The Aunties

Australian Dream : The Teaser

2011-11-22T04:01:00.001-05:00

The ~~American~~ Australian Dream : A Teaser

by Uncle Perhaps

Are you surrounded now by the beeping madness of modernity? the onlyreal language we have left that pervades this modern world and carvesits way through English, Spanish, Chinese and that primordial earlierEther communication we all know and hear without words? good god thisis terrifying. Maybe its the fact that my body has surpassed what Ifeel is a degree of hazing through use and awakening, or perhaps itwas the several weeks of late nights, heavy drinking, madpersonalities and early dawn conversations. But when I went in searchof the Great American Dream I had no idea that I would encounter thismadness.

What madness was this? What purpose and stabbing desire for me toinvestigate this? I am not an American. But I am a dreamer. The Questbegan with a request "find me the great American Dream or return onyour shield! failing that, find me the great Australian Dream, returnit to me in mint condition." I felt this investigation needed adequatelimbering up of the mental condition, a heady dose of rum and anendless supply of cigarettes helped slightly. I felt I neededsomething stronger than my staples, but that proved wrong.

I stepped into the neon glare of Surfers Paradise. The tourist mecca,the glitter strip, the Sequined Moon on the dress of a Tawdry Whore;pretty once, now mangled beyond recognition with age. It was aWednesday night. Perfect time for madness, humpday. the streets ofthis once glorious strip were deserted, the only places with any pulsewere a Gay Bar and a faux-Irish pub. What a perfect symbol!

There were all of 50 people inside the 2 story structure. Glazed neonpoured through the coloured windows illuminating the inside. I steppedonto the balcony, dead still streets swarmed with unlife below as themoon soaked tide lapped vigorously onto the pearl white shores offinto the distance; a perfect soundtrack. Half way through my 5thscotch (oh ho ho ho ho Scotch Whiskey in an Irish themed pub DownUnder, Yes Virginia, YOU TOO can meet the Forces of Discordia!) thetwang of a thick American Accent cut through the night. Was this theprey I had sought after for so long?

At a table sat 5 young, fit, American women. I approached themtentatively; i did not want to scare them off. Not when I was soclose. The floor was sticky and wet from the excess of booze droppedby the drunkard hordes. They were members of the American VolleyballAssociation. I had earned their trust, now it was time to strike...

"I'm looking for the American Dream, have you seen it around?" Iasked, the beer glazed surface of their eyes hid the truth. Nothing could prepare me for the answer I received.

"What's that?" they answered.

Over my shoulder the Fear glanced down. I would be returning upon myshield very soon. It was time I felt, for an agonizing reappraisal ofthe whole situation and a quick exit.

-2-

The Bag Lady holds the fear in her eyes.

My god! What was that? Was I just in a bear sodden Irish Themed Bar inthe fakest city in the world, down in the Southern Hemisphere, talkingto two American Girls about a concept that was inherently their ownwhich they knew NOTHING about? I needed Liquor and fast. The madnesswas creeping in on battered wings, its eyes locked onto me, its riflecocked back and a gorgeous Devil Grin spreading on its lips. I ranacross the road as fast as I could, where the haven of liquor and loudmusic could drown away the impending doom.

I entered the gay bar.

Sweet Jesus! The last location hit me hard. It was bad. I ordered adouble scotch on the rocks and took my heart and mind outdoors tosmoke. smoking I find is a safe port in any maelstrom. It gives timeto relax and calms the mind.

Just as I was settling my mind into a happy groove, the all pervadingmadness reappeared. She was at least 50, she dressed like an 18 yearold; a low cut fluorescent pink top hung exposing, tight jeans withash stains, and a face that resembled an old leather doctors bag lefton the side of the road since 1820. Good god, what could she possiblywant from me? She struck up a conversation with me and bought me adrink. If i had to deal with this crazy shit, at least I can fuckingdrink it away. She explained her story. It was her son's 18thbirthday, she decided to take him to a gay bar. Even though he wasstraight as an arrow. I told her I was a writer. Then. Madnessreturned.

"Would you like to hear a poem I wrote?" stupidly I answered. "Yeah,sure why the fuck not."

Maybe it was the fact that I had been drinking heavily, maybe it wasthe general madness of the whole situation. Whatever it was, I'm sothankful. For all I know it was God's own hand reaching down, but forthe life of me I cannot remember the crazy shit she rambled on about.

Whatever. This woman was the fear. She personified it within her eyes,her gait, her stilted walk and her squawking pseudo Cockney bastardization of an accent.

"So what are you doing tomorrow?" "Nothing." She leered at me, shecame close, too close. I could taste the cigarette smoke on herbreath, I got drunk off the stale veil of beer that she exuded."You're taking me to lunch....."

I excused myself, I needed to use the bathroom.

I ran out of that place like a bullet.

-3-

Options Tavern. A seedy polished hellhole of a place. Once classy; itnow fell into disrepute and is soaked with the dreams and screams andshit fueled voices of teenagers. I fucking loathe this place. I loatheit intensely. Why in all manner of fuck was I here? OH YES that'sright. Someone decided to have their farewell party here. ANYWAY wherewas I?

oh yes. I began the night here drinking $3 daiquiri's and somehow Ifound myself in the casino. We'll return to Options later, or maybenot..we'll see.

Jupiter's casino is a testament to the Gold Coast's greed. A toweringmonolith with more money and hidden rooms than one can shake a stickat. If Surfer's Paradise is the Mecca, this is the Vatican.

How it happened, I wont be able to recall. But I happened in the highrollers lounge. MADRE E DIOS! La Nouveau Riche! They ride splendid onthe tables, $10000 bets running hot on green velvet. I saw a man dropthis much and act as if nothing happened when he lost at his blackjackhand. I had never even seen this amount. Oh well. It was an open bar.Chivas regal to the top on ice. This fixes most things, especiallywhen all else is hard to get.

The great Australian Dream is a twisted fantasy based on materialismand safety. It was born one chilly August day after WWII, it rosescreaming and mewling and then grabbed a hold of its mothers teet withpowerful gums and sucked it dry. When it could speak, it's first wordswere BUY A HOUSE! BE NORMAL! It hit puberty early and spared noexpense in

I had to leave quickly. There was no option. I had no money, no phone, no understanding where I was and the fear was breathing down my neck and smelling like foul liquor and old sausages. My eyes glanced upon a fantastic pink beast parked in front of a sigh that read 12 STEPS HOUSE with an arrow. When the fates conspire to frown you in a situation like this, there is nothing else to do but grab

A fucking big rock and bring it down like a new tax on the drivers side window before climbing in. After a few minutes of searching i realized I was out of luck, all I could find was a pebble. And then it struck me. This gigantic 36 horsepower, pastel beast was NO ORDINARY CAR

It was a sofa.

I found sunglasses on the dashboard, an important accessory for any seeker of truth; a shining beacon in the early hungover hours where the world tries to push its claws into your brain.

I donned them and rode off. Leaving the sunset behind me in a cloud of dust and cigarette smoke. Thank the poor bastards who lost their ride, Mahalo to them.

Stay tuned for the full article, as soon as Uncle Perhaps figures out how to use the fax machine!

Witches : Always the Best Dressed Bitches

2011-10-31T11:00:00.000-04:00

Almost no one could deny that Villainesses get the best wardrobe, the dramatic colors, the draping fabrics, and the shockingly clever one-liners. Following closely, with tall pointy shoes, are Cinema Witches. These ladies are my favorite inbetweeners, for as much as I'd love to have Maleficent's headdress, its often not the thing to wear to a family pick-nick. Witches are almost always stylish, and offer something mature but snazzy to influence the wardrobe that can cross over from the Bonfire to the Workplace.

Even better, I firmly suggest that these LOVELY Ladies could offer an alternative to the Wicked Witch stereotype for your Halloween Costume Needs!

#1 - Miss Price : Bedknobs and Broomsticks

You know anything set in 1940's London is bound to have some fabulous style to it, however I think Miss Price is one of my -most- favorite onscreen witches. (Spoiler Alert : You know, until she gives it all up for a charmingly chubby man who then promptly runs off to war.) ANYHOW Miss Price is delightful. She's slightly cranky, single minded, and full of this marvelously straight forward practicality. All the while doing it in her best Milfy-School-Marm attire. There is something of the girlish about Miss Price, as though she never quite entirely grew up, living in her tiny English town. She's also saucy, and lets not forget pretty damned gorgeous.

Her collection of smart suits, the flair of her practical skirts just at the knee, and elementary-teacher ensembles are very easily integrated into something that rides the line for the grown-up Punk. You can almost imagine Vivianne Westwood making a bold-recreation of Miss Price for a runway show. (We secretly hope she decided to continue to turn the kids into rabbits when they misbehaved, or if she just needed a bit of Aunt-Adopted-Mommie time.)

#2 - Endora : Bewitched

Oh Endora! How Auntie Wicked hoped she could be just like you when she grew up. who could be more amazing? The wardrobe! The hair! The eyes! The incredible Agnes Moorehead brought life to what could have edged on what often seemed like a typical propaganda confirming that a woman should give up her power to be a wife. Not only does she end up keeping Darwood on his toes, but as any good Mother should, keeps her daughter's life lively, and reminds her that a part of her is alive and powerful.

All while looking incredible! The way that Endora uses color is exceptional, and her floating chiffon numbers are well worth the second look if you are a lover of drape & movement, and COLOR! Endora does it for any need to be super fabulous, from rocket-red hair to immaculate foot!

#3 - The Grand High Witch : The Witches

Angelica Houston, how do we love thee? So very much. While she tends to fabulous in other well-noted roles, with her soft-spoken ways and languid moving, one of our most favorite Fashion moments for Miss Houston is the Grand High Witch. The Witches, A move based off the Roald Dahl book of the same name. The Witches (unlike our first two choices) Most definitely plays the witch for the Villain, thus covering our Villanesses being well dressed assertion. As ever tall and pale, The Grand High Witch has reflective eyes, dark red lips, and gorgeous purple shadow. She mixes Purple and black, texture and shape in a super classic almost Noir-Film style that would lend itself as much to the Femme Fatal as the Oober Witch.

Auntie Wicked won't lie, she would have all that wardrobe, especially if she could have Angelica Houston's mile long limbs! And although the Witches are the villains here, it is a very funny movie, and well worth the time, if you should want to see her Majesty Glorious in action!

#4 : Kim Novak as Gillian Holroyd, in Bell, Book, and Candle

As with so many of these witches, Bell, Book, and Candle is something this Auntie found to be simply enchanting as a younger thing. Kim Novak already was something otherworldly and feline-like even in her other roles (including the one most people would remember, as the female lead in Hitchcock's Vertigo). This was no exception to the rule, Gillian is cold and childish, in a strange way this again seems to be a Witchy Parable for a girl becoming a woman, although upside-down in its sensuality, casting a woman in the role normally occupied by a man, of aggressor and unromantic.

Gillian is our Mod-Witch, an arty beatnik style that has her clad in sharp modern clothing and tidy, carefully thought out lines. Much like the High-Witch, her style can be described as semi-Gothic in that it is very dramatic and eye-catching, tending toward the dark-side. She is clearly a city-witch, although there are some stunningly soft looks that nod to her youthful witchery.

Witches have almost always been fascinating to me. Although they often come to ends involving being melted or broken like a pony by their Men, they still represent something marvelously strong and intrinsically different. They have always been one-of-a-kind women with styles of their own, like Rockstars without the stage, sashaying to the rhythm of their own drummer down the path to fashion, and life in general. WITCHES OF THE WORLD! We salute you! o\

White Witch (Tilda Swinton), Lisle Von Rhoman (Isabella Rosellini)
Jennifer (Veronica Lake), Willow Rosenburg (Alyson Hannigan), Witches of Eastwyk (Cher, Susan Sarandon, Michelle Phifer), Sanderson Sisters ( Kathy Najimy, Bette Middler, Sarah Jessica Parker)
Sally and Gillian Owens (Sandra Bullock, Nichole Kidman), Lady Von Tassel (Miranda Richardson), Morgana (Helen Mirren), Elphaba (Jackie Burns).

Auntie Wicked wishes you a Happy Witch's New Year, and a Happier Halloween, Harvest, and Howliday!

Auntie Wicked Presents: The Tale of the Little Fat Girl

2011-09-15T22:41:00.000-04:00

The Tale of the Little Fat Girl

by: a. wicked with cuten-ing by a.lumination

from barewalls.com

A long long time ago,
there was a child who's name would someday be Auntie Wicked. This child was rather short and stocky, but pretty athletic. She was active, and every year passed the President's Fitness tests; with very good results. This child would have described herself as a rather regular little blonde girl (with a mildly eccentric personality) which, for a Native Southern Californian, was pretty much to be expected.

Little Wicked's Mother had what she liked to call "itchy feet" which resulted in much moving around for the young lady. She started small,, but in due time the circles she drew for adventure grew wider and wider, and Wicked soon became accustomed to being a stranger in a strange land. One day, they landed in a teeny-tiny town out in the middle of nowhere, and for the second time in her life, the young Wicked, found herself the target of much mocking about her appearance. To be honest, it was the first time she thought twice about it, perhaps because of the factories where they grew little blond girls in SoCal, perhaps because her-self's appearance had never been called into negative question by the vast majority before.

marriage counselor blog

The little girl, over the years, out in the boonies began to be a woman. Wicked had been taught her whole life that becoming a woman would be a celebratory thing, she imagined sweaters and poodle skirts, and sharing a shake with a boy, while everyone cheered that she was a woman. Unfortunately, it was nothing like this, the grown-ups who had been such a previous source of giant people who treated her special, all the suddenly began to treat her with suspicion the moment she grew her boobs. They stared, down their noses, eyes glittering with emotion-things that the young woman didn't understand.

As any young girl knows, the common things happen. People stop touching you, boys get more hostile, adults start hedging about hugs and spouting rules, the relationship with "The Gaze" begins.

from Kids Book Explorer

All these things made young Wicked shy about her body, about her shape, and her form. She went right to covering it as much as possible. Perhaps, in theory, if someone is given no particular opinion one way or another about their body, and what it is doing as it becomes adult, their very opinion of self is shaky. I didn't know if i was pretty or not, fat or thin. I knew I didn't look like the other girls, and that odd social dynamics where emerging (although the boys treated me with the same distaste that they ever did, either ignoring me or spitting/poking/abusing).

One day, the unsure young woman had come to near-womanhood. It's that slightly chubby awkward stage that many of us go through, the phase that spawns 100,000 eating disorders. In that stage of her life, the young Wicked had the huge misfortune of having a Grown Man who didn't hold his boundaries with her. He did creepy things, said creepy things, and made her feel very violated.

It was then that Wicked's relationship with her body took a turn downward. She felt inexplicably dirty, and as though it had been her fault. It was her fault for being attractive to this Grown Man. She remembered what her mother had taught her about not being a 'cock-tease', and to never so much as to promise a boy a kiss without the intention of having sex with him, as it was unfair to his penis, or some stupid rot. This was obviously her own fault for being attractive.

from sodahead

She had no idea what to do with the growing feeling of loathing. Nobody spoke about it, there was no one to talk to and so the Young Lady was Alone, left to figure out what this feeling meant. It felt like greasy walls, like she was a bug in her own skin, like Kafka's giant beetle writhing in her human flesh.

Fine Art America - James LeGros

She'd lock herself in her room when allowed. She didn't notice she'd started to eat more, to hide her body more, to participate less, to wear giant cloths to hide her body.

She also didn't notice when she grew from her stocky 5'3" frame and around 140 pounds, to close to 190 pounds within a few months. Old clothes that didn't fit were old news, she had to change them out yearly around that age stretch anyway. It wasn't till she was out playing with the animals, and her parent's took pictures that she realized something had happened to her body. It was puffy and pale like the Marshmallow man, her face was chubby, eyes smaller.

found at Colby in Sin

The next thing she realized was she had ripped her flesh to pieces in gaining so much weight so fast, angry red stretchmarks that hurt like hell radiated across her arms, breasts, stomach, and thighs. They where so irritated that people took notice of them, and those too had to be hidden.

She cried, and still no one would talk to her about how this had happened. There was a disconnection between the comfort of stuffing her face, as it was something her Mother was trying to help her with. "Eat! Its just BABY Fat! You are just Big Boned, everything will come off and you will EMERGE a beautiful Slim Woman... " The young woman thought in the back of her mind that this might not be right, but after all, Mom's know best, right? She would ask her Mother if reducing portion size and watching the fats in her diet might get her back down to her 140 pounds that seemed much more comfortable, and bring back those bring pretty perky little boobs that had turned into sacks on her chest. Her Mother would say,"Hmmm...maybe?", or wonder what the point was, then bake her a chocolate cake, brownies, or cookies. "No sense in not treating yourself, is there?".
***

Young Wicked was an Actress, in her previous adventures. The plays they had done where all very Ensemble pieces, with no particularly big stars (although Wicked wished so badly to be a STAR!) There was no conception in her mind that she wasn't lead material. The first time she came face-to-face with this was the day that the play "Fall of the House of Usher" was put on. Wicked was a passionate fan of Edgar Allen Poe, and there was nothing more she could have EVER wished for than to play Madeline opposite one of her favorite gorgeous willowy blonde fellow Drama persons. She was crushed to death when the role went to a tanned cheerleader-girl. The look on her Director's face when she was trying to gingerly tell Young Wicked the reasons she didn't get the role. She was too young (but the cheerleader was her age), she would be better in the character role, who else could do the accents (anyone?). Finally in the awkward silence she realized the words, "You aren't the right type" meant her body. There where then the kind of stupid fat greasy tears that laid a dark moment for the young woman (that her optimism wouldn't allow her to accept), would her exceptional talent in the theatrical arts always be over looked because she was ...Fat?

Her young mind also began to discover(section by section)that the boys where dating girls, or that everyone was crushing on each other, and that despite the best efforts of the adults, some mild dating was going on. By the time she was 14, Little Wicked was friends with several boys, but always was the center of some cruelty involving a boy. It was around that age that some other girls, having elicited the clinical assertion that she did find Willowy Drama Boy to be attractive, and ran with that, assuming that she was something called 'In Love' with him. They wrote a note asking me to prom in his name, and stood by, laughing as I discovered it, and marched straight to him to ask if he'd written it. Of course he hadn't, and there it was, the glee that spread amongst the girls tormenting me over my looks. Pathetic, they would murmur, how she thought he would ask HER out. (I was confused by this considering Willowy Boy had a pretty girlfriend, and he was not the subject of my teenage heartachey LOVE, and on top of it, why was I pathetic to think someone could love me back?).

Why was I too pathetic? My body? I would examine it. Well it wasn't the best body. The other girls had young bodies, pretty ones, perky and smooth. I could see why the boys liked them, there where no horrible scars, no folds of flesh... yes it was probably my body. I had some faint idea that bodies had something to do with sex, but I was still, in my Young Lady Mind, convinced that kissing, talking, and holding hands... even finding someone's brain interesting had almost nothing to do directly with looks. This strange idea lingered, and left me at an impasse... a lonely one.

By the time Young Wicked was around 16, she was in another part of the country with new classmates. These ones where not as openly vile to her, however they where just as derisive and frightened. She was avoided at all costs, and dare she even breath in the direction of a boy, he would get skittish and start making excuses as to why they couldn't date. About a week after her 'friend' reported to her that the men she knew described wicked as "Big", "Huge", and other choice references to her weight.

There where two boys in her circle of slight-outcasts whom she asked what her level of appeal was to men and told them the story she'd been told about her accused HUGENESS. They said that was mean, then promptly started trying to find adjectives to describe her. Finally the tallest one chocked out (like he was sick) that she was "attractive". The word lingered for a moment as he dagger eyed his friend, who stuck his eyes to the floor and said, "yeah... attractive". They then both nearly ran out of the room, and never spoke properly to her again. The taller talked about his girlfriend when and if Wicked ever dared speak to him on any subject, as though being choke-back attractive was enough to send the HUGE Wicked into a beast-spiral whence he would be raped by a fat-ass in the stairway.

