WisteriaWolverine

Tuesday 1st January
Last night the kids and I went up to the clay hills to watch all the fireworks going off at midnight. We were able to see many, including the fireworks going off at the top of the sky tower. It was brilliant and a nice way to see the New Year in.
This first day of January in the year two thousand and eight sees the first child death in New Zealand for this year. A four month old baby girl died of head injuries, as a result of abuse, at 5.00am at Starship. So much for Sue Bradford's no smacking bill!
The weather is incredibly hot and muggy here, just unreal.Down south they hit 30 yesterday and I have no idea what the humidity level is at, but it has got to be 90% at least.
My neighbours had a party that ended at around 7.30 this morning so, today I feel as though I haven't slept for a week. Anyway, this is the first blog for 2008 and it is kind of boring, but that is not always a bad thing.
Laterz

Friday 4th January
Word in Pakistan is that now they are going to let Scotland Yard come in and investigate Benazir Bhutto's murder. Thing is, there's not really that much of a need. There has been video footage aired that clearly shows a man pointing a gun at her and shooting her at least three times. From the look of the blood in the car where she fell down, you can see that she lost a lot of blood. There's no way she was killed by shrapnel, as she was already inside the car mortally wounded when the bomb went off and her car was bullet proof, so no way could any shrapnel have hit her.
Anyway, it is just another example of the West trying to impose their idea of democracy in a country where democracy would simply just make it worse. I already had the blog about democracy and really don't want to rehash it, but there is a big difference between democracy and a free country. You see, democracy really reflects the will of those with the most dollars to buy party alliances and pay for promises to be kept once in power if the rich endorse them so that they may win, through party donations etc etc. Democracy is not indicative of a free society, it is simply the recurring suspicion that more than half the people are right more than half the time...usually the half being right part applies only to the rich or the rich elite.
If you live in a democracy and you still have people living on the streets, going hungry and not getting proper health care, how is that a free society? Oh that's right, the politicians are free to ignore them. That is the only kind of freedom found in a democracy.
My country is supposedly a democracy, land of the free and all that, but, if you spank your child and the authorities find out, you will be charged, tried and if convicted, possibly jailed and your name recorded evermore as a child abuser.
Schools have now made policy regarding what you can and cannot put in your child's lunchbox. A lot of foods have been banned and most schools only allow children to drink water during the day at school. What is water full of? There's less poison in Pepsi!
If your child is not fully vaccinated by age five, chances are that your child will not be allowed to start school, so parents don't really have a choice because it is illegal to keep your child out of school. Thus, to an extent, they have taken away our right to raise our children as we see fit.
You are no longer allowed to smoke in bars or pubs. You are not allowed to smoke on school fields during out of hours sports events and at most sports fields you are not allowed to smoke period. This is slowly being extended to some town streets and the move is on to make it a crime to smoke in your car.
Our country is no longer allowed to be called a Christian nation, even though our national anthem is "God save the King/Queen".
Any alterations to the building structure of your house, up to and including verandas/porches, have to have Council approval or they are deemed illegal. You have to register your car, your dogs and your boats, trailers and motorbikes.
You are not allowed to do anything that makes other ethnicities miss out on services. You are not allowed to run a European daycare centre or have a Department of European Affairs or even have a European Medical centre. However, you are allowed to have Maori only daycare centres, kindergartens, Colleges and scholarships. You are allowed to have Indian, Chinese, Maori medical centres. You are allowed to have a Department of Maori Affiars, loans and other such services, but if you do it for European, you will be in BIG trouble, Mister!
You are not allowed to deprive people of access to your churches or other buildings based upon ethnicity, unless of course, you are Maori, Indian, Chinese or Martian.
You are not allowed to use any kind of name that is derogatory to any ethnicity, unless, of course, you are Maori. (Check out the TV show Bro-town...it is the biggest perpetrator of racial slurs but, because it is presented from the Maori point of view, they can say what they like. They deride Indians, Pasifika and European people, sometimes they deride even themselves, so I suppose that makes it okay!)
You are not allowed to just fell a tree on your property if it is clogging up your drains or whatever, especially if it is a native. You have to have council approval to cut down a native tree on YOUR property!
You have to be registered to vote (it is a crime if you are not registered).
You must carry your photo driver licence at all times while driving. To not have your identification is a punishable crime.
To get anything at the bank, you must have your photo driver licence or photo passport.
To get out any sum of money over five thousand dollars (this sum may in fact be less) from the bank you must give the bank 24 hours notice.
You can only withdraw up to $850.00 dollars per day on your EFTPOS card, even if your have millions of dollars. Cheques in this country are almost defunct and almost no one accepts them.
It is illegal to post money to someone, even a gift of ten dollars in a card, to your son or daughter, is a crime.
It is no longer acceptable to hold a protest without prior consent of town council or city council. If you do, it will get nasty with Police involvement.
You can no longer take your dog to most beaches during the summer months. Almost all beaches ban dogs in the winter too.
Students cannot ride the school bus or take books from the public library or school library without a photo student ID. (Yeah, they are getting them used to it young!)
No longer can you take a tent and just set up camp somewhere for a holiday...most places require payment or a permit...they police this by putting up signs that say "No Camping after 9.00pm".
As a farmer, you cannot simply kill and donate meat to charity. You must account for every kill on your farm, for tax purposes. It is amazing how many sheep and cows stagger off the edge of cliffs on farms in New Zealand, even on farms where there are no cliffs!
There are so many other stupid, nit picking laws that I would be here all day and all night if I were to list them all. Democracy a free and equal society? Only if you are rich or of a certain ethnicity. The bottom line in my country, you are the worse off than anyone else not if you are Maori and poor, but if you are white and poor.
My personal opinion is that a free society should be indicative of being able to raise your children as you see fit. You should be able to feed them as you see fit. You should be able to believe what you want to believe and be proud of it, not punished for it. You should have the freedom to live out your life in good health and in a safe environment. People should not be going hungry in this world anywhere and people should not be going without health care. There is absolutely no need for it whatsoever, but that some men are greedy. The controls in a free society should be minimal at best and yet yes, there does have to be laws that protect people from crime. Bottom line, people are people and all men are created equal. Your entitlement should be based upon need, not upon what ethnicity you had the good fortune to be born into.
We do not live in a free society if we live in a Democracy. We live in a tightly controlled screwed up version of almost Communisim, except that equal distribution of wealth is not a feature of a Democracy.
And people sit there scratching their heads wondering why places like Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan resist Democracy!
Laterz

