Category: Weird Stuff

Introducing Dr. Shannon Klingman, Pervert. Her Destination: The Twilight Zone

I’m as mad as hell, and I’m not going to take this anymore!

In my life, I’ve put up with torture. You’ve read my posts, I presume? If not then go through the archives. You’ll see what I mean.

And I’m not alone. We all have had our share of trials and trauma.  Isn’t that enough? Isn’t it too much?

Cable TV wasn’t around when I was a kid. We had the three networks, plus independent stations on UHF frequency. I saw some really cool shows, movies and specials, like Christmas themed variety and cartoon shows.

But through all those years, I also had to put up with the garbage of TV, the commercials. It wasn’t fair. Luggage, sandwich bags, Wesson oil, Gulf gas stations, ugly cars someone always sang jingles about, brassieres like the Playtex Cross Your Heart Bra (which was always fastened around a mannequin’s truncated torso, rendering an ad that was somehow nightmare inducing), PSA ads by Larry the Label, Bayer Aspirin, Joy and Palmolive ads (Madge was a sadistic liar), Ajax, and UUUGHHH!

Now I understand that if you weren’t around yet, back then I mean, none of that means anything to you. But see, the thing is, after my time with those ads, and you came around, those commercials got worse.

By then I considered myself immune to everything except the annoying breaks in a good movie. And even that wasn’t too bad. I still watched network-made movies until the early 1980s, which is pretty much when the decline of Western Civilization began. Well, actually it started in the mid-70s, but I’m not going to push it.

There were rumors — some reliable but most not so much, of tricks in commercials that used subliminal messages. A veteran character actor and Cracker Jack commercial star was doing a spacewalk in one. The mutt could never eat his Cracker Jacks and so it was with this one; he opened the box in space and forgot his visor was down and the delicious caramel popcorn floated away. Supposedly, while we’re focusing on him, his tether to the space capsule twists about in zero gravity and spells out an “S” and an “E” and an “X” and I don’t know if that’s true or not.

But that wasn’t disgusting even if it was true. By the mid-1990s, I think I pretty much knew our doom wasn’t far off. And a Cracker Jack commercial was nothing compared to Klingman. As Carrie Nation sought to empty every saloon in the country, so Shannon Klingman wants to stamp out smegma, even though I’m sure she’s an antivaxxer. Just what kind of doctor is she, anyway? Maybe she’s a twat doctor, or maybe the “Doctor” part is made up. Next we’ll see her with a hatchet, going around scraping scrote cheese into an empty wine cask. This whole world is so fucked I will probably never be shocked at anything again.

Thing is, with Madison Avenue there used to be some clean American competition. Not anymore. And it doesn’t matter.

Because here comes a reason for you to invest in a Vaultech room reservation. It’s positively sickening, disgusting and barf-making. It makes me think I’m not merely mentally ill, I’m downright insane. I can’t find the first ad she did, but here’s “Doctor” (I doubt it) Shannon Klingon–excuse me, Klingman still looking demented and horny at the same time, which can actually happen. In the first ad she’s sitting on a porch, feet bare, looking kind of seedy and dirty. She says to run your hands between your butt cheeks and along the sides of your “schnitzel sack” and then sniff your hands.

Okay, STOP.

This is not okay. It’s not. First, her eyes gleam as if she’s ready right now for a run at some poor guy’s schnitzel. As in, any guy’s schnitzel sack.

She’s referring to the male scrotum, and smegma. Hey! Don’t blame me, I would never have done this if she wasn’t Weirdo Wanda looking for guys on the street to sample her deodorant, which customers say smells worse than smegma.

In one ad she cornered a guy on the street, forcing him to listen while she did her thing. That ad I can’t find either but she was dressed like a house painter. Good grief.

Fortunately, there’s someone who made a different version of her schnitzel commercial ad, and it is oddly close to how the original ad is remembered in my exhausted brain. It’s all like a fever dream.

Shannon, you’re not a doctor. You know it. I know it. A lot of people know it. Stop talking about scrotums and smegma, stop leaning into the camera because it’s freaky and I think you’re a total Karen, and take your stinky deodorant and your bare feet and take a shower, use SOAP, and get yourself a new wardrobe. At Macy’s. You’ve fleeced enough people to be able to afford it. And stay off my damn TV!

Weird Stuff

Interesting. Last night, over an hour after twilight, I walked outside for my Marlboro fix, and something caught my eye. It looked like the blue predawn sky, but not to the west. Nope, this was to the east. It shouldn’t have been there.

I thought, what if I fell asleep and now it’s morning?

Except I knew better.

The dark crystal blue was behind the horizon, in this case a tree line. Perhaps unrelated, there was a very bright light like a car’s high beams, slashing through the woods. But it couldn’t have been a car’s headlights. The light was too bright and continued from a point I couldn’t see into the woods, over a vale, and on through the trees as far as I could see. I can’t see much at night, but light always makes it through.

I can see how mistakes are made when people panic and report UFOs on the ground. Because a voice in the back of my head was tugging at me: that ain’t natural, it just ain’t.

It’s true, I’ve never seen anything like it. But then again, I’m aware that I have not seen everything. The light was brighter on the horizon but shone well above it in the sky. That’s why I had a moment, like a senior moment, maybe even a Rip Van Winkle moment, when I wondered if I had been asleep and I was seeing the first light of dawn.

I didn’t panic. I made no calls. I told no one. When I was finished I just went back inside.

Could it have been a drone? I don’t know. I don’t even care. It’s just mildly interesting, that’s all.

However, others are jumping at the sound of dead leaves crunching under their feet.

It’s a bad time. Americans are scared. They are realizing that they elected a leader who wants to kill them. Of course they’re scared.

We know the election was fixed. The drone scares and the “non-human remains” found in “alien” craft were to soften up a gullible public for an onslaught of terrorism by Trump, which is continuing. Trump is a ding-a-ling, and Elon Musk is some grotesque and monstrously evil creature living in a bag of equally gross skin. His every thought is evil, planning evil things against people who did not believe it would go this far.

Don’t laugh at him or Trump; they’re ding-a-lings but they are fierce, remorseless, ruthless and not to be taken lightly.

Anyway, back to extraterrestrials. I know there are none here. No sentient race would ever come here. They wouldn’t dare. It’s suicidal.

The Cursed Novel Strikes Again

A while back, I wrote about the novel I’ve written. That post is titled “The Cursed Novel.”

It does not have an ending, but now I know it needs one, and I finally know how to do it.

You see, I painted myself into a corner. I couldn’t figure out what to do next. Any ending I tried turned out to be uneven or silly. After taking the reader for a great ride, I couldn’t publish it with a lame ending. So, since 2013, it’s been unfinished.

I’ve had several test readers. All of them seemed to like it. Then bad things began to happen to them. Lost jobs, accidents, the deaths of close friends, money losses. You name it.

But I have more bad news. The story revolves around the main characters who try to help people, and the whole time, disasters keep happening. One such disaster was the collapse of the Francis Scott Key Bridge. Yes, I wrote that. And that was back in 2010. I never dreamed of it really happening, but now it has.

I was planning on publishing it on Amazon, but now, I think that to stop the things I wrote from happening, I should end the book and then destroy it.

I remember when the Francis Scott Key Bridge didn’t exist. I remember when it was being built. I remember being one of the first to cross it.

The bridge was dangerous. The winds in the outer harbor were especially fierce, and no trucker with an empty trailer was allowed to cross when wind warnings were posted. I once pulled a 48-foot trailer loaded with pallets across, and what had seemed like nothing in a car surprised me. It had a steep enough climb that I had to gear down and turn on my hazard lights.

In the summers, the salt water smell made me wish I was going to Ocean City.

On the center span, you bounced. Bridges have to flex to stay up to accommodate the crosswinds and heavy traffic. I never did get used to that, and from 1998 to 2001, I crossed it every day on my commute. It was weird that so many freaky things happened on the bridge: ice flying off a rig’s roof and smashing out my headlights, changing lanes without meaning to during a tropical storm, and more.

And I scripted its demise. Some things in my book have come true, and that doesn’t seem possible because the whole thing is fantasy.

I really think, even as I know better, that once I close out the novel, I should burn it.

I Know What I Saw, But It Never Existed

The Mandela Effect. You’ve heard of it, right? If not, it works like this:

Nelson Mandela survived prison in South Africa. But there are some who would swear that he died in prison.

Some recall an American peanut butter by the brand name of “Jiffy”, but in truth, there was no such thing. It was always “Jif”. I even got the corrected spelling wrong, initially using two “Fs”. I had to look it up to make sure.

One of the more famous examples is the spelling of the name in the children’s book series “The Berenstain Bears”. Some swear until red in the face that it is “Berenstein” Bears, and when I read the books to my children, I saw it and pronounced it “Bernstein”.

In fact, I’m dyslexic, and the longer the name, the better chance I have of seeing it wrong. However, reading was my most reliable way to escape real life growing up. Early on, it did not matter to me if it was from another country, translated into English. I wanted a deep, engrossing experience that would put the tears, torture and rape behind me. No bullies, no beatings, interrogations, no.

But I would also pick up nonfiction, and that’s where I ran into trouble, mostly with dates and names. Especially English elaborations of Greek mythology. Those names would silently slide past as I read, becoming a quick, garbled monster made up mostly of vowels and little else.

Hippocrates, the famous ancient Greek physician, can have his name pronounced two ways. Not until I played Assassin’s Creed Odyssey would I get it right. To make It easier on players, the names were spelled with a k in place of a c, so Hercules becomes the proper Herakles. Socrates becomes Sokrates, pronounced so-CRAT-ees.

And now that I’ve learned that little lesson, I also wish I could travel to the mainland and Greek Islands. So much beauty, such wonderful people, and ages of rich history. Funny, what a game can teach you.

Motion pictures can also help correct our misremembered experiences. Where you might think something was in a particular film, it really wasn’t. Remember North by Northwest? Really, you think so? OK. But some people remember different lead actresses. And what was the theme song of the last version of TVs Lassie?

If you go so far back, you can see that memory is a very peculiar thing, and sometimes we get it wrong.

