Lee's LiveJournal

Lasyrenne
The Mermaid

Fri, 4 Jan 2008
Lee Thompson-Herbert

Originally posted 11 Nov, 2007 as the header entry for a MySpace blog, At the Crossroads.
First entry, might as well start with a painting.

Picture for the day:


Lasyrenne, the Mermaid, the watery aspect of Erzuli. Digital painting, copy of acrylic on glass painted prayer candle, both by Lee Thompson-Herbert.

Lasyrenne is painted here with her golden comb from the european mermaid myths, and her golden mirror from the african myths of Mami Water and Oshun. Mermaids comb their hair to cause or calm storms in european myth. Oshun, Erzuli and Lasyrenne are all fascinated with mirrors, being most often portrayed as young, beautiful and extremely vain women. In afrocarribean tradition, the terminus between air and water when viewed from underneath is called "the mirror." Loa come up from the watery void through the center post of the peristyle and often do everything mirror-wise to the normal world, shaking hands left-handed, turning the opposite directions. Some are even referred to as "the Angel behind the Mirror" in certain songs.

As the sea is ever changing, and ever changeable, so Lasyrenne is sometimes seen as being both blonde and pale-skinned and black-haired and dark-skinned. Sometimes she even changes her appearance in the middle of a visit, jumping from Horse to Horse. This leads to depictions like mine above, where I have drawn her half black and half white.

The original prayer candle:

---

Originally written on 12 January for the Wheelchair Junkies board

This happened to me at the hospital on Monday. I broke another rib, and my husband absolutely couldn't take more time off work just then so I took myself to my doctor's office. That meant I hobbled in, since I couldn't get the wheelchair out of the car by myself. Luckily for me, the knee brace I'd been waiting on for over a month finally showed up last week or I'd have been SOL. Doc decided he wanted that knee xrayed as well, since I fell on the bathroom tiles about 3 weeks ago and it still looks bruised. During that appointment, I ended up with involuntary tears pouring down my face from the pain of the doctor gently prodding at my ribs to see which one I'd cracked this time. That's the point he pulled out the prescription pad and said, "I can write you a prescription for long acting morphine. You're not allergic to morphine, are you?" Remember, this is the guy who's paranoid about opiates! So I must've looked absolutely pathetic.



So not being entirely stupid, I get the prescription filled and eat something before I hobble over to the next building to have the xrays taken. The tech ends up twisting me into new and painful shapes, but it's neccessary and she apologizes. I get out of there and hunt for the bathroom. I meet another tech in the hall. The conversation goes something like this:



tech: You lost?
me: Looking for the bathroom. There's one right down there, right?
tech: No, the one you want is back that way and around the corner.
me: That's the handicapped one right here, isn't it? I need the grab bars.
tech: But you're not handicapped.
me: Uh, I am. [twitches skirt aside to show ankle and knee braces]
tech: that doesn't make you handicapped.
me: It does.
tech: You're not in a wheelchair.
me: [starting to get annoyed] Honey, I normally use a wheelchair. I have too many broken ribs to push it right now.
tech: You don't have the handicapped parking tag.
me: I do.
tech: So where is it?
me: [getting really annoyed now] In my car, where it's supposed to be.
tech: I'm just giving you a hard time. The bathroom's right back there. Remember there are two doors, lock them both. Happy Holidays.


Maybe it was because I was so tired and in pain, but...
I don't think that would have been funny even if I wasn't just barely keeping it together. The tech was just a $#@!head who really ought to know better, especially given where he was working. It really felt like he was
playing "Taunt the Fat Gimp." He stopped just before I got to the point
of yelling, "What the fuck is your problem?"






It's helpful and understanding professionals like that one that make me want to never leave my home. If that's how the people trained to deal with the ill and disabled act, what can I possibly expect from the uneducated public who most often still think that disabled people should be hidden from sight? And even when I'm out there in public with my flaming red hair, piercings and tattoos, the wheelchair or braces and cane makes me invisible to an awful lot of people. Or paints a big "Easy Prey" target on me for the nastier types to see.

Every once in a while a new word will tumble out of my mouth. Today's was "techtard." I'd just gotten back from lugging my G5 iMac to the Apple Store and back for a blown power supply (extended warranty is a good thing) and was getting ready to finally be able to hook up my new LaCie 250G drive to replace the old LaCie that died three weeks ago. The one that I'd been making all my backups to. So I pull the disk drive out of the box and realize I need to attach the little stand on the bottom so it can sit upright and take up less of my desk space. So as I'm standing there with the drive, the stand and the provided allen wrench in my hands, what came out of my mouth was, "No problem. Looks like even a techtard like me can do this."

I was right. That was the easy part. The nasty part was identifying the 5 different interface cables LaCie provided with the drive, none of which were labeled in any way...
Good thing I'm not really a techtard, or I might never have gotten past the 1)plug in the power supply, 2)turn it on, steps to 3)attach drive to computer step.

