Just got done watching a powerful video featuring Jim Carrey and his painting process (yes, that Jim Carrey).
One of the things he said struck a chord with me:
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So like everything we discuss, you don't have to be a girl to get a girl. We're gonna get real meta here and go a step further: your girl doesn't even have to be a girl. But you need a girl. She won't be one person, this isn't Downton Abbey. She'll be more like a team of girls - your Sephora girl (mine is Alex), your hair girl (mine is Justine), a cosmetics girl when you have to have your situation in order (mine is Michelle), your yoga girl (mine is Jennifer), your girl for seamstress issues (I'm in between currently, but they generally do your dry cleaning too), your girl for cobbling issues (mine is a dude), your girl for your diet issues (mine is Sarah) and so on and so forth. You need a team of experts who you can go to and whine that you don't know how to use highlighter/don't know how red your hair should be/slap fake eyelashes on you/fix your inherited Manolos when you wore them places where they don't belong/get your Warrior pose correct/engage in psychological warfare with when you are not magically six weeks in because you are being half assed because it is rosé season. Get a team established. It sounds terrifying and expensive but it really isn't once you get in there. Most of these things ultimately save you money and aren't a high upfront cost. You could keep buying red lipsticks at the drug store on sale at $8 a pop and not getting it right, or you could ask a girl and spend $18 and not need to buy three you will never wear again. Three = $24. One = $18.
But we all have problems that are more minor than even the above but we still somehow haven't found the solution to. This is when you enlist a (cyber) girl. There are many bloggers whose whole joie de vivre is to come up with solutions to these problems and then go forth and share them with the masses through Pinterest. They are often (though not always) Hipster Mormon Mommy bloggers who are generally living the (caffeine-free) Instagram dream. All you have to do is type in what you need in the oracular search bar and a whole huge canvas of solutions will appear before your very eyes. If that's not actual witchcraft, I frankly do not know what is.
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How many java junkies out there?
You, too?
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Mystic South is a new (and awesome!) Pagan conference that was recently held earlier this summer in balmy, bustling Atlanta, Georgia. I’ve never been to a big Pagan festival or conference, and every year Southern and East Coast folks are tempted with stories of PantheaCon or Many Gods West, much to our consternation. Imagine how thrilled I was when friends sent me a link to a big event that was (mostly) local!
The Mystic South founders wrote on their website that when creating the conference they were focused on offering a “Southern-based conference – one that was not only [easy] to attend but also had a Southern flair and spoke of the mystic spirit of our own part of the country. Since there [was] no such event to meet that need, we decided to create it.” As a bona fide Southern Pagan, I was ecstatic for the chance to attend a conference that was local, affordable, and also spoke to my concerns as a Pagan practitioner and priestess living in the South. I was also intrigued by a key concept – these folks saw a genuine need in our community and decided to step up and fill that need. This is so, so incredibly impressive and inspiring to me! I am humbled by their work and dedication to such an undertaking!
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Lokabrenna Day is on the heliacal rising of Sirius. This year, that will be August 8th through most of the USA. Lokabrenna means Loki’s Torch, and is the Icelandic name for Sirius. Some heathens and other pagans celebrate this day as sacred to Loki.
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Jarume Uwujare argues cultures should relate as equals when they take something from another, and contribute something to the other in return. I think we all can agree people can and should relate as equals, but I argue this is a confused way to think about cultures.
If I have what you want, we are not equal unless you also have what I want, and want it with about the same intensity. We can easily have a formal equality to make an exchange or not, but this equality is modified, sometimes drastically, by the intensity each of us has to make the exchange. The more desperate one party is compared to the other, the greater an important kind of inequality.
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