From the The Universal Household Assistant or What Every One Should Know (1884):

Things to try. — Try popcorn for nausea.    Try cranberries for malaria.    Try a sun-bath for rheumatism.    Try ginger ale for stomach cramps.    Try clam broth for a weak stomach.    Try cranberry poultice for erysipelas.    Try a wet towel to the back of the neck when sleepless.    Try swallowing saliva when troubled with sour stomach.    Try eating fresh radishes and yellow turnips for gravel.    Try eating onions and horseradish to relieve dropsical swellings.    Try buttermilk for removal of freckles, tan, and butternut stains.    Try taking your cod liver oil in tomato catsup, if you want to make it palatable.    Try hard cider -- a wine-glass three times a day -- for ague and rheumatism.    Try taking a nap in the afternoon if you are going to be out late in the evening.    Try breathing the fumes of turpentine or carbolic acid to remove whooping cough.    Try a cloth wrung out from cold water put about the neck at night for sore throat.    Try snuffing powdered borax up the nostrils for catarrhal "cold in the head."    Try walking with your hands behind you if you find yourself becoming bent forward.    Try a silk handkerchief over the face when obliged to go against a cold piercing wind.    Try planting sunflowers in your garden if compelled to live in a malarial district.

From the The Universal Household Assistant or What Every One Should Know (1884):

Household Hints. — Do not deposit wood ashes in a wooden vessel or upon a wooden floor.    Never use a light in examining a gas-meter.    Never take a light into a closet.    Never read in bed by candle or lamp light.    Never put kindling wood on top of the stove to dry.    Never leave clothes near a grate or fire-place to dry.    Be careful in making fire with shavings, and never user any kind of oil to kindle a fire.    Keep all lights as far from curtains as possible.    Always fill and trim your lamps by daylight, and never near a fire.    Good nice pie-crust can be made by always observing the following rule. One-quarter of a cup of shortening to every cup of flour used; to be mixed as dry as possible with cold water, and mixed only with a knife.    Take sweet butter only for baking purposes, and never fail to thoroughly beat together your butter and sugar, if you would be sure of good results in cake baking.    Have metal or earthen vessels for matches, and keep them out of reach of children. Wax matches are not safe.    Ground mustard mixing with a little water is an excellent agent for cleansing the hands after handling odorous substances.    Cut hot bread or cake with a hot knife, and it will not be clammy.    Salt extracts the juices of meat in cooking. Steaks ought therefore not be salted until they have been broiled.    In boiling dumplings of any kind, put them in the water one at a time. If they are put in together they will mix with each other.    Do not cut lamp-wicks, but trim them by wiping off with a scrap of paper.    Never boil vegetables with soup stock, for if you do it will certainly become sour in a short time.    Boil your cream for coffee, and see if the coffee will not taste better, as well as keep hot longer.    Pin-cushion covers made of cheese cloth embroidered and trimmed with lace, wear well and keep their looks.    Some one says that leaves of parsley, eaten with a little vinegar, will destroy the odor of breath tainted by onions.    Hot liquid lye is recommended for removing obstructions in waste pipes. Or let the potash dissolve over night in the pipes.    To wipe dust from papered walls, take a clean, soft piece of flannel. Of course it must not be damp, but the dry flannel will remove the dust.    Varnish the soles of your shoes, and it will render them impervious to dampness, and will also make them last longer. This is a good plan.    Clean the mica in stove doors with vinegar. Take clinkers out of stoves by putting a few oyster shells into the grate, when they will become loosened, and may be removed without injuring the lining.    Save the droppings from spermaceti candles, tie them in a cloth, and keep to smooth rough flat-irons.    Never starch napkins.    An old black bunting or cashmere dress may be made to serve a further period of usefulness by being made into a petticoat.    Between two evils choose neither.    Writing a will does not shorten life, and yet many men fear it will.    Save old suspender rings, and sew them on the corners of kitchen holders to hang them by. It will be easy then to flip them on to a nail, and they will not be so likely to get lost.    Powdered borax with a little sugar, blown into the cracks and crevices with a small bellows, will drive away house-ants.    Have a high stool in the kitchen to sit on when tired, to continue your work if necessary. Perched on its top you can wash dishes or iron with ease. A low stool placed on a wooden chair forms a substitute, but a poor one. A soft sheep-skin mat is restful to stand upon.    There is nothing better for cleaning brass or copper than coal ashes. They are also good to scour knives and forks with. For tin, whiting or fine sand is best.    To cleanse jars or jugs or any earthen vessel slaked lime is good, or warmed lye.    To keep a stove smooth, take a coarse and pretty large piece of flannel, roll it hard, and dip it in fine sand. Proceed to rub your stove whenever you are through cooking. Almost any stove will look better for being done the same way occasionally. Boiled starch is also very good to keep a stove looking well; put it on where it will not burn off — around the back and sides where it doesn't get very hot.

