Yes, I made that word up.  Being a poet, I have poetic license to create new words at will just because I want to.  That's my story and I'm sticking by it.

Last night, unable to wait until Thanksgiving for it, Jeb made a full turkey dinner... Big beautiful tender bird, future turkey sandwiches, turkey barley soup, and turkey Cacciatore, and both Bonnie and Stephen there to join us.  Even Mooshu got some turkey.  He's a sick kitty; he needs the spoiling and doesn't mind it a bit.

There was a knock on the door after dinner and, being closest to it, I was the one who answered it.

A plump and harmless looking old woman was standing there with a few dollar bills in her hand.  I didn't know her.  The first words out of her mouth were, "Oh, hello.  Sorry if I knocked on your door."

Sorry if I knocked on your door?  Normal instant  response to any statement presaged by "sorry" is "It's okay," but, baffled, I didn't say it this time.  Doors don't get knocked on by accident, especially if you have to go through the gate and up the walkway and steps to do it.  And it might not have been okay.  All right if she had a broke down car and needed us to call her a tow truck.  All right if she were my sweet Mexican neighbor that is always making tamales and cookies to sell.  All right many manners of request for help... but not all right at all she were a sales person or evangelist - not the sort I'd care to encourage, you know.

What she turned out to be took me totally off guard.  As I stood there flummoxed, she asked, "Are your parents here Honey?"

I blinked at her.  I'm used to getting that question over the phone, but in person?  That's novel!  "I'm the parent here.  Is there anything I can help you with?"

She brandished the money at me.  "I just want to buy some cigarettes.  I'm used to getting them for 25 cents each."

"I'm sorry," I said (though I wasn't really), "no one smokes in this house."

She nodded sagely.  "I know how that is: out of respect.  It's the same in my house."

"No really," I said.  "None of us smoke at all." 

Couldn't she tell by the lack of smoky smell about our house?  It's sure obvious to me when I stand at the door of any home containing smokers.  I should the think the reverse would be just as obvious.

"It's okay, Honey," she persisted.  "I won't tell your mother if you sell me a few cigarettes."

"I am the mother.  I have no cigarettes to sell.  I'm sorry."

She probably simply didn't drive to the local store because, like many elderly, she didn't like to drive in the dark... maybe no longer drove.  I'd have volunteered to drive her if she'd needed anything that was actually good for her that I didn't already have on hand.  I wouldn't have minded.  As it was, though, I shut the door gently at that point, dismissing her, pointedly refraining to mention that the neighbor on our right was a smoker who could probably have sold her some, but I really didn't care to encourage he senile delinquency. Old lady like that of fragile looking health anyway wanting someone to help shorten her life and age her even faster?  I wouldn't do that if I could.  It wouldn't be right.  But I couldn't anyway. 

It's still making me grin a bit that she thought I was a kid.

As if in sympathy for the old woman's addiction, the ghost that calls herself "Grandma" seemed to be hanging around our bedroom last night.  Several times  caught the sickening whiff of the cigarettes and stale perfume I associate with her.  It was as though she were standing over me tut-tutting.  I was tempted to flee the room from that smell, but was too tired to do it and so held my ground, albeit trying to bury my nose in Jeb's back, until finally she went away. 

Humf anyway!  She most definitely doesn't like to hear it said to her, but I was very tempted to remind her that she died of that smoking habit of hers and she oughten be wanting to see anyone else inflicted with it.  I know she wasn't an unkind person at heart; only a terribly addicted one.

Anyway... must go out and get the kitty some more medicine.  Dang me if I didn't leave the amoxicillian out overnight.  Very bad of me!

Good morning though!

Finally got to see the first episode of the V remake last night and saw a couple of familiar faces, both V, both from Firefly, another favorite sci-fi series of mine.  One of them was the guy who'd played the funny hippyish genius pilot Wash.  The other, this angelic face, is of the actress that played Anara, though it took me a while to recognize her with short hair:

The new V has so far a lot of differences with the old one, but mostly only in the peripheral characters and names as well as the necessary updating in accordance with current affairs.  Diana in the old one is now Anna in the new one - both of them equally angelic looking and equally NOT actually angelic.  Sorry for telling you if you if you didn't already know but hey, if haven't already caught the clue from her first on ship interview with the reporter, then I have to say there really is no hope for you anyway.  How did she put that? 

