Update: Pine Ridge Sacred Choices clinic

Posted with permission - go ahead and cross post.

From: Vonnie Bush
To: ME
Date: Mar 31, 2006 3:34 PM
Subject: RE: Thank you, President Fire Thunder

Greetings from the Oglala Sioux Tribe. A name has been decided for the clinic here on Pine Ridge Reservation; it will be the Sacred Choices Clinic. On an exciting note, it is fast becoming a reality. We thank you and your support is deeply appreciated. Sincerely, Vonnie Bush OST Presidents Exec. Secretary. OST SACRED CHOICES PRES CECELIA FIRE THUNDER - PO BOX 2070 - PINE RIDGE, SD - 57770

Due to the many requests of another organization on the Pine Ridge Reservation re: donations I have suggested the following non-profit organization re: Sacredness of Women (domestic violence).

Cangleska, Inc.
Karen Artichoker, Director
PO Box 638
Kyle, SD 57752
PHONE: 1-605-455-2244
EMAIL: karen@cangleska.org

This is so beautiful.
So.
Very.
Beautiful.

Bizarre fan mail..

This arrived in my inbox this afternoon. I get crazy email from that othersite I have all the time. It's usually either a) freaks who think they're sending email to someone other than me, b) people who somehow miss the sarcasm and mockery inheirant in the system, d) hate mail from those for whom the foo shits. Very, very rarely is it someone writing who actually gets it.

From: ***************
To: Peregrine
Date: Mar 29, 2006 1:18 PM
Subject: I like your site
Reply | Reply to all | Forward | Print | Add sender to Contacts list | Delete this message | Report phishing | Show original | Message text garbled?

Hi!

I saw your site and wanted to write to you to tell you what a laugh it was! I saw another story online and wanted to know if this was you who wrote it?
Here it is.
http://www.newsobserver.com/105/story/388724.html
Props, Mark

****************************

I actually half expected it to be a story about Viagra or breast enlargement or something, but it turned out to be legitimately relevant. HA! That story is fucking brilliant! Not one of mine, though.

I was also half expecting it to be signed by VT, but it was missing a few thousand smart quotes and references to sobriety.

Madness!

Vegetarian cats.

One of the questions I get asked fairly frequently, usually by fellow vegetarians, is whether my cats are on a vegetarian/vegan diet as well. The answer is no, and today the question resulted in a diatribe on what a horrible, ignorant animal caretaker I am.

My cats are not vegetarian specifically because I am not ignorant. I worked with big cats for several years, and have seen up close and personal what a nutrient-deficient or taurine-deficient diet will do to them. Hair loss, bone density loss, a destroyed digestive system, loose teeth, bleeding gums, blindness, palsy, muscle atrophy, organ failure, brain damage, death. I watched lions, tigers, Savannas, Caracals, Servals, jaguars, leopards, pumas, and bobcats die all the time because some ignorant asshat didn't learn what to feed them and the sanctuary didn't get them in time to save them.

The usual culprit was commercially manufactured dry cat food, which is garbage - literally. It's made of animals not suitable for human food, and when the meat from those animals is too decayed or tainted to use the corpses are boiled and rendered for stock and fat, grain chaff, processed corn, ash, and artificial additives and chemical colour. Big cats haven't been domesticated long enough for their digestive system to be able to break that stuff down, and it will rip through their system like shrapnel. Domestic cats have, unfortunately, adapted to eating commercially processed cat food, but just because it keeps them alive doesn't mean it's good for them either. All the bad stuff they can't digest becomes stored in their organs, in their fat cells, and it can get into their bloodstream and make them very sick.

The secondary culprit with the big cats was a steady diet of ground raw meat. Nutrient deficiencies, parasites, muscle atrophy, intestinal impaction, heart problems, calcium and potassium deficiences, seizures, death - those are a few of the major problems. The main one being that big cats are carnivores, preditors, and built to digest entire parts of animals, and in a very real way, their system needs all those parts to function properly. A diet of nothing but ground raw meat will kill a big cat just as cruelly as a diet of kibble. No matter which way it goes, both diets will cause lasting, permanent and often debilitating damage to the cat's body and system.