I was just at the Fox News website. One of the story teasers (second story, directly below Falwell's death) read:

Hard Time at Gitmo Detainee cries 'torture,' says he was forced to use unscented deodorant and read newsletter full of 'crap'

If one clicks the link and reads the article, it does mention that the source for the story, a transcript of Majid Khan's military hearing, was "redacted" (in other words, parts that would not be in the best interest of the United States military were deleted). Buried deep into the article we also find this:

Ali Shoukat Khan said his son [Majid Khan] was kidnapped in Pakistan and that there, Americans tortured his son "for eight hours at a time, tying him tightly in stressful positions in a small chair until his hands, feet and mind went numb. ... He was often hooded and had difficulty breathing. They also beat him repeatedly, slapping him in the face, and deprived him of sleep."

"Fair and balanced™" is a joke. And a bad one, at that.

gryffyn gave goldmourn and me a ride up to London, where I caught the bus back to Boston. In short order I screwed up boarding the bus and spilt my entire cup of coffee (a lot of it going on my skirt).

However, things seemed to go a bit better until we reached the border. Compared to the security personal at the Canadian border, the Americans are fascist assholes. Someone in front of me put his hands in his pocket while waiting for the border guard to confirm his identification, for which he received the threat: "WE'RE NOT PLAYING GAMES! DO YOU WANT TO GO TO JAIL RIGHT NOW?". His was hardly atypical treatment. Greyhound had scheduled 15 minutes to cross the border. However it took us over an hour to get through security, and there was no one ahead of us. The imagery reminded me more of the check points in the old Soviet Bloc rather than something I'd hope to expect from the United States. How times change.

Luckily the hold up at the border didn't cause me to miss my connection at Syracuse. Other than losing an inexpensive article of clothing, the rest of the trip went smoothly — I walked out of the bus station the exact moment purpleglitter was pulling into the parking lot.

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I didn't do my normal voice post updates during this trip, because the entire LiveJournal voice post system was down the entire trip.

Squeaky and Piglet are dead.

They were eating out of my hand this morning.

Happy as could be.

Now they're dead.

Good journey, my birdies.

One must remember to wash one's hands after touching the mouldy head of Satan.

I was supposed to see dicotomygrrl tonight. Just before she was due to arrive, I received a panicked phonecall from purpleglitter. Dandelion's food was hurt and there was lots of blood. I ran over to purpleglitter's house with my shoes in my hand, not even taking time to put them on until we had already loaded Dandelion in the car and were heading off to Angell Memorial Hospital.

Prior to calling me, purpleglitter had put styptic powder on Dandelion, so the bleeding had stopped. He appeared to be doing well and half way there we questioned if he needed to go, but we decided it was best that he see a vet anyway just in case.

Even in the strange situation, rushed out in the night, Dandelion still did step ups for the attending vet. When the vet asked if he was flighted he took off from his finger as if to say "Of course I can fly".

He got right onto my finger and I scooped him up and handed him to the vet. He is a brave bird. The vet took him in back to the "exotics" ward. Dandelion was a bit shaken when he returned, but I gave him good scritches while the vet looked for Dandelion's records and he calmed down.

He apparently got his toenail caught in something and it broke off. It looks like he'll be alright.

I haven't fallen down once since the rapture I experience a little over a week ago. Not once. Something was awakening. The unwinding of the Kundalini. I have noted much symbolic significance in what I have called my cane. It is more than a cane, it is my staff. I realize now that I did not need my staff because I had trouble walking, but that I had trouble walking because I needed my staff. Now I have found it and seen what it is, I do not need it to walk around, but I do need it for my journey. It was meant for me.

I have come to see my staff in the form of a serpent, the handle being the serpent head. The serpent is not an animal I would have picked out to associate myself with. The squirrel, the skunk, the Canadian goose, and the raccoon. Those have been the animals I have felt kinship with. But now I walk a new path. Not really new a new path, as I've always walked my path, it's just I realized before that I was walking.

