Archive for January, 2010

I usually don’t stray from the topics of fashion or style & their related areas for this blog, but I’m going to make an exception today, because I read something yesterday that really upset me.

What it comes down to is that a Wiccan priest & chaplain, Patrick McCollum, has been trying for years to overturn California’s “five faiths” policy. The policy limits the hiring of paid chaplains to Protestant, Catholic, Muslim, Jewish, and Native American religions. (As a side note, I do think it’s really cool that Native American religions are already recognized. Even if the rest of the policy is a major fail.) In 2009 a California federal district court ruled that he had no standing to bring his suit (among other reasons, they denied his standing as a taxpayer – WTF?), but he’s recently gained support from several civil & religious groups that think his case should be heard (and rightfully so!).

However, a new Amicus Curiae filed be a conservative activist organization called WallBuilders, focuses on other issues than McCollum’s standing as a taxpayer or non-inmate. In fact, they argue that he doesn’t have any standing because pagans (among other religions) aren’t guaranteed the same rights and protections as Christian or monotheist citizens.

“The true historic meaning of “religion” excludes paganism and witchcraft, and thus, does not compel a conclusion that McCollum has state taxpayer standing … paganism and witchcraft were never intended to receive the protections of the Religion Clauses.Thus, in the present case there can be no violation of those clauses … Should this Court conclude that McCollum has taxpayer standing … this Court should at least acknowledge that its conclusion is compelled by Supreme Court precedent, not by history or the intent of the Framers.”

Instead of rejecting the amicus, McCollum said that lawyers for the California Department of Corrections & Rehabilitation (CDCR) have argued from the beginning that there are “first tier” & “second tier” religions.

“I originally sued on behalf of myself and Pagan inmates as their chaplain, but about a year later several inmates joined the lawsuit.  Together, we claimed that it is unconstitutional for the state to deny the Pagan inmates their religious rights, their religious materials, and their religious services.

During the course of the case, the CDCR, other related defendants, and the Assistant Attorneys General who represents them have argued before the court that Pagans are not deserving of equal civil rights as are provided adherents of the preferred faiths.  In one of their first arguments to the court, the defendants said that certain “traditional” faiths are first tier faiths and that those faiths were meant to have equal rights and  protections under the United States Constitution, but that all of the other faiths were second tier faiths, and were not meant to have the same equal rights and protections under the United States Constitution as the first tier faiths.”

Uh huh. I don’t think anyone’s faith deserves to be classified “second tier”. And interestingly enough, Hinduism and Buddhism aren’t counted among “traditional” religions – both are older than Christianity! Hinduism is arguably the oldest religions without a break in practice. Kind of interesting how it’s not “traditional” enough for these people.

I’m just going to let the Wild Hunt take it from here:

If the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals should decide that this line of argument has any validity, it could send a shock-wave through the legal community, casting doubt on any number of legal cases that now ensure the equal protection of religious minorities. This case, fought for so long, and simply to keep a Wiccan from possibly getting a paid chaplaincy position, has already created a “two-tier” religious system for incarcerated Pagans in California. Guaranteeing that some faiths are more equal than others.

& more from Mr. McCollum:

I think it is now time for our community, and also for people of good will in other faiths and religious communities of conscience to respond to this outrageous position in support of continued discrimination by a governmental agency.  The safety and security of every minority faith community in the country is in danger when arguments like these are thought to be credible by anyone.

We all need to write to Jerry Brown, the California Attorney General, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, and Mathew L. Cate, the Secretary of the CDCR and let them all know our outrage.  And if you are a Pagan or Heathen, then we must also demand equal treatment, equal accommodations, equal access to our religious items for institutionalized persons, including prison inmates, and equal access to paid Pagan chaplains.”

I haven’t seen this picked up by any major news outlets, so I don’t know how many people are contacting them. And I don’t have a form letter for you to send, either. But please, PLEASE consider sending an angry letter to these people (contact info is at the links, I believe). Especially if you’re in California, as your words probably mean more than I do. This isn’t just about prison chaplaincy – a court decision that marked some religions as “first tier” and others as “second tier” would set a not-so-awesome precedent.