"Just please don't ask me anything that could paint us in a negative light."

And the reporter gave her a dumbfounded look and asked, "Excuse me?" only to have her repeat it and say that the interview would not continue unless he agreed.

"There will be millions of people hanging on your every word," she adds by way of inducement.

He knows full well that he is in some way selling out on his own soul to agree to this.  He does so, but with heavy misgivings and a great deal of suspicion when, cameras rolling, Anna put on her quintessential halo and immediately says, "Ask me anything... Anything at all," smiling sweetly.

Okay, another small way the new V differs from the old - perhaps due to the much shortened attention span of its present-day audience: there is no beating around the bush that the Visitors are reptilian.  It becomes very quickly apparent, whereas in the old V, there were hundreds of vague hints before anything at all was revealed and then not in the first episode if I remember correctly.

Other differences are the sleeper cells (missing from the original version), the tie-in with wars and terrorism the implication that the Visitors have been here a long time before revealing themselves and that maybe they didn't come from outer space at all.  Very interesting those addends.

I always did think the societies that terrorists emerge from had something Draconian at their heart.

Reptilians in sleeper cells... here for a long time... Hmmmmm.....  This is an interesting old concept on which you can find a great deal just by googling "reptilian," reptoid," "reptilloids," "Draconian," or "Draco" online.  You will also find lots of famous names associated with it as well as the New World Order concept and the notion of entities that feed on negative energies.  I found this on them somewhere or other; I think it was on a site that claimed this was from the library of ancient Atlantis reputed to be hidden beneath the sphinx in Egypt:

 An extract from the Emerald Tablets of Thoth

Far in the past before Atlantis existed,
men there were who delved into darkness,
using dark magic, calling up beings
from the great deep below us.
Forth came they into this cycle.
Formless were they of another vibration,
existing unseen by the children of earth-men.
Only through blood could they have formed being.
Only through man could they live in the world.

In ages past were they conquered by Masters,
driven below to the place whence they came.
But some there were who remained,
hidden in spaces and planes unknown to man.
Lived they in Atlantis as shadows,
but at times they appeared among men.
Aye, when the blood was offered,
for they came they to dwell among men.

In the form of man they amongst us,
but only to sight were they as are men.
Serpent-headed when the glamour was lifted
but appearing to man as men among men.
Crept they into the Councils,
taking forms that were like unto men.

Slaying by their arts
the chiefs of the kingdoms,
taking their form and ruling o'er man.
Only by magic could they be discovered.
Only by sound could their faces be seen.
Sought they from the Kingdom of shadows
to destroy man and rule in his place.

But, know ye, the Masters were mighty in magic,
able to lift the Veil from the face of the serpent,
able to send him back to his place.
Came they to man and taught him the secret,
the WORD that only a man can pronounce.
Swift then they lifted the Veil from the serpent
and cast him forth from the place among men.

Yet, beware, the serpent still liveth
in a place that is open at times to the world.
Unseen they walk among thee
in places where the rites have been said.
Again as time passes onward
shall they take the semblance of men.

 So I'm waiting to see if the new V is, in fact, playing on this concept.  Have you seen it yet?  What are your thoughts on it?

I’ve never done drugs or alcohol.  I’ve always been too paranoid of losing control of myself to let that happen.  Likewise, in sexual relations - because I’ve known otherwise in my youth - I want at least equal control of the situation or I want out of it.  I never want to be “owned.”

I’ve gotten alcohol in me by accident before but have never been drunk; only violently ill from it.  Yet I don’t think I’m actually allergic to it since I can touch it with fingers and have no reaction. 

It could be that I inherited my distaste for drinking from my grandfather – not by word or deed though.  I never knew much about his birth family while he was still alive.  I only found out about them afterwards; which is to say only in the last several years.  It seems that my grandfather was the only member of his family that didn’t drink at all.  He wouldn’t touch the stuff. 