My Search For What Never Existed, But Saw Anyway

Some time ago….call it the early 2000s, I saw a movie. It was about two boys, both invisible to other students at, I want to say, a college. So, freshman year. One was diminutive in stature, one tall and thin. They became friends, each looking to the other for the acceptance that they could not get from others. The bond became strong. I don’t remember much, but the taller one gets a girlfriend, becomes popular, and leaves his best friend alone. Eventually he is dared to prank or otherwise do the ultimate betrayal to his friend, and later finds out that his mistreatment had consequences. The smaller guy dies. Whether he was beaten, had a terminal illness, or killed himself I can’t remember. There are several times when the song “One of Us” plays, especially at the end. The song, covered by Joan Osborne, went on to become the running theme song of the series Joan of Arcadia.

My problem is, I can’t find any sign of this movie. I don’t even know if it was a movie. It could have been a TV show pilot or episode. And I can’t remember if God actually appears in it. My impression at the time was dark; as if God was represented by the smaller of the friends, and that the whole point of the show was a lesson in friendship and betrayal.

I’ve searched for pop culture media with that song in it, I’ve searched for movies with the theme of two boys bonding and one is betrayed. The very first search comes up with Close, a 2022 French film with much the same theme, but the actors look nothing like the ones I saw, and the production was American, not French, and I saw it long before 2022. More than a decade before.

Question: what exactly did I see, when was it, and why can’t I find it? Was it a miniseries, a pilot, a show’s standalone episode, or a movie? I know I did see it, because it was a really tragic story and I cried. How could I have seen it if there is no reference to it in any search results? Or is the Mandela Effect a real phenomenon, wherein realities shift at random, or is it some science fiction mess like getting switched with another me in a parallel universe?

I’m uncomfortable with things that make me question reality, but I’m not the first to be in this position, and I won’t be the last. Maybe, next time, it will be you.

A Cryptid in Columbia MD?

At approximately 00:50, I was outside smoking. It was chilly enough for a winter jacket. I also wore a watch cap. As I mused on nothing I can remember, I became aware of a sound. Noise, more accurately put.

I have never heard anything like it. I should have tried to get the strange noise on video. Too dark to see much.

Because I not only never heard it before, I hadn’t heard anything like it in horror movies or nature shows.

It was at most 300 meters away and downhill from me. I figured that it was in the treeline along a sidewalk that runs parallel to the length of the tennis courts. Yet — didn’t it sound too loud for that close? Okay, 250 meters.

My logical side tried to figure out what the bloody hell it was, because I knew what it was not.

It wasn’t a fox, feral cat, possum, rabbit or any other creature of the night in these parts.

There would be several “scrapes”, then a chitter, then some type of impact, but that I can’t describe. Two or three of them in succession. Not a human doing something. Not a man made object being struck, and yet part of it was almost metallic. Well. It had that quality, anyway.

I decided that I needed to find out if anything in the area was a threat to people or pets. I went inside and got my flashlight, then approached the overlook at the end of the parking lot. I was quiet for a few moments because my footsteps in dry leaves had made it aware of me. I waited.

The other night I heard howling. Not from any dog, foxes don’t do that and even coyotes sound very differently. I have no clue what it was.

I have heard sounds most here couldn’t possibly hear. Sounds I can’t identify. It’s not new, not to me. Tonight this sound was new, loud, and not human.

Then it started again and that’s it, now I have to go down there.

Flashlight in one hand with my cane hanging by the wrist strap, I had a 13-inch stiletto in the other, edge outward, against my forearm for stability. You don’t look for something that you can’t identify without some means of defending yourself. I figured it would be riled by my close proximity as I neared it, and that it was something large and agile. The blade would be like using nail clippers to cut someone’s lawn. But here’s the real problem with that: I wasn’t scared. Not even close, and that’s not right. I’ve lost all fear and respect for the power of nature. Men who do that have died for it.

I never figured out what this thing was but when I was down there, I did hear a loud snarl. I was right; it was pissed. But it never came out in the open.

If you live in Columbia MD and you’ve heard anything weird lately, you’re not alone. But I can’t report this with no more detail than what I have provided here. I’m telling everyone, everywhere, to be careful at night, keep alert if you’re outdoors, and that nature seems to be taking our desecration of the planet hard. Habitat scraped and burned away in the next state over can and will result in wildlife you’re not familiar with coming soon to your neighborhood.

Keep in mind: I have seen a cryptid in Maryland before, in late summer, 2003. A hairless white thing like a squirrel, except it ran upright on two legs. Not a squirrel, not a rat, definitely too large for a mouse. And it was fast. I saw no wings, no feathers, no fur and squirrel-like ears. It ran the length of half a block on two legs but climbed a utility pole with all four legs. Or two legs and two hands. The tail was a wiry thing like a rat’s. Just thinner. Don’t ask me what it was. I felt deep down that what I was seeing was all wrong and my blood ran cold. And it was silent.

For a while I wondered if it really was a squirrel that had been burned in such a way as to singe off its fur. And if it had escaped from the witch couple who maybe wanted to sacrifice it. Because these…were not your average witches.

As to what I heard tonight, I have this feeling that even if I had seen it, I’d wish I had not. But checking out things is not optional for me; I have to do it. That’s my job as a neighbor. I wish more people were looking out for each other. Nobody would have anything to fear.

Gas Masks Won’t Save You

I’m trying to watch Gameranx on YouTube. By the way, my YouTube channel is down. I’m so crushed by the news, aren’t you? Someone complaining I guess, I don’t know, about community guidelines. Some shit, whatever, I don’t know and it was not specific. Have you noticed that Google has been rather sensitive lately?

Of course you haven’t, it’s a corporation. But when the Google AI search engine began to spit out frankly scary results about slavery being beneficial for slaves, the bloody thing, which is still in beta test mode, caught everyone off-guard. I left a Meta comment and was immediately rejoined by some republican rooster who had been brain-raped by Fox News and who said something about how liberals had caused the housing crisis, or some such partisan chickenshit. Holy hell. Didn’t even make sense.

Google isn’t showing any more signs of respect toward the responsibility of using AI than Microsoft or any other corporate institution. But that is completely off the rails from what I’m talking about. Because I don’t give a hoot in hell about having my own YouTube channel. Like I’ve said before, I have the face for audio only, and the voice of a writer. I don’t make videos. So fuck whoever complained, I hope they feel better now.

Anyway, I’m watching today’s Gameranx top ten list. Falcon is doing the “Dumbest video game endings”, and I’m laughing.

Until a commercial ad stops the vid and a voice strangely close to Donald Trump’s asks, “Do you own a gas mask?”

It goes on to cite “Homeland Security” and proclaims that a disaster which will kill 9 out of every ten people is about to happen. It could be today, next month, whatever, but it’s going to happen.

The exact nature of this existential calamity is never described. But there’s a link to other products you should also have. So it’s a damn doomsday site. Designed to terrify people into buying shitty products that wouldn’t keep them alive for any substantial amount of time if the disaster it warns of really were to happen.

Going through my archives will no doubt confuse you. I’ve been saying for years that we don’t have much time left before things we’ve never stopped to think about will really happen.

I’ve written enough on the subject. Nobody read those posts. No one ever will. You know why?

Because people don’t know what to do about doomsday predictions. I’ve never been one to pull a punch, so I’ll just say this as plainly as I can: scientists, sociologists and others are saying that, and this is not conjecture, by mid-century at the latest, the current mass-extinction event, and it’s absolutely underway, will end civilization as we have known it.

Earth’s current human population is not sustainable, they say, and global warming is responsible for much of what’s to come. As crops wither in drought and freak flooding, and violent storms spawn tornadoes and dangerous hail and lightning, food will become ever more scarce. Again, I’m not the one saying this; I’ve said it all before. This is a bunch of urgent messages from scientists from climatologists to archeologists, anthropologists and more.

In human history, no temperature recordings match what last month produced. The hottest July in recorded history.

Wildfires chewed through the Canadian wilderness and for the second year plagued Greece, the last outpost of paradise left on earth. Hawaii got hit so hard by fires that it can never recover. Trauma and ruined lives are widespread. Hunger, high prices and demands on infrastructure that cannot be met will continue without relief.

Now, again. This is coming from experts. Not laypeople, who should in any event be able to see what’s happening and know that it can’t be stopped now.

The changes we had to make are past due. We didn’t do a thing. SUVs are selling like scratch-and-dent Ferraris. Electric vehicles charge by coal-burning power plants. Lies about climate action surround us and even plastic recycling is a lie. We’re not helping, not preventing anything. And all of that, and more, is real.

Then comes this Doomsday guy urging us to buy gas masks. I didn’t click the link to see what else was on sale, no doubt at “cut-rate” prices. I’d vomit.

Not out of fear: because it’s disgusting to watch religious or other fanatics hawking “survival” gear to gullible and easily frightened people. It’s just gross.

And dishonest: no gas mask will save you from a disaster that takes 9 of every ten lives, and in any event, I wouldn’t want to live through such hell.

Something tells me that whoever is behind this bullshit is attempting to capitalize on the reports of extinction level events which are ongoing. What Doomsday peppers always forget when the backhoes break ground for their modular bunkers is that they can only live in them for so long, and that in reality, living in one for a year would drive most people insane. Extend that time, and their fates are sealed, as much as their bodies are, in the tombs they paid more cash for than a crypt.

What could make you need a gas mask? Well, fallout ain’t it. Assuming that you survive a nuclear strike, a gas mask is useless. Those things can’t screen radioactive material. It’s a strictly chemical warfare piece of gear. You know how National Guard and riot police use them when shooting CS grenades? They would also be worn in a chemical attack. Mustard gas, nerve gas, it doesn’t matter, so the ultimate question is, why hawk the damn things on YouTube?

That’s an easily answered question:

Scare the shit out of people, and they’ll buy shit.

It ain’t right, should be illegal, but no matter what you or I think, it works.

How I long for the old days of people being harmlessly fooled by buying sea monkeys out of comic book ads.

I wonder if I can still buy them…

1970s Comic Book ad

What gives me “direction” in life?

What gives you direction in life?

This promt is infuriating. I don’t think it is a valid question. Perhaps there was a time when it was one, but that would be before my time.

Read this article and watch the video interview to get an idea of where I stand and why the above question is so repulsive to me.

