The Cheese Grates It: My Lack Of Beauty Does Not Give You the Right to Treat Me Like Crap

Seen in the photo at the end of the post:

Miss Piggy's doppelganger, one morning after work.
The knee jerk reaction from many people will be to say to me "oh no, Cie, you don't look like Miss Piggy!"
But I do. And there's nothing wrong with that.
If I refer to myself as "fat," there will be people who will immediately tell me "oh, you're not really that fat."
But I am. And there's nothing wrong with that.
There will be people who will tell me "it doesn't matter. Confidence is sexy!"
But I'm not confident. And I'm not sexy. And there's nothing wrong with that.
If I refer to myself as old, there will be people who will say "but you're not that old!"
Well, I may not be "that" old. But I'm not young either. And there's nothing wrong with being old.
It took me a long time to get to the point where I could truly feel that it was okay to not be what society considers pretty. It took me a long time to be able to say "fuck this shit" to constantly trying to starve my body to a place it doesn't want to be. It took me a long time to be able to say, no, you do not have a fucking right to insult me or anyone else just because you deem us unattractive.
I may not be everybody's cup of tea. I may not be anybody's cup of tea. But that does not give anyone the right to be an asshole about it.
I am not in love with myself by any means. But I have gotten to the point where I respect myself enough that I won't allow anyone to bully or belittle me.
I don't take a lot of "selfies." There are a lot of things I'd rather take pictures of than my face. But this is my face, such as it is. It is on my body, such as it is. You don't have to think either one is beautiful. But you do have to treat the person who owns them with common decency.
You don't have to find anyone attractive. But if you think it's okay to hate on people and broadcast your hate, you have a lot more problems than I do, and I have quite a few.
~The Cheese Hath Grated It~

