Novel Ideas

Just thought I'd add a thought about my recent editing dramas and traumas. I think I caught on to something. You probably know how people say that really good novels have things you might have missed the first time around, and if you go back and read it again, you find something you didn't notice before? Well, editing is the key.

When I first started writing my novel, I hurried through the first ten chapters or so, and then settled into a routine of sorts with the rest. In the editing, I went back and fleshed out those first ten chapters to the extent they bear little resemblance to the originals. There are also entirely new chapters.

The fleshing out in the editing process gives you the opportunity to add little teasers and clues that might well turn into that "wow, I missed that the first time."
A dark blue Lexus with tinted windshields wouldn't attract much attention the first time around,nor maybe the second time if it's far enough down the line, and you might have forgotten it by the time the illicit affair is unveiled. But, if you go back and read it the second time you say, "oh yeah, that's who she was with the whole time."

Other things ain't so subtle. I don't know why I didn't think of it before, but if you have a gang of creeps break into your funeral home while everybody is away, and there is a family mausoleum in the basement, wouldn't it be pretty obvious they might take the corpses out and scatter them around the house in various sick poses?

Yeah, I know it's not Shakespeare, but then again, Shakespeare wasn't blessed with a sick sense of humor.

Browser Add-Ons

Yeah, I've been indisposed the last few days. There's been too much shit going on that I would as soon not have to deal with, but couldn't avoid it. Plus, I've been engaged in editing my novel. Plus, it's been miserably hot.

Finally, I decide to do a post, and I turn to my Scribefire, type the post, and get ready to include a link, when what to my wandering eye should appear but, no fucking link icon.

See, I have this theory. People that work at these jobs for these people that make these browsers are always expected to "do something". Otherwise, they can't justify their paychecks. So, they tinker. And, they tinker, And, they tinker some more. Almost half of the time they spend tinkering is unnecessary, but tinker they must, and far too often, it adds up to something ending up badly fucked up.

Well, I'm dropping Scribefire. Justify that, pricks.

By the way, if you really want to drive Firefox crazy, and probably every other advertising driven site as well, download a little add-on called Propel. You'll have to Google it, because the homepage is blocked, even though I originally got it as a Firefox extension. I also have it through my local isp. If you are on dial-up, it is indispensable. I'm not sure whether it works on anything besides that, or even if it would be necessary, but it's great for dial-up. I think it works by filtering your pages through their site, much like Macros. Well, not nearly that fast, but Macros is a pain in the ass, which is a whole other story.

Firefox no longer offers Propel, and in fact discourages it, in fact, because it "doesn't offer secure updates", or some such drivel. Translation-their fucking advertisers don't like it because you can block their fucking ads and pop-ups.

Anyway, hopefully I'll have something worthwhile to blog about here in a day or two.

My One Thousandth Post (Finally) With F(Un)FAQ's

Well, here I am at post number one thousand, and I don’t know quite what to say, other than, what took me so fucking long? I’ve had this blog going now since May of 2005. I posted a lot more frequently, if not as well, in those early days, so at the rate I’m currently going I figure I might hit post number 2000 by the time the Mayan calendar ends it’s cycle, but I wouldn’t bet the farm on it. After all, whether the Mayans are wrong, and maybe even if they’re right, that farm might come in handy.

When I first started this blog, it was with the intention that people would actually read the thing. But, after three years and two and a half months, I have yet to reach the five thousand mark in reader views according to my profile page, and on an average day, I will not hit one hundred readers a day, even when I include the times I link on. The most readers I ever had was something over 300, which was a one time thing, and there have been three or four times I’ve soared over two hundred. I’m no even sure I remember now what all the fuss was about. It is not that uncommon for me to hit well over the hundred mark, but less than that unfortunately seems to be even more common.

On an up note, I’m almost sure Lindsey Lohan has read my blog, which may or may not be a good thing. Well, somebody from Westwood California came from the same unregistered isp and read the same Lohan post four days in a row, so who’s to say? If that is you, Lindsey, stop stealing folk’s fur coats, buy your own.

I was linked once by CNN. Don’t remember the post.

When I first got started, I remember thinking, hey, I need to come up with a snazzy name that is memorable and will come up in the search engines. Since I am a privately practicing pagan, who practices what I call, for lack of a better term, Hellenic Wicca, I decided on what I now see as the presumptuous The Pagan Temple. I think of it now as presumptuous not for the Pagan, of course, nor even so much for the Temple, but, simply put, for the “The”. I think I might take it off. After all, I don’t mean to infer that I speak for all pagans, when of course I obviously don’t.

I remember that when I started out, I didn’t even do the typical and usually obligatory introductory post. I just hit the ground running with two posts about two then current issues of the day. One was about the work of the U2 singer Bono, the other about the then still missing Groene children from Idaho, whom I postulated might have been victimized by a Nazi fringe group at one time prominent in their area, and who might have been sold into sex slavery as a means of paying off a drug debt. Of course, it turned out to be far from accurate, so why link it?

This blog typically has little to do with paganism or witchcraft, though I try to post on those subjects on a fairly regular basis in one form or another. I think probably I would be better off doing more of that kind of thing, as well as other things I enjoy, such as musings on cultural and entertainment stories, and less of stuff that piss me the hell off, such as politics, government policy, and political correctness-but damn, I can’t seem to help myself.

Some of my favorite posts are the satirical ones, which I have listed in the sidebar under the heading “Ancient Rites and Rants (And Immortal Bullshit)” there under the picture of the Norse God Loki transforming into an eagle. Also there and elsewhere are other posts where I give my thoughts on subjects of an historical nature-or in the case of my Sodom and Gomorrah posts, the lack of historicity in mythological stories that are generally presumed to be historical.