Adam Green, "Carolina"

When the youthy Wicked had finally ended the drudgery of High-School, she was 18 years of age and newly and officially in charge of her mind, body, and soul. This began a time in her life when she explored some new ways to treat herself. Her first boyfriend's mother bought her a Gym membership, which worked to a degree. Wicked found on school-break when meeting old classmates on the street, they seemed to be more interested in the words she had to say. Once again confused she would go to her mother, her friends, and even strangers in the restaurants and ask them if this was simple nostalgia? They had never been interested before?

"You look goooood" they would say and gesture to her. How did Wicked look any different? She had no real conception until she lived in New York City. New Yorkers are not the kind of people to mince words, and much like Meg's Family giving her advice, they suggested she develop the kind of eating disorder that made her thin instead of fat. Wicked, the worm of realization turning in her, thought she would go along with these assertions. After all, wasn't being open as opposed to resistant the key to being successful? That was what she was told.

She binged, she purged, she over-exercised, she over-ate. She took those Ephedra pills that caused horrible heart defects later, which gave her enough energy to jog 5x a week. By the time she re-hit 140 she fit into tiny jeans that had been hidden in the back of her closet. She wore a striped shirt she hadn't fit into since she was 12. There was nothing but misery in the mirror, she looked sick and troubled, but wore tiny dresses and acted very tough.

found at the Butter Compartment - original artist Pablo Picasso "Girl Before a Mirror"

Naturally at this time her slim looks made her quite popular in a new circle of friends... and found her suitors. The one she choose was the one who seemed most enthusiastic, as she had long known nothing about how to read when a boy liked her, so open enthusiasm seemed to be the best choice (after many very humiliating moments where boys would pre-turn her down if she so much as smiled at them). Privately she stopped taking the pillz that made her heart flop around, and re-dedicated herself to trying to eat in a proper healthy manner, instead of trying to stick to a 600 calorie a day diet. She gained weight. The boyfriend quickly noticed, and intentional or not scared her by telling her he'd find her beautiful if she was thin. The qualifier reared its ugly head again. 15 pounds was the difference between love and forever alone.

This was not the first, nor the last boy to make an issue of a body, and soon our fair little Wicked knew in the metallic depths of her heart, that the only thing that anyone could love her for was her body, and if that was imperfect... she would never be really loved. "A Man can be loved for his charm, or his Money, his Power or his things..." She would say, "A woman can only be loved for her Looks". They would stutter like they wanted to disagree... but no one could.

She steadily gained weight again, tripping through her life, running after ambitions, tripped only by people who where hateful, boys that where troublesome, and situations she was forever told she'd put herself up to. Boys she did adore where often fled from, or evaded until she was almost so starved for love and touch she would make a foolish decision, and date another fool that at first was enthusiastic, then directly 'honest' about how her body disgusted him.

"She's too fat for Me"

One sunny hot summers day after a fest with a Fatty Pizza, Wicked had a horrible pain in her stomach. This had started to happen after she'd worked at the fast food places, the proper diets long since abandoned as she struggled to make it emotionally through a day, not thinking twice about taking care of herself. By that fall she had an attack, they said it was her Gal-Bladder, but assured her if she simply avoided fat she would be fine.

Post the first attack Young Wicked felt so horrendous that she simply didn't eat for 3 weeks, living on pedia-lyte and gatoraid. In three weeks she lost 60 pounds, and got Jaundice. There where black marks under her eyes, her skin was hanging from her arms, and her ribs poked out. People swarmed her, young men flirting, looking her up and down. Once again the sly stare and gesture to her form, "You Look Goooooodddd..." They said. She stared at them like she didn't understand, her eyeballs where yellow, she was sluggish and slightly unresponsive, and no matter how much she dyed her hair it just kind of hung there, stringy floppy. How could this be good?

Isaac Nicholas Caruso

Her Gal-Bladder was finally gone just a few days short of it bursting and giving her sepsis. Her recovery period was long. Her slimness didn't change the insanity of a new breakup, or the gross mistreatment of her person, which had long since been the kind of relationship she'd had with people.

She did notice outside the chaos of her situation that she got attention. People that thought she was a horrible BITCH (and said so frequently) suddenly laughed at her, and said she was just SO funny and cute. She would pay half price sometimes when she'd go to eat food, she would get free things wherever she went. Sometimes when she was in a bad mood, she'd randomly abuse people that had in the past been gnarly with her, and they would giggle or call her beautiful and smart. She had started asking about going overseas the semester before, back when she was heavier, and there had been no way. The last month of her Semester the doors opened like royal gates, and with a bit of skittering work, she found herself headed to what she'd been working for 2 years. LONDON!

Wicked cannot speak much about weather she had the time of her life there because she was a relatively tiny for her 135 pounds (roughly an American size 8). She likes to think that if she had shown up her basic size 18 that she would have dated the boyz the same, been on the stages the same, been invited out post-Hedwig the same, and had all the same incredible experiences. The voice in the back of her head sings a single clear note of doubt, that she will ignore, always.

Anaballerina

By the time she was back in the states, she had become mildly accustomed to not-being-invisible. There was plenty of attention, plenty of boys, and plenty of really fun drinking. Perhaps it was due to perennial shifts in management, or perhaps because boys are shallow horrors, but she still struggled as she slowly began to gain all the weight back that had been gone for 2 years.

She passed 150 with one boyfriend who couldn't handle her parent's divorce (and just hated sex, apparently). 180 by the time she had eaten Waffle-Hut after stressful work for 4 years. The attention although still there, had taken a more hostile edge again, and people would ask her things they hadn't when she was smaller, like "Who do you think YOU are?", and "Who are you to be so picky?" when she didn't find a potential boy attractive.

Time passed, she became a care-taker, normal outside jobs eschewed for this new strange consuming life. She started to have severe stomach troubles that limited how far she wanted to be from home, and by the time 3 years had passed, Wicked found herself at 223 pounds, and a size 20. Now we can preach all day and twice on Sunday that body is a state of mind over matter, but the fact is the very first and natural consistent reaction to a change of your body like that is the kind of depression that makes you choke.

Thomas Pollack Anshutz

Wicked was SO lucky for a long while to have adopted a Sister who was the same size as her. They both shared a certain pain, and whispered secrets that they felt horror at their weight, and felt so lucky every day that anyone would love them. When the Sister got sick, she started to loose weight, and the forever beautiful girl became translucent with beauty that everyone could see. Wicked could always see it, and anyone that loved her could too. It was my first MOMENT where she saw that beauty and love was more than a body. She had spent my life looking into everyone else's spirits, falling in love with their souls, lecturing about their beauty... and it had never until the moment she knew this Sister, occurred to her that SHE had something like that, that was worth loving.

Wicked once told her, "I don't mind if I'm being Picked on, I'm used to it... But it bothers the hell out of me when someone does it to someone I care about..." and Sister said, "I mind if someone picks on you!" Your Auntie Wicked is not much for crying, but she almost over-came all her Northern Reserve and burst into tears.

Found at "That Little Something Called Life"

It had been one thing to see her eating disorder friends struggle, they where often very slim and acceptably beautiful girls who got the proper attention, the free coffees, and had Wicked as their charity-case fat friend. She had no feelings one way or another about this, but perhaps the very personal knowing that someone in the world shared her pain, her size, and even to a degree her stories about how unfair it seemed that when one slimmed down they had WORTH of VALUE that had nothing to do with their SOUL, spirit, or shimmering inner star.

Wicked knew if she was going to beat this horror feeling of being in a giant skin-suit, she was going to have to accept, in a tiny part, the regard that her Sister had felt for her, instead of rejecting it as a strange character flaw she knew nothing of. Furthermore, she was going to have to start treating her body, as well as her mind and spirit as though they where things that where actually precious to her, regardless of their size.

And that auntlings is where she is today. Trying very hard to balance moderation and indulgence. Trying to treat herself as well as others and most importantly to take care of herself as well as others. Your Auntie Wicked still has a very long way to go to a healthy view of self and losing this weight but gone are the diet pills and the insane workout programs. Though, admittedly I am still not celebrating myself - i am not hating it all. Your Auntie Wicked has been facing this body change in photographs and with friends. Never any more hiding the words like "Yes I am fat" that used to be echoing only to herself in the lonely caverns of her head. To say it out loud like most things that get outed is a breathe of air that everyone needs.

Found at The Life, Shit, and Times of Zidni hendrazid

Okay so I am fat/overweight - okay so this is why - this is what is hard about it and what it really feels like - okay so this is what i can do about it. Wicked's only advice for you is to try and find all the help and support you can get in eating healthy and increasing your normal daily physical activity - it's not easy - you'd be surprised how lazy and horrible eating many of your skinny friends are but if you can find it...even a little support goes a long way.

This blog has taken your Auntie a long time to write because it's one more step in facing fat.
I can only hope that someone takes comfort in this story or conversely we get a rollicking good debate going with the pro-fats. Either way, it will have been well worth it.

Please always feel free to find, friend, and follow us on:

facebook
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or e-mail us at a_illumination@hotmail.com(she checks it more)
and please comment us on the blog - we love that - especially lumi.

and please check back with us we have john waters and skirts coming up though not necessarily in that order.
Thank you again for reading Auntie Wicked - we do this for you - well and for us - but also for you.

Introducing Ms. Amy Winehouse

2011-08-02T09:31:00.000-04:00

an introspective by: a.illumi

Rather than write some goodbye or memorial or stupid exploitative on how she died...this lumi would like to introduce Amy Winehouse - a singer we should not have forgotten so soon and are lucky enough to be able to listen to even now.

If you are listening at all, you can tell that Ms. Winehouse's style, music, and presentation all incorporate a wide array of delicious influences. Ms. Winehouse herself pointed to the 1950-60's girl groups like the Ronettes as one of her main influences. Lumi permits you to go ahead and add other famous 50's-60's girl groups like the Crystals, Marvellettes, Shirelles, and the Flirtations, among many many others. Ms. Amy Winehouse, like other legendary rockers and rockstresses, was first and foremost a music lover who most certainly did her homework. Her other obvious influence are straight up soulful sumptuous solo singer jazz ladies like Sarah Vaughan.)

And bless her for saying," Fuck Her" about Billie Holiday; this Lumi has felt much the same about overly mentioned woman worthies. It is not that there is anything wrong with these women and they did do important things BUT somehow they become the only mentions and all that is understood or expected about women in that given genre, this, to Lumi, is a criminal travesty of ceaseless ramifications for generations of women and girls who feel and think that there was only THIS ONE jazz singer or architect. In addition to Amy Winehouse's named inspiration - Lumi also immediately thinks of Eartha Kitt's, "I want to be Evil" when she hears Winehouse's "You know I'm no Good. Name almost any other famous jazz songstress and you can place them and Ms. Winehouse in the same school. How long has it been since we were graced with a woman that could have easily hung with Nina Simone or Aretha Franklin?

In addition to the incredible writing and singing - Ms. Winehouse has also been playing guitar since 13.
and of course continues to perfect her fashion phantasticness:

The thing about Amy Winehouse - the thing that made her special - the thing that drove her - the thing that led us not to fully accept her is simple:
She is not like you
She had her own thing
A strange thing for many of us, especially fans in America, i would think.
She was unabashedly a drinker, a rocker, a lover, and lived in a fashion universe all her own.
We prefer our stars to conform and be ashamed of who they truly are: hiding any of their issues in photoshop or "spa' getaways. It was in this sort of shaming and shunning and ignoring and constant picking at her, that lumi feels, Ms. Winehouse was done very wrong.

From the fantastic Sam Spratt

She was no weakling
She was no useless freak
She was this:

and this:

and this:

Which should, Lumi really hopes, SHOULD remind you that all stars, superstars, Grammy winners, grocery store attendants and everyone famous or whatever are human beings and we all need more than money or work or fame in order to live. And perhaps, if we could treat everyone, including the famous with a little more humanity, not without criticism mind you, but with slightly less cruelty than we might avert further tragedies like this one.

We need more types of all artists - not less and we need to do this by accepting and appreciating a MUCH wider range of expressive styles. We need to do it while they are here, before they burn out, give up, or give in. Right now, Lumi can think of a few female talents (and she is sure there are many many more who never even get far enough due to the shaming and shunning) that experience a great deal of crap storm for being something other than what is expected: Beth Ditto, Brody Dalle , M.IA., Nicki Minaj and no one will believe Lumi because she this next lady is so famous but she is going to say it anyway - Lady Gaga. Lumi and Wicked both believe strongly that these women are just squished and squished until no more music can come out because they can't breathe or they just walk away from it or are left only to make terrible squeaks for many years to come. Ladies and gentleman, please stop obsessing on what our signers and songwriters and band members look like and who they are fucking and please listen to what they are doing- judge not Katy Perry by her pumps but by her songstressing no?

In short, everyone should be ashamed that we can't seem to appreciate and love and keep our amazing talents alive or unbroken. Booh to us and yeah to Ms. Amy Winehouse for staying true to herself.
Maybe next go round, we won't be so hard on the bouffanted ducklings before they have a chance to truly become swans. Also, do yourself a favor, instead of JUST buying a ton of her music now, because she is DEAD and now has a MYSTIQUE; INSTEAD look around the world of women in music, in the media, and in general and choose not to fuck over anymore amazing girls or women because they look different, or dress different, or act different, or have boyfriend problems...let's be the voice that says, "I don't care who her boyfriend is and I don't judge her for her substance use" Let's hold our female rockstars to the same standard we do the men. Let them be who they are and we love and admire them for creating incredible out of whatever the situation is. Furthermore, don't buy into tabloids or the mentality. Let the women be musicians, not our personal game of Operation and we might just see a great deal more of talents like the late great Ms. Amy Winehouse

As always we aunties want to hear from you! Especially if you have know any great new music we should be listening to or if you have something to say, preferably nice, about Ms. Winehouse(we won't not respond to unkindness and derision about her but we warn you - our heart is in this one and it could get messy).
You can find us on facebook, tumblr myspace, and email lumi at a_illumination@hotmail.com

Lumi Does It: Pierce Your Own Ears!

2011-07-21T10:10:00.000-04:00

Really You can.

by: A. Illumi

This self-induced assignment came about while talking about Jackass and their recent loss of Ryan Dunn. Wicked and I were talking about how great it is that the Jackass guys have an idea and they get stuff, learn how(kind of), and then dooooo it! This lead to a broader talk about how we as a people used to do so many things in our homes: can veggies, pluck chickens, birth babies, and more recently and a little less difficultly; pierce our own and each other's ears.

Piercing your ears, not too long ago, was something your best friend might do for you or your mom. It's one of those things a women or teen in your circle just knew how to do and more importantly was not afraid. We seem to live in a culture of fear of being unqualified for everything. We need experts and specialists in order for a finger to be lifted in our home's.

And though it is nice not to do EVERYTHING one has to wonder and worry a little about the loss of knowledge and experience that comes with this "paying for everyone to do our things policy".
With ear piercing especially, Lumi feels, that there is an intangible non-monetary loss when women, girls, and guys no longer get together and poke holes in each other's ears like some beautiful 1960's tableaux.

There is and always has been a profound psychological and symbolic meaning to piercing. The act and the jewelry have been seen throughout time as symbols of strength, wealth, symbols of marriage, as a charm against pain, as a way to express one's individuality, reclaiming body after abuse, or even as a way to get into a transcendental state of mind. As to ear piercing specifically:

"Ears were probably first pierced for magical purposes, very many primitive tribes believe that demons can enter the body through the ear, because demons and spirits are supposed to be repelled by metal, ear-piercing prevents them entering the body. Sailors used to have an ear pierced to improve eyesight, and if the bodies washed up somewhere it would pay for a christian burial. In many societies ear piercing is done as a puberty ritual, in Borneo the Mother and Father each pierce one ear as a symbol of the child's dependence on their parents."

The fact that we used to all take part in piercing, rather than passively receiving, seems so much a metaphor for the strange dilution of culture that continues to wreak havoc on our overall family and community structures.

It was with all these thoughts heavy on her mind, that your Auntie Lumi blurted out to Wicked," What if I pierce my own ear? Would that be a good blog, I think it might mean something!"
Wicked responded, "Fuck yes!" and here we are. Before getting started, Lumi did her normal survey of the internets to see who was saying and doing what, with piercing their own ears. There were alot of good explanations and several excellent videos but the chutzpah of this young lady really made Lumi certain, she was indeed going to go for it:

After getting all her chutzpah together, Lumi decided it was a good suggestion of Wicked's to send a quick e-mail over to Wicked's friend pin-up model, piercer, tattoo artista, and magical lady of fashion Jacqui!

She provided Lumi with lots of information! Her top rules were "Have everything ready before you get started" - seems simple but the process does happen really fast and there are quite a few things you need to have together: piercing implement, alcohol swabs, waterproof sharpie, paper towels, gloves etc..) Miss. Jacqui also recommends: unscented hand soap and seal salt with warm water for after care. And in case you were considering not going to a piercer and not doing it at home; please don't consider the ear piercing guns, a really great option. Lumi has experienced and Jacqui mentioned, that these guns often cause cysts,which for Lumi, resulted in the past of her ear rejecting the earrings en toto. As for actual process of self-piercing Jacqui says this: ...Please do not pierce yourself alone -- if you can help it. If you are firm you must pierce yourself, please have a friend on standby..." Lumi did take this advice very to heart ,as previously, she had planned to go it hana-solo.

Jacqui gave me alot of really great safety tips and advice. I followed all the hygiene and sanitary onez because clean and unifectious is really not negotiable. However, let me be very clear that the piercing tool of safety pin was not recommended or endorsed by Jacqui. The approved tool for ear piercing would be a piercing needle available very cheap!

I went next, to my aunt Dinah and asked her about completing my mother's piercing when she, as a teen, had Sleepers that failed to go all the way though. Sleepers were earrings that had two sharp points which met in the middle and you squeezed them periodically through the day to slowly self pierce your ear. These look like a modern version of those:

Aunt Dinah came to the rescue with icing my mom's ear until it was numb and pushing a sterilized sewing needle through. She explained they used a sewing needle and that the reason to use a sewing needle vs. a safety pin was knowing the type of metal it is made out of. Though I did end up using a safety pin...Lumi

The reason Lumi chose a safety pin was the desire to have something to hold onto when piercing her own ear. And just for the sake of Dora the Explorer laws of repetitions: Lumi went far far off any recommendations of piercer Jacqui or Aunt Dinah in choosing to use a safety pin. Furthermore, the Aunties do not recommend piercing, or anything else, to anyone ever.
With all warnings in place and without further fanfare. Here is Lumi Does her own piercing:
First Lumi put on her non-latex gloves and then sterilized the safety pin:

Next, she numbed her ear with ice for about 7 minutes, which is really cold.

Then Lumi had her assistant, photographer, and mother put dots with a sharpie(lime green) on her ears.

Now it is important to know that 9 years ago, lumi did have piercings in her ears and so there were small indentation type scars to help guide where the holes should be. It's possible this made it a little easier, on Lumi, during the piercing. Then it was time to press the needle into my ear.

Pressing through the initial part of the ear took a good amount of force and it hurt a little. Lumi advises closing one eye for pain control.

When I got into the middle of the ear it was easier but pushing through the back of the ear took a lot of balls. I actually pressed on the back of my ear with my finger, into the needle. I have fairly calloused finger tips, so they made a good landing zone for the needle to touch down when it slid out the back of my ear. Sliding vs. slamming seems like a good policy when it comes to piercing and their is actually even piercing lube(recommended by Jacqui) that helps makes the piercing process even more smooth. If lumi did this again , she would invest in some of this surgical lube. okay so here is the needle, once it was out of the otherside of the ear.