The Cheese Grates It: Inappropriate Fan Behavior: Dumping Problems On Your Faves

I wanted to talk first about those folks who come to Jared Padalecki and spill their guts to him. Jared is the actor who plays Sam Winchester on Supernatural. He lives with depression, and he created the Always Keep Fighting organization in order to help bring awareness to mental health issues and end the stigma on people who live with them.
 These folks who tell their sad stories to Jared come in two classes. Some of them mean well but are very desperate and don’t have very good social skills. They tell Jared how much the AKF campaign means to them and tell him an awful and depressing story. This is inappropriate on their part, but they aren’t trying to be bad.
It makes me sad when I read things about how “pathetic” these people are, because I used to be one of those people. I still have the tendency when I get really depressed and am having high suicide ideation. I just try to confine it to dark and miserable posts rather than spilling it out on someone like Jared.
I would never go to a convention or meet and greet and try to tell the person or people I was meeting my life story at this juncture. I did send a brief bio to Jared for one of those mass emails for his birthday or such. I kept the gory details about my previous self-harm, which did leave scars, or my fight against my tendency to self-harm out of it. Reading such things would only make him feel sad and helpless. It wouldn’t do any good.
There is another class of people who want to spill their guts to anyone who will listen. These people are walking wounded too, but they aren’t the sort of sad souls I mention above who are simply desperate to be cared about but are severely socially impaired.
This class of people are sociopaths. The focus isn’t on their feelings of connection with someone like Jared. Their focus is literally “look at me!”
I’m not saying these people aren’t damaged. They are. However, they do not feel emotion in the same way a person who is not a sociopath does. A sociopath does not feel empathy. When a sociopath says they love someone, what they mean is that they are obsessed with that person. In truth, the person means no more to them than any other possession.
These people are good at pulling the “poor me” card to get attention. Where the first class of people would be saddened to have hurt Jared, the second class of people wouldn’t care that they did, so long as they get the attention they seek.
I dealt with such a person during the past two years. This person attacked me by going to various Tumblrs and leaving nasty replies to threads I’d commented on regarding things I’d written on my own Tumblr. It took a while to figure out that all the attacks were coming from the same individual using several sock puppet accounts, but when I did, I was not surprised at who was behind the curtain.
The reason for these attacks was because this individual, whom we’ll call Victoria, felt threatened by my expressions of sympathy towards the object of her obsession. We’ll call him Mitch.
When this individual discovered that Mitch was terminally ill, she went on and on about how terribly devastating this was to her. It was so awful that she had to stay home from school and nurse her wounded feels. There was a red flag in all this. Not once did she say anything about how sad this situation was for those people who were actually close to Mitch, such as his children and grandchildren, or his brother Mac, who is not only his business partner but his platonic soul mate.
Victoria had a plan to get backstage when Mitch and Mac’s band came to town so she could give Mac a long letter she’d penned about her miserable existence and how the only thing that saved her was being so deeply in love with Mitch. Her plan, which I seriously hope she was never able to implement, gave no thought to how tremendously uncomfortable such an action would surely make Mac feel.
Victoria was not planning this ill-conceived plot because she is overly emotional and misguided. I have actually had occasion to converse with her online, where of course she pretended to be friendly to me. I can assure you that she is emotionally cold. She does not care about Mitch, she cares about having other people praise her for her devotion to him. She said to me “I haven’t thought about what I’ll do when he dies, but I’m sure I’ll be okay.” That sort of statement is the hallmark of a sociopath.
Let’s look at this from Mac’s point of view. His brother, the other half of his soul, is critically ill and there’s nothing he can do about it. Along comes this young woman, young enough to be his grand niece or even great grand niece, telling him that she is in love with his dying older brother and she wants to give him a letter all about how much Mitch means to her.
Mac is a polite person. He would probably force a smile and thank her for her thoughts, all the while feeling like ice was climbing up his spine. If he read the letter rather than tossing it in the trash the moment she left, it would not make him feel good. It might just make him sick, or it might make him angry that this self-centered person felt the need to dump her problems on him without regard for the fact that he is constantly grieving for the loss of his best friend. He might feel conflicted, telling himself that he shouldn’t be angry at such an obviously sad and pathetic person.
In other words, spilling your guts in this fashion to people who are themselves struggling is an erroneous act at best and a cruel one at worst. Some people who do it are misguided. Others are malevolent.
When I had the opportunity to attend a meet and greet with Chris Isaak, one of my longtime musical heroes, there were so many things I wanted to tell him. However, I knew his time was limited. If I were ever lucky enough to be able to spend any significant amount of time with Chris, I would go into detail about why his music meant so much to me. I confined my revelations to telling him that Blue Hotel was the first of his songs that I heard, and when I introduced my son I said “Ian here was born in 1990, so he’s been listening to your songs since before he was born.”
Chris told me that his father had made the guitar case that he’s carrying in the picture that I had him sign. I said that was wonderful. I knew his father was a very important person in his life. If I’d had time, I would have told him that my father suffered a major stroke too. If there had been time, we probably would have bonded over talking about such things and maybe even developed a real friendship. Unfortunately there wasn’t time, so I respected his time.
Folks, what this boils down to is the fact that these people who mean so much to you have problems of their own. They have limited time and their emotional resources have limits as well. I have no doubt that Jared would love to help each and every one of you personally. I know he feels sad because he can’t.
For the people who actually care about Jared but may have dumped your problems on him, don’t beat yourself up. You will know better in the future.
There’s nothing I can do to change the actions of those who don’t care how their actions affect other people for the simple reason that they don’t care.

~The Cheese Hath Grated It~

What is God?

What is God? 

According to monotheists, and others, God is a deity. The supreme being who created everything. If this is so, argue Atheists, then God is a very flawed designer. You would surely expect from so powerful a deity perfection in his creations, if not that then a single lack of cruelty? For is cancer, famine, pestilence, AIDS, children with severe disabilities not a flaw in design?  No. Not if it is nature. Not if it is Tao. Nature makes no mistakes. Those seeming flaws are our perceptions based on judgement's made by long established conditioning. It is no different than when we suggest this person is ugly, that person is fat, the other is to be feared. These thoughts have no basis in God's mind only within human's. They are reactionary judgements. 

Shackling God to such man-made logic is questionable. How would those who follow him know His methods let alone His intentions? However, if God is the supreme spirit that lives within all of us, a Christ-like presence awaiting our personal discovery, then what some call God becomes more than a distinct possibility. 

Reading the Bhagavad Gita you discover how much symbolism there is in the Hindu faith.   They are not alone. Jews and Christian's too have a great deal of symbolic storytelling found within the pages of the Old Testament.  Krishna is the light, a sublime force, that exists in all mankind. The old Egyptian god, Horus, like Jesus and Mithras, was a virgin birth. More pertinently, Horus is a symbol of the goodness within us all. It is a goodness Buddhist's call enlightenment. Zen Buddhist's have a saying, I'll have to paraphrase it I'm afraid, which goes something like this - 'if you meet the Buddha, kill the Buddha.' This is an ironic statement suggesting we all, by our flawed personallities, by the manner in which mother nature has created us, can never acheive full enlightenment. We can, however,endeavour to make that change. To better ourselves.

