Day 1 - Turn Left to Go Right

There are some among you who will cry, "Stick to ONE thing and finish it!"

Seeing as it's the Christmas season, and Winter Solstice today particularly, and everywhere is lush with the MAGIC of the season I can't help the pull of wanting to write fantasy.

I know I haven't finished my mystery novel, but I have plotted it all out, the characters have been very friendly and helpful to me, and I really do want to write it and love ready mysteries. I know I can and will return to it, it has no insurmountable flaws (do you hear that The Larch, I'm thinking of you now).

Anyhow the Fantasy Muse has mugged and kidnapped the Mystery Muse so I'm going to have to obey her (and secretly enjoy it). I have a two pronged plan. I want to write children's fantasy so I'm going to be writing and sharing short stories here with that bend. I feel guilty about not telling my youngest the same type of stories I made up for her older sisters anyway.

The other prong, if you will, is driven by a site I found today, 30 Days of World Building. I'm going to be following the advice and exercises there and post the results here. To show you my earnestness, I'm going to post Day 1 here and now:

Climatic Zones and the Feelings They Invoke:

1. Temperate Rainforest - mysterious and magical
2. Rocky Mountains - beautiful and cold, distant and unapproachable
3. Smokey Mountains - hidden meaning, ancient and guarded, wise
4. Great Plains - vast, open, boring
5. California Seaside - surf fun, dangerous
6. Southern Atlantic Seaside - gentle fun, old
7. Far Eastern Beaches - exotic and mysterious, longing, wishful
8. Low Pacific Islands - sandy, warm, crystal, pure
9. Great Lakes - surprising and helpful
10. River - stretches off into the unknown distance, but helpful
11. Swamp - hidden danger, soggy and sad
12. Dry Riverbed - disappointment, broken promise
13. Desert - Hot, uncomfortable, unwelcome, lost
14. Tropical Forest - tiny close danger
15. Arctic - wet cold but full of life
16. Antarctic - desert cold almost unimportant
17. Open Sea - vast with many pop-up surprises

Not Firing on All Cylinders, or Dancing with the Muse What Brung Me

I'm missing days. I write on some and not on others. I'm still working on The Boys of St. Leonard's, but I can't get to it every day. I WILL finish it, but it may take longer than I expected (or planned).

I did figure something out about myself. I'm mostly interested in antique mysteries. I'm not talking about historical mysteries. Those are stories set in the past. No, what I'm interested in are stories written a long time ago, but that were contemporary at the time. Sherlock Holmes, Hercule Poirot, Nero Wolfe, and M. Dupin are all favorites of mine.

I had flirted with writing an historical novel this November, but I went with the Boys. I think next time I'll write the story I was thinking about with a detective that is a WWII vet.

I'm guilty of writing some of it today, so the least I can do is share the snippet.

Captain Thomas Selfridge – WWII Disabled Vet Detective

"So, glad to be home for Christmas, Tom?" Uncle Vernon sipped punch with a ridiculous smile on his face.

Tom Selfridge grunted as he shifted his weight on the kitchen stool, "Not really. There's still a war to be won."

"But Tom, you did your duty, you gave an eye and your right arm." Vernon grimaced, he was not drunk enough to see that he had offended the veteran.

"It's just my hand, and that doesn't really matter to all those boys who lost and are loosing their lives does it?" he stood. He was a tall man who had grown lanky in the service of his country. He was sun-leathered almost as dark as the uniform he wore. He insisted on wearing a mustache, even though it came in too blond and sparse. He eyed his uncle with his remaining pale gray eye. Then he softened.

The older man was round and soft from good living, but he had a good heart and loved his family. He had never known war, nor hunger, but he had worked honestly and earnestly his whole life.

"Merry Christmas Uncle," Tom patted him on the arm and moved away to gaze out the window at the snowy Chicago street in his own anguish.

Slipping

I missed a day yesterday, I was thinking about the Boys, but I didn't actually write anything.

I took off Monday through Thursday with the idea that I could finish the book and get some Christmas decorating done, BUT I ended up painting and stuff because our first floor renovation isn't done YET.

We are THIS close to being done enough to bring up the tree and stuff, but I still have some things to do and now I'm back at work.

None of this helps the book.

Let me give you the first chapter and let me know what you think.

The Boys of St. Leonard’s

Chapter 1 – The Nightmare

The screaming woke Clovis Murphy from a sound sleep.

He heard it again, glanced at the clock, 2:00 AM. He was out of his bed and his room like a shot. He crossed the dorm suite common room in a single stride and opened Nick’s bedroom door. The window was closed and the light was off. Clovis turned it on and saw Nick sitting bolt upright, staring straight ahead and panting.

“You okay buddy?”

Nick’s breathing slowed. Clovis looked down where he thought Nick was staring, at the stumps below his knees, but Nick was just staring straight ahead. He was covered in sweat.

Clovis sat on the edge of Nick’s bed, “Buddy?”

Nick took a deep, ragged breath and glanced up at Clovis, then looked forward again.
.
“Was it Iraq?”

Nick breathed out forcefully. “I’m okay.”

“You want me to do something, make you some tea?”

“You make tea?” He laughed.

“Well, if you don’t want…”

“No, that’s fine. Thanks for coming over. Sorry I woke you. I’ll make some tea. You want my special herbal?”

“If that’s what you’re having. I can start the water boiling.”

“Boiling? You don’t boil tea.”

Clovis gave him an angry look.

“I must be fine if you’re mad at me. Hand me my feet, would you?”

Clovis smiled as he handed Nick his prosthetics and went out to get the tea set out. When he went into the common room there was a knock on the door. It was Juan Vega the seminary student who was their floor RA.

“You guys alright in here?” He was in a ratty green robe, tee shirt, boxers and slippers.

“Fine, just nightmares.” Clovis answered as Nick walked into the common room.

“Oh good. I didn’t know with you guys, I mean, I mean you guys have been doing some strange things, I mean with the investigating stuff, you know.”

“I know.” Clovis said.

“I’m making some herbal tea, would you like some Juan?”

He took a step in the room and threw himself in one of the lounge chairs even before he said, “Yes please.”

Before the water was ready La Bamba started playing from somewhere inside Juan’s robe. He struggled to find his phone, wriggling his bulk in the chair until he found his pocket and phone.

“Juan Vega, yes. Yes. What? Now, I mean now? Yes ma’am. Ok. Right away. Ok, thank you.”

“What is it?” Clovis asked.

“You guys know Chet Reese?”

Before Clovis and Nick could answer, Juan blurted, “He’s been found dead!”

“Dead?” Clovis asked.

“I have to go down and identify the body, do you guys want to go with me? They’re still at the crime scene. You guys investigate stuff, maybe you can help the cops.”

“I don’t think so.” Nick said.

“What?” Clovis turned to his roommate who was leaning near the electric tea kettle.

“We weren’t invited, and we don’t investigate death. Death isn’t a game or a tourist attraction.” He turned away.

“Still, I would really feel better if you guys would go with me. I’m kind of nervous around cops, you know it’s a Latin thing.”