I did the same on both ears, leaving the safety pins in for about fifteen minutes before trying to insert my new jewelry. Then I was ready to put in my new little sterling silver skulls, after sterilizing them, of course. I slid out each safety pin and slowly pushed in the earrings. Finding my way through freshly made holes took a couple of minutes but the end result was:

LUMI HAS THE CUTEST EARRINGS IN HER EARS AND SHE SHE DID IT HERSELF!

Well aunties and uncles and everyone out there - doing it yourself can sometimes be a really big chore and ends up being expensive or not worth it but in this case Lumi couldn't be more satisfied with her do it yourself doings and 9 days into the self-pierce and my ears feel great! Just a few more weeks and this Lumi will be doing the earring shopping to end all earring shopping!

Maybe starting with something like these:

As always thank you all for reading and please leave us comments! We love to hear what you think!

And you can find us on tumblr, facebook, myspace, and twitter!

Wicked, Lumi, and THE DREAM:

2011-07-04T08:28:00.000-04:00

(aka Optimism & Cyanide : Searching for the American Dream in the Depths of the Internet.)

A three part trilogy.
Part One: American Rants

by Wicked & Lumination

with contributions by:

the Spirit of Hunter s. Thompson

Josh Darling

Patrick Gallagher

Baron and his Hello Kitty shirt

and with music by Rob of 7 Feelings

11.53 Pm, Wicked is in her hotel surfing on a wave of digital madness, although the madness was a bit flat and low that day. Just as she'd given up on any kind of forward motion, a window opened,

"Hello!" The window said.

It was Lumi, so Wicked flicked away any rude responses she had saved up for strange windows and set her fingers to keys.

"Lumi, was I dreaming when you asked me if we could do a piece on the American Dream?"

There was a pause, so Wicked went into the details of her dream. She said she was in a strange place behind a desk, speaking to small windows, on the other side, people from around the globe, or one's RIGHT next-door could talk to each-other. "That sounds Neat!" Lumi squeaked, but Wicked droned on.

In the dream, she was speaking into a window with the other Aunt, and Lumi had said, "Wicked! I've been reading Fear and Loathing, and it gave me an idea. We could use the interwebs to find the American Dream!" Wicked was stunned by such a great idea, although thought it was a heavy thought to take on. Her fingers hoovered again as she waited Lumination's thoughts.

"Well..." Lumi said. "I want to tell you a lie..." She adjusted her glasses as she settled in the driver's seat of the enormous pink convertible couch they'd rented for such occasions. "But it was totally a dream." Wicked deflated a little, staring out from behind over-sized sunglasses. "HOWEVER..." Lumi said in her most encouraging voice. "I think you where having an Electric Dream with Hunter S. Thompson as your totem-animal! Who are we to argue with an idea like THAT?" She flashed her best smile to Wicked, which generally meant they where going to end up causing some trouble, and pressed her foot down on the gas. The great beast lept forward with a VROOOM!

And with that, Lumi and Wicked went to search the vast interwebs for the American Dream.

Wicked exalted, "This is so titillatingly homagey, I can barely stand it!!! I am going to draw pictures while you drive!" As the Aunties raced across time and space, they catted and screamed about the horrors and wonders they saw.

Lumi had yet to make her mind up about what an American Dream even was and half listened to Wicked pontificating in the background. There was something about the social traps the Government laid for society at large in post World War II America. This wisdom was interspersed with bizarre stories about a man-caterpillar smoking a hookah, who Wicked said they would be visiting later (followed by talk about how his window lead to an upside-down world, which made little to no sense to Lumi.)

Wicked gave her speech, Lumi noticed, with seven markers; three in each hand and one in the mouth. The whole scene confused Lumi enough, and with Wicked's cata-man puffing psychedelic smoke,she began to feel dangerously overwhelmed.So she tried very hard to concentrate on her lipstick.
A little too hard, because before Lumi knew it she had passed out a little (make-up related black-out!) when she realized with a sudden clarity that Wicked was at the wheel. The Pink Fuzzy Beast was by now screaming along the Information Superhighway, and at first Lumi brushed the thought away like gnats. Wicked's hat flapped in the wind. Her cigarette holder clamped between her teeth, the roar of the engine vibrating Lumi's Fluffy thoughts.

"...Wicked?" Lumi finally said.

"Hrmph?" Grunted Wicked, face all fierce and stuff.

"I didn't know you could Drive?" Lumination squeaked.

"Oh I could always DRIVE! I just don't have a license! " Wicked Smiled one of her patented crazy-smiles, and stared with glowy-intense eyes and laid her foot to the pedal. VROOOM! The engine gunned and Lumi went cold with the fear. Just then a white blur crossed in front of them. "EEEE!" screamed Lumi, "A RABBIT!"What the mother-fuck are you talking about Illumination?" Wicked Grunted before she noticed the thing herself. "FUCKING RABBIT! I'll cook you into a lovely stew YOU SWINE!"

The Car swerved, as though somehow, the Pink Mammoth knew Wicked would make good on her threats. It spun around and screeched in a great cloud of dust, while Lumi screeched and Wicked cursed.

When the chaos settled they found they had traveled very far south through wild jungles of tourists traps and colorfully garbed legions of old people. Lumination rolled out of the car and muttered her
famous words, "Gonna Barf!"

"THATS NO RABBIT!" Said Wicked's voice before she strode fourth from a swirl of dust, cigarette and hat in perfect order. Wicked marched up tape recorder in hand and held it aloft, "What say you of the American Dream, Not Rabbit!?!?"

Instead of a Rabbit, The Aunties had come upon, Joshua Darling : Film and Troublemaker Extraordinaire. Lumi, over her travel-sickness, ran over to listen, as with very little hesitation, Mr. Darling, set his terms and rules for said answers (he only struggled slightly when Lumi set her own term of bunny ears, But once Lumination had an idea it was difficult for even the even most seasoned arguer to win her over). Darling whipped out a megaphone which he held in the direction of the cassette recorder. Lumi, for back-up also took notes and Wicked drew pictures. with wild hand motions and many changes of facial color Mr. Darling brought forth his commentary, in essay form no less!

The American dream, a speculation on nightmare.

A nonfiction travesty by: Josh Darling
In 1971 Hunter S. Thompson set out to try and capture a snapshot of the American dream in his book Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas... That America. The America of 1971. An America of hope and an America freshly suffering from the slaughters of Kennedy, Martin Luther King Jr, and a whole bunch of Vietnamese. That was the OH-SO "America time", in America where the exciting energy of turbulent change for the better was filling the the air…

Their Dream was different, it was closer to providing freedom, before Ray Crock could thoroughly pollute it with and happy meals for one and all. Because the America of today is such a grossly different and hideous beast, Comparing their dream dream versus the dream of today is like comparing a Michelangelo’s David to the most rank gay porn.

But this dog will hump a that leg on a different day... Back to the Dream. I don’t want to start spouting off with the hatred that both big business and big government have for the little people. I want to start off by talking about the little people. The American dream, the original American dream was obviously to come up from oppression, and then it morphed in the streets of gold. These are the dreams of the little people. These little people are the cogs of the machine that is America. The cogs that allow it to run but what if the machine decides it no longer wants or needs its cogs? What if the machine no longer cares if it runs smoothly? What if the brain decided that body was no longer needed mostly because it could enslave other bodies? But as the brain is sentient so are the cogs. But what do the cogs want?

Not pawns mind you, cogs cause the whole machine runs on them ... What makes their eyes twitch under the lids when the day is done?

Before one can really talk about dreams we have to look at the environment of the dreamer, because dreams of the processed data of the subconscious and that subconscious builds its database from perception. If you’ve traveled America you know the landscape is the same everywhere you go:
*When you get to the end of the list wash, rinse, repeat.*

Starbucks, McDonald’s, Burger King, Taco Bell, Gap,

Hot Topic, Pizza Hut, Old Navy, Best Buy Disney,

Game Stop American Eagle, Wal-Mart,Outback Steakhouse, Victoria Secret,Denny’s, Sephora, Target...

Why the Stores?
It’s simple, if you want to know the dream...you must first realize the state of the dreamer. Americans have always thought that the lifeblood of freedom is capitalism however these two things are really ships passing in the night. The mistake comes, of most Americans thinking their money and freedom are somehow tied together. Americans assume freedom and lust for the dollar are one in the same. But as we stand today and look up at that landscape but no longer live off the land...As we see that land carved away by high calorie food stands, as we feel ashamed to do manual or factory labor, as we see jobs outsourced... What is this dream? We no longer work for a living or for enjoying work. We have, in fact, given up getting paid a fair day’s wage for a fair day’s work instead opting for flatter televisions and x-boxes. To fill in the gaps we offer up cookie-cutter life lessons and Twilight Zone morality. In the face of this, I can’t help but wonder, What is it that Americans are dreaming for? If we are a democracy and people on the whole are giving lease to the psychotic Christian mutants that make up the Tea Party, selling our future for the latest toy, and wishing for nothing more than to be the next wealthiest insta-star than I say:

America no longer has a dream and America no longer future.

If Americans are so bankrupt on all levels orally, psychologically, economically, that we are turning to people who are willing to destroy the government and destroy America then I say America is over and if America is over, so goes the dream. Just look at fat-fuck Pentecostal children’s pastor Becky Fischer, best known as the semi-closeted lesbian, in the movie “Jesus Camp” ….How are these people still under the ether of “Manifest Destiny”? Bad enough that but the poison goes deeper, because a better tomorrow is going to come if we all just wait and pray for it to happen because god and America are obviously one, despite all that silliness about separation of church and state. When we talk of The Dream, we are really talking about what Americans want and America is driven by mob rule. The minority means nothing the majority is king. This could be problem enough. But there is also a secret minority, not a minority of the poor or so-called downtrodden, but this minority is the ultra rich. This minority are the people who pull the strings behind the politicians. I don’t say this as a “conspiracy theory” I say this as-in :

this is the way things are, this is the way things have always

been, and this is the way things will always be.

This minority controls the ideals and dreams of all of the people who are easily swayed. For the

majority, I believe this dead American dream is to fuck Jesus.

wait for a savior

for a daddy

to pull us out of our shit

shit that was voted for

to use hate, to hate

the enemy

to not attempt to understand anything

to not have to understand, to continue

to live in fear, because it’s just easier, and just do it, we put the

baby to sleep and sleeping it will remain.

If you’re poor and have transcended the bullshit of religion and are looking to have a real dream, the real American dream... Jerry Springer/American Idol/ America’s Next Top Model/The Biggest Loser have it for you. Big money in the bag all at once - that is the new American Dream and why? Because there are no more bootstraps to pull yourself up by... We outsource. There are no more government programs to help you. Jesus, in his infinite wisdom, and compassion did away with them for supply-side economics. If you are in the so-called “middle-class” you may still have a dream, but don’t work too hard at it, because you’ll be coming down to our level soon – ha ha.
We no longer live in a place where dreams happen, we live in a place where subterfuge and circumvention of the laws that protect staples of humanity is common practice. Free speech will become freedom death. The American dream, denial. Deny logic, deny reason, deny science, deny responsibility… I fuck you over, I steal from you, I rape you, I murder you, I suppress your rights, I apologize to my God or my CEO and make everything okay. The new American Dream is indeed: Fuck You! I dream of having everything taken out of my hands. The dream of not doing. The dream of zero work, zero responsibility and all returns are pure Cream. I would love to leave you with a happy thought, that some brilliant anarchist revolution will come and save you... I would love to leave you with happy thoughts.

I have no manifesto that decrees THIS IS THE AMERICAN DREAM - SAVE IT! No, at this point the only thing the American dream needs is to be put to bed. Because without a future what is there to dream about?

Wicked realized that Darling was finished when he took out a camera and started making a mockumentary, "Satire of the Homage" of she Lumi's American Dream Project. Despite their fascination with Darling's Strange World, it was time for the Aunties to go. Wicked jumped in the Pink Beast and said “Let’s go!” Lumi said “WAIT”, “Why wait?” Wicked irked. “I know the answer!” “To what?” “His question! No time time! Just tell me - we will put it in the blog later! “Okay fine! The answer is COOKIES! Their are always at least still cookies to dream about!” To which Wicked replied, “Are cookies American?” and with that the two sometimes-bottle-red-heads, were off to their next destination... GEORGIA!

But just before they could make it to one of Lumi's many old stomping grounds they ran across a protest, almost literally. If it hadn't been for one girl standing right in front of their car with a sign and a bullhorn, Wicked and Lumi might, in fact, not be writing you this blog but rather cooling their heels in Atlanta City Detention for the crimes of accidental running over 5 or 6 activists. It turns out the girl's name was Ami and she was very interested in the Aunties project and had some very colorful things to say about it unfortunately Lumi who had been taking notes and this is all that remained of the girl's impassioned speech on the American Dream.

The American Dream you ask? "...is to be culturally indoctrinated and socially engineered to detach from our innate self-awareness in exchange for materialisms. In short ladies, it is to live in excess." The Aunties left behind the activists and stopped by at the mall before heading on a video chat with a history buff!

At the mall Lumi swung around on her way to the frozen yogurt stand when she saw a man in a
hot pink hello kitty Shirt! Lumi was like OMG we have to meet him. Wicked in her usual non-plussed fashion mumbled, "Oh THAT'S Baron, let's go say hi..." Lumi was very excited about the Hello kitty shirt and the American Dream so before she could say, "Hi" or wicked could introduce her she blurted out, "We are a on a mission to find out what you think is the American Dream - got any answers?" Wicked looked both slightly embarrassed and amused. The hello kitty wearing Baron looked wryly thoughtful and said, " What, the American Dream? Isn't it basically just to have more than the next person(the most money, the most kids, the most houses) so one can brag about it? At least that's what I'VE always thought. Or are you referring to something else entirely?" It seemed the Hello Kitty wearing man (Lumi's new hero), and the film-maker and the activist had some in-common things to say. Wicked and Lumi walked away shaking their heads in mesmerizing unison, even forgetting they had meant to say hello.

The two were beginning to wonder if this trip was going to be a bummer... There only hope was some historical perspective from one very Mad Hatter, Patrick Gallagher, who was going to take them on a whole new trip. They had provided the good sir with an email simply stating, "What is the American Dream?" and so the historian extraordinaire came prepared to the video chat with MUCH to say (and much Noir-style lighting to match the droll-dryness of his quick paced banter). Most of which they heard, despite the fact the three golden panties boys continued to interrupt with e-mail overtures of adoration. Patrick's words that rung through and very true sounded something like this,

"I'm more and more convinced that much of the Dream's manifestation in the concept of improving one's economic circumstances is just the modern incarnation of what Eric Foner described as free labor ideology in his landmark books "Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men" and, later, "Reconstruction." Both deal with the civil war era and argue that dominant labor ideology in the North was based on the idea that via temporary wage work in one's youth allowed a person (here being white men almost exclusively) to accumulate enough capital to become an independent proprietor in his own right, whether that meant a small farmer, shop owner, or whatever. This of course stood in direct opposition to Southern slave labor, where manual work was considered primarily the domain of the unfree, and that free men should only perform it as the distasteful but necessary means to buy their way out of laboring via the purchase of slaves.

Free labor ideology is, as you've likely already noted, itself an outgrowth in large part of what Max Weber famously describes as the Protestant Ethic; work hard, be thrifty, and success will follow. Though I suspect most Americans these days no longer aspire to what Foner describes as independent proprietorship (and as he points out even in the 1850s it was increasingly becoming less obtainable due to the rise of industrialized manufacture), it does seem to me that the majority do at least hold to the American Dream of a successful, comfortable life via working hard and prudently saving.

It's a nice dream, but I cannot help but wonder if, like most dreams, there's not a little wishful and willful ignorance in play here. If we've learned anything from the past several years of economic hardship, I'd like to think it would be that all the prudent hard work in the work can be easily undone by actions far outside of anyone's personal control.

Like all pleasant imaginings, the American Dream too easily turns poisonous when it's clung to too tightly in the absence of its tempting promise. When prosperity doesn't follow, two options present themselves to the Dream's adherents: The first, and by far the more benign of the two, is to simply presume that they have not been working hard/long enough. The Dream remains valid, it rather is they who've failed to hold up their end. While often stark, this conclusion is at least internally consistent.

However, I used the word "poisonous" above deliberately here; in such situations far too many instead go looking for scapegoats. If only the damn government would stop over-regulating the marketplace/wasting money on domestic social spending, then I'd be able to make it! If only those damn illegals weren't keeping wages down by working at below-market rates, I wouldn't be a month behind on my mortgage! If my hard-earned money wasn't being taxed so heavily to pay for all those damn lazy welfare queens, I wouldn't be struggling to keep my head above water! A staggering array of similar historical examples from the various Panics of the 19th Century and recessions of the 20th exist as well, though curiously only a minority few from that harshest reality check ever thrown the American Dream, the Great Depression. Reality it would seem is at least in the most extreme cases able to trump ideology (though it must be said that even then, the hard core of libertarian "fuck you, got mine-ism" survived).

That the initial premise of the Dream remains unexamined here is no accident. The ideal is an old one, and one frankly that most Americans have been taught from birth to hold as sacrosanct, particularly any who grew up before the end of the Cold War and death of the evil Communist Enemy. It's a powerful ideology, more powerful than the Protestant Christian counterpart it so often walks alongside if we're being wholly honest as what it promises is less abstract and more concrete. And much like that counterpart, questioning (outside of narrowly-defined safe regions of inquiry intended to reinforce the original concept) is not encouraged, lest the faithful fall away.

By this point I suspect at least a few readers are frothing at the mouth in righteous fury, prepared to savage me for being some commie pinko bastard who wants the government to pay for everything and has never worked a day in my life, etc, etc. Fingers poised eagerly above keyboards, they now prepare to vindictively tear me to be bits in an appropriately triumphalist terms. For those I offer the following mollification: have no fear, the American Dream is alive and well. The promise of the nation remains genuine if perhaps a bit dented. Dreams rarely stay as gleaming when recalled in the harsh light of wakefulness.

I would however offer this final caution to such Dreamers: while work and effort are a vital and necessary element of success and prosperity, they surely are not the only ones. That you can succeed is no promise than you will, and Dreamers who came before you have, in their dreamlike delusions, made sure the safety net below the tightrope upon which you choose to walk is perilously close to the ground, and increasingly moth-eaten.
do you best not to fall...

With the end of Patrick's brilliant speech trailing off into the sound of "Endless Aspiration"

Endless Aspiration by sevenfeelings

(Rob Deyz sometimes is so kind to tailor soundtracks to the Aunties liking)

The Aunties went wheeling off into a beautifully back lit sunset. Their chatter was heavy with these American rants and punctuated with frequent beepings of "You've Got Mail!" As Lumi began to sift through the new responses, as Wicked was indeed still driving, she realized that a wave of American Optimism as well and some very distinct international impressions of The Dream were arriving. "Wicked!", Lumi yelled over the roaring of the wind, "We can do a TRILOGY on the American Dream!" Wicked pulled down her sunglasses and said, "As long as we don't reference ANYTHING Star Wars. I am SICK SICK to death of forever Star Wars references, if you ask me THAT is possibly what is eating away at the American Dream, this plague of Star Wars references and of course hipsters...." Didn't you make a painting about that Wickie?" Lumi chimed. Wicked nodded,"Yes, Yes I did"

see more great art at Art Fruit

Exploring Sensuality, Wicked vs the Mad Poet.

2011-06-29T07:36:00.000-04:00

Exploring Sensuality : Dueling voices, Introducing Uncle Perhaps, the Mad Poet from Down Under.

In which Auntie Wicked and Uncle Perhaps embark on a series of conversations.

It was sometime of a lazy Sunday morning, Auntie Wicked and Uncle Perhaps sat deep in conversation sipping coffee in a café designed in the tasteful art deco style. Soon enough the conversation took a turn for the taboo as the topic of sensuality rose it’s decadent and indefinable head. Why is this topic and lifestyle considered so wrong and terrifying to everyone who has yet to engage in its feather light touch, awakening with a fury the desire’s long locked within our psyche? As the sailboats rolled and swayed down the sea just outside the window, and the scent of tropical plants filled the air, we began penning down the conversation.