This may be so but when I meditate I join with that which is far greater than me. Some would call it God. It is not an authorative presence but a collective force, gentle in the extreme. It aids in realsing a Christ-like sense of being one with all, of wanting to improve oneself until God, Tao, Krishna are finally released within the individual.

God is within us and without us. God, like Tao, is just a word. It is our understanding of what God is that causes us so many problems. But there is one word that combines all our beliefs admirably well, that word is love.

101 Facts About The Human Body

The Cheese Grates It: There Is No "Good" or "Bad" Food, But There Is Plenty of New Age Bullshit

The following is a response to a post on Alternet, which refers to "good" fats and "bad" fats.
http://www.alternet.org/food/when-youre-stressed-good-fat-isnt-so-good-anymore

To save what is left of my sanity, I stopped categorizing food as "good" or "bad". I aim to eat fewer highly processed foods, and because of my diabetes I should try to moderate my carb intake. However, I find labeling foods as "good" or "bad" unhelpful at best and triggering of disordered eating behavior at worst.

I like to eat guacamole any time. I ate a lot of guacamole after a really bad breakup. Guacamole was much better than my crappy so called boyfriend, who was a thing that was way more unhealthy for me than even either bad guacamole or deep fried food could ever be.

The aforementioned article is one of those New Age "health" pieces. I fell for the New Age mindset for many years, to my detriment. More on that in a minute.

Commenter Freydis had this to say:

AND we're supposed to be responsible for the amount of stress in our lives! Family, children, tRump, gun violence, plummeting finances, etc., have no relevance.

This was my reply:

That whole "you're responsible for your stress levels" line of thinking always increased my stress levels. So, is the person writing such Pollyanna poppycock going to get me a better job which pays more than 30,000 a year (for a credentialed person to do skilled work, mind) and allows me to work 40 hours a week or less as opposed to the average of 50-60 hours a week that I actually have to work? My 30,000 dollars a year has to cover more and more every year. Plus, I suspect that my mother may be developing dementia. Plus, my son is a high functioning autistic person who has trouble with anxiety and depression and has never been able to hold a job due to said anxiety and depression. But yeah, I'm just supposed to "think myself happy," and it's my fault if I'm not. Sorry to rant. Your thoughts are spot on, and I'm so over this New Age crap, which I used as yet another reason to belittle and berate myself for many years.

So, that's what I have to say about that. New Ageism has been more hurtful than helpful to many people, and Diet Think has certainly been more hurtful than helpful to our entire society.

~The Cheese Hath Grated It~

The Cheese Grates It: The Hate that Hate Breeds

I was replying to a post by the wonderful Russell Duffy, when I realized that my reply had  morphed into a post. It is necessary to read Russell's post to fully understand why I was inspired to write what I have here, so here's the link:

http://openmindedsearchfortruth.blogspot.com/2016/09/no-room.html

I try not to let hate in. For instance, although I dislike Donald Trump with a fair intensity, if I were to allow myself to hate him, it would hurt me a lot more than it does him. Hate is an emotion with a lot of energy invested in it. It is a poor investment, and we should avoid it.

It wasn't always this way. I've mellowed with age and with the proper diagnosis of my mental illnesses. Taking Lithium turns down the intensity of my more extreme emotions.

Whenever I have felt hate, it's because I feel threatened by the person I'm feeling hate for.

I remember in my late teens on up into my thirties, I felt ire towards women that I perceived as "slutty." Having been brought up in a misogynistic society, I perceived "slutty" women as both threatening and entirely responsible for their presentation. I feared that these "easy" women who put their wares on display so readily would "steal my man." I was disgusted by "skanky" actresses making men put all the more pressure on ordinary women like me to transform into some sort of perfectly proportioned and ever available nymph there for the taking.

I was never the "there for the taking" kind, and I was anything but sexy. I really did not even want to be sexy. I hated these women for "making" me hate myself more than I already did.

Years later, I learned that most of the women I felt threatened by also suffered because of these perceptions, and that they aren't "perfect" either.