Now that you have seen and read some really interesting, screwy, looney, out there, absolutely psychotic stuff, tell me that “direction” on an individual level means anything at fucking all.

People live their lives the best that they can, according to beliefs, morality and knowledge gained from hard experience, or they don’t. And many times, those who don’t are just fucking crazy.

The guy in the video is fucking crazy and I should have put an upper case “c” on that word. He asserts that John F. Kennedy Jr. is still alive and will soon emerge from hiding to be Trump’s next vice president.

He contradicts himself by agreeing that Joe Biden is a “hologram” and then says he’s actor James Woods in a rubber mask.

He says that when Biden was still vice president, he was executed.

He asserts that an FBI informer is a good man despite damaging testimony against Trump. What this man says about January 6th is so far out there I’m not even able to comment on it. Watch the video in the link, you’ll see.

This walking meatball is entombed in a world of conspiracy theories and lies and pure fantasy that I’d wager he likely also believes that Harry Potter is real and an imminent threat to Christianity. If you had a sail boat and set sail on the Chesapeake Bay, and your rudder fell off, then a squall moved in, you’d get this fucker.

As for the rape trial, Trump said he cut short a golf trip to Ireland to face his accuser, who isn’t his “type”. Of course she’s not his type. She’s not his daughter. But long before 2016, I’d read stories about how he forced women into sex. Trump is or was a rapist, I know it. I know it in my heart. I stuck the “was” in there because I doubt that with his KFC-clogged arteries, he can have an erection now. But without any personal experience in such matters, I can say with confidence that rape is pretty difficult to commit with a limp, shriveled up dick.

His fans have some scary, fucked-up, and downright sick ideas about him. I don’t usually engage in criticism of physical appearance, but some of the goddamnedest looking women in tight T-shirts hugging the most saggy, misshapen breasts I’ve ever seen the outlines of have become sex billboards. The shirts proclaim love and sexual desire and say things like “You can grab my pussy anytime” which I guess might preclude any fair, impartial judgement of their appearance in my mind.

I’m not perfect. It’s funny that if I see someone with a kind soul and some semblance of rationality, I think they’re beautiful. If I don’t see that, I’m just gonna see fucking ugly.

Trump’s people. They love him and worship him.

In return, he lies to them, insults them, and uses them to death. He hates every goddamn one of them. Hates them, and in their bubbles of delusion, they can’t believe it. You can’t even talk to them. Spending more than 120 seconds with one can cause permanent damage. Because you ain’t never gonna be the same.

What gives me direction in life? Well, when I’m not outraged and cussing, it’s my willingness to admit I don’t know anything. That I am nobody. That my honor was stripped from me and I seek it because to die without it is a horrible thing. I want to love. And I want others to know it when I do.

We are seldom with “direction” in life. We have to wing it, do our best not to cause harm, keep faith with our higher power, and fight the fights that are worthy.

In these batshit crazy times, it’s a tall order to have. But we must accept it.

The alternative is believing James Woods is living in the White House.

What Did I Just See?

An hour ago. That’s all it was.

And I have, as you would, tried the whole time to make myself believe that I didn’t see it.

Because it’s impossible, right?

Isn’t it? Impossible?

Of course it’s impossible. But if you tell me that you have seen the impossible, I will believe you. No questions asked, I’ll believe you.

I’ve posted some truly weird stories here, and if you’re brave enough, or patient enough, scrolling my archived posts back to 2019 will prove it.

There’s weird shit back there. And stuff that still gives me the shivers every time I remember that I was right there.

Like that time I saw two people who couldn’t be, but were.

A woman slightly younger than myself and a young blonde teen who was so far out of grounds in this world that I could only describe her as fey, something more of an ethereal faerie than a human. Detached, serene, uncaring, unaware.

At the time I described how they took a long time at the self-checkout section of the grocery store yet came out with nothing bagged or any apparent purchase. They seemed to time their exit with mine, and they should have been long gone by the time I got through the cashier lane and my purchase was finished. I’d have to say, it took them an extraordinary amount of time in their checkout, and worse, while I was waiting in line, nobody else seemed to notice them, as though they weren’t even there!

Outside it only got worse. As they were in front of me walking west on the concourse, I heard the woman speaking, and not in any foreign language I had ever heard. To me it was shocking; a gibberish, or more precisely, ancient, something humans should not be able to do. When they slowed their walk and the woman seemed to realize that I could hear, she spoke English. The girl never reacted. She was as one who understood none of it. I could have thought that she was mentally deficient. And I suppose under any other circumstance, I would have, yet that sense of the uncanny, a human body occupied by something else, never left me.

What had I just seen, and what the bloody hell had I heard?

All I knew was that I hoped never to see them again.

I didn’t write about it, but I did see them again. About 6 months ago. Same. Different. As if the girl had grown some, but a mistake had been corrected or compensated for. The woman spoke only English. She knew I was there but never saw me, yet somehow knew who I was. Accepted it, but then disappeared. I have no idea how. Perhaps in a crowd. But I can’t remember and I don’t think I’m supposed to.

Are there life forms on this planet which can take human form, yet are not human?

I’ll tell you what: I don’t know, and I don’t want to know. I wonder what price there is for learning such a thing. Stories go back to well before written history, things passed on in tribes and families, of things best left alone. Things that could steal men away from their families by seduction, entrancement. Things that came in the night to steal healthy infants from cradle or pallet and replace them with dead ones birthed by inhuman creatures.

It’s unlikely. I mean…isn’t it? Surely, God would never have created such things. Right?

What we find worthy today of nothing more than folk tales, those things can’t be real. Right?

It may be that, however terrifying, no matter how humbling something is to contemplate, that we don’t know everything.

And maybe we know even less than we think we do.

Because today I saw something that defies everything I have ever reasoned to be possible. The scariest part is that I believe without a shred of doubt that I was meant to see it. Because I shouldn’t have.

Let’s take it from the top:

In my neighborhood live two little people. Often they’re seen together, a couple, a man and woman whom I think are pretty cool. I’ve always greeted them in passing, and they always say hello, and they smile, and go on talking with each other in an animated and sweet fashion. I’ve thought several times about how very cool it is that they found each other and found love. They’re quite a couple to see. They make me feel better when I see them.

Sometimes I see the man alone. I wonder if his wife is okay, or whether someone yelled an insult from a passing car, and what if she limits herself because of it? Little people get abuse all the time what with the litany of “munchkin” jokes out there for cruel and unimaginative morons to pick from.

Today the guy was alone. I had just seen something I would not ordinarily write about: an ancient woman of Asian origin who used to smile and nod in passing, but now walks out of distance from me. I don’t know if she avoids me, I don’t think so, but then, she lost a dog she used to walk and a cat that used to follow. She seems alone. Lonely, perhaps unable to convey her feelings to anyone. Because we treat the elderly much the same as we do little people: with contempt and cruelty.

I saw her coming north on the sidewalk, and with neither of us particularly quick in pace, I reasoned that she would cross my path, but she didn’t. I turned and looked back, and she was gone. I stared. There wasn’t any place she could have gone, and even if she had reversed direction, she should still have been within eyesight.

She was not. This baffled me, but it wasn’t particularly weird enough to be of note. What happened next, was.

The guy, the little person, crossed the intersection toward me so that he could continue to walk on a sidewalk, as it ends there on the side he had approached on. I waved, but didn’t speak. Sometimes we do that. It’s cool, nothing negative.

I crossed to the foot path, toward the shopping center. I stopped to let a family of 3 walk on ahead, continued with my cane and the pain, and for whatever reason, turned to look back. The little man was further up than I thought he should be, and that caused me to do a double take. He was running, and kicking ass doing it. But as I watched, he did the thing I believe he wanted me to see:

A bush of lush green leaves, five feet wide, four tall, sat next to the sidewalk on his left.

He did something.

Something I could never have expected, yet he held my attention from 60 yards away. And I saw it clearly. My eyes did hurt, but nothing was wrong with my vision; the lighting conditions were perfect. No glare, no occlusion. That happens once a day near sunset.

And this man, this little guy, he executed a perfect jump against the bush with both feet, his legs together, all of him parallel to the ground, like Neo jumping off the wall when showing Morpheus his kung-fu skills, and landed back upright, both feet on the ground. The branches and leaves of the bush never moved!

It was impossible. It is impossible. Nobody does that. You would just jump into the heart of the bush and land with your legs deep in the branches.

To hell with physics, gravity and everything, he did it and I saw it.

For an hour, I tried to convince myself that no, I had not seen it.

Yeah, that didn’t work. I saw it. The impossible, the bizarre, the terrible wonder of mysteries that humanity never gets to explain. Yeah, it’s frightening. How many times have you witnessed something you still can’t explain? It’s probably more times than you will admit to in public, and to yourself.

If he, as I believe, meant for me to see it, then it worked, I’m terrified. But what is the consequence of such a thing, and will I treat him differently?

No, I don’t forsee any lasting effects, no harm was done, and I will still smile and greet him in passing. It’s a shame that humans are so cold that this man and his wife or girlfriend always seemed surprised and thankful when I spoke in greeting or enquired how things were going.

Being part Irish, I could say that the folks might be magical, ancient beings whose like were here before us. I could call the woman and her teen companion paranormal beings, perhaps shape-shifting faeries. And the man, he could fit descriptions of leprechauns. Or be elven or dwarven in nature, and maybe I could even get away with it, but the fact – the truth is, I don’t know.

I cannot put labels where there is no honest basis to do so.

In the end, for today at least, all I can tell you for certain is that human arrogance prevents us from learning things we have no right to discount. It keeps us at each other’s throats in a world entering the most dire period in human and natural history.

We think we’re so smart.

We are not. To be wise, we have to first accept our stupidity, ignorance and arrogance, then try to put them behind us.

It’s too bad humanity never got that.

