ULTRAMEN EM ÚNICA APRESENTAÇÃO

Um ano e meio após sua última apresentação, a Ultramen sobe ao palco para um único show. Os ultramanos Tonho Crocco, Júlio Porto, Pedro Porto, Zé Darcy, Marcito, DJ Anderson e Leonardo Boff reunem-se para matar a saudade dos fãs. O repertório composto pelos maiores sucessos da banda como “Bico de Luz”, “Dívida”,“Peleia”, “Tubarãozinho”, entre outras, foi elaborado a partir de músicas dos quase 20 anos de carreira. O Bar Ocidente, que já abrigou memoráveis shows da Ultramen, foi escolhido estrategicamente como palco desse reencontro. Oportunidade única para curtir a fusão do reggae, rap, funk, samba rock e heavy metal que a Ultramen faz com propriedade. O show será no dia 30 de novembro às 22 horas. O Bar Ocidente fica na Rua João Telles esquina com a Osvaldo Aranha no Bairro Bonfim.

A banda iniciou seus trabalhos no início dos anos 90 e têm em sua trajetória 4 cds lançados: Ultramen (1998), Olelê (2000), O Incrível Caso da Música que Encolheu e Outras Histórias (2002) e Capa Preta (2006). Em 2005 participou do acústico MTV Bandas Gaúchas.

O QUÊ: Show com a banda ULTRAMEN
DISCOTECAGEM: VooDoo
QUANDO: Segunda-feira, 30 de novembro de 2009 – 22 horas.
QUANTO: Ingressos antecipados a R$ 20,00 (vinte reais) os 150 primeiros. Restante a R$ 30,00 (trinta reais) na Lancheria do Parque (Av. Osvaldo Aranha, 1086 – Fone: 3311. 8321).
ONDE: Bar Ocidente – João Telles esq. Osvaldo Aranha
INFORMAÇÕES: 51 3312 1347 – www.ocidente.com.br – www.reimagroproducoes.com

SORTEIO DE INGRESSO!

A VooDoo vai sortear entre os seguidores do twitter @festavoodoo 1 ingresso para o show da Ultramen dia 30 de novembro no bar Ocidente.

Para concorrer, basta seguir @festavoodoo e RT (Retwittar) a seguinte mensagem:

“Dia 30.11 Ultramen + coletivo VooDoo no Ocidente”.

Siga @festavoodoo e RT essa mensagem para concorrer!

O ganhador será avisado dia 29.11. Encaminhe nome, telefone e data de nascimento para festavoodoo@gmail.com para entrarmos em contato.

A promoção é válida somente para quem estiver seguindo @festavoodoo.

From philly.com comes the story of a transgender death:

Hamilton, 20, a male-to-female transgender from Little Rock, Ark., died during a spiritual cleansing inside the home of a Camden County voodoo priest on July 10.

Yesterday, the Camden County Prosecutor’s Office said that Hamilton’s death had been accidental, resulting from the combined effects of “physical exhaustion, ambient room temperature and an oxygen-depleted atmosphere.”

The only substance found in Hamilton’s system, her mother said, was cinnamon.

Photographed by Moi of Ra

These guys were kind of scary and had covered themselves in yellow palm oil.

– License

Als blutiger Anfänger des Glaubens-Hopping stellt sich die Frage: Wo fange an? Gleich ins kalte Weihwasser springen und alle heimatlichen Zelte abbrechen, um als Rastafari beim rituellen Cannabis-Konsum zu debattieren, oder erstmal ‚lauwarm’ loslegen und einen kleinen Voodoo-Schrein im Schlafzimmer aufbauen? (Foto: CC Jonathan Stevens, wikimedia)
Und was lohnt sich überhaupt? Da war doch diese Religion mit der Polygamie – Islam… dazu gehört allerdings auch, 5x/Tag Richtung Mekka zu beten. Zumindest an den polygamischen Tagen ; )

Letztendlich hängt die Frage, mit welcher Religion starte ich, auch immer vom eigenen Typ ab, und da hat mir der Facebook-Ratgeber quittiert: Mir stehen alle Glaubensrichtungen offen… Was sagt also mein kleiner Helfer „Best of Gott“ dazu?

Als Lebemensch sollte man die Vielgötterei nach nordeuropäischem Vorbild ins Auge fassen: Odin und Thor geben sich überraschend spaßbetont und stehen Saufgelagen sowie One-Night-Stands mit Bürgerlich-Sterblichen alles andere als ablehnend gegenüber. Diesen Vorbildern zu folgen, sollte für den ein oder anderen unter uns nicht schwer fallen. (Foto: CC PinkMoose, Flickr)

Natürlich gibt es noch die klassische Variante, der die meisten von Haus aus nahe stehen: Den Monotheismus mit the one and only… Mr. GOTT. Um den Zahn gleich zu ziehen: da gibt es zwei Steintafeln mit einer Menge Regeln drauf. Übertragen auf heute sagen die uns: In der Einkommenssteuer die Einnahmen aus Geldanlagen korrekt angeben, kein Blick mehr über die Hecke, wenn Frau Nachbar ihren Body in die heiße Sonne packt usw. Auf der anderen Seite weiß man beim Monotheismus, woran man ist: Hier gibt es genau einen Gott für alles und es kommt nicht zu Kompetenzstreitigkeiten bei Opfergaben o.ä.

