Geez... I'm really missing my computer already, and it's not even gone. Doug's "fixer" talent didn't work. The hard drive might be toast.
This will be brief. The space bar on this keyboard takes more force than the "a" key on an old manual typewriter, and engages with a noise like jacking a shell into a shotgun. My forearms are aching and burning already.
Greyfox here--aka ArmsMerchant. I am posting this for Kathy from the lib to tell her friends that her comp is down. Possibly, Doug may be asble to heal it with laying on of hands stuff, but it MIGHT have to go into the shop.
More details as they become available.
It started Thursday, really. I realized I hadn't been out to check the rhubarb since the snow melted. When I got about halfway out there, I slipped and fell. I twisted one knee, and landed hard on that hand and the opposite knee. I hobbled back into the house without checking the rhubarb, and spent the rest of Thursday and all of Friday mostly inactive and hurting.
Saturday, Doug was frustrated and crabby due to internet issues, the sun was coming through big puffy clouds in an interesting sky, and I was still wondering if the rhubarb had gone to seed in my absence. I took the camera and walked slowly and cautiously....
The rhubarb hadn't gone to seed yet, but the flower stalks were over my head. After taking a few pictures of the flowers, I twisted off the stalks. The rhubarb is puny compared to last year, as expected, after being severely cut back late in the season by a vandal/thief.
We call the game "Where did THAT come from?" We just take turns saying whatever comes to mind associated with the last thing the person ahead of us said, until one of us says something so off the wall that the next person doesn't get the connection and challenges, "Where did THAT come from?" If it sounds dull to you, that's because you don't know the way the minds in my family work. It's one laugh after another for us.
From there, I got onto Xanga, read comments, responded to some personal messages, checked my email....
Before I knew what was up, my mind wandered and I was at our public library system's online catalog, trying to find some books I wanted. I was amazed and appalled to learn that none of the libraries in this huge and literate valley has any books by Professor Paul Davies, director of the BEYOND Center for Fundamental Concepts in Science at Arizona State University. Nor do they have the book I (wishfully) entered in my "currently reading," to which Davies was a contributor. Inter-Library Loan, here I come.
When I complained about the library's lack to Greyfox (my Old Fart, husband, soulmate and partner in crime -- just threw that in because several people lately have gotten the impression that Doug, The Kid, my son, hero, and personal caregiver, was my "partner"), Greyfox said he had recently purchased a copy of one of Davies's older books at a library discard sale. This is even better, owning the book instead of having to return it in a few weeks, but I would think that when they pitched out his old book they would have replaced it with 3 or 4 of his newer works. He's as awesome as Richard Wolfson, as physicists go. I have added a different quote from him, and another picture, to my "favorites" module today.
The last few days, some memories from past lives have come up, and then today one of the messages I received had asked me to blog about my past lives. I pointed the person to the "karmic history" thing in my memoirs, but that involves some lives other than the ones that have been surfacing in my memory this week. I posted something about them at KaiOaty today.
Greyfox, caught by surprise.
Doug and Sephiroth, looking over Greyfox's new car... guys and cars 
I don't know the man on the left... on the right is Jim Kloss of Whole Wheat Radio
...and, candid kittens. They might have seen the camera, but they weren't posing.
Cats are people, too.
Final posting day is on Thursday. Each Friday there will be a new challenge.
The photo challenge is not a contest. It's not about who comes up with the best photo or who has the most expensive equipment. It is about people from all over the world who love taking pictures.
Today's "note from the Universe" was about smiling for no reason at all, saying that smiling or laughing for no reason at all is good for us. *sigh* I can't do it! If I smile or laugh because I know it's good for me, then that is a reason, and no matter how many times I try to do it, I can't do it without a reason. Is that so unreasonable?
BTW, I was smiling when I started writing this, and by the time I got to the end of the paragraph above, I was laughing out loud. I don't care, really, whether I have a reason or not.
The reason I am posting the images below is because the Kid and I had a big discussion this morning about the proliferation of useless stuff on our hard drive, and how hard it is to find anything amid all the clutter. Posting these won't help much with that clutter, but finding them and putting them into a folder did help a little. Posting them might help you smile, and smiling is good for us.