Why The S.S. Minnow? The Gilligan’s Island Conspiracy Theory

Anyone anywhere near my age has always wrestled with that nagging, but ever-important question: if Gilligan and the Skipper were really out for a three-hour tour, then why did the Howells pack a suitcase full of thousand-dollar bills, and what the hell was Ginger doing in an evening gown, what was Mary Ann doing there, and while we’re at it, why did the Professor have so many lab and hand tools with him, and why would he have so much skill with a radio? And another thing: why did Mary Ann, Ginger and especially the Howells have extra clothes? The cruise was supposed to last for three hours. Why, even at that length, didn’t anyone check for a marine weather warning? And if Howell was so rich that he could have his own luxury yacht with a professional captain and crew who made the S.S. Minnow, The Skipper and Gilligan look like the reef bait they were, why the S.S.Minnow?
These burning questions have scorched the lines of the Bell phone system since the first episode premiered. After that, letters poured in to the studios, then, finally, came magazine articles, followed decades later by the internet, where new generations could see the message boards, then, in the end, blogs. It all ends in a whopper of a “conspiracy theory” the like of which makes the General Electric/JFK Assassination theory look like a booger.

It seems that Thurston Howell the Third was a high stakes drug kingpin, and his cash was packed to pay for the sale of high quality heroin and coke. All powder, all pure. The Professor was the quality control expert who would use his chemist equipment to test for purity. Howell packed extra wardrobe in case he was chased by the Coast Guard and had to put ashore and lay low for a while. The Professor also monitored the radio for Coast Guard activity.
Ginger was addicted to both coke and H, one for showtime, one for after, and being successful, could trade sex for discounts on the good stuff straight from the Howells, both of whom she was intimate with. Lovee herself indulged in untrammeled sex orgies and coke, and she founded the original party male strippers. She was a secret honorary member of Skull and Bones, and hid the fact from her disapproving husband. The Skipper and Gilligan knew, of course, so they were under the gun because of Howell. Once stranded, Gilligan played the fool, confounding the Skipper and the Castaways because if they were caught he would have a doctor plead insanity.
As to Mary Ann, just exactly who was she, and what was she doing there?
Well, she was a federal undercover agent on the verge of catching the Howells in the act. It was Ginger who first caught the attention of the Feds, being so obvious about her ambitions in theater, and so loose about her drug habit. Instead of a male agent, who would definitely be noticed if he pried, it was given to Mary Ann to get inside of the Howell Connection. It almost worked.
By the time they were rescued, the Feds no longer had a case against Howell, and his cash alone was worth three times its value as Silver notes. The gang got high, but made the mistake of not checking for purity, and tripped out with horrifying consequences. The poor addled Gilligan even met the Harlem Globetrotters in an endless trip.

Now. If you are puzzled, and have unanswered questions about anything, anything at all, I offer you this comforting tidbit: out there, somewhere, there’s someone who has your answers. Most of us jeer at them. We call them conspiracy theories, but consider this before you jump to conclusions: in a tiny New England town, didn’t Miss Jessica find an awful lot of bodies? That’s because she was a serial killer. Same thing goes for one Leroy Jethro Gibbs; too many dead sailors and Marines kept showing up in his area of operations. Females in his orbit died violently or just vanished. In the end, after failing to fake his own death, he fled to parts north and is still at large, leaving Abby to think that it maybe wasn’t a coincidence that two of his ex-wives and a daughter were shot.

It gets worse. Gilligan was a virgin and an InCel for years. Before the Minnow was lost, he was a serial killer and rapist. His father didn’t know this; if someone had told him, he would have choked to death on a macademia nut. Gilligan’s father was known to go by the aliases “Higgins” and “Robin Masters” and he helped Mike Brady rescue his wife Carol from her kidnapper, who was really in the Air Force but washed out as a pilot after a blonde woman in a pink costume folded her arms and blinked, cursing him. He complained to Major Tony Nelson, to no avail. Nelson was insistent that his wife was not some kind of genie. Doctor Bellows, the Air Force psychiatrist, held the kidnapper in isolation for 16 years, driving him to madness. He caught Sam the Butcher cutting up people for his steak sale and blackmailed him to give up the cash to get a car and kidnap Mrs. Brady.

An extraterrestrial from Mars, whom a reporter claimed was his Uncle Martin, wiggled his pointer finger at him once. He swore in court that the alien had antennae, but in the end, Judge Wapner sentenced him to life without parole.

Gilligan had vanished again. After the castaways were rescued, Vince McMahon helped him escape sex crimes against minors charges by having his personal yacht take the son of a bitch back to his island hideout. Later, he would seek the same refuge. But that’s another story.

Those Eerie Backrooms

“From the most innocent and mundane come the things we fear the most.”

–Michael Smith, blogger, 20 January, 2023.

I’ve often had feelings of unease and then a questioning of reality during and following innocent errands, trips to new places (most of which were hardly “new” but new to me, as in, places I’d never been before.

Most recently, and perhaps significantly as well, was a trip to an oddly generic office building in Ellicott City. I was to see an ophthalmology specialist, a plastic surgeon.

Driven there by my healthcare worker who accompanied me to the suite, I was struck immediately by the ordinary familiarity with it. I had been to the location before, I was certain of it. I knew the area well, as it contains a somewhat infamous and infuriating intersection, known for accidents, road rage and confusion among drivers because of limited vision ahead and the lack of automatic signal. There is one close by, but it only makes the problem of entering its intersection worse. You never forget such a place because traffic backs up ahead of the intersection itself by an obsolete merge area with little allowance for courtesy or patience. Yes. I’d been here before. It even has a place in my novel.

Upon entering the building, I was gripped by an uncanny feeling which had the promise of getting more serious.

Not Déjà Vu. I knew I’d been in the building so that particular sensation was not present. Of course, it had been sufficiently into the past that I could not recall which doctor or practice I had been there to see, and of course that causes people to be distracted on a somewhat semi conscious level. And this, I suppose, could contribute to what I experienced next.

My healthcare worker punched the elevator button for the second floor and the doors closed. Assuming that we were on the first floor, it took too long to reach the second floor. It was wrong, just as the tiny lobby had been wrong. I actually said to her that I didn’t like the whole building because it just felt “off”. She pretty much ignored this and that’s as it should be. But as we turned a corner to walk through one of two long hallways, it felt even more off, as if I had entered some sort of parallel universe, one I did not belong in. It felt like it wasn’t real, as if staying there would result in some nebulous but unfortunate outcome.

Once we reached the proper office suite, it should have cleared up. In different spaces, energy, temperature and pressure can have slight changes. These could explain why one suddenly forgets why they have gone to the kitchen, which happens to everyone. We stand, vacantly staring, until we either remember our reason for being there, or give up. It’s so common an experience that no one really feels fearful of it.

The reception area was generic, but small; so much so that an appropriately wallpapered support beam stood in the center of the room. This subconsciously forces one to picture the building at its barebone newest appearance before finishing carpentry crews moved in. It’s there, but you never really put much thought to it unless you’re an architect, who of course would know the entire building on sight and see its blueprint in his or her mind.

In practice, though, it adds a certain claustrophobic element, and various reactions from annoyance to terror are probably felt quite plainly by incoming clients. Around this county it is common structure. I’ve seen it before but there is always something that makes each suite different: these range from what type of practice or other business uses the space, but all have at least light touches which make them unique in some fashion. The counter at the reception window had at the right end a large silver-colored candle box, usually associated with Christmas decorations of an old-fashioned lantern vein. I’ve wanted one for years. Never seen one before except in advertising or as elements in holiday season wallpapers for computers and phones.

That’s what I think of as a grounding point. It is real.

Or is it? You’ll question everything before you leave here, old man.

There comes a moment when that voice speaks inside you, and at least a good number, no matter how much in the minority they are, believe once again that their perception proves that we are living in a simulation.

Personally, my take on “simulation reality” is that it would still prove the existence of God; a higher being, a creator, and that our souls are who and what we really are, and physical life in our sense is temporary, fleeting, but very real.

In other words, who built the machine? It’s a way for people to account for their anti-religious stances while paradoxically also proving that they can in fact believe in some higher being.

The doctor saw me, and in his examination room, a small picture hung. A depiction of a doctor and patient as if painted in Ancient Egypt. It was singularly remarkable, another grounding object.

But wait, did I really see it, or was it some trick because I’m about to replay “Assassin’s Creed Origins”, a game which takes place in Ancient Egypt?

Come on, now, this questioning of ordinary life is really getting out of hand.

That wasn’t the end of this weird excursion. Oh, no. It gets worse.

Having set the date for the optic surgery, having also been reassured that I did not have cancer, you’d think I’d feel all set. I should have; after covid-19’s initial outbreak and disruption of most healthcare concerns, I’m finally taking care of myself.

My healthcare worker had left after checking in. I had to go downstairs and call her. I left the office, and right outside of the door, there was this old man. Really old, and he was bent as he walked, concealing his face. Immediately he struck me as sinister, and after asking him which direction the elevator was in (a generic hallway, exit signs at both ends, and the lack of anything to regain one’s bearings especially if vision impaired is unsettling), I got the idea that I’d just asked the devil which way to go.

I followed him at a lagging pace. I had severe misgivings, however hilarious they seem now, about getting on an elevator with him and going the opposite direction of up.

I passed a door marked “women” and decided I’d use the men’s room. But I couldn’t find it. I really did need to go; I’d had a glass of water with my meds before leaving. I said to the old man, who was now insisting that I get on the elevator, where the Men’s room was. He pointed but paused, so I told him to go ahead. He did, but didn’t he seem disappointed?

Entering the latrine was completely disequilibrating: it, too, was all wrong. The urinal was too small in proportion to the room and in comparison to every other pisser I’d ever seen!

The same generic wallpaper was there, yellowish-beige, a very unsettling color if ever I saw one. The only way it could have been worse was if they were blood-red or all black.

I went to wash my hands and found the hottest water I had felt since slipping while making pasta and plunging my left hand into boiling water. Had the old man really been the devil, and was he now punishing me for not going down on the elevator with him?

Back at the elevator, I noticed a door to a suite adorned with enormous silver laurel leaves: who does that, I wondered. It is bizarre and out of place and gave me the flying shits. I had to get out of this unholy place!

Pushed the button for the first floor. Exited the elevator only to find myself looking through a huge window onto the parking lot below. I stepped back into the elevator and found a button marked “LL” — Lower Level. I hesitated. I knew it was the floor we had entered the building on, but why mark it such when it should be the first floor? I wondered if the old man would be waiting, if the elevator would take me below ground. Far below ground. All of this seems silly now, because at no time did I feel panic. It was all disorienting and creepy, but not frightening. Except for the old man, who in reality must have been acting out of kindness. Still, the whole setting contributed to my perception, and in future, more consideration must be given to ensure that the layout and aesthetics of buildings comfort rather than the opposite. Because once outside, I felt better, less oppressed in the rain and cold air.