Allen Glen, aka WinAce, died from complications of cystic fibrosis on November 4 at the age of 20. He'd been fighting Medicaid to get a lung transplant operation to save his life. Medicaid had denied his claim, with the argument that the operation was too dangerous and likely to kill him. Nevermind that without the operation he was certainly going to die. You can read about his battle at his blog, www.save-allen.org, as long as the site stays up. I'm not sure how long Jess and Allan's family are going to leave it there. I think what bothers me the most of all in this mess is our society's willingness to simply throw people away without bothering to count their worth. Allan was a really good writer. In time, he probably would have been a great writer. But he'll never get that chance now, and as a society the rest of us have lost the talent Allan represented. Disabled? Don't have money? Sucks to be you, because as a society we don't seem to give a shit. It doesn't matter if you're a genius or possessed of great artistic talent, if you don't have money, you're most likely going to die. Your potential worth to society is counted strictly in how much cash you can produce on the spot. So a brilliant mind has been snuffed out, long before it could truly make a mark on the world. People have already begun to archive links to his best posts on various discussion boards scattered all over the net. Sad Poem by Allan The Wonderful World of WinAce, Allan's Website

A list of tribute posts from all over the net:

http://www.save-allan.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=150
http://winace.hyperboards.com/index.cgi?action=display&cat=feedback&board=guestbook&thread=1131126342
http://www.freethought-forum.com/forum/showthread.php?t=5073
http://www.freethought-forum.com/forum/showthread.php?t=5097
http://www.infidelguy.com/ftopict-14349-Allan_Glenn_has_died.html
http://www.infidelguy.com/ftopict-14381-WinAces_Farewell_message.html
http://www.faithless.org/community/index.php?showtopic=4329
http://www.towerofthesun.com/blog/?p=106
http://www.pandasthumb.org/archives/2005/11/allan--aka_wina.html
http://www.christianforums.com/t2150138-wwwsave-allanorg-a-worthy-cause.html&page=3
http://www.christianforums.com/t2280015-our-beloved-winace-is-gone.html
http://www.christianforums.com/t2279998-for-those-who-knew-and-loved-winace.html
http://www.christianforums.com/t2291508-cf-member-winace-1984-2005.html
http://www.christianforums.com/t2282398-the-death-of-winace-beware-of-geeks-bearing-griefs.html
http://www.christianforums.com/t2280051-winace-died-today.html
http://forums.randi.org/showthread.php?t=47043
http://www.skepticfriends.org/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=5168
http://www.skepticfriends.org/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=5192
http://forums.cysticfibrosis.com/messageview.cfm?catid=5&threadid=4508
http://forums.cysticfibrosis.com/messageview.cfm?catid=5&threadid=4512
http://forums.cysticfibrosis.com/messageview.cfm?catid=5&threadid=4517
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=104x5275488
http://www.seebs.net/log/archives/000308.html
http://www.ex-christian.net/index.php?showtopic=4797&hl=
http://www.ex-christian.net/index.php?showtopic=4812&hl=
http://www.ex-christian.net/index.php?showtopic=4737&hl=
http://www.libbychic.bravejournal.com/entry/13979
http://www.libbychic.bravejournal.com/entry/13974
http://www.freelancer-universe.com/modules.php?name=Forums&file=viewtopic&t=47
http://www.bakermedia.com/learn/showthread.php?t=52898
http://www.livejournal.com/users/kingfishernovel/112095.html
http://www.livejournal.com/users/schwarzewitwe/36474.html
http://www.livejournal.com/users/schwarzewitwe/36802.html

Even the people he mocked mercilessly, the Fundies of the Rapture Ready board had a prayer chain going for him:
http://www.rr-bb.com/showthread.php?t=212989
However, that might be seen as a metatribute to Allan's Fundies Say The Darndest Things. Behold the power of prayer. Snort.

Anything to avoid thinking about real life, 'cause it sucks just now.
Look, a shiney!



At least I had fun drawing the flogger for that.
Maybe I should just go back to bed...

Might as well keep with the title of the blog...

This ended up being the basis of my halloween costume this year Conductor on the Train to Hell . Charon modernized and quit using those little rafts a while back and now instead of having coins on your eyes, you need a ticket. If you don't have a ticket, they put you on the Bus to Hell. And if you were really, really bad during your lifetime, they put you on the airplane. In coach. In the middle of an aisle 17 seats wide...

Yeah, you really want this ticket.

Well now, this is less ugly (that's like saying something "sucks less"). One of the hells of being a graphic artist is not being able to get things to look just right. But this is a lot better than before.

Some of this tinkering is my way of avoiding thinking about things right now. The whole last week has sucked. And it doesn't look to be getting any better.
So far we have:

my husband with a sprained knee
me with a screwed up hip and knee
my doctor doing the annual "But you might get addicted to painkillers," song and dance
my finding out that anti-inflammitories make me throw up blood once again
Finding out that my regular set of pills will now make me throw up if I take them on an empty stomach
Throwing up in the kitchen sink isn't pretty, kids
Pharmacy had only half of my heinously expensive biotech drug in stock because I take double the normal dose
Did I mention the stuff burns worse than xylocaine when it's injected?
Friend who was denied a transplant operation by Medicaid died on Friday morning
Husband's grandmother died this morning

So yeah, the week has sucked.

I'll get around to writing about Allan, the young man who died of cystic fibrosis, in the next day or so. I'm just uncharacteristically left at a loss for words.

This color scheme and layout I have is pretty damn ugly, but it appears to be the best I can do until I manage to learn the style system here. Sigh. As if learning to code html by hand for my web pages wasn't enough work already. Now I have to learn a whole 'nother scripting language to make things display correctly. I suppose I should dig around and see if someone's already built a WYSIWYG style editor before I complain...

But yeah, ugly. And I've yet to find a way to put in background images. Where's that image again?



Converting over to Yet Another formatting system is why I never bothered with a formal blog up til now.

Wherein I Post links to my original Not-Quite-A-Blog entries at my website:
Lee's Rants (Not-Quite-a-Blog)


The individual Rants:
A Night in the ER, or, "I'll Take 'Things That Suck' For $200, Bob!"

Too Many Drugs Or Not Enough? Or, Ponderings on Better Living Through Chemistry

How NOT to fill a Prescription, or, A fitting end to the Week From HELL

Reason 584 That It Sucks To Be Me

Gifts You Never Knew You Wanted.

The Finger. Or How I Won the Stupid Award.