuel the terrorist engines. Why? Because we don’t want to, or have the willpower, to kick the SUV habit no matter how many polar caps we may melt in the process. Enablers have a tough time in making the hard decisions for themselves and the others they enable.

Furthermore, American dollars funding abhorrent terrorist behavior is nothing new for this country. For years Irish-Americans supported the activities of the IRA while Cuban Americans continue to funnel much needed dollars to Cuban relatives and into Castro’s failed regime. By golly, enabling is an American tradition just like apple pie!

I don’t expect this to change any time soon nor do I expect our greatest enablers, our brave politicians, to lead the way out of the land of enabling. So Michael Jackson rest in peace, you’re sad destiny was determined by your own neuroses and your enablers alike! What a depressing day and such a waste of a great talent but not surprising when your paramount interest is just to be entertained!

Erik John Bertel

I know this is tacky but speaking of enabling try these sites for the free Flores Girl novel download:
WWW.A-FREE-EBOOK.COM
WWW.SCIENCE-FICTION.MOBI
WWW.iPhone-Novel.com
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Ce soir, première soirée Dedans le Sauvage. Un principe mis en avant, celui de l’éclectisme, et on peut dire qu’à cette tâche, ces bougres n’ont pas failli, réunissant pas moins de cinq groupes proposant tour à tour shoegaze, post-rock, post-punk, noise et black-metal.
 
“Bonsoir, on s’appelle Burzum”: voilà comment Team Ghost, premier groupe à s’élancer sur la scène du Nouveau Casino, se présente. Trio guitare/basse/batterie tout récemment formé, avec en son sein un ex-M83, ces parisiens ont l’air d’être encore en phase de rodage. Grosses couches rêveuses de guitares avec blips électro mélancoliques en sus pour un shoegaze venant se caser entre My Bloody Valentine et Boards Of Canada, mais sans malheureusement atteindre l’intensité des deux groupes sus-cités. Car le groupe donne presque l’impression de trop hésiter sur scène, trop hésiter à réellement balancer la sauce et lâcher les décibels quand il le faut. Et même si ce détail n’empêche nullement d’apprécier la teneur du set du combo, il aurait certainement pû le faire décoller plus haut que ce que Team Ghost a présenté ce soir. Sympa, donc, sans plus.  

C’est Microfilm, groupe de Poitiers, qui prend la relève. Groupe qui vient de sortir son second long format, le fabuleux “Stereodrama”, et composé de quatre illustres membres (deux guitares, une basse, un batteur) de la scène française (ex-Seven Hate et Myra Lee). Et autant le dire tout de suite, je m’attendais pas à une telle claque. La musique de Microfilm te transportes littéralement, post-rock, mais pas au sens éculé où on l’entendrait aujourd’hui, car ces types n’ont pas oublié que dans “post-rock”, il y avait “rock”, et le quatuor ne s’est pas gêné pour le démontrer.

Toujours sous tension, sur le fil, d’une intensité constante, leur musique s’impose en jouant sur les ambiances et les structures, maîtrisées et finement ciselées, incroyablement captivantes, que ce soit lors d’explosions ou de moments d’attentes, mais toujours empruntes de mélodies délicatement taillées qui vont droit au cœur. Des vidéos sont projetés au fond, derrière les musiciens, accompagnées de samples de dialogues de films, mais le tout devient presque inutile tant la musique du combo se suffit à elle-même. Concert de grande classe, et Microfilm peut se targuer d’avoir remplacé sans problème From Monument To Masses qui était initialement prévu ce soir.

Snowman a déja commencé lorsque je sors de l’exigu fumoir qui accueillait ma pause goudron. Quatre types qui débarquent du fin fond de l’Australie (d’un bled nommé Perth) mais qui se sont récemment installés à Londres, et auteur d’un excellent second album: “The Horse, The Rat and The Swan”. On s’en tape, ils sont déja à fond dedans, surtout le gnome à lunettes derrière son synthé, complètement en transe, gigotant, hurlant, transpirant sur son clavier, tabassant avec vigueur le tom basse à sa disposition, sautant dans la fosse pour haranguer le public; celui-ci assure l’attraction visuelle du show.