Es bleibt die Qual der Wahl… ich schlage vor, auf dem Blog hier abstimmen lassen, welche Religion als erste in der Praxis auf Herz und Nieren getestet werden soll. Ich bitte um zahlreiche Votes!

"DTAH", Acrylic on Canvas.

Aaron Sutton
As Above So Below

9 a.m.-5 p.m.

Sixth Street Gallery
YWCA of Greater Kansas City
1710 N. 6th St.
Kansas City, KS
913.371.1105

7 a.m.-2 p.m.

Corner Coffee Cafe
Adjacent to YWCA

Sixth Street Gallery Hours: 9 a.m.-5 p.m. Monday-Friday
Cafe Hours: 7 a.m.-2 p.m. Monday-Friday (7 a.m.-4:30 p.m. after Thanksgiving)
Runs though: Dec. 9

Gallery site: http://www.ywca.org/site/pp.asp?c=hvKVLbMVIuG&b=420859
Cafe site: http://www.ywca.org/site/pp.asp?c=hvKVLbMVIuG&b=420869

Aaron Sutton manages three delicate balancing acts in his show at the YWCA’s Sixth Street Gallery and Coffee Corner Cafe.

His acrylic paintings are esoteric yet accessible, Afrocentric without being exclusive, and evocative of his mural work without being overpowering in the small space of a canvas.

Sutton, who is also a hip-hop musician and the founder of the multidisciplinary Kansas City Hip Hop Academy, mixes Voudou, Egyptian mythology and alchemy into a stew of color, power and creativity that reflects Sutton’s own philosophies and drives.

Scarabs, birds and third eye images abound — often in combination, as in DTAH, today’s featured image. So do representations of Simbi, a Voudou god who appears as a serpent and represents the principle of creativity.

I think of my work as a vehicle of social and spiritual expression, he writes.  Many of my paintings and drawings deal with internal and external struggles that we endure along with the flow of life.

The concept which gave the show its title — As Above So Below – is drawn from the alchemical/magical idea that everything in the physical world has a supernatural analog and vice versa. As the show brochure puts it, … everything that exists in space is what we hold within ourselves and everything that we hold within ourselves exists in space.

In the Hermetic philosophical/religious tradition, that makes humanity the earthly equivalent of God, with a similar drive — and responsibility — to create.

Sutton clearly takes that responsibility to heart … and to canvas.

I keep banging on about the fact that you don’t need to buy any tools to walk the path, but then again, these are not tools but little treats. As you might have guessed, this is more work of the talented Carolina Gonzalez.

This lady is Called Santisima Muerte and is a Holy Death Altar Doll. For more information on this lovely lady please refer to Carolina’s site here

And to round it off I also bought a print of one of her original drawings called The Horned Goddess. More of her work can be found at The Hoodoo Shop

For now this is my little set-up in the bedroom away from prying eyes. It is not set in stone but always changing depending on what I find. This can be bought, made or found in nature like all the stones that you can see on the bottom shelf. Although, if I carry on like this it will end up as Carolina Gonzales shrine to her work before you get the wrong idea .     

Last night I dreamt that the British actress Lesley-Anne Down had just arrived in the U.S. as a penniless immigrant. (In the dream, she was not a famous actress.) I was in the lobby of a homeless shelter for men, located in the Georgetown area of Seattle. I was trying to get the employees there to help me locate a women’s shelter. They handed me a phone book, but the listings were in some sort of crazy semi-alphabetical order that I could not make any sense of. Finally, one of the employees told me there was a women’s shelter in Greenwood. In the dream, I thought I knew where it was, even though I know of no such shelter in real life.

I left the men’s shelter and went out to the white car, where my friend Steve and Lesley-Anne were waiting. Steve is single, so I was hoping that he and Lesley would hit it off. However, when I got into the car, Steve was visibly upset and I found out that Lesley talked him into turning himself into the police for some minor offense. (I can’t remember what it was, but possibly a hit-and-run with minor injuries. Note that this type of irresponsible behavior is extremely uncharacteristic of the real-life Steve.) In the dream, the offense happened some time ago and was over and done with, and I told him that I thought it extremely foolish to turn himself in. But he seemed to feel that he needed to do it for his conscience.

When trying to make sense of this dream, I thought back to Mambo C’s tarot reading, and the conflicting male/female energies in my life. The dream may be expressing my own conflicts between objective efficiency (potentially ruthless) and subjective morality (which has the potential to make me indecisive, vulnerable and obsessive over the past). It’s tricky sometimes to find the middle road.