In retrospect, I think he had good reason to fear the effects of alcohol.  His other immediate family members were all serious alcoholics with abusive tendencies towards each other and everyone else as a result of their drunken rages.  Maybe he passed that onto me via genetic channels the way instincts will travel through the descendents of any species.

I’ve seen people get drunk and some of them have dramatic personality changes and don’t remember a thing about what they did while in that state.  It was literally as if they were out of their mind at the time and had left someone else temporarily in charge.  It makes me nervous enough of them that I avoid friends who are drinking.  Strangers don’t matter because they were already strangers to begin with so no big shock.

Being around people who use drugs is even weirder for me.  I’ve never been one who can see the colors of auras, but I’ve always been able to feel them in a way I can’t begin to explain - like an electrical sense of presence I guess.  Anyway, the odd thing about people who’ve recently used any kind of psychedelic drug is that their aura fades out in the same exact way it does on people who are either very ill or soon to die (of any cause, including accidents).  It’s like being around an artificially animated corpse or a possessed person: creepy as hell.

I’ve left my body on occasion myself – OBEs in the classical sense, lucid dreaming – but never by route of inebriation or drug induced states… though I have heard that doing so via certain drugs is almost the exact same state sans the physical side effects.  As a matter of fact there was a series of secret mind control experiments in the 1950s I’ve read about that actually banked on it.  LSD was one of the drugs they used on often unsuspecting subjects.  I’ve found references to it various things I’ve read on the subject mind control, OBEs, PSI experiments and the like, but this little bit on Wikipedia today:

“LSD was the original centerpiece of the United States Central Intelligence Agency's top secret MK-ULTRA project, an ambitious undertaking conducted from the 1950s through the 1970s designed to explore the possibilities of pharmaceutical mind control. Hundreds of participants, including CIA agents, government employees, military personnel, prostitutes, members of the general public, and mental patients were given LSD, many without their knowledge or consent. The experiments often involved severe psychological torture, and many victims committed suicide or wound up in psychiatric wards.^{[citation needed]} The researchers eventually concluded that LSD's effects were too varied and uncontrollable to make it of any practical use as a truth drug, and the project moved on to other substances. It would be decades before the US government admitted the existence of the project and offered apologies to the families of those who had died during the experiments.”

Okay, so why am I thinking about this at t he moment?  Well, a few things brought it to mind…

Last Friday, on Xanga, a young woman I don’t know blogged that she was going to try LSD for the first time.  It was one of the featured blogs short as it was and far from warning her off, a whole slew of commenters congratulated her on what a good time she was about to have.  Never mind the risk of going out of your mind.  LSD was abandoned even by the dirty buggers who ran MKULTRA because it was so damn uncontrollable.  *SHUDDER* 

Does the DEA pay any attention to Xanga at all, or is LSD no longer a controlled substance?

This weekend, I watched an old movie called The Bride about the woman that Dr. Frankenstein reanimated as a bride for his first creation and then ended up trying to keep for himself since unlike his first experiment, this one was beautiful and much more articulate. 

That part about her being articulate struck me as particularly interesting.  She had no personal memories of a life before but still had body memory of such skills as language, basic instincts, walking, and horsemanship. 

Isn’t a brain dead person also brain damaged for lack of oxygen to the brain?  Yet both of Frankenstein’s “creations” were basically corpses reanimated via electricity sans their original souls.  That was precisely what was so creepy about the original Frankenstein by Mary Shelly, wasn’t it?

But was he soulless?  I can see where a dead body could be artificially reanimated if the body were still fresh enough and intact.  People are, after all, often kept artificially alive for long periods of time when they should be dead.  But is the original soul what always comes back?  I don’t think so. 

A shell emptied of or only loosely held by a soul would seem to me to be an open invitation to whatever disembodied spirit might want it.  These come under two appellations that I know of that are probably one and the same thing: walk-ins and spirit possessions.