Clovis gave him a cockeyed look.

“What?”

Clovis raised his eyebrows and pointed at his ebony face and short dreadlocks, “Don’t try to play the race card with me.”

Nick chuckled over the kettle as it whistled.

“Ok, right, well, you guys know the campus cops and they found him on campus. Would you please come with me?”

“Okay,” Nick said, “at least let me put together some travel mugs first.”

Stay on Target, Stay on Target

I have a serious itch to write a fantasy story. I need to finish my mystery story, but the Christmas season and our new decor in our house are driving me towards fantasy. My muse is dressed all in yuletide garb and is dancing to a carol. How can I write a noir-ish mystery with all that going on?

NaNo NO!

Funny that this comes after a post on Oxi Day. I'm not going to make it, I'm not going to get 50,000 words done this month on my book.

I have my excuses all lined up, I was renovating my entire first floor, Dad with cancer, wife got the flu, kids' concerts and games, computer at work crashed. Bottom line is, I'm not going to make it again this year.

The good news is that I like the story. I'm going to try to write an hour a day until it's finished. At that rate I should have about 70k words by the end of the year, which is probably a better length for this work anyway.

I've really enjoyed creating the characters, town and the college (University of Senachwine in Illinois). There are still lots of blanks to fill in on the map and they aren't screaming at me, just calling seductively.

Happy Oxi Day

The Greek Old One, Cthulhu wishes all of you Hronia Pola!

Oxi Day is a Greek holiday celebrating when the Greeks told Mussolini to stick it in his ear. It was quickly followed by the Italian army invading Greece, which was quickly followed by the Italian army failing to capture Greece, which was quickly followed by Hitler and his boys coming to their rescue.

It is a very Cthulhuloid sort of holiday, an ancient alphabet, impending doom, denial, bloody resistance, mountains of death, Nazis, screaming death from the skies, muha ha ha ha!

BTW I can't use Greek characters, but it is pronounced like Oh-khee, not ox-ee (the second letter is a khee, not ksee).

Getting My Game Face On

After an overwhelming majority (5 to nothing) I am tossing my computer in the ring and have signed up for NaNoWriMo 2009. Wish me luck.

I'm going to be writing a mystery this time round. I talked about the main characters before. The story is tentatively called The Boys of St. Leonard's.

Cthulhu Sunday

I got the Call of Cthulhu silent movie from the library and it put me out of action for days.

I highly recommend it.

PS. I'm going to go to go to work on Friday as a Superfan for Halloween.

Five reasons the Bears lost to the Bengals today:
5. At least we don't have to live in Cincinnati (it's not a reason for the loss, but at least it cheers me up)
4. The Bears just gave an excellent clinic on how you cannot win NFL games with no O-line, no D-line and no special teams. Did everybody pay attention, we don't want to have to do that again.
3. The team was out all night last night celebrating Da Coach's 70th birthday
2. Whatever happened to Lonnie Anderson and WKRP. Lovey and Ron were so busy trying to find the radio station that the game just got out of hand.
1. What're you talking about? The Bears didn't play the Bengals, that's just crazy talk, they're an AFC team. Forget you.

Strange Weather

Fifth coldest October on record so far, but we puny humans have been keeping records for a measily hundred years.

Nightmares of Katrina 4 - The Arrival

I need to write while I can, but I’m arguing with myself. I need to write, but, I don’t really want to write about, that incident. I have to write though and I have begun to tell the story so I really need to finish, whether I like it or not.

When we arrived in the New Orleans area things were very strange. People had a glassy look in their eyes and their faces were blank. The damage didn’t look too bad to me, but I had been jaded. I hadn’t been too long out of Afghanistan and you just can’t compare any place in the United States to the primitive and deprived conditions there.

We skirted south of the city, far from Lake Pontchartrain where the land was higher and the carnage inflicted by the Lake’s release had little or no direct effect. Still, there were small signs here and there of damage and destruction caused by the Hurricane herself.

The chief indicator was the people. They looked spent and were all headed out of town. Most of them had come back into the area to check the damage and to retrieve what they could. A few who had official duties had come back to help in the rescue efforts. While their own houses were underwater they were helping others.

In Belle Chasse NAS itself, things were even more chaotic than outside. Every state and territory with a National Guard had sent supplies, food and soldiers to support the relief efforts, but none had been coordinated. Units arrived by air and land with no instructions or orders; and with no one expecting or prepared for them.

I have been in the National Guard for over twenty years and I have seen the confusion that happens every month as civilians slowly, staggeringly and sometimes painfully change themselves into military personnel. This was beyond anything I had ever seen. There were regular Army, Navy and Air Force people there who were just as confused. It was almost as if there were some outside force affecting us, causing everyone to be even more confused and uncoordinated than they possibly could have gotten by themselves.

General Honore famously said we were, “Stuck on stupid,” but I don’t think it was stupid we were stuck on, and I don’t think it was all our fault.

An example of the confusion was how supplies were flown into Belle Chasse. The C130s would land, the supplies would be shoved out the cargo door and the planes would leave. The airfield would become quickly and irrevocably disorganized. Any unit with forklifts was employed to move the supplies off the airstrip, and more would land. The situation deteriorated to the point that yellow Post-it notes were used in lieu of ANY military forms.

No one seemed to see a problem with this while the inexhaustible stream of equipment and food continued to flow. The entire month we were there, it never did dry up.

We too, seemingly came out of no-where with no usable assets or skills, but we couldn’t be sent back. As far as the people in Belle Chasse were concerned, we were of no use without trucks or forklifts. The ideas of just-in-time supply, efficient logistics, planning and coordination were just foreign gibberish. We were raving lunatics of no conceivable use.

We spent three days trying to convince someone that we could bring some order to the logistic nightmare if only we could be allocated several rooms, computer and phone connections. As the Group Signal Officer it was my responsibility to make the connections. In the entire month of September that we were there, I never, never found anyone who would admit that they were the Senior Signal Officer in the AO (Area of Operations). Everyone was in charge of something, but that one over-all, coordinated, unity of command, as far as signal was concerned never materialized.

Cthomputer Cthulhu Cthaput!

My work computer died the other day. Unfortunately that was where I had all my Cthulhu stuff (and some writing stuff).

The IT folks at work said that the hard drive was completely wiped, absolutely empty, like it didn't even exist. This smacks of some malicious intent (and not on my part or maybe even not on the part of anyone of my species).

SO, I'm really scrambling to put my external "brain" back together.

The up side to all this is that I found Propnomicon. I was very excited until I realized that the "prop" in the name is referring to stage or RPG props. Oh well, we do share a sort of kinship.

Weekends with Cthulhu

Boy, hangovers are really bad when the Great Old Ones are involved.

Sorry I fell behind on my Cthulhu posts.

Can We Be Alone, Please

Eating Right

I have got to stop eating junk late at night.

Cthulhu Help Me

Note that I have changed Nightmares of Katrina 2 and moved the information that was there to a new post (Nightmares of Katrina 3).