I’m still making adjustments to my shelf that holds the shrines for La Sirene, Agwe, Erzulie and Ogoun. At the back of Agwe’s shrine, I placed an image of a whaling boat (although I do not think of it as such) with a crew full of either dogs or wolves that was part of an Inuit art calendar.  The artist is Pudlo Pudlat [Canadian Inuit, 1916-1992]; the title of the piece is “Animal Whalers II.” I like this image a lot, and once I added the word “IMMAMOU” in white paint, it fit in perfectly. I am not really satisfied with the sea turtle as a representation of Agwe, although I do like the turtle and it will remain in the shrine. I spent the week searching online for an affordable Neptune or Poseidon statue that would fit on my shelf, all to no avail. There was one interesting ceramic statue of “Prince Neptune” on Etsy that I liked a lot. It was affordable, but turned out to be a bit too large for the available space. In the end, I found a nice Neptune bust on eBay that is meant to be placed in an aquarium. It even has a gold crown and some blue/green jewels on it. I don’t know why I didn’t think of aquarium figures before. They are both the right size and affordable.

I want to get something larger for Erzulie, but I am not sure what yet, either a figure or a larger image. I saw a couple of things online that I liked, but have not yet made a decision.

I came home from work one day last week to find La Sirene’s expensive mermaid mirror had tumbled off the shelf onto the cats’ ceramic water dish below, breaking the dish in two. I am a bit puzzled as to how the mirror fell down. I had it balanced upright (handle down) so that La Sirene could see her own reflection, but it had been leaning towards the back of the shelf and should not have fallen forward.

My first thought was that Luna, my younger cat who likes to mess with everything, had gotten up on the shelf and knocked the mirror down. However, on close examination, I could not find anything else that appeared to be disturbed. What’s also interesting is that the mirror itself did not sustain any damage whatsoever: no chips or scratches, much to my relief.

I am not sure what this means, if anything. I do not want to be one of those people who reads metaphysical meaning into every single event. So my list of possible theories are:

• The mirror managed to fall somehow in a way that I did not anticipate. Mundane and entirely possible.
• La Sirene is irritated at me about something, perhaps because she is sharing her shelf with 3 other lwa. One of them is her husband, but perhaps she isn’t pleased about sharing with Erzulie or Ogoun. I hope this isn’t the case, as I really have limited space, although it might explain why the mirror didn’t sustain any damage.
• La Sirene is irritated at Luna for attempting to disturb the shelf and the mirror fell to scare the cat away.
• Erzulie is unhappy that La Sirene’s shrine has nicer things in it (including offerings and a better avatar) and threw the mirror.  I am working on improving Erzulie’s area, but it’s not going to be immediate.

I am not sure which of these is true, so have resigned myself to once again wait and see what happens next.  In the meantime, my studies continue. I also want to set up a shrine area for the Ghede. I’m waiting for a skeletal bride/groom figure to arrive that I ordered from Gargoyles. I also put a partial payment on an original painting that I fell in love with at  Gargoyles last week. The painting is a portrait of a skeleton guy wearing a suit and tie. A crown floats above his head and between his grinning teeth he holds a lit cigarette. I laughed and thought of the Baron when I saw it. It should make a nice counterpiece to the steampunk Brigitte print I recently ordered from Etsy. I can’t wait for it to arrive.

In my previous posts I have aimed to inform and entertain you in regards to zombies featuring in popular culture – and probably the kind of zombie that springs to mind first of all – but now for a bit of a history lesson…

As with many phenomenons the concept of the Zombie is recognised in films, it has conjured a following of zombie enthusiasts, it has appeared in music videos, songs, costume themes etc.etc.

Anything with this kind of interest and modern significance has an intrinsic beginning.

The Zombie that we know and love is said to have derived from the ‘Voodoo’ or ‘Vodou’ zombie.

Most of the historical research into the ‘zombie’ explores their origin – the Caribbean island of Haiti.

Within my research I have discovered that the word ‘Zombie’ or ‘Zombi’ means god, spirit, or snake god and comes from the realms of ancient Voodoo.

Two beliefs are presented: It is said that according to the doctrine of Voodoo (vodoun or vodun) a person can either be ‘revived’ from the dead by a bokor through a drug – an amalgamation of things such as puffer fish and toad skin – or using sorcery and the person would remain under the bokor or voodoo priest’s control until they had no will of their own or were “dead” like… Or someone who is living, and through the same method, undergoes a ‘zombification’. (It is also said and debated that after undergoing this they were sold and used in sugar fields as slave labour.)

