Musing From the Laundry Mat of Life - Imperfections

I have been struggling to get this out of my head. I had my own perfection issues to deal with.

At the root of the matter is how many messages have I received about my hair, skin, body and profound lack of fashion sense that I have ingested over the course of time.

This is what I have figured out so far and was able to make a small demonstration video of a very big issue. I think if more of us could get a handle of what is being transmitted to our heads and see our true selves we could increase the mental health of this nation by a factor or ten.

This is the 3.79MB Windows Media Version

This is the 3.41MB QuickTime Video

Dove has a new product line that is interesting. Instead of selling anti-aging products lets try selling products that enhance our beauty after we reach a certain age.

Aged women are hardly ever mentioned in advertisements. That would be an admission that there are women who are over 25 years of age. Dove seems to be saying there isn't an expiration date on our attractiveness. http://www.doveproage.com Dove also seems to be saying "we don't care how old you are, we have got products to meet your needs."

I like the idea of the commercial. It is still selling a solution to a non-existent problem but it had more people that looked like me than I've seen in ten years of television.

Aging is not a problem. It is a result of successful living. You either increase in age or you are dead. Now at some point you will be dead anyway but I'm thinking later not sooner.

Much, much later.

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Musing From The Laundry Mat of Life - Cycle 1a

Some of you I can tell are not convinced. After all it is an act of defiance. You have an advertising and business foundation of making sure you believe there are massive things wrong with you. It is a foundation of business to sell problems and solutions.


I am proposing that you are worthy without cosmetic reconstruction.

Sometimes you gotta hear from folks further along the path to get your attention. This is a video that I found on Atom Films. If you have problems viewing this video here or want to read some of the comments made about the video you can visit http://www.atomfilms.com/film/undressing.jsp

Musings at the Laundry Mat of Life - Cycle 1

In his book "The Art of Loving" Erich Fromm wrote:

"Genuine love is an expression of productiveness and implies care, respect, responsibility and knowledge. It is not an "affect" in the sense of being affected by somebody, but an active striving for the growth and happiness of the loved person, rooted in one's own capacity to love." Page 54

So, in my understanding of this passage another person can't really love you unless they have the capacity and the goodies inside to love his or herself.

And on the other side of the fence if you don't have any of that going for you then you will probably search for substitutes. Like Ben and Jerry's Cherry Garcia ice cream. Or 50 pairs of shoes. Or a Fuji S5200 digital camera. Or, I dunno like maybe, sex?

Every once in a while is fine. But when it becomes your sole prime motivation in life?

If you are sexing up to fill a missing part of your being or trying to treat for body companionship then it will feel good. It might feel okay. It might feel bad.

Pick one or all of the above. This is not a trick question. You really do have to like who you are on a primary level of existence. For some of you you are gonna want it on a spiritual level. Atheists I'm not letting you off the hook - on a humanist's level you have to like you.

(Psst, if you like yourself it keeps you from doing x-amount of dumb ass shit. Can save you a boat load of money too.)

If you know this stuff, cool I'll dig you later. Based on the poor souls of the prior post and in the news I don't think enough people believe this so I want to make sure this seed is planted somewhere.

To be clear, I'm not advocating selfishness. There are way too many self indulgent fools on the planet. I'm advocating a core love and respect for yourself because if we as women folk (and the people that like and love us) don't have it then really bad things tend to happen to us. Really embarrassing, horrible, pride sucking bad things.

So the first cycle is self-love. How you come to find it within your self is your journey. Me? I find great healing in a bubble bath.

Resources To Check Out:

• Sounds True - audio, video and publication to help you on your search to a better life or contact with an alternate path http://soundstrue.com
• International Erich Fromm Official site http://www.erich-fromm.de
• Essay by Steven G. Fullwood "Dualities and A Whole Self "
  
• Iyanla Vanzant - Innervisions for A Spiritual World
  

Musings at the Laundry Mat of Live - Pre Wash

I was at trying to write this idea that has been banging in my head. A guy I know comes up to me and asks what am I writing.

I tell him I'm trying to write about love and sex for a blog post. He pauses, smiles and then says " I didn't think you wrote about stuff like that."

He didn't mean it the way it sounds. Around the break table we talk of politics, the lack of mass transit alternatives, technology, current events and almost anything else. So when he made that comment it was like "you are breaking my pre-conceived notions of who I thought you were."

This is a good thing. So I'm sitting in the laundry mat and the past week has been a dilly for women:

• Driving a 1,000 miles to hurt another woman because of a man.
  
• A woman miscarries because the police officers refuses to take her to the hospital.
• A rape victim arrested and denied emergency contraception medication by a contract nurse who may or may not have been acting on her religious beliefs.
• A woman who was going to have gastric bypass surgery and didn't want to lose her boyfriend so she made a deal with her 15 year old daughter to have sex with said boyfriend for perks like dying her hair.
  
• And on so many levels Anna Nicole Smith and the media vultures picking on the still warm bones.

In my head I keep questioning is it education, lack of self-knowledge, parenting skills? What do we need to tell to the group mind that would keep women safer than the poor souls that made the news and the million more stories that are never spoken.

And who am I to offer anything to the conversation? Only hard won personal information and a near lethal dose of curiosity. Am I gonna write about this all the time? Nope. This will get mixed in with the other stuff. There are other bloggers who do a wonder job about writing about sex issues. I'm going to refer you to them.

I wanted to set up an anchor point for future posts. This is the "why am I doing this?"

There is a risk here. Because if I hit the right nerve I could increase my troll level a hundredfold. Or lose a job because a potential employer will read this posts and make a decision that may or may not be true.

But there is something that will not leave me alone about this so I might as well go forth. So here is the deal. For the next couple of posts I want to present information about primarily straight but open to the possible options about self love, self pleasuring and web based resources that straight women and interested others could visit.

There will be some video, not as much as I hoped unless I can convince people to come out on this limb with me. But I will have links to credible sources and I'll do my best not to lead anybody into a spam farm.

Appeal for Redress To The U.S. Congress

While some folks in Washington, D.C. are talking about non-binding resolutions other folks have other ideas. This is Jabar McGruder speaking at the January 27, 2007 Los Angeles protest event.

A number of active duty soldiers have signed the Appeal for Redress document and it has been submitted to Congress. For more information visit http://www.appealforredress.org

This is the 12.9MB Windows version.

This is the 6.05MB QuickTime version.

I'm a little more than cynical about them getting an honorable response to their request. President fever has hit and there is little incentive to hear them out. If you can, take the time to listen and consider what is being said.

Bear witness to the voices. The voices grow louder.