Another of my favorite posts, also satirical, are my “Guest Bloggers” which are of course meant to be over-the-top denunciations, ripped off from the days headlines, more or less, as seen through the eyes of fictitious personages. Well, fictitious that is unless you consider Baphomet the Demon a real personage.

So, where do I go from here? I guess I could give some indication as to what directions I am heading.

F(Un)FAQ’s

Will you endorse a presidential candidate?

Probably not. One, I am not satisfied with either major candidate. Plus, I am just absolutely loathe to see the Democratic Party have any more power and influence than it already has as long as it is dominated by its left wing. Unfortunately, John McCain is not exactly a bulwark against increasingly incremental socialistic policies. He represents, as far as I’m concerned, the worse not only of the Republican Party, but a good deal of the worse of the Democratic Party as well.

In other words, the gods sent John McCain to this earth for the sole and exclusive purpose of pissing me the fuck off.

Two, I think I can be a better and more honest observer and interpreter if I stay objective and unaffiliated. It is harder to criticize somebody when you have painted yourself in his or her corner.

Three, and most importantly-what difference does it make? Me endorsing a candidate and thinking it’s going to make a dime’s worth of difference would be like me pissing in the ocean and thinking I’m going to make the sea level rise.

Have you changed any since you started blogging?

Yeppers, especially politically. I used to be a left-of-center moderate, and in some cases a flaming liberal, depending on the issue. Now, I’m a right-of-center moderate and seem to be becoming more conservative as time goes on. It’s probably due to reading more and paying more attention to what’s really going on and having less of an inclination to excuse the inexcusable for the sake of group cohesion.

When it comes to workers rights, wages, and benefits, however, I’ll always be a leftie. Social issues are of secondary importance, as in the end a conservative-a true conservative-point of view suggests that government should stay out of people’s lives and bedrooms insofar as consenting adults are concerned.

When it comes to religious rights, of course I stand for the legitimate rights of the practitioners of all religions within the framework of the law. Don’t castrate your eight year old daughter, or fuck her, or treat her or your wife like a piece of shit because you have it in your head some god gave you that right, and I probably don’t have a problem with you.

A special hint-pagans-honest to gods true pagans-worship goddesses as well as gods and tend to look unkindly on any who treat women badly, and look particularly askance toward brutal rag head bullshit. Any who don’t see it that way, well, sorry, their “paganism” is selective and leaves a lot to be desired. Opposition to the “evil” George W. Boooooooooosh is not an excuse.

A second special hint-the preceding was not intended as a slam at all followers of Islam, most of who are probably decent people who treat their wives and daughters probably very well. In fact, they probably put them on a pedestal, if anything. They just mainly have an oddly eastern way of showing their esteem.

Otherwise, whatever you do is fine with me as long as you don’t try to force it down mine or anybody else’s throat, and especially as long as you don’t try to control the government to that end.

If you want to tell me I’m going to hell for my beliefs, then, sigh, I guess you have the right-just use that right judiciously. When I walk away from you, take that as a hint not to follow along behind me, especially to my house. I’m good with a gun too.

I guess I should point out something else here that should by now be painfully obvious. Although they would seem to be in the majority, not all pagans are liberal pacifists and/or environmental extremists and/or ultra-feminists and/or LGBT Act Up activists and/or socialistic utopians who take their cue from “elders” who manifest unto them through a fog of nineteen sixties pot haze and patchouli. There are a growing body of us who are libertarian and conservative, and though I don’t always side with them (in fact I have gotten into some pretty good rows with them, especially the Libertarians), I trend increasingly in their direction.

But are you fair in your assessments of everybody?

Hell yes, I tell it like I see it.

So, do you have any predictions for the future?

I’m not much on predicting the future. I will go out on a limb though and say that I think Lindsey Lohan will eventually gain recognition as one of the all time great actresses and will display a remarkable poise, elegance, intelligence, beauty, and natural talent that will make her one of the all time great respected personalities of our or any day and time.

Aren’t you kind of a sexist?

Yes

But how does that square with your statement about respect for women and worshipping goddesses?

Errrr, I like to fuck.

If you were truly a religious pagan, shouldn’t you promote peace? You do believe in peace, don’t you?

I sure do. That’s why when anybody starts some shit I think we should blast them back to the Bronze Age as quickly as possible.

What do you actually believe about the deities? Do you think they are real, or do you think they are personifications of nature, or do you think they are really all various manifestations of the same one or two deities, or do you believe they are archetypes?

All of the above, but for my own personal use, the archetype thing seems to work best for me. Really though, there is truth in all approaches, and I mean that literally, not symbolically. You can’t understand that if you try to see it through a finite understanding of nature, though, you have to look beyond that. It’s all tied in to mankind’s and the universe’s own evolutionary development. I can’t explain it any better than that. Suffice it to say atheism and monotheism are also equally valid concepts.

Would you raise your children to be pagans?

I don’t have any children, unless you’re counting the billions I’ve flushed down the toilet or put through the wash and rinse cycle when I do my sheets. Well, there’s a few thousand I haven’t gotten to yet, dried up on the crotch of my jeans.

Okay, but if you had children, would you raise them to be pagans?

Nope, I’d raise them to be good people to the best of my ability and encourage them to find their own paths, which they would be welcome to pursue once they were grown and out of the house. I haven’t got the time to try to undo the foolish shit people tend to put in kid’s heads. Unfortunately for every bit of good they might learn, which I can teach myself, there’s an equal amount of bad I don’t want to have to try, probably futilely, to excise from their psyches.

Do you believe in heaven or in hell as literal places?