Please excuse the way I've been relaying the tale of my experiences in New Orleans after Katrina. It is a very painful and difficult memory and rather like scrubbing an infected wound to try and dredge up.

Please understand that I am struggling with a way to convey the information in a way that will serve as a warning, rather than simply as a story to entertain, or gods forbid, for anyone to try and follow.

I could never forgive myself if anyone tried to find the places I'm describing in these posts. I am going to give enough facts so that you will believe me and heed my warnings but please do not attempt to find the specific streets or buildings I'm going to tell you about.

I would be most happy if everyone abandoned New Orleans entirely, but I understand that it is home to some good people. For them I hope the best. For the rest of us, if you do not have to go to New Orleans or Louisiana at all, please don't.

I know I won't be going back.

Nightmares of Katrina 3

On the way down from North Riverside in the Chicago area we stopped off in Alexandria, LA near Fort Polk.

Fort Polk is the home of the Joint Readiness Training Center. It's the equivalent of the National Training Center in California, except that the NTC is mainly for training armor in a desert environment, JRTC is mainly for training infantry in a third world, tropical environment. If I ever wanted to choose a place in the US to represent a third world country it'd be Fort Polk.

At Fort Polk we were billeted on a parking lot. We waited two days as our OIC (Officer in Charge) was flown to the New Orleans area to find out what exactly our mission would be. He returned only having succeeded in determining that we would be stationed at Belle Chasse, New Orleans Naval Air Station Joint Reserve Base (NAS JRB). Our mission was unknown, our facilities were unknown, our billet ting was unknown, the situation was unknown.

We left Fort Polk at first light. Somewhere just past Baton Rouge along I10 the expressway was closed for everyone except military, police and fire vehicles. The LA State Police had road blocks up and turned every civilian vehicle away. The road was ours alone. It was a bright sunny day, but we only saw a few ambulances heading southeast, nothing headed the other way. A lone HMMWV (Hum-Vee) on an unknown mission.

Lord's Day Cthulhu

So, I was in church yesterday. There was a Sunday School open house for my youngest. I sat in while they did some studying and then played a game of answering questions. My brilliant daughter stole some answers from the other team, knowing, among other things, the name of the censor (the thing they burn incense in and bless the congregation).

In honor of that I put this image.

Interesting that Acts 16 talks about what happened when
Paul went to Athens. He was invited to debate in the Socratic style. Predominately he was laughed at and ignored.

The church makes this point to show how special Dionysus was to accept the Word and become the Bishop of Athens.

I don't remember hearing this story before, but if I did I never realized that even back then, when you apply logic and reason to the Bible, it falls flat. Now that I'm thinking Deistically I see that as the real point of the story. I think our responsibility as sentient creatures is to use our God-given brains to the best of our ability, not to turn them off and follow blindly.

Anyway, it has nothing to do with this month, but Cthulhu is fun.

Cthulhu Icon?

For Halloween I decorate my cubicle and I was thinking this time to make a Cthulhu icon.

My wife and kids are Greek Orthodox and they're big on icons. We, like all good Orthodox are supposed to, have a space in our house that is set aside for the icons.

They are usually called Icon Corners or Icon Tables. Here is one.

They look very mystic and I think it would look extremely creepy if it were dedicated to the Elder Gods.

I am planning on printing an image of Cthulhu and decoupaging or varnishing it to a board to be my icon. I'm also going to get some of those battery powered candles. What else do you think I could have in my Blasted Icon Corner?

Photographs of Cthulhu

Wait a minute, did that say PHOTOGRAPHIC, as in from a photo of the Great Old One? Well bust my britches and buy me a new white jacket with extra long sleeves, but this here site claims to have made posters from photographs.

I think there may be a certain Inspector LaGrasse that might want to look into that one. Either that's false advertising or something else sinister. I hesitate to say more sinister, because what could be worse than expecting true revelation from one of the elder gods and finding that it's a hoax perpetrated by just one of Cthulhu's many followers, bent and twisted as they are? Huh, I ask you.

BTW, I don't know why I switched into a kind of affected country accent just then.

Let Cthulhu Month Begin!

It's Cthulhu Month again, hurrah! This is the third annual one. That's right, I've been posting daily Cthulhu images two years already.

This year I'm going to try to get some unique images that can be found no where else on the net. I've seen my share of uncanny and unearthly things, I know things that shouldn't be known. Unfortunately, or maybe fortunately for your sanity and mine, I never seem to have a camera when I encounter strange things.

If you have strange images, or know of someone who does, please contact me I'd like to put them on the blog. Hey, insanity loves company, right?

Nightmares of Katrina 2

Army National Guard units belong to two masters. They are part of the US Army, but they also belong to their state and must obey the lawful orders of their governor.

When a National Guard unit gets sent on a federal mission (to Afghanistan for instance) they are alerted months ahead of time (usually), sometimes at weekend "drill." When a unit gets put on state active duty the alert is usually a phone call, in my case it has always been when I was at work. Some one calls you and tells you that you have a certain number of hours to report to the armory.

Usually there is some event that you are watching closely and hoping that you won't be needed, won't be called. I've been on state active duty for riot control, flood abatement and hurricane relief. Every time when the phone rang I knew exactly what it was.

When I was called up for Katrina there were only a handful of us that had the early call. LTC John (then MAJ John) was already at the armory when I arrived. He had actually been there a day before I had to report, but he didn't go with us on that faithful drive south, into the storm ravaged land.

We would have reported to our home armory on North Avenue and Kedzie Avenue in Chicago, in the corner of Humboldt Park. The armory was built in the 1930s when America had thought they had seen the last of war, thought that National Guard service was all fun and games. It was years before the shock and horror of Pearl Harbor, and a millennium separated from the devastation wrought on our own land on a sunny day in September.

On the sunny day in September which I was to report our armory was closed for some badly needed repairs. Walls and ceilings were being rebuilt, windows replaced, electricity and phone lines run. The things they found, bricked away for decades would be another story. For this one, we reported to the armory at the North Riverside Maintenance Center and Training Site.

Nightmares of Katrina

You know, it's hard to believe that Huricane Katrina hit LA, MS and AL just over four years ago.

I was called into active duty to help with the victims. I left Chicago with the advanced party from my Illinois Army National Guard unit (108th Sustainment Bde) just two days after Katrina had plowed through the gulf states.

We drove a hummer down and I ended up spending all of September 2005 at a Louisana Air National Guard Base in a suburb of New Orleans called Belle Chasse.

We had only been back from our deployment in Afghanistan since April 2005. In fact we were the most recently deployed unit sent there (besides the LANG units who were recalled from Iraq to come home and help).

There were things I saw there that I had never seen before, strange things that boggle my mind and keep me up at night. I think I may be far enough removed from the events to relay them to you know. I'm not sure, but we'll see. I'll write the stories to you in the next couple of posts, if I can manage it.

Investigator Marshall Team 199

This is the first scene of a story I just started working on. I've been thinking about it a bit, and a recent L&O, CI got me to thinking about my Dad's carreer as a Chicago Cop. BTW 199 was his Captain star number in the CPD.

