When I wrote “How do You Define “Quality of Life?“” I had no idea that I was coming down with the flu, which has now struck all three of us. Due to this unfortunate eventuality I won’t be able to write much in the way of a post for this evening as I had promised.

I don’t want to leave you with nothing though so I give you this quote I found in “Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailors.” The book is an incredibly well-written account of one of the finest moments in the history of the United States Navy and is a must read for anyone interested in the study of heroism and bravery.

When Great men blunder, they count their losses in pride and reputation and glory. The underlings count their losses in blood.

– Theodore C. Mason, Battleship Sailor (1982) as quoted in Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailors by James D. Hornfischer (2004). p.358

Let’s begin by making one thing perfectly clear: I have never served in the military. Leaving aside the minor issues of my fondness for cock and predilection for barking like a dog, not to mention a childhood history of using psych meds (most of the meds used to treat Tourette are on the military’s “never mind” list), I don’t think the military has much use for someone who can’t even lift his cat without major pain. Long before my neck injury or even leaving for college, I spoke with a Coast Guard Reserves recruiter. I was rejected because of the TS and having taken the drugs most commonly used to treat it, but looking back now I think my swishy hips and bent wrist would have constituted “telling” under DADT.

All that said, for spooky reasons I have studied physical and magical combat in a tough school. Before my injury I was a pretty damn good hand to hand and knife fighter. Now, while not a competition grade shot by any stretch of the imagination, I am quite competent with a variety of firearms. As a combat magician I have been in combat situations which left their own kinds of scars (that’s right kids, cut up your astral body bad enough and it scars too).

My reason for bringing all this up isn’t just to make myself feel better in the face of my second bout of bronchitis in a month. Instead I am trying to establish a foundation from which to criticize… His Royal Highness Prince Harry of England.

Actually I suspect that it is not Prince Harry that deserves my distain but rather the British government and perhaps some elements within the Royal Family.

The reason for my vitriol is that His Royal Highness is deploying to Iraq soon with the rest of his regiment of the British Army. Troop Leader Wales as he is known by his soldiers has been trained to command four tanks and eleven men. How will those men he has trained with and commanded going to feel when they are sent into combat sans the Prince. That’s right, as second in line for the throne of England, Prince Harry is not eligible for combat duty. He is too important.

The media has proudly pointed out that the Prince (and his brother who also is a military officer) is continuing a long line of military service. His father was a navy pilot. His grandfather abandoned his Greek and Dane royal titles to serve in the British military in WWII and his uncle served on board an aircraft carrier in the Falklands War. When the British government wanted to remove Prince Andrew from his dangerous posting during the Falklands War the Queen and Prince Phillip supposedly overruled the government in order to keep their son on that aircraft carrier.

These recent military exploits, and let’s be honest the Falklands War wasn’t Britain’s most dangerous hour and while flying planes is a dangerous practice it is unlikely Prince Charles was ever in anymore jeopardy then if he had become a tour bus driver, are only the surface of the British Royal military tradition. To make a broad and historically dubious generality: there is a historical tradition both in and out of the British Isles that members of the ruling family lead their troops into battle.

If we accept that broad generality, than should the current generation of British Royals have chosen not to join the military it would have been a break with family tradition. However, to join the military but be held out from combat surely makes a mockery of a traditional role of royalty that goes back millennia. It would be one thing if His Royal Highness was in a non-combat position within the military. That would be a way to get the invaluable experience of military training and contribute something back to the country without putting himself at great risk. However, Prince Harry is trained to command tanks for gods’ sake. I don’t think there is such a thing as an administrative tank commander.

My partner Summerwind, who lived for many years of his young life under British rule (first in England then in Hong Kong before the hand off to China) assures me that this all makes perfect sense from a British perspective. He has rightfully pointed out that the House of Windsor doesn’t do a whole lot of governing anymore. Rather, they are a symbol of Great Britain and the embodiment of British fortunes. While they don’t make law anymore, they still fill the traditional role of sacred kingship in the sense of being the country. Summer says that it could be devastating to the moral of the British people to loose a crown prince in combat.

However, Prince Harry is the same young man whose grandparents refused to evacuate London during the Blitz because if the citizenry couldn’t leave than they wouldn’t either. I know that there is a huge difference between the war in Iraq and the Blitz of London (although I bet the Iraqis could find some similarities awfully easily) but that doesn’t change the disparity between Elizabeth II’s refusal to leave London and keeping Prince Harry out of combat while his fellow troops go off to fight. All that changes is the scale of people affected.

What will it mean to the troops who serve with the Prince when they go off to get shot at and kill strangers while he stays in as safe an environment as you can have in what remains essentially hostile territory. Imagine the resentment of coming back from a bad patrol, dirty and bleeding, knowing that the man who could be your future king (obviously a concern or he’d be allowed in combat) stayed behind so he wouldn’t get hurt.