I'm not pleased with the way Xanga forces us to give a reason when we decline a "friend" invite. Why isn't a simple "no" good enough? Don't they realize that egos will be wounded and feelings get hurt if I have to tell people why I am rejecting their offers of cyber friendship?
When the social networking thing started here, I declined every invite from people I didn't "know," in the sense of being familiar with their blogs. I chose one of the canned options, the one about not knowing the person well enough, most of the time. If it was obviously someone who wasn't interested in my blog but was only out for numbers, I'd pick one of the flip responses.
Eventually, I changed the way I viewed the "friends" feature when I noticed how pleasant it was to see that random sampling of my friends' pictures in that little box. When I subbed to someone new after that, I also invited him as a friend. I continually go back now and ask some of my subs to be my friends, when I realize that they aren't... especially the ones with cool profile pics. It always makes me smile to see you guys sitting there in your little boxes, just like Hollywood Squares.
As KaiOaty, I have welcomed thousands of new and returning Xangans, and have friended a few dozen of the ones who actually wrote something worth reading. That was mainly because back when I started that site, I decided only to subscribe to the people we did readings for, so that I'd have that list of our Xanga clients there on the home page. Themes limit the display of subs to ...20? 30? ... whatever, it's not enough, but I haven't decided what to do about that. KaiOaty's friends are a mix of old friends from this site and new people from the Welcome Wagon.
Recently, I (SuSu) got an influx of friend invites from strangers. Feeling expansive, I decided that, rather than just summarily rejecting them, I'd look at their sites and if they'd written anything interesting, I'd accept. One young man who invited me had just three or four brief entries, and hadn't said much at all. He did, however, have a bunch of friends, including the most egregious attention-craving Xangalebrities. So I told him it wasn't because of his writing that I was rejecting him, but because of the company he keeps. He didn't like that, and in his fit of pique he chose to denigrate the blogosphere.
I got to wondering how widespread his attitude is. What do you think? Is a blog somehow inferior to print media? Should we really, as he says, save our quality writing "for National Geographic or Discover magazine," and just blog about inconsequential crap?
BTW, I think I have solved the problem of how to decline an invite without using the canned options or being my blunt, forthright, offensive self. I'll choose "other" and fill in the blank with "...".
I don't remember how this long strange googletrip started today. I have been even more distractible than usual, if that's possible. Maybe some unseen force took over my mind, or my computer. As an explanation, that one makes as much sense as any.
I know I started out searching for and reading web pages about sidereal astrology and Chaldean astrologers. Somehow, from there, I found myself looking at a bunch of oddball military mission patches. From there, through some connection that's beyond my ken, I ended up on a page dealing with a book by Jack Parsons.
What an interesting man! Said to be a descendant of a founder of the Hell Fire Club, his parents named him Marvel, which he changed to John. He died in 1952, at the age of 37, after having helped to found Jet Propulsion Laboratories. A high school dropout, he did solid-fuels research that others in the field credit with having been seminal for space exploration. A crater on the far side of the Moon is named for him.
He was also an associate of Aleister Crowley, who appointed him to replace Wilfred Smith as head of Thelema O.T.O.'s Agape Lodge in California. When Wilfred Smith left, he took Jack Parsons's wife, Helen Northrup, with him. Helen's half-sister, Betty Northrup, then moved in with Parsons, and later left with Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard. Hubbard and Betty married, but he had another wife at the time. They may or may not have had a daughter, Alexis, whom Hubbard later disowned, claiming she was actually Parsons's child.
The Babalon Working, a magickal ritual, was undertaken by Parsons and others of Agape Lodge, to invoke a Scarlet Woman, with whom Parsons intended to sire a Moonchild avatar (think "Rosemary's Baby"). When Marjorie Cameron came along, Parsons considered her the fulfillment of the Babalon Working.
Jack Parsons died in an explosion at his home in June, 1952.
My source for much of the above is wikipedia.org.
Parsons is the subject of one of the "mad scientist" features at rotten.com.
His life has become the basis for a web comic.
In his own words:
"When the majority of men surrender their freedom, barbarism is near but when the creative minority surrender it, the Dark Age has arrived."
"No man is worthy to fight in the cause of freedom unless he has conquered his internal drives. He must learn to control and discipline the disastrous passions that would lead him to folly and ruin. He must conquer inordinate vanity and anger, self deception, fear and inhibition."