Ps and this is for those who might be inclined to point the racism finger in my direction, I am of Maori descent, as well as European. My children are also of Maori descent as well as European, therefore, I have licence to say whatever I want.
Have a really nice day!

Saturday 5th January
Kenya has exploded into ethnic violence following what has been deemed as possible election rigging. The scenes playing out on television are terrible. I saw one young guy being hacked to death with a machete. Obviously they did not show the entire attack upon him, just the first four or five strikes, but they told the viewing audience that he was subsequently hacked to death.
The U.N should get in there now because as of yesterday's date, there were 300 dead and 70'000 displaced. That number will only increase if nothing is done. But then again, why would anyone do anything? It is the same old story, if an ethn ic war broke out in America or Britain and the death toll was 50, it would dominate television all day and all night. But, funnily enough, when tsunamis, earthquakes or bombs go off killing people not of anglo-saxon descent, the Western world pays it very scant attention. Makes me sick.
It is like many of the famines that are still in progress today, the UN saw them coming yet did absolutely nothing, leaving the bulk of the work to extremely underfunded relief agencies such as the Red Cross and Save the Children. It is hard to keep draining your pockets when big wealthy corporations sit back and donate a pittence of what they have, while ordinary folks give more than they can afford and the problem just keeps growing.
Uneven distribution of wealth again.
Look, if every top actor, super model and musician in Britain, Australia, Europe and America gave one million dollars each (and let us face it, that would be like me donating ten cents of my entire wealth by comparison) the problem would be solved overnight. But there is just too much emphasis placed on decadence and not enough emphasis placed upon the basic concept of humanity.
People are more concerned about Brittney Spears enduring her own self-inflicted nightmare of too much drugs, booze, whoring around, irresponsible parenting, drunk driving and general middle finger in your face to authority to be concerned about real issues. I try to care about the ignorant decadent, I truly do except that these days, I can hardly muster up a sigh for them. They can tell you the latest sport results and yet they would be hard pressed to tell you where Kenya even is, let alone what is happening there.
Men are being hacked to death, women are being raped, and helpless children are dying, but hey, you have your cold beer in the fridge and the sport is on in an hour, you know where your next meal is coming from and no one is chasing you with a machete, so you're okay thanks very much for asking!
Obviously that does not apply to everyone. A few people can be bothered. But it is like that old saying I heard in a Nicholas Cage Movie, "Lord of War" (about the illegal gun trade), "Those who know don't care any more and those and those who care don't know."
I hate this f#@ing world today, it truly sucks!
Laterz