The last, and thankfully least, culprit were the big cats who came in on a totally vegetarian or vegan diet - usually done because the ignorant owner believed that by not feeding them any meat or animal products, it would make them more domesticated, more tractable, less predatorial. This is a complete myth that resulted in a lot of dead cats. Big cats cannot survive on a vegan diet. Domesticated cats can survive on it. How well, the jury is still out on. I'm optimistic about it, though.

Depending on what deficiencies a big cat came in with, what the sanctuary fed them varied based on what they needed. The workers had to learn what vitamins and nutrients are absolutely necessary to the big cats, how to spot vitamin or nutrient deficiency, and what to do to halt that deficiency. How much, how fast, how strong. Staying awake for two days nasotube feeding an animal that's come in with its body cannibalizing itself due to inadequate nutrition, holding it as its organs fail because they've been starved for too long and injecting nutrient-rich saline directly into the organs as a last ditch attempt to save the animal, watching as it dies when there's nothing more that can be done - and knowing that this was something completely preventable if the owner had done any research at all - that's the most powerful incentive on the planet. I'm a big proponent of 'Read the fucking manual first', because I want to know - not think, know, that I am doing the best thing possible for any animal in my care.

I was a vegetarian before I got my cats. I looked up vegetarian cat food alternatives, and looked for data on how well cats did on it. I looked up ingredient lists, recipes, articles, talked to vets and nutrition specialists and zookeepers and holistic medicine practitioners. The data that was available in 1998 wasn't adequate. There were rumours of 'synthetic taurine' but no information anywhere about what it was or how it was made. Acamprosate is a synthetic taurine analog, but its main use is in alcohol dependency in humans - I have no idea if this is the 'synthetic taurine' available. Taurine is absolutely necessary to any cat's health - without it, the cat will die. It is found in meat. It is found in trace amounts in plants. Cats cannot get enough taurine from plant sources. Humans and other animals can synthesize it themselves - felines cannot. There is no long-term data on the health effects of synthetic taurine on cats, much less any data on cats fed synthetic taurine their entire lives versus those transitioned later in life.

There was no specific, long term data concerning vegetarian diets for cats. The only scientific study done was a study in Germany published by E. Kienzle and R. Engelhard - “A Field Study on the Nutrition of Vegetarian Dogs and Cats in Europe” in the Supplement to Compendium on Continuing Education for the Practicing Veterinarian, September of 2001. That study only used 8 cats, and did not go into detail on the cats prior diet history - and the study showed negative results. The University of Pennsylvania just finished the very first study done specifically on vegetarian diets for cats, this year. The results haven't been published yet. I'm very anxious to read it, and study what their control methods were and what the ages of the cats were when the study began and what they are now. What I want to see as proof positive that this kind of diet is healthy and beneficial to felines are geriatric cats, both those who've had a vegan diet their entire life and those who were transitioned, who are in good health, with clean health records.

Those are the kinds of records I looked at when deciding the diet for my cats. My cat's vet is vegan, a nutritionist, a holistic vet, and a proponent of raw food diets. She helped me do research both before and after my cats came into my life, and helped formulate the diet for my cats. I make their catfood, both the kibble and the wet food. Yes, there's raw meat in it. Free range, organic meat. I can't control the environmental variables where the animal was raised, but I can control which farms produce the meat my cats eat by being very particular about what I buy. I thought about using taurine supplements, but the ones on the market have a bunch of additive crap in them, and were produced using 'chicken meal' - and that term creeps me out because I know what it stands for. The taurine supplements also had other chemicals in it that my cat doesn't need, and there is no data on what effects those 'additional ingredients' may have when used long-term. The recipe for the diet I chose was worked out before I brought my cats home, and it's changed as they grew older and their dietary requirements changed. My cats are now 8 and 7 years of age, respectively. They are healthy with an absolutely clean medical history.

When I decided to have cats in my life, it wasn't a decision I made lightly. I'm a vegetarian. Cats are carnivores, and I didn't then know of any, or if there would ever be any, way to have them live healthy lives on an entirely vegetarian diet. The jury, as I said earlier, is still out on that until the results of the study done last year are published. Deciding whether to have cats meant, for me, studying the environment they'd be in and whether the housing, companionship, and diet would be best for them. I've made my choices based on what was in the best interest of my cats, with a background knowledge of feline nutritional requirements.