Son comparse guitariste n’est pas en reste, chantonnant, marmonnant entre les morceaux genre “j’ai un grain et j’ai envie que tout le monde le sache” en n’oubliant pas ses gestes étranges et désarticulés pendant les titres, alors que bassiste et batteur restent en retrait. Et la musique dans tout ça? Bonne, très bonne même, Snowman arrive à retranscrire toute la folie et la tension chargé dans son dernier opus, tribal, agressif, surtout avec la voix du mec à la six-cordes, hargneuse, proche de celle d’un John Lydon. Le groupe nuance ses ambiances, faites de montagnes russes, tendant vers le gothique mais sans jamais dans l’excès vaseux que ce genre peut sous-entendre. Très bon set des australiens, même si leurs attitudes sur scène pouvaient parfois être à la limite de la pose, la qualité de leur musique aura compensé.

On passe au gros morceau de la soirée: Enablers. Encore une fois, le groupe retrace une tournée en Europe, encore une fois, celle-ci passe par la France et franchement, je vais pas m’en plaindre. La dernière fois, c’était à la Mécanique Ondulatoire, petit bar qui convenait parfaitement au combo. Aujourd’hui, Nouveau Casino, vrai scène, de la place pour tout le monde, et je me demandais si cela n’allait pas affecter la représentation du quatuor, plus propice à jouer dans un bar miteux et enfumé que dans une salle de concert à proprement parler. “Santé”: traditionnel petit verre d’alcool fort avant de commencer, et Enablers se met en place. Goldring et Thompson aux extrémités, leur six-cordes à la main, Scharin, ex-batteur de June Of 44 , qui remplace Byrnes aux fûts et Pete Simonelli à l’avant, prêt à hypnotiser la foule. Ça commençe avec un morceau du dernier album, le superbe “Toundra”, et non, la magie et la puissance d’un groupe comme Enablers ne souffrent absolument pas d’une disposition dans une grande salle. Au contraire, leurs morceaux n’en deviennent que plus forts, grandis par un son qui fait la part belle aux guitares, aiguisées comme des lames de rasoirs. Ces deux guitares, magnifiques, dont les accords se rencontrent, s’entrecroisent, jouent ensemble, tour à tour mélancoliques, crépusculaires, tout simplement beaux, puis venant détoner dans un fracas métallique relâchant la tension alors accumulé au fur et à mesure, d’une intensité grandiose. Scharin, lui, ne déçoit pas, et donne une nouvelle dynamique au groupe par rapport à son prédecesseur, plus puissant, plus rock, et même si celui-ci perd du coup la superbe finesse de Byrnes, cela n’affecte en aucun cas la musique du groupe.

Et ne surtout pas oublier Simonelli, à l’avant, déclamant ses poésies avec vigueur, se sortant tant bien que mal de l’instrumentation grondante de ses camarades. Car ce type est fascinant, ensorcelant, contant ses histoires de la vie quotidienne d’une voix chaude et posé, totalement pris par sa musique, dansant, s’adressant directement au public, captivant l’auditoire à ses pieds. Cette musique est belle, majestueuse, convoquant la nuit, l’obscurité. Cette atmosphère régnant dans les bars enfumés et assombris, parfaitement retranscrite dans des morçeaux comme “On Monk” ou “Output Negative Sapce” que le quatuor aura joué ce soir. C’est déja fini, et le groupe à encore donné un concert d’une classe phénomènale. Longue vie à Enablers.