Britney Spears is attractive. She's pretty and can certainly present as sexy. More importantly, she's genuinely beautiful, as in she's a good and kind person. Britney insisted on releasing the unretouched photos from her Candies Shoes photo shoot to show that she does not actually have the impossibly perfect body that so many women are led to believe we should have, not only to our own detriment, but, I believe, to the detriment of society as a whole, to the detriment of the entire human collective consciousness, if I may be so bold.
Personally, on a purely aesthetic level, I think that Real Britney is very lovely and nothing needed to be done to "correct" her physique. I wonder if a day will ever come when we don't erase what people actually look like. For my own part, I like real people.
When I was younger, I would never have said something so kind about Britney Spears. In my view, she was a skank who was putting herself on display and making life more difficult for women like me. I didn't want to put myself on display. Doing so makes me very uncomfortable. Unless I'm posing for art classes, which is something I did in order to help myself get over the mindset that only "slutty" people allowed themselves to be seen nude. More on that in a minute.
I learned over time that Britney Spears was a nice young lady who wore sexy costumes while performing. She wasn't a "slutty man stealer." Like many of us, she was looking for The One. She was disturbed by all the focus on her breasts, particularly when she was still a teenager. She was struggling with untreated bipolar disorder. She is a good person, and I was wrong to judge her the way I did. My prejudices clouded my true intuition.

Angus Young has taught me so much, even though I was never fortunate enough to meet him in this life. I don't know why that is, considering that I feel like we would be friends if we had been allowed to know each other, but that's a post for another time. Unfortunately, he didn't teach me how to play the guitar. Musically, I have all the talent of a hammer. I bash on instruments and hurt them, or at least hurt anyone listening to the cacophony I produce.
One day while watching Angus strip off and drop trou, it came to me that here is a person who does not think of himself as attractive, who has, in fact, referred to himself as "that ugly little man," and yet he's baring it all for the world to see. Now, I realize that what Angus does is not art school modeling, it's burlesque. However, I was inspired to take my body, such as it is, stretch marks, scars, fat rolls and saggy breasts, and put it on display for pay at art schools in my area.
I started seeing myself as less ugly when I was modeling. Also, it's a different culture. Modeling for art schools is not sexy. Yes, I had idiots saying I was an "exhibitionist" for doing this. I'm not. I had people praising me for being so "uninhibited." I'm really not.
Being a man, Angus does not have the added fuckery of people thinking he's "slutty" for taking his clothes off. A naked man is not "slutty," he's just naked. A naked woman is seen as a "skank" who is "asking for it." More on this another time.
This realization made me very angry, both at myself for having bought into it and having wasted my energies on hate for others because of it, and at the society which teaches it.
I have a million reasons for wanting to find Angus in the spirit world after my body boots me out for good and give him a big hug. This is one of them. And then, maybe we can be friends. It's something I like to think is possible.

My uncontrolled borderline personality disorder certainly played a part in my hateful thinking. People with borderline personality disorder tend to see the world in shades of black and white. People are either wonderful or they're terrible. This extreme love/hate dichotomy is very disconcerting, especially considering that people are terribly flawed creatures who inevitably fuck up.
However, I place more of the blame for my hateful attitudes on a society that views women in terms of being virgins or whores. You can't tell how promiscuous a person is by the way they're dressed or whether they've ever appeared nude in a movie or even if they've appeared in porn. You can't tell what that person's morals are when it comes to having sex with a person who's in a committed relationship.
Hate is a strong and destructive emotion. There are rational reasons for disliking a person, but rational reasons for hating someone are few and far between, and are of a catastrophic nature such as when hate is directed at someone who murdered a loved one.
Beating yourself up for irrational feelings won't help. Try to get to the root of the feeling. It generally boils down to learned prejudices and/or personal insecurity.

~The Cheese Hath Grated It~

30 Days of Haiga 2016: Day 26: Spice

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Tears of the Moon 2

Photoshop manipulation by The Real Cie

With love and tears for Malcolm Young

Dementia destroys beautiful minds

The Cheese Grates It: Masturbation Techniques

So, according to this post, there's a new way to get yourself off while in the bath.

I suppose I must be a terribly boring person, but the water technique never worked for me and I find vibrators too intense for "that area." Nothing like the good old hand. Pedestrian though it may be, it's tried and true.

