I Feel Like A (Natural-Born) Woman…

Posted by M - on March 31, 2023

For I am the Soul of Nature, who giveth life to the universe.
– Doreen Valiente

Forgive me for paraphrasing Shania Twain, but I would like to proclaim March 31st as a day that womanhood should be celebrated. Actually, I celebrate the fact that I’m a woman every single second of every single day; however, let’s make today something REALLY special. Let’s Run With the Wolves (or Felines) and Yowl at the Moon!

Natural-born womanhood. For those of you who don’t understand the term “natural-born woman”, it refers to a human that was BORN A WOMAN. Never once have I wanted to be “a man”. Never once have I ever thought that I was less than anyone, either. I am a modern-day representation of FIERCE femaleness that goes back to the dawn of time.

We interrupt this Post for an important Public Service Announcement.

Ahem. Should the Reader, at any time, feel that I am participating in “man bashing”, let me assure you otherwise. Although this Post is all about the Divine Feminine, natural-born men should also be celebrating their masculine selves and revel in their Sacred Masculine…they’re just gonna have to do it on their own social media or blogsite page.

Where was I? Oh, yeah. Natural-born Women of the World: Make your presence known. Whether housewife or CEO, you are a wild and powerful spirit. We are Warriors all. We hold the secrets to the Universe. We are enigmas. We nurture and destroy – equally. We are the Divine Feminine and we need to re-embrace it FIERCLY.

Our mother was, as women are, a creature of fire and feeling.
– The Sinister Mystery of the Mesmerizing Girl

The many definitions of Divine Feminine. They are all valid.

The Divine Feminine is the spiritual concept that there exists a feminine counterpart to the patriarchal and masculine worship structures that have long dominated organized religions.

The Divine Feminine is the feminine aspect of the divine power that connects and binds the Earth together, which has been around FOREVER in all cultures.

The Divine Feminine refers to a face of the divine spirit that is connected with the body, with nature, and with the cycles of CREATION and transformation.

The creative force, represented by the natural-born female body, has been recognized in many myths as the activating body and alchemical necessity for the masculine force. (In other words, both masculine and feminine create a cohesive symmetry of energies.)

It’s not nice to fool Mother Nature – not that she’s fooled by all this “non-binary” nonsense – and all these mentally ill people who think otherwise are just FECKING PISSING HER OFF. No amount of garish makeup, clothing that would make a stripper cringe in shame, or tomato paste shoved up wherever will magically make one a WOMAN. Just ain’t gonna happen so suck it up, buttercup.

The depravity of men replacing women…
without possessing any of the critical features and virtues
that make them one.
– visibleorigami.com

ℳ –

Baseball, Margaritas and Chilaquiles a la Chez Rock Vixen

Posted by M - on March 30, 2023

It’s 10:05am. Opening day 2023. SF Giants at NY Yankees. Morning workout DONE. Now it’s time for breakfast: Traditional Margaritas made with Tres Agaves Organic Tequila, homemade simple syrup, and lime juice.(Both Cointreau and Triple Sec are VEBOTEN.) AND my first try at Chilaquiles.

One of the sellers at the Farmers Market in Campbell makes homemade tortillas from three different kinds (read: colors) of organic, heirloom corn. I couldn’t decide on which color I liked best so I got a variety pack. I cut each tortilla into fourths and baked them at 350° until they were crisp then filled the bottom of a foil-lined cast iron pan with them.

The pan is lined with foil because I normally use it to cook steaks and such.

Next up: The chili layer. For this I heated up two cans of Gardein Plant-Based Chili (Good stuff.) to which I added a few dashes of Tabasco – ’cause I like it spicy. This was spread over the tortilla chips, topped off with four eggs and handfuls of cheese (a Mexican blend). Under the broiler it went until the eggs were cooked.

I started serving it up, then quickly realized I hadn’t taken a picture of it yet. Ooops.

LET’S PLAY BALL!!!

ℳ –

The species weeds most resemble is US.

Posted by M - on March 28, 2023

The title of this piece is a quote from Richard Mabey‘s book Weeds: in defense of nature’s most unloved plants. (I had made the connection before reaching that passage in the book, though. It was so obvious!) It is a brilliant book written by an intelligent and prolific writer of nature and culture, and he is one of my favorite authors.

