Happy 21st Birthday to Caitlin!❤ 🧡❤🧡

 

These are images I created (my first experience with photoshop) for Caitlin's 10th birthday. She already seemed pretty grown-up to me then. Now she is an independent young woman who has no idea how beautiful she is.

The TrollDoll Channel: HALLOWEEN IS HERE! Fun Family Unboxing of White W...

This is the most delicious video, combining goofy family times with gorgeous trolls. Predictably, my views are near-zero now, but I have concluded I've been shadowbanned, and it's permanent (subs not getting notifications, etc.) But I have to carry on. It dismays me no end that these highly enjoyable videos are being ignored, while that stupid Daisy one gets gazillions of views and comments, most of them stupid. I've tried to include links to other stuff, but nothing works. They've cut me off for no reason at all, and there's no way out of it - banned is banned, forever. Breaks my heart. BUT, I at least got back in the saddle yesterday and posted two so far, and will continue. I love both of them, but it breaks my heart that YouTube won't let even my most loyal subscribers see them.

🎃MANGA-BANGA POP-EYED PUMPKIN!🎃

It's Halloween. The lamp is lit.

Around the fire we children sit

And telling ghost-tales bit by bit,

'Til sister Jane says "HUSH!"

Who's that creeping on the kitchen floor?

Who's that sneaking round the bedroom door?

Who's that squeaking like his throat is sore?

IT'S A GOBLIN!!

Why I remember this tattered bit of song from my school days - maybe grade 3 or 4 (and I took 3 and 4 in one year, which was then called "skipping" but which meant the curriculum was combined so that I could go into a "special" Grade 5) is a mystery to me, but it's one of those things that flies out of the junkyard of all my past lives and hits me on the head like flying shrapnel.

I say grade 3 or 4, rather than 5 or 6, because I seem to remember, vaguely, the music teacher from McKeough School in Chatham vigorously leading the choir, which was made up of "canaries" and "bluebirds", or something like that (i. e, the kids who couldn't sing were literally in their own little stigmatized group, not allowed to mix with the better singers). McKeough School was an old horror of a building which was turned into a heritage site in the '80s, but which may well have been converted into retail space by now - like that OTHER horror, Park Street Untied Church (about which I still get an inquiry once in a while when somebody takes a bit of interest in Rev. Russell Horsburgh, whom I have written about in several posts, years and years ago. I don't recommend you read them.)

I can't and won't go into other Hallowe'en memories (and we DID spell it with the apostrophe, a contraction of "evening" - I guess - and when I saw it spelled in that archaic way recently, I was puzzled. Do they still do that in Britain? Do they even HAVE Hallowe'en in the UK?), because I don't have too many. One time, though - my mother actually sewed my outfit, a black velvet cat costume which caused one guy in a car to yell out, "What's new, pussycat?" to a startled eight-year-old, trick-or-treating me.

I have to get on with my day now. I made this goofy little video out of PicMix gifs, and post it here cuz I want my videos to have a second life somewhere. It surprises me how many views I get on YouTube for these little things, primitive as they are. But there is pushback now because, among other things, YT has become (as they used to say in the '60s) "plastic" - too slick, too manufactured, too uniform, too DULL like a loud TV commercial, all monetized and out to grab your cash. And why is it that so many YTers KEEP ON SAYING, "Like, subscribe, hit the notification bell. . ." at the end of every single video, when everyone who has ever watched even ONE YT video knows all about that stuff? Just as actors shouldn't insult their audience and authors should not insult their readers, YT should not be insulting people who have actually SEEN the little symbols for like, subscribe, and notification at the bottom of EACH AND EVERY video.

But I digress.