After looking into these ideas there was a recorded case that came up time and time again…

> In 1937, while researching folklore in Haiti, Zora Neale Hurston encountered the case of a woman who appeared in a village, and a family claimed she was Felicia Felix-Mentor, a relative who had died and been buried in 1907 at the age of 29. Hurston pursued rumors that the affected persons were given powerful drugs, but she was unable to locate individuals willing to offer much information. She wrote:

“What is more, if science ever gets to the bottom of Voodoo in Haiti and Africa, it will be found that some important medical secrets, still unknown to medical science, give it its power, rather than gestures of ceremony.” – Zora Neale Hurston

Another form of record of this kind of procedure taking place was investigated and documented by (Edmund) Wade Davis in his book The Serpent and the Rainbow.

In 1982 Wade Davis explored Haiti and declared, after investigation, that a living person can be turned into a ‘zombie’.

He claims this occurs by two special concoctions, he said to be powders, entering into the blood stream. One to be said induced a ‘dead-like’ state because of Tetrodoxotin.

As with any text claiming seemingly off-the-wall going on Davis’s book divided opinions. However, there is  also wide recognition among the Haitian people of the existence of the “zombi drug”.

There have been many reports of people witnessing the backlash of these ceremonies and procedures occurring in Haitian culture - of people attending a funeral of someone to then see them days later in an undead state, uttering indecipherable ramblings and of people mindlessly performing tasks but unable to partake in normal social conduct.

Of course, it is up to you to make your mind up…

This article is a personal story about a cruise on the Royal Caribbean Cruise Line, an experience with a Haitian Voodoo man and Fern Gully in Jamaica. Click here to read the story.

Video about brain magic. Better viewed than talked about:

http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/keith_barry_does_brain_magic.html

Outta this world...

My first real glimpse of life here in the Big Easy was Saturday night on Bourbon Street. Talk about sensory overload.  It’s a direct frontal assault of the five senses.  From the bling of beads and the flash of breasts to the glare of neon selling everything from sex to cigars, I didn’t know where to look first.  It was a kaleidoscope of color that changed from corner to corner as I made my way along the crowded street rubbing elbows (among other things) with all manner of people from t-shirt wearing tourists to conservatively clad businessmen. 

Smells spilled out from the doorways; some were deliciously identifiable while others made my stomach lurch as I hurried past – exhaling all the way. Once inside Bourbon House, I was greeted by spicy scents that made my mouth water in anticipation of a gumbo so tasty there was only one word, newly invented, to describe it: gumbo-licious!

 ‘Round midnight, I went in search of a nightcap of a more musical nature, passing first one bar then the next.  From the open doorways and windows, a riff or a phrase, would reach out to pull me inside.   “Just two minutes,” I would promise myself – but then two became five minutes, and five became fifteen, before I forced myself to leave and search for my next musical fix.  

 Overall, the night belonged somewhere in the realm of the sixth sense, an otherworldly event that worked its magic – cast its spell over me. Ah, I thought to myself, so this is witchcraft (or maybe it was voodoo).  After all, it is New Orleans.

Neste dia 17 o Coletivo VooDoo discoteca no show da banda de funk instrumental Funkalister, no Sgt. Peppers, Rua Dona Laura nº 329.

The grotesque dance of corporate legislators.

Bryan Zepp Jamieson, November 15, 2009

One of the early fallouts of “tort reform”, the ongoing drive by corporations to put themselves beyond the reach of the law, has been the widespread use of waivers mandating private arbitration in the event of any dispute. Corporations have then slipped this language into employment and service contracts, and would-be employees and customers often sign this waiver unwittingly, but in any event, if they don’t sign, they don’t get the employment or service they wanted.

How widespread is it? If you have health insurance, even if it’s through your employer, then you’ve probably signed this waiver. Nearly all health insurance companies have such a waiver, and it mandates that in the event of dispute (as, for instance, when the company decides you aren’t worth the trouble and arbitrarily decides not to pay your claim), you take it to private arbitration, the board of which is selected by the insurance company. In forty-nine states, you aren’t even allowed to discuss the results of the arbitration with anyone, and may not even reveal if you prevailed or not. California is the exception, since the state passed a sunshine law requiring the companies to publicly show the ratio of wins and losses of consumers who go through their arbitration process. The only real surprise is that the insurance companies only prevailed 95% of the time. Maybe the members of the panels would toss small bones to the most deserving, so they could go home and night and assure themselves that they weren’t total whores.

In the meantime, if you have health insurance, you’re pretty much reduced to hoping your company treats you honestly and fairly. You’ve signed away your First Amendment Right to Redress to an outfit that sees you as nothing more than a vehicle to maximizing profits. In other words (Representative Grayson’s), just hope you don’t get sick, and if you do, die quickly.

Kellogg-Brown Root, the former subsidiary of Halliburton and now spun off and known as KBR, Inc., had such a waiver as part of its terms of employ. Now, normally, that protects the company from civil suits, but not criminal complaints. You can’t sign away your right to redress under criminal law. But a lot of employees got sent over as part of the mercenary forces taking part in the occupation of Iraq.