I’m not British, and unlike Summerwind I’ve not even had the experience of living in another country (or in his case, three). However, unlike the majority of my countrymen I believe that done right, there is value to be found in the monarchy model of government. Even in the extremely watered down form that the British still have a monarchy there is a spiritual and magical role played by the existence of the royal family.

The British schoolboy in Summer says that it makes sense for Price Harry to be held back from combat duty because of the potential damage his death might do to the country’s moral. At the same time though, the spirit worker in me wonders about the damage to the luck and fate of his country caused by his or far more likely his government’s unwillingness to risk his death when so obviously willing to risk the death of his subjects and comrades.

Picture a room full of goths. Make it a small dance club, a crowded small dance club. There’s a band performing and the club is far more crowded than normal, enough so that the air conditioning system is running even though it is fifteen degrees outside and a blizzard is scheduled to start within hours.

Got that in your mind? Ok, now picture all those people smiling.

That’s right, smiling.

Sounds pretty crazy but it is a sight I saw myself a few nights ago. Even crazier, it wasn’t the first time I saw this unusual sight. Personally I have now experienced this phenomena three times. That is because I have seen the Cruxshadows perform live exactly three times.

There is a good chance that you have never heard of the Cruxshadows, and an even greater chance that you’ve never seem them perform. Fortunately for you that will have no effect on the rest of this essay. The Cruxshadows are alternative/darkwave/goth band who have been playing music for about fifteen years. Like many bands in their genre they seem to be more successful in Europe than the states, although their most recent single got in the Billboard Top Ten Singles when it was released.

Aside from the fact that I am generally quite fond of their music (after all, Fire and I drove two hours to see them and then three hours home in a blizzard and considered it worthwhile) what amazes me about the Cruxshadows, and their singer/songwriter Rogue is their ability to bring joy to a crowd generally resistant to outward expressions of such (or really any) emotion.

At the recent concert I watched with amusement as an attractive young woman clearly struggled to maintain an air of angst/impassivity for a solid several minutes before abandoning all pretenses and grinning like an idiot.

The image that stands out above all else from the evening though is of Rogue standing in the middle of the crowd on a bar stool. At this point I should mention that he periodically steps into the audience and walks and dances through the crowd while continuing to sing using his headset microphone. He went and got a swiveling bar stool and spun himself around in circles while singing using only his own movements. People who know me will be shocked to discover that the reason this stands out in my mind is not directly related to the sight of Rogue’s gyrating hips.

Rather what stands out is his total confidence. This is a pretty risky, albeit impressive stunt. For a band with their punishing tour schedule, an injury to the singer could be disastrous. However, I don’t believe Rogue was ever really in any danger whatsoever. There is no doubt in my mind at all (and I suspect the same could be said for him) that if he had lost his balance he would not have hit the ground. There simply isn’t any way that the audience would have let that happen.

I have seen other performers who possessed incredible “presence.” Rogue, and to a lesser extent the rest of his band (especially the electronic violin player, Rachel who is unbelievable) are exceptional but not alone in this area. It is not the remarkable blend of intimacy and power over and with the audience that is most significant in my mind. Instead it is what the band seems to do with it, namely make people feel good. One might even say good about themselves.

Don’t misunderstand me for a moment; the Cruxshadows do not sing exclusively happy songs, far from it. I may be wrong, but right now I fail to think of a single song of theirs that I would call “happy,” weird perhaps (try listening to the song “Carnival”) but not happy. At the same time they generally lack the brutal despair of say, early Nine Inch Nails. Their music tends to revolve around the human condition, sometimes in a mythological context sometimes not. One of the finest songs I have ever heard honoring the sacrifices made by soldiers and warriors is “Winterborn (This Sacrifice)” off of their album “Wishfire.”

I have spent the last several days trying in to grasp and explain the effect that the concert had on the crowd. There was clearly a good deal of energy and foo flying about, but at the time and in retrospect I have been unable to pin down exactly what it was. I will say this, if in the middle of the concert Rogue had told everyone to take off their underwear and put it on their heads they(we) probably would have. If he’d told them to go kill some guy they(we) probably would have done that too. Where the real power was though is that there is no way he would have asked that and that is how he got such power in the first place. He conveys an intimacy and with it a trust that as a shaman I know I should distrust, but instead find comforting even in retrospect.

As a shaman, I would love to know what about Rogue and the Cruxshadows inspire these feelings. However, as an audience member, I honestly don’t want to know. Attending a ritual and being able to enjoy it purely as a participant, rather than analyzing its effectiveness/structure/spiritual impact is a privilege that one gives up when one becomes a spirit worker. This concert was a rare opportunity to recapture some of that feeling of magic (rather than foo) and I see no need to look behind the metaphorical curtain.

Readers of BarkingShaman may have noticed that it has been some time since my last post. The reason for this is simple: Lunesta stole my brain. Those of you who watch television will remember the creepy advertisement for this particular sleep aid in which a big glowing luna moth repeatedly flies by. I can personally attest that the atmosphere of that ad is really what one feels like falling or trying to wake from a Lunesta assisted sleep.