On passera sur Wolves in the Throne Room, quatuor plongé dans le black metal, genre dont je ne suis absolument pas friand. Je ne suis apparemment pas le seul à ne pas en être client, la moitié de la salle s’est instantanément vidé, si bien qu’au début du set des américains régnait une ambiance étrange dans le public, comme si voir ce groupe relevait de la simple curiosité plus que par amour de la musique du combo. Bref, quelques secondes à supporter blast beats surhumains et autres growls de la mort, et je sors vite fait de la salle, avec encore la tête la superbe représentation d’Enablers.

Team Ghost

Microfilm

Snowman

Enablers

Wolves In The Throne Room

I’ve been listening to Hawaiian music on a streaming web site called The Radio.com and a number of the songs they played were by Israel Kamakawiwo’ole – better known as IZ.

As you can tell from the video, IZ was morbidly obese. For his later appearances, he needed a fork-lift to get him on stage. He finally came to his senses and went on a diet. Unfortunately, it was too late and he died of a heart attack.

I learned about IZ following our trip to Hawaii a few years ago. I heard his voice on a recording at the airport as we were awaiting our flight back to the mainland. After getting home, I went out and bought one of his recordings. That’s when I learned that this man with the beautiful singing voices was no longer with us.

I am a fan of the ‘educational’ cable channels – The History Channel, The Discovery Channel, The Learning Channel, and so forth. There have been numerous shows centering on morbidly obese individuals. These folks are so far beyond ‘fat’ that it defies comprehension.

Most of the individuals have been bedridden for years. They cannot get out of bed to get food, or to attend to bathroom functions. That means that someone else must do those things for them.

I can understand serving someone his or her meals in bed. I wouldn’t hesitate to do that for someone who was suffering from some sort of illness. However, I would draw the line at helping with bowel movements and voiding of the bladder.

If I had a child or significant other who couldn’t toilet him or her self because of a weight problem, the chow line would stop until that problem went away.

Obviously, if my loved one was suffering from the effects of a stroke, accident, or something else – other than obesity – I’d overcome my distaste for wiping an adult’s butt. But if that person needs help simply because he or she is too heavy to make the trip to the bathroom, it is time for a crash diet.

I may sound heartless, but consider the alternative.

These morbidly obese individuals didn’t get that way without the help of someone. Perhaps those someones are people who need to be needed – mothers who can’t let go, or mothers who won’t let go.

Is enabling someone to grow to a thousand pounds or more really a sign of love? Not in my book.

I am overweight to the point of being obese. But I can still take my two hundred and eighty pounds to the bathroom when I need to go. Unfortunately, I can also carry myself to the dinner table.

But I guarantee you that I will not become morbidly obese to the point that someone else must toilet me.

We’ve lost IZ. We don’t need to lose any more talented people because someone is willing to jump in and help them kill themselves.

If you are an enabler of any kind, step back and take a good hard look at the situation. Are you really doing someone a favor? Or are you helping someone commit suicide?

Now that I’ve got that off my chest, I’m going to picture myself on a beach in Hawaii and concentrate on the hula dancers.

I want to go back to my little grass shack

Frank Rich, The New York Times, June 14, 2009

When a Fox News anchor, reacting to his own network’s surging e-mail traffic, warns urgently on-camera of a rise in hate-filled, “amped up” Americans who are “taking the extra step and getting the gun out,” maybe we should listen. He has better sources in that underground than most.

The anchor was Shepard Smith, speaking after Wednesday’s mayhem at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington. Unlike the bloviators at his network and elsewhere on cable, Smith is famous for his highly caffeinated news-reading, not any political agenda. But very occasionally — notably during Hurricane Katrina — he hits the Howard Beale mad-as-hell wall. Joining those at Fox who routinely disregard the network’s “We report, you decide” mantra, he both reported and decided, loudly.

What he reported was this: his e-mail from viewers had “become more and more frightening” in recent months, dating back to the election season. From Wednesday alone, he “could read a hundred” messages spewing “hate that’s not based in fact,” much of it about Barack Obama and some of it sharing the museum gunman’s canard that the president was not a naturally born citizen. These are Americans “out there in a scary place,” Smith said.

