Aviporium

Created By avi101

An Evening on the Fireside

Hello folks, sorry for no updates this week, so this is a Super-Mundo Post with all three weekly posts rolled into one.

I’ll start with Song of the Week

Firefly
By
Owl City

An Evening on the Fireside with David 55
I just had a filling drilled into my mouth yesterday, and will be getting a wisdom tooth out next Friday, I give you this nugget by Horace Mitchell Miner

Most cultures exhibit a particular configuration or style. A single value or pattern of perceiving the world often leaves its stamp on several institutions in the society. Examples are "machismo" in Spanish-influenced cultures, "face" in Japanese culture, and "pollution by females" in some highland New Guinea cultures. Here Horace Miner demonstrates that "attitudes about the body" have a pervasive influence on many institutions in Nacirema society.

The anthropologist has become so familiar with the diversity of ways in which different people behave in similar situations that he is not apt to be surprised by even the most exotic customs. In fact, if all of the logically possible combinations of behavior have not been found somewhere in the world, he is apt to suspect that they must be present in some yet undescribed tribe. The point has, in fact, been expressed with respect to clan organization by Murdock[1] . In this light, the magical beliefs and practices of the Nacirema present such unusual aspects that it seems desirable to describe them as an example of the extremes to which human behavior can go.
Professor Linton[2] first brought the ritual of the Nacirema to the attention of anthropologists twenty years ago, but the culture of this people is still very poorly understood. They are a North American group living in the territory between the Canadian Cree, the Yaqui and Tarahumare of Mexico, and the Carib and Arawak of the Antilles. Little is known of their origin, although tradition states that they came from the east. According to Nacirema mythology, their nation was originated by a culture hero, Notgnihsaw, who is otherwise known for two great feats of strength—the throwing of a piece of wampum across the river Pa-To-Mac and the chopping down of a cherry tree in which the Spirit of Truth resided.
Nacirema culture is characterized by a highly developed market economy which has evolved in a rich natural habitat. While much of the people's time is devoted to economic pursuits, a large part of the fruits of these labors and a considerable portion of the day are spent in ritual activity. The focus of this activity is the human body, the appearance and health of which loom as a dominant concern in the ethos of the people. While such a concern is certainly not unusual, its ceremonial aspects and associated philosophy are unique.
The fundamental belief underlying the whole system appears to be that the human body is ugly and that its natural tendency is to debility and disease. Incarcerated in such a body, man's only hope is to avert these characteristics through the use of ritual and ceremony. Every household has one or more shrines devoted to this purpose. The more powerful individuals in the society have several shrines in their houses and, in fact, the opulence of a house is often referred to in terms of the number of such ritual centers it possesses. Most houses are of wattle and daub construction, but the shrine rooms of the more wealthy are walled with stone. Poorer families imitate the rich by applying pottery plaques to their shrine walls.
While each family has at least one such shrine, the rituals associated with it are not family ceremonies but are private and secret. The rites are normally only discussed with children, and then only during the period when they are being initiated into these mysteries. I was able, however, to establish sufficient rapport with the natives to examine these shrines and to have the rituals described to me.
The focal point of the shrine is a box or chest which is built into the wall. In this chest are kept the many charms and magical potions without which no native believes he could live. These preparations are secured from a variety of specialized practitioners. The most powerful of these are the medicine men, whose assistance must be rewarded with substantial gifts. However, the medicine men do not provide the curative potions for their clients, but decide what the ingredients should be and then write them down in an ancient and secret language. This writing is understood only by the medicine men and by the herbalists who, for another gift, provide the required charm.
The charm is not disposed of after it has served its purpose, but is placed in the charmbox of the household shrine. As these magical materials are specific for certain ills, and the real or imagined maladies of the people are many, the charm-box is usually full to overflowing. The magical packets are so numerous that people forget what their purposes were and fear to use them again. While the natives are very vague on this point, we can only assume that the idea in retaining all the old magical materials is that their presence in the charm-box, before which the body rituals are conducted, will in some way protect the worshiper.
Beneath the charm-box is a small font. Each day every member of the family, in succession, enters the shrine room, bows his head before the charm-box, mingles different sorts of holy water in the font, and proceeds with a brief rite of ablution[3]. The holy waters are secured from the Water Temple of the community, where the priests conduct elaborate ceremonies to make the liquid ritually pure.
In the hierarchy of magical practitioners, and below the medicine men in prestige, are specialists whose designation is best translated as "holy-mouth-men." The Nacirema have an almost pathological horror of and fascination with the mouth, the condition of which is believed to have a supernatural influence on all social relationships. Were it not for the rituals of the mouth, they believe that their teeth would fall out, their gums bleed, their jaws shrink, their friends desert them, and their lovers reject them. They also believe that a strong relationship exists between oral and moral characteristics. For example, there is a ritual ablution of the mouth for children which is supposed to improve their moral fiber.
The daily body ritual performed by everyone includes a mouth-rite. Despite the fact that these people are so punctilious[4] about care of the mouth, this rite involves a practice which strikes the uninitiated stranger as revolting. It was reported to me that the ritual consists of inserting a small bundle of hog hairs into the mouth, along with certain magical powders, and then moving the bundle in a highly formalized series of gestures[5].