First, because of Coalition Provisional Authority Order 17, employees of American firms over there were not subject to Iraqi legal authority unless they were acting outside the specifics of their job descriptions. The order reads, “Contractors shall not be subject to Iraqi laws or regulations in matters relating to the terms and conditions of their Contracts, including licensing and registering employees, businesses and corporations; provided, however, that Contractors shall comply with such applicable licensing and registration laws and regulations if engaging in business or transactions in Iraq other than Contracts.”

So all a Halliburton employee had to do if someone thought they were doing anything criminal was show it was just part of their job, and the local authorities couldn’t touch them.

Well, what did you expect from an occupying force? Justice?

CPA 17 was abolished after a bunch of Halliburton contractors slaughtered a dozen or so civilians at a busy down-town intersection, apparently for sport. The US was given a choice by furious Iraqis: annul that order and get the mercenaries the fuck out of there, or have the whole country blow up in their faces.

Now, there is a section of the US Code, Title 18, Part I, Chapter 1, § 7, called “Special maritime and territorial jurisdiction of the United States defined”, which gives the federal government jurisdiction over crimes committed against American nationals where no other law applies. This was meant to protect Americans on the high seas, but could be applied to occupied Iraq. But the Bush administration’s Justice Department wasn’t about to enforce any laws against Dick Cheney’s former and future meal ticket.

So when Jamie Leigh Jones “found her body naked and severely bruised, with lacerations to her vagina and anus, blood running down her leg, her breast implants ruptured, and her pectoral muscles torn – which would later require reconstructive surgery” the only place she could turn to to complain about the drugging and subsequent gang rape she suffered from her coworkers, was Kellogg Brown Root itself. Armed with the rape kit she obtained from an army doctor, she approached the brass of KBR at Camp Hope in Iraq with the evidence of the assault upon her. They responded by locking her up in a storage shed with only a cot until she agreed to drop the complaint. In the meantime, the rape kit vanished.

Remember, it’s entirely possible that there are people in the employ of KBR Inc., who are not amoral human filth. It’s entirely possible.

That left her with no recourse at all. No criminal law could be applied, and she discovered, when she tried to sue, that the waiver she signed also included such on the job injuries as gang rape and sexual mutilation. Great stuff, that tort reform.

Fortunately, the 5th Circuit Court got the case anyway, and decided that justice superseded the right of corporations to evade justice. Her suit proceeded.

But freshman Senator Al Franken, when he heard about the case, realized that those waivers were a big part of the problem.

There may come a time when the vast majority of Republicans in Congress and far too many of the Democrats stop being monkeys on a stick, dancing for the corporations, but it isn’t today. Franken reached for what was in his grasp. He got an amendment through on a bill that allowed the government to refuse federal funds for companies that forced their employees or customers to sign such waivers.

Given the circumstances, a truly horrific rape followed by an even more horrific denial of justice, it’s hard to imagine that anyone would not support such an amendment. But 30 Senators, the following, voted against it: Alexander (R-TN) Barrasso (R-WY) Bond (R-MO) Brownback (R-KS) Bunning (R-KY) Burr (R-NC) Chambliss (R-GA) Coburn (R-OK) Cochran (R-MS) Corker (R-TN) Cornyn (R-TX) Crapo (R-ID) DeMint (R-SC) Ensign (R-NV) Enzi (R-WY) Graham (R-SC) Gregg (R-NH) Inhofe (R-OK) Isakson (R-GA) Johanns (R-NE) Kyl (R-AZ) McCain (R-AZ) McConnell (R-KY) Risch (R-ID) Roberts (R-KS) Sessions (R-AL) Shelby (R-AL) Thune (R-SD) Vitter (R-LA) Wicker (R-MS)

Yup. All Republican. All men. The four Republican women in the Senate voted for it. A lot of people were furious at those 30 Senators.

A viral video of David “Diapers” Vitter, stalwart champion against sexual misbehavior, running away from a young woman and self-described rape victim who demanded he account for his vote against the amendment kept the vote in in the public eye, and a month later, Republican Senators were astounded by the fact that they were still getting political blowback over it. One of them, Thune, even whined that they only wanted to protect Halliburton/KBR from the vile liberal machinations of Franken. (The legislation does not mention Halliburton/KBR).

A Think Progress article marveling over the Republican tone deafness quoted one of their bloggers, BarbinMD as writing, “Seriously? They voted against an amendment that was prompted by the brutal gang-rape of a young woman by her co-workers while she was working for a company under contract for the United States government, after which she was locked in a shipping container without food or water, threatened if she left to seek medical treatment, and was then prevented from bringing criminal charges against her assailants. And they failed to anticipate the political consequences?”

Well, Thune, like his 29 fellow Senators, is just a monkey on a stick.

