DirecTV Dictatorship (now in four rooms of your home for FREE)!

Newscasters seem so disappointed when impending cataclysms fail to be particularly, well, cataclysmic. It’s disturbingly hilarious. Reporters doing their damnedest trying to tart things up, saying: “... the expected DEVASTATION and narrowly escaped HORROR!”
How could mainstream media ratings ever top 9/11? The current fixation with child sex-crimes might spike the curve a little, but all that “in-depth,” “thought-provoking” coverage of psycho-social disturbance serves only as whitewash. Our collective guilt and shame find brief respite in a poignant, warm-fuzzy moment of “social consciousness.”
“We’re AWARE, and that makes a difference.”
“I’m BOTHERED, therefore I’m part of the solution.”
Glad you feel better, but that brand of “self-esteem” is for complacent narcissists addicted to milquetoast dipped in mediocrity. You know, “liberals,” “anarchist philosophers,” and other culturally impotent “radicals.”
Since Hurricane Katrina, we’re officially desensitized to disaster. The effects of Katrina were, as one reporter stated, “like a scene from a horror movie.” Brilliant journalism! So now life/death is more credibly beautiful/tragic when it resembles an illusion?
Reports out of New Orleans from real people were decidedly more visceral: “The 9th ward still don’t smell right.”
Talking heads mesmerized audiences with “sensitively” edited visuals of the “rising death toll” while “rotted, floating corpses” were described in graphic detail. House by house searches revealed elaborate tableaus of American family life that Norman Rockwell never imagined.
FCC, Board of Standards & Practices—don’t worry, you can show us the stacks of black bags coming back from Eye-Rack with dead kids in ’em now. This country’s so numb there’s no danger of any effective revolutionary movement. It won’t be the same mistake y’all made by broadcasting real-time bullets during the Vietnam war. That public was still paying attention. They hadn’t been appropriately prepared; they still cared about life.
In LBJ’s day, the puppet masters of mass consciousness went for that nationalist “guts and glory” rallying angle, for sure. It wasn’t a bad idea, just one whose time had not yet come. Well, not since about 1938, in Nazi Germany. But outraged consciences finally emerged from the coffee shop smoke screen and park bench consensus, facilitating the public’s scrutiny of our fledgling neo-fascist regime and ending a heinous, ill-considered, mismanaged travesty of a war.
Whoops!
Spin-doctors learned quickly from their little propaganda faux pas. Those “Beatnik” “hippie” “intellectuals” who demanded common sense, integrity, and accountability from their elected leaders hadn’t grown up playing gut-splattering video games for hours on end. A plethora of voyeuristic brain fodder, exponentially escalating shock “value” and sensationalism of “reality” TV was not yet the norm.
One small step and a giant leap later, in less than two generations, the media machine whetted a voracious American appetite for global domination, complete with an obnoxious attitude of self-righteous entitlement.
During the war in Vietnam, people watched reality on TV, not “reality TV.” They witnessed actual experiences of fellow human beings. Today, in an increasingly tumultuous and volatile climate, we’re “under constant threat” of nuclear annihilation, superflus, and environmental disasters of biblical proportion. As a result, we may have fattening rosters of congregations, support groups, ashrams, and motivational seminars, but let’s face it—we don’t really have fellow human beings anymore.
We have sense-surround home theater systems for the closest thing to reality. Sublimely ironic, since average citizens have lost most of their capacity for genuine experience. How can we expect to sympathize with the feelings of STRANGERS? We aren’t even aware of our own feelings.
Why not just show us the carnage in the streets of Fallujah?! Broadcast GI Joe barking with his boot heel on some rock-tossing kid’s neck. Zoom in on that frail little raisin of a grandma wailing her head off while you’re at it. What else is on besides BigBrother and SuperNanny?
Continue the feed. Make sure the advertisements are sexy. Sell the collective UNconsciousness to the highest bidder. Delight, tantalize, shock and awe us in our emotionally anesthetized isolation. Thrill our fried synapses and gauze the lens of our third eye!
What’s next from the media alphabet and Murdoch, who FOX with us the most?
“Survivor Appalachia?”
“B-List Celebrity Shotgun Roller Derby?”
I got it. “The Suicide Channel.”

“Informed, inactive people are just as useless as ignorant ones.”
—Andrew Vacchs, author/child advocate
Isabel Scott is a Taos resident, essayist and songwriter, damned sick of being a culturally impotent radical. She currently hosts a regular gathering of evolutionary revolutionaries intent on reclamation of individual and collective power through elemental and psychological alchemy. It’s deep, man, and usually pretty fun.
For more information contact:unitedspacetaos@yahoo.com.

Americans, not who we used to be.

Americans are no longer considered rugged individuals, fearless pioneers, or even “free.” Thanks to the “ugly American” caricature, and the marauding tendencies of self-interested “leaders,” we are now famous worldwide as a society of whiny, angry, finger pointing victims. Lawsuits are preferable to accountability, and semantics equate tangible results. The fact is, as a nation, we’re embarrassingly over weight, under educated, and miserable in our excesses. When faced with the consequences of ignorance puritans are notoriously defensive.

Doesn’t it feel just a little dicey to be complaining about losing inalienable rights to an oppressive government while living in the shadow of the Pueblo and alongside people whose families were here long before we had a constitution to protect? How do “we the (rest of the) people” begin to reclaim our individual sovereignty and create solidarity? Just like that. Humbly acknowledge the difficult truths. Then, with heartfelt gratitude and a deep sigh at the irony of it all, we can pass the Thanksgiving turkey.