In addition to the private mouth-rite, the people seek out a holy-mouth-man once or twice a year. These practitioners have an impressive set of paraphernalia, consisting of a variety of augers, awls, probes, and prods. The use of these items in the exorcism of the evils of the mouth involves almost unbelievable ritual torture of the client. The holy-mouth-man opens the client's mouth and, using the above mentioned tools, enlarges any holes which decay may have created in the teeth. Magical materials are put into these holes. If there are no naturally occurring holes in the teeth, large sections of one or more teeth are gouged out so that the supernatural substance can be applied. In the client's view, the purpose of these ministrations[6] is to arrest decay and to draw friends. The extremely sacred and traditional character of the rite is evident in the fact that the natives return to the holy-mouth-men year after year, despite the fact that their teeth continue to decay.
It is to be hoped that, when a thorough study of the Nacirema is made, there will be careful inquiry into the personality structure of these people. One has but to watch the gleam in the eye of a holy-mouth-man, as he jabs an awl into an exposed nerve, to suspect that a certain amount of sadism is involved. If this can be established, a very interesting pattern emerges, for most of the population shows definite masochistic tendencies. It was to these that Professor Linton referred in discussing a distinctive part of the daily body ritual which is performed only by men. This part of the rite includes scraping and lacerating the surface of the face with a sharp instrument. Special women's rites are performed only four times during each lunar month, but what they lack in frequency is made up in barbarity. As part of this ceremony, women bake their heads in small ovens for about an hour. The theoretically interesting point is that what seems to be a preponderantly masochistic people have developed sadistic specialists.
The medicine men have an imposing temple, or latipso, in every community of any size. The more elaborate ceremonies required to treat very sick patients can only be performed at this temple. These ceremonies involve not only the thaumaturge[7] but a permanent group of vestal maidens who move sedately about the temple chambers in distinctive costume and headdress.
The latipso ceremonies are so harsh that it is phenomenal that a fair proportion of the really sick natives who enter the temple ever recover. Small children whose indoctrination is still incomplete have been known to resist attempts to take them to the temple because "that is where you go to die." Despite this fact, sick adults are not only willing but eager to undergo the protracted ritual purification, if they can afford to do so. No matter how ill the supplicant or how grave the emergency, the guardians of many temples will not admit a client if he cannot give a rich gift to the custodian. Even after one has gained and survived the ceremonies, the guardians will not permit the neophyte to leave until he makes still another gift.
The supplicant entering the temple is first stripped of all his or her clothes. In everyday life the Nacirema avoids exposure of his body and its natural functions. Bathing and excretory acts are performed only in the secrecy of the household shrine, where they are ritualized as part of the body-rites. Psychological shock results from the fact that body secrecy is suddenly lost upon entry into the latipso. A man, whose own wife has never seen him in an excretory act, suddenly finds himself naked and assisted by a vestal maiden while he performs his natural functions into a sacred vessel. This sort of ceremonial treatment is necessitated by the fact that the excreta are used by a diviner to ascertain the course and nature of the client's sickness. Female clients, on the other hand, find their naked bodies are subjected to the scrutiny, manipulation and prodding of the medicine men.
Few supplicants in the temple are well enough to do anything but lie on their hard beds. The daily ceremonies, like the rites of the holy-mouth-men, involve discomfort and torture. With ritual precision, the vestals awaken their miserable charges each dawn and roll them about on their beds of pain while performing ablutions, in the formal movements of which the maidens are highly trained. At other times they insert magic wands in the supplicant's mouth or force him to eat substances which are supposed to be healing. From time to time the medicine men come to their clients and jab magically treated needles into their flesh. The fact that these temple ceremonies may not cure, and may even kill the neophyte, in no way decreases the people's faith in the medicine men.
There remains one other kind of practitioner, known as a "listener." This witchdoctor has the power to exorcise the devils that lodge in the heads of people who have been bewitched. The Nacirema believe that parents bewitch their own children. Mothers are particularly suspected of putting a curse on children while teaching them the secret body rituals. The counter-magic of the witchdoctor is unusual in its lack of ritual. The patient simply tells the "listener" all his troubles and fears, beginning with the earliest difficulties he can remember. The memory displayed by the Nacirema in these exorcism sessions is truly remarkable. It is not uncommon for the patient to bemoan the rejection he felt upon being weaned as a babe, and a few individuals even see their troubles going back to the traumatic effects of their own birth.
In conclusion, mention must be made of certain practices which have their base in native esthetics but which depend upon the pervasive aversion to the natural body and its functions. There are ritual fasts to make fat people thin and ceremonial feasts to make thin people fat. Still other rites are used to make women's breasts larger if they are small, and smaller if they are large. General dissatisfaction with breast shape is symbolized in the fact that the ideal form is virtually outside the range of human variation. A few women afflicted with almost inhuman hyper-mammary development are so idolized that they make a handsome living by simply going from village to village and permitting the natives to stare at them for a fee.
Reference has already been made to the fact that excretory functions are ritualized, routinized, and relegated to secrecy. Natural reproductive functions are similarly distorted. Intercourse is taboo as a topic and scheduled as an act. Efforts are made to avoid pregnancy by the use of magical materials or by limiting intercourse to certain phases of the moon. Conception is actually very infrequent. When pregnant, women dress so as to hide their condition. Parturition takes place in secret, without friends or relatives to assist, and the majority of women do not nurse their infants.
Our review of the ritual life of the Nacirema has certainly shown them to be a magic-ridden people. It is hard to understand how they have managed to exist so long under the burdens which they have imposed upon themselves. But even such exotic customs as these take on real meaning when they are viewed with the insight provided by Malinowski[8] when he wrote:
“Looking from far and above, from our high places of safety in the developed civilization, it is easy to see all the crudity and irrelevance of magic. But without its power and guidance early man could not have mastered his practical difficulties as he has done, nor could man have advanced to the higher stages of civilization.[9]”