Try out the helpful bathtub aid if you like, though. 

You don't actually need to tell me about your experiences, although I suppose you can if you want. I'm not a sex therapist in any way. I'm just a curmudgeon who sometimes likes to share WTMI about myself.

~The Cheese Hath Grated It~

Contradictory Ray of Black Hole Sunshine

There are things in my life which leaves me wondering "am I really and truly the oddest person in the history of ever anywhere?" Is there anyone else who when they're supposed to be sleeping but can't creates sad tributes in Photoshop while yelling at the cats that keep walking over their tablet?
My life sounds like I'm probably someone who does a lot of drugs, but I'm actually a complete teetotaler. I don't even smoke cigarettes at this point.
I'm such a mass of contradictions. I sound really interesting, given the above description, but I'm actually incredibly boring. Considering that I'm so boring I should be causing myself to fall asleep by my mere presence, but yet I can't sleep.
Most of the time I really hate being me, but I really don't want to be anyone else.
I'm just a really mixed up little ray of manic depressive black hole sunshine, aren't I?

~Cie~

The Cheese Grates It: Pills Aren't The Answer to Everything

 TRIGGER WARNING: SELF-HARM REFERENCE

This is a response to a post on Alternet titled "Is Modern Psychiatry Bullshit?"

Modern psychiatry's answer to treating psychiatric illness is to throw pills at everything. They have no idea how to treat people who can't tolerate the pills. After having horrific reactions to Effexor (it made me manic and psychotic) I was put on Zoloft, which gave me the sensation that my brain had grown tiny hands and was trying to pick its way out of my head. When I told the doctor this, I was told to "stay on it." I refused.
Years before, Prozac had left me so flat emotionally that I was staring at my arm, contemplating cutting it, not because of self-harm reasons but because I wondered if I could still feel.
I do not take psych meds. Everything I take to help me manage my mental health issues is a natural supplement, including the Lithium I take. I got lectured about the fact that my Lithium levels aren't even close to therapeutic. However, therapeutic doses are right next door to toxic, and the small amount I take of Lithium Orotate, which is more bioavailable than Lithium Carbonate, do the job without threatening to put me in the hospital for Lithium toxicity.
Counseling is too expensive and never helped me much anyway. I've always thought that cognitive behavioral therapy might be useful, but that's not one of the choices you get when all you can afford (and you can't even afford that) is the county mental health system.

~The Cheese Hath Grated It~

"Listen to the Sound of Silence"

To sit in silence, be it on a chair, a bed, a cushion, the floor, a bench in the park or when by a river or lake, by the ocean, on a train or bus, on an aeroplane, sitting in your car, leaning against a tree in your garden, cross-legged on the floor, by the light of day, by the silver of night, in the dark, in the brightest sunlight, for five minutes or five hours, listen to the sound of silence.

Listen in the way a cat does seemingly half asleep to the sounds of the world turning. Listen. Listen to your breathing. Again, like a cat when it purs, follow the undulations of your breathing similar to the sound of the ocean lapping. You will hear life moving about you. Life going on within you and without you as you and it become as one.

My Albino Children: Black Brazilian Family Have Three White-Skinned Chil...

Unbelievable. With the challenges they already have, they have to also face bigotry from ignorant people.


I was most astounded when the brother said that the other children would ask him "why can't we pick on them?" when he defends his siblings.

It's as if people look for an excuse to be cruel.

~Cie~

No Room

Let there be no room for hatred within you. Hatred is the great perversion. It twists those it rules into ruins of their former selves. As it festers inside you, it eats away at you as though it were cancer. You may think you have control but you haven't. It controls you as it gnaws at your thoughts controlling your waking and you sleeping hours. By allowing it room to bring such pain  to you is an intolerable burden. It is a debilitating curse.

Such hatred is surely born of great hurt.  At some stage of your life, someone has caused you great pain. Maybe you have been wounded in love, betrayed by  a lover you thought loved you with all their being. Learning perhaps of their infidelity or their ceasing to love you as they once did both disturbs and upsets you beyond belief. It is this hurt that turns to resentment and then to anger before blossoming into hate.

If hate has you at its command it is difficult, but not impossible, to break free. Love is the only remedy, the only cure. In 1963 my grandfather scribbled in an auotgraph book I still have 'Love Conquers All.' He died two years later. The words live on and are still true today as they were then, love really does conqueror all even hate.

