We're tired of this whole Valentine's Day mania -- as if there's Nothing Higher to Live For. There's more to life than endless obsession with romantic relationships. What else is there? There's Galentine's Day! What else?
There's friendship,
there's spiritual aspiration,
there's yoga,
there's sisterhood,
there's travel,
there's book writing,
there's enlightenment and a whole dimension of wisdom and compassionate experience, like helping Mother Theresa feed the poor and save the dying.
He's OK, he's an ally. - No, girl, boys stay home!
I want to fix the environment, stamp out war, stop corporations from raping everyone, stop rapists from raping victims, start a book club to read Soshin O'Halloran's book about Irish Zen, and stop bad comedians from terrorizing audiences with squirm-inducing sets. So this V-Day we're doing Galentine's Day, a day of friendship and fun. This is a day for chocolate and laughs...and a potluck on Saturday at the Happy Day Vegan Cafe:
The way to build community (a spiritual sangha of doing good and uplifting each other) is coming together to share and celebrate. It's time for good eating, conversation, performance, music, entertainment, meditation, and some Sanskrit yogic chanting. It's PC's birthday, and Cody is performing new music. Your talents and cuisine are needed, too. it's an all-vegan potluck of delicious dishes: Ethiopian from Eagle Rock, Thai from Pasadena, Italian pizza from Altadena, and Middle Eastern from Glendale, but most of all it's stuff from your house or culinary explorations. Massage chair, ecstatic breathwork, and Reiki healings will also be offered along with group blessings. It's all in fun and for the sake of community-building. RSVP. It's FREE:
Luxury fashion brand Christian Dior is facing boycott calls on social media after Turkish and Israeli sources reported on Monday that it had replaced American model and longtime brand ambassadorBella Hadid with Israeli model May Tager in its latest ad campaign.
Neither Hadid, whose father is Palestinian, nor the brand, has commented on her alleged replacement, which was initially reported in Türkiye’s Yeni Safak and an Israeli blog called Fashion Forward, raising questions of the reports’ veracity even as there were calls to #BoycottDior on X (formerly Twitter).
Writing in her first Instagram post following the declaration of war, Hadid vowed not to be intimidated, explaining, “The people and children of Palestine, especially in Gaza, cannot afford our silence. We are not brave – they are.”
The model emphasized that she mourned for Israeli families who had lost loved ones on October 7, as well as the residents of Gaza who endured “generational trauma” above and beyond the immediate crisis.
Tager draped in Israeli flag (newsus.cgtn.com)
“It is important to understand the hardship of what it is to be Palestinian, in a world that sees us as nothing more than terrorists resisting peace,” she wrote, describing her family’s suffering during the Nakba [the Catastrophe], the forced expulsion of 750,000 Palestinians from their land in 1948 by the founders of the [settler colonial] state of Israel.
"There is an urgent humanitarian crisis in Gaza that must be attended to. Wars have laws – and they must be upheld, no matter what."
Bella Hadid, whose siblings Gigi and Anwar are also models, revealed in 2021 that she had lost a significant amount of work by supporting Palestine and had even had friends leave her over her advocacy. While Dior has faced calls to drop her before, the brand did not previously give in. More
NATIONAL MAD HATTER DAY falls on October 6th, a day set aside each year to bring out our silly side while celebrating.
The fictional character known as The Hatter (aka The Mad Hatter) from Lewis Carroll's Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland typically acts silly.
That is how the creators of this day decided on their theme of silliness for National Mad Hatter Day.
Sir John Tenniel illustrated The Mad Hatter and all of Lewis Carroll's colorful characters beginning in 1864. Alice's Adventures in Wonderland was first published in 1865.
The phrase "mad as a hatter" comes from the late 18th and early 19th centuries when haberdasheries used mercury nitrate. Exposure to this heavy metal over time caused the tradesmen to develop symptoms, making people believe they were mad/insane.
Taking our inspiration from The Mad Hatter (or any of Carroll's wonderful characters), we may pursue laughable, absurd, or even confusing adventures on National Mad Hatter Day.
Break from the usual routine. Ask ridiculous riddles much like The Hatter's own, "Why is a raven like a writing desk?" Write a nonsense poem. Play croquet with plastic pink flamingos, or wear a funny hat around.
Celebrate the day with silliness. Our sanity depends on it. More
#MadHatterDay
COMMENTARY
I'm little Alice, innocent child
(WQ) Hey, did Oxford Math Professor Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (pseudonym Lewis Carroll) molest little Alice Liddell? It's clearly something that has been on the mind of many readers for a century or more. It's verboten to suggest as we nudge and wink. Who would be surprised? We can only say that at that time in savage English, particularly give the author's social class and standing, marriage between a man of his age and a child of her age was common, legal, and possibly financially advantageous for her family. The writing of these beloved stories and books may well have been the product of courtship, legitimate, legal, and well understood courtship of the day, no matter how much it scandalizes England or the U.S. today.
Photography's a new art form. Let's see what I can get away with by having all the sisters pose for me
Was Carroll trying to make young Alice look "sexy"?