Common people, one writer held in 1700,
may be “looked upon as trashy weeds or nettles”.
– Second Nature: A Gardener’s Education

I am one of those “common people”. No privileged class runs through MY veins. Instead I have the FIERCE blood of Irish Gypsies – or as I like to say “Irish trailer trash”. Even today in Ireland, Irish Travellers are considered an ethnic minority and looked down upon. But we are a scrappy bunch. Stubbornly resilient. Like other WEEDS around the world, we have thrived in places and circumstances that would otherwise destroy fragile “purebreds”.

Weeds are plants particularly well adapted to man-made places, thriving in gardens, meadows, lawns, vacant lots, and even sidewalk cracks. In other words, weeds grow where WE live. They relish the things humans do to the soil: clearing forests, digging, gardening, farming, land development, dumping nutrient-rich trash…Weeds stand at the forefront of evolution, evolving with one end in mind: to thrive in places where man has disturbed the earth.

“There are now 66,000 vacant lots [in NY City], and 40 of the 139 square miles of the inner city have been taken over by wild vegetation, which is the active process of demolishing what was once the fourth largest city in the United States.” – Weeds: in defense of nature’s most unloved plants

Thwarted by their efforts to rid themselves of us, “the great unwashed”, poisons in the form of chemicals, pesticides, drugs, and diseases have been unleashed. Unlike those delicate hot-house flowers who call themselves “the elite”, the great unwashed WEEDS of the World are made of strong stock. Much to their shock and dismay, we have adapted – and continue to adapt.

Chemical weedkillers actively encourage the evolution of individual weeds.

Giant Stinging Nettle

“Stinging nettle are flourishing. Fertiliser run-off from the county’s huge expanses of industrial arable farming, plus phosphates from household detergent, drains off into the River Kennet [Southern England]. In summer a twelve-mile stretch is an almost continuous double ribbon of nettles, some of them ten feet high.” – Weeds: in defense of nature’s most unloved plants“

More than 30 years after the Chernobyl disaster, Nature is healing the earth’s wounds. Its MAN-MADE wounds. Wounds that “experts” said it would take hundreds of years to repair. Yet here we are. “Our calculations show that the inhalation dose people get in most of the CEZ is lower than in places like Cornwall that have higher-than-average natural radiation.“

Who were the first soldiers Mother Earth called in to that area? Weeds…Nature’s scrappy healers.

It is not the strongest of the species that survives,
nor the most intelligent, but the one that is most responsive to change.
– Charles Darwin

Kudzu (“the vine that ate the South”) grows up to a foot per day.

Goyim. That’s their word for us, the great unwashed. We outnumber them by millions. WE ARE LEGION. Like weeds in the world of plants, we goyim are the weeds of humankind. We are also genetically superior. Like the GMO tomato, which LOOKS perfect but when you bite into it you find it tasteless and mealy (not to mention unsafe for consumption), they are similarly predisposed.

I would rather be like the kudzu. Resilient. Without boundaries. Stubborn. Like a weed…

Plants become weeds when they obstruct our plans,
or our tidy maps of the world.
– Weeds: in defense of nature’s most unloved plants

WEEDS are the boundary breakers. The outlawed minority who remind us that life is not tidy. Nor should it be.

March 28th is
National Weed Appreciation Day

Embrace thy inner WEED!

I started this Post last night, intending to finish it today.

This morning, Ramses awoke at 7:45am. I wasn’t ready to get up no matter how pesty he was! I finally opened the bedroom door for him and climbed back into bed. 7:55am I bolted upright. SHITE!! I had forgotten that, despite my leaving this Post unfinished, I had SCHEDULED it to be published this morning. 8:00am to be precise.

I jumped out of bed and started up my laptop. After what seemed like FOREVER, I connected to the internet and logged on to my website. 8:03am. I was fecked. I would have to publish a “take two”. What’s this? It hadn’t been published yet!!! Upon opening the file I saw that I had inadvertently typed 8:08am. By this time it was 8:05 and I had exactly three minutes to correct my mistake! Whew, that was a close one.

The Universe works in mysterious ways. Although this was a very small problem, Ramses was indeed trying to get me up in time to correct it.

Ramses. If not my Familiar, my accessory in crime…I hope you enjoyed the Post.

ℳ –

Lipshock ~ “They Burned It Down”

Posted by M - on March 26, 2023

Lipshok fecking rocks! Saw them at The Quarter Note last year and we both fell in love with them. Here’s their latest video (and my favorite song from their set that night) telling the story of the infamous Witch Trials. (Not only does the singer have a fantastically beautiful voice, she’s also a Witch.)