And lastly, Poetry Wed-nes-day

I have an ensign but not a square to spare.

Oh what to right, what to write
Righting would require the written,
But doesn’t include, a bulb to light.
To write? A dog or kitten

A frog, a bull, a bull frog
How about a cabin
Made from one great big log
Or about space and an ensign

So much to right though
Can I spare a single square?
How could this be so?
Not a single square to spare

Do I grow tired of this net>>
Well, will anyone read this?
A person I have yet to met.?
One I have yet to kiss?

Enough of this rambling
Class is any minute
Even now I am gambling,
She definitely isn’t mute

As Always, you can find my posts at

Facebook http://www.facebook.com/friends/?id=1707799817#/profile.php?id=1840165438
Myspace http://www.myspace.com/daviddysart
Blogger http://daviddysart.blogspot.com/
DeviantArt http://avi101.deviantart.com/
TheOtaku http://www.theotaku.com/worlds/aviporium
Twitter http://twitter.com/daviddysart

My podcast, The DJ Show. http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?id=320469532
.. ..
And special Youtube Channel
http://www.youtube.com/user/DavidDysart

An Evening on the Fireside

An Evening on the Fireside with David 54

Hello again folks. I had intended to post part two my investigation of beauty, cuteness, and hotness, but the pictures take a while, and I didn’t think I was going to tear the garage apart to find the opossum that decided to die in there, so you all get the 900 words of fiction I wrote earlier today. It is the same main character as the piece I posted last week. It also includes Sariel, another main character.

Hmm, I'm not sure if this is considered PG-13 or not

The beginning is somewhat suggestive, but fear not, it’s before not after or during. It’s just story arc-ish stuff. You can skip the first quarter of it if you just want the meat of it.

Vignettes – Zombies in the Garage

Their conversation stopped as the lights flickered out.

“*Expletive and Deleted*,” Nu said, looking up and scanning the empty ceiling. “Is there a chance they found us?”

A candle poofed to life in Sariel’s hand as she said, “That would be the worst case scenario.”

Nu looked down to her and said, “So, in other words?”

She stared up at his face, glowing above the candle, “Yes.”