And without further adieu your Auntie A. Wicked and newly initiated Uncle Perhaps fearlessly embark on the titillating topic of Sensuality.

Uncle Perhaps : I have a lot of thoughts about this, mostly pornographic

A. Wicked : Welcome Uncle, it is so refreshing to have you here! LOL We will start with porn and go from there...

Uncle Perhaps : <porn> its like, sensuality within the theatre of see. I also want to go ahead and make a vote that Oscar Wilde should be known as the patron saint of sensuality - at least outward sensuality - the aesthete (see also : The Aesthetic Movement)

aes·thete or es·thete

1. One who cultivates an unusually high sensitivity to beauty, as in art or nature.

2. One whose pursuit and admiration of beauty is regarded as excessive or affected.

A. Wicked : Mmm, I'll give you outward sensuality. Although in being a Victorian Gay, Sensuality was a necessity, evading the outwardly sexual, infused with romantic subterfuge considering the desert of sensuality that was the outward world of the Victorians.

Uncle Perhaps : Hey you remember the book(it was most likely this book that Oscar Wilde had in mind) that was given to Dorian Gray that basically started him being corrupt?

A. Wicked : No I don't.

Uncle Perhaps : Well in the book, after he spoke to Henry he was given a book that kinda started him being all sensualist and corrupt , it was a À rebours by Joris-Karl Huysmans, also known sin "Against Nature".

A. Wicked : Sensualism is against nature. That could be very interesting.

Uncle Perhaps : Well it's not that it's against nature

A. Wicked : Don't you think it's usually portrayed like that?

Uncle Perhaps: It was the way that the main character lived was in a built up sensualist prison-house

A. Wicked : I mean the very reason sensualist are seen possibly as uhhhh evil. because to draw out pleasure is a corrupting factor?

Uncle Perhaps: I can see that but under who's gaze is corruption weighed?

A. Wicked : Society! Like how in Dorian we are guided to moral outcomes

Uncle Perhaps : How so?

A. Wicked : As though sensuality is a gateway drug to heavier corruptions...

Uncle Perhaps : lol 'come on man, smoke some of this sensuality....just
rub the velvet man. it'll be cool.' BANG next thing you know you're
using kids as drug mules

The Picture of Dorian Gray via http://www.plutenko.ru

A. Wicked : ...and Dorian Grey is totally a twisted morality tale

Uncle Perhaps : So you think that the inevitability of Dorian becoming corrupt was due to his sensual path?

A. Wicked : No, not me personally but I think that's the way it is presented. He is corrupted by sensuality, and it opens him up to the point where he is indifferent to other corruptions, being called over the cliff by Satan with a flute; Or its even a good parable about how discovery about one's identity coming fourth and living an increasingly debauched life can change a moral compass irrevocably.

Uncle Perhaps : Well, Henry Wotton is today considered to be Satan by many factors, including that he's called Harry by many of the characters as a nickname, and that Harry was another name for Satan in the 19th Century.

A. Wicked : See? this is typical how Victorian (and in turn OUR) society sees the corruptive path to go?

Uncle Perhaps : So do you agree with the current moral compass' direction away from sensuality?

A. Wicked : Oh yes. The moral compass understands us better than we do
sometimes... because there is a certain power in sensuality that corrupts or even makes people feel as though they are being corrupted.

Uncle Perhaps : It's quite powerful, I'll give it that... but it depends how you look at it.

A. Wicked : Brushing your hands on a velvet jacket, or listening to satiny words. The single-minded enjoyment of a taste or a moment. These are but a few of the things we get wrong when sensuality goes by the wayside. As to Sensualists? We are to be seen as Devils though we see no off morality to our lives.

À rebours face plate via http://pmokeefe.blogspot.com/

Uncle Perhaps : It seems so simple... there is really only the now, which is a moment trapped in a series of moments, why not make it beautiful? Do you mean we don't believe in evil?

A. Wicked : TYPICAL answer of the Sensual DEVIL!

Uncle Perhaps : ...and you expected anything less from me?

A. Wicked : But think of the people who you have allowed to share your life from time to time. For instance a story I told today of a young closeted gay man who lived and breathed the air of a Sensualist 24/7 for a few months. He seemed normal and it was too much the relief of the outside world that she'd convinced him to be straight. Then one day he digs in her closet and puts on makeup and we dye his hair blond the next thing you know he's trying to fuck boys in front of her under the false assumption it pleases her and goes off the deep end ends up with a drag queen, (which I don't fault him for) then CHAKAHHH! he gets her fired from her day job and goes back to being a country boy in the closet... Because it was too much for him to handle.

This is just ONE of the examples of how most people cannot cope with sensuality, or how for many it's not something that is less than an entry drug. breathing the fumes of opium smoke and succumbing only for a moment because most people seem to feel the need to live life's that do not feel.

Uncle Perhaps : Isn't that just an illusion? We as humans feel by nature, we're emotional beings, we have 5 senses and they're in constant deploy to become unfeeling is to go against nature.

A. Wicked : Well I feel it's an illusion in the sense that society is an illusion.

Uncle Perhaps : I think a degree of sensuality is necessary...

A. Wicked : ...But lets face it, sensualists tend to be a sub-cultural shaman of the senses. Not meant to live on the inside with the other hoo-mans, but rather to live on the edges reminding them of the offerings. And in this way you can say that by saying that their society is an illusion, you are trying to apply your lack of sense of society and morality on others.

Dionysus via http://www.mythencyclopedia.com/Cr-Dr/Dionysus.html

Uncle Perhaps : Not necessarily, they can keep their illusion as much as I can keep mine, its like two different magicians performing to one crowd. We are Dionysus come to show them Elysium.

A. Wicked : That's true but you have to remember very much that OUR seeming lack of morality doesn't apply to normal society.

Uncle Perhaps : Of course it does, just not in the way that they see it...

A. Wicked : Particularly in times where we (as a society) shout to the rafters we are nothing like the Victorians, yet grow more like them everyday.

Uncle Perhaps : Oh God Yes!

A. Wicked : I wouldn't be shocked if we outlawed sensuality entirely because sensuality gives a sinful intimation that there has been pleasure in this life. We feel that pleasure...that inherent moment we have when we are kids and realize that pleasure is connected with touch but it is immediately squooshed and made to be something dirty.

Do you think the dirtiness and sinfulness is what makes it difficult for Society at large to deal with Sensualists?

Uncle Perhaps: I think, more than anything, they're afraid. They keep getting bombarded with certain 'truths' about reality, life, society etc by the same society and anything that exists beyond...has to be
seen as 'Evil' due to the fact that we're living in a Judeo-Christian society and have been for 2 thousand years.

Though the original idea has been corrupted and the charlatans allowed to wander the street
and then the so-called 'revolution' came, we're still deeply carved with a few tenements that remain from the Dark Ages But in saying that, without the Dark Ages we would never have the Renaissance or 'Enlightenment'. If all people were sensualists, the villains would be played by a new race of the morally corrupt who go to work, live boring lives, and don't enjoy sex but I guess that will only happen in a perfect world

A. Wicked : That's a lot of morality, and its relevant to truth-seeking to a certain degree
but how much does Mental-Enlightenment have to do with being a sensualist?

Uncle Perhaps: Nothing it's just a metaphor.

A. Wicked : Sensualism is in itself an earthly pleasure and in theory, truth-seeking and enlightenment can come without the fleshly pleasures.

Uncle Perhaps : You can't have sensualist without the anti-sensualists just as you can't have the dark ages without the light.

Crowley via http://freemasonry.bcy.ca/texts/AleisterCrowley.html

A. Wicked : Can you not tho? I mean that would depend solely on people seeking to be sensualists, and as we know from some of the more Crowley-esq pursuits of teh Victorian era, sensual-enlightenment becomes quickly a Sexualist thing heavy on the Kink. I think most people don't realize the concept of being a Sensualist in itself is separate from sex although it sometimes leads to or involves it.

Uncle Perhaps : Well if everyone was born a complete sensualist, completely into it and it was considered as normal as is breathing, then society would have something else to villainize in degree of morality.

A. Wicked : I'm just saying in itself pursing sensualism as a form of enlightenment it becomes easily SEXUALISED by people because they pursue it as a sexual thing. So it leads to bondage and thrill
and that by nature is entirely separate from Sensuality as an art and inborn habit.

Uncle Perhaps : It does, what other sole activity have we upon this earth that combines all senses within such a joyous dance? Who breaths perfume and casts music, whilst delighting in chords written upon flesh and the most exotic tastes to have? Which kind of brings me back to early Pagan beliefs where sex was often viewed as Mystical.

A. Wicked : And that follows up to what sensualism too you. Do you think that the concept of Sensuality is inherently Paganistic in nature?

Uncle Perhaps : I don't see why not. I think that we learn about sensuality before we learn about other things growing up, we learn what's pretty and what's nice to touch and what feels nice. If we looked at it in a worldview light.. then yeah its definitely Pagan. I would say most ancient cultures saw it as amazing and mystical, they gave it gods. nowadays it's almost reviled.

A. Wicked : So the idea of sensuality is a kind of sheer enjoyment of that which feels nice or pleasurable and indulging in it?

Uncle Perhaps : Not just that, no, that's Hedonism... which i think sensuality can easily become.

A. Wicked : But again isn't hedonism the active pursuance of excess in its own way? to me it intimates silently that you endeavor to go beyond enjoyment and overdo everything? And sensuality in itself has to do with pausing at the crest of excess, and stop doing something when it's beyond pleasure?

Uncle Perhaps : well once you do something that feels good, you do it again till it gets old, then you need either something harder or a break from it...

A. Wicked : See I've never been a monkey with a button type. I know precisely when something has crossed the line between pleasurable and boring.

Uncle Perhaps : To me sensuality is more of a connection between the mind&emotion of a person and the way it reacts to the senses. you don't need to go all the way to orgasm, so to speak, all the time, sometimes foreplay is nice just for that reason... you need wine and cheese and jesters standing over a trap door m'dear.

via http://tinyurl.com/geeksugarpoke

A. Wicked : But isn't sensuality in itself something more abstract? It's not like licking clits or poking parts just for the sake of it, its more something like the smooth skin of a belly to be rubbed for the sake of the feeling against your skin or the hint of the scent of hair or even a bite of some mousse... and its that trapped moment in itself that is sensual.

Uncle Perhaps : When life throws you a curve ball painted by Michelangelo and you can lose yourself catching it?

A. Wicked : Yes. and that's the sensualists largest problem with the outside world is that sensuality is told like an opium den and kink and fucking... like your den is somehow constantly full of naked orgies, when in fact sensualists are more prone to beauty and moments like the cool touch of marble or the way a breeze feels.

Uncle Perhaps : the other day I sat in an art deco revival café by the beach with morning sun filtering down through the blinds made of twigs as i sipped a cup of black coffee. I did that for an hour.

A. Wicked : Exactly.

Uncle Perhaps : That is sensuality... living for that moment BUT I think there are other kinds not just single moments.

A. Wicked : I never was able to make much of a distinction. When someone asks me what turns me on it was this laundry list that freaked them out.

After a night's rest A. Wicked and Perhaps were back at mulling over the ins and outs of sensual sensuality-ness

A. Wicked : So last night, we where talking about our sensuality thing...

Uncle Perhaps : Oh yes, sensuality what makes us tick....

A. Wicked : I mean do you think in theory that its touch and the enjoyment of the rituals that makes it sensual? or maybe more like What makes YOU feel its sensuality vs sex?

Uncle Perhaps : That's a hard one to explain...

A. Wicked : Well for me, what is not sensual is easy to explain. Not sensual is if someone skips to the naughty bits like just goes right to sex...like tweakin' nipples or shoving fingers places or probing things roughly. It doesn't really uh? Do that much for me? One can't simply skip to the ritual of the old in-and-out. As a man is there a ritual like that on your end? Like make out - nipples clitoris - humphump?

Uncle Perhaps : As a sensualist I can say there is a ritual...

A. Wicked : A ritual of your own?

Julek Martwy via http://juliuszmartwy.blogspot.com/

Uncle Perhaps : There is definitely a ritual, I love devouring a person before and as I fuck them... their very taste, touch and smell.

A. Wicked : OK lets see. What I'm saying is what divides you from sexualists? Because EVERY tweaks nobs and pokes and rub. Because to me sexualists are like:

Goal Oriented Foreplay.
Straight to the point.
The fucking as much and as many times as possible, without any particular attention (or care) to the what why when how?

Fetishists even tend to be sexualists cause it's about more exciting sex. The though there is "Stimulate the fucking" and " yahhh make it more exciting." When to me, as a sensualist, a feeling of lots of pleasure can come from non-to-the-point things?

Uncle Perhaps : Oh no I agree! I mean,the difference is that even though we all do the same things, tweak nobs, lick clits, bite nipples etc, I think a sensualist can at that point of his or her sensual experience take it differently. Not to say that i don't enjoy things that aren't directly to the point. There are some degree's of the human form that simply running eyes or hand over can give me the same sensation: the small of someones back, the V shape before the pubis...

A. Wicked : Well isn't that the point tho? To a sensualist, the situation can easily happen that a kiss or a lick to some non-typical foreplay point can be just as arousing? Wrist or back of the knee replaces NOBS easily and without a second thought. However I'm talking about something subtle, like I can't stand SLOBBER or overt Porno Tonguing?

Uncle Perhaps : There has to be some degree of elegance.

A. Wicked : Exactly! So Sensuality or Sensualism comes down to a type person who isn't strictly turned on in the normal ritual of foreplay. Sensualist defs can't tolerate slobbering or pushy fucking...

Uncle Perhaps : Of course not! but then again we cant exactly say no to a rough random fuck in an alleyway...

A. Wicked : Well that's what makes Sensualism not really a fetish? It doesn't Always have to be one particular way to make sex exiting. I think its a different degree of sensuality in your alley situation

Uncle Perhaps : Exactly, as a Sensualist I'd get really bored if all I did was get the same incense filled, candlelit, silk sheet swaddled romp within candlelight every night ... that'd get annoying, But in saying that, pleasure with a rough random fuck in an alleyway somewhere is a degree of our senses being played with. I look at the senses and the body as almost an instrument; you can play classical music on it, or you could play rock depends on what the mood calls for.

Le Violon d’Ingres - Man Ray, 1924

A. Wicked : Exactly but wouldn't it be like the same as a fetish or OCD fucking if it had to be the same every time? I'm just saying with a sensualist sexual stimulation can come as readily from caress as it could from a knob wiggle...

Uncle Perhaps : I've always seen sex as being like playing on an instrument.

A. Wicked : Oh? Explain?

Uncle Perhaps : With music, different notes and tones create different emotions and sensations in the listener; the same can be said in regard to sex and sensuality except that you are playing the audience as instrument play it rough or soft, the bites, scratches, licks, rubs, caresses, touches, tastes are all different tones.

A. Wicked : It is like a dance but with tongues and lips and teeth. Or like a proper high tea where you can't always wear a t-shirt unless you are feeling super punk rock. Sensuality tastes a different flavor on every day. Sensuality is drinking up a heated debate or elegant poetry.

Uncle Perhaps : Speaking of, I don' have a poetry today but do you want to hear the lyrics o the new song?

A. Wicked : Sensualize me!

Uncle Perhaps :

You were standing neath the arms of the old oak tree.

Skin pale as milk, hair alive as fire.

You spoke softly 'how long will it be

to learn of a love. That will not tire?"

Sapphires rose to catch the sky as i took you by the hand.

Take this path by eastern star, tread across the land.

Find the one. The beggars son.

Hush now dear

hush now my love

slip on your fear

wear it like a glove.

your eyes are rivers

your veins are seas

why do you hold to dreams as these?

On camel back through ancient hill;

Crete, Thebes, Thessaly

All the dead turned away

at the golden sight of thee.

The vagabond along the way

held out his rotting palm

traded you a jewel for the price of a psalm.

And you went away....

far away.

To the land beyond the edge of a map, you found yourself alone.

Broken lost wanderer with skin against your bones.

Before you stood the beggars son, horns hidden by his mane. Alive as fire.

He asked no questions, he queried no reason

he already knew your name.

Leading with his crimson palm he took you by the hand,

and saw the past in those sapphires that held the broken land.

Then with a buried and lowered singsong voice he spoke without a tear...hush...hush

"hush now dear,

hush now my love.

slip off your fear

now free as a dove.

your eyes were rivers

your veins were seas

why have you departed

the dreams as these?'

***

And that my dearies is just a taste of the wide world of sensuality and an invitation to partake in the insurmountable joy that can come from its often simple employ.

Verticordia by Dante Rossetti

Sensuality seems to be increasingly a symbol of the devilry in our Society, a mini-reflection of the return of the Victorian thoughts, fears, and social Conservatism running rampant in our country today. Strange that sensuality gets such a name while all the worlds of people seem to be reveling in trash that only proves the Social Conservatives right about the Baseness of women and lower classes. Sensuality seems to lope hand-in hand down the road with Aestheticism, and the truest old-school ideals of what being an Artist of any genera is about. I think it is mortifying to some people to sense that there could be a pure enjoyment of the world around someone, a magic that has nothing to do with Biology, Tradition, Sex, or even Love as we know it.

In a strange way it seems to embody something alien or other, something that the frightened adult-children of our world cannot accept as they shiver in wait for the Future to consume us, or other Terrors to manifest in the form of people being free to make their own choices. I think the Fear that Sensualism evokes has much to do with the raw unknown of Pleasure in general, particularly in a world that has become about clashing people's Sexuality & Freak-Banners against 'Mainstream Society'. The Sexuality of the Baby-Boom generations Counter Culture has streamed into this strange distillation that somehow Sexuality is a Culture, and even further more that by flying your Freak Banner, you can be your own Counter Culture.

And yet to take PLEASURE in the world around you, savoring your moments, evokes a kind of darkness that we can't face. To take pleasure in your sexuality seems to be more of a sin because it in itself is no particular statement except that maybe you for a moment, dared to enjoy your life with all 5 senses.

Many Thanks to Uncle Perhaps, who also goes by the monikers :

ByronicTwist, Musician : https://www.facebook.com/ByronicTwist
Lysander Gray : Photographer, Poet, Painter : http://raptureofdecadence.blogspot.com/
& His Tumblr : http://byronictwist.tumblr.com/

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Wake Up and Face the Porn!

2011-06-16T09:25:00.000-04:00

Wake Up and Face the Porn!

a gentle nudge, by: Aunt Lumi

see the full trailer for the funny or die movie here

Causal arguments are dangerous and often rife with complication.
Lumi finds this to be true of life and of most of the research and discussion around the effects of porn. As always, the Kinsey rule applies: People have been doing, are doing, and always will be doing AND thinking far stranger things than we(society) considers the norm and those things no matter how frequently practiced or thought about, will rarely be discussed in public. The repression of sexuality and discussion of sex practices has been a heated debate FOREVER. Court statements like "seduced by cupidity" let you know that the accusations and fear spin cycle surrounding ANYTHING with sexual content is nothing new to the stage.

The reason our children need sex education for instance ? Many of use can't bare to discuss the basics of sexual organs and acts with our own children. And even god knows how hard it is to find materials actually MADE for children on the subject. Did lumi just put children in her introduction paragraph about porn? You betcha. Because it is time,to very early, get this crux out of the cane. There is no doubt about it, this Auntie is fully aware that sexually explicit materials should be kept for those who are old enough to understand their contents and mature enough to discuss any disturbances they may cause(watch out folks cause none of us may be mature enough for that it seems).

Porn is not for children, to be around children, or be exposed to children.
LET us be clear on that. The whipping cane of,
"BUT WHAT ABOUT THE CHILDREN" - need not apply here. People who neglect their children or abuse them by exposing them to traumatizing images or experiences are just bad people. They are however a type, and with or without porn people find ways to do the awful to children.