Today, the first article of the day I read was another about young Muslim girls in Afghanistan committing self-immolation to avoid forced marriages to much older and/or abusive men.  I know what it’s like to be stuck in a life where there’s so little room to be oneself and so much upset to go through it really doesn’t seem worth it.  I knew that in Iran and it wasn’t even close to as bad as these Afghan girls had it.  I also think that if I’d succeeded in killing myself over such, I’d have been one hell of a wrathful ghost… or maybe just a lost one, feeling forever cheated of a worthwhile life, wondering if rebirth in the normal course of things would even be worth the risk.

In the portion of Real Vampires, Night Stalkers, and Creatures from the Darkside by Brad Steiger I read at lunchtime, there was one story about a strictly religious Southern Baptist college boy that was possessed by the spirit of an alleged Egyptian woman.  Both tired from studying late and in a rebellious mood due to his father’s excessively controlling way, he finally agreed to a drinking party with his secular friends.  At the bar, this beautiful large-eyed, raven haired, dark complicated 40ish woman dressed all in black and wearing a niqab flirted with him until, tempted, he left with her, leaving his astonished friends to pay for his tab.  When finally in the wee hours he went home, it was with her in possession of his body.  His soul had somehow been evicted by her – literally.

Through 6-months of psychologists and sedation since she was a violent rowdy his parents couldn’t deal with and was clearly not him, she caught the attention of a professor that happened to recognize the strange foreign language she often ranted in.  It was Egyptian.  So he asked to speak to her rather than the boy.

She was more than willing to talk.  She spoke of having secretly worshiped the old gods in Egypt of several hundred years ago (still in the Islamic period), apparently as an act of teenage rebellion against the then strictly interpreted Islam of the day.  This was with a small group of other cultists and involved human sacrifice and blood drinking. 

The joke was on her, though.  What she'd done to so many others was soon done to her.  As a virgin, she herself made an ideal sacrifice and she was furious with her “friends” for making one of her.  She was impatient to live again so began a campaign of walking-in or possessing the bodies of other young women who’d one way or the other let their guard down over the centuries via drunks, drink, or depression.

Anyway, a Christian priest called in to exorcise her was unable to do anything but piss her off.  A middle-eastern spiritualist called in by the family reluctantly and as a dead last resort, was finally able to do it via ancient Egyptian rites.  And the boy came back, waking as if from a deep slumber and no inkling of what had gone on in his absence or how much time had past.  He thought it was the morning after his one and only drinking bout.

I just thought that was very interesting.  Don’t know what point, if any, I intended to make, except maybe the moral to the story: never go out of your mind if you’re not going to leave it in control of some aspect of other of yourself.  Otherwise, you may very lose your body to some other mind.

Wow that sounds weird.

To save a friend, he's been led away from his family and life into a darkness not quite as dark as he might have expected, but somehow a pawn between Vampons that kill and Vampires that only mesmerize and merely sip.  Interesting movie.  I liked it.  But I don't want to spoil it for you.  I don't want to tell you too much.  Just a little from out of a battle of good and evil:

He's weak as she pulls him up and guides him away from the fray, nestles him on sacks behind the curtains at the back of the stage. 

"You're a vampire," she says, "you need blood," and gets only his woozy stare.  And then she moves her hair and tugs down the shoulder of her top, exposing the neck to him bare, quiet pulse pounding there.  "Drink mine... only don't take too much."

He shakes his head.  "No.  I won't do that.  I won't drink blood.  Whatever it is that makes me still human... I have to hold onto that."

Her turn to shake her head.  "No Darren, you don't understand.  You can do this.  You need to.  And Their eyes lock and then slowly he leans toward her, kissing that sweet pulse, dipping his head and taking that little drink of life from her as gently as he can.

I'm not sure I'm recalling the dialog exactly right.  I remember the message more than the words but I am certain of the words, "it's not what you are that makes you human, but who you are."  They are amazingly, wonderfully, apt.

Later and much safer, he's looking down into her sweet face and asks if he can kiss her.

She looks at him in exasperated surprise.  "Darren, I let you drink me blood.  What do you think?"

I guess...  Hm.  If kissing is normally first base, what would offering and/or drinking blood consensually be?  It seems way more intimate than kissing is, terribly vulnerable, certainly a measure of trust.  So... yeah... he kisses her and up goes her tail.  Uhm.  Monkey tail that is.

