Bride of Chucky

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seed_of_Chucky

My life changed with the economy, just as it has for millions of Americans and billions of people worldwide. I didn't like it, but I did accept it. Instead of keeping up with someone's rat race, I now run my own, every single day. This is the best job I've never had, precisely because it isn't just some paycheck that some random generic stranger spits out of a payroll system every week, regardless if I am working there or not. Corporations are not people, but you, my audience, most certainly are. Just like there is no course or school curriculum that can create a "Master Illuminator" in this century using the latest (or not) technology, so there is no college class in being me.

Part of that change is accepting what resources you have available to you, rather than expecting some pricey company to buy stuff for you. Luckily, I do not derive my ego off of man-made gadgets (that must be horrible), desperately lining up like a million other compulsive addicts at the "launch" of some new device. That sounds mad, and it certainly looks that way on t.v. I can wean myself off of pop culture anytime I want to. I went for years without a television set, which freaks out almost everyone I meet, except for the most backwoods hippie kid with wacky survivalist parents who are anti-The World. I simply couldn't afford a pricey t.v., nor did I need it, so I went without it.

Ditto with computers, cameras, Internet...etc. If I don't have the money to buy one of them, I find a way to have access to it, which is why I freely publish to you off of the community WiFi: that's "no overhead" for you business douches, and sometimes it means I traverse difficult public environments that I do not control, like the bank of cheap computers that are available at most public libraries. It sucks, but so did most of the junior designers in any given department on any day, at any publishing company across the U.S (or the world). It's not new, it's not great, but I'm here for you, glitches and all, which makes it the most transparently published site in the world. No ads, no agendas. Simple. Just me.

That pisses off a lot of people, a lot of people, especially the wacky conspiracy theorists/indigents who frequent public spaces for warmth, or to nod off their recent heroin high. It's brutal, but it is real. I've seen it. Government employees typically care more about maintaining their steady paycheck than policing the people who visit their library every single day, but such is the mostly selfish nature that typically marks lower minds than mine. I don't publish just to my peers, know what I mean? And so, on any given day, I can be typing to you while listening to music and hugging it out with my special friends from the ARC community (Hi, friends!), or concentrating through your obvious eating disorder and rank bad breath, as your overstuffed hoarder car sits outside, parked askew by the curb. It's not my choice or design, but here I am: your beacon of light in the nighttime of your disorder.

Given how much time I spend out in the world, I'm used to the wider ranges of the human experience at the bipolar extremes of your insanity, with the understanding that my beauty and brilliance draws "wack jobs" like moths to a flame. If they don't "catch" me out in public, they plan for it, like the deranged stalkers they really are. 
It's utterly revealing to me. So, on one fine day, a total nut-job from the local chapter or "Dipshits Anonymous" stopped by to heckle me here, while he sat at a public computer doing absolutely nothing but look at me out of the corner of his eye. I know when people seek to engage me, and if I'm done with my work, I use any extra time I have to lecture to you all, if I can, which is what I did on this particular afternoon.

He was a rather garden-variety wacko: a "Right to Life" idiot who dissembles under any type of intellectual scrutiny. Within minutes of our "talk" (which I'm loathe to use as a term suitable for him), he hated my attention. First, he pointed out that he was the deranged nephew of a famous New York politician to justify his rudeness towards me (arrogance as the first sign of weakness=check), backing up his hippy-style ranting by his woven rainbow bracelet (a symbol of successful pot smokers worldwide), to show me that he doesn't trust "The Man", hence his obvious outsider status within his very successful family, thus making him available for viewing during normal daylight business hours: the black sheep who can't work=got it.

He quickly directed me towards his conspiracy du jour: women and their bodies. He hates them. Oh, okay. Gay AND crazy. Check that one off, too. To show me how much disdain he has for the female body, he let me know that he knew all about biology (but wouldn't tell me where or how, which makes me suspect that he's a high school dropout), but that he rejects it. Oh. Delusional, too! Wow, this is just getting better and better for me. Whenever I calmly answered him with logical, non-ranting types of answers grounded in rigorous scholarship, he seemed like he was about to implode right next to me. 
He ballooned himself up, becoming confused, red-faced, and apoplectic in front of me in under ten minutes, which was a new personal best. I love stripping people of their false delusions.