I believe they are both something you create within your own psyche and you carry them with you once you leave this life. It’s not real in the sense of being a literal place with a geographical location as such, but it is real in the sense that a dream seems real while you are asleep and dreaming. Your emotions and attitudes that you carry with you though life is like the brick and mortar by which you build these places within your subconscious. They are eternal in the sense that, once you leave this life, you are stuck with what you have spent that life constructing for yourself. You can’t add or subtract to it at that point, for the simple fact you are by then lacking in the physical brain cells necessary to create and store new thoughts and memories. You are nothing but a form of mental and emotional energy, and as energy can neither be created nor destroyed, you are pretty much what you are at that point. Of course, it might fade over time and disperse throughout the universe-possibly after a period of years, months, weeks, days, minutes, or even seconds. However, just like a dream seems to go on forever-well, you get the point, I guess.

So how does that square with reincarnation?

I’m not sure I believe in reincarnation. I tend to think it happens, but rarely, and when it does-if it does-it’s a natural process based probably on an overwhelming desire to go on living. Karma has probably little to do with it, though past actions would probably influence the next life’s attitudes and inner desires and fears. Wiccans tend to take the opposite approach from Buddhists and most Hindus, who see it as something to avoid, to the point they spend what seems to me an inordinate amount of time trying to transcend the “cycle of rebirth”. Most Wiccans tend to think it is something to embrace, and as such teach living in positive ways to insure a good life upon return. I’m not so sure that makes a lot of sense to me, and I’m not sure either approach is more or less valid than the other. I think you should mainly concentrate on this life, on living in moderation and as good as you can live it to the best of your ability. Let the end sort itself out. You’ll get there eventually, wherever you’re going-if anywhere.

Do you believe in magic and witchcraft?

Yep. Been there, done that, just too lazy to do it on a regular basis. It works too, but not like most people conceive of it. It works mainly as a form of self-hypnosis, though there are other important factors as well having to do possibly with quantum physics. An effective ritual will empower you to go about accomplishing what you set out to accomplish in such a way you don’t have to give it that much thought. It eliminates a lot of the inner drudgery, angst, and other negativities that gets in your way, and you find yourself arriving at where you need to be, sometimes unexpectedly. In other words, it’s more psychological and emotional, and not at all “supernatural”, which is an unreal concept to begin with. Movies and television do a real disservice in their portrayals of magic and witchcraft as concepts that are more fantasy than real.

Do you believe in the Law of Three?

Yes. The term might be a bit simplistic, but the overall Golden Rule/Karma concept of the belief is valid. Again, it is not “supernatural”, but a natural consequence of negative actions and thoughts. No deity points his or her finger from on high to “punish” you for your actions. What happens is that by engaging in negative actions, you poison your own psyche and energy. You imbue your own personal power with a negativity that actually never leaves you from that point unless and until you cleanse and purify yourself. As such, if you extend your energy in a way that is harmful toward another person, while you may succeed in harming that person, or taking advantage of the person in some way that is damaging to him or her, the damage you do to your own self is exponentially greater. That is simply because it is and remains a permanent part of your energy and psyche, and wreaks a degree of havoc measurable according to the energy you put into the initial act.

There are many who deny the legitimacy of this concept in the pagan community, but their attitudes are, as far as I’m concerned, self-serving and maybe even a hypocritical and delusional bit of wishful thinking. They have a ways to go. I suggest a revisit to Paganism 101. While they are at it, Living Life 101 might be an even better idea.

So, where do you go from here? Do you want to join a coven?

Only if I’m the boss.

So, where do you go from here with your blog?

I don’t have the slightest idea. That’s half the fun of doing it.

Blue Pagans, Red Meat

A new blog by two pagans is called Blue Pagan, and it aims to chronicle the time leading up to and including the presence of these two pagan bloggers from Maine at this years Democratic National Convention in Denver, where they have been granted press credentials.

One of them is Rita Moran, a Maine bookstore owner who was outed and stalked by a conservative Christian group, and so determined to live openly as a pagan and Maine Democratic Party official. (I forget her exact title).

Ed Lachowicz is the other team member of the blog, and another Maine based Democratic Party activist.

I include this blog on my blogroll for the same reason I would include a "Red Pagan" (be that Republican or communist) blog if there were one-not out of support, but as a matter of presumed general interest.

My own personal agenda-not that I will ever have a snowball's chance in hell of ever seeing it become reality-is for all political parties to be outlawed and the government at the federal level limit itself to adhering to the powers granted it by the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, and otherwise keeping the fuck out of everybody's lives.

As for Ed and Rita, I would like to think they are going to use their press credentials in order to perform actual journalistic work, as opposed to devoting their time and talents to being Obama/Democratic Party cheerleaders. I am not hopeful.

Hey, Rita and Ed, I have a great idea for you. Why not stage a ritual where, after imbuing an American flag with personal power, on live television, you burn it in a ritual designed to release that energy in "positive" ways.

Don't explain what you are doing, though, as long-winded explanations tend to limit the effectiveness of ritual. Just do it, and wave those athames proudly in the air for all to see that you are proud Democratic Party Pagans.

Weather permitting, I'm going fishing on election day.

Save Our Cupcake Trees

Fuck you Swarzenneggar

Fortunately, some bakeries and restaurants in Kaley-Forney-Ya have already made the transition to non-trans fats substitutes, such as palm oil, soy, etc., and claim the product is just as tasty. The others though have until 2010 to comply, and can be fined up to a thousand dollars for every second time and beyond they are not in compliance. The first time the fine is a measly twenty five dollars, which will probably be about the price of one of these cupcakes by about, oh, 2010.

The people that voted for Ahnuld thought they were getting the TERRRMINNAATTOOORRR RAAAUUUGGGHHH who was going to destroy the evil tax and spend nanny state mentality of the California Legislature.

Instead they got a kindergarten cop. What the hell did they expect? Every night when he goes to bed a Kennedy has him by the balls.

He Was Here But Ye Knew Him Not

Question-was the person in the photo below the long-awaited Jewish Messiah? Could be. Of course, I would understand the reluctance many might have at accepting such an audacious claim. After all, he doesn't exactly have "hair as wool", to paraphrase the words of one of the Old Testament prophets who described the predicted Messiah.

