olenskae:

Yekaterina Samutsevich’s closing statement in the criminal case against the feminist punk group Pussy Riot:

During the closing statement, the defendant is expected to repent or express regret for her deeds, or to enumerate attenuating circumstances. In my case, as in the case of my…

I squealed in delight as my insides swelled when I saw this. <3

the-star-stuff:

This guy hand-forged his own wedding ring. OUT OF A METEORITE.

That’s it. Game over. You will never have a wedding ring cooler than that of redditor laporkenstein. Not only did he fashion the band himself, in the formidable fires of… well… his garage — he forged the damn thing out of a chunk of meteorite. (A Gibeon meteorite, to be exact.)

Check out the entire album over on imgur.

(via itsfullofstars)

30-Day Song Challenge - Day 19

A song you’re currently obsessed with: “Fairytale of New York,” The Pogues

How Urban Decay Got Me/An Important Lesson Learned

Do not read this if you’re offended by silly buying habits. Prices will be mentioned so I’m warning you. Once you’re past this point and if you feel like violently reacting about the expense involved in coming up with this rant: stop and move on. I’d welcome any comment about the palettes, though.

SO — I regret getting Urban Decay’s Naked 2 palette. Photo above shows Naked 2 vs. my (a bit over) 1 year old Naked palette. Naked 2 looks watered down and I feel like a gimp for giving into what’s little that’s left of my feminine side. I got the Naked 2 palette for Php 3,000.00 from one of my favourite online resellers- which is Php 500.00 less than the price for which I got the Naked palette last year. I actually feel like hurling Naked 2 against a wall if not for wastage. I read reviews. I did try and put on my best decision-making bra. I admit letting the hype get the best of me. I tried looking at the brighter side of things, that this second Naked palette assures me a longer lasting supply of nude eyeshadows… but my hard-earned money is not as justified as it was when I received the first Naked palette. After Awkward High School, I rarely berate myself, but right now I’d go as far as calling myself a gimp for falling into this marketing trap. So let me just get it out there to Naked 1 owners who are still thinking of buying Naked 2: You don’t have to do this.

Oh but there are reviews of people buying this on top of their current ownership of the first Naked palette, and still loved it — I respect that. I WILL respect that if they can switch skin tones from warm to cool. I’m warm. The second palette will not suit me as much as the first one. I can already see myself wearing the face of a frosted doughnut once I start with the Naked 2 palette, but that’s still to be proven.

I also took this as a sign to stop buying make-up until I run out of what I currently have, and that I’ve to stop spending for things just because I have to have them (unless it’s life-threatening, e.g. a rabies shot, oral prophylaxis, Nanay’s groceries). A life lesson learned relatively late in life. Odd that I just threw away the concepts and exercises I’ve learned and executed for the past three years in prioritizing needs within limited amount of resources.

For the record, among the things I’ve bought, this is the first purchase that really made me feel bad. This is just not right. Good Friday.

How To Be Alone

If you are at first lonely, be patient.

If you’ve not been alone much, or if when you were, you weren’t okay with it, then just wait. You’ll find it’s fine to be alone once you’re embracing it.

We can start with the acceptable places, the bathroom, the coffee shop, the library, where you can stall and read the paper, where you can get your caffeine fix and sit and stay there. Where you can browse the stacks and smell the books; you’re not supposed to talk much anyway so it’s safe there.

There is also the gym, if you’re shy, you can hang out with yourself and mirrors, you can put headphones in.

Then there’s public transportation, because we all gotta go places.

And there’s prayer and mediation, no one will think less if your hanging with your breath seeking peace and salvation.

Start simple. Things you may have previously avoided based on your avoid being alone principles.

The lunch counter, where you will be surrounded by “chow downers”, employees who only have an hour and their spouses work across town, and they, like you, will be alone.

Resist the urge to hang out with your cell phone.

When you are comfortable with “eat lunch and run”, take yourself out for dinner; a restaurant with linen and Silverware. You’re no less an intriguing a person when you are eating solo desert and cleaning the whip cream from the dish with your finger. In fact, some people at full tables will wish they were where you were.

Go to the movies. Where it’s dark and soothing, alone in your seat amidst a fleeting community.