Nu rolled off of her and pushed himself to his feet. As he pulled her up, he said, “Do you still have the generator for the elevator and D-light in the garage?”

“Of course, it’s automatic,” she said, working her way past him and stopping at the elevator.

Sariel’s finger lingered on the unpressed button until Nu’s hand covered it and put it into the button. Her eyes fluttered as he said, “We’re not finished here. It’s just on hold.”

The doors before them pulled open as they stood there. Sariel pulled her hand out from Nu and slid into the elevator. Turning to look at him, she said with a fanning wave, “Are you coming.”

As the doors began to close he jumped in, bumping Sariel and pinning her to the back of the elevator.

They looked at each other in 60-volt illumination as the elevator rolled down and jerked to a stop. Nu heard the doors open and saw Sariel go pale. Her hand searched his pocket until it wrapped around the lighter.

He took a step back, leaving the lighter before turning through the doors. Two or three dozen glowing red bodies stood in the darkness.

“Could we flood?” Sariel asked, still huddled in the elevator

Nu embraced his own blue glow as he continued out of the elevator. “It would take to long.”

Sariel stepped beside him as the hungry faces burned with sunken eyes. She dug her nails into her left forearm, sliding them up to the nook of her elbow.

Nu winced through the corner of his eye before she rubbed her wet nails in four streaks on his cheek.

Sariel flipped the metal cap up from the lighter and gave the wheel a flick. The flame jumped in the darkness as they stood there, in front of the red army.

Nu exploded forward and charged the group as Sariel frisbeed the lighter into the crowd.

Nu reached the flame, cupping the lighter before he ripped away, a strip of fire igniting. One of the zombiac possessions swatted the lighter down, but Nu slashed him in half with the flaming sword in arc that spun him around to land on his knees. A puff of sulfuric ash exploded and covered the back of Nu’s suit.

The group roared and closed in on Nu as he spun up, taking another zombie from crotch to head in a burning flash that coated the rest of the angel in ash.

Nu twisted, hacking another zombie from neck to waist to his left as Sariel took a running leap to the shoulders of another soldier. She leapt and planted a heeled boot into the face of another, riding him to the ground. Sariel barreled through another red auraed unhuman man before falling into a pillar. She scanned around, gathering the attention of the zombies around her.

Nu stood straight, spitting in his hand before grabbing the head of one of the snapping mouths. He closed his eyes and took in a breath. A flash irrupted at the point of contact followed by a clap of thunder. Dust exploded from the thing’s body, held tight by clothing, a T shirt and khaki shorts.

He looked around and diced another one as he yelled, “Any time now!”

Sariel scribbled a glyph on the bare concrete of the pillar, circles and triangles lit by her blue glow and inked in her blood. One of men wrapped a hand around her arm, pulling at her writing hand. She turned to him, a pity held in her eyes. She slapped the support with her self-mutilated limb, blood smearing on the post.

Nu planted his shoe on a creature’s head and crushed it against the swirled cement floor. The ash settled to the floor as a zombie leapfrogged a fellow comrade, falling for Nu. The cherub pushed forward, arcing on his toes as he drove the inferno into its mouth.

The monstrosity landed on his feet as the flame ate through his face. He spun as he collapse, sulfur spraying from his head and covering the throbbing red glow of the others.

The glyph lit from burgundy dullness along with dormant symbols spaced periodically throughout the midnight structure. The semi-sentient zombies followed the looping glow that surrounded them.

The man holding Sariel looked back to her. His jaw sagged in his skin as his eyes scanned. The flesh on his grip began to slosh. She shook him loose as he stumbled back. They began shambling before the screaming started. The howl that gnawed at the humanity of the angels. The noise mumbled to a stop as the bodies continued to melt.
Nu and Sariel looked away and to each other. Sariel’s blood on Nu sizzled on his cheek as the zombie’s glow began to dim along with the burning of the glyphs. An explosion of sulfur filled the garage hip high as the darkness returned to black, two auras of blue and violet standing among the cloaked carnage.

Poetry Wed-nes-day

The Free and Emerald Green
Blades of Emerald Green
Shall soon set me free.

For one of them comes:
One of the great sons.

A miscalculation means certain death,
But only she could ever take my breath.

The feel of his vibration
Mixes with my own anticipation.

I climb the stalk
As he continues his walk.

His steps shake me.
I can’t do this; how can it be?

But I must be with her.
I do not care what wrath I occur!

From the green I plummet to the pale peach
Just within my reach.

Soft skin reminds me of my hunger.
But I must restrain myself further.