Now, the next bear trap is PORN IS BAD FOR WOMEN. Again, I warn the little auntlings to forever and always be suspicious of blanket arguments especially those covering entire races, genders, or sexualities. Statement with caveats are much more trustworthy and worth consideration. Porn, can be bad for women, in that it seems, to frequently represent a singularly masculine fantasy of feminine submission. Porn often portrays women experiencing things that are socially considered degrading and to which many women in my peer group would not consider even remotely a turn-on. Shocking though it is, neither Wicked or I prefer to have cum shot in our face. But then is the problem separating fantasy from reality?

If that is the problem porn can go onto the shelf with video games, rap music, and comic books. Many people, in many walks of life, with many interests, fall down a slippery slope of losing themselves into fantasy lands and not being able to separate it from truth. True, that ye larper is not going to go around smearing hyper fantasized versions of female submission onto the commuter club and so porn is of greater concern but then is it the fact that it's sexually explicit material that is the problem, or is it something else? Is it about the sort of perspective that is shown and how narrow minded the vision is? Then we are in bed with Cosmo and Glamor magazine. "The fantasy girl", the one type, the skinny, the blonde weave; all fantasies that many women are killing themselves to attain. Is there anything wrong with fantasy girl? Lumi argues definitively not . I don't want to ban blonde magazine women and girls, what I want is greater variety. So it seems then it would make sense that if the true problem with porn is the sexual point of view it is representing?

from The Paradime

If that is the case, then the solution is for a lot more about needing to make a lot more porn that represents a wider variety of sexual points of view. But wait? Why is it that the blonde girl of Cosmo and the boob job twins of porn are so prevalent? That is the scary and shocking part we don't want to examine. Cosmo shows us what we want to read and what we will buy. As does Porn. Porn is what we have ordered. Porn is the ,not so politically correct, truth about our innermost desires or, in some cases, even our fears. Before we even hope to make more types of porn, for everyone, from a wider scope; we need to make sure there is a wider scope. What if the problem is not porn is raising your children ? What if the problem is your children are being raised with terrible views about women, relationships, sex in general? Traditions that teach ideas like women need to submit their entire life for the sake of others/family/love are not a far cry from the woman who will bend over and take it in the ass. This is the symbolic and more well oiled version of the same philosophical clap trap we are STILL selling in our American values. Do not be sooo shocked that some women feel like its not any sort worse to work in porn or the sex industry than to take the average every day treatment of women in the rest of the world. In fact, they get paid for many things that we ladies put up with in our unpaid regular life relationships. But its different cause we do it for the amorphous LOVE right? Women are always allowed to do all kinds of insane things so long as it is for sacrifice and LOVE. We burn all sorts of women who dare say, "I am doing this for me."

Here are a few such women, this video actually inspired Lumi's entire blog so please take a few minutes to hear them out:

Remember, when we burn porn we burn a TON of women who people that field and without porn? I am sure we all imagine that they would all become nurses or something? The next terror cannon of wake up that lumi has for you is this: Some women do not want to be nurses. Some women would prefer a job in the sex industry. Many of them would go on to stripping or call-girling it or invent some new fantastic entrepreneurial scheme to cash in on the ancient idiom: sex sells. To rid yourselves of porn would only push the whole discussion farther underground. This porn all-up-in-your-face moment is an amazing time. To see, in extremely vivid moving color, the sexual mores of a people, played out is a phenomenal opportunity both to understand and appreciate them, and where needed update and cultivate them. Lumi also thinks it is also very interesting that men are left out of the conversations of woah about porn? Apparently we don't care that they are there? What does that say of our views on men? No one says oh POOR MEN they are being used in PORN? Perhaps its because of their physical sexual positioning and aura of dominance in the films?
Lumi is also guessing that if society wasn't so aghast at women and sex AT ALL that we wouldn't be wringing so many tears over women in the industry. For certain there are women and men that want to get out but that is true of any job and doubly so for many high risk jobs. If activists want to do something about porn, this auntie wishes they would focus on offering college/highschool classes to people in the sex industry, getting them insurances, working on health clinics, setting up programs that help sex industry workers continue to have positive relationships with family and or friends or most simply aiding in the campaign for safe sex porn. Else? we end up, this lumi feels, with more war on drugs stupidness. We attack drugs. People just make new onez like "Bath Salts" often so much worse than what we cracked down on in the first place. Porn is an outlet for alot of pent up thoughts, feelings, and desires. If we are concerned about what those thoughts feelings and desires are then we should examine the source rather than shooting the messenger.

As to extreme porn - like extreme music or games it will be there. Whether u can see it or not.
Here is a chart:

It's a bell curve(this link is not to the source of the graph because that site is full of worms!)
Everything, lumi has found, falls into it. That is when things are all well good and healthy.
Extreme porn is a voice. It is what some people think about, it is some people's view on sex, and some people want to see it. Those people would be represented on the left of the chart of NORMAL DISTRIBUTION, meaning to have this type of variance in anything, including sex, is NORMAL.
If you don't like extreme porn being around don't buy it or watch it. Be a part of fleshing out the middle norm of sexual desire or maybe you will pioneer the market for Puritan Porn, they are over there on the right of our bell curve of sexual fantasy desire.
We can make porn a much healthier representation of sexuality. We can work to ensure alternative employments are available. We can help with safety and security for those who dare to be employed acting out our sexual desires. All of this is possible but banning PORN? Its pure Houdini antics.

To scream about the online porn being the creator of patriarchal thoughts in sexuality is also so much a magic trick, and one serves to insult all of our intelligence. Men have been ass fucking and binding girls since long before even the Marquis De Sade. To bind, to conquer, or even to degrade a woman during sexual intercourse has long been a tradition. This fact doesn't make it right but it does in some way prove that our trouble with porn is not that its creating a culture but that it celebrates one that has been in existence for a long time. Furthermore nudey movies have been around for longer than u think...here is one from 1906.

You may think that oh well this wasn't PORN but many at the time felt it was even the creator Johann Schwarzer, according to Europa Film Treasures, warned that women and children should not see his films! Films from the same era and in the same style were policed and protested against, some even destroyed, by crusaders, who felt these movies were tearing at the moral fabric. Sounds suspiciously familiar.

I find "Verboten" very interesting because images of multiple women playing flirtatiously naked and skittering off with a seemingly angry but also playful man? Still controversial today and we worry so much over these new and dangerous ideas, when perhaps at least to Europe it's all the same old garter...or lack there of.

Edouard Manet 1878

I say all this having been a young woman who experienced ALOT of what one would call sexually degrading circumstances. Did i get myself into them? Most definitely. Did porn drive these menz views on sex and me?
Maybe it did...but to be sure they sought porn that validated their own thoughts and desires. If i could have changed something about that young woman facing the wild world of sex?
This Lumi thinks that, if she had seen the porns she would have prolly known what was going and had a better voice about it. Lumi also wished, that her mother had been empowered, by our society, to arm her fully for the realities of the sex experience of young liberated women. We are sexually liberated indeed but are we not still very Pollyanna about it? Everything is not my little pony sex nor has it ever been.

gotten from somewhere on facepunch.com

To understand and have confidence in your own sexual desires and voice, to be given permission to not to please someone when it conflicts with your own desires, these are the far greater weapon against and damage porn may be doing. And most amazingly, to empower women to find out what they DO LIKE and know it as ardently as men? Now that would be progress worth fighting for.

if you missed out on the Slut-Walk phenomenon u need to read this

And there you have it Auntlings, a blog about porn for you by your sparkling auntie Lumi. And now for the secret, before doing this blog, actually the inspiration for this blog was a conversation with Wicked in which Lumi was complaining about it and all it's ill effects on life. There is a wonderful thing about researching, ladies and gents, and that is, if you do it right, you never know what will come of it. Hee-hee COME of it;P

Let us know your thoughts and feelings on porn or anything about sex or anything else! We always want to hear from you and we are super easy to get in touch with!

like us on facebook and then friend lumi there

on tumblr

on myspace

or twitter

email us at: a_illumination@hotmail.com or the2aunties@gmail.com

And as always, Lumi's extras:
It is being said that men are learning about sex from porn and that ladies and gents is whose problem?
The first part of this article reprinted from 2007 says alot about the futility of fighting porn
rabbitwrite did a pretty incredible project on women and porn earlier this year - check it out!
we can't talk about women and sex and porn without giving a link to cosmo right?
excellent article on "porn for women"
his friend gave him a visit to a porn set
cameron diaz comment on porn
lady Gaga writes about what she knows - one of these things is porn
interesting thoughts on porn and violence in the media
how to stop looking at porn so much
the quirky queer quaker talks about porn
even oprah has some helpful information on women enjoying sexual media!
and Lumi even watched this documentary so it must be good!

Keep checking back very very soon Wicked will be wowing you with something loverly and introducing a new friend!

Lost Beauty Secrets : Sun In

2011-05-26T11:04:00.000-04:00

Sizzling in the sun with Sun-In
by yours truly: a. illumi

If you are even remotely a child of the eighties you prolly remember this:

If not...consider yourself now educated! Yes that is Sun-In!
A magical product whose function was to lighten your hair gradually while you played in the sun! And they still make it! And Lumi couldn't resist giving this new "Lost Beauty Secret" a try after having so much fun and success with Rollers!
Firstly, Sun-In gets points just for encouraging people to get outside and for making it possible to work on your roots while you play/run/walk the dog!
Now there are some horror comments around the internet about what is in the Sun-In:
JUST A TON OF CHEMICALS.
Lumi is here to let you know that it's almost entirely compromised of the,as far as i know, relatively harmless
hydrogen peroxide(H2O2):

My specific type of Sun-In was "Tropical Breeze" so it also contains:

aloe barbadensis leaf juice,you know ALOE!

chamomilla recutita(matricaria) interestingly chamomile is also said to have hair lightening properties!

calendula officinalis: flower extract More flower things!

linum usitissimim seed extract: that is long Latin for FLAX!

hydroxyethul cetyldimonium phosphate:like your conditioner in the shower!

dimethicone PEG-7 phosphate: okay that one is a straight up silicone based chemical but I am still going to say Sun-In is mostly harmless when used as directed.

glycerin: sugar alcohol!

quaternium-80: another silicone based conditioner, lumi is guessing the Sun-In people heard the complaints of shoppers who said that Sun-In was "drying" and hence the BUNCH of conditioners to go with your, no doubt, drying peroxide

Panthenol: pro-vitamin of B-5 more conditioning! Crazy names for conditioners like HUMECTANT! EMOLLIENT! but it all means conditioner/moisturizer

silk amino acids: moisturizers from silk!

polysorbate 20: makes things stay mixed together. It can also be a fragrance.Yeah for multi-tasking chemicals? Some say this one could be mildy dangerous so don't isolate it and then eat it,okay?

benzoic acid: preservative and anti-fungal...yes apparently our cosmetic products would grow things if not for preservatives...

disodium EDTA: CHELATING agent, which means it grabs hold of bad things that will mess up your product!

So,yes..okay. Sun-In has a few chemicals in it and yes indeedy there are 100% natural ways to lighten your hair; such as lemon juice, chamomile, honey(scroll down a little for the recipe), and even cinnamon(for brunettes)!

Lumi actually wants to try ALL OF THOSE buhhhht barring a trip to the grocery store and some time in the kitchen, Sun-In remains a pretty safe and fun way, especially for a very young person, to lighten their hair without too much hair dying fiasco!

Now on the Sun-In website(who may sue your Auntie Lumi for using their pictures)they show significant color changing results in two days!

Lumi is assuming that those girls stayed outside for about 8 hours a day. After considering the health risks of that in my uber hot almost-tropical home, this Auntie settled on thirty minutes to an hour straight in the hot hot sun(sunscreen of course included)!

So this is how i started out:

After spending three days in the sun for at least thirty minutes...

For the first few days, it seemed like the Sun-In wouldn't work on my actual natural hair color at the roots but with more careful attention to applying it directly to that area, the Sun-In did actually lighten this Auntie's roots, just enough to cancel out the need to redo my hair for another couple months!

My hair looked basically the same at day four but here is day 5!

Well, as you can see, this Auntie's hair got more goldeney/reddishey over the five days! I tried very hard to get a more streaked look for the lightening by applying the Sun-In, with my fingers, to specific chunks of hair but hydrogen peroxide is actually runnier than water and so it just spread and spread. I was told by a reliable source that spraying Sun-In on chunks and then going swimming, especially in a pool, seems to help the streaking process.

Not wanting to give up, your Lumi decided one more try was in order. The alternate instructions for activating Sun-In is to use a hairdryer! This time Lumi focused on just one chunk of hair in the front to see if the hair dryer method could get her at least one streak to go with her overall lightened effect. Sadly, it seems my color treated hair had reached its max potential lightening either that...or it is truefax that lumi HATES hair dryers and thus didn't stay under it for long enough!

Nevermind though! The final result was a nice overall lightening of my brown hair to a more subtley goldeny-reddey brown.

The process was alot of fun, as I HAD to go outside every day for at least thirty minutes, which has really gotten this Auntie in the mood for Summer!

Now, if only Wicked and I could figure out the wide world of bathing suits!

We Aunties hope you are all getting ready for a great Summer and have somehow figured out bathing suits! If you have, tell us your secrets, because these ladies have yet to find ONE that doesn't ride up, or down, or squeeze, or well you know! As always, thank you for reading with us and we would love to hear from you on facebook and you can friend lumi there too!

Everyone should also be following our tumblr(and making one too) because it is full of interesting things!

Check back with us soon - it seems Lumi and Wicked will be feeling out something very red,white, and blue!

Lumi's extras:

a hair gel with lighteners!

hair lightening

more to try!

baking soda to lighten hair!

with plain hydrogen peroxide

for hair lightening with rhubarb!

pre-made chamomile tea hair lightening product!

this hair lightener comes from BUNS OF MAUI!(and claims to have no peroxides!)

why our skin darkens and our hair lightens in the sun!

sephora's beauty and the blog says add VODKA to that lemon juice for hair lightening!

john frieda's lightener claims to keep the peroxide from running so much!

The Gaga Question

2011-05-10T09:11:00.000-04:00

- answered by yours truly, Wicked and Lumi

art by marleen weijman found at vector net!

It had to happen, as eventually all things will be discussed by the Aunties and with the Judas video release last week, the new album about to drop, and Mike Rooth's work on the gaga-esque Hadron Colliderscope comic, "Poker Face Oddity", these aunties could no longer postpone the Gaga Question or questions as the case maybe(nothing is singular with the Gaga).
sort of like rainbow rhinos:

art by etienne delessert found at 7 impossible things

or a farting unicorn:

the arts of miss katherine gray

But back to the point(s).
To start a fresh discussion of Gaga, Lumi ,ever the go-getter, sent Wicked up some links to what seem to be the most important Gaga-ish things. In previous discussions, Lumi and Wicked have never really been able to talk the Gaga; as Lumi was ill behaved and Wicked was defensive.

Fortunately this night everyone was very well hydrated and had taken their multi-vitamins. So ready for a big girl talk! While watching the videos, the Aunties got to nitty-gritty of miss top titty.

Here's the almost unadulterated transcript of how the talk went down:

Lumi: I think we should start with the sad mashup of her talking in the black outfit...before this video and since the end of the sort of the "Telephone" and "Bad Romance"(which this auntie loved) moments.. I have possibly been
too hard on her(hides massive pile of Gaga in the media critiques). Anybody can have a bad Vanity fair moment right? And when you listen to her...

Lumi: well Wicked, I am not saying that you are right just yet, cause we have an argument to have but i think that video is a pretty powerful, uhmm point in her favor.
Wicked: Oh, Because you she MEANS it all?
Lumi: I am not conceding to that yet!
Wicked: LOL
Lumi: okay let's started with the argument part now. Let's begin from Gaga as she is RIGHT NOW!

What is going on with gaga right now?

Wicked: Want to start with your talk points?
(in addition to VIDEO homework - lumi also sent wicked a list of talking point questions SUCHAH teacher's pet!)
Lumi: Yes let's use those! Okay...as of the release of
"Born this Way" and "Judas" off the new album
the big question still seems to be, Is Lady Gaga good?
Wicked you tackle this one first as you are her defense!
Wicked: Gaga being good is a very complex thing. Gaga has a great voice, and tons of Charisma(that's capital "c" charisma kids the only higher level is with a "k" charisma and these aunties have yet to even see it outside of a laboratory setting).

If,say I, sat Lady Gaga in the pantheon of Grace Jones, Beth Ditto, or the like, you might say Gaga is not the most incredibly talented girl on the earth.
Lumi: It is a complex question, in that, we have to really separate several issues when we are talking about most major pop divas!
Wicked: Yeah, Gaga has a beautiful voice, its strong, but its not perfect, and In comparison to Xtina, who over does every little thing, or Britney who's still singing like a 14 year old Karaoke star...Well compared to that Gaga is incredible.
Lumi: She's is "incredible" is an important statement, I think. Because the Gaga may not be good but she is defs incredible - indefinably. One might say, "that girl is something else"
Wicked: And when you think about it, do we love Bowie for his perfect voice?

found at Askmen.com

Lumi: Well I think that is a very valid point. How many male pop stars really have to have perfect voices? People often make fun of those men whose voices are too perfecty. And Don't even get started on the voices in rock? I suppose what upset me recently about gaga is also very complex and really about the bar she set for herself?and something about how when you are a woman who becomes famous the DELUGE of images people will make of u creates a whole 'nother voice, one that may even easily overcome that of the musical one.

Wicked: Well I think fame is a nasty subject not everyone can handle it, we know this.
Lumi: And she does say as much herself
Wicked: Not even someone like Hunter S. Thomson could handle it.

found at travisjensen

Lumi: I guess then I wonder, Is the Gaga handling it? Like,
If you or I was to be first encountering the Gaga right now, like our first experience with her was "Born this Way" or "Judas":
and had no other media uhmm barf about in our heads
what do you think our response would be?
Wicked: I'm not sure, mostly because I avoided Gaga like the plague when people talked about her alot. The more they talked, the more I would avoid her.
Lumi: LMAO, you and your fear of lemmings
Wicked: So I pretty much ended up missing her until I relented one day when youtube gave me the "Beautiful, Dirty, Rich" video.
And honestly I was impressed, with all the kind of fail hipster 80's shit I was seeing, I was impressed that she was getting this very 80's pop diva going, studio 54, coke, disco.

Lumi: Don't worry i was pulling the video as you were typing
it def is/was a refreshing contrast to bummer hipster music and emo.
Wicked: I watched a few, and said to myself...
"She's def not some vapid horror that bores me, and I haven't loved pop since the 80's practically because its so bubblegum and just completely unappealing to me as a person." And not to be too blunt but I love pop a little slutty and rock infested.
Lumi: Well i think pop has been more than a little slutty for quite while now, but Gaga is certainly is bringing a taste of the rock though.
Wicked: So to the whole point of whether she would be interesting if we found her just now: I can't say for sure, but I would probably be interested in Gaga on the basis of what she's done recently. Its fun and dirty and her idealism about the Monsters is really sweet.
Bad Romance however, is what made me fall for her for realz.
Chicks just don't talk about this sort of all too common relationship scenario in an empowered way.
Lumi: Speaking of the Little Monsters, What do you make of the whole monster cult thing and how she speaks of it? And also yes "Bad Romance" and "Telephone" went beyond anything I have seen or experienced in pop music since being a child of the eighties. The empowerment of both songs was a big thing as was watching a young woman really do the damn thing and own them.
Wicked: Well, I think the Monsters thing is not really of any concern at all to me? Its not only the show of her educated approach to self promotion (by people who don't feel the belong a 'place' by being her fan) But also serves the purpose of her, possibly being a person who genuinely felt rejected by the world, reaching out to all others who do too, and it blings my strings, because I'm somebody who spends alot of time trying to do the same thing.

from amanda_riot

Lumi: I suppose the hardest thing about lady gaga is that... she doesn't always make sense! I think it is a very modern expectation for our rock-stars or pop stars to make a lot of linear sense. She said her self she lives, 'half in reality and half in fantasy.' I think the thing with lady gaga, when i like her actually, is when she is making us very uncomfortable.
I worry over her when she is pandering but then maybe the pandering is the act, I am not sure
Wicked: Well isn't it a worry about who she is pandering too?
And how far into the fantasy she is. But lets face it, she spent her life being a Drama-Kid, one of those New York arty people who only half live in reality anyway.