And then take yourself out dancing, to a club where no one knows you, stand on the outside of the floor until the lights convince you more and more and the music shows you. Dance like no one’s watching because they’re probably not. And if they are, assume it is with best human intentions. The way bodies move genuinely to beats, is after-all, gorgeous and affecting. Dance until you’re sweating. And beads of perspiration remind you of life’s best things. Down your back, like a book of blessings.

  

Go to the woods alone, and the trees and squirrels will watch for you. Go to an unfamiliar city, roam the streets, they are always statues to talk to, and benches made for sitting gives strangers a shared existence if only for a minute, and these moments can be so uplifting and the conversation you get in by sitting alone on benches, might of never happened had you not been there by yourself. 

Society is afraid of alone though. Like lonely hearts are wasting away in basements. Like people must have problems if after awhile nobody is dating them.

But lonely is a freedom that breathes easy and weightless, and lonely is healing if you make it.

You can stand swathed by groups and mobs or hands with your partner, look both further and farther in the endless quest for company.

But no one is in your head. And by the time you translate your thoughts an essence of them maybe lost or perhaps it is just kept. Perhaps in the interest of loving oneself, perhaps all those “sappy slogans” from pre-school over to high school groaning, we’re tokens for holding the lonely at bay.

Cause if you’re happy in your head, then solitude is blessed, and alone is okay.

It’s okay if no one believes like you, all experiences unique, no one has the same synapses, can’t think like you, for this be relived, keeps things interesting, life’s magic things in reach, and it doesn’t mean you aren’t connected, and the community is not present, just take the perspective you get from being one person in one head and feel the effects of it.

Take silence and respect it.

If you have an art that needs a practice, stop neglecting it, if your family doesn’t get you or a religious sect is not meant for you, don’t obsess about it.

You could be in an instant surrounded if you need it.

If your heart is bleeding, make the best of it.

There is heat in freezing, be a testament.

—Tanya Davis

I Made My Own Cheese

…I really did. Today’s an angry, cold, and rainy Saturday- the first day of my three-day weekend and I thought: maybe I should make a quiche. My little brother Paolo likes quiche a lot and would gobble down any type of the pastry at any given opportunity. I’ve been making quiche for quite some time now and it’s always been “processed cheese food.” Oh you know what am talking about. Eden… Ques-o. We all grew up with it. It’s fucking cheap thrill. Good palaman. But I’ve always wanted to make my own cheese and so I did.

I mixed four cups of whole milk, 2 cups of buttermilk, 1/4 teaspoon of salt and a cup of heavy cream in a sturdy, thick 6-quart pot and stirred five times as soon as it hit the fire (on medium, of course)… then stopped there. I never touched it again until I’m supposed to.

And it was wonderful. Right bit of tang, fluffy texture and creamy, creamy taste. It will stay good for three days but I think it’ll be dumped straight into tonight’s quiche, if I’m a good girl. Use full cream milk, no less- and be kind enough not to disturb the curds and whey while they part as the heat grows stronger. Once separation is imminent, lower the heat and avoid the danger of boiling your pet to death… let the batch rest and make it realize that there’s only so much that you can do to keep them apart without breaking the fragile bond that formed the precious curdles that shall soon become ricotta. After two minutes, turn off the fire and let your pet rest up to an hour. Once cool, treat it lovingly. Like transferring a baby from its playpen to the crib. Use a ladle and gently scoop off your cheese from the pot and then place it on the sieve to drain. Scooping in gentle strokes prevent the break down of the curds and you’ll see that your patience will yield fluffy, fluffy natural ricotta.

Eat before three days, I tell you. Nom nom nom.

"…feels that I can do more good by engaging in dialogue with everyone, not by boycotting."

Peaches

It’s Halloween tonight. Don’t forget to brush.

A Wall of Sound

It’s said that Phil Spector invented this element and it’s evident in every song he wrote for so many groups.

Read More

Biblical Basis for Separation of Church and State By Alberto Romualdez, M.D. Wednesday, 19 October 2011

Biblical Basis for Separation of Church and State

By Alberto Romualdez, M.D.

Wednesday, 19 October 2011

Reposted from Dr. Romualdez’s Facebook Notes and Malaya.

“Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s and to God those that are God’s.”

The quote is from the 22nd Chapter of the Gospel according to Matthew, which was the reading for the Catholic Mass last Sunday.  Many scholars interpret this teaching to mean that it is possible for individuals to be separately accountable to the Church and to the State. 