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Today is the first day I have been able to take my staff outside since I sealed it with polyurethane 6 days ago. I put the coating on it so that I would not have to worry about taking it outside in the elements. I was worried that snow and rain would take their toll on it, and it would not be long before it crumbled of rot.

Putting the polyurethane on proved to be more adventure than I had anticipated. More accurately: putting the polyurethane on the staff was easy, getting it off myself was difficult. I don't have any paint thinner, and not much else works as a solvent for polyurethane. I tried water and soap. I tried rum. My hands were sticky and the stick was spreading. The brushes I placed in a plastic bowl of soapy water and I hope that they are still able to be fully cleaned when I do get paint thinner. However, my hands and my arms were my more immediate concern and I lacked the correct solvent.

It then occurred to me that there was another approach to solve the problem. I needed the polyurethane would take hold of rather than something that would take hold of the polyurethane: flour. I worked the flour over my hands and arms and between my fingers letting it form a thick paste with the polyurethane. That paste I could then simply scrape off my skin. It worked, and I am now free of the stick of the polyurethane. I will, however, make sure I have paint thinner on hand if I try this again, so that I can do the clean-up the proper way.

Before, we only held the baby budgies for the purpose of moving them out of the way so we could clean the nesting box. Today, we started holding them for bonding purposes. We want to get them used to human contact at an early age. The eldest baby, 13 days old, is much stronger than it seems. Very good grip with it's feet and able to climb around on my hands with the help of it's beak. It can even stand up for short periods of time, though it's not very good at it yet. The 11 day old budgie tried to climb, but was not quite as good at it. They are both very curious about everything and not afraid of purpleglitter or me at all. We will be getting them out again later today. We plan to spend 20-30 minutes interacting with the babies a day. They are sweet and wonderful and fill me with joy.





photos by purpleglitter

photo by purpleglitter

I got to hold the baby budgies this morning while purpleglitter cleaned the nesting box. I took them out of the nesting box carefully one by one. Two of them had their eyes open and they looked at me while I held them. It was the first time that they saw the world outside of the box. It was very exciting. The oldest two also have hints of blue coming in. More blue budgies! They are so cute! I love baby budgies!

Much of Mark Twain's work is still quite timely. Written in 1904, but published shortly after his death in 1910, The War Prayer is one of those works. For those of you who haven't read it (and for those of you who want to re-read it), here it is:

The War Prayer by Mark Twain It was a time of great exulting and excitement. The country was up in arms, the war was on, in every breast burned the holy fire of patriotism; the drums were beating, the bands playing, the toy pistols popping, the bunched firecrackers hissing and sputtering; on every hand and far down the receding and fading spread of roofs and balconies a fluttering wilderness of flags flashed in the sun; daily the young volunteers marched down the wide avenue gay and fine in their new uniforms, the proud fathers and mothers and sisters and sweethearts cheering them with voices choked with happy emotion as they swung by; nightly the packed mass meetings listened, panting, to patriot oratory which stirred the deepest depths of their hearts, and which they interrupted at briefest intervals with cyclones of applause, the tears running down their cheeks the while; in the churches the pastors preached devotion to flag and country, and invoked the God of Battles, beseeching His aid in our good cause in outpourings of fervid eloquence which moved every listener. It was indeed a glad and gracious time, and the half dozen rash spirits that ventured to disapprove of the war and cast doubt upon its righteousness straight way got such a stern and angry warning that for their personal safety's sake they quickly shrank out of sight and offended no more in that way. Sunday morning came – next day the battalions would leave for the front; the church was filled; the volunteers were there, their young faces alight with martial dreams – visions of the stern advance, the gathering momentum, the rushing charge, the flashing sabers, the flight of the foe, the tumult, the enveloping smoke, the fierce pursuit, the surrender! – then home from the war, bronzed heroes, welcomed, adored, submerged in golden seas of glory! With the volunteers sat their dear ones, proud, happy, and envied by the neighbors and friends who had no sons and brothers to send forth to the field of honor, there to win for the flag, or failing, die the noblest of noble deaths. The service proceeded; a war chapter from the Old Testament was read; the first prayer was said; it was followed by an organ burst that shook the building, and with one impulse the house rose, with glowing eyes and beating hearts, and poured out that tremendous invocation: "God the all-terrible! Thou who ordainest, Thunder thy clarion and lightning thy sword!" Then came the "long" prayer. None could remember the like of it for passionate pleading and moving and beautiful language. The burden of its supplication was, that an ever-merciful and benignant Father of us all would watch over our noble young soldiers, and aid, comfort, and encourage them in their patriotic work; bless them, shield them in the day of battle and the hour of peril, bear them in His mighty hand, make them strong and confident, invincible in the bloody onset; help them to crush the foe, grant to them and to their flag and country imperishable honor and glory – An aged stranger entered and moved with slow and noiseless step up the main aisle, his eyes fixed upon the minister, his long body clothed in a robe that reached to his feet, his head bare, his white hair descending in a frothy cataract to his shoulders, his seamy face unnaturally pale, pale even to ghastliness. With all eyes following and wondering, he made his silent way; without pausing, he ascended to the preacher's side and stood there, waiting. With shut lids the preacher, unconscious of his presence, continued his moving prayer, and at last finished it with the words, uttered in fervent appeal, "Bless our arms, grant us victory, O Lord our God, Father and Protector of our land and flag!" The stranger touched his arm, motioned him to step aside – which the startled minister did – and took his place. During some moments he surveyed the spellbound audience with solemn eyes, in which burned an uncanny light; then in a deep voice he said: "I come from the Throne – bearing a message from Almighty God!" The words smote the house with a shock; if the stranger perceived it he gave no attention. "He has heard the prayer of His servant your shepherd, and will grant it if such be your desire after I, His messenger, shall have explained to you its import – that is to say, its full import. For it is like unto many of the prayers of men, in that it asks for more than he who utters it is aware of – except he pause and think. "God's servant and yours has prayed his prayer. Has he paused and taken thought? Is it one prayer? No, it is two – one uttered, the other not. Both have reached the ear of Him Who heareth all supplications, the spoken and the unspoken. Ponder this – keep it in mind. If you would beseech a blessing upon yourself, beware! lest without intent you invoke a curse upon a neighbor at the same time. If you pray for the blessing of rain upon your crop which needs it, by that act you are possibly praying for a curse upon some neighbor's crop which may not need rain and can be injured by it. "You have heard your servant's prayer – the uttered part of it. I am commissioned of God to put into words the other part of it – that part which the pastor – and also you in your hearts – fervently prayed silently. And ignorantly and unthinkingly? God grant that it was so! You heard these words: 'Grant us victory, O Lord our God!' That is sufficient. The whole of the uttered prayer is compact into those pregnant words. Elaborations were not necessary. When you have prayed for victory you have prayed for many unmentioned results which follow victory – must follow it, cannot help but follow it. Upon the listening spirit of God the Father fell also the unspoken part of the prayer. He commandeth me to put it into words. Listen! "O Lord our Father, our young patriots, idols of our hearts, go forth to battle – be Thou near them! With them – in spirit – we also go forth from the sweet peace of our beloved firesides to smite the foe. O Lord our God, help us to tear their soldiers to bloody shreds with our shells; help us to cover their smiling fields with the pale forms of their patriot dead; help us to drown the thunder of the guns with shrieks of their wounded, writhing in pain; help us to lay waste their humble homes with hurricanes of fire; help us to wring the hearts of their unoffending widows with unavailing grief; help us to turn them out roofless with their little children to wander unfriended the wastes of their desolated land in rags and hunger and thirst, sports of the sun flames of summer and the icy winds of winter, broken in spirit, worn with travail, imploring Thee for the refuge of the grave and denied it – for our sakes who adore Thee, Lord, blast their hopes, blight their lives, protract their bitter pilgrimage, make heavy their steps, water their way with tears, stain the white snow with the blood of their wounded feet! We ask it, in the spirit of love, of Him Who is the Source of Love, and Who is the ever-faithful refuge and friend of all that are sore beset and seek His aid with humble and contrite hearts. Amen." (After a pause) "Ye have prayed it; if ye still desire it, speak! The messenger of the Most High waits." It was believed afterward that the man was a lunatic, because there was no sense in what he said.

I have the memory of waking up in the middle of the night tripping when I took the shrooms that didn't seem to effect me. I don't know if it was a delayed effectiveness or just a dream. Whatever it is, it makes me want to try them one again one last time, if I can get my hands on them again.

i feel so good after last night's experience
i feel like i figured some important stuff out
not exactly what i expected to figure out
but in this case the unexpected is good
i feel more at peace with my life
the next major drug i want to do is acid
but that is very hard to find
it may be a while before i get my hands on any
i haven't done it in years
it is