The reason that I am sleeping the sleep of the glow-y moth is that I haven’t really been sleeping otherwise. An examination of the time stamps on some of the older BS posts will bear out my point. Unfortunately, I simply can’t get the clouded feeling out of my head through the course of the day. If I have also used morphine (on the advice of my doctor) this is even worse.

On the other hand, let’s make a list of the downsides to using Lunesta:

A) Thought processes are indisputably slowed throughout the day.

B) Within fifteen minutes of taking a Lunesta my mouth fills with a bitter metallic taste. Drinking or eating is extremely unpleasant. This taste lasts for in excess of 36 hours after taking one Lunesta. Aside from just sucking, this has also caused severe dehydration.

C) I shit you not. When I started this list I had four things to list. Three of them were mundane and the last will be spooky. However (and I swear I’m not making this up), I no longer can remember what the third point was.

D) I think my spooky shit is suffering from the sleeping drugs and mental dulling. I have learned to address this sort of thing before She addresses it for me.

E) I think what C was supposed to be was that the cognitive dulling has made it very hard for me to do things like keep up with BarkingShaman or my business. Honestly, I am not sure if that is what it was or not, but I think so.

F) Nope it wasn’t. I just remember what I was going to say. I have had a headache for the last several weeks. The doctor says it is unlikely to be caused by using the Lunesta (although admitted that dehydration was a possibility) but I remain unconvinced. It isn’t as bad now, but it is still there after over two weeks. The doctor I saw (while mine was in Honduras) explained that I had a complicated medical situation so anomalies like multi-week headaches had to be expected.

So how do you define “quality of life?” At what point does the frustration of not being able to do the work I need to do (or remember where the fuck my wallet is for that matter) overcome the increased comfort of being able to sleep at night. Lunesta is supposed to be non-habit forming but I must confess that the prospect of a full night of sleep is tempting beyond belief. I suppose you could say that it is the sleep that is habit forming not the Lunesta, but the idea of not taking it tonight fills me with anxiety.

So in the interest of maintaining a useful quality of life (and not getting my ass kicked by a certain deity) I am making this pledge: Today is February 16^th. There will be another BS post tonight (meaning before next dawn not midnight) and it won’t be one of these “in my life” posts. Rather it will be an actually commentary essay like most of the posts in BS. In addition, there will be an essay post on the 22^nd, 24^th, and 26^th.

The only exception is that there is a chance we may be going to Portland ME tonight to see the Cruxshadows again since Summer was sick when Fire and I went on Tuesday. If I am going to a concert tonight then I won’t be posting this evening.

If I can maintain a quality standard of writing, and I can tell that I have failed in this post compared to previous ones, then I will continue to use the Lunesta and work through the fog. If however, I am unable to even successfully write for BarkingShaman than the Lunesta will have to go and another option sought out.

-Wintersong Tashlin

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Someone has missed the point. To be fair I am unsure as to whether or not I may be that someone, but from where I sit the world is making my brain hurt. Witness this image.

At first glance it looks like an ordinary post-SOTU CNN Online front page. However, if one is to look at the lower right-hand portion of the image something is awry. That something is the “BREAKING ONION NEWS” box.

For those of you who don’t know, The Onion is one of the most successful online satirical newspapers (there is still a print version put out as well). Onion headlines often cut to the heart of the absurdity of the American experience. Their post-9/11 coverage attracted some of the widest publicity, prompting Newsweek to affirm that The Onion really is “America’s finest news source.” A recent article, “Amazon.com Recommendations Understand Area Woman Better Than Husband” is an excellent case in point. Of course, The Onion doesn’t always rely on current events: “Why do all these homosexuals keep sucking my cock?” is a timeless piece of… journalism.

Perhaps it is apparent then why I am so flabbergasted (fun word, don’t get to use it often enough) by the presence of an Onion link as part of CNN Online. For one thing, there have been too many distressing instances over the past several years in which it has been hard to tell that an article on CNN wasn’t in fact a spoof from The Onion. And for its part, the Onion has carved out a web presence and a loyal following from pointing that sort of thing out. Can either outlet remain true to the intent of their content when existing in this sort of relationship?

Ok, they probably can both do that just fine. The Onion has demonstrated time and again that they don’t really give a fuck what the world thinks as long as people laugh, and CNN is probably incapable of seeing the irony of having fake news headlines next to such “legitimate” gems as “Beefier High School Football Players Verge on Obesity” and “Sea Lion Wanders on to Dairy Farm.” (Sea Lion headline found originally here on CNNOnline, although it goes to an affiliate website)

I have been sick lately and having pain problems to boot (being sick means I can’t have barking tics which means more physical tics and hence more pain) so I have been sleep deprived and this evening I added two Benadryl on top so perhaps this seems weirder to me than it really is. Hence the screen shot. After all “CNN Online to Carry Onion Articles” sounds, well like an Onion article.