My ancestors were at war with each other. That doesn’t mean I have to be at war with myself. If we don’t choose to be at peace, free and bravely at home in our own skins, “visualizing” world peace is a ridiculous waste of time. Just as ridiculous as the idea that a government can provide anything that it doesn’t inherently possess, for instance, integrity, morality or personal security. Only “we the people” have the option to exercise those qualities on a momentary basis, one person at a time.

SUPERHERO RESCUES SELF

The real Superman knows power is not brute force, willfulness or aggression. He knows power is not about having the loudest bark or the nastiest bite. Someone else's power isn't Kryptonite. In fact, there's no such thing as Kryptonite. The real Superman knows this.

True masculine power is in knowing; knowing who you are, what you want, where you're coming from, where you want to go, and how to accomplish your desires, right now. If you don't know, you find out, humbly, "by any means necessary." If you have no vision higher than a mundane cycle of work and stress relief, you are failing as author of your own experience. Your vision is a powerful and essential gift to offer the world, and the feminine. Both give their powerful gifts in absolute reflection of your intent. Know why you want what you want.

Power is discerning. Do you serve your vision by creating the vacuum which nature so abhors, so she can fill it? Are you clearing the field of anything that would impede growth; strengthening defenses against all that would prey on your peace? The stones and scavengers will often be your own thoughts. Discover the difference between thinking and knowing, opinion and insight, stagnation and stillness, personality and presence.

Power is active. Run to meet the challenges of the unconscious; experience the blissful release of an open heart and body in ecstatic surrender. Allow yourself to be immersed in a faithful certainty, surrounded by the guileless abandon of a life force that endlessly conspires to manifest your greatest potential. Take steps to get out of your own way.

Power initiates. Be fearless and forthcoming. The world responds to your power. Feminine strength catalyzes it. Focus your clarity and uninhibited desire. Follow through with integrity and imagination. Your creativity and willingness are all the resources you will ever need. Fill your coffers by emptying them freely.

Wildly, reverently, celebrate, claim and share your power, your wisdom, yourself. Your power is your soul, your shadow, philosopher's stone, and San'Grael. Know it cannot be lost or taken, only embraced or denied.

Now ask yourself if you know what you've been pretending not to know.
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Just a Spoonful of Sugar…

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My friend Leonardo from school has lots and lots of the biggest imagination ever. Sometimes his imaginations are a little scary and he won't stop jumping up and down or making zoom zoom noises for a long time. He is very funny and most of the kids are his friends even when he gets extra mad for a few seconds and then falls asleep in the middle of the playground. (he NEVER sleeps at nap time)

He does art during snack time, plays kamikaze pilot during story time, sleeps at recess and sings all during the teacher's good morning lesson plan time. He is smarter than anybody. He can always figure out new ways to build a fort or tell the same old story so it's never boring. He gets bad marks on his work papers because he writes backwards. He also writes secret messages with numbers but no one can read them except him and he says the messages are "topological maps of alternate dimensional realities" but I don't know what that is. Maybe it's something you learn in second grade.

Last week during parents' visit the teacher talked to his for a long time in private.
This week he had a special "desert" to eat that no one else got. It was a little yogurt cup with a funny label and we were all kind of mad that he got extra snacks and that he wasn't allowed to share.

For the past couple of days, Leonardo's imagination hasn't been so big. He sleeps really well at nap time. He started a new game during good morning time, and he plays it all day long. I think he calls it "chemical warfare". He took a sponge from the art cubby and the teacher gave him a little spray bottle. He cleans the underside of the tables and chairs really fast and when he finishes he starts all over again.

He hasn't been writing any secret messages. He doesn't sing anymore, unless you count that weird little quiet humming noise. I asked him if he wanted to build a fort or draw or something, but all he could do was stare at the underside of the chair and scrub away, saying " busy, busy, busy". It was kinda creepy. But it's worse sad. He doesn't care if the same old story is boring anymore. But the teacher is very pleased, because now, she says, we can all finally pay attention to it.


"Life is flowers, Love is water, God is good dirt." - LuLu, age 5

I Don't Care About Your Apathy

Okay, are we clear about what fighting for democracy means? Is it freedom or moral justice for other countries while dismissing the needs of our own people? Yawn.
Old story, I'll move on. Allow me to modify the perspective. Screw the bleeding hearts. It's about power. We all know it. Keeping pedal to the metal on the foreFATHERS' WHITE-MANifestos, careening toward eugenic fruition at all costs! Okay, oil. Keep firmly revving the LandBruisers and plastic HumJobs. It's embarrassing; please don't affix vinyl sentiments any further left than Ted Nugent's on those behemoths.

The enemies faced as we "fight for our way of life?" - A ceaseless assault of 'terror' from 'foreigners', hating us cuz we're Christians with badass weapons 'n'sh*t? Nebulous threats of God (and apparently only Dick Cheney, BioMedtronics and Pat Robertson) knows what - on Americans, who exist in anything but genuinely United States?
Maybe, but once the world is "under control" in the name of "liberty", we gotta deal with domestic terrorism! Druggie ECO-Hippie GreenArchists gumming up the works. How are we supposed to get clean drinking water if not from melting glaciers? What's the big deal? Don't those environ-mental cases believe in evolution? Besides, polar bears and penguins will always be immortalized by Walt Disney Studios and popular zoological parks.

Do you know what really terrorizes this country? High School seniors who don't know why the Civil War began, where it was fought, or who won it.

Isabel Scott
Taos resident with the dubious distinction of being both a Daughter of the American Revolution and the Confederacy.
sistersofthesun@yahoo.com