Haus der Luege : Noli Evocare Quod Reprimere Non Potes

Klint Finley over at Renegade Futurist recently pointed out This Story from the Wall Street Journal about the city of Oakland, CA hiring private guards to supplement their police force. Their reasoning, that contracting private guards are less expensive than hiring new police officers may well be sound; however, there’s a moral issue involved that concerns me: who bears responsibility for the actions of those private guards?

Ideally, the responsibility would still lie with the city, since the guards are acting as their agents. but as we saw with Blackwater Worldwide, now called Xe Worldwide over in the Middle East, what we find is that the penalties for misconduct are financial at best and result in a company having to rebrand, at worst. What I haven’t seen from either the government that hired Blackwater, or from Blackwater/Xe’s management is a sincere mea culpa. They paid a few million dollars in fines - to the government - which essentially came back to them in the form of renewed and extended contracts from that same government. In other words, their responsibility has been pretty minimal, in light of what they’ve been accused of.

So what happens when we see that same lack of culpability manifest in this country?

Word has come down from Management the AOBI that former U.S. V.P. Dick Cheney will have the hours stolen from Millions of Americans by means of the so-called "Daylight Savings" tacked on to his life span.

The good news is that he'll develop a non-terminal, but completely untreatable bowel disorder, causing him to live those hours out in unimaginable agony in the restroom of a gas station in North Dakota.

To Perfect This Feast: A Commentary on Liber XV, the Gnostic Mass
James and Nancy Wasserman; Bishops Tahuti and Mara

Book reviews are strange territory- they stand only as opinion, and yet pretend to objectivity, influencing the reception of the text. They habitually disclose little of the nature of the reviewer's thought process in arriving at Hir conclusions. As this is the first book review I've posted here, I'm going to start with a bit of disclosure, in hopes that it benefits the reader.

In the Spring of 1990, my 13 year old self was hanging out with a friend in a sketchy lean-to of a garage in New Hampshire, cleaning up from tinkering with another friends car, and listening to cassettes on the ghettobox. We'd been listening to headbanger standards for most of that day- Iron Maiden, Metallica and the like.

I was pawing through the cooler for another can of piss-water beer when I saw this bright yellow cassette case with a freaked-out zombie dude on it. I tossed it in the player, twiddled some thumb while it damn thing rewound, and pressed play.
A hollow, 'verbed out jangler of an intro riff.
Dead simple drums, all backbeat.
And then, this tweaked out caterwaul that could only have come out of some Frank-n-furter's monster made from parts of the Big Bopper and Patsy Cline"

"you ain't no punk, you punk..."

I wanted to turn it off, but I was afraid to get close enough to the player to do so- as if increased proximity would have been enough to contaminate me.

According to the website it seems that the First Church of Wicca has lost it's High Priestess to to the Christians.
This at first, seems to be a Bad Thing for the pagan community in general, and in Massachusetts in particular. I'm less convinced that this is as horrible as a lot of commentators seem to think. Let me try to explain some of my thoughts, and while I'm at it, look at some of the reasons why I think unloading Reverend Kendra is a pretty good deal.

Man, what a weekend.

Friday, my mom called and told me that my dad has been diagnosed with a really aggressive cancer. It will probably end him. It's weird the way that the illusion of immortality of youth, while it may wear thin, somehow manages to persist until one confronts the imminent death of a parent.

Yesterday, we held the inaugural meeting of a Magickal working group that I'm forming with some some friends. One of our intended number failed to show. This is a bummer, as frankly, he;s going through a rough patch. I hope everything is OK by him.

Today, it is snowing. A lot. 3-6 inches were predicted, but there's more like 9-12 already, and the radar doesn't show it moving out of here very quickly. All I can say is YUCK.