In the words of someone famous, "Ignorant, I ain't."

Brokeback Mountain - mostly spoiler free

Like Boys Don't Cry, Brokeback Mountain was an emotional punch in the stomach. Not for what I saw on the screen - but for the things they didn't show. The main form of distance communication are postcards with very few words on them, no emotional content at all except the word 'friend', capitalized like a proper noun. They're never seen using the phone, although there's evidence at the end that Ennis had Jack's phone number memorized. The interactions between the two main characters are likewise restrained except in very rare moments. Neither of them voices a word for their emotions or their relationship, although the power behind both is depicted throughout the entire movie. It's not a movie about "gay cowboys". It's a movie about how social stigma and paralyzing fear kept two people apart.

To quote Lord Alfred..
'What is thy name?' He said, 'My name is Love.'
Then straight the first did turn himself to me
And cried, 'He lieth, for his name is Shame,
But I am Love, and I was wont to be
Alone in this fair garden, till he came
Unasked by night; I am true Love, I fill
The hearts of boy and girl with mutual flame.'
Then sighing, said the other, 'Have thy will,
I am the love that dare not speak its name.'

They don't speak about it, they don't acknowledge it, they try to live so nobody ever suspects, because the repercussions for being found out would be ugly - and deadly.

What hurt the most, watching this: It's set in 1963 and spans 20 years. It could have been modern-day; the same stigma, the same fear, the same narrowminded, hateful attitudes still exist and still hold the majority. To know that even now, in 2006, we haven't come very fucking far at all from the days of open, condoned bigotry and hate. It hurts to know that, and to know people would rather gloss over that ugly little aspect of our society to make the United States look like some pretty, progressive, shiny magazine cover bastion of political equality and democracy than face up to the dark and ugly side, the things retarding social progress, and work toward fixing them and building a better society instead of a prettier one.

It hurt to realise some people will watch the movie and brush it off simply because it's set in 1963 and "things are better now".

They aren't. Not when a college kid could be pistolwhipped, tied to a fencepost by his own shoelaces and left to die or a man be shot to death for admitting on a television shock-talk show that he admired another man. Not when there's such a thing as a "gay panic defense". 'According to the gay panic defense, romantic or sexual propositions of a homosexual nature are so offensive and frightening to certain individuals that they can bring on a temporary psychotic state characterized by unusual violence.'

Why should that be offensive or frightening, especially to a degree that would provoke 'unusual violence'? Why is someone of the same sex making a pass at a person so much more taboo and terrible than someone of the opposite sex? The incidents of a turned-down homosexual cornering and raping the person who turned them down.. well, I can't even find one at all, so I'm gonna say they're pretty freaking small. Contrariwise, I've had two friends -female- who've been cornerd and raped by men they've politely turned down. One at a college party, one at a bar while she was waiting for a friend who never showed up.

Because 'gay' is seen as contagious, guilt by association. Don't get too close, for fucks sake don't let them touch you, or people might begin to question your own sexuality. They might think you're also homosexual, and that's bad because then they'll start treating you as badly as they treat those gay folk.

Things won't truly be better until that stigma has been put to rest for good. Not until people can stop living with the fear they'll be murdered for who they chose to love. The one thing I'm thankful for is that I live in a time when homosexual equality can be worked toward openly. Equality in general - this aspect in specific.

I had a brother who was gay, and he was murdered. My family doesn't know if his sexual preferance was the reason behind the murder, but we all pretend it wasn't - that it was a random, violent act that happened to him because he was in the wrong place at the wrong time. There's comfort in not knowing - we can pretend it happened for no reason instead of such a terrible one. No matter which way it's sliced, it still amounts to 'no reason'.

Since the post yesterday, I've gotten a lot of insane email.

I'm Tsalagi.
I'm a treehugging dirtworshipper.
Those two things have nothing to do with one another.

I can't teach you how to be a "Native American" shaman/priest/medicine person/Stomp Dancer." This isn't because Cherokee spiritual practices are some deep, dark secret held fast by a Tsalagi Shaman Shadow Society, or because there would be 'penalties' for me teaching 'non-natives' - it is because I. Cannot. Teach. What. I. Don't. Know.