SlasherCom and a Phone Call...

Please show support to Jewel, who is battling a rare form of cancer.

30 Days of Haiga 2016: Day 14: To Catch a Thief

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Words and Photoshop manipulation by The Real Cie

A little something I was inspired to make for Gem 

One

Smoke rising

Dog, black and white, pads by

Fire - forever friend and foe

On Porn: The Blinders are Off

Image copyright 123rf.com

TRIGGER WARNING:

SEXUAL ASSAULT

PORNOGRAPHY

SELF-INJURY

The short version is a response to a post on Alternet about the summer's most popular porn.

Reading this turned me off rather than on. 

Porn is utterly unrealistic, and yet it's what people have come to expect sex is like. It harms rather than helps relationships. Yet we as a society glorify it.

A lot of people think of porn as just people being filmed having sex. You've got your guy-girl porn, your girl-girl porn, your guy-guy porn, and your group sex. If it's consenting adults, no big deal, right?

If it were just consenting adults having sex, it would be no big deal and would, in fact, be kind of boring. If you're not the one having sex, sex looks kind of silly.

Once on the Howard Stern show, Howard asked one of my favorite people, Angus Young, how much porn he watched. Angus replied: "I don't get off on watching butts bouncing up and down, especially not hairy man butts."

Angus may not be aware of just how much more disturbing than butts bouncing up and down porn can be. Hopefully he never finds out. I use his statement to illustrate that for the uninitiated, "butts bouncing up and down" tends to be what they think porn is. Thus, they can't understand the argument that porn is harmful, and view those making said argument as pearl-clutching fuddy-duddies.

For many years I had myself convinced that porn was okay and that I was being closed-minded in my knee-jerk reaction that it really wasn't okay and was exploitative of women. 

I also had a complicated relationship with porn, because my own past abuses led me to be simultaneously aroused and disgusted by humiliating fantasies. Part of me believed that I deserved to be hurt and humiliated. While I would never have sought it out in real life, I would spend entire days sometimes watching scenarios in which one person was the target of sexualized demeaning acts.

Back in 1997, I was involved with a very bad guy. He was looking for a victim, and he found a perfect one in the thirty-two year old me, with her untreated mental illness and terrible self esteem.

I had a history of two full-on sexual assaults, and most of my sexual experiences had been coercive. I was molested when I was very young. I was everything a guy like this abusive misogynist could want.

It started out with regular porn, and then he started bringing in worse stuff. At first it was scat, then it moved to bestiality. When I got upset, he laughed at me and threatened to withdraw his "love" from me if I left. 

If you're saying that anyone with any sense would have left, you're partly right. My sense was telling me that I needed to get away from him. My butchered self-esteem told me that I was throwing away "love." I was so desperate to have someone care for me that I put up with this abuse.

My boyfriend started flaunting his other conquests in front of me, and when I got upset he told me that men were incapable of being monogamous, and I needed to understand that. He made me kiss his feet.

At one point I showed up at his house at two in the morning with my wrists slashed, after having wandered about the neighborhood cutting myself repeatedly.

I finally mustered the courage to leave him for my son's sake rather than my own. I didn't care about myself. I thought I was garbage. I was still obsessed with him. It took months for me to fully realize what an absolute piece of crap he was and that nobody deserved to be subjected to his monstrous behavior.

It would be another seventeen years before I could break free of the cycle of psychologically abusing myself by watching demeaning pornography.

I'm going to keep this post in the material realm. One of these days I'll talk about how Gem helped me break free of my porn obsession.

Follow-up:

I should not be surprised that I had someone Mansplain to me that my argument was "completely invalid" because his experience with porn had been the opposite of what I described. Porn is totes realistic, you guys.

As we know, nothing will change a woman's mind quicker than Mansplaining. The poor dumb bitches don't know their own minds, after all.

Well, you've convinced me. Porn is wonderful and makes the world a beautiful place. It does not create unrealistic expectations about what sex is like, and it is never violent, demeaning or ugly. I will now return to my invalid existence, gleeful in the knowledge that at least I can always have porn.