Well, then again-

Come on, Jews, get to work rebuilding the Temple. Sure, the Islamic world would get pissed off, and so would a lot of the rest of the world, but hey, like the Messiah himself might say-

Fuck 'em if they can't take a joke.

John Edwards Cheats On Cancer-Stricken Wife And Thirty Million Plus Gay Americans

From the National Enquirer-

If true, this is good news for the Democrats, as what it means is John Edwards will probably be denied a chance to fuck up a second Democratic Party presidential campaign.

On the other hand, he is probably now definitely on the short list to run the Justice Department under any future Democratic Administration.

CitiBank-Life Happened While It Was Busy Making Other (Shady) Plans

CitiBankl has just posted losses of more than two billion dollars, which wasn't as bad as expected, while now expecting a housing slump of about two years duration.

In other words, collectively speaking, we might be lucky, if this is true. So, what happened?

A lot of people are trying to blame it on the feds for forcing lenders to loan money to minorities, which is a lot of crap. News flash-nobody is forcing anybody to loan outrageous sums of money to people that are credit risks based on race. The law is meant to insure nobody is turned down for a loan specifically due to their race. The idea that this is even part of the problem presupposes a lack of qualified loan recipients among the minority community, and is a canard at best to disguise shady business practices.

What happened was orchestrated by greedy lenders to create an artificial housing bubble. It was based on the supposition that they could grant sub-prime mortgages to folks of questionable financial stability at best, and when they failed to make their payments when the rates rose, they could foreclose and sell to somebody else at a profit. Then, they could say, oh well, we tried.

Unfortunately, a lot of problems coalesced to turn this little scheme into a debacle. The most obvious problem that no one stopped to consider was the sudden surge in energy prices-the latest manufactured crisis orchestrated by big business hoodlums and their political dingleberries.

Suddenly, there became an ever shrinking pool of potential middle-class buyers willing to pay for a house at quadruple the price that same house would have fetched twenty years ago. Times suddenly worsened for everybody, and the lenders were left holding their dicks. The rest of us were too busy worrying about how we would make ends meet in the face of rising prices for food and energy during a period of constant layoffs and the myriads of other problems and expenses of day to day living.

Suddenly, a Subaru looks a lot better than a Suburban, while a smaller and cheaper home, or the one you might already have, or the apartment you don't have to insure, looks a hell of a lot better than an over-sized MacMansion or any other home worth four times it's original value.

People never learn from such mistakes of the past like the nineties tech bubble, I guess, but damn, when are people going to stop falling for shit like this? I mean, really, how fucking stupid can you get?

Welcome To America

I'm betting there aren't very many countries in the world that conduct yearly mass swearings-in of newly naturalized citizens who have immigrated from foreign countries. I would say they are a relative handful, limited to the US, Canada, Australia, and maybe a few places in Europe. Most of the places in Europe probably amount to transported immigrant Muslims who aren't so much attracted by the appeal of Europe so much as a chance to either work and live in peace, or to escape criminal prosecution and in some cases oppression, and maybe in the meantime to carry on with their lives exactly as they would if not forced to leave their homelands for whatever reason, thank you very much. I seriously doubt that very many of them are that taken with European culture and democracy.

Supposedly, most of the people that come to the US see us as a shining beacon of liberty, and hope to become a part of the American dream, while understandably hoping to retain their unique cultural heritage at the same time, not separate from the rest of us, but as a vital and interdependent part of that whole.

Well, the most recent batch of new citizens sworn in by President Bush at Thomas Jefferson's Monticello this last Fourth of July got a taste of the American dream they probably hadn't counted on when protesters from the group Code Pink interrupted the proceedings and heckled Bush throughout his address, repeatedly saying "Fuck you, Bush".

Who was the coordinator of this effort? Read the following, courtesy of Lee from Digital Nicotine-

a bunch of supposed adults kept yelling "Fuck you, Bush! Fuck you Bush!" among a bunch of people expecting to celebrate newly-gained citizenship. One of these supposed adults was the press secretary to Rep. Dennis Kucinich in his latest run for the presidency.

I couldn't believe it myself, so I followed the link provided to here, and sure enough, there it was. Yet, these same people seem amazed they are the only ones that seem to know what a great guy Dennis Kucinich is.

That is actually the good point to this story, the fact that the loony left, typified by the people responsible for this sorry excuse for a "protest", really don't have that much influence with the American people, and not really as much as one might assume they do with the Democratic Party either. If they did, the Little Smurf From Cleveland would have done much better in the primaries, wouldn't he?

They just make a lot of noise, disgust the hell out of decent people, and provide fodder for the enemies of the Democratic Party, who unfortunately don't seem to have the guts to actually tell them to get lost. Instead of doing so, even Obama kisses up to them up to a point.

I would dearly love to see them go over to Egypt and try this with Hosni Mubarek.

Really, what was the point of the protest? We get it, they are against the Iraq War-mainly because it is a "Republican war", in my opinion. Frankly, the Iraq War has turned into just another hot button issue like abortion and gay rights to me. If I do vote, those issues will not inform my decision one way or another, neither for nor against.

That's my own protest against these damn nuts. It's my way of telling them "I don't care enough about (insert controversy of the day here) to vote your way. Leave me alone."

Really, these people have no common decency. I used to not like Bush at all, but I like him and Cheney both just a little bit more every year. In fact, if they could run for re-election this year, and did, I might well vote for them, just because of these people.

Why should newly sworn-in citizens have to be subjected to this crap? It boggles the mind that these fools even think they are influencing anybody. What is the use of protesting if all you do is turn people against you? I have yet to have anybody offer me a sensible explanation for that.

And they are turning people against them. They disgust people and make far more enemies than they make friends. I'm living proof of that.

On the other hand, that might well be the best thing about it.