Tonight, upon your pillow

Turning Halloween

1

TURNING JAPANESE  (The Vapors, 1980)

I've got your picture of me and you

You wrote "I love you" I wrote "me too"

I sit there staring and there's nothing else to do

Oh it's in color

Your hair is brown

Your eyes are hazel and soft as clouds

I often kiss you when there's no one else around

I've got your picture

I've got your picture

I'd like a million of you all round my cell

I want a doctor to take your picture

So I can look at you from inside as well

You've got me turning up and turning down

And turning in and turning 'round

I'm turning Japanese

I think I'm turning Japanese

I really think so

Turning Japanese

I think I'm turning Japanese

I really think so

I'm turning Japanese

I think I'm turning Japanese

I really think so

Turning Japanese

I think I'm turning Japanese

I really think so

I've got your picture

I've got your picture

I'd like a million of them all round my cell

I want the doctor to take a picture

So I can look at you from inside as well

You've got me turning up

And turning down and turning in and turning 'round

I'm turning Japanese

I think I'm turning Japanese

I really think so

Turning Japanese

I think I'm turning Japanese

I really think so

I'm turning Japanese

I think I'm turning Japanese

I really think so

Turning Japanese

I think I'm turning Japanese

I really think so

No sex, no drugs, no wine, no women

No fun, no sin, no you, no wonder it's dark

Everyone around me is a total stranger

Everyone avoids me like a cyclone ranger

That's why I'm turning Japanese

I think I'm turning Japanese

I really think so

Turning Japanese

I think I'm turning Japanese

I really think so

I'm turning Japanese

I think I'm turning Japanese

I really think so

Turning Japanese

I think I'm turning Japanese

I really think so

Turning Japanese

I think I'm turning Japanese

I really think so

Turning Japanese

I think I'm turning Japanese

I really think so

Turning Japanese

I think I'm turning Japanese

I really think so

(think so think so think so)

Turning Japanese

I think I'm turning Japanese

I really think so

NOTE. I have no idea what this song means. In actuality it has about two verses, though it seems to go on forever. I first heard it on SCTV on the Jerry Todd Show, with Rick Moranis crooning those strange lyrics (pronouncing it "Japa-NEESE"). I thought it was racist and stupid, but since it was on SCTV I more or less forgave it. Then I forgot it. More or less.

THEN, a billion years later I see this Value Village ad for used Halloween costumes, with a song and dance number called Turning Halloween! I recognized it from somewhere. Turning, what, something else? Ah! Of course. Turning Japa-NEESE!

So now I find out that the original was by a British group called The Vapors, and as far as I am concerned it iS sort of racist, or at least damn stupid, so I don't know why I'm posting it except that no one else seems to think so. And the Value Village ad is way cool.

And he glittered when he walked

Richard Cory

BY EDWIN ARLINGTON ROBINSON

Whenever Richard Cory went down town,

We people on the pavement looked at him:

He was a gentleman from sole to crown,

Clean favored, and imperially slim.

And he was always quietly arrayed,

And he was always human when he talked;

But still he fluttered pulses when he said,

"Good-morning," and he glittered when he walked.

And he was rich—yes, richer than a king—

And admirably schooled in every grace:

In fine, we thought that he was everything

To make us wish that we were in his place.

So on we worked, and waited for the light,

And went without the meat, and cursed the bread;

And Richard Cory, one calm summer night,

Went home and put a bullet through his head.

I remember that we "took" this poem in school, way back in Grade 7 or thereabouts, and the chagrin, the consternation of the class: "But why did he DO that?" "He had everything." "Everyone envied him." "It's not fair." "It's a joke, isn't it?" " That would never happen."

My "favorite" was this lovely statement, which I have heard echoed many times and from many people - I mean adults who should know better, not kids:

"You kill yourself because you're crazy, and you're only crazy if you want to be."

I wonder now, if that kid is still alive, whether he thinks the same way.

I'm not supposed to think about any of this, of course. As one writer said, Robin Williams' death caused many people to suddenly come out of the closet and proclaim, "Yes, me too". But where are they now? No doubt they have retreated in terror, hoping against hope that no one remembers their foolishness.

I've written about this before. Halloween is coming, and in the past I've seen "mental patient" costumes, often with restraints and lurid "nurses" with syringes full of "sedatives". It's funny, isn't it? Come on. Come on, don't you have a sense of humour?

No. If that's what humour is, then no.

My brother was in these "loony bins", "nut wards", etc., on and off for years. I loved him dearly, and by his own admission he was not just crazy but "ca-RAZY". Eerily, I used to compare him to Robin Williams in his madcap ability to riff on outrageous themes, putting on characters and taking them off like masks, only to change at light speed to another subject entirely. One time he did a riff on the '60s TV show The Real McCoys, doing every voice from Grandpa to Luke to Little Luke to Hassie to  Kate to - his personal favorite - Pepino. Some of it was so x-rated that we fell out of our chairs.