[Freedom] can only be insured by the allegiance to the principle that
man has certain inalienable rights; among which are the rights:
These
rights must be counterbalanced by certain responsibilities. The liberal accepting
them must guarantee these rights to all others at all times, regardless of
his personal feelings or interests. He must work to establish and protect
them, live in a manner commensurate with them and be prepared to defend them
with his life. He must refuse allegiance to any state or organization which
denies these rights and he should aid and encourage all who, without qualification
or equivocation, endorse them. He must refuse to compromise these principles
on any issue or for any reason. Nothing short of such a commitment will assure
the survival of liberty, or democracy of society itself.
The comment below provides an excellent excuse to blog about myself today:
Being young, I have a lot to learn (don't we all?) and the psychiatry-related stuff certainly helps in regard to my self-education.
As well as sharing a few of the same interests, you and I seem to be on the same page in many instances --though I tend to discoutn the New Age mysticism. Despite not subscribing to that kind of belief system, I find it quite intriguing and I'm toying with the idea of learning a bit about astrology myself. What led you astray from the scientific method and (possibly) materialistic reductionism?
I'm very curious about you. I thought to myself, "What kind of genetic, epigenetic and environmental determinants could've helped mould such a person?" I suppose your life story tells me some of that... I don't know anyone like you; though I wish I did.
Cheers on the kickass blog,
My husband, Greyfox, the eclectic shaman and ArmsMerchant, would tell you that you don't know anyone like me because there is no one like me. Perhaps there is no one in his experience who is exactly like me, but I'm not as quick as he is to declare the non-existence of anything, just because I've never seen it. This, I know, is another of those traits that set me apart from most people.
"What kind of genetic, epigenetic and environmental determinants could've helped mould such a person?"
An astrologer looking at my chart would see some factors that would tend to explain me, more or less, to an astrologer's satisfaction. Sun, Moon, and three major planets, plus several asteroids, are up in the ninth house of intellectual attainment, philosophy and higher education, and they are in the signs of Virgo and Libra, indicating that I would tend to see all sides of an issue and not disregard details, however obscure they may be. Stationary Uranus trine Venus, Mars, and the Midheaven, put me in the New Age, and Moon conjunct Neptune opens windows of perception into weird realms. Eighth house Mercury conjunct ninth house Jupiter shows me to be a natural born investigator, always seeking (and tending to find) information and insight.
I knew nothing of that, and, following my family and teachers, rejected the whole idea of astrology, until my mid-twenties, when I began to investigate it with an open mind. I suppose that was a major turning point for me in many ways, because I then realized how fallacious popular culture or "consensus reality" could be. Even so, it would be a couple decades more before I transcended the cultural rejection of reincarnation and opened myself to recalling my own past lives. Along with genetics and environment, anyone wanting to understand me also needs to take into account experience, in this life and those that have gone before, on this planet and on other planets.
Boundaries between genetics and environment tend to blur when looking at my infancy. My mother's uterus was not a healthy environment, and her labor with me was so long it almost killed both of us. The damage to her, and her frequent hospitalization during my infancy, provided an enriched environment for me, in that my father received help from family, friends and neighbors to care for me, giving me variety and sensory stimulation. My mother, when she was around, tended to pen me in my crib or tie me to a chair. That also might have helped me, in that it made me rebellious and eager to get out and experience freedom.
From my first exposure to the "nature versus nurture" debate, I've had problems with it. It has never seemed to me to be an either/or situation, but one of both/and. Likewise with most of the other ridiculous dualistic debates between creationists and evolutionists, scientists and religionists, etc. Both sides are wrong, and neither side is completely wrong. Unable to take sides anywhere because both sides are stupid, and unwilling to give up on this existence which is rich in mysteries to solve and adventures to experience, I have been forced, in the absence of an acceptable social group that will have me, to accept myself as a constituency of one within the greater Oneness of All. ... and that is me in a nutshell.
...to inform anyone who might care, why I'm not blogging today. One, I'm in mourning -- naah, I'll miss George Carlin, fershure, but mourning over death is not my style. May he, for the sakes of everyone on this benighted planet, not rest in peace, but hurry right back.
Two: it's Monday. Mon, Wed, and Sat, are Doug's days for online D&D, and today he's hovering to get on here early and finish building something for today's session.
'bye
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