Lumi: In that Judas performance she reminded of that man uhmm the singer from The Who.
Wicked: Rodger Daltry?
Lumi: I think so? is that insane? from specifically the Who's "Tommy"

from Little Angel Dance on tumblr

Wicked: Well I know the fall of our most rocking girls is always hard to watch. We always stand in fear hat this could def be the Who's Tommy over and over where she begins to believe she is the Messiah and goes down that path.
Lumi: I don't know if we know how to deal with a woman who is a rock-star! We live in a world where, "Yes!", you do have to be the pop diva queen and the only way to really hold that is to do this but then again she may possibly be insane or on yet another pinkie finger might be, is this a SHOW of crazy?
Wicked: Well lets face it...the bigger fear then falling like Ziggy Stardust, is that she becomes a pathetic figure like most Pop Divas dying the death of someone fucking irrelevant and 50 humping a boom box.

found at Miss Q's blog

Lumi: yes? see? I think i fell for her hard as "my new rock-star diva", with "Bad Romance", and "Telephone",
and then came "Alejandro", and i began to worry.
Not that Madonna didn't go through the big relig-io phase
but then where did her phases and her buying into her own thing ultimately lead her? I am afraid of that and I am afraid of her becoming...what i think of as the "cookie cutter of weird girl"? a la' Tori Amos y P.J Harvey etc...
Wicked: Well I was worried because "Alejandro" felt too forced
Lumi: yes!
Wicked: She wasn't having fun or organized.
Lumi: See? the fun! It really is important to me that the women with the keys to the musical world at least try to have fun.
Wicked: She seemed tired and purposeful and knowing the meaning of it I think I can see it, but you really want to help the gays and the aunties stay on board, so please do it covered in glitter. Mostly, "Alejandro" mad me want to go wherever she was, pick her up, and, feed her sammiches and tell her to sleep in.
Lumi: She really does need some rest and kibble cause uhhh
when i see this girl just uhmm maybe just five years ago? Not long anyway...

I'm more than a little concerned. Like of course, money makes for nice packaging and costumes and who wouldn't? do it all!
but I miss this awkward stoner in her tough?
Wicked: Well if Bowie can have flipped through projects and personas like the world was made of tissues then its entirely possible for Gaga to have many personas
Lumi: Let us pray that it shall be so, possibly we can skip the middle man and pray straight to Gaga now that she is some kind of
anti-saint in the church of monster!
Wicked: I wouldn't be sad to see her assassinate Gaga and start over again all new...after a nice looong vacation, with poolboys
Lumi: Okay enough redesigning and fantasizing the Gaga's escape and eventual comeback, for now...lets shift gears though specifically speaking her music? Does the actual music itself move you?
Wicked: Well "Bad Romance" was on a loop to be for ages, mostly because it spoke to me in my personal experiences.
Lumi: I have moved to "Poker Face" but yes! It is nice to hear some songs like "Bad Romance", that really reflect the Un-Disney nature most of us experience in our rocky road of relationships.
Wicked: It was right on. Her lyricism is very beat-poety, it reminds me of someone who's feasted on the granddaddy's of counter culture.
As for Telephone I think it was a real gayboy/independent party girl anthem, but not as much for the lyrics, but because her choice of beats is, occasionally incredible. The mix of sounds in that song really makes me bop in a way that I haven't since eighties Madonna.
Lumi: It really is the whole combo of beats, funky club tunes, sometime provocative lyrics, and the images she uses to back it up that make Gaga, at the very least, impossible to ignore.
And when she gets it, when she OWNS the song like "Bad Romance", its like all the girls have to stop what they are doing and run to dance in the nearest bathroom! Or now cry....I find this newest album, so far, to be much sadder? Which might seem odd cause of all the murder in the last one

found at Gotcha Glass?

Wicked: I think she is sadder tho.
Lumi: I agree
Wicked: But I don't think its BAD that she's sadder, I think its interesting, and very genuine. I was very sad when I'd finally gotten everything I wanted. The demons that drove me to the place... hadn't gone away and there was lots of feeling massively alone, on top of my little mountain of success. The worst part is when you kick ass you mostly kick ass with the energy of 'showing them' or being angry. When that ANGER is gone all you have left is sad. And some people don't react well to that, it seems pitiful, but Sad is a very appropriate response for being the Queen of the World. It will eventually teach her that life isn't about beating or showing, or being angry, maybe she will discover some new energy for herself in the process.
I mean it took me till I was much older than her, but maybe its just a part of the journey.
Lumi: I hope so, the so-sad scares me. I, unlike many others, as she said, on the anderson cooper interview...do not want to see her or any other female stars go down in a flame of Ophelia. Whew. TOO SAD...let's go to another question!
In your wildest favorite story of lady gaga later - what is she making?
Wicked: Mhmm..Gaga is faux-crucified in front of an audience of millions
Lumi: OMG! Crucified, of course! Sinead o' Connor should be invited to help! It could be her redemption.
Wicked: Stephanie takes all her monies and buys a large island in the Atlantic, on top of an old volcano, and turns the Monsters into a real army.

no credit for this picture because this person's website
tried to give lumi's computer a virus

Wicked:
and after a long vacation with lots of pool boys
brings her sharp style to the world reborn as a benevolent dictator
Lumi: And she could come back with like a industrial-grindey Rhythm Nation type thing!
Wicked: and become the true Queen of Pop. No humping anything,
just being fabulous for all the land to know!
Lumi: She will re-emerge, reborn even, as the true Queen.
Wicked: Who's message of get along, be nice to people, and "You have someone, don't be sad", will help all of us go on.
Also more selfishly there will be a line of fashion Gaga headbands
with horns, lace, ears, etc and I will very pleased.
Lumi: Please lady gaga, with all your knowledges and monies
do invent headbands that don't hurt and have fabulous things on them! The motto can be, "Fits just like Sunglasses", which will make perfect sense to all women who can happily wear sunglasses on their head but for whom headbands cause an insta-migraine.
I also want her to continue to gracefully exit and come back with something new and appropriate for many years to come. And
well I want US all in the future to be able to adore women,including gaga, without divorcing them entirely from humanity and so ends
my idealistic tirade for the night.

found at the bottom of a pretty poem

And also the end of this blog-sation of somewhat dueling Aunties, on the ever morphing topic of Lady Gaga. Please do send us your thoughts on the diva and keep checking back because our next blog is such a a surprise that we don't even know what it is yet!
In the meantime, tumble with us!

We all have Hair : Lumi explores Hair Removal!

2011-04-28T09:04:00.000-04:00

Hair? Not a problem.

seriously: Auntie Lumi

the supplies

Tweezers, Nair, Nads, Sally Henson, Razors - this stuff is everywhere and yet? So many of us, gals and guys go around pretending that we are 100% naturally hairless as...dolphins.

The mere thought of tweezing ,waxing, or hold-your-nose nair-ing, makes for nervous twitching amongst many of us! You might even go so far as to say that we are all embarrased!

picture form kat doodles!

For instance, lumi works in a drugstore, where we sell all the afore mentioned hair removal products and employees even get a discount on them. Yet? You will not see any of the women buy so much as a razor in front of each other! Why?
Well Lumi thinks it's because, we, most of us chicas, would like to perpetuate the myth that we are the one girl with natural dolphin legs, underarms, and certainly never an errant hair or hairs anywhere. Now, there are many official academic writings, magazine articles, and blogs around about WHY is this idea of hairlessness! Sometimes, this lumi finds help in such sources...In this case? Not so much. Most sources named the reasons as us all being just very very vain and how close minded society is and the satan media and blah blah. In times like these, lumi decides to throw out the books and think of something herself...
Now if Lumi wanted to get very theoretical ...she would think that, we could say the desire to be more hairless comes from an earnest urge to place more tracks between us and our neanderthal begininngs.
The equation:

< hairy = more apey : >hairy = more dolphiney

seems to apply. We all, after all, secretly do want to be dolphins and lumi is not going to argue with that.

Then there is the fact that various hair removals have been used for like ever?
So, though our methods and perhaps particular fashioning of our hair removals may be effected by the onslaught of landing strip pubic hair magazines and things...the fact is, that hair removal is possibly as old as cave people and for certainly many 15th century ladies even plucked their hairlines!

from a blog about the fabulous thing lumi wants

loreal's 100,000 years of beauty!

Yup, it's really true! Long before television and tabloids were dangerously apparently TELLING US ALL WHAT TOD DO AND WHO TO BE AND JUST UTTERLY RUINING US(lumi has words for the women who are blaming everything magazines but that is a blog for another day). Back to this blog though, yes they were indeed even PLUCKING THEIR SCALP HAIR TO MAKE FOR A HIGHER FOREHEAD...Why? because a high forehead was associated with royalty and a big brain and who doesn't want to look like they have a royally big brain! Dolphins also have big brains, just saying;P
All this historical grounding is by way of hoping that everyone out there will be a little less utterly shamed and or FREAKED by HAIR that is not on the head!
This girl goes a long way to make hair removal from the face the simple and silly and fun process it can be:

Personally for Lumi? removing hairs is actually some kind of
tai-chi jitsu. I sit before my giant bathroom mirror, on my counter,(where this auntie can often be found anyway!) and often to musical accompaniment, just playfully pluck out everything that is un-dolphiney. Of course, just by writing this article, its possible? that wicked and I risk losing points in the "woman status race" but - well it seems even kim kardashian admits to her hair removal so - well Lumi refuses to be afraid of anything Kim Kardashian isn't....

“I am Armenian, so of course I am obsessed with laser hair removal! Arms, bikini, legs, underarms…my entire body is hairless.” - thank you justjared for covering this!

Besides? We are pretty sure this blog is read by at least 50% our ex boyfriends so? Well we are guessing they already figured out that we have to pluck the face the chin the chest the everything...IS it because we were eating disorder girls? Is it because we may have polycystic whatever? Are we just naturally packing more testosterone? Is it because we are of something in our ancestral family tree?

Who knows? Maybe all at once!
The reason really doesn't matter! What DOES matter is to change how we view it and make it like all things in lumi's world of woman: a CHOICE. Some women like to exfoliate and mask and paint nails (lumi pom-poms for that) and many women choose to tweeze and wax and all these things. Lumi has a dream that one day women can just out and say,"going to tweeze my facial, be back in a few" and it be no bigger a deal than going to paint my nails. Lumi really has no idea why this was ever a source of shame for her or anyone else?
But she is totally over it...and is happy to report that she has decided being body hair unashamed has resulted in self permission to purchase many different beautiful tweezers and hair removal celebration tools. For women who don't want to remove your hair? Please don't! The world needs less women who are doing stuff they don't want to because of shame and pressure....Lumi stumbled across this video and was amazed by the joyous clarity of the girl there:

And as you for you utterly hairless girls don't be sad! We are going to put out dolls that have hairs so you to can participate in our hair celebration and then you too can make the CHOICE about what, how, and if any hair removal will be done!
And finally,Yours truly, yes indeedy ms. lumi ,in the fleshy photos, doing one of her many bathroom routines!
Tweezing makes me make myspace face! LOL

And showing just-how-fine-i-think-it-is to remove hair finale - oh yes the happy trail:

So kiss the dolphins and or the bears and call this blog done. This Lumi hopes that sharing out stories of hair stuff helps gain us one step closer to our really big goal, to try and take over the world! No, no not really...not yet! But our real goal of expanding and understanding and upsiding taboos and no-talk-abouts from all the far reaches of this planet. You can help us do this! Do you have any crazy hair removal stories? Have you been living ashamed about it? Do you prefer not to hair remove? anything and everything hair related comment us/mails us! We love to hear what everyone has to say!
email us at: the2aunties@gmail.com or lumi at a_illumination@hotmail.com
tumble with us facebook like us friend lumi on facebook myspace twitter

Lumi's extras:
man scaping
more on men and their hair choices
one cool ladies hair talk
women complaining about body hair on fb
an interesting thought piece on hair removal
good discussion on hair removal
julia roberts hairy armpit moment of 2007
middle east and asia hair removal

Wicked's Quests, or How a "Goth" Chick learned to be tan.

2011-04-19T13:17:00.000-04:00

Hello world! This is your fiendish Auntie Wicked reporting in for a small talk on Skin. Anyone who has been following this blog since the wee-days knows the story of my skin, however, I'm going to start over again so that the newbs can catch up.

My name is Auntie Wicked, and I grew up in the sunshine. When I was a very young lady I would get brown and gold, never ruddy like the other children. When I was about 11 and started to go through puberty, I started to have troubles with my skin. I was ruddy, the sun started to give me horrible rashes, and I got two shades of translucent pale. My eyelids where a pale purple hue without makeup, and my skin, save a few pimples, was generally flawless without even the faintest touch of foundation.

Drama was the first place I learned to put on makeup, and at the time not even the lightest-hue of foundation matched the pallor of my skin (despite my being a fairly outdoorsy kind of kid) I always looked like I was wearing a darker mask. So when my musical and literary tastes ended up sliding me toward this 'subculture' called "Goth", (whatever that means) I finally ended up finding white-pale foundations that perfectly matched my skin, although half the time there was little-to no need for anything but a finishing powder. I felt very accepted by this until a time make in this Goth Place that you could only be one under certain rules, such as hair needing to be black, and makeup having to be clown-white.

Time passed, and my skin didn't change much. I found another girl at college that finally had about the same shade of skin as I did, and always borrowed her makeup. (Thank you Illumination!).

One day, Your fair Auntie Wicked hit the dreaded age of thirty. I'd finally run out of the marvelous Shiseido and Stila foundations (and the Korres wild-rose face creams.) In my adventures, I found that powder would no longer hide the strange uneven ruddiness that was now permanent in my face. Even worse, when I bought my typically super pale make-up, it was grainy, weather it was liquid, powder, mineral, or cream. I cried, I screamed, I complained, and finally, like any good scholar, I researched.

Google told me the most horrifying thing I'd ever heard in my life. My skin had probably darkened, and that is why my makeup seemed strange and grainy. Even worse, my skin texture had changed, and needed to change up from a wash-tone-moisturize when I felt like it to "ex-foliation" and fruit acids? I ignored it at first, despite the fact that the self-portraits where telling me the same tale (and partly because ex-foliating and fruit acids burnt the shit out of my skin when I tried it in my 20's). I bought theatrical makeup to take myself back to a shade of skin that was comfortable. In the Southern Summer my skin rebelled under heavy oily makeup, and ruddy breakouts ensued.

For a long time, I gave up completely, and began wandering around in sweat-pants, no makeup, obsessively taking self-portraits to examine what had happened to my pretty perfect skin.

Perhaps partly because for a time I could not afford all the lovely expensive items that where recommended to me by every other blogieatrix, I moved down to nothing but SPF 30 (after learning that those in excess of 70 and with 'anti-aging' had nasty hormones that might be contributing to my skin issues, to be discussed later.), and occasional mascara. I still can't afford any kind of expensive skin-stuff (which I think all people should get some kind of yearly grant to get expensive face creams, weather they help or not, they are the most lovely luxuriant thing one can do for oneself).

However it started me on a journey to accept the New Auntie Wicked, and swallow that something that had created a subcultural identity could carry me into my next phase.

Last summer I took my niece to the swimming Pool once a week. Public Pools tend to be hard on the skin, and before I could say 'wide brimmed hat' I had the most lovely golden-tan I'd seen on myself since childhood. I had not a rash, nor a breakout, my one time of slight burning healed quickly, and left me with a healthy glow. Now I'm going to say here, I wasn't rubbing myself with tan oil, nor did I cease using my SPF like a good girl, what I am saying is that I found myself embracing a whole new skin, with shock, awe, and trepidation.

As winter approached, I found my skin uneven again, and going through foundations like snotty-rags. Medium is too dark, Light is too light, even a mix of the two doesn't get rid of the darkened spots at my mouth, or balance out the dark circles under my eyes (which no longer look hot vampire chick, more... minimum-wage zombie granny). One day, I was eyeballing a thing of self-tanner that Boi's mom had given him to remedy the farmer's tan he was developing (I resisted making him tan till he looked like Capitan Jack Sparrow, unfortunately) and on a whim decided to try it.

Now I rubbed the YUMMY smelling stuff into my skin with no small amount of crippling self-doubt. I called myself a sell out, and wondered if I wasn't being true to myself, I wondered what my Goth people would think, me rubbing self-tanner on.

Then something marvelous happened! I looked at an lovely even skin tone. The odd dark spot at the corner of my mouth was gone, and I looked like a White-Ashkasha with a faint shimmery gold glow. I'd had a Snooky-nightmare about being one of the orange people, and yet, that isn't at all what happened.

I muse all the time about what this means. Did I stop loving Horror Movies or Visiting Graveyards? Did Halloween stop being my favorite Holiday? Do I still read Annabell Lee to myself on cold windy days? Do I still love black as my favooorate neutral? The answer to all these things is YES.

I was never much accepted in general by the Club Kids or Internet Goths, and I don't expect this Call to be Yourself will win me very many points with them (rant on conformity and its place in subculture forthcoming). However I am going to encourage EVERY last one of you to do the same.

If you are super pale, you be happy with that, if you are dark-skinned, you too can be a Vampire-Wannabe. Be what you are, and don't let pressure to conform to some idiot stereotype keep you from looking your best, or accepting just exactly who you are.

As for your Auntie Wicked, she has her glow on right now, and refuses to be ashamed of it.

the2aunties@gmail.com

Color Crush: Hot Pink

2011-04-11T09:04:00.000-04:00

lumi has a color crush...BUT WHAT COLOR IS IT? learning the HUGE world of hot pink by lumi

It came upon the 8 o'clock hour, while this Auntie was at work, of all places. Suddenly and like-totally, a bottle full of memories! Lumi held the bottle and read it's name, Sinful Colors "24/7 ." Staring into its almost entirely matte core, lumi thought of so many things: jem, wham, uptown julie brown, the fresh prince, lisa frank, twisted sister,debbie gibson, slap bracelets, and glow rings. This was going to be the best nail polish ever! And what better way to celebrate the best nails polish than with the best pictures and a commemorative blog celebrating the color? Oh hot pink how I love thee, kind of blog...To that aim and right after work, this auntie ran home to check a bit on google to find everyone pictures of this magnificent nail polish! But infuriating picture after infuriating picture , showed some dull imitation of the hot pink that was now gracing this auntie's nails. Okay, well actually, this one came close but lumi wondered if it wasn't possible to do better to show more of the hot pink?
This first led Lumi to research HOT PINK itself. And let me tells you ladies and fellas...your idea, my idea, his and her idea of what HOT PINK is? Well chances are, they are all different!
Hot pink is defined by wordnik simply as "a bright vibrant pink color" and this seems to be the acceptable definition everywhere! Just look at and love all the colors considered under the undulating umbrella of hot pink:
the historical "shocking pink"

internet specific hotpink(nospaces on purpose)

check out magenta and fuchsia that are said to be synonymous with each and hot pink!

and cerise

Before lumi's head spun off, she realized that this pink, the pink of her 24/7 Sinful Colors nails, and the pink of her dreams was not indeed HOT PINK, per say. Maybe that's why Aunt Linda always called in PAHNK? And PAHNK it is.Sometimes also lovingly referred to as "blindingly" But technically speaking it seems this pink is NEON PINK or Fluorescent Pink. Now, finally, lumi was really getting somewhere.
And now it was time to hit the books and figure out how color really works!
Sort of..because, well after reading endless reams of very boring things, Lumi found a cartoon that said it all in fifty seconds rather than 250 pages:

And what is it about these particular pinks that makes it so dyingly difficult to find a picture of them? Well here you go: It seems neon colors absorb more uhmm parts of the light and then give it it back at a higher rate than we are used to...in other words - they actually do DAY GLOW. You also NEED to know that when the electrons in the neon color take in all that light, they are called excited electrons! Oh yeah! Of course neon colors come from excited electrons! And very like lumi and wicked, these electrons get very excited and take on ALOT and then get so full they have to blow it all out and then back to empty! And anyone who has ever taken pictures of anything that has its own light source ,like neon signs or the sun, knows that it is no easy task to capture the thing that you see on your film or screen! I followed some hints by those who have written extensively about sunsets and neon signs AND used Auntie Wicked's suggestion of using a blue or green backgrounds: this makes perfect sense because neon colors actually suck in blue light and emit red! OMG!
So here is one of the shots from going out EARLY IN THE MORNING AND USING BLUE BACKGROUND and changing the "white balance setting to fluorescent : notice how what looks bright and orangey to lumi in person sill turns so bluey purpley...