"I don't think you're particularly wanted here Marshall." Vega Iggallos folded her massive arms and looked down at the uniformed man.

The holographic face on the blue and red box on the man's left lit up and turned to the Amazon, "Technically, his title is Senior Investigator, and his name is Harris Cerwin, Leader Iggallos."

"That is KUC-42-LAGY, or Lagy for short, and this is EJB-82-RECO or Reco for short, and they are the only things I'm senior to. You're world is a signatory of the Asteroid Belt Conglomeration Accord, gaining the benefit and burden of the Conglomeration Security Marshalls."

Iggallos' neck veins pulsed and the overdeveloped muscles in her jowls tensed. "We expected that the Marshalls would police the SPACE between worlds. The whole point of ninety percent of the worlds in the Belt is for the people of those worlds to live the way the want without the interference or judgment of others."

Cerwin, in his formal navy blue uniform betrayed no fear of the woman who stood twice his height and six times his mass. Neither his firearm nor his uniform provided any real protection, the knobots who were his partners were some protection, but it was really his knowledge that a calm demeanor, reason, and dedication to purpose were enough to persuade all but the furthest gone psychopath.

Showing no fear and having no fear were two very different things though. Cerwin had to fight hard to hide the fear in his throat and the pounding of his heart. His efforts to meet the intensity of the Leader of the Amazons with his own cold, professional, law enforcement intensity were hampered not only by her overwhelming power, but also by the fact that Iggallos wore only a loin cloth, and despite her muscles she was the most feminine person he had met in over a year. In fact, she was absolutely a stone cold hottie.

Her skin and hair were perfect, her muscles, though massive were well proportioned and gently curving rather than angular. Her face, far above his, if he could see past her massive, naked chest, was heart shaped with natural color and a button nose that managed to somehow seem not incongruous with the size of the rest of her. There were some Amazons who looked like a badly cropped photo of a model's head onto a male bodybuilder's body, but not Iggallos. Her blue-green eyes sparkled from her lovely face, even when she was at her most intimidating, like when she was staring down the new Marshall sent from "The Glom."

"Ms Iggallos, I did not choose to come here, nor, I assure you, did the Marshall Service intend to interfere with internal governmental functioning. My presence here, as with most single Investigator Marshall Team's is to provide additional resources for you use and to ensure that Conglomeration are upheld."

"What was that noise?" Cewin turned toward the apparent sound of gunfire.

"Rifle fire." Reco stated, Lagy concurred instantly. Iggallos looked embarrassed.

Busy Busy

I just had to check in because I said I would, but an avalanche of work has fallen on me at work, we're remodeling our entire first floor, the girls have volleyball, I've got my country's 500th anniversary to plan, my wife to murder, and Guilda to frame for it, I'm swamped.

I'll have more tomorrow because it's Friday, but I'm thinking about: female detective set in a fiction town of Ecophilopolis (known as Dam City), a middle aged male detective who solves crime during lunch time at a big business, and a Solar System Marshall who solves crimes in the Asteroid Belt with his two companion "kno-bots."

NaNo or No NaNo

I've done NaNoWriMo four times now and actually managed to "finish" my novel twice. Both times I got to the required 50,000 word count which qualifies as finishing, but both times I got to about 40,000 words and had to truncate the end so I could finish on time. They should have probably been 75 or 100k novels.

SO, they both need heavy editing, which I was never really very good at, and it never really moved me to spend a lot of time on.

I know the responsible among you will say, "Don't write another one until you fix the ones you have," or something along those lines, but I just can't bring myself to spend that kind of time to disassemble and reassemble those novels.

So that's not on the table as a choice.

Table, what table? Well, I'm putting up a poll and I'm going to let my visitors decide whether or not I should attempt NaNoWriMo this time or not. I know some of you are more aware of my schedule situation than others, but that's fine. Sometimes it is the busiest people who are the busiest because they can get the most done.

The poll will be a simple Yes or No, but PLEASE feel free to add comments on the posts as we go along.

Happy Autumnal Equinox

Happy Autumnal Equinox everybody!

I've been remiss in posting here and I think it's one of those snowball things. I didn't post for a while, then I was too embarrassed to post with out something meaningful to say, then I had some good stuff to say but I didn't have time to type them up well. You know the story.

With Autumn upon us, it is almost Cthulhu month, so you know I'll be posting daily then, but I think it may be more of a habit thing. I need to get into the habit of posting, then it will work better.

One of my colleagues here at work took the day off for Autumnal Equinox. He said he was just going to walk around. I like that idea. Every now and then my Dad would take us out of school and we would go for a walk in the forest preserves. He said that sometimes it was more important to have days like that than to be in school. In retrospect, these days may have been after particularly harrowing days at work (he was a Chicago Cop), but I only remember them as great little hikes, usually in the fall.

I really like the idea of communing with nature that way, just getting out and being. I try to remember and observe the solstices and equinoxes because I think in modern life we have alienated ourselves so much from nature that we forget that if the sun and earth didn't play nice this way, none of us would be here. School starts well before Labor Day and ends with no regard to Memorial Day (the traditional bookends of summer around where I live) and work just goes on and on with absolutely no regard to season, day or night, we'll just adjust the HVAC and Daylight Savings Time. The celestial holidays are REAL. We can hide in our buildings and ignore them, but they are happening, and we should pay attention.

That's Demeter in the picture, by the way, the goddess of the harvest. In Greek mythology this is the day that her daughter Persephone returns to the underworld and her husband Hades for the winter months. It was sort of a plea bargain after Hades kidnapped Persephone was that he would share her with Demeter, thus giving us the seasons.

Tomorrow Is Talk Like a Pirate Day! Get Ready!

My pirate name is:

Iron William Roberts

A pirate's life isn't easy; it takes a tough person. That's okay with you, though, since you a tough person. Two things complete your pirate persona: style and swagger. Maybe a little too much swagger sometimes -- but who really cares? Arr!

Get your own pirate name from piratequiz.com.
part of the fidius.org network

Good Night Dear Lady

My Dad called me yesterday at about 9:15 to tell me that my maternal Grandmother (Bushia) had passed. She was a very special lady and with my Grandfather they were the role models for our marriage.

She had been in poor health, but there was nothing particullarly life threatening yesterday. We think she just decided that it was time to go be with Grandpa.

We will miss her very much.

The Queen of the Blues Has Left the Building

Koko Taylor died yesterday at 80. I didn't know her work well enough (I had seen this performance when it was on TV though), and in truth (I'm ashamed to admit it as a Chicagoan) I only started appreciating Blues a few years ago. I guess you do have to live before you can sing the Blues.

Well, I will be making a trip to the library today and get some of her albums in tribute.

Listen to Bellwether!

There is a lovely podcast called The Cthulhu Podcast. He has been kind enough to read "Bellwether's Asteroid" in two parts.

Part 1

Part 2

Building a Bridge of Faith

I realized that I have actually always been a deist, and always will be a deist.

This is important because I have been in a crisis of faith for almost a year now. In July of 2008 I really started doubting the existence of God. In fact, I was pretty sure that there could be no God. The part of my model of the universe that was held up by faith had been blown away.