Cherokee do not have shaman. We have medicine people, we have spiritual people, we have healers - they are not identified by the word 'shaman', and anyone claiming to be one is someone to be very wary of. Please read the article here.

Also, if you're trying to learn, please look at this site. Trisha Jacobs has a very extensive list of frauds - and anyone trying to take your money to teach you counts as a fraud, in my not so humble opinion.

Cherokee don't care whether you're blood or not if you want to learn about our culture. Hey! Come talk to us! We love to teach! How much Cherokee blood you have only matters if you want to be a registered, enrolled member of the Tribe - there are plenty of people who are non-enrolled who are intensely knowledgeable about the culture, tradition and language. Our nation has official sites on how to learn the language and our history and stories, and we can teach you traditional dancing at any powwow that happens to have a traditional dancer - by 'traditional', I mean the social and not the religious dances. I don't do the religious dances. For more information on Cherokee dancing, I direct you to the WikiPedia site.

I can't make you a "Cherokee Dream Catcher" - well, in theory I could, because if I made a dream catcher, it would in fact be made by a Cherokee, but the device itself is. not. a. traditional. Cherokee. spiritual. artifact. Likewise, we don't have sweat lodges, medicine wheels, crystal skulls, wolf songs, sun dances, etc. We also don't have 'traditional snowshoes' - Cherokee don't come from where it snows, yo.

Beware of anyone trying to sell you "native american spiritual" /anything/ - the one thing that is true of all Native American Tribes is that our spirituality cannot be purchsed or sold. It may be gifted, freely - nothing more. Not ever. Anyone telling you anything different is a disgrace to the blood they claim to have.

My grandparents were good, practising Christians. They were deeply spiritual people who believed that God could be found in everything - every blade of grass, every child, every heart and every soul. Not because they were Cherokee, but because they were believers. My father was agnostic, my mother is Episcopolian. My grandparents, my parents, my siblings, and many other people around me have influenced my spirituality, my thirst for knowledge and my openminded outlook toward everything. My spirituality stems from a lot of time researching various religions, and the joke is that I studied theology long enough to learn to believe and too long to believe in any one thing. I respect the power in everything. That respect is something I try to teach everyone I meet, if only by example.

Please do not email me asking me to teach you about Native American spirituality, because that phrase makes my teeth hurt. All tribes have different beliefs, and different factions of each tribe may have different beliefs as well. It's like asking a Mormon to teach you how to be Christian. They can teach you what they know, but what they know won't be true for all Christians. I can teach what I know, but these are things that are only true for me, not for all Cherokee, certainly not for all Native Americans and I would never presume to imply they were.

I can tell you all the stories my grandparents ever told me, but what you take away from those stories may be different than what I did. I can teach you how to make a mean batch of frybread or those things they sell at powwows called 'indian tacos', and while I learned how to make frybread as a hyper child (Grandmother: "Here. Go pound this dough until it's not sticky anymore."), the 'indian taco' recipe I got from a vendor at a powwow who admitted he made it up. I can teach you how to make sassafrass tea, and how to make butter from whole milk (Grandmother: *puts milk in mason jar, screws cap on tightly* "Here, go shake this until the butter forms.") I could tell you all about what it was like to grow up Tsalagi, but that won't teach you what it's like to be Cherokee. I can tell you all about my own personal spiritual journey, which hasn't ended yet, but that won't teach you how to be spiritual, for everyone will walk a different path on that journey.

-P

President Fire Thunder to open Planned Parenthood in Pine Ridge, SD

Text taken from here: http://kathrynt.livejournal.com/366823.html

"I called the Office of the President of the Oglala Sioux Tribe of Pine Ridge, and spoke with Ms. Fire Thunder herself. (In case you haven't seen it, this is in reference to http://www.indianz.com/News/2006/013061.asp)

If you want to mail donations to the reservation, you may do so at:

Oglala Sioux Tribe
ATTN: President Fire Thunder
P. O. Box 2070
Pine Ridge, SD 57770

OR: and this may be preferred, due to mail volume:

ATTN: PRESIDENT FIRE THUNDER
PO BOX 990
Martin, SD 57751

Enclose a letter voicing your support and explaining the purpose of the donation. Bear in mind, the Pine Ridge Res is not exactly dripping with disposeable income, so do consider donating funds directly to the tribe as well as specifically for this effort.