Lumi actually took HUNDREDS of pictures and MANY were pretty pictures but not one really
showed the uhmm inner glowey orangery warning hazard fluorescence of her nails! Perhaps it is true that love is not to be photographed? Here is a collection of the best of 342 attempt at capturing the glory of fluorescent pink:

After days spent getting the headache from staring at the screen and getting nothing Lumi came upon a blog about sinful colors 24/7. The brilliant lady over there said, "This color is so hot my camera didn't want to focus on it" this all made sense with what Lumi had just so recently learned about fluorescence and their glowing and made her think this might be a camera issue...and partly? it is. There is alot of stuff about % of gray card, and RBG, JPG, RAW that technically perfectionist photographers gab about...and this time it MAY MAY be true that without different equipment capturing this true color is actually impossible. Lumi doesn't completely give to that though, being a little more of the ansel adams, lay in a ditch, and "wait for it", school of photography! There are also those that say, 'just get a picture and then photoshop it to look like what you saw', and while Lumi agrees that photoshop can create great works of art, she draws the line at them being used as some sort of journalistic reporting of what was seen. This may be purely a snobbish photography purist delusion but for the time being lumi is sticking to it.
Enough of that, so here we are and STILL, this auntie feels she hasn't captured the true essence of hot pink which is just...an AMAZING physical sensation. And according to these peeps, a psychological one too! Do yourself a HUGE favor and get something hot pink into your life - starting with sinful color 24/7!! And please, if you get an great pics of fluorescent pink send them our way! Or any fluorescent pink anything really! Lumi has decided it may very well be her calling to archive colors in person, since it seems accuracy cannot as yet be displayed fully with our current imaging technology!! The fact that we can't yet is very interesting considering that it seems fluorescent dye technology itself seems to have been blooming in world war II and began to be used long before that in the medical and scientific worlds. GAH! We have Android phones but still the caveman printers and cameras...please children go into technology!
Thankfully, this year you may get super lucky and see some really fluorescent pinks in person, as totally unbeknownst to lumi at the time of incepting this blog, the Spring 2011 runways went poodles over pink!

Pink Tartan's spring pink:

One of Lumi's favorite singrestresses Marina will apparently be sporting the pink of many names during the Max Factor campaign:

Armani Spring fluorescent pink:

Christoper Kane:

jil sander also incorporated hot pink

as well as many others!
Lumi is glad that the whole family of vibrant pinks are in th air this year and will be keeping a particular look out for that near and dear to her heart day-glow fluorescent jem eat your heart out pink. If you or anyone you know finds some - take a picture or better yet send it to us! In the meantime lumi is thinking fluorescent paint? Oh yes...

Please be the first to comment on the blog since our move to blogger!
And then check us out everywhere:
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email us those pics: the2aunties@gmail.com or a_illumination@hotmail.com

Lumi extras:
Fun fact: Fluorescent colors were added to the crayola library in 1972!
For the historical info on "shocking pink" and its baby momma and her beautiful clothes
the pink posse in india sports on of the hot pink variants while they do their superhero work
Did you even know there was such a thing as pink diamonds??
lady explains colors in a great accent
guys helpful video about neon lights and the colors they emit
what neon color are you quiz(not for the shy of pop teen culture)

Top Internets of This Time

2011-04-04T01:25:00.000-04:00

Every Day Life Tutorials Educational Link #1 deals with internet lessons on daily challenges, or what I would call "grown up skillz". For one reason or another, not all of our fine ladies and gentlemen in the land are taught all the skills you will need outside your house. This has lessons on how to read a Subway Map, how do Job Applications, Counting Change, and Paying Your Bills. Don't be ashamed if you can't do it, bookmark this and pass it on!

MIT Open Course Material Speaking of Education, this is the most awesome old thing ever. MIT offers access to all their courses through Open Course-Ware. Basically, although its not accredited, nor can you get your degree, you have open access to MIT classes, and that is freekin' awesome.

Female 'gladiator' remains found in Herefordshire File this under favorite news of 2010, they found what they describe as a "Massive Muscular Woman" buried in an elaborate coffin.

Beauty Secrets of Ancient Egypt Illumination will like this, its an article on the how, why, and what of Egyptian Makeup. Apparently makeup was for Rich and Poor, Man and Woman alike, and it served not only beauty purposes, but Magic, and Practical!

Bereaved Animals Grieve While studying Primates, Science has discovered that if they have the time (if they're lifestyle allows for it) that they will grieve the death of one of their own.

Michelangelo's Last Judgment figures 'based on male prostitutes'. An Italian Art Historian explores the Homosexual themes in the Last Judgement.

Giant Rabbit Fossil Found Nuralagus rex was found on an Island off of Spain, EPIC BUNNY!

<3 Your Kindly Young Aunties

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Flawed Beauty : Liz Taylor and Modern Feminism

2011-03-28T01:03:00.000-04:00

We are the liberal Internet. We RT, sign, share articles about Tea-Party Madness, homophobia, and Feminism. We shout for all that follow us that the world should be more equal, and that we are the forefront of that. But let me tell you something Internet, you have proven in the wake of Liz Taylor's demise that all our progress was nothing more than surface simpering, and I am SO disappointed.

"I don't pretend to be an ordinary housewife." Elizabeth Taylor

Elizabeth Taylor as an activist was the very form of what someone should want to be. She supported Gay friends through times when anyone knowing they where homosexual would have ruined their lives. She was what we should all strive to be, a straight woman who supported her friends in any way that she could, protecting the secrets they wanted to keep, and being a shoulder to cry on.

This is the reason she is a Gay Icon more than her physical beauty. She had sense of style, and what my friend would call Moxie. She opened her mouth, she drank, she fought. When she struggled we saw it clear as day. She survived a childhood in Hollywood that could be best described as the "Asylum" where children (and adults) where given uppers to work, to keep trim, downers to control mania and get to sleep, and all working 16 hour days plus. Most people who survived the studio years continued with these bad habits, and it killed most of them far before their time.

Elizabeth Taylor survived her Tragedies, which where too many to describe in one page, and often seemed to be too much for one person to handle, all in front of lights and a microscope.

When she died, we saw none of this being talked about, even amongst ourselves. There where snide comments about her breakdowns, marriages, and substance problems, or inversely she was sanctified purely for her beauty, while secretly being slapped with the left hand for DARING to loose it.

Even Jerry Saltz the Art Critic wrote a side-ways article about Andy Warhol's Portraits of Elizabeth Taylor and used words like "Gaudy", "Campy", and "Flawed Beauty". I can't possibly understand entirely what he meant, but I can agree that Liz Taylor was the icon of something different than the norm, just left of center.

Jerry Saltz on Andy Warhol’s Portraits of Liz

Here we are in the modern world, the world of the Internet. We talk feminism and alternatives to marriage, we tell girls that they can have different lives than their mothers if they so choose to craft them, we tell them they can be whatever they are... and yet here we stand in the dawn of the 21st century making an extraordinary woman's life about how many time's she's been married, not only that but using it as an excuse to invalidate the entirety of her life.

Never mind all she's done kids, lets focus on the fact that she betrayed us by getting old and fat (because we know one is only valid forever thin and young), or was married eight times (OMG aren't you just supposed to be married once?). This isn't so much about Liz but about our ignorance about how very little we've changed as a people. It proves how many take up liberal talk as a form of speech but how very many lack it in actions and real support. I think its time for all of us to be a little more mindful of what we stick up for, and make sure not to let faux-hipster jaded smarmy talk reveal us for the shallow talkers we are.

Ever,

Your Auntie Wicked

8 Lessons Millennial Women can learn from Elizabeth Taylor

Excerpt from Diana Cary’s piece on the good old days before child labor legislation from Old Hollywood's Tumblr

Drug Related deaths of "Notable" People.

Harvey Weinstein: Elizabeth Taylor Was AIDS' Greatest Fighter

En Philosophia: Boys of Our Lives, or The Philosophizers We've Loved.

2011-03-12T00:07:00.000-05:00

These are the Boys of Our lives:

time travel edition: Philosophers

: extracted from lengthy hilarious talks between Wicked and Lumi

Well hello thar! We are sure you are all wondering, "Why has it been sooo long since the Aunties made a new blog?". It really hasn't been sooo long but Internet time moves REALLY fast, so it FEELS like it's been a long time since we posted. That and you just can't get enough of reading the Sanctuary, excuse me, now known as The Aunties!

You see,Wicked got all spring cleaning and moved our site and changed the name! So if you're looking for "Auntie Wicked's Sanctuary", you are here, and now it's called the Aunties and we are living on Blogger! The name was change was made to be all egalitarian about our work on the thing, which is good but the most important thing is that it's MUCH MUCH shorter to type out than "Auntie Wicked's Sanctuary"! Actually, by Lumi's calculation: a whole twelve key strokes less!! Now, it will be all the easier to share the name of our blog with your friends!

Today's new blog, is a trip back into the fantabulous fictional world of Wicked and Lumi, one first introduced in: "The Ghost in the Grounds" and continued in, "A Holiday Story". Today's blog ALSO marks the second blog in the series, "These are the boys of our lives", though this entry is MOSTLY fictional where the last one was oh so terribly 100% true!

Our concept came from a brilliant statement from Wicked, the Aunties were fussing about philosophers and she said, "All philosophers are ex-boyfriends!" They so are aren't they?

During the next hour the Aunties slayed all manner of ivory tower thinkers making Marx, "that anarchist boyfriend you had with who always wore the military surplus and patches" and Heidegger a big S&M kinky king. The list went on and on. We thought about putting them ALL here but figured we better just give you two now and save some for later: like little squirrels we aunties are, always holding some tasty bits back just in case of a cold harsh winter of brain freeze! So without further shameless self promotion, we present the aunties and their philosopher ex-boyfriends: Mr. Karle Jung and Albert Camus:

A long time ago, we will not say HOW long, there where two stunning young Aunties. One bestowed glitter and loved popular music, as well as her minty lip gloss. The other was more of a Mad Scientist but with wicked (huh huhuhuh) fashion-sense. Both had active minds despite their feminineness (shocking right?). In short, despite being color coordinated, they both had a burning passion to know what stuff was all about. An opportunity to do JUST that came one rainy day, when Auntie Wicked came upon IT. "It" was barely more than twisted wreckage, but with Wicked's keen eye and killer mind she deduced quite quickly that this was no boring "it". This "IT" was a the tangled wreckage of a TIME MACHINE!

Assuming, that the driver wouldn't be interested in it...Was that a collar bone over there? Wicked decided to rebuild this once" It" and future time machine, herself.

And rebuild it she did! With, of course, her own special touch! It seems the original creator had overlooked some of her favorite and most versatile materials: broken computers, mod-podge, old mattresses, vacuum tubes, some spray paint, and felt cogs. When all the materials were affixed, Wicked handed Lumi her very own birthday balloon and instructed Lumi on the wonders of static electricity.

The two Aunties rubbed the balloons furiously on their heads and scuffled their feet on woolen blankets until they could feel the static electricity just waiting to pop out! Each placed one finger (E.T. style) onto the exterior of the creation and VOILA! An impressive burst of very attractive blue sparks, and wahhlahh, the Time Machine became a fully functioning unit. Eager to see inside, Lumi flung open the doors and remarked, "Looks like some modern art installation but I like it anyway!"

As Lumi spoke, she disappeared inside the structure. Wicked mumbled, "Looks like 'Dr. Who' Lumi, it looks like "Dr. Who!" Lumi responded sounding now like she was in the bottom of a well, "Does 'Dr. Who', look like a phone booth?" Wicked took a deep breath and gathered her strength to face her Creation, and the lecture on Science-Fiction television she was going to give Lumi. When she did make it to the center of the machine, she found Lumi running from one side to the other. "Its SO MUCH bigger on the INSIDE! How do you do that?" Lumi squeaked while flopping on the couch made of old mattress and patch-worked slip covers.

"Elementary My Dear Illumi!", Wicked quipped, pleased with herself.

"No Silly! That was the Halloween Blog!" Together they sat and painted their nails in honor of the new project and after a short silence (between Madonna Remixes) Lumi suddenly asked,
"What does it do?" And stared with the biggest eyes humanly possible, hoping that Wicked wouldn't hit her. Then Wicked did that thing where she stared off a minute, and took some more of those deep deep breaths, her eyes making that 'jaguar' thing that they do when she gets impatient with Illumi.

"Its the GIRDIS! Girls In Relative Dimension(s) In Space. You see Aunt illumination... "

She always used Illumi's full name when she was about to launch into one of her looooong explanations. Illumi tried to put her listening face on, but Wicked's words started to fly around, big and spacey. She started to look around for her pom-pom topped pen, as she suddenly realized she should be taking notes. Two hours later, she woke with a sudden start, having passed out from not caring about Wicked's "Science talk". Covering all her bases, she scribbled a picture of a bunny eating pie, hoping Wicked would accept this as proof of "listening" and definitely not sleeping. About this time, Lumi actually did HEAR some words and they sounded pretty interesting...

"Long Story Short... Its a TIME MACHINE! Or rather, a Time/Space/Dimensional Travel Mechanism."

Aunt illumination tried not to stare blankly, and reinstated her listening face, nodding slowly, pom-pom pen fluffing on her cheek. Earnestly her brow furrowed and she asked,

"What are we going to do with it?"

"Well, um?" said Wicked, stuffing a cookie into her mouth. "Travel in time and Space?" Crumbs fell on her chin.

" Oh! Ok! That sounds neet!", Lumi chirped and ran over to the GIANT BLUE LEVER AND began excitedly tugging on it. As she pulled and prodded is she twittered, "Wicked, what's this one doooo?" Wicked, suddenly roused from the spell of her cookie, mumbled "Just don't touch the blue one!" With a giant whompf and a little "ooopppss", heard from Lumi amid the noise, the GIRDIS Jumped like a bucking chicken into the unknown. The ships whirled and whomped sending loose bits and open nail polish tumbling across the ply-wood floor. Things whirred and beeps went BEEP BEEP, while Wicked said some things that would not be repeated to posterity (but Lumi kept in case one day Wicked gets famous and she can sell the transcripts on ebay!).

"This was not part of the plan" Lumi screamed!

To which wicked replied, "Remind me after this is over, to explain to you how to avoid not having a plan ..." Wicked's wise words were interrupted by...a large electric shock blasting from one of wicked's many half-broken computers that made up the controls of the GIRDIS.

The wild colors fixed on a blue vortex formed and sucked the GIRDIS right through glittery interior. "Hold onto yer butt Illumi!" Shouted Wicked as she finally got ahold of the pirate-ship steering wheel (which presumably steered the thing, but it could also just have been there to look cool.) The window panels rattled a little, and things ZOOMED by, warped like a mirage in the desert.

Pink cloud nebulae and white pinpoints of distant stars floated by, questionably. Suddenly the GIRDIS started spinning. "I'm going to barf!" Illumi screamed. The door to the Machine flapped open, and Aunt Illumination got sucked out into the blue whirling ether. "OMG I DON'T HAVE A HAIRBRUSH!", her words echoed back. With absolutely no fanfare, everything went black. Even as she fell Lumi thought, "Well at least black goes with everything."

Lovely lush black it stayed, which Lumi thought meant that, she was unfortunately dead, and still WITH NO HAIRBRUSH, and that death was an incredibly dark and cold experience. Just as she was beginning to question whether you can have an existential crisis once you are dead, a smoky French voice whispered in her ear, "I hope this wasn't a philosophical suicide but then that too would be absurdly beautiful wouldn't it..." his words ran through her muddled mind, and she sat up very excited, "Did you just call me absurdly beautiful? WOW! that's the best compliment this Auntie has ever gotten!"

Lumi beamed her 500 Led light smile which slowly dimmed, as she realized, she remembered those words "absurd" and "suicide" from somewhere. "Oh no, you are a philosopher!" she huffed and stood up quickly. The man puffed on his cigarette and smartly replied, "Well, now THAT is the best compliment I have ever recieved." The coin finally processed in the soda machine of Lumi's mind and out popped the full soda can:

" Death. Absurd. that ciagrette. Oh my god,Your Albert Camus! Oh no, I am in Algeria? Yuck. Wait, no! ... Does that mean? I must be dead! cause your dead! Where are we?"

Mr. Camus rubbed his temples and pulled out a flask, a gesture Lumi had come to think of as men's way of showing they were listening to her. Camus offered Lumi her hand and her asked her if she had ever read any of his books, but Lumi didn't hear because she had just realized they were walking down a street. This was a city. There were lights. "Where are we?"

Lumi demanded and realized she had been holding the hardboiled philosophers hand for some time now. He winked, all Gene Kelly, and asked,"Does it matter? Does any of it matter?" Lumi then remembered why she doesn't' hold hands with philosophers. Camus then took her up to a building with many, many, many stairs.

Lumi made a mental note to make a post-it about wearing more practical shoes for time travel in the future. That's right, THIS IS time travel...I am not dead. And I am in a big city and this is Camus...OMG WE ARE IN NEW YORK! While Lumi is talking to herself, they arrive in Albert's little room. One benefit, of being on an accidental date with a philosopher, thought Lumi, is you can talk to yourself and they think nothing of it. She then thought, you should prolly not call people by their last name unless they play football and asks, "Should I call you Albert then?", the philosopher only stared deeply into her eyes. Lumi was undeterred and continued, "Oh-kay then, I will call you Albert or Albie! How about Albie?"

Still without any answers, Lumi continued, "Why have you brought me here Albie?" He ignores her talk and sets to pouring scotch. While he does his french film thing, Lumi thought, I will scan the room and see if... "Ah Hah!", a newspaper...its 1946!

Oh wow - oh my god! 1946, how exciting! I wonder what kind of stuff is here! As, Lumi began to poke around in stuff that was not hers, it reminded her of the joy of poking through Wicked's belongings, and she began to worry. However, having aced her Lady Gaga test, she remembered to hold her Poker Face. When Albie was finally done brooding over the pouring alcohol scene, he motioned for Lumi to sit on a ratty couch. I wonder she thought, when do philosophers first recieve their ratty couches?

Lumi thought many things about philosophers in her time, as Camus began to mumble on and on about the contradictions of rebellion and solidarity, his mother, and Algeria. He seemed to just be getting started (OH NO!), so without any hesitation, Lumi decided the time had come to employ Plan 43B. Which she wished she could remember by heart, but instead had to reach deep into the pockets of her skirt to look for it.