Then he brought up another recent gunman: “If you’re one who believes that abortion is murder, at what point do you go out and kill someone who’s performing abortions?” An answer, he said, was provided by Dr. George Tiller’s killer. He went on: “If you are one who believes these sorts of things about the president of the United States …” He left the rest of that chilling sentence unsaid.

These are extraordinary words to hear on Fox. The network’s highest-rated star, Bill O’Reilly, had assailed Tiller, calling him “Tiller the baby killer” and likening him to the Nazis, on 29 of his shows before the doctor was murdered at his church in Kansas. O’Reilly was unrepentant, stating that only “pro-abortion zealots and Fox News haters” would link him to the crime. But now another Fox star, while stopping short of blaming O’Reilly, was breaching his network’s brand of political correctness: he tied the far-right loners who had gotten their guns out in Wichita and Washington to the mounting fury of Obama haters.

What is this fury about? In his scant 145 days in office, the new president has not remotely matched the Bush record in deficit creation. Nor has he repealed the right to bear arms or exacerbated the wars he inherited. He has tried more than his predecessor ever did to reach across the aisle. But none of that seems to matter. A sizable minority of Americans is irrationally fearful of the fast-moving generational, cultural and racial turnover Obama embodies — indeed, of the 21st century itself. That minority is now getting angrier in inverse relationship to his popularity with the vast majority of the country. Change can be frightening and traumatic, especially if it’s not change you can believe in.

Read More Here

The Washington Times reported that there is a probe of Voice of America (VOA) and its Pashto service, which serves Afghanistan and parts of Pakistan. An excerpt below:

The probe was spurred by concerns first raised by Rep. Mark Steven Kirk, an Illinois Republican who in the past had championed the Pashto-language service known as Deewa Radio. Mr. Kirk said he became concerned that American taxpayers were providing the Taliban a megaphone after he learned that Pakistani Taliban leader Baitullah Mehsud had been interviewed by the service — and claimed responsibility for terrorist bombings in the Pakistani city of Lahore in March.

“The U.S. taxpayer should not be subsidizing free air-time for al-Qaeda terrorists and Taliban leaders,” Mr. Kirk wrote in a May 5 letter to Mr. Geisel. “These broadcasts put the lives of American soldiers in danger and undermine the policies of the United States in Pakistan and Afghanistan.”

VOA Director Danforth Austin said Deewa Radio was simply seeking to report the news in a way that was credible to listeners from the same ethnic Pashtun group as the Taliban.

He told The Times that the Taliban has threatened the families of his reporters and broadcasters and declared Deewa Radio “haram” — forbidden by Islamic law.

“We wouldn’t be threatened by the Taliban if we weren’t showing them up for what they were and in a way that is credible,” Mr. Austin said.

Nonetheless, the station at times has inadvertently served as an outlet for the Taliban to advance its military strategy by misleading Pakistani authorities. For example, a Taliban spokesman told the VOA service in an April 24 interview that militant fighters were withdrawing from Pakistan’s Buner province when they did not do so.

The investigation of VOA’s Pashto service is another example of the long-standing tension about the role of American-funded broadcasting.

Read it all. This is not the first time that VOA has been accused of aiding and abeting Radical Islamic enemies of human rights. See the following:

Sen. Tob Coburn: VOA harming U.S. interests in Iran

CAIR propoganda on VOA

I just found the site “Let Go…Let Peace Come In Foundation.”  It is for adult survivors of sexual abuse.  I did not know it existed. A great resource for anyone whose life has been touched by sexual abuse in anyway…

Solomnia has the scoop on the recent debate between Joshua Rubinstein from Amnesty International and Gerald Steinberg from NGO Monitor. An excerpt below:

Charles Radin, former Bureau Chief for the Boston Globe in Jerusalem, recently arranged a debate between Joshua Rubenstein, Amnesty International’s man in New England and Gerald Steinberg, Director of NGO Monitor, a Jerusalem based watchdog organization that specifically critiques “Human Rights” groups that, according to their analysis, maintain a double standard and disproportional apparatus of criticism when it comes to Israel.