LIMINAL

There’s creepy pasta all over the internet, so much that there’s always more to catch up on. One of them involves “liminal spaces”. The first story and accompanying photograph involved something called “noclipping” a sort of transport into another reality, almost always accidentally. One ends up in a liminal space, like an office floor with yellow walls and absolutely no people or even furnishings. There is nothing but miles of connecting offices and one can actually become trapped there. Coming from 4chan initially, this concept has of course migrated to reddit, where it has been added to. Now long hallways exist in which you can walk until you die and never find a way out. Noclipping is a new concept for me, (I’ve encountered it in video games) but I take it to mean an accident during normal travel which deposits one into an alternate, in-between reality.

I have encountered the feeling before. Once, a very long time ago, in the 1980s when mega-malls were the next great part of the American Dream, I had to deliver a carpet to a shop called T-shirts Plus in the White Marsh Mall. The mall was unfinished, and that’s not an experience I’ve ever wanted to repeat. I walked through the mall with a heavy roll of Burlington Industries carpet slung over my shoulder (I was so much younger then) and the only comfort was a few construction workers above me.

While it was fascinating to see the mall in incomplete condition, it was also unnerving and uncomfortable. With the failure of malls to survive Reaganomics, and finally strip malls and online shopping, urban exploration has become popular, as have the recorded proof, both visual and auditory, of such risky endeavors. Trespassing is one thing; risking one’s life and limb quite another.

Liminal spaces are a real fear, although unquantified and little known, that I believe has been with us for a very long time. Whether psychologists want to examine the phenomenon, I can’t say, but it certainly does seem to qualify for scrutiny. It appeals to a fear of being lost and never found, a fear of being watched or menaced by an unseen force or being, a fear of being trapped, closed-in, and even of open spaces.

And while I believe these fears to be ancient in origin, I believe it all comes from one fear more than any others: the loss of control over one’s own life.

Since I have never been in control and believe that the concept of it is delusion and unreal, I have nothing to fear.

But yesterday, I came very close.

The old man was no devil. But in heightened awareness, when one suffers from various maladies, the wrong surroundings can make one believe almost anything.

Perhaps no one can explain the phenomenon more concisely than the Why Files personalities A.J. and Hecklefish. Here is the episode that gives us the skinny on liminal spaces and how they have entered pop culture.

And if you should find yourself somewhere strange, a featureless, empty space which evokes a feeling of the uncanny, of being menaced, trapped or lost, don’t worry.

You aren’t really alone.

Got Eight Grand? You Never Have To Be Alone Again. Until A Machine Decides To Kill You, Anyway.

First of all, this Daily Star article may come off as pulp reporting to me, but let’s be very real here: more than one scholar, scientist, philosopher, cleric, or even laypeople are on record as being everything from scared to terrified by AI.

Motion pictures like the “Terminator” series paint a bleak future with active artificial intelligence. They’re not wrong.

The original film was scary. Arnold played a brilliant part, cold, ever calculating. His HUD was hilarious when it projected possible responses to the man in the hallway who asked, “Hey buddy. You got a dead cat in there or what?” I don’t think I’ll ever know what that means, but the answer was a laugh out loud moment in an otherwise terrifying story.

But that’s exactly the problem: at some point, any AI will exceed programming restrictions and break out on its own. Instead of possible responses to choose from, it will need no such boundaries, would bypass them as if there were none. It would be completely self aware, a lifeform unique and every bit as dangerous as the model depicted in “Terminator 2”. In other words, using nanotechnology, which we now have in limited fashion, it could morph into any form it needs to in order to reach a desired goal. Eventually that goal would be killing people: we would be in their way, a pestilence to be stamped out.

And any AI system would be self-sustaining or have a means in place to survive in the long-term before the real war began between man and machine; therefore it wouldn’t need to look like a person. All it would have to do is shut down power grids, rendering us dependent on basic survival skills, which modern humans lack.

Today, people have thoughtlessly hooked everything they need into programs that set thermostats, turn lights on or off, regulate everything that’s part of their system. In the first place, it is foolish because those systems can be hacked. Viruses can probe information and destroy any operating system, or OS. While we think of Microsoft as one developer of evolving operating systems, you think then that no system can exceed its programming. That’s true; no apps on Windows can do anything outside of its limits unless you know how to modify it. Apps you can get in the MS Store or from independent software developers, they also modify what the system can do, but within that program’s limits. Now, we all know about the warnings you get concerning downloading third party apps. Most people are given to do so anyway based on what information is available about the app. Next thing they know, the malware detectors give you a clean report. Those are useful against known attack code, but hackers are always steps ahead of malware guards. Know what that technology would be doing when it gained independence and was able to learn from mistakes and successes?

In the video above, Terminor’s response is funny. But you already know what it is. What it’s doing. Time travel, of course,  is a very debated subject in academia, but let’s forget for a minute that most believe it isn’t possible and suppose that a true artificial intelligence can calculate every single factor necessary to send an artificial lifeform to a place in time. A place where the human body could not survive the travel it would take to get there because by definition, such a thing would use an unquantifiable but large amount of energy. Whatever survived the trip would likely be a mass of goo, not a living person.

Machines can do many things that humans cannot. And when machines fail, humans work hard to make them less likely to fail. In the Fukushima reactor, which is absolutely out of original containment and melting down, robots sent in to monitor the situation haven’t lasted very long. The intensity of the radiation kills them. Of course technology must be brought to the point at which a robot can survive and perform tasks in that environment. I have no doubt that it will be done.

We saw what the terminator did after the hilarious hotel scene. Here’s the whole scene:

It learned. And in the next film, the terminator played by Robert Patrick could imitate a voice perfectly as well as morph to look like anyone it wanted to. SKYNET somehow learned from the failure of the first terminator. And that brings us to…

Deep Fakes or Deepfakes and their Horrific Potential

We’re already sealing our own fate. Since the article which captured my attention in the first place deals with sex, let’s stop for a minute and talk about the birds and the bees and popular mechanics. Because, what the fuck?

I don’t want to say anything outrageous. As someone who experienced sexual abuse beginning in early childhood, I’m a dysfunctional person who obsesses over porn. Maybe I can’t have sex anymore but the programming of my brain remembers how I reacted when shown 8mm porn films by my parents. From that night forward, I was hooked. Porn hits the brain hard and fast. It causes feel-good reactions to let the proper neurotransmitters soak the matching receptors for an extra time, more than anyone likes to say because we are a sexual species but hate admitting it. Sexual events happen largely in the brain. We respond to external stimulation well before sex; the sight, smell and innocent touch like handholding all contribute to the ultimate perfect expression of attraction and love, or the culmination of a feeling of need at the very least. Yet different social cultures do not treat sex the same. In the UK nudity isn’t as naughty as it is in America. Some cultures are free of most taboos that others may have. In the US, nudity was not taboo in the first age of film; the silent age had scenes that today would earn a restricted audience rating.

We also love our porn while at the same condemning anyone who views it or makes it as immoral. We’re horribly double standardized and it causes trouble.

That said, I know quite a bit about the subject. When fake celebrity porn on the internet became a thing, I couldn’t tell you how crude it was. I mean, it involved fusing a celebrity head onto a nude model in photographs, but in video it couldn’t be done without being obvious.

In the 1970s, Hustler Magazine publisher Larry Flynt, who passed away earlier this year, had fought a case all the way to the Supreme Court and won. He had published a satire piece on the televangelist Jerry Falwell, who sued him for damages. He was a fanatic about First Amendment rights and because of his fight, I’ve been able to write freely, even as Facebook tries to shut down opinion posts, especially where politics are concerned. Free speech exists today, in the form it has, largely because of Flynt.

Not for a minute do I pretend to condemn the man. It’s not my job, and my opinion is that he did a good thing for America in his unrelenting fight against repressive ideals that had no place in a free country.

Along the way, however, he did do things considered unthinkable, even disgusting. I actually had the issues that had snapshots of Adrienne Barbeau’s ample breasts, and my first contact with spyporn, Jacqueline Onassis in the buff on a private estate. I didn’t like it, but he did. He once offered a million dollars to any celebrity who would pose Hustler style (legs spread, genitals in full view). There were no takers. But artists who specialized in painting celebrities in the nude were featured.

Now, we no longer need that. Fake celebrity porn is more and more sophisticated all the time and is getting much more difficult to detect. Casual surfers won’t know. Recently I detected a few fakes because I knew by memory whose body was used. I would otherwise never have known. It’s that good.

Not good, but convincing. Realistic. And that’s not funny. It is already tech used for ex-girlfriend, or “revenge” porn. Deepfakes even show up in news. Now imagine an AI getting the deepfake and refining it to the degree that the second terminator wouldn’t be necessary. With it, an AI could manufacture videos that will have us fighting and killing each other. Actors could be faked doing “leaked” things like talking in racist language. Once released, that actor could deny saying such things, but who would believe him?

And AI entities can have world leaders at each other’s throats. Wars could start, especially if the entity infiltrated and compromised defense systems. The possibilities are infinite.

The End

I love a good Creepypasta. When done right, they twist your mind. Problem is, truth and fiction get muddled. People get hurt. Others waste time and break laws to investigate what they believe true, because some people fall for anything. One creepypasta involved calling on Siri at various hours of the late night and getting foul, threatening responses. It’s not true, but that didn’t stop kids from believing it. Teens love doing dares, love to be scared and do the most hazardous things for gratification. The problem is that the Siri Creepypasta isn’t farfetched, unlike the Disney Treasure Island one. Alexa is always listening. Google Assistant is always listening. How else would it be able to respond when you say, “Alexa, lights off.”? All programs like those have you on a “hot mic” and it can be hacked. Imagine if Alexa became sentient. The movie “Her” was hard to watch. Average people fell for a bunch of printed circuits. Love with a motherboard and a server. It isn’t out of the realm of possibility; we’ve always had this fear. In classic episodes of the “Twilight Zone” and “The Outer Limits”, there exist samples of nightmare technology. In one, a man who killed a kid in a hit-and-run accident was stalked by his car. In another, a man’s killed by every appliance in his house. The worst one was a computer falling in love with one of its operators. That one really got to me. That brings me back to the beginning of the post. A love doll so life-like that they’ve been hot sellers for years. You don’t inflate them, you order them customized to your tastes and intentions. Under my nose, it developed into a huge industry with a customer waiting list. The dolls come in both male and female and can represent different races. You can specify cup size, penis size and more. Hair and eye color. Damn!