Thanks for reading – again, please send a letter & pass it along! I’ve contacted Feministing & Shapely Prose with the hopes that they’ll post about it and help get the word out, but either way, it can’t hurt.

(this is a guest post from the lovely Steff at Steff Metal – thanks Steff! Why don’t you stop by & check out her blog?)

[humanity is] a silly, ongoing, short-term memory machine that fails to learn from the past.

Kris Kulski (artist)

What’s going to happen is, very soon, we’re going to run out of petroleum, and everything depends on petroleum. And there go the school buses. There go the fire engines. The food trucks will come to a halt. This is the end of the world.

Kurt Vonnegut Jr. (Rolling Stone 2006)

We all know the apocalypse looms. We know the cycle of nations, that the inevitable rise and fall of empires will someday devour us, too. We’ve read the signs, brushed up on religious dogma, brought our The Idiot’s Guide to Surviving the Zombie Uprising. We’ve resigned ourselves to the fact that, sooner or later, we’ll be living in a broken, desolate world. The apocalypse is coming. The question remains, what on earth will we wear?

If you’re an Apocalypse Lady, you’ve already figured it out. They’re the girls who assume the world will end today, hopefully before their 2pm meeting. They are the girls who take photographs in abandoned buildings, who drink tea in the cemetery, who practice archery from their 10^th story apartment.

Dressing for imminent destruction.

In a world where empires cease to exist and the rubble of fallen civilizations litters the streets, the Apocalypse Lady reigns supreme.

In the corporate world, you dress to impress, but in the post-apocalyptic world, your clothing needs to help fend off the zombies. No clean lines, bright patterns or pastel colours here. An apocalypse lady seeks comfort, camoflague, and kick ass boots.

Her outfits come from pilfering thift shops, ramsacking the houses of the rich and stylish, and picking through the coatrooms of abandoned heavy metal clubs. She is caked in the dust and dirt of the road – her leather faded, her denim torn. She likes layers – thick jackets, lace chemises and gauzy dresses over socks and stockings and suspenders and scarves. She has a warm coat made of leather or wool, which doubles as a blanket. She defends this coat with her life.

She wears a hat – a brown cowboy hat that’s two sizes too large, or perhaps a wool beret covered in badges of long-forgotten punk bands. Her mismatched boots reach halfway up her thigh, the steel caps polished to a brilliant sheen.

The Apocalypse lady carries her treasures close to her heart. Ancient talismans, tokens of love lost, treasures she’s found in abandoned buildings, memories of a past life. Her superstitious nature leads to her adorn herself in arcane magical symbols, animal totems, and fossilized sea creatures. She’s the warrior of the road, the valkyrie of the urban jungle, the coffee shop poltergeist. She keeps natural, animal fabrics near her, to remind her of her true nature: feathers, leather, raw silk, wool, dried flowers, linen and lace. She frightens and intrigues everyone she meets.

In a world without electricity, the apocalypse lady carries arcane devices. She cobbles together fantastical ray guns, futuristic Victorian aviator goggles, pocket watch grenades and gas mask lazer beams.

The Apocalypse Lady covers herself in utility pockets, pouches, bags, charms, clips, carrabenas, backles and laces. She hides cigar boxes in the folds of her dress and grows herbs on the windowsill of an abandoned factory. She has nefarious purposes, and finds beauty in wilted roses and decaying furniture.

Style Icons: Mad Max and Aunt Entity, the hot chick from Land of the Dead, Tank Girl, The Postman, Sarah Conner, Akira, 12 Monkeys, Bioshock, Carrie Ryan’s The Forest of Hands and Teeth, Resident Evil and Alexander McQueen.

Are you an apocalypse lady?

When I was a little kid, I was absolutely fascinated with rocks and minerals. I still have a sizable collection stored in fabric bags (that, and tons of quartz rather scattered across the house). I found this on Flickr & thought it was gorgeous – apparently, it’s calcite under UV. It has a heart on it! I find that ridiculously awesome.