It is no secret that Mr. Rubenstein’s AI, a powerful international force with over 2 million members and a budget of nearly 200 million dollars, has been highly critical of Israel, regardless of whether a left or right government is in power. According to Steinberg, groups like Amnesty and Human Rights Watch, in their obsession with Israel, have “undermined the very human rights values that they claim to promote by demonizing Israel.” Founded in 2001 by Steinberg in reaction to the hate fest against Israel and Jews that took place in Durban, South Africa, NGO Monitor was instrumental in exploding the 2003 Jenin “massacre” myth, propagated in large part by Amnesty. Predictably, he continued, Amnesty evinced virtually no concern over the fate of IDF soldier,Gilad Shalit, held incommunicado by Hamas for over three years and denied visits by the International Committee of the Red Cross. More recently, AI’s treatment of the Gaza War, according to Steinberg, has gone from “illegitimate criticism to absurdity” in its disproportionate and inaccurate attacks on Israel.

Steinberg then went on to list 7 basic violations of the very tenets of human rights norms ranging from predefining victims (Palestinians) and perpetrators (Israelis) regardless of the facts on the ground to the failure of “independent investigation” (Amnesty relied on Hamas casualty figures, which claimed a virtual totality of “civilian” deaths).

Read it all! (link to Solomnia includes video as well)

It’s been a busy few days here at Small Garden as the early Spring gardening season gets underway.

Sunnyfield

Midwest gardening mecca

I made my first visit of the year to Sunnyfield to pick up cool season vegetables (broccoli, lettuce – yes, I’m the world’s laziest gardener – and seed potatoes) and annuals (violas, snapdragons and sweet alyssum) The day started out cool, cloudy and windy, and while it stayed cool and windy the sun eventually came out, making it feel almost festive. The greenhouse, which a month from now will be jam-packed with long lines at the checkout, was quiet, full of colorful plants and promise for the summer. I’ll go again in about a month to pick up the bulk of the annuals and vegie plants I need, but this early visit is always a special treat and a great way to kick off the growing season.

Spring Garden Projects

even harder than it looks

I’m very good at dreaming up new garden projects during the winter, when I have time on my hands (relatively speaking) and I’m warm and dry and cozy. They’re all perfectly reasonable projects that will add lots to the garden. However, I do tend to underestimate the time requirements and the sheer brute strength most of these end up taking. This year’s projects are no different – re-doing the mulched paths in the cutting garden and mulching the row of Karl Forester grasses that line one side of the back yard.

For the cutting garden paths, I’m disposing of the old mulch (composting as much as possible), pulling out the weed fabric and then replacing with cardboard and fresh mulch. I got about half of the paths here done (above is an in-progress shot; you can see the results in the next photo) before running out of cardboard (and energy) There’s just a little bit left to do with the grasses – just waiting for more mulch (and energy)

Planting

stay away bunnies!

Planting has begun; all of the plants brought home from Sunnyfield (except  the potatoes) as well as onion plants, spinach and sugar snap pea seeds have all been planted. It’s nice to give these cool-season plants a jump start before our hot, humid summers slow them down or even knock them out altogether.

As you can see, I’ve placed row covers over the lettuces and the broccoli plants, hoping to keep the rabbits at bay. (The green that you see are ornamental alliums, which I plan to transplant into the perennial beds this fall) You might also notice a lot of plant supports in this picture; I set up all of the supports so that I could create proper spacing and still have room for the heat-loving plants (tomatoes, peppers, eggplants, etc)

All in all, a pretty good start to the gardening season.