After much, totally unsuspicious, rumpling around her pockets, Lumi found a twisted roll of post it marked "Drink Me". Oh Wicked, you are such a funny devil, thought Lumi and she proceeded to unroll the post it and read it's contents:

Plan 43 B

In situations where a man is trying to kill you by
"running-his-mouth-incessantly- about-depressing-pseudo-smart things"
and he is otherwise attractive and of interest, the best practice policy is
to cover the mouth with something. There are many acceptable methods of
mouth covering and the choice of the covering must be dictated by each
individual situation. However, it is of absolute importance that the mouth
covering be completed before twenty continuous minutes of theoretical
rambling has transpired. The agency cannot gaurantee the efficacy of any
mouth covering after such a time, as the listener may in fact spontaneously
die in order to escape the absurdity and horror of this current human condition.

Lumi looked all around the sparse room and tried to think of what Wicked could possibly mean by, "mouth coverings" and how MUCH she missed her hairbrush, when out of nowhere, a ticking clock made itself apparent. Tick tick.

Oh no! The Twenty MINUTES!

He has probably been talking for at least 19! Now he was name dropping his OWN books and all the philosophers whom he, of course, had read and was beginning to minutely deconstruct their arguments to, of course, further his own. By this time, the clock's tickings were like pounding in Lumi's ears. She could only hear the last three words of any of his sentences. Desperate/metaphysical/man. Momma/Sartre/Existentialism, and finally the tell tale sign of death-by-philosopher, she heard the ENTIRE last sentence: " I don't like to think of myself as a philosopher..."

At that, Lumi knew her life was going to end at any moment for lack of a proper mouth covering and thought she may as well kiss this blathering hard boiled french man.

So "power-life-suck" kiss him she did, and mid-way through, realized
he was no longer talking in intricately laced circles. That he was occupying his mouth with more immediate concerns. Lumi beamed at herself, Yeah mouth covering! ,except she began to realize that her mouth as mouth-covering was not going to last forever so she began to feel around for something else to cover dear Albie's mouth. Couch cushion? No too big. Old Sock? too filthy. When she finally groped up to the wall it budged. Lumi knew enough about Scooby-Doo to realize, a wall -that-budges is a door to somehwere!

Maybe through this door there would be no more talk of rats and plague victims (that made her hanker for Poe's Masque of the Red Death) but left her instead with logical equations. So up she leapt, switching hand for lips on Albie's mouth, then bounce flipped (all Matrix style) right through the secret wall-door. Through about two feet of dark she walked blindly, damming herself for opening the door of the time machine and forgetting her hairbrush and for ever having read Camus because if she hadn't...well it all wouldn't have seemed so boring to hear again...

When much to her wondering eyes did appear...Wicked's face and 8 tiny
reindeer? No, no Wicked's face at the end of the midget hallway. And THOSE things... were definitely not reindeer.

Apparently, Camus had not been kidding about the rats. Screaming half with joy of seeing her dear Wicked again, and the other half over rats (who hold so much symbology that they just explode all puss and infection with it).

The situation was bad, Lumi decided. The only way she could get to Wicked fast enough, (ideally before Camus or his rats decided to keep her fairy prisoner of the corridor of poo poo) was to dump out the entire bottle of Jojoba Oil that Wicked had snugged away in her pockets. Some time earlier, Wicked had explained the amazing health and beauty benefits of the oil and Lumi was not listening. ( Wicked knew the best way to get Lumi to try anything new was to put it out somewhere, as Lumi's curiosity was the only stronger thing than her boredom.)

So for weeks, all sorts and shapes and sizes of Jojoba oil had been appearing on counters and in cars and thankfully, most recently, in her tulip skirt's saggy pockets. Lumi seized the plastic bottle and held it up up for Wicked to see, mouthing " I am going to dump it and slide" Wicked shook her head and marked "No!" with her finger. Lumi mouthed, "This is no time for an argument about waste!!" Wicked scowled at her and looked away which indicated permission-with-disapproval (one of Lumi's favorite Wicked Gesturisms.)

So now, completely forgetting Camus and the rats, Lumi joyously poured Jojoba Oils all over the midget hallway. With just a little belly flop, she was sliding down the corridor through the
rats and all their existential puss and finally, fully moisturized, landing right in the middle of the GIRDIS. (or rather right in the middle of Wicked's lap which happened, to conveniently, be residing on the GIRDIS.)

Lumi smiled and cocked her head, "Hu huhuh wicked, I tried that oil you have been telling me about, it works great!" Wicked sloughed Lumi off into the floor, which was covered in fluffy unicorn pillows and muttered, "Also has anti-fungal properties and I knew you would like it if you just tried it" She sighed, smiled, and took her place back at the might-be steering wheel and assumed a course, ostensibly, for home. After three hours of rolling around on the floor and laughing Lumi finally looked up and said, "Wicked where DID YOU END UP? and where did all these unicorns come from?"

"Well, That's an interesting story..." She leaned back as if going to sleep...

Out of the darkness, Wicked smelled something sterile and white (she could tell it was white because being asleep in a white room made wicked feel crazier than normal). This was not one of her nap spots on the GIRDIS, her bed, or her keyboard. One eye cracked as the soft
droning of a man's voice filled the background. It was some guy with an accent going on and on about his mother. Apparently she was distant and heard voices.

"You say that like you're the only one, HA!"

She said, sitting straight up. Mumbles turned around in his chair to reveal a moustached face, interesting eyes, tidy appearance. It smelled like a doctor's office. What was she doing here.

"Velcome to ze Burghölzli young lady... I'm Dr. Karle Jung..."

Wicked huffed, she could have done without the Arte Johnson accent, and had no real idea what a Burghölzli was. It sounded like a pastry, but smelled nothing like it. The faint smell of leather and books canceled out the horror of the white-smell. She looked around the room, as he'd begun to talk again.

"For you see State is taking ze plaze of Got..."

She looked around, a picture in a frame of Dr. Karle and a dude with a pointy van-dyke, Me & Freud, Best Friends Forever, with a heart scribble. A small one of a Lady and some Kids, wife maybe? She wiggled her toes in her shoes.

"Eets all a the process of individuation you see, You must meet ze self and ze DIVINE! You are transforming the impure soul to pure, like.... "

Wicked stared as he stammered. "Like how the Alchemists turned Lead into Gold?"

He just stared at her blankly, that kind of look a dude gives you when he thinks you are totally way off, but is too polite to tell you flatly. "Your vagina makes you wrong". Karle started to talk again.

While the doctor-like man continued to explain impurity and the vast importance of archetypes as well as the terrors of his witch mother; Wicked had a very very good idea! "Hey, how about we draw some pictures?" she blurted. Karle, (who Wicked wasn't even sure was all 100% Karle at this time) just the same looked surprised but interested. Wicked took out her red leather moleskin and showed the weird doctor her latest drawings and dream memoirs.

"Zis is everything I have been working on my dear!" the doctor shouted at Auntie Wicked, which she had begun to understand was men's way of saying she was right. Thinking she had hit on something that would make this situation more amusing, Wicked took out her pastels and ink pens and gave them to the might-be-mad-man and encouraged him to write and draw in her red book.

He hesitated,"What will I draw, what will I write about?" he asked. Wicked, very happy to have somehow have turned the tables in the conversation, answered kindly, "Write about anything. Draw it all. Write...Write about your dreams! Your visions! Draw the things you see but don't talk about!"

Mr. Jung shuddered for a minute and stared deeply into her eyes and almost asked her who she was, but decided better of it. For hours, the funny man drew all over the book, rolled, and raved on and on about the visions he had. Wicked, bored of watching the crazy man journal suggested a guided mediation. "But first..." she said, "I must know your name!" The man hesitated and pushed up his glasses, "Carl Jung", he said "Is that with a C or a K ?" Wicked snarked. Again, the man looked at her like he might just really suspect the real truth of how she came but instead, shook it off as more wacky dreams for the Red Book. Wicked spoke again, "We are in ...a bubble, any color you like, there are animals, and Gods, and walkways..." The once just-crazy man, now named, "Karle Jung", squeezed his eyes hard like a Lost Boy trying to imagine the Peter Pan feast.

The meditation continued and soon Mr. Jung was doing his fair share of guiding the vision. In fact, he was now walking up the walls, so high on metaphors, he was. Even Wicked, practically high priestess of metaphor, was a little abashed. The mediation was coming to a climax, he was sweating and talking rapidly, "...and then...Then Thousands of Unicorns rain from the sky and we snuggle... and look Freud...he is watching." At this point, Wicked hit her mental, "too weird even for me" button in her mind because when she OPENED her eyes...there they were indeed swimming in a sea of stuffed unicorns snuggling. The snuggling wasn't so bad, but there was a skinny dark figure - Freud watching them! "Uhmm Karle, honey..." she began but looking in to his wild peyote looking eyes, she decided that reasoning with him on this was out. Tugging a gel-pen and tiny black journal from the pile of unicorns, she channeling her best "Fear and Loathing" survival skills, she assessed the situation.

Inventory

-1,000 stuffed unicorns

- 1 potentially high philosopher

- 1 voyeur with creepy van-dyke

Problems:

- No GIRIDIS

- Lumi AWOL

- Jung just introduced me to the voyeur/creepy dude as "my girlfriend".

Solution:

Reduce the weird in this situation, attempt to restore some sort of normalcy.

Method:

Pack up every damn one of these unicorns and walk right out the front door.

As Karle and Freud stared deeply into each others eyes and did bizarre mirroring and shadow box routines, Wicked busily loaded unicorns into Jung's spare linens. He had ALOT of spare sheets, Wicked amused herself by concluding that this was due to his no-doubt-about-it chronic bed wetting. When each unicorn i.e. beacon of weirdness and magic, was packed away in the sheets..Wicked put her hands resolutely on her hips and said in her best screen siren husky voice, "Well boys, it's been a blast but me and the unicorns have a date with destiny...err at least." It should have been a really dramatic exit but it took about half and hour with all the dragging giant knotted make-shift bags of stuffed unicorns into the street. It didn't matter anyway, Karle and Freud were taking turns "putting each other on the coach" so they didn't really notice the lack of pizazz in her final scene. When she and the last bag of unicorns stepped outside the drizzly doorway, the sky turned a now what Wicked would soon call, "a hopeful shade of blue." Then everything went black. When she woke up, BRUISED, of course, gah! She felt exhilarated by all she had experienced in the wild depths of Karle's office and wanted to write it all down and draw the pictures of all she had seen. "Wait a minute, what the fuck?" she yelled as she looked all around her. There were the thousand unicorns and thankfully all her body parts but something terribly precious was missing. Her journal! "My moleskine, NOOOOOOO!" she screamed. "Why is my ex -boyfriends always end up with my Art! Dammit! That bastard better give me credit for the first half" she continued to rage. Until when thinking, about journals, she remembered Lumi rummaging through hers and set immediately to activating the homing signal that she snugged in Lumi's skirt pockets.

"Wow Wicked! I thnk your story is better! No fair! Do over!" gigled Lumi. "Both of our stories are good and now we have to get home our blog is wayyy overdue and you know just how disappointed our readers will be if we fail!" Wicked Nodded, "Yeah your right. However, I do know what we are doing next Blogcation!" trailed a high squeky voice behind the the phone booth/collage looking GIRDIS. A blue vortex enveloped two aunties, 1,000 unicorns..."WAIT WAIT I found my hairbrush WICKED!" Illumi shouted happily over the noise of nothingness..."Lumi please be quiet the narrator is doing our ending" Wicked smiled. "Oh oh right okay" Lumi nodded seriously and looked up, "Go ahead, do it now! You were saying the blue vortex enveloped..."

Hrrmmm ermmm...yehs thank you...The Blue Vortex did envelop the two aunties, 1,0000 unicorns, and one found hairbrush. And thankfully the Aunties Wicked and Lumi reappeared back home in time to participate in their nightly ritual of powering up their laptops to chat online while in the same room - which they never ever ceased to find amusing. Especially, on this night, when they could they could tell and retell the tale of when they philosophers were there ex-boyfriends!

*Hey you have any crazy ex-boyfriends or girlfriends to tell a story about? Do you have a time machine? Tell us about it!

We are everywhere!

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email: the2aunties@gmail.com

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thank you all for reading and look out because lumi has a color crush and she will be back shortly to tell you about it!

Link-Blog

2011-03-06T23:30:00.000-05:00

Bat's Have Regional Accents The telegraph UK reports that bats have been found to develop different "dialects" or regional calls.

Medieval Work Reveals Jesus's G. Grandmother MSNBC reveals that studies of Medieval transcripts show that St. Ismeria is Mother Mary's Grandmother.

The Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence While I'm on a religion page, I 'd like to remind you to check out the Sisters. The San-Fran branch says best what the Sisters are all about, “We are an order of 21st Century nuns dedicated to the promulgation of universal joy and the expiation of stigmatic guilt. Our ministry is one of public manifestation and habitual perpetration. No more guilt!” They raise money for the needy, teach safe sex, support human rights, and courage diversity, just to quote some of their high-ideals. And they look fabu doing it.

Tattoos from the Blue A wordy but worth it article on people who've been branded with marks after being struck by lightning !

The Mythology Behind Harry Potter For non-history nerds, a nice article on some of the Myths and Legends behind the books. (The Moer you know!)

The Ultimate Life After College Guide This is a website devoted to tips and stories of how to survive the aftermath of college. Because lets face it, graduate or not, the academic world can't always prep you for what to do with yourself, with subjects like "Your Degree Means Squat", and "Moving Back Home" It addresses the reality of what being a grown up is like in this day and age.

Trinny and Susannah reveal 12 Womens Bodytypes And Finally, I've posted this before, but I have more of you paying attention now. Let me Introduce Trinny and Susannah, of What Not to Wear UK. They are two very straightforward women who should be REQUIRED study of every woman. There's so much horrid self-esteem in the world, and so very little way to combat it. They aim to give women the tools to find their outer beauty, and insist that there is no such thing as flaws that can't be masked, dressed, or fixed with the right hair and outfits. Embrace your Shape and Dress it beautifully!

Thanks to a friend we are boiling Straws!

2011-02-21T23:21:00.000-05:00

Lumi Does It: Boil Bracelets?

Yes, Yes I can.
never say never!,
by a.ilumi with photos by LUMI-SOn!

About three months ago an old friend of Lumi's
sent her a crazy e-mail! It said,

"I don't know if you knew this or not, but If you take colorful plastic straws and put them in a huge pot of boiling water you can make bracelets. They harden and look really cool... If you try it and they come out right, then you can put them on the Auntie Wicked page, if you want... that seems like the kinda thing you guys put on there."

From that moment on, Lumi has been searching for information on the practice of BOILING BRACELETS and found almost NOTHING! Finally, she found this about boiling toothbrushes! Well? If you can boil a toothbrush, certainly you can boil a straw, right? Also, note to people who actually did follow the link, Lumi certainly DID NOT wrap her arms in paper towels for any part of this process! But if you feel like you would enjoy wrapping your arms in paper towels? You just go right ahead and send us pictures if you do! Thankfully, the friend/informant for this blog topic, Mrs. Dyan, had warned me about the possibility of straws failing because as she said, "maybe straws aren't made like they used to be" WHICH MADE LUMI WONDER , "What straw would be more like and OLD straw?" Well it turns out straws are usually made of polypropylene .

Lumi is not sure she read ALL of that correctly but it seems one would need VERY hot water, beyond boiling? to make these new straws get melt-ish and by that time you would prolly end up with a mess! The FIRST time Lumi did this experiment, she did indeed try these new straws and NOTHING HAPPENED:

I boiled those suckers for like an hour!!

So, the question remained...what would be an old straw? Well a really old straw would be like horsey straw but in this case Lumi thought of "crazy straws", which actually IS the technical term for straws like these:

These straws seem to be made out of a DIFFERENT plastic! Something more like Polyvinyl Chloride ,which I think has a lower melting point which would make all of this make good very scientific sense! Yehs! Science! Big Words! Safety Glasses and aprons! Yeah! The crazy straws scored at the grocery store and fully investigated on the internet, Lumi snagged Lumi -son, and we were ready to

DO THIS THING!

Actually as mentioned , Lumi ended up doing this thing TWICE! Because the first time a combo of my dying camera and bad lighting led to pictures that looked TERRIBLE and didn't tell much of the very fun story of making bracelets from straws and toothbrushes! So a byproduct of this experiment? Lumi learned she needed a new camera! The first experiment also taught Lumi, that any modern-like rubbery toothbrushes never hold a shape even if you do get to the point you can bend them(which may never happen)! So remember SWIRLY straws and brittle old-school toothbrushes only!

LIKE THESE:

It also helps to have:(materials)

- Some kind of work gloves: that water is hot(but neither Lumi or Lumi-son were able to keep them on WHILE shaping the slightly cooled straw) On the toothbrushes though you will need them!

- Needle nose pliers: for shaping bracelets and pulling out toothbrush bristles

- Tweezer: also for shaping and pulling out bristles

Once you have your materials together, everything else is actually really easy and FAST!!

Boil some water and keep it boiling. Then drop in one swirly straw, in about thirty seconds it will look like this:

You have about thirty seconds to shape the bracelet before it cools too much!

If it gets too brittle and you are just not done perfecting your design, don't worry! You can hold the bracelet form back in the water to get it soft again! This seems to work about three times before the straw just becomes hardened for good! The most difficult part of the bracelet making is actually figuring out how to do the closure? The straws do not get hot enough to really melt the ends together! Perhaps a well placed grill type lighter would be appropriate? My helper, being eight years old, I decided not to try the torch the ends method at this time! I actually twisted the ends around and around until the length I didn't need came off or got thin enough to snip with a scissors. Most of the time this created a seal and a neat twisty bottom of the bracelet.

Here's finished bracelet number one!

This is one of those projects where you really appreciate the process! There is this WOW moment! Lumi felt like a real science girl with the tongs - OH I FORGOT TONGS IN THE LIST OF THINGS TO HAVE! Yehs, tongs and boiling water and things changing form from solid to semi-solid...kind of exciting science stuff and then out pops a bracelet!

All science should culminate in bracelets!

Here's the before and after!

So Lumi did a bunch more straw bracelets and Lumi-son did some bracelets and we had a BLAST...

until we ran out of straws! But thankfully, we also had TOOTHBRUSHES TO EXPLORE:

So same story, you drop the toothbrushes into boil. These take about one minute. You will KNOW for sure when you pull them out and they HANG!

The big difference is when these babies come out, you have to ,and this is the part Lumi found the MOST fun part both times...You have to yank out the bristles with a tweezers or pliers and or your hands!

check it out:

The tweezers work great:

After all the bristles are out these toothbrushes go back in the boiling water(yes you do keep it boiling all this time - you may need to add extra water!)

Then you get to pull them out and bend them into bracelet shapes!

You need to hold the toothbrush bracelets in the shape that you want them for about a full minute, maybe a sketch longer! Until they are really cool! Cool like our photograph, who's subject has been sitting there making wolverine claws with straws (and will just perish, if lumi doesn't include some of our posing with straws in this blog).

The Brilliant photographer Lumi-son/wolverine:

and here is one of "way too many" that Lumi took of herself posing with straws:

And finally - all our creations at once - including the ones i had to snatch back from the photographer!

So cute! Now you have something to do with all those toothbrushes Wicked has been telling you to throw away. Lumi also thinks ALOT could be done with these and would love to see anyone's pics! WE will blog them! What other crazy things are people making bracelets out of? Oh ,and as Lumi mentioned, this idea actually came from a friend(thanks again, Dyan!) who read the blog and thought this might be the kind of thing we would do! And yehs it was! We love getting ideas because then half of the work is done! So if you have ideas for blogs send them! Comment them! Send a carrier pigeon! Anything. We love ideas!

You can find us in ALL THESE PLACES:

The Aunties on facebook

The Aunties on twitter

The Aunties want you to ask them questions on formspring

Yehs, the Aunties are on myspace

The Aunties especially love and also live on tumblr

Thank you as alway,s and check back all you lady lovers! Wicked and Lumi are going to blog on two ladies we admire very much ...you will never guess in a million years who they are!