Feelin’ like Lindsay Lohan (Yes, I’m talking about REHAB…)

As of now, I’ve been two weeks as an inpatient in a rather-expensive [by my standards] holistic rehab (can’t really say much because of some stupid confidentiality agreement…but fuck that! It doesn’t cover my thoughts about it…).

Anyways, I have to say this detox phase really sucks…like REALLY SUCKS! It’s horrible and don’t let anybody fool you into thinking it’s the “most comfortable part of it“ like they told me. Even though I’ve been on some medicine it still feels like i’m doing this cold turkey… and somehow makes me realize it would have been almost the same doing it by me onesie in my home.

I’ve got to say:  Quitting drugs ain’t that fucking hard, it’s the staying clean part of it that fucks you up and messes up with your mind.

Anyways, I’m still supposedly “detoxing”, so I can’t say I’m some sort of expert on this shit. Just makes me feel a bit more experienced than before. And, yes, go ahead and ask me: WHAT THE FUCK WAS I THINKING??! (It’s what I’m thinking right now…)

I’ve got two more weeks coming up. The question is: will I stay here or sign myself out before it’s time?

Note to Self #3: REHAB!

Right now, I’m doing one of my “NOT new year’s resolutions”: getting the hell outta here for my own fucking sanity! I need to do this and I plan to keep posting while I’m there… that way I’m gonna give all of you an inside perspective on drug rehabs and hopefully help someone somewhere decide if that is something they could consider to better their own life. And NO, I’m not gonna preach about the good things that can come out of stopping drug use/addiction because I’m the first one that hates people telling me that.

Christmas is NOT Jesus of Nazareth’s Birthday…

So yesterday a lot of people celebrated what is called “Christmas”, “Christmastide”, “Noël”, or worse “Feast of the Nativity”. This “Holiday” is a mix of Christian, pre-Christian and secular themes and origins. So, it’s really a hybrid of a bunch of stuff.

I huge amount of people already know this. I will contribute my little “grain of sand” and post this up in here. The figure of Jesus of Nazareth (A.K.A. ‘Christ’/ ‘Christos‘) was NOT born of December 25 as some people still think. If you’re one of those who still believes that, you need a reality check...Go have fun on Google or some other search engine and find more about the topic. I will give you some hints & keywords to check out:

•  • Pagan winter festivals • Roman winter solstice • April 17, 6BC • Star of Bethlehem theories • Christmas = “Christ’s mass” • Yule • rebirth of the Great horned hunter god • Cernunnos • Pan • Dies Natalis Solis Invicti • Sun God • (Sol Invictus) = birth of the “invincible sun” • Yule singing = caroling •  •

One of the most important things is that the ‘Christ’s mass’ was scheduled at the same time as pagan winter festivals to keep church members from going to pagan festivities. This date was also chosen to help pagans asimilate and convert to Christianity in an easier way, thus celebrations like Yule and Dies Natalis Solis Invicti were a equated and absorbed into the Christian liturgical calendar.

I personally dislike the holiday season. Apart from all that I’ve mentioned above and it’s fake meaning (Yes, I absolutely hate when people say that Jesus the true meaning of Christmas), it’s disgusting how people relate it to material gifts. I hate giving gifts as much as I hate receiving them.

Anyways, I hope that anyone who is ignorant of this be motivated at least a tiny bit to find the actual truth.

- Adrianne Katzen

Today’s Lesson: Stop trying to help people who don’t want help

People (who exactly? who knows?) say that we learn through trial, through our experiences. Seriously, what the fuck?! I digress.

Some people, myself included, not always learn from their past mistakes or trials. Some of us just rush back to make the same damn mistakes. Some of us are that fucking stubborn, that fucking stupid andheadstrong.

Bad stuff is not necessarily all bad. There is no white and black distinction in life. We have to accept that there might be some good or benefit to those “bad” things because if not there might not even be a reason not to do or have them.

I will not tell anybody ever no to do any one thing because it is “bad”, harmful, or risky. (I would though warn them to make an informed decision). If people want to do anything, they  will. And if they want to repeat that, they will. A person’s inner-self will dictate what they do or don’t do … not anything you or I will tell them.

So, if you see someone who you think needs your help to stop doing “bad” things, please think more than twice about it because most peope tend to reject unwanted help. If you still decide to try and help them anyways, stop trying to do so as fast as that person asks you not do do so and go away.

Always remember to respect each and everyone’s will to do as they please and to think as they please.

- Adrianne Katzen

Almost Everyone’s a Fucking Drug-addict!

There’s one thing (almost) everyone agrees upon and that is that the WAR ON DRUGS is a complete and utter failure! In my opinion, it is useless. Tell a kid to not do something and the next second that all he or she is thinking about doing. And what does that lead to? To doing the fucking drug!

Now, i’ve seen all these new “wonderful” ads for the campaign “Above the Influence”. Really? Like that’s gonna help. Why not instead of spending thousands or millions of dollars on this crap, spend it better in trying to help those who want to quit using. There’s all this talk about how people should quit drugs but there’s no actual help for those who need it, for those who don’t even have a dime to pay for real treatment. The government should focus instead on treating addicts as patients not as criminals.