ETA: Make checks out to OST Planned Parenthood Cecelia Fire Thunder. This will ensure that the funds get routed properly.

For email contact, you can contact the president at:

firethunder_president AT NOSPAM yahoo DOT com
cc:vbush AT NOSPAM oglala DOT org

That is Ms. Fire Thunder's personal email address; I have received permission to post it here. For the sake of record keeping, do cc: the listed address on all correspondence; that's her official secretary.

She was frankly kind of surprised that a white girl from Seattle was calling to express support, and even more surprised that the news had spread so far so fast. She's likely to get deluged with screaming hate mail soon, so get your support in fast. Send email with good thoughts if you can't send money.

ETA: Yes, please, dear God, link it anywhere and everywhere!"

Double posted. Cross post it. Link it. Get the word out if you support this decision, and do it loudly and do it NOW before the opposition starts screaming. Donate if you have the cash, spread the word to those who might if you don't.

Personal edit:
How to say 'Thank You' in Lakota
(by a female) Pilamaya ye
(by a male) Pilamaya yelo
(thank you very much) Pilamaya aloh

Pilamaya aloh, President Fire Thunder.

-Peregrine

I shouldn't be laughing.

The next time someone earnestly asks me what kind of 'meat substitute' I prefer, since, y'know, I must completely crave the taste and texture of meat even though I've been an herbivore so long I couldn't honestly tell you what it tastes like anymore.. I think I'll suggest HuFu.

Because sometimes I am 12 and I could say that and explain what it was with a totally straight face.

And it would relieve the tedium of being asked that question for the nth time.

Some things just boggle me.

Occasionally I read The Smoking Gun, because the site takes online investagative reporting to a whole new level. I like them because they show you their papertrail and stick to documentable facts. Also, because the level of snark on that site is beautiful. Today, I came across an interesting article that documents the budgets of M. Night Shyamalan's recent trail of blockbuster movies.

I went through them all and zoned out at the numbers. More than three 0's and my brain shuts down and refuses to comprehend it as anything other than 'a lot'. What was interesting about the docs was that they're the budget, not the actual expenditures. This is just the list of numbers the movie was approved to spend, not what it actually did spend. They very well might be one and the same, but they could be radically different.

A group of friends and I write really bad movies to blow off steam; several of my friends are also into cinematography and production, and we all kind of enable one another in pursuit of our collective hobby. (Except the one of us who is a producer for a tv station in Green Bay, WI, we're all just hobby junkies.) The concept that movies could sponge that many figures for a budget just blows my mind. Then to see the actual breakdown of where the money was spent.. gah.

I'm biased - I'm one of the very few people who didn't like any of Shyamalan's movies. I found them two dimensional, predictable, and boring. I walked into the parking lot after 'Signs' and had an incoherent hissyfit complete with jumping up and down and radical gesticulations because I couldn't articulate how much I disliked that movie. (Earth.. mostly water. Aliens whose weakness is.. uh.. water. WTF?)

It seems like movies are going with bigger and bigger budgets to throw in Big Shiny Distractions and I can't decide whether this is because the status quo for viewers with attention spans has gone so completely down the toilet that such measures are necessary, or because the movies couldn't hold their own without said big shiny distractions. Sometimes the big shiny distraction is the names on the marquee, sometimes it's the overuse of CGI or SFX.

It makes me wonder what the ratio of actors with ulcers today as compared with actors with ulcers 20 years ago would be. I can't even imagine the pressure to walk into something where it's "Hi, we just got a budget of 70m, and we'd better have the box office bank and several gold statues of little naked men to justify it later." Because if a movie doesn't bank past the budget, it gets totally panned by everyone whether or not it was a decent movie. Contrariwise, if a movie doesn't start with a ridiculously large budget.. it doesn't make the news, doesn't stir that hype of 'zomg it's gotta be /awesome/!', doesn't engage people's curiousity.

.. train of thought derailing. To Be Con't.

Note to self.

Dear Self,
Some time from now, when you reflect back upon the project you are working on and want to rip your hair out from wondering why on earth you ever thought it was a good idea, this will be your notice.