My model had always been predominantly built on scientific facts. Most of my "path" was on solid ground. There was a very small gap that faith had to span, but the banks of that chasm had shifted and the span had collapsed.

I had to rebuild, but the material I had once used was not strong enough anymore (a modified Catholic catechism with no Hell, no Devil, the bible as allegory, sin and evil as shortages of goodness, God the creator, the Holy Spirit as the spirit of God with us, Jesus Christ as a physical manifestation of God, heaven for those who mold their souls into something compatible with it, the universe and mankind as creations with a purpose, the supremacy of Love, the authority of the church handed down from Christ, the ability of God to perform miracles, and the ability to communicate with God through prayer). I searched and am still searching frantically for material for which to build my bridge of faith. I may use some of the old material yet.

What I have realized as I searched for material to build my bridge is that deism is not material from which the bridge is built. Deism is the tools, knowledge and skill with which I have always, and will always build my bridge, or bridges.

This goes hand in hand with thinking skeptically (or free-thinking), but where skepticism is negative, deism is positive. Skepticism helps sort out the bad material, but deism helps build good material into something useful.

This is very comforting. There is a storm raging in my soul, but no matter how bad things get, I will always be able to build that bridge because I will always have my deist tools.

Well, that's one less thing that I have to worry about.

I SCORED!

I played Rugby today for the Lake County Gladiators against Fox Valley Maoris. I didn't start but about five minutes in the starting Loosehead Prop went down with a badly sprained calf. I went in and played the rest of the match.

About half way through the first half we were at about the five meter line and there was a ruck forming (I don't think it had actually formed yet, which was why this worked). The ball came out and went past me. I heard the Ref (I don’t know why people call the ref, "The Sir" it seems strange to me) say, "Play on."

I turned around and picked up the ball expecting to be hit in the back, but I wasn't and I turned toward the goal line. Most of the other players looked confused. They weren't confused enough to do nothing, but too confused and worried about going off-sides that they hadn't hit me yet. I saw a gap and hit it. Several members of the other team tried to tackle me, but they had been caught flat footed and they managed to bring me down with my head and shoulders in the In Goal area. I reached out with the ball as I went down and downed the ball half in goal. I moved it forward immediately to make sure it was a try, but the ref called it as soon as I had downed it the first time.

It was strange because I think I've only ever scored four times previously, the last time in 2005. In '05 I was really pumped and jumped up and screamed. This time I got up and walked back to midfield. I got a lot of hand slaps, but nothing really that impressed. I guess it was because in the game in '05 mine was the only score for our teams (I think we played three matches that day) all day.

Today we won 57-12. The other Bill on the team (Number 8) scored three times. It got to the point when the forwards were asking whose turn it was next.

Anyway I scored today, number five in my life, so I am really happy. I had to preserve the story for posterity.

This week, I'll be very happy to tell people, "I am a Rugby player."

This isn't actually me, and I had a lot more resistance when I scored, but I kinda dived this way.

Happy BirthdayYou Two!

200 Years ago today two of the most influential men in history were born. Happy Birthday Gentlemen. We are forever in your debt.

I would be remiss if I did not make a post today.

I must say that as someone who holds a degree in Anthropology I agree with the Theory of Evolution and applaud the work that Charles Darwin did to advance it.

Also, as a man who holds a degree from the University of Illinois, I am proud that we have adopted Mr. Lincoln as our own and that he made our state his final resting place (though the events of the last two months have most likely had him spinning endlessly, for joy and then in embarrassment).

For a very long time I was in units of the Illinois Army National Guard (in which Lincoln could be said to have served as a young man while a member of the Illinois Militia) that had as a unit patch a shield with the silhouette of Mr. Lincoln. I was very proud to wear that patch and upset when people did not recognize the same image that adorns our pennies (one person actually thought it was Jay Leno). Today is also the 100th anniversary of the Lincoln penny (to mark his 100th birthday).

Also for a very long time I carried a copy of the Gettysburg Address in my wallet. I now carry it in electrons in my Palm PDA. I cannot fathom or conceive of a greater speech ever made in the history of men, because if it's message and its brevity.

Please take some time today to think about, read or watch information about the works and thoughts of these two men. You will be enlightened and uplifted.

The images are of Mr. Lincoln in Chicago in 1858 and Mr. Darwin as he appeared while on the HMS Beagle. I'm sure they need no further introductions.

Happy Australia Day!

God, Faith and the Science Fiction Method

I think I can say now that I am a skeptic. I've been growing into that role since last July, but now I think I can say that I am and it's what is driving my Crisis in Faith.

I have always been a critical thinker. I prefer that and that term better because "skeptic" is more a lifestyle and critical thinking is more a process. Skeptic comes with a bag of preconceived notions (both internal and external) while critical thinking doesn't. Critical thinking is perceived as assertive to skepticism's aggressiveness. You ARE a skeptic, but you DO critical thinking.

This gets right into how I developed a Crisis in Faith.

When you write fiction you have something called a "Suspension of Disbelief."

For instance, look at any Muppet show you KNOW that it is all just people's hands inside of Styrofoam, but you suspend your disbelief because you want it to be a pig, a frog, a rat; you want the pig and the frog to be in love; you want the animals and things to all be able to talk; you want there to be legs below the waists; you want to partake of the story.

I use movie examples because they are so illustrative.

Another example would be the Blues Brothers. You know that Dan Ackroyd and John Belushi are not brothers, or orphans, or even Blues musicians. You know that the bluesmobile can't jump that bridge, or jump the Nazi car backwards, but you want to enjoy the movie.

Dan Ackroyd had originally written a big explanation as to how the bluesmobile could do such miraculous things, but the director, John Landis told him, you don't need that, the car does what it does because we say it does. There is suspension of disbelief, Ackroyd didn't think it was strong enough to not lose the audience when the car did strange things, but Landis knew it was.

You see, suspension of disbelief can be spoiled. You see this most often when an expert watches a movie in their field or reads a book in their field. They point out that hand grenades don't work that way, or the Sergeant wouldn't tell the Lieutenant what to do, or cops don't talk that way, or it doesn't look like that in a fire. The experts have lost their suspension of disbelief.

Belief in God is like this to a skeptic or critical thinker. Critical thinking and skepticism require you to ask for scientific evidence for things. There is none and can be none when dealing with an omnipotent, omniscient being. Those skeptics that are not atheists keep their belief of God compartmentalized. They know there can be no proof so they don't ask for it in this one particular case. They have suspended their disbelief so that they can participate in their belief of God.

That's the way I feel, or at least that was the way I felt. I don't think I had examined my own belief system this critically before, but now looking back I realize that this is how I looked at Faith. Now it seems that I have learned too much and it has spoiled the suspension of disbelief.

There is a thing in Science Fiction thing that takes suspension of disbelief one step further. In hard Sci Fi you cannot break any existing Laws or Theories. You may present new ones in the space between the old ones, but you cannot break the existing ones.