I wonder what he would think of similar legislation that went a little beyond requiring companies doing contractual work for the government to not have that waiver clause. This legislation, passed several days earlier, cuts off federal funding immediately for any organization that has been accused of any of the following:

1. Any organization that has been indicted for a violation under any Federal or State law governing the financing of a campaign for election for public office or any law governing the administration of an election for public office, including a law relating to voter registration.
2. Any organization that had its State corporate charter terminated due to its failure to comply with Federal or State lobbying disclosure requirements.
3. Any organization that has filed a fraudulent form with any Federal or State regulatory agency.
4. Any organization that (A) employs any applicable individual, in a permanent or temporary capacity; (B) has under contract or retains any applicable individual; or (C) has any applicable individual acting on the organization’s behalf or with the express or apparent authority of the organization.

Well, that would certainly eliminate Halliburton/KBR from any federal funding. Halliburton/KBR are under indictment for murder, rape, torture, endangering American troops, poisoning American troops, and selling arms to the insurgents.

In fact, it’s a tad broad. You could apply it to nearly every private contractor doing business with the government. Certainly every major military contractor would be disallowed under those provisions. Most of them haven’t just been accused of such items, but indicted and convicted. There are outfits that have been fined hundreds of millions of dollars for committing fraud against the government who are still doing business with the government, and getting billions of tax dollars, often so they can lie to and cheat the taxpayers even more.

But so far, it’s only been applied to one contractor, a real tiny one that only got a measly $25 million a year from the Feds. And it wasn’t convicted of anything; in fact, it hasn’t even been indicted.

That outfit, of course, was the dread ACORN. They got their funding cut in what was supposed to be “one-armed blind man” legislation (H. R. 3571) that in fact, was written so broadly that it can be used to eliminate the entire military industrial complex. All because an ACORN volunteer got caught groping on a highly suspect video for an answer to an outlandish question about the tax status of child prostitution.

I think you’ll agree that’s right up there with drugging, gang-rape, false imprisonment and destroying evidence, wouldn’t you?

So where were the thirty Republicans who were incensed at legislation designed to make sure that companies getting tax dollars respect the legal rights of their customers and employees?

Oh, they all supported it, of course.

Monkeys on a stick.

VamS – Die neue Rubrik auf Maximum Old School. VamS ist keine von uns herausgebrachte Zeitung um mit der BamS zu konkurrieren, sondern steht für Video am Sonntag. Was euch hier erwartet? Viel lustiges!

Wenn man an die 80er oder 90er der Videospieleära denkt, kommt man nicht um die lustigen und seltsamen Werbungen herum, mit denen die Spiele beworben wurden. Vor allem in Japan gibt es viele skurile Clips die auch den Sprung in den Westen geschafft und heute absoluten Kultstatus erreicht haben.

Daneben gibt es noch die kleinen aber witzigen Pannen bei Videospielen. Unfreiwillig komische Spielfehler, Helden die im Gelände stecken bleiben, Grafikfehler, die Auswahl ist riesig.

All das vereint VamS. Wir präsentieren euch ab sofort jeden Sonntag zum gemütlichen Ausklingen der Woche ein lustiges Video aus dem Retro Games Bereich, kurz und schmerzlos, das heißt ohne Kommentar, denn die Videos sprechen für sich. Den Anfang macht ein Werbeclip der Firma 3dfx, weltbekannt für die legendären Voodoo Grafikkarten.

When Paul Stembridge came looking for his missing brother Geoffrey, Susan Lord could not know he had brought a family curse with him. Susan fell in love with Paul, married him, and in her happiness, all thoughts of Geoffrey were forgotten.

But soon a subtle change came over Paul. gradually Susan realised that he wanted her for one purpose only – to help him break the curse.

What had become of the missing Geoffrey? If the curse had taken him, then Susan, too, was in danger. Captive of a family plagued by voilence, Susan faced a legacy of evil that spanned more than a century.

She had to learn the secret of the Stembridge curse – or die a victim of it.

Writen by Nancy Taylor Smith. First Ace printing August 1974.

Set in the early 1900’s this is an exotic excursion into the world of old time tropical plantations and dark family secrets, with a smattering of voodoo adding intrique to the mix.

Susan Lord works in the Ossadaga Public Library, lives in the local boarding house and feels life is passing her by. A self proclaimed old maid at 25 (weren’t those the days!) you can imagine her excitement when the mysterious, tall, dark and handsome Paul Stembridge comes into town. A whirlwind romance follows and soon enough Susan is  married and whisked off to Stembridge’s grand West Indian stately mansion.

Well, marriage is not all it’s cracked up to be for Susan, with Mr Right very quickly turning into Mr Completely Appalling as he becomes increasingly moody, abusive and controlling toward his spouse. Then there’s the hostile family and the West Indian ghost’s or duppies to put up with, as well as the resident family witch leaving voodoo dolls in her underwear drawer.