* You sat through 12 years' worth of ER in a short period of time.
* Goran Visnjic's accent makes you purr.
* You speak Russian.
* Croatian is very similar to Russian.
* Your internal monologue has developed a Slovic accent.
* Thus all the characters in your head developed Slovic accents.
* You decided to work that into the story.
* You are a slave to 'I wonder what would happen if..'
* You have an exceptionally sarcastic and morbid sense of humour.
* You are a masochist.
* Your friends are enablers to your masochism.

Love is..

I wrote a whole list of things and realized they sounded like a chain of platitudes and weren't any sort of definition, but personal landmarks. Love defies definition. It's something that grabs your emotions and puts them on the most crazy, vertigo-inducing rollercoaster imaginable and makes you hold on tight and scream in fear all at the same time. Not just romantic love - any love, because to give that much of oneself is pretty freaking scary. Love isn't about being afraid of losing someone, it's about the joy they brought to your life by being a part of it. The worst tragedy I can think of would be letting someone I loved leave my life without knowing down to their very atoms how much I love them.

Years ago, Gunnar Nelson posted a poem that grabbed me, arrested my attention, and hasn't let me go. It haunts me. It's beautiful and rather tragic, and makes me wonder if the person writing was writing it to someone else, or themself. I wonder if they ever found the answers. The poem more or less defines love for me. Not the way you might think. When I read it and my heart and lungs feel like someone's grabbed them, and my next breath and heartbeat bring with them an enormous rush of joy and awe, and my next thoughts are of the beauty and wonder of everything around me and I can point to one thing and say 'This is what caused these feelings in me!' - that's love.


It doesn't interest me what you do for a living.
I want to know what you ache for,
and if you dare to dream of meeting your heart's longing.

It doesn't interest me how old you are.
I want to know if you will risk looking like a fool for love,
for your dreams, for the adventure of being alive.

It doesn't interest me what planets are squaring your moon.
I want to know if you have touched the center of your own sorrow.
if you have been opened by life's betrayals or
have become shriveled and closed from fear of further pain.

I want to know if you can sit with pain, mine or your own,
without moving to hide it or fade it or fix it.

I want to know if you can be with joy, mine or your own;
if you can dance with wildness and let the ecstasy fill you
to the tips of your fingers and toes without cautioning us to be careful,
be realistic, or to remember the limitations of being human.

It doesn't interest me if the story you are telling me is true,
I want to know if you can disappoint another to be true to yourself.
if you can bear the accusation of betrayal and not betray your own soul.

I want to know if you can be faithful and therefore trustworthy.
I want to know if you can see beauty, even when it is not pretty every day,
and if you can source your life from It's presence.

I want to know if you can live with failure, yours or mine,
and still stand on the edge of a lake and shout to the silver of the full moon, "YES!"

It doesn't interest me to know where you live or how much money you have.
I want to know if you can get up after a night of grief and despair,
weary and bruised to the bone, and do what needs to be done for the children.

It doesn't interest me who you are or how you came to be here.
I want to know if you will stand in the center of the fire with me and not shrink back.

It doesn't interest me where or what or with whom you have studied.
I want to know what sustains you from the inside when all else falls away.
I want to know if you can be alone with yourself,
and if you truly like the company you keep in the empty moments.

-Anonymous

Interesting.

Short article on how going vegan does more for the environment than hybrid cars.

A very short rant: Yeah, thanks, that's all well and good, but if people aren't willing to change their diet for their own personal health and the welfare of the animals they've been eating, I sincerely doubt the benefit to the environment will sway them much. It does make an interesting argument.

Although that would require me arguing with other people about their dietary choices, and I just can't be arsed to do that.

Mai bpen Rai

Walk the Line

Finally got around to watching Walk the Line, the Johnny Cash biosynopsis. Won't call it a biopic, because it only hit on the main driving factors in his life and the man was a lot more complex than this movie had time to portray.

The main thing on my mind after watching this movie is, "Their sound editor is either absolutely brilliant or should be locked in a room and forced to listen to this on one volume over and over and over again, because it would make him bleed out the ears and/or cause insanity." When the background noise completely obscures what the main character is saying on more than one occasion, it's a bad thing. Transitions between complete silence and loud, jarring music are also bad. Adding characters talking during the loud, jarring noise is also not good. I have a possible explanation for this in the paragraph below, but I'm really not sure whether I'm accurate or just trying to find a way to justify absolutely terrible sound editing.