For example, the speed of light is immutable. You cannot travel faster than the speed of light, nothing can. So, how do you do star travel within a human lifetime? It happens all the time. There is nothing in science that says for certain that there is no "hyperspace." Current scientific theories suggest many different dimensions, some of which may touch every point in our universe, but are themselves vastly much smaller than our universe. If you could go to that universe; travel within it and then return to our universe you could be taking a shortcut. Science cannot show that this is impossible; therefore you can use this in your stories.

You cannot have people travel faster than light just by going faster or building a bigger engine. You cannot have people defy the laws of gravity, or thermodynamics etc. You cannot have insects grow bigger than people and still have them walk around.

Similarly, if there is a scientific law or theory that is broken by Faith in God, it doesn't work. Belief in God cannot go against what we already know; God must be beyond our current knowledge.

For instance, I have absolutely no belief that Noah took two of every animal aboard the ark. Could an omnipotent God have put those animals in a boat so big that they could have held them? Sure, omnipotence makes everything possible, but I don’t know anyone (outside a few fervent fundamentalist Christians who believe that the Bible is literal and absolutely correct) who believes that to be a literal story.

If you break a scientific law or theory you automatically ruin suspension of disbelief in Science Fiction. If miracles break scientific laws then they could not have happened. If the existence of God breaks scientific laws then God cannot exist. At least that is what would spoil your Belief if you were a skeptic.

Right now I'm sitting on my couch with my wife. We are watching a movie and something happens to ruin my suspension of disbelief. I complain to my wife that the movie is ruined. She says, "don't analyze it so much, just enjoy the movie."

I want to enjoy the "Movie." How do I get that back? Is it like the splotches of ink that if you look at them a certain way become a drawing of a face? Can you make it look like splotches of ink after you see the face? I hope so.

Remember Pearl Harbor Day

This post is about my thoughts from last Sunday, December 7th, 2008. I would say "Happy" Pearl Harbor Day, but that just doesn't sound right.

I'm writing this because I think I'm more coherent when I write than when I speak extemporaneously. If I were to script out what I'm going to say I might as well just type the article and post it.

The Orthodox gospel reading today was from Luke 13:10-17 (BTW, the Orthodox readings tend to be shorter than the Roman Catholic readings for some reason). The story is about how Jesus healed a woman and was chastised for it because it was working on the Sabbath. Jesus responded, not with a swift, "Shut up, it wasn't work, it was a miracle for crying out loud." He said that the guy who criticized him untied his donkey to let it have a drink on the Sabbath.

I wonder what the situation was that surrounded this. To me, the miracle of healing someone right before their eyes should have been staggering. I don't know how any one could have questioned that. Were they performing "healing miracles" all the time? Did they think that Jesus was doing the same type of, "trick" they were doing? Weren't they impressed? Why wasn't Jesus outraged, why did he play word game with them? Why didn't he just tell them to be quiet?

You must understand that I never believed in miracles, not even before my Crisis in Faith (which started in July 08). I always felt that GOD didn't set up a beautiful, well functioning universe jut to break the rules that G made for it. Miracles are things that work on the mind, not physics or reality. Now, I'm not even so sure of that.

Let me get into the other thoughts I had when I was standing there in church (in the Orthodox service you mostly stand). I stand in the Narthex or the back of the church (more on that later) when my daughters are in Sunday school.

What's the purpose of church? What's the purpose of prayer? Let me suggest that they are useful even if you don't believe in GOD or are shaky about your faith. The reason is that it gives you time to think, time devoted only to thoughts about GOD, the universe, our place in it and our relationships with each other. I think this time is very useful.

I was thinking that I personally use church time and prayer to my own advantage. I listened to a podcast called Skeptoid. The podcaster in that show is an atheist and he suggested that our moral centers are the same for all humans, regardless if you believe in GOD or not. That our morals grow from a basic human cultural community, guided by GOD or not. With that in mind, I think that church could be the way to strengthen that moral center. If you believe in GOD you are there with other believers. If you don't believe then you could put the very same teachings (love your neighbor, etc.) to work to strengthen your moral character, just take out the GOD driven part.

When I was in Afghanistan I led prayer services when there was no priest available. Do I feel hypocritical about that? No, because I was just there to facilitate others prayers even if I didn't pray myself (I did at that time though, but my argument still stands). They used GOD as the source of their morals and strength, I used the community. When I'm with a group of Catholics I feel at home. I know what they know and I know a lot of what they believe. If they are good Catholics I should have nothing to fear, IF they follow the morals prescribed in their religion.

I wonder if you can pray to the community. My prayers for years have been the type of prayers for strength and guidance. The types of prayers for the strength and intelligence to use what I have been given. I could just as easily meditate and try to use the strength of the community around me.

There is a book by Stu Kaufman called Reinventing the Sacred. I haven't read it yet, but I've read a review and in it he talks about the fact that people need a "sacred" and there is sacred right here in the world around us. The beauty of nature and the human community at its best are awesome and worthy of respect and perhaps veneration themselves

In an article I read recently called "Religion for Skeptics" by L. Karl Branting. It was very heartening. In it he said that GOD performs two essential functions for humans, transcendence and morality.

I've written about morality already, but this transcendence is something I find very dear. This is the part where I say I WANT there to be a GOD. I NEED the transcendence. My Scout law tells me to be reverent, but doesn't mandate to whom or what to be reverent.

Branting says that the community is a kind of meta-being (my word) that we are beholden to. It provides the morality. It provides the thing that is bigger than all of us (as individuals). It provides the immortality we all want.

This immortality is not only in the memory of us (which we all know and which seems hollow to me), but in the way we shape others and the world around us, just by being here. Every one of us, no matter how small, petty or reclusive adds to the human "inertia."

This is the community that I'm referring to when I say, "pray" to the community.

There is one small problem. Human communities are flawed because of what they are made of. GOD, if G exists is not, because G isn't made of the same stuff. This is a stronger base for most. It is just that I can't use that base anymore. I have to hope that the human community and it's evolution are moving in the right direction, and maybe I can help it. This is called Cultural Evolution and I think I'm going to have to believe in it to keep up this idea of a community based morality and transcendence.

I have to explain why I stand in the narthex. I do because I don't feel comfortable in the actual church and I think I might make others uncomfortable (what with my note taking and all). That puts me OUTSIDE the community. That doesn't help at all. I need my wife and children to act as my chaperones or proxies.

On the other hand, what my Father said is becoming stronger in my mind. He said that basically Boy Scouts is his religion. I think this may be closer to the truth than he imagines.

In church they talked about leaps of faith. On another episode of Skeptoid the host said that to use science to find evidence for GOD was going against religion, even though it is being done to supposedly help reinforce faith.

This is similar to Douglas Adams' argument that if you have proof of GOD then GOD ceases to exist because GOD is dependent on faith alone. When you have proof you don't need faith, and you actually can't have faith, by definition.