We judge it by our standards and mores, but it may be important to understand it in context. Here we have a man into photography who is clearly in some kind of love/lust with a marriageable female, if only a parent approve, and then there's the matter of the missing pages of his diary. That suggests someone in the family knew for sure what Carroll felt and intended for Alice. The fact that those pages are missing so we can all sleep in ignorance of the hard truths of brutal English life.
We are the descendants of that culture, the colonial inheritors of it. And the fact that our older white males routinely raped Black male and female slaves when that was legal. oh we don't dare think about it much less mention it in polite company. A play examining this subject came to South Pasadena a few years back, and it's a surprise it did not go national with its provocative examination of what a man might feel. Oh, it's unthinkable. Art must hide it that we may, like Anais Nin, speak what is not easy for others to say.
"Jab her, Cocky"
Wisdom Quarterly poet-in-residence parody of "Jabberwocky"
The relationship between the Liddells and Dodgson suffered a sudden break in June 1863. There was no record of why the rift occurred, since the Liddells never openly spoke of it, and the single page in Dodgson's diary recording June 27–29, 1863 (which seems to cover the period in which it began) was missing [18].
I like little girls. It's very British
It has been speculated by biographers such as Morton N. Cohen that Dodgson may have wanted to marry the 11-year-old Alice Liddell, and that this was the cause of the unexplained break with the family in June 1863 [19].
Alice Liddell's biographer, Anne Clark, writes that Alice's descendants were under the impression that Dodgson wanted to marry her, but that "Alice's parents expected a much better match for her."
I didn't get my marriage wish, alas.
Clark argues that in Victorian England such arrangements were not as improbable as they might seem; John Ruskin, for example, fell in love with a 12-year-old girl while Dodgson's younger brother sought to marry a 14-year-old, but postponed the wedding for six years [20].
In 1996, Karoline Leach found what became known as the "Cut pages in diary" document [21] — a note allegedly written by Charles Dodgson's niece, Violet Dodgson, summarizing the missing page from 27–29 June 1863, apparently written before she (or her sister Menella) removed the page... More
Barbie throws a BBQ party and pasty Ken gets a bad sunburn
(Titi Toys and Dolls) We play with Barbie's doll furniture accessories playset in this fun episode.
Sunburn? It's time for mindfulness, Ken!
Barbie and her sisters Chelsea, Skipper, and Stacie throw a [vegan plastic] BBQ party. They decide to invite Ken so he can help with the plant-based grilling.
Barbs relaxes on her hammock, reads a magazine, and sips on yummy lemonade sweetened with monkfruit and erythritol.
Meditate with me, Kids.
Chelsea eats a vegan cheeseburger and plays with her puppy. They all have a great time.
But Ken forgot to put on zinc sunscreen and gets a pretty bad sunburn. Ouch!
The story starter Barbie accessories make the perfect holiday gift. The set is like the Barbie Life in the Dream House episodes, using craft paper and simulated grass. More (episodes + toy reivews)
Barbie goes on vacation for BBQ and boating
Vegan hotdogs, burgers, steak? Tastes like summer. But better. (BeyondMeat.com)
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Val is a very spiritual human Barbie doll
What is the human beauty up to now?
"Human Barbie" Val is a Ukrainian spiritual instructor at the School of Out-of-Body Travel, which is described as "an international school in which our instructors show students how to leave their physical body and travel in their spiritual body."
Val is a strict raw vegetarian, thriving on a liquid diet. She said her weight in 2012 was 100 lb (45 kg), which seems reasonable at 5 ft 4 in (163 cm). In 2014 she stated that she was training herself to live off light and air by converting to breatharianism, the practice of living only on breath (prana, "holy spirit") and amrita ("nectar of immortality"), which comes from under the tongue in yoga practice (which may also be possible to achieve from ingesting angel's food for devas in the form of protein made only of air, which as hard as it may be to believe, really exists as a tangible substance available for anyone to purchase).
Her spiritual name is Amatue. She is also an author, actor, and music composer (as well as an opera singer) who has recorded two albums of New Age music, Sun in the Eyes and 2013, as Amatue.
She wrote a book, Astral Travel Amatue, about her astral projection trips. It's available as an RTF file for free download from her website (valeriahumandoll.wixsite.com), and find her on social media (facebook, IG, etc.)
Dad, can I do Barbie's hair? She's punk like Avril
She had her acting debut in the starring role for the feature film The Doll (2017), a horror movie written and directed by Susannah O’Brien. More
Now Greta Gerwig, who's been listening to too much Aqua ("I'm a Barbie girl in a Barbie world/It's fantastic, a life in plastic"), is about to release THE BARBIE MOVIE! Poor fathers and their dented wallets!
I was a "Plain Jane" in Ukraine. I called attention to myself as Barbie.
Avril Lavigne is one of us, a Vril alien, but I'm Barbie (Val Luky')
*No one said anything about liking her body dysmorphia, Amanda. There's nothing "ideal" about her body, except maybe Mattel's plastic toy research. Take it up with them. No one is saying a "woman on earth" would look like this, but she's from another world, a spiritual one. Ask her. And call her Amatue when you do. The doll Barbie (and Nazi Ken) is to blame for giving girls false expectations about their female bodies, not Val. Stop jumping to conclusions and making baseless assumptions that suggest insecurity more than reasonable accusations.
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