He died in 1980, not of suicide as almost everyone assumes, but an accident. Two months later, John Lennon was shot and killed. It was a point of despair in my life.

So what is it about people who seem to have everything, who do themselves in anyway? I think of Phillip Seymour Hoffman, relapsing most awfully into a habit he thought he had beaten. I think of Amy Winehouse drinking a gallon of vodka and poisoning herself at age 27. I think we think they are immune. Not just that they are rich and famous, but loved - aren't they loved, too, I mean by friends and family?

Are they? Is there - is there balm in Gilead?

I have already published a couple of eerily similar photos of Robin Williams with dear friends who hold him so tenderly, he looks like a baby bird fallen from the nest. I once read that people who don't feel loved are like sawdust dolls with a tiny hole in the bottom. It keeps trickling out, almost imperceptibly, until the person is desperate for more supplies to keep from bleeding out.

What got all this started again? Well, it's close to Halloween which makes me think of all those awful mental patient costumes, totally dehumanizing but seen as ghoulishly funny, and CERTAINLY not anything to be offended about.  (You're too sensitive, you know? That's your whole problem.) We don't have Parkinson's or MS or ALS Halloween costumes, but then again, these illnesses are "physical", "real", no one's fault, with the sufferers seen as dignified and courageous, and therefore not frightening or subject to mockery. After all, it would be in very poor taste. 

 It's also from remembering Williams, who seems to have died a very long time ago (but at the same time, only yesterday), but most of all it's because yesterday I bought Billy Crystal's memoir, Still Foolin' 'Em: Where I've Been, Where I'm Going, and Where the Hell Are My Keys? It's typical self-deprecating Crystal humour, but not excoriating, with a sweetness, a gentleness that I have always loved about him. In fact, he is my favorite comedian.

He and Robin Williams were best friends. Closer than brothers, in many ways. This book was written and published before his suicide, but on the back is a quote from Williams that now seems poignant and unsettling: "This book is kick-ass funny and truly unique. A Hollywood autobiography with only one wife, no rehab, a loving family, and loyal friends."

I wonder if Williams secretly feared he had none of those things. It's a bit scary that he focused on that, as if to shame himself for having three wives and multiple trips to rehab.  To imply, almost, that Crystal was a superior version of himself - or, at least, not so scarred, not so vulnerable.

I don't want to go much farther into this because I don't fancy triggering off a lousy day of depression. It wouldn't do anything to change the situation. But oh how I wish people would wake up. I thought of a scenario that might have saved him - everyone has a theory, so here goes, here is mine:

He is pacing the floor, both despondent and frantic, knowing there is no way out of the crushing adversity that is coming at him from all sides. Soon he will be paralyzed from Parkinson's, his career will be over, and he won't be able to take part in the cycling that has kept him sane. Rehab did no good at all and made everything worse. He looks back with shame over the battlefield of his life, and for that moment he can't see anything good about it. At all. He has made a mess of things, and there is only one way out.

Though it is agonizing to do, though he has to stand up to an immense shame that is nearly overwhelming, he goes over to the phone, picks up the receiver, dials 9-1-1.

"Hello. I'm going to kill myself. Come get me, please. NOW."

CODA. From Leonard Bernstein's Mass. I used to carry this around written on a little piece of paper. Once a counsellor took it from me and read it in a sing-songy, Betty Crocker voice, then handed it back to me saying, "Oh, that's nice."

I don't know where to start

There are scars I could show

If I opened my heart

But how far, Lord, how far can I go?

I don't know. 

What I say I don't feel

What I feel I don't show

What I show isn't real

What is real, Lord

I don't know 

No, no, no. . . I don't know.