The problem with this argument is painfully obvious, but what I want to point out is the problem of seeing no need to try to find evidence for GOD. The reason I see for looking for evidence of GOD, or for using logic to figure out GOD, or just the logical questioning of GOD is this, you will always need to make a leap of faith in order to believe in GOD (who, by definition is outside, beyond our direct observations and proofs), but just like an actual leap, the more narrow the gap, the easier the leap. Some people can leap very far, some can't go much more than a long step. Personally I always needed a very narrow gap between GOD and our reality.

GOD is in the leaping, not either side. Right now I feel like the space has closed up and there is no room to leap at all.

Maybe the perfect human community in the distance (cultural evolution) is an effort worth working for, and maybe eventually leaping for.

PropCast I

I am semi-officially entering the world of podcasting. This is my first time, be gentle.

Illini6-PropCast-0108-1203

Or This.

Reading vs Doing

I realized today that I have certain things that I just can't stand reading about but I love. There are other things that I love to read about but don't like doing, and there are things that I like reading about AND doing.

I like camping and I would read about it or do it, but too much reading with no doing would be frustrating.

I like reading about history. I also like reading about strange and sometimes frightening people that I don't care if I never meet. The list of things I like to read about and not do is pretty short though.

But the list of things that I can't stand to read about and not do is, if not longer, much stronger. Archaeology, swimming and Rugby are things that I can't stand to read about if I can't do them. I've tried. I have books on Rugby, I've taken books out of the library about swimming and Archaeology (and Anthropology) but I just can't read them. I'm trying to get back into the swing of Anthropology, I'd LOVE to go back to school to get my doctorate in it, but I just can't stand to read it.

Maybe there is some other way to interest myself in reading about it. I do like to WATCH shows about it, but shows tend not to have the cutting edge information and are not detailed enough to make me satisfied.

I'm like that with learning Greek. I really can't sit there and try to learn it from a book. I want a class and tests and teachers being disappointed in me for not doing well. I want to earn a good grade.

Do you think there is a correlation?

"My" Troops Have Come Home

Time to take down the candle from my virtual window. There has been a candle image at the bottom of this blog for about a year now because a portion of the unit I retired from was deployed to Iraq.

The slice of the Headquarters of the 108th Sustainment Brigade that was deployed to Iraq has come home safely now. I'm so happy and proud of them.

We tried to make sure their families were well informed and looked after while they were gone. Thanks to tireless efforts by many of the wives and friends of the soldiers I think they were, which I'm sure, eased the effort the soldiers made. Speaking from experience, when the home is taken care of, your mission away from home is just a little easier to deal with.

There should be a big thank you going out to lots of people. I don't want to name individuals, but I'd like to send out thanks to a couple of groups.

AVMRA Chapter 7

Vinyard Church

Berwyn VFW

USO

Thanks everybody for helping the families. And

WELCOME HOME SOLDIERS!

Memorial Services, Ceremonies and Faith

I went to church yesterday and had a lot to think about. They were having a memorial service for several former parishioners and for departed veterans in honor of Veterans' Day.

First of all the bulletin had a short essay about how the gospels are "written icons." I thought, "Are you kidding me?" In my opinion, icons are strange looking, not beautiful or lovely. I'm also of the opinion that icons, statues and stained glass are there to help educate and guide the illiterate. To say that the gospels are an imitation of what amounts to picture books is to belittle the written and even spoken word. I find it suspect.

In John's gospel, chapter one he says, "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was fully God." Hmm, did he say, God was the picture? When you put icons ahead of the actual words of the bible then you are basically dumbing-down the thing and that irks me.

Okay, enough of that. That is PURELY religion and will lead to trouble if I go down that road.

An eFriend of mine (Sadie who commented on my Obama post) said that she would pray for me. In my crisis in faith that may sound hollow, but I do find value in prayer and in attending church. I appreciated her offer.

When I was in Afghanistan I went to mass every Sunday. My faith was stronger then, but whenever I have been away on military missions I always make time for prayer and church services. Why? It gives me time to meditate and reflect. It gives me the time I need to get my head right. It give me a small space of time when I don't have to, in fact I'm not supposed to think about mundane things, but the bigger picture. I think that is important.

Another thing I've noticed since I've been looking at religion and faith with a more skeptical eye is that there is a sort of need for ceremonies. I think human beings need ceremonies; we have them all the time. Some are religious of course and the thinking is that God has to be treated in a special, not an ordinary way. But, we also have purely secular ceremonies and they can have just as poignant and traditional meaning and place in our lives.

A good example is the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. Even if you do not believe in any sort of god and you don't believe that we have any life beyond the one we now know; you would still show reverence to the memory of the men and women who served our country and gave the ultimate sacrifice.

I think that prayer and church attendance falls within that greater umbrella of ceremony, but that Ceremony is a much bigger thing. It is also a thing that I think we must have. I think that Ceremony helps cement the morals of our culture. Whether there is a god or not, we as humans need Ceremony.

One of the things about ceremonies is that sometimes your mind follows what your body is doing. I mean, if you get dressed and go to church you will naturally be thinking churchy thoughts. If you get dressed and go to the gym you will find yourself motivated to exercise. If you get dressed and go to work, you are likely to actually do your job. Maybe we have a kind of mental inertia that sometimes must be overcome.

On the other hand, sometimes we do something (go through the motions, if you will) but hold a different thing in our mind. That's something I could never understand about atheists who file lawsuits. You often hear about an atheist who filed a lawsuit because they had to say, blah blah blah with god in it, or blah blah blah to god. Why don't they just say it, but (to them) know it isn't true? Is it hurting them? If they really want the thing that is surrounding that god reference then why can't they put up with that word?

I'm jumping topics a bit here. When I was in Afghanistan, as I said I went to mass every Sunday. Some Sundays we had no priest, so I led the service. When it was available I administered communion, when it wasn't, I led the liturgy service. Even then I felt a pang of guilt at this because I felt like, I'm not worthy. Who was I to lead a church service? I wasn't holier than anyone else there.

What I found within myself was that I was not leading the service because I was better than anyone; I was leading the service as a service to others. I was doing what I could to facilitate their faith and religion. They were the ones who were holier than me, and I was helping them to be so. I want Sadie and anyone who wants to partake in a discussion about these topics to feel that way too. Even if you don't restore my faith, I hope I can, through our discussions, help to facilitate your faith.

The Roman Catholic gospel reading for this Sunday was very interesting to me. In the story Jesus says that there were three employees who were each given an amount of money. The first two invested the money and gave back more than they had gotten to their employer. The third buried the money and gave exactly back what he had given. The employer was mad that he hadn't even thought to put it in a bank to at least earn interest. The employer praised the other two and even gave the third man's money to the first man so that he could make more.

Given the market lately it would be easy to see this parable as a story about money. Alternately, you could also think of money as representing grace or faith and the employer as God. Immediately, for me, the money stood for the word. I saw it as another version of the parable about the sower and the seeds. That's interesting that I feel that in a way I hope I'm helping strengthen people's faith, just like investing money.

Winning Entry! Lycanth Boiling

I entered a contest at Mirabile Visu and WON! Woo Hoo! I love winning! I shared the podium (or rostrum as she put it) with Valamber.