Video courtesy of LIPSHOK.

lipshok.com

Frightened men are dangerous to the women who have frightened them.
– The Age of Witches

ℳ –

HAIR

Posted by M - on March 26, 2023

Gimme head with hair
Long beautiful hair
Shining, gleaming
Streaming, flaxen, waxen
Give me down to there hair
Shoulder length or longer
Here baby, there mama
Everywhere daddy daddy

Hair, hair, hair, hair, hair, hair, hair
Flow it, show it
Long as God can grow it
My hair

– Hair: The American Tribal Love-Rock Musical

March 26th is GOOD HAIR DAY. What does that even mean? I haven’t met a woman yet who hasn’t done battle with her hair at some point in her life, trying to get it to DO what she wants it to DO. (I wonder if that’s where the term “hairdo” came from?) We torture our hair. Curl it, straighten it, color it, bleach it, tease it – you name it, we’ve probably done it; and no matter what we do to it, we still have BAD HAIR DAYS…

I had a “pixie” cut throughout my younger years, probably because it was easy for my Mom to take care of. (c. 1960)

My Mom eventually let me grow my hair out – Although “the pixie” would rear its ugly head once again as an adult. (c. 1962)

When The Addams Family aired in 1964 all I wanted was straight, black hair just like Morticia. (Never have been able to get my naturally wavy hair very straight at all, but blue black hair was just a bottle away…albeit many years down the road.)

I also wanted a Widow’s Peak.

Then two things happened in the mid-1960s that had a huge influence on me: the Swinging Sixties and That Girl. Teased or straight, long and flowing hair became “the thing”.

Raquel Welch

Jean Shrimpton

Perfect Flip.

(Never mind that Marlo Thomas had black hair, I envied that FLIP! I tried hard to recreate it, but my efforts were not only futile they were down right hideous.)

Needless to say, my Jr. High School days were fraught with frustration because I still didn’t have a clue about styling my “stubborn” hair – and I didn’t fare any better upon entering High School. Unless I wore my hair very long (well past the shoulders) my natural waves would take over – and not in a good way. Other girls with wavy hair ironed theirs. I tried that, but my thick hair would prove to be too much of a hindrance. Back in those days we didn’t have hand-held blow dryers which made luxurious “blow-outs” problematic. The solution to taming those waves: Extra jumbo hair rollers…and sitting under a rigid hood dryer. It took a good hour to dry but the results were the closest thing to what I was trying to achieve.

I think my BFF at the time was going for an “artsy” shot here. (c. 1970)

By the time I graduated I had pretty much mastered taming my wild-ass hair into a sleeker look.

In 1976, Charlie’s Angels aired and Farrah Fawcett became that decade’s “it girl”. Even though my hair was born for this style (and I did get my hair cut appropriately), try as might I couldn’t achieve that layered FULLNESS. WTF was I doing wrong?

TV-MOVIES - Farrah Fawcett (Harper's Bazaar 1976)

TV-MOVIES - Farrah Fawcett (1976 red swimsuit poster)

I continued to struggle off-and-on with my problematic head of hair. Got it cut, let it grow out, rinse and repeat. I even got a short perm. Only half of my head could be done at a time and I ended-up looking like a poodle. 1981 came to the rescue in the form of music videos. Yep, I’m talkin’ ’bout MTV. Suddenly there were all these different hair styles to choose from – and most of them belonged to the guys. First off, I went for a long shaggy “mullet”. (Goddess, I hate that word…)

c. 1983

When I saw Mötley Crüe’s “Looks That Kill” video for the first time, my hair’s fate was sealed; and the best thing about the 80’s Hair Metal look was that IT WORKED WITH MY HAIR. Yippee!! I no longer had to fight with my mane and it no longer fought me back; AND I began dying it blue black. Except for a brief stint in the 1990s when I wore my hair very short (What WAS I thinking?), I’ve kept this style as part of my “signature look”.

‘Kayso, enough about MOI. I’ve selected a number of photos of what I think is GREAT HAIR, many of which are from decades OTHER than the 80s.

Cher

Have I mentioned I not only got to see Cher in concert (twice) but one time she came to the edge of the stage, smiled at me, and shook my hand? No? Well, now I have! This was back in the late 70s in Reno. Boy was I on cloud nine! I never missed an episode of The Sonny & Cher Comedy Hour. Because what’s not to love about a slinky, long-black-haired singer who looked amazing in whatever she wore? I wore my hair very long at the time, and seeing that I was slim I did a decent job of emulating her. Made some halter-topped, floor-lengthed dresses and jumpsuits similar to the ones Cher wore on the show. Fun stuff. Too bad I have no pics to share.