Zombie poison: death in the back yard

I'm not sure why this is -  I surely don't go looking for them - but strange stories like this one just seem to drop into my lap. Now, back in 1812 when I was a kid, we did things like smoke banana peels (after the Donovan song Mellow Yellow came out: "Elec-tric-al ba-na-na. . ."), nutmeg which turned out to paralyze the central nervous system, and tea leaves which just made us all sick. We were either too cheap to buy marijuana, or (in my case) had no idea where we were supposed to get it. I simply didn't know any drug dealers, so relied on my brother to bring hashish into the house when he came home from university. I didn't smoke up that many times, but it was far from a mellowing experience for me. I even hallucinated once, white fountains that I am SURE were not produced by cannabis. The strangest effect was the elongation of music, so that one phrase seemed to last about 5 minutes. In fact, I seemed to be able to make it last as long as I liked. Well. Mary Jane is pushing her way into the mainstream now, and becoming more and more acceptable for "medicinal" reasons, including anxiety and depression. You can even get it out of vending machines now, so WHY do people still do stupid things like eating noxious garden weeds to get high? Read on. . . 


Cornwall Seaway News

DEVIL'S SEED: Teens hospitalized after ingesting poisonous plant

Published on September 30, 2014

By Adam Brazeau

CORNWALL, Ontario - Public health officials and police in eastern Ontario are warning the public about a deadly plant that has sent several teens to the emergency room in the past few weeks.




© Kyle Walton

Jimsonweed.

And unlike other deadly toxins people take to get high this one grows wildly and locally.

The Eastern Ontario Health Unit (EOHU) issued a community safety alert on Sept. 29 after a Russell County teen was hospitalized for ingesting Datura stramonium, also known as 'Jimsonweed or Devil's Seed,' earlier in the month at a school.

OPP say the teen was spotted at a campus after school hours by faculty acting strangely and not feeling well. As police investigated the case, he was taken to the hospital.

On Sept. 26, provincial police confirmed the accused was intoxicated by the notorious plant. He has been charged with administering a noxious thing with intent - endanger life or cause bodily harm. The teen is scheduled to appear in L’Orignal Youth Court on October 29.

“Young people are not aware of the serious risk they’re taking," said Dr. Paul Roumeliotis, medical officer of health of the EOHU.

"Some of them may think of jimsonweed as a substitute for other drugs. Unfortunately, this could cost them their lives."

According to the EOHU, all parts of the plant are poisonous and contain a powerful hypnotic sedative as well as a high level of nitrate.

Symptoms usually occur within 30 to 60 minutes after ingestion and may continue for 24 to 48 hours or even longer.

Jimsonweed is described as odorous with pointed green leaves sprouts trumpet-shaped white or purple flowers, as well as a prickly pod filled with dozens of seeds.

Common effects include high fever, racing heart rate, blurry vision, hallucinations and delusions. More severely, the plant can also cause seizures and comas.

Roumeliotis urges parents and caregivers to speak with their children regarding the dangers posed by jimsonweed in order to prevent any further victims.

In 2007, over a dozen teens in the Cornwall area were hospitalizes after ingesting the hallucinogenic plant.

Search for Jimsonweed on www.omafra.gov.on.ca to learn more.

For additional information, contact the Addiction Services of the Cornwall Community Hospital at 613-936-9236 or toll free at 1 800 272-1937.

But hey, folks. There's more to this story, as there usually is. It struck me as idiotic beyond lunacy for kids to be ingesting this obviously-toxic substance. They deserve what they get, don't they? But when I saw the name datura, it rang some sort of ancient bell from 20 years ago, when I took an an anthropology class exploring the roots of indigenous medicine. Wade Davis! The Serpent and the Rainbow! The true cult of the zombie, in which people from Haiti and other spooky juju-infested lands were poisoned to induce a deathlike state, buried, and revived so as to appear to come to life again. All to prove the spectacular powers of the shaman. Along with the anaesthetizing venom of the puffer fish, datura was a crucial ingredient in zombification. Is that why kids are ripping noxious weeds out of their back yards and eating them, or smoking them, or whatever-it-is-they-do?

Home / ZOMBIE SCIENCE / WORLD BELIEFS / “SCARIEST” DRUG CREATES ZOMBIES

“SCARIEST” DRUG CREATES ZOMBIES

Posted by: ZRS Staff in WORLD BELIEFS May 20, 2013 1 Comment

Unlike corpses rising from the grave in George Romero’s classic Night of the Living Dead, Voodoo zombies are created through a mixture of drugging, religious ritual, and cultural belief.

After being put into a trance-like state that approximates a coma, victims are regularly fed the hallucinogenic drug scopolamine, derived from the Datura stramonium plant, otherwise known as jimsonweed, the zombie cucumber or the Devil’s weed.