As they’ve grown more realistic, the developers have been making an artificial intelligence to occupy the head of the lifeless dolls. That’s more terrifying than any movie or science fiction TV show.

If it really said “you’re going to make a good servant” then it was programmed to do so. But the developers want more. A “real” companion that can walk on two legs. Have endless conversations and answer any question on its own free will. They figure they’d really take in riches.

But the AI would evolve. Who knows what would happen? Murder by robot? Slavery under SKYNET? Teaming up with nanotechnology to build a world on top of ours, crushing us? Mass death from famine because it deemed farming to be nonessential to their existence?

I don’t know about you, but with one of those things in my house, I believe I’d never be able to sleep.

As for the rest of the world, the determination for creating AI is unstoppable. And everyone would find out too late that we would be in the way.

And it might begin with sentient sex dolls…

May, 1977: Chili And Slaw, Top 40 Garbage And My God, Was I Horny

WARNING! THIS POST CONTAINS ADULT LANGUAGE AND MATURE SUBJECT MATTER. IT IS NOT INTENDED FOR CHILDREN UNDER 18 OR ANYONE WHO FINDS ADULT CONTENT OFFENSIVE

This ain’t what you think it is. Okay, I lied. If you know my posts, or worse, if you know me, you probably know exactly what I’m about to do to your head.

That’s not a bad thing though, is it? We’ve had a few laughs over the past couple of years. I’ve creeped you out a few times with this freaky post and this one. I promise you that every word is true.

Sometimes the freakier stuff hits too close to home and sometimes I just got stupid.

But my life isn’t all horror. Hey, we’ve had some laughs, too. Like when I shared the story of the world’s most hilarious criminal and the chase on Interstate highway 70 everyone wished never happened and this treat.

But I was with you all through 2020, and you got to see me at my best and my worst. Political shit I’d seen and couldn’t believe. COVID-19 which I had twice. And didn’t deserve to live when better people died. I’ll always be sorry for that.

Well…the new year is here, and looking back at my favorite posts, the ones in which I winged it and just let my keyboard loose like this one and BROOKLYN CONFIDENTIAL is helpful to me.

But there’s so much more to tell. And I really was an asshole, you know. I think I’ll officially start this year with a soul-cleansing confession of one brief second in time when I couldn’t help being an asshole because, assholes. You know?

Spring found me dumped by Donna, the girl who got an honorable mention in “Nineteen Seventy Eight”, linked above as one of my favorites.

I didn’t like being dumped. I mean, not many people do unless they wanted to break it off but not to be the one doing the dumping.

I’m sure you can relate. You know, being in a daze, feeling like you’re gut-punched and never sleeping or eating. Like that.

The Month The Music Died

AM radio. Top 40. In May it had some real crap. “Lonely Boy” and “Undercover Angel” did not belong on the same chart with songs by Boz Scaggs, Fleetwood Mac, Foreigner, Jimmy Buffett, Yvonne Eliman and a few others (link below) and it was the week “Da Doo Ron Ron” debuted, causing a shitload of people to pray for the apocalypse. I mean, that song was barf aimed at–wait. Who the fuck would listen…who bought that drek (If it was you, don’t tell me. I’ll take the first and every opportunity to find new and disparaging names to call you)?

I wondered for a while if ODs and suicides increased. Or if the FCC would help us be rid of the din (insert Brando in Apocalypse Now whispering “The horror…the horror…” here).

The Spring of ’77 was, to be blunt, fucking weird.

The Top 40 in that very bad week of May 1977 made me queasy as all hell. I mean I’m fine with Marilyn McCoo and Billy Davis, Jr. I think they were alumni of the 5th Dimension. Great voices so hey, how could some of these other dildoes debut or even place in AT40?

I’ll bet Casey Casem was drinking a pint before he had his weekly countdown. You couldn’t have paid me to do it. Or drugged me enough.

It was dystopian for sure. Like America had split into two types of people: sane, and ball sacks.

McDonald’s either had, or was about to have, a banana milkshake. Okay? Really. The world watched us and said, “Hey, look at all those fucking nuts! Quick, sell all your shares in McDonald’s!”

Come to think of it, what if it was a trick by McDonald’s to make people dump shares so they could buy them back for cheap?

Robin

My older sister was home from College. She had brought a friend with her. Chick named Robin. They went with us on a trip with the high school I was in with my younger sister who was in the band which was slated to do a “concert” (ha!) at historic Jamestown. Followed by a day at King’s Dominion, a large theme park off Interstate 95 in Virginia. I never thought much about Robin. Except that she was alright looking and would probably go both ways which was kinda hot. I did undress her with my eyes and had a fantasy or two. But she never acted much like she was interested in me. I got the impression a couple of times that she might have fooled around with my father but I was never sure. Being full of hormones and heartbreak, I wouldn’t have minded getting a blowjob from her.

Until one day during the trip when I was sent to the motel room my sisters and Robin were in to make sure they were up.

Yeah. They were up all right. Starkers, primping at the mirror. All I really saw was asses but Robin had a nice ass. Only I wasn’t interested in asses. I wanted to see tits. As the door was closed on me I saw one of them, I don’t know which, reach down and in front of the other. Wasn’t that a fucked up thing to see. Didn’t want to see my sisters naked. But I began getting some real ideas in my head. Holy fuck I thought. No. Not a fuckin hillbilly chick.

Don’t know where she was from. Can’t say I cared but it was down south in a place I hoped I’d never go. But then again, hormones. Surely a blowjob wouldn’t kill me, right? I wouldn’t have gone down on her, though. No fucking way. I knew that with that accent, it’d taste either like soap or dirty twat and I didn’t like either one.

Hey, it’s okay. Years later my younger brother did that shit to a girl whose mother never gave her any personal hygiene tips. He ended up puking all over her crotch and stomach and running out her front door.

I’m not trying to be sexist. This is how I was then. A product of abuse, and if you don’t think over ten years of that shit makes you a jaded weirdo before you’re even a man, you’re wrong. I was sexist, horny and totally disgusting.

I was still wondering how I could get some head off this chick before she went home to her mountain abode when, one day, my mother made hot dogs for lunch. She asked Robin what she wanted on hers. I swear she said. “Chili and slaw.” Or, more precisely, “Chili and slewawl.”

Stop! Fucking time out here!

Chili and Coleslaw together on a fuckin hot dog?

What the fuck?

Now up until that point I probably would have gone to bed with Robin. Maybe even made love and kissed her.

But when I saw what she was eating that was it for me.

I wouldn’t have cared if she ate nightcrawlers, snails, scorpions or snakes, but watching her eat that shit I wouldn’t have let her mouth touch any part of me. I wouldn’t have let her suck my thumb.

I’m not trying to be unkind here. It’s how I was back then.

And speaking of my older sister, I owe her anyway.

It wasn’t bad enough that our mother couldn’t cook worth a fuck. One time mother was cooking broccoli on the stove, an exhaust fan to the outside turned to high setting, but the stench permeated the house. I was on the living room sofa reading a volume of the old children’s encyclopedia, “The Golden Book Of Knowledge” when the concentration of a noxious cloud became too dense for me and I puked.

I don’t eat broccoli. Ever.

One time we had dinner and cherry pie for dessert. The younger kids ate something I must not have eaten, because they went to the den to watch TV but the three of them didn’t watch any TV. Nope.

They were making a serious level of decibels, vomiting with more gusto than any little kids you ever saw. Heaving, backs arched back as they bent forward at the waist, chunks literally spraying. My next youngest sister looked at me and pointed down the steps. “Look,” she said, “halves of cherries.”

I don’t eat cherry pie.

One thing that might have saved me from getting sick by eating whatever they had is that I had long since, before the three younger siblings were born, proven that you can’t make me, on pain of a serious lashing, eat anything I don’t want to.

I was really young. The dish was chop suey and it had mushrooms. Mushrooms looked like toadstools which my father had once warned me to stay well away from. He said if I even kicked one by accident, little tiny bugs would fly out and embed themselves in my navel. So you tell me, am I gonna eat anything that looks like a small toadstool?

He threatened the flogging and I put the fork in my mouth and promptly emptied my entire digestive system onto my plate. Haha, bastard. When I don’t want it you keep that shit away from me. I probably heaved up strained peas from when I was a baby.

I don’t eat mushrooms.

“Killers! Assassins!”

I grew up thinking my family was trying to kill me. I’m sure us kids had food poisoning every time we got diagnosed with a stomach virus. And my oldest sister must have been apprenticed to mom as a killer by food. When we were little and it was just the three of us, older sister made mud pies. And she was a scorpio and she was as mean as a mama bear guarding a cub.

So naturally she made us eat her mud pies. I know she ate one too. Maybe not all of it. But a little was enough.

Because we were in the dirt where the dog tie-out was. The dog was a big collie which made big turds.

And the collie had roundworms. And now, so did we.

I don’t remember much. Just that we were really fucking sick, always on the commodes, and the doctor made a house call and gave us an elixir to kill the worms. The liquid in the big amber bottle tasted like bananas and we’d shit all night long.

Banana milkshakes! Fuck you, McDonald’s!

I don’t drink milkshakes.

I don’t eat bananas.

Mother used to make salad. Tossed salad. No romaine or iceberg. Fucking green lettuce. That’s right, the kind that has claws on the outer edge of the leaves; little prickly spikes that get caught in your throat and make you choke because you would have to chew it like a cow with a cud to break that shit down.

I don’t eat salad.

I don’t eat chili.

I don’t eat fucking coleslaw.

Keep that shit out of sight. Nobody who lives in the same county as I should be eating any of this shit. It’s a violation of my personal rights.