Since it became obvious rather quickly that he had no firsthand knowledge of anatomy, probably because he can't perform sexually with a partner due to his own rotting brain and complete lapses with any decent healthcare, he backed himself into a corner very quickly. 
I was horrified and embarrassed for him. I hate the feeling that I am causing hurt to someone who's disabled, but he sought me out. 
He talked over me manically, become more panicky by the second. 
He blurted out over and over the same weird lingo that has no basis in reality; the speech of the demented, in a mantra that he seemed to think would soothe his fevered delusions: "Partial birth <pause> partial birth <slight pause, then it sped up to cover over me>partialbirthpartialbirthpartialbirthpartialbirthpartialbirth..." 

When he slowed down enough for me to inquire through his stuttering psychotic episode, I asked him why he thought there existed such a hallucinatory haunted house movie-version of women's healthcare, in an odd scenario I haven't never heard of, nor seen, or read about...ever. Why? He told me it was true. That was it. He had thought it up, and therefore it must be real. He thinks women go to some scary evil doctor to give birth to a baby while the doctor chops it head off slowly. Swear. At that point, I reached into my bag, pulling out a black "Illuminations" collectible sticker that I hand out in public, to give to him as a reminder in the future about how badly he fucked up with me, and then I put headphones back on to signal the end of our brief chat, but not before I slowly pulled out a set of rosary beads that I carried with me, showily draping them over the edge of my bag that sat by the computer station I worked at. End of discussion.

Because, dear readers, what that kook in the wild did not know about me (surprise!) is that my man Father Stephen at my home parish of St. Francis of Assisi in West Nyack had asked me on the phone years ago about whether not it was prudent for us to allow such extremist firebrands into our intellectual community for their weekly meetings, to which I replied "Of course"! Who better than him, someone who has devoted his entire life and vocational service to tending all of you, to chair what amounts to a bloodier version of "Alcoholics Anonymous" on any given day? If not me, try him. I dare you, because he's a master educator, too. Booyah! Oh, no, son...you did not see that one coming at you, did you? No! You didn't! Oh, yes. I did.


For those of you mature enough to look at images that depict what a woman's early miscarriage looks like in "human", please click on the following link: http://s1161.photobucket.com/user/sandraebey/media/019.jpg.html. That...that's it. All of your horribly misguided fears and insane paranoia is centered over some blood and tissue that most women naturally develop (and flush out of their bodies) each and every month. That's it! Thanks to Sandra for the images. You go, girl! Please feel free to explore this scientific topic that's existed for all of of humanity on your own: https://www.google.com/?gws_rd=ssl#q=what+an+early+miscarriage+looks+like.

Don't hate the seed, nor the carrier. It's just nature, yo. Chill! And take a class or two, will ya....geesh: http://www.butterflybirth.com/how-many-eggs-is-a-female-human-born-with/. Ignorance is hell!

All That Jazz!

America, meet the Jennings: http://r29.co/1I8ZU1Q

I've been fascinated with the recent heightened awareness about the transgender community for awhile now, because I see them as cultural "outsiders" like me, but not for something of our particular creation. How can this be true? A gay man does not choose to have a brain shape that more closely resembles the brain of a heterosexual woman, a change that occurs during the earliest phases of fetal gestation, which makes it almost impossible for a mother to have any control over it, although photographic imaging technology improves our ability to see almost daily. 

It's given us the necessary scientific evidence we need to help treat our populations who have long suffered from false accusations of choice. How the heck does a small embryo "choose" his or her brain shape? Through sheer willpower?! It sounds absurd to us now that we know better, and yet during the Salem witch hunt days, Puritans wrongly believed women with moles were witches and burned them to death by tying them to a stake, albeit with the "holiest" of motives. Where was the compassion for a common skin feature then? 

What has always been taboo to the typically European "white man" has, in fact, always been accepted (not perfectly, but much better) by native First Nations of America** as a human part of tribal life. In fact, many societies accept the third gender as a natural part of life, the way a mother accepts her child's Albinism; it's a rare but beautiful thing.

Enter into the scene my favorite kiddie New Yorker, beautiful baby Jazz, a wunderkind dynamo if ever there was. From the age of two or three, Jazz told her parents she was a girl, because she is a girl. Not in all facets, yet (because she's still a teenager), but internally, deep in her brain, where we've yet to go where with our still-limited technical abilities, although I feel more confident than ever that we will get the correct results, because this mama ain't ever wrong about what she knows to be true. And so were Jazz's really "New Yawk" parents sure, too; two very normal Longyland people from totally normal backgrounds, who had no idea what "trans" was, let alone suggest it to their baby in utero. 