Have you seen this movie yet?  If so, what did you think of it?  And have you read the book?  Is there a book?  It sort of reminded me of Something Wicked This Way Comes, though not quite as dark.

This was inspired by a post I read at tripcrazed@crazed this morning this morning, How Other Countries See the USA, and comprises at least part of my response to it there:

As an American woman, I've gotten mixed reaction when travelling to other parts of the world. 

In Paris France, the people were downright hostile unless money were involved.  I tried to speak my high school French to them, the best I could do, but they seemed to see my poor pronunciation as a personal insult to them though it wasn't intended to be.

In Germany, they were standoffish until I tried to speak my limited German to them, and then they were totally friendly and inviting, sometimes even answering me in English.

In Iran, I got a lot of sexual harassment from the men and endless innuendos about how American women were supposed to be despite my wearing full hijab and speaking pretty good Farci.  I learned not to shake hands with them because it ALWAYS seemed to give them the wrong idea.  But that was only with men in general. 

As part of a couple or a family, the people were very warm and hospitable, always willing to invite strangers in for tea or even dinner, even be she an American.  But this was confusing, really, since in the street they would have these fairly regular hate rallies, shouting, "Death to America!" at the top of their lungs.  Then too, was the attitude of the women that I shouldn't be let to raise my own child.  My husband then was an Iranian and everyone was worried about "his" child being influenced by an American.

Later, after leaving Iran, it is of note that many of those that shouted "Death to America" and disdained the American influence I'd have on my child, nonetheless fled to America from the Islamic Regime that they themselves had put in power. 

Do they not hate us anymore then?  I'm not sure.  When I point to the IRI and ask Iranians still there, unable to get out, why they put up with it, they invariably go into a tirade about how it's all the fault of the U.S. and Britain and that Iran wouldn't have these problems if not for the greed of oil companies. 

Excuse me?  I don't understand that. 

Then I get the whole spiel about how Iran once got their Shah out of power (in the early 1950s) and replaced him with someone popular, a Mr. Mosadegh, and how the American CIA then removed Mosadegh and put the Shah back in power again until he was finally toppled in the 1979 revolution. 

This time, the Iranian put their religious teachers in power and have apparently regretted it ever since.  There is no dictatorship like a religious dictatorship.  Their Shah was a pussycat by comparison – though there aren’t many alive today that still remember it, there were then.  When I was there, I met a great many people, especially women, still in shock at having so suddenly lost their civil rights to the power of the new regime.

I think I may never really understand how Iran really sees us. It seems like anything that goes wrong there is blamed on us.  And an awful lot goes wrong there!  They have my sympathy… but I will always be more than a little leery of any relationships the U.S. has with them and have no idea how to react to their mixed feelings toward us. 

Yet they seem to expect something of us and I don’t know what.  Do they want our help?  If so, what kind of help?

The Mosadegh incident happened about 10 years before I was born.  I know the politics were considerably different back then and the CIA, no doubt, had too much power.  But in whose interest was it for them to meddle in someone else’s chosen government? 

That would be the oil companies.  I think my Iranian associates are right about that.  They’re greedy and ruthless and would do anything to get the oil.  Since this seems to win us nothing but enemies in the world, my hope is that the U.S. will just stop buying foreign oil – at least from countries that, either meddled with or simply too ideologically different, hate us. 

We should, moreover, not buy any product from nations run by dictators.  Money keeps dictators in power.  We could remove a vital income source from them.  Maybe they’d crumble then.  Or, if they didn’t, it would at least not be seen as our fault – especially since the oil companies not dealing with foreigners would then not feel any temptation to mess with their governments.

Wouldn't the world be a better place then?

In any case, as regard oil, at least, it a resource we need to find alternatives for before we run out of it or it brings us to more grief.  And I don’t think this is anywhere even close to an impossibility.  We’re stuck on it more by habit than anything.

Either way, I think we should just bud out of the problems of other nations and attend our own.  They don’t like us when we bud in and, personally, I think its bad business to trade with those who hate us.  Wouldn’t it be better to just stay out of the limelight and thus out of trouble?   

What are your views on this?