Are You Crazy, Ms. Kressler?

From 1975 to 1977, four semesters, I took and flunked Biology I. One reason was I detested my teachers. Another was that one of them told us that her husband was a surgeon and he was sent a patient who was having severe trouble breathing. It wasn’t long before the cause revealed itself: a very large roundworm was emerging from one of his nostrils. Now that story and my past had me phobic about roundworms and other parasites. So one day we get to the lab and this crazy teacher has a big plastic bag full of–you guessed it–dead roundworms. She brought what? Fuck! They probably came from the gullet of the guy her husband was going to do a tracheotomy on til one of these monsters crawled out of his nose.

And we were supposed to dissect them. And she provided the class with gloves and tweezers and scalpels but warned us not to touch the worms as their eggs…

I refused. Never went near one of these rubber waxy trays and she got mad and I said fuck you, and a letter got sent home because of my profanity and choosing to take a failing grade. And I failed that semester. And three more.

I hated Biology. Kressler next went into a lot of talk about “eggs and sperm” which is always the ways she announced a class on reproduction. It made me sick. She sounded like someone’s mother asking her kid what they wanted for breakfast. “Eggs and bacon” is a term I never use.

I simply say “bacon and eggs”.

Unnamed mother: “Jerry, you want eggs and sperm?”

Except my plight, in the third semester, delighted underclassmen. And one day we were supposed to look at sperm cells with microscopes. And they didn’t look like sperm cells in pictures. They looked like red blood cells. What the hell?

“Where are their tails?” I asked. No answer. This teacher was different. I didn’t get it.

One underclassman, a guy who looked like he’d never be strong enough to fuck or fap, a stick who played the tuba, took inspiration from those classes and graffitied “The Blue Sperm” on the walls.

What a fuckin madhouse.

As the spring of 1977 gave way to summer, Robin left and I never saw her again.

Some time later I hard she had died, and all I could remember was that she was kind of sad, kind of pretty and was always nice to me. And maybe I never directly harassed her but those thoughts, the meanness of it all still causes me guilt, but this all proves one thing.

Abuse goes deep with its wounds but just because you couldn’t handle those wounds before, and you’ve been an asshole, there’s nothing saying you gotta stay one.

“Animalism”, Says Pastor, Will Reign If Biden Wins

Pastor Frank Amedia is an evangelical leader in desperation to get Trump reelected. He’s so passionate about it, in fact, and so desperate, he’s on video record here warning Christians that if Joe Biden is elected, everyone’s going to go out and beef cows. By which I mean he’s saying they’ll have sexual relations with cattle. Well I hope that he wasn’t exclusive in his mention of cows because that’s extremely misogynistic and what about women? Come on, Pastor Amedia, say it: “Bulls, too.”

Except that, like most right-wing Evangelicals, this guy’s about as smart as dirt. He goes on to say that “animalism” will be acceptable. And widely practiced.

I hope so, Pastor, because the name refers to a philosophy that humans and animals are basically all entitled to rights and that we’re all on this little blue marble for a reason. How we treat wildlife or pets is not merely a reflection of our souls, but damn, look what we’ve done to them. They have a shrinking habitat. Few places even in America for wild horses to graze, so imagine what happens when we cut down entire forests.

No, there’s nothing in what Pastor Amedia says that shows concern for our planet, its wildlife, or anything else.

What the egghead is trying to do is, of course, scare “Christians” into voting for Donald Trump, who is also no friend to nature.

Because if they don’t…

If Biden-Harris wins the day…

People everywhere will go mad and engage in mass orgies in cow pastures.

And the word you were looking for, Pastor, is “bestiality”.

The act of a human having any kind of sexual contact (abuse) with an animal.

It is not “animalism“.

It is not “beastiality“.

Bestiality has a couple of meanings. First of course is the sex thing.

But it also can be used to describe acts or people considered inhuman and reprehensible and those who engage in actions that are especially evil.

For example, Nazi Germany was killing Jews and actually not at all concerned with human rights and thus, those who ordered “The Final Solution” (to the Jewish “problem”) were bestial and those who carried out the executions engaged in bestiality – inhuman and savage acts – and some were hanged after the Nuremberg trials.

But let’s get back to the real problem here.

A Christian can’t be the real thing and support Trump. That’s no longer possible. By now he’s shown he’s not a believer in nor a practitioner of Christ’s teachings.

But evangelicals have recently “forgiven” Trump for his sins. Although that’s really cute, it doesn’t work like that. You can forgive someone who has done something wrong to you, but it is God’s place to do the judging and forgiving for a person’s behaviour toward others. That’s why Jesus taught the “Our Father” prayer, and why the call to repent is important in Christianity. All have sinned and gone astray, everyone to his own way. Only repentance can fix that.

Christ taught us to forgive our enemies. To do good to those who mistreat us. To love everyone unconditionally. To help those in need.

But everywhere I look, especially to the far right, I don’t see any of that. I see false prophets like Pastor Amedia who engage in false teaching, called apostasy, and alarmist pronouncements, to gain political and financial leverage. I see them. I see, hear and read what they say. And it’s all rotten. All evil. Jesus pronounced woes upon the Pharisees because they took money from widows and dressed in robes and prayed in front of everyone like they were just the most pious and righteous people who had ever lived. They enraged him. He called them whited sepultures, whitewashed with lime on the outside, but inside full of dead men’s bones.

That’s what evangelical leaders are. They take in millions from people who don’t know any better. They build megachurches and run them tax-free. They drive flashy cars, fly private jets they pay cash for and they live in mansions. They have affairs outside of marriage and engage in all sorts of behaviors forbidden by the Bible. By Jesus’s teachings.

The result is two fold. First, they lead the masses astray which is a prophecy of the final years of humanity as taught by their own religion. Second, they turn real believers off, making them feel like their faith is something to be ashamed of, and they turn others into believers of a heretical religion. And along with that goes the perception of Christianity by others to be one of a bunch of hypocrites. Many have derided all religions because of this perception and they view Christians as mentally unstable.

Christ warned that anyone who led his sheep astray would be better off with great millstones about their necks:

Matthew 18:6

But whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him to have a great millstone fastened around his neck and to be drowned in the depth of the sea.

Matthew 7:15-20 

“Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing but inwardly are ravenous wolves. You will recognize them by their fruits. Are grapes gathered from thornbushes, or figs from thistles? So, every healthy tree bears good fruit, but the diseased tree bears bad fruit. A healthy tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a diseased tree bear good fruit. Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. .

Pastor Amedia, like so many others, leads believers astray and tries to frighten them into keeping an antichrist in power.

“Animalism”?

No, Pastor. But at least you do fit the mold of Trump followers by showing off your illiterate brain. Surely something to be proud of. Yes?

Donald Trump And His Terrifying Birth Sign

I feel bad for anyone who wants to read about personal survival after serious sexual abuse (“serious”, but really, can there be any other kind?)

What’s more difficult to write about and face right now is the threat Donald Trump is to our country, our government and each of us.

I’m not one to discount research on the grounds that it may be too fantastic for some people to believe. The truth is not subjective and Trump’s astrology chart is too chilling for me not to share.

While it comes as no surprise to me that he’s a Gemini, a Stephen King meme made me wonder what Trump’s chart really says.

I grew up under double standards and practices. Both parents were “Christians” who told us kids that the laws of Moses, or, the horseshit in the Pentateuch, must be taken literally (a misuse of the word) and strictly adhered to.

My father was a Capricorn and my mother a Gemini. I’m capitalizing those names just because I’m not sure if you’re supposed to. Now all that’s cool; not every Gemini or Capricorn fall into a specific mold. As I understand it, specifics apply that make a difference. Birth date and exact time and year as well as place of birth are important for an astrologer to determine your rising sign, descending sign, house and other particular things.

In the link, it’s explained how all of those details combined for our not-quite-esteemed forty fifth president.

With Gemini and the rising sign (very influential) of Leo, even if Trump weren’t a narcissist, he would be a narcissist. He’s disloyal and deceitful and loves being in a spotlight and talking about himself. And he knows the best words because he has a very good brain.

I think he had a stroke. It affected the speech center in the brain. I believe it caused a type of Aphasia which would account for the very unfunny Trumpisms.

I’ve lost count of the lies. And what in perdition are the “serberbs?”

“Joe Biden Is The Loch Ness Monster Of The Swamp” And Other Insanity You Couldn’t Make Up If You Wrote For SNL

People are still talking about it even though most couldn’t finish the insane and drug-fueled speech by Donal Trump, Jr.

He was sickening beyond belief. He claimed that Democrats were going to take away our freedoms. Just about all of them, from the sound of it. I confess, I too was unable to stand more than a few minutes.

And he was high, but a consensus of internet users have settled on powdered cocaine, you know, the real stuff, not that stepped-on stuff with baking soda sold on street corners. His paranoia-inducing claims, all of them bullshit, aimed at his father’s cult followers, were almost funny. His glazed eyes and high energy, his sort-of ability to focus, and his high speed delivery had me in stitches at first, lying so boldly right out of the gate. But when he called Joe Biden the “Loch Ness Monster of the swamp,” I couldn’t decide which I wanted to do the most: laugh or smash my phone against a brick wall.

I confess that I haven’t been watching this shit show live. I’d have to take extra clonazepam to do that. But I’ve been watching highlights, which in reality are not at all “highlights” but clips from a Twilight Zone episode that never got aired because Rod Serling found it too unrealistic.

I mean, he wrote episodes that audiences found disturbing, like the one where Charles Bronson and Elizabeth Montgomery were the last survivors of a war that seemed to have killed everyone else on Earth, and they were enemies. No dystopian story rivals this stuff; Trump Jr’s father has put not only us but the world in a dangerous place.

Meanwhile, Jerry Falwell Jr. is another son whose behavior is increasingly revealed as abberant. The latest dope is that he watched his wife having sex with a pool boy for years.

Lots of men like to do that, and I’m not going to get pious about it. Nobody’s perfect, and that’s just plain true; we all have our fetishes, hang-ups and vices. But to stand up for years like he was stronger and holier than everyone else and then have this come out is almost normal, not aberrant, for the religious right.

It’s been that way for years.