Anyways! On to the links!

• Thought this article about social networking & fashion was really interesting.
• Typical blogger’s morning to-do list – this made me giggle.
• A few thoughts on synchronicity from Birdie.
• Fellow Austinites! Go to the clothing swap this weekend, mk? There’s free clothes, cupcakes, and rum. And I’ll be there. What more do you need from life?!
• Can you buy self-esteem?
• Who’s showing up in your life? (I am all kinds of questiony today!)
• Some wise words from Mr. O’Brien.
• Also, this chick? Has the best hair ever. It’s like Dolly Parton and a My Little Pony had a baby.

Found this while looking for crystal photos. Not only is it effin’ gorgeous, but I think it’s neat how much the mountains actually look like crystals. Just some random beauty for your day!

I hope you are ALL starting off your week on the best note possible. I don’t know why, but I just feel like this is going to be a great week. (Probably the prospect of cupcakes, clothing, and booze at the end of it.)

Wanna know a secret?

I have a tendency to get somewhat neurotic. And by “somewhat”, I mean spending hours unable to sleep because of worrying or feeling nauseous from anxiety. Which is, um, not fun! If you’ve experienced anything similar, you know that hearing things like “You should really stop worrying all the time”, or “Just calm down!” don’t help much. (There was a time when I would have bribed Matt with anything I had handy to keep from hearing those phrases ever again.) But it IS possible to get to a point where you don’t have to worry about dealing with the Anxiety Monster on a daily basis. Here’s what worked for me:

• Meditation. I feel like a cheesy weirdo saying it, but I seriously can’t put into words how much meditation helped me. Though it may sound pretty woo-woo, the science is there to back it up. Ten minutes a day of just breathing consciously (counting one on inhale, two on exhale) was what I did, but there are tons and tons of variations to try. If you’re looking for a place to start, this book seems to come highly recommended. (affiliate link; book is 8 Minute Meditation by Victor Davich)
• Yoga. For those too fidgety to meditate, yoga also concentrates on breathing, but you’re moving while doing it. I do (or try to, sometimes I miss a day) meditation & yoga daily, and it is such a great way to start the day!
• Other Exercise. Aside from the physical benefits, exercising releases endorphins, and having some time alone to think every day while doing something you enjoy can’t do any harm, right?!
• Laugh! I recommend Not Always Right or I Can Has Cheezburger.
• Logic is your friend. This one takes some explaining. Sometimes we get trapped in these weird sort of thought-circles. An example of this: one day, I thought “Oh, if I just had more money, I’d be able to stop worrying about it all the time.”. And then I realized…hey, I can stop worrying about money right now. Worrying about money doesn’t make me have any more of it. When you start worrying, think for a minute. Why are you worrying? (This sounds stupid, but trust me, the answer will sometimes surprise you.) Is there anything you can do? If there is, do it and stop worrying. If there’s not, stop worrying. Find something else to occupy your brain with. Watch episode of Buffy, read a Neil Gaiman book, play solitaire – whatever. Just do whatever you have to do to stop worrying. In my experience, after a few rounds of this, your brain gets the hang of it – it just skips “worrying” and goes straight to “doing what I can do”, and is much more apt to recognize useless anxiety for what it is. For more on recognizing patterns like this, I recommend Steering by Starlight by Martha Beck. Though the name & subtitle bring new-agey drivel to mind, it’s a surprisingly practical book – and a good one at that!
• Identify and remove triggers. This is probably the most obvious one, but it’s last on the list as it can be pretty hard to execute sometimes. This might will lead you to cutting stressful people out of your life (possibly friends or family members), removing yourself from a stressful situation (say, a crappy job?), or getting something off your chest. I listed ways to deal first, because these things can’t always be done easily or right away. Obviously, if it is easy, this is the best way to go! Even if it’s hard, you should really look at the things that make you anxious and consider why you have them in your life, with the goal of working towards removing it. (This might seem harsh in regards to people. There are some cases where the more ethical choice might be to help the other person out with whatever is making them that way. But at the same time, there is only so much you can do, and you are not a superhero. You are not obliged to solve everyone elses’ problems all the time. And I know from personal experience with family members that sometimes, there is nothing you can do to make someone happy, and they will still use any opportunity to cause strife. That’s just how it goes.)