The movie overall wasn't bad. It was a little slower than I would've liked, but I've also read the autobiography and the movie was concentrating strictly on one aspect of the Johnny/June love story. One of the things I liked was that this wasn't shot as the story of the man's life, but the story of his /memories/ of that life, at one particular moment in time. From the time of the fade, while he's standing in Folsom Prison staring at the saw blade, everything is a memory until they fade back into that. The sound during the memory portion is /awful/ - you can hardly understand what the hell Joaquin Phoenix is saying.. which is why the editor is either brilliant or needs to be smacked. Reese Witherspoon's voice is crystal clear, no matter what the background noise is. Joaquin Phoenix sounds like he's talking through a mouthful of gauze, and any tertiary characters are hit and miss. If this is Johnny Cash remembering these moments, and they're picking up on what he remembered as important, that would explain why everything June Carter Cash said stuck out so vividly, other people's words stuck out if they were important at the time, and Johnny Cash's words were mostly mumbled except when he was making a statement he remembered as important. Even if it's brilliance, it still drove me out of my tree trying to watch the movie, because while what he said might not have been important to him, *I* would've liked to know what he was saying.

Another thing I liked was how they portrayed Johnny Cash as always creating songs. Whether actively working on one or not, it was like he couldn't get the lyrics out of his head until he said them and gave them life.

Joaquin Phoenix's method acting again made me wince, not because the acting was bad but because he seems to have a habit of torturing himself to get into the role. He looked bloody awful through most of the movie - because he was supposed to - but watching someone bounce between beer gut and gaunt over 2 hours was shocking. Mission accomplished, I suppose, even if it made me want to chain him to a recliner until he ate and slept. I think part of why I watch movies he's in is a morbid fascination with how far he'll take it. It's frequently a painful transformation to watch, although nothing has been as horrifying as what he put himself through in Return to Paradise. Johnny Cash was a different kind of broken, and at least he survived it.

Reese Witherspoon was gorgeous, per usual. She definitely got the June Carter personality down. I'd kind of like to see a sequel done that was the exact same movie, only from her perspective. She's probably the only actress I can think of who has the kind of inner grace and poise that would suit June Carter Cash. I guess any decent actress could've portrayed that, but Reese does it effortlessly in everything she does, so her character came across as a lot more natural.

The cameos of Shooter Jennings and John Carter Cash made me happy.

While writing this, I was simultaneously discussing with a coworker the wonders of airbrushing and why most candid shots of celebrities wind up on the front page of the National Enquirer with "She's gained weight!" "Wrecked with drugs!" or some similar bunkum. We were discussing the flawlessness of Reese Witherspoon's face and the shadows that took over Joaquin Phoenix's during the movie. This site is very enlightening. If you go to 'Portfolio' and 'Before and After', at the top of the thumbnail frame, there's a 'Before' button you can click to see what the picture looked like before it was airbrushed. The 'Composite/Manipulation' page also has the 'Before' button. Interesting examples of how easy it is to make someone look like crap on film - just don't airbrush or filter.

I think I have to watch this movie at least twice more. I was too distracted by the sound to pay attention to some of the smaller details. Once more with the subtitles on, once after that when I don't have to read the screen and can pay attention without gritting my teeth with frustration every time John Cash says anything.

Love and hate, all at the same time.

I was reading a story yesterday, about a French soup kitchen that's being routinely shut down by riot squads for serving soup made with pork. Apparently that's discriminatory. Granted, the kitchen is more concerned with feeding France's hungry and homeless than taking care of the hungry and homeless from eleswhere in the world, but I fail to see where that's by definition a bad thing. They serve a full French meal, but the rule is: No soup, no dessert. If you don't eat pork, you won't be served, because you can't eat what's on the menu. They're a private charity, not a city or province funded one. They don't say "You're not a French national, go away!" .. they say "Want to eat here? Pork's on the menu." They have political views I don't agree with, but.. riot squads for a private soup kitchen? People having public fits over this, when there are plenty of others they could go to, including Halal or Kosher kitchens? Basically, the riot squads and protestors are preventing the kitchen from disbursing food to people who need it, to conform to a very warped idea of politically correct, and that's just total crap.