The Wages Of Sin For You Wicked, Wicked Women

So, what is going to happen to all you haughty, wicked women that talk back to your husbands, who mock them and leave the house without your husband's or father's or son's or other decent, responsible male relative's permission?

Well, as we plainly see here in this fifteenth century Persian painting, courtesy of Zombietime, of Mohammad, astride the mythical creature Buraq and in the company of the Archangel Gabriel-

YOU WILL BURN IN HELL FOR ETERNITY WHILE HANGING BY YOUR PIERCED TONGUES, BEEEYATCHES!!

Hey, Where Are Obama's Daughters, Off Studying Das Kapital?

Hell, the only thing missing is the crack pipe and the boom box. I have a relative who actually thinks, or at least so she said, that an Obama White House-or "Whitey House", as I have heard others say-would be a never-ending party.

Of course this cartoon is funny.

What is beyond belief is that many on the far right have lauded the cover as "perceptive", while many of Obama's supporters complain about it. Yet, it is the far right being made fun of here, while the left should appreciate the joke.

In the meantime, the New Yorker publisher has taken on the persona of Johnny Carson, one of my all-time favorite comedians, by taking the time and going to the trouble to "explain" his failed joke. Carson salvaged some real bombs that way and made them funnier in many cases than they actually were.

No one should have to explain this one, it should be self-evident. America has been hijacked by the lunatic fringe, and I don't see it getting better any time soon. When people lose their sense of humor, they have no business being involved in public policy. I would go so far as to say they are dangerous.

I tried to explain to my female relative that, regardless of what you think of Obama, he would be unlikely, to say the least, to conduct himself in the manner she described.

You don't really imagine I changed her mind do you? Do you think I bothered to try after the first time?

Nope. All you can do is laugh. Although I did put The New Yorker back on the Myth-ing links section.

An Unexpected Blast From The Past

Last night, quite by accident, I discovered this website, which contained the above picture of my great-great-grandfather, Ira Wells Sr, whom some of my older readers might well recall me writing about in this post.

I can't really say he looks that much like me, but strangely he does look quite a bit like I always imagined he'd look. He was a unique individual, regardless of the veracity of the witchcraft stories, which might well have been more legend than fact.

I'm really glad I found this. Back in the days this picture would have been taken, people tended not to smile in photographs. They were afraid their descendants would see them and, if they were smiling or laughing, would think they were "foolish". A serious expression and public manner at all times was the order of the day.

Can you imagine what they would think if they could see some of the pictures people pose for today?

When It Rains It Pours

I'm having some computer issues. Hopefully, it's nothing too serious, but there's a chance I might be off-line for some time, though I hope not for too long. Feel free to chat with each other about anything and everything on the comment section of this post, leave any messages, etc. Maybe if I am off for a while I'll check in via public access from time to time. Until then, have a good one, or better yet, have several of them.

Lech Walesa-Was He A Communist Informant?

This is actually an old story that was supposedly settled, but it seems to have roared back to life. Two brothers have written a book detailing what they insist is proof that Lech Walesa, in the early to mid seventies, worked as a spy for the Polish communist State Security Services and informed on many of his fellow Solidarity members, resulting in the arrest of as many as twelve or thirteen of them. They go on to insinuate that Walesa might have gone on to lead Solidarity in it's opposition to the Polish government government with the support of many in the same security services who might have had their own reasons for wanting to overthrow the communist regime.

From the article in the timesonline-

In The State Security Service and Lech Walesa, Slawomir Cenckiewicz and Piotr Gontarczyk make two central claims. The first is that Mr Walesa was an informer for the secret police between 1970 and 1976 under the codename “Bolek”. The second is that as President from 1990 to 1995 he borrowed his police file from the Interior Ministry archives and returned it with key pages missing.

Walesa still denies the charges, of course, in no uncertain terms, but the writers of the book insist that they have gained access to previously sealed records that point to him as being the mysterious "Bolek", in addition to the aforementioned charges of evidence tampering.

Walesa is threatening to sue the writers, and insists his political opponents today (including the present day head of the Polish conservative party) are behind the charges, much the way he earlier claimed that the incriminating documents were forged by enemies within the Polish State Security Service in order to decimate his standings with the people and within Solidarity.

Coming on the heels of all this is the news that just this last Sunday, another former high ranking Solidarity official, Bronislaw Geremek, himself later a high ranking cabinet minister in post communist democratic Poland, was killed when the car he was driving was involved in a head-on collision with another vehicle. No word on the condition of the driver of the other vehicle. Geremek, curiously, served in the administration of the successor to Walesa, who defeated him for re-election.

Geremek was a Nobel nominee and in fact was responsible for moving Poland into the EU, while remaining himself a staunch nationalist at the same time. He also proved instrumental in overturning a law, since held to be unconstitutional, that stated any aspirant for public office in Poland had to swear to never have been involved in any undercover spy capacity for the former communist government's secret police. Any found to have been so involved were denied the right to serve in any official capacity for a period of ten years. Geremek refused to make such a pledge, and challenged the law in court, leading to its eventual repeal.

Of course, Geremek's unfortunate demise might well be coincidental, and the charges against Walesa might turn out to be, at most, the proverbial tempest in a teapot. For now, though, it is certainly a strange brew.

Aztlan Myths

I guess I'll add what should be an obvious disclaimer here-just because I link a site doesn't mean I agree or disagree with the mission of the site in whole or in part. Nevertheless, some sites are just of enough interest to warrant their inclusion. As such, I have added the Aztlan website on the Myth-ing Links section.

They are an open borders advocacy group, and honestly, I have to tell you, they are quite extreme in some regards. They are also anti-semitic according to most standard definitions of the term, while claiming of course to be merely "anti-Zionist". Some of their posts in this regard are disingenuous at worse, unintentionally hilarious at best. Take this, for example.