So! Those are my tips. I hope they help, and if you have your own, I would absolutely love to hear them!

1/16/2010 (couldn’t think of a witty quote for today) – White moto jacket & Thakoon for Target top – Buffalo Exchange, ruffled skirt – Target,  boots off eBay, belt & necklace are secondhand. Yeah, so it was REALLY bright outside, hence my fluorescent legs and my squinty face.

These boots are an eBay find from a while back, shipped from I think either Korea or Japan. They’re surprisingly comfortable, especially after an addition of these insoles. The jacket and the top are both “new” from BX; I like the interesting stripe design on the top, and the jacket…I’ve been looking for a leather jacket for ages. I almost didn’t buy it because it was white (can you dye a jacket? maybe I’ll see if I can have it dyed black), but I went ahead and got it anyways with some store credit. It’s already got a ring of purple on the neckline!

Anyways, this is what I wore to meet up with Pace and Kyeli. Like I said on Monday, they are both superrrrr nice people and I had a great time chatting with them about spirituality and other random things (drinking, aliens, you know how it goes!). I had a blast, of course!

I’m so glad the weather in Austin has started to warm up. It’s been absolutely lovely the past few days, once the rainy spat was over. I’m hoping I’ll be able to swim outdoors by the time Ashley (my sister) comes to visit on her spring break! I am ridiculously excited about swimming. I love swimming but chlorinated water effs up my eyes (and of course is not friendly to fairy-haired folks either), so natural water it is for me!

Oh and I almost forgot:

This is what I call the “80′s glamour portrait pose”. You like?

So the last few months I’ve been working on something, and I kept putting off launching it, or even talking about it to anyone except for a select few. Because, you know, they might tell me it was stupid! Or something. (My brain sometimes fails at logic when it comes to my projects, I won’t lie.)

And then the anxiety and thus, procrastination set in, and I put off putting the finishing touches on it, because OMG then I wouldn’t have an excuse to not put it out there!

But then I got tired of worrying, and decided to hell with it, I’m finishing this and putting it out there and that’s it.

By now you’re probably either bored, or curious. Either way – why don’t you go check it out, hmm?

What is Style Therapy?

It’s not a “what not to wear” or “oh you’re an hourglass, you should buy this” or “this is what’s in this season” sort of thing. At all. It’s about figuring out how to express your style, while working around any issues or constraints you might have. It’s about you and your style being one happy whole instead of two pissed off parties fighting with each other.

We’ll talk (either via email, Skype, or IM) about problems you’re having with your style, why you’re stuck or uninspired, any disconnects between the way you view your style and the way it actually is, what’s causing those disconnects, how to fix them, and any other problems that you might have and want to talk about.

You’ll walk away with a refreshed vision of your style and a clear direction to go that expresses yourself wholly and completely.

Sounds pretty effin’ awesome, right? Well then, let’s move on to the options.

Needless to say, now that I’m done worrying I’m super, super excited to announce the launch of Style Therapy! Aaaand, to celebrate the launch and triumph over worrying, I want to offer all of you a 25% off coupon – NEWYEAR. It expires on the 31st, though, so if you’re interested, you’ll want to get on that relatively fast!

P.S. – don’t worry, Wicked Whimsy won’t turn into one of those obnoxious places where the author is constantly promoting themself. Writing good things for you guys to read (and/or watch!) is still my priority, although you can expect semi-regular shop updates as well.

P.P.S. – I’m so excited! Yay!

cutest thing ever? MAYBE.