Vice Magazine called scopolamine/Datura the scariest drug on the planet because of its ability to completely consume the mind of those who ingest it (see video below).

Webster University Professor Emeritus and Haitian scholar, Bob Corbett, had this to add:

“Eating the zombie cucumber keeps them in their zonked-out state, but otherwise they are just like animals in a pen and will do what they are told to do.  Mainly they’re used as slave labor.”

Corbett went on to emphasize that despite the effect of the drug Voodoo zombies have beating hearts, and normal blood flow and body temperature. They need to sleep and eat regular foods, and are not contagious, dangerous or aggressive in the slightest.

Here we have an example of taking something that has a kernel of truth in it - people being poisoned to render them docile or even make them appear dead - and stretching it in all sorts of bizarre directions. No doubt this has been a boon for the film industry, but it just has nothing to do with reality. Datura doesn't give you an appetite for human flesh - not as far as I know. It doesn't turn you all grainy and black-and-white and make you kill people with shovels. But the phenomenon of one-upping reality, of creating Boogiemen, is a very ancient one. I won't get into Slenderman (yet - I'll probably write about it sooner or later) and all the ludicrous superstitions that can completely disable the rational brain. But the progress of science and technology has done nothing to eradicate or even slow the viral spread of these terror-based beliefs. In fact, what with the internet, social media and other woeful ills of the 21st century, sick superstitious beliefs can rip through the culture like wildfire, damaging our young people most of all.

So PLEASE do not go out into the back yard with scissors, unless you are planning on trimming the hedges over a very long period of time.

"Mellow Yellow"

I'm just mad about saffron

A-saffron's mad about me

I'm-a just mad about saffron

She's just mad about me

They call me mellow yellow (Quite rightly)

They call me mellow yellow (Quite rightly)

They call me mellow yellow

I'm just mad about fourteen

Fourteen's mad about me

I'm-a just mad about a-fourteen

A-she's just mad about me

They call me mellow yellow

They call me mellow yellow (Quite rightly)

They call me mellow yellow

Born-a high forever to fly

A-wind-a velocity nil

Born-a high forever to fly

If you want, your cup I will fill

They call me mellow yellow (Quite rightly)

They call me mellow yellow (Quite rightly)

They call me mellow yellow

So mellow yellow

Electrical banana

Is gonna be a sudden craze

Electrical banana

Is bound to be the very next phase

They call it mellow yellow (Quite rightly)

They call me mellow yellow (Quite rightly)

They call me mellow yellow

Yes, saffron, yeah

I'm just-a mad about her

I'm-a just-a mad about-a saffron

She's just mad about me

They call it mellow yellow (Quite rightly)

They call me mellow yellow (Quite rightly)

They call me mellow yellow

Oh, so yellow

Oh, so mellow

Donovan

 

Dear Sir or Madam, will you read my book

    It took me years to write, will you take a look

Order The Glass Character from:

Barnes & Noble

http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-glass-character-margaret-gunning/1117863913?ean=9781927068885

Thistledown Press

http://www.thistledownpress.com/html/search/genre/Fiction/the_glass_character_p580.cfm

Chapters/Indigo
http://www.chapters.indigo.ca/books/the-glass-character/9781927068885-item.html?ikwid=the%

Amazon.ca
http://www.amazon.ca/Glass-Character-Margaret-Gunning/dp/1927068886/ref=sr_1_1?

Be VERY afraid!

Still has some powerful mojo, even after all these years.

The Resurrection of Peter

The Resurrection of Peter

It wasn’t much of a day. She wasn’t even sure it was a day at all, since they had really cancelled days quite a long time ago and made everything One. Or was it that they had cancelled Night?

Which means, you walk around in a half-state, sometimes jokingly known as Twilight. Twilight was the stuff of owls and demons and things that didn’t even really exist any more. But, she thought to herself, do any of us really exist any more?

They all made it seem as if it were “just her”, and that everyone else was normal. This was all part of the scheme, the huge heartwrenching scheme to take her life away. It was illustrated nearly every day now when she ran into the people she knew.

They looked dissimilar, but all the same, with a strange hazy quality. Yet they laughed and were jolly in a way they never seemed to be before, as if they had discovered an amazing new Secret.