This is supposedly a picture of religious Jews in the aftermath of an assault perpetrated on them by Israeli "Zionists", whom the Aztlan site claims are all about taking land from the Palestinians.

Now, admittedly I'm no expert, but unless I'm mistaken, these are probably religious Jews in the aftermath of an assault by Israeli Defense Forces who, in fact, were forcibly removing them from Palestinian lands in the Gaza strip (or maybe the West Bank) that they occupied illegitimately.

In another bit of obviously unintentional humor, the site derides the Zionist Jews as the descendants of Eastern Europeans who converted to Judaism one thousand years ago and who now have immigrated to Israel for "opportunist" reasons. I'm glad I wasn't sipping a slurpee when I read that one.

To be fair, this site has a lot of good (if questionable) articles, and in today's current angst over immigration, it pays to keep up with both sides of the issue. For one thing, I learned something about the term Aztlan itself from reading this site, from this post in particular.

Aztlan is not necessarily a place-it's a state of mind. Aztlan is anywhere it's people are, and the old myth that described the Aztec origins as a group of hunter-gatherers and part time agriculturalists, and their subsequent migrations from Aztlan, their mythical homeplace, to their eventual destination in Mexico, need not be taken to infer a claim on anyplace, including in the United States. It is more accurately, at least according to this site, viewed as a reminder for the people to be true to their roots and culture-wherever they might happen to be at any given time.

I also found out that the Aztlan advocates are quite distinct (though you can expect there would be some overlapping, of course) from the people who make up the group LaRaza. Whereas Aztlan are an all-together open borders advocacy group, LaRaza, contrary to popular belief, actually support border security and strong but compassionate (their words) immigration enforcement.

LaRaza also does not mean "The Race" (although that can be a technically correct definition) but "the people" or "the community". More on them later.

Like I always say, if you have to be for or against something, or even anywhere in between, it never hurts to know what they really stand for-or what they say they stand for, anyway.

Another Giant Sucking Sound South Of The Border

Though I tend to doubt this, I guess anything's possible. According to this post from the Aztlan website, American oil company giants Chevron, Shell, and British Petroleum, are engaged in a project to siphon oil from under Mexican territorial waters by way of a floating oil rig platform on American waters near the border. The diagram below tells the story.

Hey, isn't this what the Kuwaitis were supposedly doing to Saddam's Iraq that led to the first Gulf War? Or so Saddam claimed, at least. Like I said, I guess anything's possible. Curious.

Baltimore Prostitutes Targets Of Special Attention

This post I did about the murder of the step-daughter of the former Baltimore Police Commissioner seems to be the tip of what might end up being a very big iceberg by the time it's over. Although the Baltimore Police Department is as of now saying it is too early to tell if there is a connection between the murders by strangulation of five women-four of them prostitutes-they have appointed a special squad of four veteran detectives to investigate the crimes.


The implication seems to be that Baltimore might well have a serial killer(s) all its very own. At least there's no discernible link to all the other prostitute/women murders over the last ten years, the cops assure us, but is that really a good thing? Doesn't that mean there's even more killers out there?

As for these recent murders, which have occurred over the span of the last four months and in different parts of Baltimore, if it does turn out to be the work of the same killer(s), then what are we dealing with here? Even Jack The Ripper stuck to the Whitechapel section of London when he committed his infamous so-called canonical murders one hundred twenty years ago. This guy(s) really gets around. The last victim was found in an alley behind a church in West Baltimore, but he seems to be spreading the love all over the city of Poe.

So let's round up the usual suspects-

A delivery person
Cab driver
Cop
City maintenance/sanitation, etc. worker.
Housing inspector
Social worker
Did I leave anybody out?

Prostitutes of course make convenient victims. The perpetrator need not be anti-whore. After all, hookers make their living to a degree by providing a convenient sexual outlet, but also by fulfilling otherwise unattainable fantasies in a great many cases.

Well, nothing says "I loved you, you fucking dirty bitch but now I hate you, you cunt you" quite like two hands around a throat.

Unfortunately, it has been noted that the prostitutes of Baltimore don't seem to be taking the situation seriously enough to modify their behavior or otherwise exercise appropriate caution. Then again, what can they do? Many if not most of them are drug addicts, or otherwise in a desperate situation, and the counseling and charity services that try to help them can only do so much for them.

I have an idea that when they finally catch the person responsible it will turn out to be another example of someone no one would have ever suspected, but probably should have.

Don't Cry

She's not gone, she's just moved down to the bottom of the page. The one in her place is at least as hot anyway, at least in my opinion.

Other changes-

Sidebar rearranged. and two new links, plus an old one I want to draw your attention to.

The old one is Religion Clause, a blog by Milton Friedman, professor of law at Toledo University, that deals with the legal implications of religious matters. So frequently posted I have to wonder if he assigns the blog to his students for extra credit. I don't see how he could possibly find that much time to blog otherwise. However he does it, it's worth a look.

I recently found Scientific Blogging quite by accident when I noted an article listing on Technorati about Kumbachka tea. I probably haven't spelled it right, but it's a fermented tea with purported near miraculous health benefits. I've lost track of that particular article in this also frequently updated blog, but it covers a wide range of different scientific fields.

Finally, our friend Rufus and his associates from Grad Student Madness have started a new website called Another Sky Journal. He had to put it on hold due to a recent trip to France, but he is now in the process of reviving the effort. Check out the articles on Graz Austria in particular from Greg. I put this one on the Myth-Ing Links section. Rufus is trying to make it more like a magazine format, and I wish him luck.

I actually thought of trying to do the same thing once, and still do, but it took me days to just get around to changing the damn sidebar here around. I'm still wanting to add more good websites under more categories-like something dedicated to hedonism, for example, with this cool picture of a fat, drunken Bacchus. I might get around to it in a year or two.