• Goal Setting for Creatives. This totally makes me want The Creative Entrepreneur even more.
• And a similar set of words but completely different article: Creative Ways to Meet Your Goals.
• Why Having Fun is Great for Business.
• Just a reminder: beauty standards do, in fact, change with the times.
• This should be required reading for online purchases: How to Custom Order Goods from Your Indie Friends.
• Haus of Gloi sounds like a place to check out…and their packaging is just lovely!
• Dolls + CGI = creepy animated short courtesy of Coilhouse.
• From Pace & Kyeli (who, by the way, I met on Saturday and were probably some of the nicest people ever): the structure of social revolutions.

dancing cats FTW.

• Via Gala: The Art of Living Mindfully.

Though she can betray impatience, she very rarely gets angry (her students confirm this). Anger is a tactic of the powerless, Langer believes, and she decided a long time ago that she had the power to do anything she set her mind to. That also takes care of envy: “If you have something, it doesn’t mean I can’t have it, if I learn how.”

• Part 2 of How do I become a grown-up? Good reading. Like, you know, pretty much anything Sarah Von writes!
• The Triumph of the Size 12s is very much a misnomer, but I liked the article anyways.
• You’re not normal.
• The V size issue has sparked some interesting posts, articles, & feedback across the web. (Admittedly, along with some that make me want to rip my hair out.) Here’s my favorites: at A Fluffy Blog, the fashion size debate bingo card, and Shapely Prose’s take.
• And, finally, even though I’m working on a pretty customized planner of my own, I kind of want to buy this one, just to keep around and look at. Gorgeous much? I shouldn’t even be looking at it, it just makes me want it more! Along similar lines, TeuxDeux is pretty awesome and very handy when you’re between planners.

I hope you had a freakin’ fabulous weekend, and that your week is getting off to a great start. I’ve got some news & neat things in store for you this week! It’s been pretty nice here in Austin, I’m just hoping it stays this way – it keeps getting all soggy and rainy, boo!

Farylrobin shoes are supposed to be comfortable and I love the postapocalyptic (that’s how they look to me anyways – the mix of textures, chunky zipper, &  bit of stitching, I think?) look.

Fun fact: I tried on a pair of shoes at Buffalo Exchange the other day because they reminded me of these shoes. And then, once they were on, I couldn’t get them off. I had to have Matt pull them off for me, and shortly afterwards he reminded me how much he hated shopping. Note to self: find new shopping partner.

1/10/10. Wrap thingie is from Buffalo Exchange, as previously mentioned, secondhand Fornarina boots, Alternative Apparel leggings, secondhand Tahari skirt, Target tank top, secondhand necklace. Matt said this outfit made me look like a superhero – something about the color scheme.

I absolutely love these boots. I think they’ll be very comfortable once broken in (unfortunately, I didn’t factor in the logistics of walking for 2-3 hours in barely worn patent boots, and my feet were worse the wear for it). They were an eBay score, I think they were $10? They turned out to be so much more gorgeous in person than in the eBay photos. They’re a really interesting shade, a bright navy with a touch of teal.

This is what I wore to walk around downtown. Matt and I decided to go on a walk and check things out, since there are still large parts of Austin we’ve never really seen. We walked down Congress to 6th street, walked a few blocks east on 6th, then turned around and went to Lamar before going back over the river and walking home. It was a little chilly but not too bad, especially when in the sun – I can’t wait for when it really warms up again. We need to get bike helmets & an air pump too, I’m greatly looking forward to being able to bike around!

This is the view behind our apartments. One major reason we moved here! I’m so looking forward to being able to swim in the summer, I love swimming but hate swimming in chlorinated water – it wreaks havoc on my hair and my eyes.

Here’s some more photos of the day. I’m so glad we moved to Austin, it’s such a pretty city, and it didn’t hurt that it was a beautiful day on Sunday!

We were baffled by these birds. They looked exactly like parakeets, but bigger, and there was about nine of them all in a group. Escaped from a pet shop, maybe? No idea. Pretty birds, though!

Walking by the dog park at the end of the day. It’s almost a pity we don’t have a dog, we live in such a dog friendly neighborhood now!