Like all great gothic heroines, Susan takes whatever’s thrown at her, even her husband’s punches, and carries on trying to mantain some semblance of normality, while all is heaving and seething around her.

Gradually more and more clues lead her to the truth behind her brother in laws  dissappearance and,  as befittng such a glamorous location, things come to a stormy, windswept climax during a thundery hurricane – when Susan finds true love in the arms of her rescuer as the mystery behind the Stembridge family curse is finally revealed.

For connoisseurs of the creepy, this book has a little something for everyone. There’s black magic, white magic, haunted houses, madness and hidden treasure. There’s even the grisly remains of a body hidden right under everyone’s noses – I won’t say where but the clue is in the title. Three out of five stars.

Last Sunday I went to Mambo C’s house for a met tet reading. For those of you new to Vodou, a person’s met tet is the “master of their head,” a sort of Vodou guardian spirit. At any given time, a number of lwas may be with a person, but the met tet is the one you are born with.

Prior to my reading, the mambo had to finish up an interview with a student from out of town. The student had arrived 90 minutes late, so the interview ran late as well. As it turned out, we had only a very brief time to do my reading. The tarot cards had been laid out and Mambo C had barely begun reading them when Houngan D arrived. She had not gotten a clear impression of who my met tet was, although she had identified three lwa who were around me.

We discussed the reading a little with Houngan D, and he suggested I try working with Azaka, the lwa of agriculture. Houngan D asked me if my family had been farmers. I had to reply that they were not, as far as I knew. However, I never knew my father’s family (the Chinese side), so it’s possible some of them might have been farmers. I thought about Azaka, and did not have strong feelings one way or the other. Mambo C and I  never did get back to the cards that day, but she left them laid out on her dining room table and told me to give her a call later.

By the time we resumed the reading on Monday via telephone, Mambo C had carefully gone over the cards. While she was still not sure about my met tet, she did provide me with some interesting information.

La Sirene was very prominent in the reading, although the mambo did not think she was my met tet. However, this made me very happy, as it meant that La Sirene acknowledged my service to her. Erzulie was also present, although a little less prominently.  Also very prominent in the reading was Ogoun, the warrior lwa. The reading indicated some conflict between masculine and feminine energies, possibly related to the relationship with and between my parents. I found it interesting that the mambo saw this in the cards, as I grew up raised by a strong single mother with few positive male role models around, and certainly none who were around for any significant amount of time. She thought that the Ogoun energy manifested in the skill involved in sculpting, and the Erzulie/La Sirene energies manifested in my artistic abilities. She also thought that Agwe might be indicated, as he is married to both Erzulie and La Sirene. Both Ogoun and Agwe are associated with thunder and lightning, which reminded me of my close encounter with lightning back in December. On one website, Ogoun was associated with solitary predators, including panthers. Erzulie in her darker aspect (Erzulie Red Eyes) was also associated with big cats, which appeals to the therian in me.

She advised me to set up additional shrines for Erzulie, Ogoun and Agwe, so during the week I bought more candles and tried to find items to represent the new lwa in their shrines.

Mambo C mentioned that the Queen of Cups in the Rider Waite tarot deck represents Erzulie well. She is also commonly associated with Mater Dolorosa, a lovely white Mary wearing pearls and gold with a sword thrust into her heart. While killing time before meeting a friend on Wednesday, I stopped by Edge of the Circle Books and found a prayer card of Santa Barbara that I thought would work quite well. Saint Barbara is holding a cup and has a sword, although it isn’t piercing her heart. Her gown is white and her cloak is pinkish red (Erzulie’s color are white and pink).

While the guy was ringing up my card and candles, I looked down through the glass of the counter and my eyes fell on a cool metal pendant of Ogoun. The pendant was made of pewter and is basically a full body relief depicting the lwa as a modern soldier. It appealed to me both for its interpretation of Ogoun and for the artistic quality of the piece. Also, it seemed appropriate that his avatar be made of metal, as he is the lwa of iron. Of course I had to buy it.

That left me with the task of finding a representation for Agwe. Usually he is depicted by images of boats, but sea creatures can be used, as well as Saint Ulrich. I was having trouble finding an image or item that resonated for me. One sculpture that I saw in Pike Place Market of an Inuit man with a walrus face would have worked very well, but at $245 was out of the question. Finally, on Thursday, my girlfriend and I were at a gift shop in Belltown that sold a variety of well-sculpted plastic sea creatures. After pondering various dolphins, sharks, whales and a walrus, I settled on a small but highly detailed sea turtle with an appropriately intense expression and eyes that were nearly solid white, which gave him a mysterious otherworldly appeal. I will place some boat images behind him in his shrine.

So my plan is to set up these additional shrines today, serve these lwa, and hopefully at some point my met tet will identify itself.

Mambo C’s reading also indicated that my path into Vodou would not be a simple one, but instead full of twists and turns. And my thoughts to that were, “Ah. Just like the rest of my life.” Oh well. Sometimes when things come too easily, we appreciate them less.