Obama-Jesse Jackson Wants To "Cut His Nuts Off"

Fox News takes a lot of flack from the left, and sometimes from the right, and they are taking it again for simply reporting the truth of what Jesse Jackson said in anger about Barak Obama-something most of us might consider-let's see-oh, yeah, NEWS!

They should be above that, I suppose, and not be so quick to point to the obvious proof of what most of us have known or at least strongly suspected all along-i.e., Jesse Jackson is a piece of trash. What other kind of person would say the following, as reported on the Fox website-

Jackson was speaking at the time about Obama’s speeches in black
churches and his support for faith-based charities. Jackson added to
the reporter, “I want to cut his nuts off.”

Jackson is seemingly enraged that Obama is "talking down to blacks" and seems to think his time would be better spent engaged in the same type of demagoguery that made him such an icon of racial harmony.

Instead, Obama has the gall to suggest that blacks do something to encourage respect for families in the black communities, keeping them together, supporting their children, and becoming overall better role models to them.

In other words, he is not "talking down" to blacks. He is "talking up" to whites.

Jackson knows that, of course, and what is really driving him so nuts that he would love to get his hands on Obama's nuts is that-uh oh, it might be working.

Nor is this the first time Jackson has insinuated himself in Obama's campaign in a negative manner. Here is an account of how Jackson went ballistic over Obama's refusal to become involved in the controversy last year involving the so-called "Jena Six". Evidently, Jesse Jackson thinks it's proper for elected officials and candidates for public office to insinuate their opinions in the middle of court cases that have not yet been decided, or that are being appealed. Most of us would prefer they stay out of it, or at least not take any specific side.

In Jackson's opinion, Obama was "acting like he's white".

That statement on it's own should be enough to show the world what Jesse Jackson is about. Think about that, slowly and carefully. Let it languish in your consciousness for just a few seconds.

"Acting like he's white."

Jackson's son, a current Democratic Representative from Chicago, had at least the good sense to public disavow his father's rhetoric.That's understandable, more than it is admirable. The junior Jackson knows his father, in his rapidly approaching stages of dementia, has revealed the inner workings of the Jackson machine and the persona that is its spiritual foundation.

Jackson said the latest remark off the cuff, at the end of an interview, thinking the microphone was cut off. This is turning into a trend.Sometimes I wonder if it might be intentional, and that Jackson might actually be sending out signals to his more radical, hard-line supporters, telling them in effect, hey-this guy is not really one of us.

Check out how Jackson tries to play it off when confronted over the remark-

"Then I said something I regret was crude. It was very private. And very much a sound bite," he also said.

A sound bite? Isn't that basically the same thing as an overgrown slogan? Something you say that you hope will stick in people's minds, that they will remember in the days and weeks to come? Something that basically amounts to a distillation of the essence of your position on a particular matter?

Well, congratulations, Jackson. We get it. You want to cut a man's nuts off. I think that's pretty much an accurate reflecion of your position over the last forty years.

Keep the black man emasculated as a statististical group, he and his families helpless and dependent on government handouts, with yourself among the most elite beneficiaries of that sad and regressive philosophy-the straw boss on the Democratic Party plantation.

The really scary thing is this guy might be named to an official cabinet position, something like Secretary of Health And Human Services, under an Obama Administration.

Whatever he's put in charge of, let's just hope they keep him away from sharp objects.

The Others-Old Movie Review

The Oxygen Network recently went through a period of showing old Nicole Kidman movies, and I decided, since there wasn’t anything else on worth watching and I didn’t have anything any better to do with my spare time-why not? I caught two of them-Cold Mountain and The Others.

Both of them are worth your time, but this particular post is a review of The Others.

I’ll say from the outset, many people wrote this movie off from the beginning as nothing but a copy of a wildly successful earlier movie with a similar theme, despite the fact that the movie, and in particular its director, won some awards. Perhaps there is something to the criticism. Hollywood has a bad habit of latching on to successful formulas and making you sick of them. On the other hand, how many totally original movies can there be?

I’ll add one more point. I saw the other movie in question quite a while back and, in my opinion, this one is superior. The atmosphere is gloomier, the setting is more macabre, the acting is at least equal, and overall, the movie is scarier-especially the end of the movie, which is actually quite chilling. It will stay with you for a while and, to make sure I make myself clear-this is not a movie for the kiddies. I am very serious. I was disturbed by the end of this movie, and if you are one of the very few that read much of the first draft of the novel I published on this blog, you will know that it goes without saying that it takes a hell of a lot to disturb me.

This one did the trick.

That is not to say the movie is flawless-far from it. It requires quite a few leaps, in fact. What we are dealing with here is the spirit world, which of course always requires some suspension of disbelief and an acceptance of certain precepts in order for everything else to follow along a logical course from there.

The most obvious one is a requirement for belief in ghosts to begin with, of course. Going from there, you must make the equally obvious leap in a belief that the spirit world can interact, however tenuously, with the world of the living. This movie takes it a step further and requires a belief that that same spirit world exists in something very much like our own linear time, with mornings started rising from bed, going through the day-to-day routines, the preparing and eating of meals, the chores, the studying, the conversations, on through to the retiring for bed at night. That is the major problem here, but in this case, it is one not so easily dealt with.

Nicole Kidman plays the role of an apparently widowed mother raising two disabled children on the British island of Jersey immediately following the end of World War II. Her kids suffer from what she describes as a photo-sensitive allergy. They must avoid all kind of light but a mild candlelight, and in order to insure non-exposure to the sun, she must insure that every door of every room is immediately shit when going from one room to the other.

She has had many other profoundly serious problems. Her husband went off to the war, only recently concluded-but he never returned, his whereabouts unknown. While he was there, the Nazis invaded the little island, and she had to constantly guard against the very real possibility of them taking over her house during what brief interval they were on the island.