As the priest who celebrated the 6:45 morning Mass at the Parish of Our Lady of Fatima in Las Pinas put it, all Filipinos are at the same time “citizens of the Philippine Republic as well as citizens of the Kingdom of God”.  However, whenever conflict between the two occurs, individuals will often have to make difficult choices.

The priest at Las Pinas, who had apparently watched the movie series, “The Tudors”, chose as an example, the conflict between Henry VIII of England and the Church of Rome in the 16th century.  The King had defied the Pope by insisting on divorcing Catherine of Aragon and marrying Ann Boleyn.  The equivalent of the Justice Secretary of England at that time was the lawyer, Thomas More, who believed that the King had no lawful grounds for invalidating his first marriage.  Because he refused to sign a document legitimizing the second marriage, More was beheaded thereby becoming a martyr and saint of the Catholic Church.

In the priest’s example, the representative of the State (King Henry) had initiated the conflict by violating the Law of God, as it was understood at that time.  In this interpretation, More, acting according to his conscience, was wrongfully executed.

Unfortunately, the sermon did not mention the possibility that there are times when the representative(s) of the temporal Church (not always representing God) wrongfully initiate the conflict.  There are, in fact, historical examples of this occurrence – such as the cases of the medieval scholars Copernicus, Galileo, and Giordano Bruno who were persecuted for insisting on scientific evidence rather than dogmatic pronouncements of bishops as the basis for their teachings and beliefs concerning astronomical phenomena.  Bruno in fact was eventually burned at the stake as a heretic – a form of execution infinitely more cruel than beheading.

Moving forward to the present, it appears that conservative Catholic extremists are bent on pushing the Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines into violating the principle of separation between Church and State by blocking any reproductive health legislation on the basis of their own scientifically shaky opinions on contraception.  Insistence on the conservative opinions that inform the almost irrationally persistent legislative opposition to the RH bills runs counter to the democratic principle of rule by the majority.

For those who believe in liberal democracy, it is particularly painful to see that so-called representatives of the people choose to ignore the overwhelming public opinion in favor of providing family planning information and services to all Filipinos.  In Cebu, despite the surveys that show support for RH legislation, 5 out of 6 congressmen stubbornly cling to the Church position despite the evident objective and expressed needs of their poor constituents for state provided services.  This blatant elitist thinking is reflected across the entire region of the Visayas where the majority of congressional representatives have taken the side of rich Catholic conservatives against the poor majority of Visayans  - be they Waray, Cebuano, or Ilonggo.

As Congress goes into recess, action shifts to the electorate.  Legislators will be pressured by both the pro and anti sides of the RH debate. On the one hand, the oppositors will continue to brandish the increasingly questionable threat of a Catholic vote led by bishops and conservative cleric.  On the other side, supporters will try to convince the Congressmen and Senators that opinion polls do translate into votes – especially those of the poor majority in need who are rarely shown any respect because of the cynical perception that their votes are for sale anyway.

On the other, the respite from heated debate may just provide the needed space for a rational and calm review of the issues to see if there are common grounds on which to base a government policy that favors the disenfranchised poor majority – especially the women and children who bear the brunt of an unjust and unequal society.  After all, everyone involved claims to be “pro-poor”.  Perhaps it is still possible to isolate extremists on either side of the RH spectrum.

***

The storm surge that recently devastated Roxas Boulevard and its adjacent neighborhoods should be a warning to all concerned that global warming and climate change are upon us.  While there remain those in persistent denial about the contributions of human populations to the catastrophic events that have occurred and will continue to occur as a result, it is urgent to begin to address at least some of the agreed man-made causative factors for the floods and other tidal disasters.

For one thing, political will must be exercised to strictly regulate human settlements in flood prone areas – including the disposal or non-disposal of wastes that cause siltation of waterways.  For another, on-going commercial activities that damage the environment must be thoroughly re-studied with the end of limiting their adverse impacts on families and communities.

A clear and forceful environmental policy that is clearly pro-poor and pro-people is urgently needed.  An ecologically sound orientation is required to moderate such greed-driven phenomena as the uncontrolled expansion of malls and high-rise expensive real estate development.  This should happen before the global contagion of the “occupy Wall Street movement” spreads to this part of the world.

(Dr. Romualdez’ email address is alberto.romualdez@gmail.com)