Sunday 6th January
Well it has cooled off a little today, which is good because the heat was getting a little much. I like winter and spring the best of all the seasons.
Found a dead cat today. It had been run over during the night and no one had stopped to claim it, so I brought him home and buried him. Marked his grave with a Yucca. He is the third cat to be buried in my garden here and none of those three were mine. I have one buried here that was ours, Malfoy, but he died in 2006.
I don't understand how people can know that their pets have gone missing and yet they never go looking for them. Or they see a dead animal on the side of the footpath and just walk by like it isn't their problem. They are happy to leave it there decaying like it simply doesn't count for anything. Animals deserve dignity just as humans do. If God is aware of every sparrow that falls to the ground dead, He is most certainly aware of every other animal that does, so, in my opinion, animals should be treated with respect and dignity, even in their death.
That is one thing about me that people find strange and almost bizarre. At my other house, I lost count of how many cats I picked up off the road and buried. It is silly, but I always try to remember to name them and put a small soft toy in with them. Isn't that dumb? And I always cry. Every time I bury one of these poor little creatures I cry like it was my cat. The one I buried today was black and I called him Arthur, although I forgot to check if he was a boy or a girl.
The last one I buried last year, I think I called him Fluffy. He had gotten his foot caught in a pool fence and the people who owned the property must have heard him crying before he died in the heat of the day and through stress. I went mad at them! Anyway, I untangled his foot and brought him home and buried him too.
I have been this way since I was a little kid. Every time I saw a stray dog or cat (actually I never knew if they really were stray or not, I was only little!) I used to have to stop and cuddle them or pat them. Often I found it hard to leave them, consequently I was almost always late for school from about the age of five to seven. Nothing seemed more important to me than to stop and pat the animals who looked as though they belonged to no one. In my teenage years I started burying dead animals like cats, that were left on the road and never claimed. I just cannot simply walk away.
If I ever won a million dollars, I would start up a sanctuary for unwanted dogs and cats. None would ever be out down unless illness made their lives torment. Other than that, all would live out the natural span of their lives in comfort, peace and ease. I would also have a "Homestay" for animals of wealthy people and that side of the business would help fund the sanctuary side. To make it even better, I would try to secure the services of a vet I personally know who would treat the animals at minimal cost. It would be really neat to be able to do that, but I will never win a million bucks, so it is merely a dream and yet, we all have to have those, right?
I don't care if people think I am crazy. I really don't care. I will never change because I cannot help what I am or how I feel nor what compassion drives me to doing, even if it seems banal to other people.
Laterz

Ps it just occured to me today that I never kept last year's resolution. I decided around New Year last year that I would submit at least one piece of writing to a publisher every month. Want to know how many pieces of writing I actually submitted?
None.

Monday 7th January
Not much happening today, except that I did watch an interesting YouTube doco. It is called Waco Revelations and is a 13 part series. It was interesting to see what things went on behind the scenes and to see a lot of the agencies involved trying to cover their butts and justify their actions. What amazes me is that none of the players were ever accused of a crime when it is clear that what they did there went horribly wrong.
My daughter burnt her leg with the hair straightener last Friday and I had to take her back to the docs today to have her burns dressed etc. Thank goodness I live in a country where we have free health care or else I would be in the hole for thousands already.
The doc says that he does not think that the burns will leave long term scars, but he said he will know more in a few days. Mean time, I have to take her in every day to have the bandages changed. Hair straighteners, who would have thought!
Laterz