But what they did have (and still do) was the love, compassion, intelligence, and faith to understand that they did not raise a liar, or a cheat, or a sneak, certainly not as a cute lil' toddler. They choose to love, accept, support, and take care of their special little girl; not because you like it, but because they have G-d's absolute empathy and understanding, just like do you.

Oh, I know all about the wackos who can easily throw up Bible scripture like they wrote it yesterday and understand it perfectly, but as someone who has seen firsthand many people with learning disorders and mentally disabilities struggle to read one perfect, easy book (think of "Bible Study" as Special Ed for the spiritually inept), you know what I'm up against here. All I ask is that you let me tend to my own kind while I get you the information you need, in a way that you can understand. That's it. You don't have to do a thing. I got this one.

Special "shout-outs" to the wonderfully smart Dr. Marci*** for leading the way by honoring her Hippocratic Oath, and actively using her experienced background as a transgender healer to make a difference by saving lives one person at a time, and my man Chaz Bono for staying strong and true. It ain't easy being real in a world that can seem so fake at times, but that's exactly where all the gloriously good stuff is. Thanks for leading the way.


*      http://www.thestar.com/life/health_wellness/2008/06/17/gayness_linked_to_brain.html

**    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two-Spirit

***  http://marcibowers.com/

Eye of a Needle

Lately there's been a lot of headlines on t.v. news and entertainment media about ongoing struggles with the definitions of certain words that relate to human reproduction, which is odd to me, because we've sent men to the moon and back successfully, therefore demonstrating that as a society, we've mastered complex technological feats like astrophysics and space travel. 

Apparently the womb of a woman is still too difficult for some folks to understand? Please allow me to clear up any big, grave misconceptions you may have about words like "life" and "kill", because here's what an actual human embryo in the eye of a needle (that we cannot see with the naked eye) looks like: 

This is called "microscopic imaging". It's been around for awhile.

I know it seems weird to some people that I can have such mature conversations about microbiology, which is also somewhat strange to me, because my mother is a retired Microbiologist and Roman Catholic, and as such, we have no gaping divides between the arts of religion, science, technology, and the well-known (and very well-documented) aspects of mammalian reproduction. 

Of course, we are also an exceptionally well-educated clan, and I do understand that. But fears can grow in the darkest of places, sometimes attaching itself to a woman's body in utero*, in a process called "gestation" that we cannot see happening, because it happens inside our bodies without us seeing it (or being able to mentally control it), because we lack inhuman superpowers like see-through X-ray vision and telekinesis. Well, at least for now. Maybe we'll evolve into that some day! Wouldn't that be cool?!

An embryo sitting on the tip of a needle.

Anyway, that may sound kind of disturbing for a mom to do, but think of it this way: natural bodily processes occur every single day right here on Planet Earth, in every single carbon-based life-form on the planet, be they male, female, asexual, or not. Be not afraid of it!

In fact, cell division also happens each and every day, whether we want it or not, and again, whether or not we can visibly see it happening, regardless of gender and/or sex. 

Here's a series of pictures of embryonic cell division, also captured photographically under the view of something called an Electron Microscope** (thanks to "Dr. Diane" for the science lessons;) Don't be alarmed if you don't understand the caption beneath the image below. We do, and we live to serve.

Mesenchymal stem cells facilitate the derivation of human embryonic stem cells from cryopreserved poor-quality embryos. For more on this technology and others (like ultra-sounds), please click here: http://rsfs.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/1/4/576.

23 And Jesus, looking around, said to His disciples, “How hard it will be for those who are wealthy to enter the kingdom of God!” 24 The disciples were amazed at His words. But Jesus answered again and said to them, “Children, how hard it is to enter the kingdom of God! 25 “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.” 26 They were even more astonished and said to Him, “Then who can be saved?” 27 Looking at them, Jesus said, “With people it is impossible, but not with God; for all things are possible with God.”

*    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_utero
**  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electron_microscope

For more on the concept of "viability" and its' linguistic roots, please see additional definitions by clicking here: https://www.google.com/?gws_rd=ssl#q=viable.