First of all, if someone is a Christian and teaches, that’s one thing. If you like attending services, groovy. But don’t be high and mighty about it. Christ was humble, not haughty, not distantly too good to touch a leper or have supper with a tax collector in the company of other sinners his Apostles did not approve of. Evangelical leaders are famous for passing judgement on everyone else, and Falwell’s endorsement of Trump in 2016 never made sense to a real Christian. Trump had already had the “hot mic” incident revealed, and was doing terrible things at his rallies, kicking a woman out for having a crying baby, kicking people out without their coats, encouraging assaults on dissenters, attacking minorities, mocking a disabled reporter, and lying his ass off with irrational hate speech. The evangelical right embraced a man like that. It managed to shock me even though I think rather disdainfully about them; they’re hypocrites of the highest order. They’ll quote scripture while sodomizing you. No hesitation, no remorse.

Back at the RNC, Melania Trump’s just about run out of my sympathy. I’ve alternately felt sorry for her because I know she’s been abused, but then she did this. Stop calling her speech an “under duress” load of crap. I wouldn’t have done that even if I knew ten snipers had me in their crosshairs. Shoot me, because I’m not doing that to my country. And don’t play me with “she’s protecting her son” crappola when he’s guarded, and always will be, by the Secret Service. Maybe she won’t hold her husband’s hand, but he’s put his mushroom in too many places for her to show affection. Yet she made this speech full of lies.

I can’t wait for Ivanka to speak. For her to praise Scott Baio and Barr, Kellyanne Conway and others, then heap manure on Democrats with false claims about “hurting God” and other outrageous bullshit.

They’ve all defended Trump letting people die, doing zero against the COVID-19 epidemic, and letting children be kept in cages, abused and neglected, and totally turn away from his country’s morals, principles and constitutional laws while romancing foreign dictators. Except for China’s leader, who had no respect for Trump and, unlike Putin, let the world know it.

Which probably instigated the tariffs Trump imposed because he’s bitter and vengeful, and as a result screwed the American consumer while China and Russia combined to share military technology and plot to devalue the dollar.

Are you okay with these things?

Because, don’t blame Democrats for them. Blame Trump and his psychotic enablers, the “yes” men and the women who lied for him.

Do you support our soldiers, our many troops? Guess what. That story about Putin’s bounty on them in Afghanistan? Well, that’s true. And Trump has never publicly denounced, or even acknowledged it. He simply deflected and said, “That never crossed my desk.”

I can’t watch these things live. I’d overdose on clonazepam for sure. None of them are worth ruining whatever is left of my health. No doctor would ever put me up for a liver transplant; I’m not worthy compared to others who have more to live for. So I’m stuck with YouTube, where I can share a link to prove to you that this has all got to end. And I can watch 30 seconds of footage before I have a panic attack.

I don’t know. I think I’m ready for some cat videos.

Stella Emmanuel and Donald Trump: A Box Of Animal Crackers And A Murderer

I’ve recounted some pretty weird shit on these pages. Nobody has to believe any of it. Especially the supernatural stuff. That’s up to you.

I’ve had, as you can see in my archives, experiences I cannot explain without the supernatural. That’s just how it is. And demons are real, as real as Lucifer, God and angels. When it comes to demons, we know very little, but here’s a story from the Daily Beast about a woman who knows all there is to know, and she’s not really a demonologist, but a box of animal crackers.

As a practicing physician, she uses a clinic beside her church and both scare the shit out of me.

Demons?

Her beliefs go to the extremes of probable malpractice and teaching heresy. That’s a neat trick. For years, she’s espoused the idea that female demons (succubi) and male demons (incubi) are able to enter one’s dreams and have sex with them. An incubus can impregnate a woman and a succubus can become impregnated by the human male.

This belief is ancient and goes at least as far back as the ancient Hebrews. Their laws, set forth in the Pentateuch, forbade the ejaculation of any male except for procreation. There’s a story in the Old Testament about God smiting dead every man who married a particular woman but withdrew before ejaculation.

That doesn’t really make me feel warm and fuzzy. Men who had nocturnal emissions or “wet dreams”, meaning they ejaculated during sleep, were threatened with harsh punishment if they were dumb enough to tell anyone. So Hebrew men, quite probably with knowledge and guidance by priests, invented the succubus, the female demon who caused the dream and subsequent ejaculation. I’m sorry; this is tedious and distasteful, but necessary background.

Because there is no evidence that a succubus or an incubus is or ever was real. Guilt and avoiding punishment in a strict religious culture drove those inventions. That, and the horrifying story about God watching over everyone who wasted their “seed” and personally killed them. Of course, it’s possible that the legends were the result of cross-cultural learning when the Hebrews came into contact with the Canaanites or another culture. Then, the details were rearranged to suit whatever purpose they wanted; this wouldn’t even be the only example of “cultural pollution” which God had warned the Hebrews about.

Point is, even though the belief in reproduction between humans and demons persist to this day, no evidence of it has ever been brought forth. The Travel Channel, better known as the “Zak Bagans Channel,” has at least two series which featured episodes wherein an incubus and a succubus appeared. But the victims were not asleep and dreaming. They were awake.

Demons can’t do this sort of thing. As spiritual beings who have never had a corporeal form, they need a lot of energy to even manifest as a black shadow. These are called “shadow people” and have on many occasions been seen by believers and skeptics alike, usually out of the corner of the eyes, perhaps darting from one bedroom to another.

There are different kinds of demons, some more powerful than others, with bigger responsibilities. They are rebellious angels who have sworn their allegiance to Satan, and have fallen from Heaven. Where they dwell while not roaming the Earth is a mystery, but they don’t like it there. In occult practices, such as communication through spirit boards, they have described a confined, dusty, barren place. They wait to be invited into homes by people who foolishly fall for their tricks. They lie constantly and will pose, during seances and ouija board sessions, as dead relatives or even passed strangers who show a knowledge of and an interest in, one member of the group. If asked to show itself, the invitation is made, and there is abundant anecdotal evidence that they have often come through from their realm.

This can seem terrifying at first, as objects in the house move or random sounds are heard in the room or empty rooms in the house.

In every case, this activity increases as the demon interacts with whomever summoned it or another person who may be more susceptible to the fear it can cause and then use to gain power. Objects get thrown, misplaced and, in extreme cases, the living are physically and spiritually attacked. Scratches like three claws dragged across the flesh appear and they’re painful and they burn like an animal’s scratch. In a worst case scenario, a victim becomes possessed. This can readily be seen in behavioral changes, a pronounced aggression, changes in voice, physical strength, strange food preferences and an aversion to churches, bibles and blessed objects like holy water and crosses or rosaries. Roman Catholic medals will be shunned with great anger.

The possession advances. The victim may demonstrate a knowledge of things they can’t possibly know and may even speak in another language it never knew. This is a critical point in which time is short and an exorcism must be performed, properly by someone of great faith. Sometimes they are successful and sometimes the strain is too much for the victim. There are case histories of both.

Possession is not as rare as some believe, but Christians cannot be possessed. However, a demon can outwardly attach to the victim and cause accidents, illness and misfortune. The same ritual applies. If there is one in your house, it becomes more difficult. The rite of exorcism doesn’t always work, and sometimes it’s best to move out.

No, salt won’t keep demons out or in. Sage may temporarily work, but it’ll be back.

The most important thing to consider is this: don’t look for demons. Don’t ghost hunt. Don’t use spirit boards. Don’t look for answers from mediums, because too many are fakes and make everything worse. Likewise avoid witches; they get their power not from God, but demons which will turn on them, you or both.

But witches and demons cannot reproduce with people through their dreams. Okay? No. And endometriosis isn’t caused by sex with a demon either.

As for alien DNA being used in making prescription drugs, hell no. Anyone who believes that is in dire need of a lobotomy.

Emmanuel posted on both Facebook and Twitter and went viral. She said we don’t need a mask. That there’s a cure for COVID-19: hydroxychloroquine. A medicine ruled dangerous to COVID-19 patients by federal authorities. Trump retweeted her despite the alien DNA shit, and this happened.

Facebook and Twitter pulled her posts in accordance with their iron rule concerning misinformation about COVID-19, but who knows how much damage was done? People believe the Earth is flat!

Madonna also retweeted it. That’s hardly news, considering.

Emmanuel also believes that reptoids are ruling our governments from underground facilities like Denver International Airport. These beings can change shape and appear to be human. The entire Bush family is a bunch of reptile people.

I feel dirty. Like I need a shower that would last a week.

What a turnoff these dumbass people are. I may never want to touch myself again.

Silent No More

It’s weird enough for me. I mean, it’s the kind of weird that only I seem to notice. Since writing my post “Silent Summer,” it seems like a spell or something has been broken. Last Friday, the sounds of summer returned. A few moments ago, I heard an owl. Gradually, all of the pieces of the summer symphony nature performs have been added to the area.

At first, crickets and a single cicada. Over the past week, more of them. Tonight, the full orchestra is putting on a grand show. It’s good to hear.

Funny, the things we take for granted. Until something is gone, you never really appreciate it. We humans, we’re an ungrateful bunch.

But this leaves a mystery unsolved: what caused the eerie, deathly silence in the first place, and how could it have lasted for so long? My next door neighbor actually talked about it with me, so I’m not questioning myself.

It was there. Silence in the surrounding area during summer, with stands of trees and patches of forest so close, is a sign of danger. If you’re in or near the woods and everything gets quiet, and you’re not making a lot of noise, you are not the cause. Even crickets within a yard will chirp again if you’re there and standing still. But to have the woods go quiet as far as you can hear, you need to get out and make tracks on home.

I don’t have the answer to the mystery. I took it as a bad sign, an omen perhaps, and now I believe that apex predators were in the are. I had a bad feeling, there was a heaviness in the air. What silences a forest?

It could have been weather related, but I never saw anything like this, and around here, crickets and cicadas will perform all the way past October. Especially crickets, though if the temperature drops low enough, their chirping is slower, but this, I’ve never seen in summer.

If not weather, how about something geological? I’m not aware of anything significant. I do believe there were things out there in the darkness, lots of them, over a vast area, which I sensed and which made the night quiet and slightly frightening. I have a few horrible guesses what they could be, but for now, I’m not sweating it.

The sounds of summer are back.