After the war ended, and it looked like her husband might yet never return, her servants inexplicably abandoned her, and she is in the desperate process of trying to hire replacements when three people arrive, claiming to have worked in the old, remote mansion years in the past. They are an old woman, an old man, and a young mute girl, whose lack of ability to communicate is explained by the old woman as a consequence of an earlier exposure to tuberculosis.

The old woman soon has something else to explain. How is it she and the other two just happened to come looking for work just when the woman and her kids needed it most, despite the fact that the advertisement was never delivered. She produced the undelivered advertisement. Taken aback, the old woman explained that she had always loved working at the residence, as had the other two, the former owners having treated them very well.

The mother agrees to let the three stay on, but over time, other mysterious events involving the unseen presence of a little boy named Victor cause her grave concern. No one seems to communicate with the alleged boy besides the daughter, who swears by his existence, alone with that of an adult man, woman, and an old woman who “smells bad”, the little girl going on to say she thinks the old woman in question is a witch. Yet, the little girl swears the people are not ghosts, explaining to her little brother that ghosts “wear sheets and rattle chains”.

The mother is angered at her daughter’s stories, all the more at her stubbornness at refusing to admit she is lying. She compels her to study the Bible even more than is her regular wont. Finally, the woman finds evidence of the “others” in the house. She hears voices, and once hears the playing of a piano, tracing the sound to an empty room, the piano silent and unattended. She closes the lid over the keyboard, and leaves, only to hear more voices and further playing. Returning to the room, she discovers the keyboard cover once again open.

Apologizing profusely to her daughter, she seeks an explanation from the old woman, who helps her search the house, an endeavor that turns up yet no sign of any other inhabitants, though it does reveal one possibly vital clue. She discovers a series of old pictures of various people, seemingly sleeping. The old woman explains to her that these are pictures taken of people immediately upon their deaths, something done at one point in time in order to keep the memories of the people alive.

Not too long after this, the little girl disappears, and the mother looks over the house for her. When she finally finds her in the room in which she sought out Victor, then dressing in what looks to be something like a white gown with a veil, the little girl appears transformed into an old woman, chanting some strange ditty while dangling something that looks like a puppet on a string. Horrified, the mother demands the creature tell her what she has done to her daughter, only to hear an otherworldly voice exclaim to her that she is her daughter. The woman grabs the little girl by the throat and almost strangles the life out of her, though regaining control of herself just in time.

She determines to take it on herself to travel to the village and bring back the Vicar of the Church in order to bless the house, despite the fact that the Vicar has seemingly ignored her earlier requests to come to the home. She sets off through the woods while telling the old man, who has settled into his position as gardener, to find what graves might have been disturbed that might account for the bizarre occurrences. As she walks on, we see the old woman telling the old man to cover the graves, which he does, with piles of dead leaves, while wondering whether they should try to stop the woman from walking to the town.

“The fog will stop her,” the old woman reminds him.

“Oh, yes, of course,” the old man replies. “The fog.”

As the mother proceeds through the woods as nightfall approaches, she is indeed met by an increasingly dense fog, which soon obscures her vision, its failure to dissipate with her movements leaving her stymied as to how to proceed. Suddenly, at one point, the fog does dissipate upon the approach of a masculine figure dressed in a military uniform, which the woman recognizes, both to her surprise and her delight, as her long missing husband. She falls into his arms in a mixture of joy and unbridled relief.

“I bleed sometimes,” he tells her strangely, which elicits a winsome smile from the woman as she proceeds to walk with him back to the house, passing up the old man and woman along the way, as they remark quietly to themselves, concerning the man, that he doesn’t seem to know what’s going on.

The son and daughter are overjoyed to see their father, and rush to his arms. He speaks to them, has dinner with them, and seems ready to resume the old life, but the little girl tells the father of what her mother had done to her. From that point on, the man stays in his bed, lying on his side, his eyes open and his face a terrible expression of confusion and grief. Assuming that he has trouble with his memories of the front, the mother tells him he must pull himself out of his despair. They go to bed that next night, whereupon he reaches over and embraces his wife.

Later, he tells her he must return to the front, a bit of news that leaves her dumbfounded and outraged.

“The war is over,” she insists.

“The war is not over,” he informs her. He leaves, whereupon the woman falls into a state of despair that is only broken when one day, to her horror, she discovers every single curtain removed from ever window, the entire house now flooded with the light of the sun so poisonous to her two allergy afflicted children. She rushes them from one room to another until she finds something with which to cover them.

She demands an explanation from the three servants, whereupon the old man offers that the light is a good thing. Incensed, she demands all three of them leave the house and never return, at one point even threatening them at gunpoint.

Later that night, the little girl informs her brother that she has put up with enough of this, and climbs out her window, and down to the ground below. At her urgings, her little brother follows her. They have not made it far, however, before they see the three servants heading their way. Happy to see them again, the little boy waits as the girl, having now discovered the graves uncovered of their leaves by the wind, warns the little boy to run, that the three are ghosts. At first, he is confused. After all, neither of them wears sheets and rattles chains, but she finally prevails on him to run.

Meanwhile, desperate for some clue, the mother looks inside the room of the former servants where she finds, hidden under a bed, an old picture of the three servants-taken of their corpses, after their deaths. She runs in a horror, all the more so when she discovers the children have left the house, when she sees the three servants standing at the front door. She commands them to stay outside, which they do.

Suddenly, the daughter appears at the top of the stairs, telling her to come to a certain room. She follows her, desperate to save her and her son, and so she goes into the room, and-

That’s when she finally sees them-“The Others”.

Who are they? Are they evil, vengeful spirits? Are they demonic entities? Are they something worse-much, much worse?

I’m not about to give the answer away. I’ll just say it’s worth your time and, on the off chance you haven’t figured out the mystery of the Others-there are clues as to their identity, but you have to watch for them-be warned:

It will FUCK YOU UP!!