Tuesday 8th January
Heard something really interesting on the Alex Jones show today. On the land where David Koresh and his family were slaughtered, years before, possibly one hundred years or more before, there was an Indian massacre on exactly the same land.
Further to the fact that Mt Carmel has a lot of blood in the land, the authorities now want to run the NAFTA Superhighway right through the very land that the new church has been built on. Talk about "having it in" for the Branch Davidians, now they want to mow down the church that was lovingly rebuilt by kind folks from all over the USA.
The US government has already denied that NAFTA exists, and yet many people have been able to prove it with a very big paper trail. One man has even managed to get maps of where it is to go and, oddly enough, it is a survivor of the Mt. Carmel slaughter who has managed to get them. The majority of US Government, at the moment, is unbelievably criminal and really do not care who they rape or what they plunder, such is their greed for power and control.
The elite are out of control.
I had this really wild thought last night and I was wondering about the push to have the 6th Amendment of the Constitution to be changed so that foreigners may in fact be allowed to run for president (it was being done in the interests of Arnold Swazeneggar being allowed to run for not just Governor, but President). I wondered whether, (assuming Hilary Clinton were to get into power) whether she might follow through with the amendment change? If she did, could it be that something mysteriously happens to her Vice President and Arnold Swarzeneggar becomes her Vice President? Worse still, perhaps they'll assassinate her, but it won't look like that, and install Arnold Swarzeneggar as President of the United States? I know it sounds really far-fetched, but if you had posed the events of 9/11 (and all that has been discovered about it since) as an idea, before it had actually happened, no one would have believed that either.
Just makes me wonder because Giuliani is a limp wimp who will not make it to the Whitehouse. Hillary is just not Whitehouse material either, although she would be continuing the Bush/Clinton/Elite Dynasty, which means that the Elite plans could progress along uninterrupted. But knowing Arnold Swarzeneggar's past and some of the things that he has said, (there is a very beastly side to Arnold that is almost terrifying) he would DEFINITELY make the kind of leader who could heartlessly betray the people of America in a way that would make what George W Bush did seem like a Sunday school trick.
I do not know exactly how American politics work, nor what the rules of engagement are, regarding one's Vice President, but I would be interested to know (if anyone reading this could tell me) if it were possible for this kind of scenario to happen, theoretically speaking? Assuming also that a Government would change the 6th Amendment of the Constitution...remember, the Government pretty much shredded Posse Comatatis (sp) and enacted the Patriot Act, practically shredding your 1st Amendment and 2nd Amendment rights. Understanding that they have done this already, without the consent of the American public, then it is reasonable to assume that they may adjust the 6th too...at least I think it is the 6th that speaks of who can run as president and who cannot.
Leak it, deny it and then do it. Seems to be the formula that they have been following for a while now.
Laterz

Wednesday 9th January
Well, what do you know, there has been a breakthrough in the Madeline McChan case...the little British girl who went missing in Portugal last year. It would seem that, after all, the parents have been directly implicated in her death, along with another woman. Right at the start I thought that the whole thing seemed weird, I mean, who in their right mind, when visiting a foreign country, would leave their children sleeping in a hotel room alone and go off to a restaraunt? You wouldn't even do that in your own country let alone in a strange one. And to boot, Madeline's parents were not exactly poor so they could have afforded to hire a nanny to stay in the hotel room with the kids. So it will be in teresting to see what has developed since yesterday. I have not read the Herald online yet, so do not know. Perhaps I should have read it before writing this?
Saw Hillary Clinton on TV last night and I have to say that she looks terrible! Apparently she is falling behind in the polls too and, short of a little election rigging, is not likely to make it to the Whitehouse. But, stranger things have happened haven't they?
There was also an incident yesterday between Iranian and American boats in the Gulf of Humoz(sp) and America is making a really loud noise about it but I did hear, somewhere else that the Americans were actually in Iranian waters when the incident occured, not in international waters as it was officially reported.
The goings on in Pakistan have died down to absolutely nothing, well at least the news isn't reporting anything and most eyes seem to still be upon Kenya.
Laterz