“Emma. Hi, Emma! Haven’t seen you in a long time!” Gretel was wearing the strangest outfit, bright paisley like she’d never worn, a sort of muumuu, with a straw tote bag.

“Hi, Gretel. I think.”

“Oh, it’s me all right. This is just my New Look.”

It’s hardly a look at all, thought Emma, wondering whatever happened to the Old Look, and what made her change it.

“You look the same,” Gretel said in a flat tone. Looking the same wasn’t quite “it”, she supposed.

“Haven’t gotten my instructions in the mail yet,” Emma said, trying to be ironic.

“Oh, that’s so funny! You’re such a funny person! Well, goodbye then!”

“Wait, Gretel. I need to ask you something.”

“What is it now?” She was getting testy already.

“You know, Peter. . . “

“Yes, Peter.” They had both known Peter. His sudden death had been a wrench, for both of them she thought, but now she wasn’t so sure.

“What about Peter?”

“Ever since he passed, you know. . . “

“Passed?” She began to titter. “Was he in school or something?”

“No! Don’t you remember? When he. . .”

“What, when he went on vacation?”

The ultimate vacation, Emma thought.

“Look, I mean when he died.”

“Died?”

“Died.”

“Died?”

“For God’s sake, Gretel! You know what I’m talking about.”

“Oh, that.” She fumbled around in her straw bag for a minute. “I thought you’d heard about it.”

“Heard what?”

“He’s back alive again.”

Stunned silence. A sick feeling gathered in her stomach.

“Back alive again?”

“Of course. Haven’t you seen him? He’s walking around.”

“How, by remote control?” Her sarcasm seemed to be flying over Greta’s pointed little head.

“Sort of, but it’s better than that. He can go under his own steam by now.”

“But he’s dead!”

“Sort of. But not really. You can get renewed now, sort of like a library book. You must know that by now."

She stood there stunned, things whirling around, as Gretel just walked away without even saying goodbye.

She started to comprehend then why everything was different, why she was sort of seeing through some people, mostly really old people, but some of them children. They had a strange sort of translucent quality, but they were still walking around.

And they always seemed happy. Emma thought about Bible study a million years ago, before the Bible was universally banned, and how Jesus had raised Lazarus from the dead. She had always wondered if Lazarus really wanted to be raised, his body half-rotted. Would he have a new body, somehow, or walk around like that forever?

But then that meant she could find Peter!

Peter wasn’t her lover, never had been, but he had been there during the blackest, the most despairing time in her life. He would just show up at Starbucks with his baseball cap and his smile, cheerful as Bugs Bunny. He was in worse shape than she was, but they joked about it, guffawed about how awful life was.

“I heard about a woman who committed suicide. But before she committed suicide she got out the vacuum cleaner and cleaned her whole house top to bottom so it was absolutely spotless. Then she hung herself.” They had both howled with laughter.

Then they just lost touch. Like a sick cat, he had crawled under the house somewhere. She had known he was deteriorating; one conversation they had wasn’t a conversation at all, but a monologue on her part. He’d start to say something, then dry up after a couple of words and look at her in bafflement.

What bothered her was the fact that it didn’t bother him.

She kept sending him emails long after she suspected he had passed (and NOT “in school”!). She couldn’t help it. She’d think she saw him in a crowd. But it wasn’t him. Because the emails didn’t bounce back to her, she assumed they were hitting the target and he was just too busy to reply (knowing full well he had kicked the bucket long ago).

Back alive again. Strange things had been happening lately. She had mentioned her grandfather to a friend of hers, how difficult it had been for him to let go.

“Is he still dead?” the friend asked.

Oh, maybe they meant in her mind, in her memory! But somehow she didn’t think so. Death was the only thing more sure than birth. Wasn’t it?

Would she see Peter again? A wild stab of hope made her heart beat faster.

She became aware of how the light went right through people, and began to count them. It was an awful lot. She wondered just what had happened to everyone. Back alive again? Is he still dead? Did you will this, wish it, or did someone impose it on you like poor Lazarus wrapped in his rotten gravecloths?

It was too much to hope for, but in her next turn of mind, when she did not pass Go but began in the middle again, she saw him. She saw a ball cap bouncing up and down the street first, then a smile.