If people want to use all kinds of shit, let them by all means! It’s their own bodies they’re damaging. Just like with the damn birth control pill, any kind of drug is a choice an individual makes. Legalize the damn stuff and drug users and addicts will get clean drugs that won’t be cut with even more dangerous shit.

The world is fucked up and will continue to be fucked up until people in general accept that everyone is entitled to have the freedom to make their own choices as long as they don’t infringe on other’s rights!

Anyway, enough about my ranting about the government and drugs.

 On a side note, people should start realizing that those pills that they shove down their throats whether for psychiatric or physical conditions are DRUGS. That alcohol and nicotine are DRUGS. Why treat cocaine, heroin, MDMA, LSD and other drugs differently??!

- Adrianne Katzen

[[My ranting and arguments for drugs will not stop here. Expect to see more of this. I have
tons of reasons to think the way that I do...not that I will explain them in this brief note...]]]

Adolf Hitler and Art

[[Disclaimer: I by no means condone the killings perpetrated by the Nazi State. This post has absolutely nothing to do with taking pride in the actions of the Nazis. Please read thoroughly before making any comments.]]

     Adolf Hitler was first and foremost a man, a human being, and as such bound to make mistakes. I’m not trying to make a case in his favor, but rather analyzing a part of his human nature. I’d like to briefly explore his views on art, criticize him as an artist and as a “pseudo-curator” (of ‘entartete kunst‘ or “degenerate art”), and state that question that has always lingered on my mind. Actually, i’ll start with that:

What would have been the course of history had Hitler been accepted as an art student at the school of Vienna? What if he had achieved his dream of being a successful artist instead of becoming Führer?

[Me] As a visual artist, I may see his case in a kind of biased way, but I will give no apologies for my thoughts on this subject specifically. Just to clarify: I do not claim to be an expert of his work in any way.

Hate the guy or not, he was an art-aficionado and considered himself an artist. So, let’s talk about the artist not about him as the brain of the mass murdering that took place with him as a leader.

Just by looking at his artwork, his paintings, one can surely deduce that he was an extremely conservative person and even possessed a sort of sensitive personality. It is obvious that he didn’t handle rejection or criticism well. He had his own style which was very traditional, even “neo-classical” with a tad bit of influence from modern art even if he hated it. Observing his paintings closely one is able to see the brush stroke and able to sense a bit of rapid movement of his hand – which could indicate a tiny influence of the way impressionists used to paint. On the other hand, this was not necessarily the case and may simply mean that was his own personal style. One thing is sure, he loved adding all those little intricate details of the buildings he painted – to which we could argue shows something of that complicated spirit he possessed.

Personally, I think that technically his artwork is pretty good since he seems to dominate well the concepts of perspective and light. I’m not a fan of landscapes or urban life as a topic in general…but to each his own.

Thoughts About Religious Beliefs

[[WARNING: This post is not meant to diss anyone's religions convictions. Please forgive me if you feel I have touched upon a sensitive spot on your particular beliefs. It is not the intention of this post.]]

Ever since I was a child I’ve been fascinated by world religions and beliefs. I was brought up in a Christian environment and had to withstand biblical classes throughout high school even when I no longer believed these things. All this made me question religions and people’s motivations to believe in something greater than themselves that kept “order” between what they categorized as “good” and “evil”. Of course, the main religion I decided to explore further was Christianity (along with a bit of Judaism and Islam) because it was the one that hit closest to home and information was widely available to me as a child and teenager.

I started to notice a lot of inconsistencies with it and started to think the Bible had either serious errors or missing information. I believed (and still do) that the Bible is not the literal word of God (and that’s if ‘God’ even exists) as people claimed it was. I knew that information changes as it is passed generation to generation via the memorization and oral transmission because this is evidenced in a multitude of old literature and the different copies of it from different times. Also, every text loses something in translation. Now, if you take that into consideration and add the fact that writing had not yet been invented at the start of the events of the Bible/Torah, it is enough to convince me to take anything I read from this book as it is said “with a grain of salt”.

For example, a lot of people claim the first man and woman on Earth were Adam and Eve. I have two major problems with this: (1) How to account for the different ethnicities in the world?; and (2) Genesis, the first book of the Bible that gives the account of creation, has what one could either call a “flaw” or a conflicting view with this claim. Let’s take this second problem further into examination: Genesis 1:27 tell us that God made man “in his image; male and female he created them” (from dust). Genesis 2:18 states that God saw that Adam was alone and in Genesis 2:21-22 he creates a woman from Adam’s rib. Now, if this does not mean that God created 2 different women, it certainly poses the question of which of the two ways was she actually created.

And that’s just the first of many things I could find wrong with this book, with the Bible. I’m not saying you cannot find good advice and real bits of wisdom. No, not at all. I just think of the Bible as a sort of history book that combines poetry and prophecies in it.