Very sixties-inspired. (1966)

Loved this dress. It was made out of souffle, which at the time was outlawed in the US. Cher was featured in this dress on the cover of TIME magazine. (1975)

Although Cher was best known for her long, straight hair, I really love this “gypsy” look. (1979)

Men with Great Hair

c. 1970

While my HS BFF was deeply into Janis Joplin, I was crazy for The Doors. Jim Morrison, to be precise. Their enigmatic lead singer. Fun factoid: Nikki Sixx (Mötley Crüe) and Jim Morrison remain my two favorite poets/lyricists. Sagittarians both.

Marc Bolan, singer/guitarist of T. Rex. (c. 1970)

English-born Marc Bolan wouldn’t have looked out of place in the 80s Hair Metal scene. Got that gypsy hair vibe going.

Andy Taylor, guitarist of Duran Duran. (c. 1980)

Andy Taylor, guitarist of Duran Duran. (1984)

That last photo of Andy was the inspiration for my 80s shaggy mullet. His was THE BOMB.

Japanese heavy metal band, E-ZO. (c. 1987)

Jeff LaBar, guitarist for Cinderella. (c. 1983)

Talk about a head of thick, wavy hair. Jeff LaBar, rocking that gypsy vibe I love so much. Must be my 1960s hippie roots…
Jeff LaBar: 1963-2021

Singer/bassist/guitarist, Blackie Lawless of W.A.S.P. (c. 1984)

The Avalon in Santa Clara. Somewhere in the 2000s. W.A.S.P. headlining. I’m at the stage when they come out for the encore. Blackie bends down in front of me and winks…❤ Always loved his hair. Wild. Black. Shaggy.

Simon Cruz (2nd from right) of glam metal band, CRASHDÏET. (2012)

Simon Cruz, former singer of Swedish glam metal band, CRASHDÏET. (c. 2010)

A blast from the past, CRASHDÏET is a glam metal band from Sweden whose influences are very 1980s. They’ve had several singers during their reign. Simon Cruz remains my favorite, both in vocal style and looks.

Detroit band, Seduce. (c. 1985)

Seduce was featured in Penelope Spheeris’ documentary, The Decline of Western Civilization Part II: The Metal Years..

Nadir D’Priest, singer for the band London (1989)

London was also featured in The Decline of Western Civilization Part II: The Metal Years.. BTW, Nadir had the best hair of that whole 80s scene in LA. PERFECTION.
80’s Blast::London

You didn’t think I’d forget to include the men from Mötley Crüe, did you?

Mötley Crüe. from left to right: Nikki Sixx, Mick Mars, Vince Neil, Tommy Lee. (c. 1983)

Nikki Sixx, bassist for Mötley Crüe. I think it was Mick Mars who said Sixx looked like a “giant hairball” the first time they met. He couldn’t even see his eyes…

Ladies with Great Hair

Farrah Fawcett looking every bit the 80s grrrl here.

Farrah

Demi Moore in the film St. Elmo’s Fire (1985).

Crimped hair was all the rage in the 80s. 80’s Blast::St. Elmo’s Fire

Black hair. Shag. Black-rimmed eyes. Quintessential Joan Jett.

Movin’ into the 80s rock/metal scene…

Random Female Rocker (c. 1980)

Jan Kuehnemund, guitarist for Vixen. (c. 1988)

Lita Ford (c. 1986)

Virtuoso guitarist, Lita Ford. (c. 1988)</span

Women Who Rock (Their Instruments)

Nancy Wilson, guitarist for Heart. (c. 1985)

The next two ladies were featured in Penelope Spheeris’ documentary, The Decline of Western Civilization Part II: The Metal Years..

Drummer for Vixen, Roxy Petrucci. (c. 1988)

Jaded Lady. Terry O’Leary, singer, is 2nd from left. (c. 1988)

Terry O’Leary being interviewed in Decline of Western Civilization Part II: The Metal Years (1988)

Guys in the metal scene are fun.
You can take advantage of them
just as guys can take advantage of girls in the metal scene.
– Terry O’Leary

(Amen to that!!)

Odds and Ends

The first two I stumbled across while researching this Post and I thought they were the coolest SHAGS I’ve ever seen.

Jane Seymour as Marguerite St. Just in the film The Scarlet Pimpernel (1982).

Yeah, I know. It’s a wig. Who cares!