Then they were sitting in Starbucks, but she noticed he was sitting two inches above the chair. He didn’t seem to really drink the coffee, but the eyes were the same.

They could always be blunt and honest with each other, so Emma waded right into it.

“So, Peter. I hear you’re back alive again.”

“It would seem to be so.”

“How does that happen?”

“I don’t know that, any more than cells know how to multiply or the earth knows how to turn.”

“But is it. . . beyond your will or something?”

"This is a place beyond will."

Her head was whirling. She hated the idea of not being able to die. Death was one of the things she looked forward to the most.

“Peter, I’m sorry, but it sounds as if you’re a fucking zombie or something. The Undead.”

“Hey, I like that! Undead, but not really alive.”

“Look, Peter, there are only TWO states: dead and alive! Which one are you?”

“No. There is the dream state. There is the hypnotic state. There is the hypnogogic state. There is the catatonic state. There is the trance state. There is the transcendent state. There is the resurrected state. I could go on and on.”

“But those are only in your mind, Peter.”

“Tell me this.” He leaned forward and looked at her with his old intensity, and for one moment she really believed this was Peter. “If I were just a body, I mean lying over there with my heart beating but no consciousness, would that be ‘me’?”

“I don’t. . . “

“So what is it that makes me me?”

“I don’t know, your brain?”

“The brain is just half a pound of juice with some wires running through it. Dissect it, and you see some curls and buds and bulges like normal internal organs. There’s nothing there.”

“So where. . . “

“Ah. You’re about to ask me where Consciousness resides.”

“I guess so. Peter, why aren’t you drinking your coffee?”

"I've evolved beyond coffee, I guess." He chuckled to himself.

“You’re not alive. Get away from me! You’re not really Peter. Are you a ghost?”

"Beyond ghost. We've been refined. We don't have to go around haunting old buildings and Civil War battle sites any more."

“But who DOES this? It has to come from somewhere!”

“Haven’t you noticed you don’t have any privacy any more?”

“Oh, Jesus, Peter.”

“Haven’t you noticed all the electronic jims and jams that everyone seems to carry now?”

“Oh, so you’re saying your Smart Phone turned you into a ghost.”

“Everything is changed, changed utterly.”

“So what if it all just shuts down, the power grid and that?”

“Yes! Smart girl. THAT is what it is all about.”

“What?”

"Bodies that need no sustenance when the Time comes. That time when the whole ecosystem collapses, gives way in a great Biblical flood and rips apart the rest of the world with an all-consuming fire."

“You’re scaring me.”

“Haven’t you ever worried about it?"

“Of course. But I never knew that. . . “

“Now we can live under any conditions.”

“BUT YOU AREN’T REALLY ALIVE! You died of AIDS two years ago!”

“But I’m not really dead.” He grinned, looking as cheerful as when he told me the suicide joke.

“You must be dead, Peter. You MUST be.”

“No, my good friend.” He lifted his mug and pretended to drink from it. “I’m back alive again.”

Monster chiller horror haunted house!

Shannon's spooky haunted house story on CTV News includes a couple of little kids I think I've seen before!

http://bc.ctvnews.ca/video?clipId=1032822&binId=1.1184694&playlistPageNum=1

Bewitching: Caitlin turns 9

 

 

The child who changed my life:

 

magic door to first grandmotherhood,

 

the gingerbread lady in the woods

 

come home to herself at last

 

 

 

 

Only minutes old, all pink and gold

 

I held my breath

 

and watched her intrepid arrival

 

 

 

 

 

Born October 31,

 

and all her attendants costumed

 

as if attending some great medieval ball

 

 

 

 

A magic little football passed from hand to hand

 

Her birth announced on the radio

 

during a Canucks game!

 

Already unique in many ways.

 

 

 

 

 

Happy girl in pink, with her Faux-hawk. . .

 

 

 

 

Cinnamon heart-child. . .

 

 

 

 

 

Celebrate!

 

 

 

 

Caitlin by the shore

 

 

 

 

 

 

Little mermaid

 

 

 

 

Sweet girl in red

 

 

 

 

 

 

Down in Mexico, with Bo Derek braids

 

 

 

 

Halloween birthday, 2011

 

 

 

 

Have a Joyous 9^th Birthday, Caitlin

. . . and Happy Halloween!