There are charities all over the world that have views contrary to those of other religions. In my country, Catholics run a good portion of the charities and you're served sermons with your food. They don't care what religion you are.. from the time you walk in the door until the time you walk back out, they treat you like you're Catholic. Which is great, unless you're Jewish and don't believe in that Christ character as a messiah figure. There are some that have rules that if you don't go to Confession to be shrived, you can't eat. Those kitchens are just as discriminatory but there are no riot squads or protestors. There's not a tree-hugging-hippy-dirtworshipper contingent outside protesting that the charity doesn't respect the rights of those who worship a Goddess figure and demanding that they start incorporating that in their charity.

It's a choice. The people protesting? They don't like it, they don't have to eat there. There are other places for them to go. They could even set up a soup kitchen dedicated to serving safe food for Muslims.. oh look, there already are some. Using a soup kitchen to make a point that there are homeless in your own country and you'd like to concentrate on them? That's fairly benign, since they're not checking visas at the door and turning away anyone not a French national.

So.. let's take away pork, because it's offensive to Muslims and Jewish people. How about beef? No, that offends East Indian people who view cows as sacred and also, Jews can't eat it unless it's Kosher and iirc Muslims can't eat it unless it's Halal. Same with mutton or goat, but then you're leaving out the Jews on the split-hooved thing. Chicken or fish? Unless it's Kosher, the Jews still can't eat it. Oops, and now you've pissed off the vegetarians. Ok, so.. no meat. It's France, let them eat quiche. Woops. Quiche is made with eggs and cheese, so now the vegans are being discriminated against. Tofu based food for all! .. and now everyone who eats meat is angry all over again. Meanwhile, the hungry are going without because people are getting into a political fight about a charity.

I don't like the soup kitchen's viewpoint any more than I like that of the redneck bastards here at home who want to kick out all the immigrants, stop sending aid to foreign countries and spend American dollars on American people. I do understand it, on both counts, especially when I can look at the news every week and see how much money the US is dumping into foreign aid and compare it to the budget cuts Social Security and Welfare are getting. I don't agree with the viewpoint, and I don't like it - but I do understand it and I respect what they're doing because at the end of the day, they're feeding people who would otherwise go hungry. Protesting why they're doing it is a waste of resources and energy and only harms the people on the receiving end. A better way to protest would be to set up an alternative kitchen that served non-offensive food and make it better to a degree that it would draw away the crowds. My view boils down to "Don't like the message? Stop listening and send a better one."

And speaking of better messages. On to a happier topic.

I was forwarded to another story about peer-to-peer loans for developing countries. Global Giving and Kiva are two organizations that allow people to find a grassroots effort and help finance it. They use PayPal as their means of accepting donations, which kind of sketches me out because I have issues with PayPal over their fee system - paying by credit card would mean not all of my donation would get to where it was going, because they slice their fee off at the receiving end. However.. I really like the idea of being able to choose where my donation would go, and being able to help a smaller effort that doesn't have an organization whose overall views I might not agree with backing it. I'm still looking over the sites, but so far I'm enthused about the idea. A few years ago, a friend of mine directed me to Heifer International, a site where you could purchase livestock to help farmers in foreign countries. We bought a llama, which was then given to a farmer in Peru, as a birthday gift for a friend. I liked this charity because a) my money went to one specific thing, not put in a pool and allowed to accrue interest that was then disbursed along charity lines, and b) I could help fund farmers by means other than animals used as food. Animals raised for fiber, bees used for honey, trees. That was a new one on me.. normally I adopt rainforests or cocoa or coffee trees or bats for people. Sometimes reefs. I hadn't thought about adopting herd animals because I have a big soft squishy heart and can't stomach the idea that any animal I had a hand in purchasing would potentially be killed for food. That isn't a donation I could feel good about. Fiber animals, bees, trees.. that I can do.

It's all about choice. I won't fund a charity that goes against my personal moral viewpoint, but I won't deny their right to exist and run their charity how they see fit.

Discrimination is an easy label to apply. It's that grey area around how it's used and how far it's taken that gets me worried. The current political trend of trying not to offend anyone is great in theory but not so practical in application.