Lastly, I’ve recently had some insights and ideas about the visitor in the blue dress that appeared to me twice, once on a bus ride and another time during meditation. On the bus ride, my impression of her was of an adult Native American, Latina or mulatto woman with long dark hair. In the meditation vision she appeared as a very dark skinned young African girl. I suspect this was La Sirene because of the similarity of the dress (both times it was blue with a repeated white pattern–blue and white, La Sirene’s colors). On one website I saw artwork of her with dual aspects, represented as two mermaids, one light skinned, one dark. This contrasts her benevolent and more dangerous aspects. The adult woman I saw had some maternal airs about her and may have been La Sirene’s protective, gentler aspect. I think the child represents La Sirene in her darker aspect, but “darker” in this sense would refer to the subconscious desires and instincts of the soul, or the part of the soul that is more spontaneous, unrestrained and childlike.

So with that, I take my leave to continue down my twisty turny path.

Order your copy here:
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Traumatized by Alexander S. Brown

Columbia Library
900 Broad Street
Columbia, MS 39429-3109
(601) 736-1812

This event will occur from 1:00pm to 3:00pm on December 12, 2009

Only paperbacks will be sold at this location $20 each.
Order hardbacks at http://www.traumatizedsouls.com

Nos anos 30, na cidade de Chicago, Estados Unidos, o clarinetista e saxofonista norte-americano Mezz Mezzrow compunha um jazz chamado Funky Butt (em nossa tradução livre, algo como “traseiro vibrante”). Era uma das primeiras aparições oficiais da palavra funk, gíria já corrente na época. Décadas depois, todo um novo ramo na música negra mundo afora iria identificar-se sob este guarda-chuva vibrante. Nos originais anos 30, colocar mais funk em alguma coisa era deixá-la mais solta e mais sexy, era deixá-la apimentada e safada. Na música de então, significava dotá-la de um ritmo sincopado e forte, bem como de fraseados que tivessem o poder de sacudir e fazer dançar. Era caprichar no swing. Chamar um transe. Em conversas mais polidas da elite branca de então, era palavra a ser evitada por sua conotação abertamente indelicada.
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Durante os anos 40, 50 e 60, enquanto o jazz proliferava em bebops, hardbops e outros estilos, a proposta de unir ritmo, harmonia, melodia e transe era cada vez mais comum. Em meados dos anos 60, depois que James Brown e Sly & The Family Stone aparecem na cena do R&B norte-americano, então o funk ganha estatuto próprio e explode corpos e pistas de dança. Instala-se o transe generalizado. Surge o mais safado de todos os ritmos já inventados pelo homem. Brown e Sly pavimentam o caminho por onde passariam nomes como George Clinton e seus combos Funkadelic e Parliament, mas também The Commodores, Kool & The Gang, depois Stevie Wonder, Curtis Mayfield, Marvin Gaye, Isaac Hayes, Al Green e tantos outros; eles também lançam as bases para a construção das pontes que levarão a nova música negra até a África originária de Fela Kuti, Manu Dibango e todos os grandes nomes da variação do funk que viria a ser conhecida como afrobeat; ainda hoje aprumam os lemes que fizeram o funk chegar ao Brasil e misturar-se às ricas sonoridades locais na música de Tim Maia, Gerson “King” Combo, Miguel de Deus, Jorge Ben e muitos outros. Inúmeras outras misturas também foram possíveis e até inevitáveis: efeitos do transe, chegamos até o que seria um suposto absurdo como o funk’metal, unindo o peso das guitarras distorcidas com o antigo e vibrante balanço na sonoridade de bandas como os Red Hot Chili Peppers. Pimenta ardida, o funk. Tempero groove.
Hoje em dia, a música do mundo todo já passou por alguma revolução funk, em dado ponto já é mais solta e sexy, apimentada e safada, marcada e dançante.
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A VooDoo é uma celebração às mais diversas manifestações desta história musical negra, quente e safada, procurando sempre os precursores destas inúmeras revoluções: VooDoo é funk old school pelo transe na pista.
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Sua receita é infalível: comece cedo aquecendo os corpos com o melhor da história do jazz, do originário ragtime ao contemporâneo fusion; quando os corpos já estiverem suficientemente amornados da frieza bruta e métrica do cotidiano, acrescente pouco a pouco o calor dos grooves em doses crescentes de batidas fortes, baixos gordos, guitarras choronas, teclados imensos, roucas vozes e coros que chamam a cantar no que há de melhor nos lados B da música funk; quando o suor começar a brotar, então é hora de fazer o bicho pegar com os grandes e universais sucessos desta história absolutamente contagiante, sem parar, até atingir nada menos do que o transe total.
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Quem comparecer ao nosso ritual VooDoo será tomado.
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Quem viver, voltará!