~Cie~

Fear

Fear is the one thing that holds us back from true freedom. Fear of the other which reduces our natural human reaction to love those who live on this planet with us. It might be a Muslim we fear because of the stereotyping we hear of; it may be a homosexual who's sexual preferences frighten us due to some ridiculous belief of 'them' either raping or abusing heterosexuals; it may be a specific race or a nation who we view as being somehow different to ourselves; all  these fears are groundless, irrational, futile. 

Our differences add colour to our existence. We should embrace them not fear them.

Another fear is the fear of death. Well, nothing lasts long, nothing lives forever. All things must pass and ourselves no less but death should have no fear for us. Life is as fleeting as the morning dew, we should live it with every fibre of our being. We should not fear dying but enjoy living. 

We are part of the eternal. When we sit in silence, our minds relaxed, our bodies too; as we stop the chattering of our brains allowing silence to encompass us so we feel the eternal fill us. We are at this stage part of the universe. Death finds a different perspective then. Weare truly alive.

The Cheese Grates It: Education, not Overpopulation

The following is my response to a post by Josiah Brown about his feelings on the abortion his ex-girlfriend had.

"There would be fewer abortions if comprehensive family planning were more widely available.”

THIS! I (and many others) have said it for years, but people still don’t listen. 

Cutting funding to women’s health clinics does not prevent abortion. It only decreases the likelihood that any abortion performed will be legal and safe. It also increases the likelihood of unplanned and unwanted pregnancy by removing access to education and methods of contraception.

I am not “pro-abortion.” However, I realize that abortion is going to happen whether I am “pro-abortion” or not, and it happens for many reasons, both reasons of medical necessity and personal reasons. My own personal feelings should not determine the ability of others to make this difficult choice. 

While I was able to conceive (I am now post-menopausal) I said that I would never personally have an abortion, but I fully supported keeping abortion safe and legal. I still support keeping abortion safe and legal, and I always will. I also support preventing abortion where possible through education and access to contraception.

On a planet where we are pushing the limits of our resources, I cannot for the life of me understand how people still think that “being fruitful and multiplying” is any sort of necessity. Regardless of what your religious convictions are, it’s time that archaic law was written off the books. I suggest it be replaced with “have fewer children and do your best to insure they are well educated and well adjusted.”

~The Cheese Hath Grated It~

Tavener – He Hath Entered the Heven / UCSB Chamber Choir

What a Doll: Using Doll Magick to Connect with Spirits

Image Source

The use of dolls in magick tends to be portrayed negatively in fiction and film. There are plenty of wonderfully entertaining stories of angry individuals utilizing dolls to wreak havoc on those whom they feel have wronged them.

The use of dolls or poppets is known as sympathetic magick. The doll or poppet is utilized to establish a connection between the spell caster and a specific person or animal. Far from always being negative, magick utilizing a poppet can be used to bring focus to healing spells.

The doll does not have to be particularly realistic looking. It can be a general human form, such as the doll illustrated above, available from Etsy.

The doll does not have to be made from cloth. Candles in human form are available from various sources. These are generally utilized in love spells.

I have several poppets that I made. While I am proud of them, I am not going to show a picture of them because I do not wish to inadvertently bring any sort of negative or disturbing energies to the people they were created to represent.

I feel that unless specific permission is given by the party the poppet was created to represent, a poppet should never be used as a focus for sex magick. The energies created by sexual arousal are extremely intense and could be disruptive or disturbing for a person who has not given his or her consent to receive such.

One of the poppets I created helps me to strengthen my connection to Gem. I will cradle the poppet and send comforting energies to him. If Gem and I have been having trouble connecting with each other, usually due to exhaustion or depression on my part, this helps us re-establish our bond.

I also created a poppet version of myself. I have a history of self-harm to my own body, but I won't harm the poppet. Whenever I am feeling like I might self-harm, I look at my poppet to remind myself that I was born innocent and do not deserve the hurt I'm thinking of inflicting on myself.

I keep Gem's and my poppet wrapped up in one of my shirts, embracing each other. 

While I do not have a poppet to represent my late father, who died from various cardiovascular complications in 2010 after a six year period of decline following a stroke in June of 2004, I do have the comfort objects he kept: a stuffed parrot I gave him and a stuffed corduroy bear that my mother gave him. 

My mother wanted to have these cremated with my father following his passing, but when she told me this, I felt a strong energy of distress in my heart chakra. I begged her to allow me to keep them. They are still with me today and help me keep the bond between my dad and me alive although he is in spirit.