Spiraling up the jungle,
I wait and huddle.

With each step, he takes me closer.
O! To be even this much closer!

The heat sinks into my body
As my stomach lay empty.

My hands begin to lose their grip.
My life starts to slip

I begin to fall,
But nothing is all I saw

I return to the blades so green
That promised to set me free.

As Always, you can find my posts at
Myspace http://blogs.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.ListAll
Blogger http://daviddysart.blogspot.com/
DeviantArt http://avi101.deviantart.com/
TheOtaku http://www.theotaku.com/worlds/aviporium

My podcast, The DJ Show. http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?id=320469532

And special Youtube Channel
http://www.youtube.com/user/DavidDysart

Song of the Week

For the nest Song of the Week, I present

Papa Loved Momma
By
Garth Brooks

My podcast, The DJ Show. http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?id=320469532

And special Youtube Chanel where you can find my Song of the Week performances
http://www.youtube.com/user/DavidDysart

She’s Country
By
Jason Aldean

My podcast, The DJ Show. http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?id=320469532

And special Youtube Channel
http://www.youtube.com/user/DavidDysart

An Evening on the Fireside

An Evening on the Fireside with David 53

Alright, so for last week, I put the first half of this character piece up, now I'm getting the second half out

Nu spun around as he reached twenty feet from the stump and melon as Phil set the camera up off to the right to catch both the stump and Nu.
Truckers and drunkards began encircling Nu, and subsequently Phil and the stump.
The bartender tapped record as he shouted, “You guys should stand away from the watermelon.”
As they began stepping away, Nu asked, “Is that a new camera?”
Phil patted it as he said, “Yeah, it’s one of those high speed ones. We’re are officially out of 1995” He grabbed a pair of ear muffs attached to the tripod and a pair of sunglasses that were hanging from the back of his shirt. Putting them both on, he rechecked the view of the camera. “You’re good to go,” Phil said with a thumbs up.
Without looking, Nu reached into his vest pocket for a pair of ear plugs and placed them in snugly. He slipped a pair of sunglasses on from an inside suit pocket, as the group began to step restless. He began pouring the last drops of the liquor from his beer bottle on the fingertips of his right hand before throwing it aside. Leveling his stance, he held out his wet fingers.
Nu’s suit tightened to almost bursting as he breathed in enough air to barrel out his chest. In and out, his body shrunk and expanded several more time before his breathing shallowed. Hops enhanced poison dripped from his pinky finger. His arm began shuddering; his left hand snapped to its aid, grabbing his right wrist and steadying it to a tremor. His arm jerked forward, dragging his body with it before a burning blue exploded from his fingers in a thundering boom.
Most of the people around them collapsed to the floor, screaming, alternating from holding their ears and their eyes, pain and a temporary loss of senses the payment for skepticism. A few other veterans were already wearing nearly black glasses and ear muffs.
The trucker that had put down the last hundred was clawing at the dirt and rocks, screaming a stream of profanity and swears, failing to hear any of them.
A couple unlucky people who found themselves too close to the watermelon were sprayed by the molten juice shrapnel that exploded from Nu’s burst.
Nu still held his hand, head down as he remained nearly doubled over. His arms dropped as he breathed in a coarse lump of air. His body swung up, his hair sweeping back to the top of his head. Nu straitened up, returning to his grumpy posture from before. He flicked the glasses off and returned them to his pocket with a smoldering hand. So did the ear plugs come off and find their way back to a pocket.
Phil shut the camera off and unarmored his head as Nu said, “Did you already call the docs?”
Phil picked the camera up and answered, “Yeah, just before the last guy put his money in the kitty.”
“Alright, I have time for one more shot then.”
Everyone capable of walking went back into the bar and returned to their seats and conversations.
Phil poured one last shot from the dusty bottle and began working on his camera.
Nu lifted the glass to his lips and flipped the shot up as sirens began to buzz through the door. He looked puzzled at Phil, “Did you call the cops too?”
The bartender slipped the DVD from the bulky contraption as he looked up and said, “No, but after last time, they started sending them out with the ambulance every time I call them.”
“Well, damn. Thanks for telling me,” Nu sighed
Phil popped the DVD in a case and said with a smile, “Yeah, no problem.”
As Nu stood up, swooping up three grand of the 3150, Phil uncapped a marker and wrote, Lightninging a Watermelon, and slid it in a shelf next to Lightninging a Chicken and Lightninging a Mr. Potatohead.