The contest was to write a story of 1000 words or less with the topic of Collision, Windfall and Gift. The challenge was to include a spider and make it really scary.

Here is my winning entry. See what you think.

Lycanth Boiling

The Halloween Decoration Judging Committee squeezed into Bob's cubical. He'd always said that he was a true witch, in league with the dark forces, a claim that rankled Stacy, the Wiccan in the office.

Bob was a small greasy fellow who wore a van dyke, shaved eyebrows and always smelled of clover and olive oil. He had surgically split his tongue, inserted small horns in his forehead and enough piercings for ten people.

His cube always looked decorated for Halloween. As near as they could tell, the only extra decorations added for the contest were some small medicine bottles with post-it labels in scratchy handwriting.

"What is this?" Stacy picked up a bottle.

"Eye of newt," Bob said without turning. His fingers flew on the keyboard at an unnatural speed.

"Witches don't use eye of newt," Stacy growled.

Pudgy Kevin released an ear-splitting scream, "Spider!"

He had been resting his hand on the cubical wall and a large, shiny black spider had climbed on it. It was making its way up his arm quickly, headed for Kevin's face.

"Down Max." Bob tapped the desk. The spider stopped. Bob tapped again. "Here, Max."
The spider dropped down a line to the desk and ran behind the monitor.

Kevin's scream ended, and he disappeared.

"Great. This was the first cube he had actually showed for." Stacy said.

Polly noticed a bottle labeled, "Werewolf Juice."

"Pets aren't allowed." Stacy said.

"What's this?" Polly asked.

"Rainwater collected from the paw print of a wolf at midnight under a full moon. It grants the drinker the power to become a werewolf," he said.

"Really?" Polly asked.

Bob turned to Stacy, "Max is not my pet. Petunia is my pet." He flipped his overhead cabinet open to reveal a huge brown tarantula.

Stacy and Petunia both jumped at the sudden movement. Stacy shrieked, "I'm reporting that." She bumped Polly on her way out. Polly pocketed the Werewolf Juice.

"Don't think that will help you with the contest," Polly said as she backed out.

"Who cares," Bob said. Just as Polly was leaving he added, "What's in your pocket?"

"N-nothing."

"Go on, take it. Use it. Maybe then someone will believe my powers."

As Polly turned to walk away an evil laugh peeled through the office. She whirled around to see her boss Russ standing behind her. He had just stepped on a sound effect mat.

"Polly, good, I wanted to see you. MacDonald is going to Miami this weekend to handle the Patterson case."

"Sue MacDonald? But that's my case."

"Well, I think Sue can handled it better so I'm sending her."

Sue and Russ were very bad at hiding their affair. Polly gritted her teeth and shoved her hands into her pockets to avoid punching Russ. She found the bottle of Werewolf Juice there and fingered it. If only it were real.

"So I'll have to have you come in Saturday to cover Sue's work while she's gone."

"What?" She gripped the bottle.

"Sue's a little behind in her work. Saturday will give you a chance to keep up with your work and get her caught up. We can't have her fall behind just because she's handling a big case."

"In Miami in late October."

Russ smiled, "By the way, Tom won the Halloween Decorations contest."

"What? But the committee -"

Russ winked, "Tom won."

She had a death grip on the bottle.

"$100 prize, right?"

Polly nodded. "Tom won."

"Good girl." He patted her on the rump.

If his father didn't own the company and Sue wasn't the head of HR, she'd have filed a complaint. She spun the bottle in her pocket and wondered if it were real.

At the end of the day, she discovered that someone had stolen her umbrella. As she walked through the pouring rain to her car her cell rang, "What." She demanded.

"Polly, this is Jerry. I think we should start seeing other people."

Polly screamed, slammed the phone shut and shoved it in her pocket. She pulled out the bottle and looked at it. She ground her teeth, the rain dripped through her hair. Slowly, she put it back and got in her car.

Despite the tears in her eyes, and the pounding of her heart, Polly drove the sharp curved road through the Forest Preserve with extreme care.

She came around a tight turn. There, in her lane, beyond the madly swinging wipers was a tow truck. He had taken the turn too fast. She had to swerve. The road was too slick and she flew off the road, down into the flooded ditch and into a tree.

***

"Lucky for you I was right here, huh?" The tow truck driver said as he winched her car back onto the road.

She had crawled out of the car, bottle in hand. Her head was bloody and her clothes ripped. She made her way back up to the road. Without asking he had walked right past her and hooked up the winch.

"These roads are real tricky in the rain."

"You were on the wrong side of the road," she seethed.

"You know, it's real hard to see anything at night in the rain."

She had the top off the bottle.

"I sure hope you got good insurance, cuz I think this thing is totaled."

She never thought about not drinking it. She was standing behind him and drank it in one go. She felt the power as soon as it hit her lips, felt it working, felt the magic. He kept talking, but she was focused on the change, the growth, the power. It hurt worse than anything she had ever known, but that didn't matter.

Just before the final change, before it was too late, she thought about control. Would she be able to control this, return to normal? Would she ever be able to be human again?

With a screaming howl she lost herself to the wolf.

History, Lincoln and Kennedy Parallels

I see parallels with the President Elect and Presidents Lincoln and Kennedy.

First Lincoln, who was not born in Illinois, but made his home in Illinois and went to Washington from Illinois, just like the President Elect. Both were lawyers here.

Lincoln was the great emancipator, Obama is the first President from African heritage, though neither had any history of slavery. I think these are very significant.

I also see a lot of cockeyed euphoria that accompanied both Kennedy's and Obama's elections. This frightens me. Calm down people.

There are people and other countries that may not have been happy with the US recently, they see this election as a grand thing and can see only hope.

I'm afraid that this president is an unknown factor as far as defense and he will be pushed, just to see what he will do. I think this is similar to Kennedy and Khrushchev with the Cuban Missile Crisis. This is why I say, "Calm down." Let's see what the man does when his back is against it.

This election may have made some of our friends friendlier, but remember, regardless of the outcome of this election, America still has people who hate us and I think the world has just gotten a little less safe.

I worry about all the "volunteers" that the Obama campaign paid to be volunteers. I fear that money drove this election rather than the issues. Slick advertising always gets Americans' attention.

Speaking of economy. Although it is clear that he Obama campaign had the message of change, I don't know how radical that change will be or how far left it will go. Will the government take more from me? I suspect so. Will the government get more into my personal business? I suspect so. Will the government get more into businesses business? I suspect so. Will any of that be good? My opinion is no.

Again, I'll wait and see what actually happens. The President is one person; campaign promises are what they are. Politics is thick, slow and messy, not grand, sweeping and level headed. Let's see what sort of camel this committee comes up with, but I'm afraid we are going to get a camel when we need a horse.

I liked the acceptance speech in Grant Park, Chicago. I love that it was in Chicago, but I also like that it was open and lots of people could be there. I like that the VP Elect is Catholic (just like Kennedy).

As long as I'm drawing Kennedy parallels maybe Obama can start a new fashion like Kennedy. JFK ushered out the era when men wore hats, maybe BHO can bring them back.