The next time you see a movie or read a story where poppets are used to terrorize and control a victim, enjoy it. There are some great tales of terror involving the use of poppets. One of my favorites is "Sweets to the Sweet" by Robert Bloch, in which an angry girl gets, well, shall we say, sweet revenge on her abusive father.

If you are a fan of horror fiction and you can find a copy, you won't be sorry about picking up Ten Tales Calculated to Give You Shudders. It's billed as a book for children, and I received a copy on my tenth birthday from my mother. 

Although mom didn't want me reading horror comics when I was younger, she came to realize that I had an affinity for this sort of thing and gave me what remains one of my favorite books. Don't let the idea that this book was compiled for kids fool you: these are excellent tales by some of the finest writers. The book contains the classic cautionary tale "The Monkey's Paw," and to this day part of me fears the possibility that I might see the hideous monstrosity from Frank Belknap Long's "Second Night Out" floating towards me from a darkened room.

Perhaps when I'm retired I'll find the time to create poppets representing my favorite authors so I can tap into their collective creative consciousness when writer's block hits.

I'm only joking a little bit. From a crafty point of view, creating such dolls would be a fun activity. Also, I'm not new to working with spirits when I write. Without Gem, Team Netherworld's WIP novel, Fetch, would never have been imagined. It is his story: I am only the scribe.

Sympathetic magick is only one of the forms of terror that Fetch's protagonists face from Nyarlathotep's high priestess Yadira Root and her lackeys.

No, that wasn't shameless self-promotion, not at all. But if that sort of thing sounds like its your bag, click the link and follow along with us as the story takes shape.

~Cie~

One of these times, I need to discuss Chaos Magick, which is the system that I utilize. Like my mind, my magick is more chaotic than most people's. 

In the meantime, check out the page where I found this symbol.

The Humorless Feminist Killjoy Cheese Grates It: Just Say No to Sexist T-Shirts

I’ve seen this floating around, and I have to tell you why there’s just so much NO here.

Big reason: this is sexist as fuck.

There’s the implication that girls/women can’t just be fans of music, they have to be groupies.

You’d never see a guy wearing a comparable shirt saying “good boys go to heaven, bad boys go backstage.”

I’ve been backstage. I’ve met musicians. I was happy to meet the musicians. I was not there to fuck the musicians. Not once. Not ever.

A musician would actually have to try harder than the average Joe Blow to get in my good graces due to the reputation that musicians have.

I’m not saying that there aren’t musicians I find attractive. I’m a heterosexual woman. There are plenty of musicians I’ve found attractive. However, I don’t see the need to fuck everyone I find attractive.

I would wear this shirt before I would wear a pro Donald Trump shirt. However, I would turn it inside out, because I sure as hell wouldn’t want this sexist bullshit emblazoned on my chest.

~The Cheese Hath Grated It~

Friendly Fill-Ins Week 17

Week 17: September 2, 2016

1. My favorite way to exercise is in a therapy pool. But I haven't had access to a pool since I quit my old job a year ago.

2. Something I learned last week was that it really sucks to be without money. Oh, wait, I already knew that.

3. I am sentimental about:

This beautiful mess. 

The photo isn't mine.

4. Some people might find it surprising to know that I used to believe that wonderful things would happen to you if you were a good person. I have since learned that bad people get away with a lot of shit and terrible things happen to good people. There is no rhyme or reason to it.

~Cie~

The Cheese Grates It: Say Her Name

Thumbs up to the creators of The Get Down for their compelling, memorable characters, including Mylene Cruz, who has an amazing voice and admirable strength of character.

Thumbs down to the writer of this synopsis for the first episode:

“Zeke's resolve to woo a girl sends him into a dizzying, dangerous nightclub scene, where he crosses paths with a nimble local legend.“

You may be wondering what I think is wrong with this sentence.

Why not use Mylene’s name?

Mylene is an essential character.

“A girl” is a plot device.

Granted, Shaolin Fantastic’s name wasn’t used either. However, this character is a mysterious figure throughout the first part of the episode.

Mylene appears early in the episode. We know exactly who she is from the beginning.

Mylene may not be the main character, but she is a very important character. She should not be relegated to being just “a girl.”

It’s not like it’s hard to type “Zeke’s resolve to woo Mylene.”

~The Cheese Hath Grated It~