Thursday 10th January
I saw this ad on TV today for a CD collection of soft rock classics. The really strange thing was that I had almost every song from the collection that they were advertising...and it is like a twenty CD set. So now, through watching that ad, I am absolutely certain in the knowledge that I am now, finally a fully fledged member of the sad old fart club. Just like John Cusack in the movie Hi Infidelity, I keep my CDs and albums in autobiographical order.
I have to go buy my rabbit a new cage today because she has eaten hers...yes, you did not read incorrectly nor did I write in error, she ate her cage. Silly bunny! The other one dug a hole and got out and we had to chase it around the lawn!
Laterz

Friday 11th January
It would seem that the latest incident between Iran and America may have been a Black Ops provocation exercise. It is said, and keep in mind, I am only repeating what was said here, that George Bush couldn't get them through the nukes avenue, so now he is going to clandestinely create an incident in order to provoke the Iranians into doing something back. Iran's reaction to provocation might be small, but it it said that any kind of retaliation will be enough to give George what he wanted to begin with.
Also, something else interesting here, there are murmurings of George Bush perhaps, and this is a big PERHAPs, creating some kind of incident where he will declare Martial Law before his term, as President, is over. I think I bandied this suspicion around about two or three years ago, and it was me simply playing with ideas, I did not get the idea from anywhere.
It is true that I have been aware of an American President's ability to declare Martial Law, and thus being able to remain in sole power, since 1984. Barry Smith first wrote about it way back then but, at the time, it did not seem to be an era where any president would really do such a thing. With George Bush, more than ever, I think it is a very real possibility. Why do I think this?
A woman in the Whitehouse or a black man? Come on, do you really think the elite will be very keen on either. Maybe they will, but I find it difficult to accept that they would, without their hands remaining on the wheel for the entire duration of the presidency...well that's kind of a mute point, I don't think their hands have been off since Reagan. To my mind, there is no real candidate for the presidency of the United States, not as far as the "old boy's club' goes. But it is true that only time will tell.
Seems Diebold has been caught with their hand in the cookie jar...again. Barak Obama was leading in New Hampshirew in a poll taken only days before the primary and then suddenly Hillary beat him out. Even the people who lay odds on bets are absolutely dumbfounded and cannot work out how that happened. Easy, it happened the same way as it did in Florida almost four years ago. The only person who will get into office there is the person whom best serves the special interest groups such as CRR, TC, BG and all those other elite companies, structures and groups. I think we are at a crucial time in world history.
Also, President Bush announced that there should be a peace deal between Palestine and Israel within a year which means, in his words, that Palestine will have its own recognised state. This is a critical thing, particularly as far as biblical prophecy is concerned, you see, it states in the book of Revelation that the beast would broker peace for seven years but that it will last only three. It is not worded exactly that way, but it is pretty close. Thing is that whoever brokers that peace deal could be clearly recognised as the beast. If Bush brokers it, or his people broker it and he endorses it, then bingo, there he is.
Other things that are happening in the world at the moment are also indicative of end times. Financial institutes are falling over daily and the talk was recession but now there are murmurings of depression. They say that the next depression will make the last look like good times and thus that fits in with the prophecy pretty well. Not to mention the diseases and rumours of wars etc.
Not many people these days hold much stock in biblical prophecy, but I find it fascinating and I do believe that what was foretold to happen, (what John saw on the island of Patmos) will happen. We are rocking and rolling already, I think.
Laterz

Saturday 12th January
This election fraud thing is getting really big over in the States with many people coming out and saying that something is very wrong with the results. It will be interesting to see what happens with a recount but, if the recount is ocnducted by the same company that too kthe original vote, then chances are that the same phony result may ensue.
It is unbelievalbly hot here. Incredibly so. I do not remember it being this hot last summer. Spent most of the day in the pool.
Jonty got a good score at K-Mart the other night...he scored an $80.00 scooter for $50.00.
Oh yeah, did I forget to mention that Sir Edmund Hillary died on Saturday? Or was it Friday? Might have been Friday. Anyway, the Government has decided to give him a State funeral, which is interesting because all the guy did was climb a mountain. It is not like he rushed into a raging inferno and rescued two hundred children! Aren't I horrible? I have absolutely no respect for national icons. I just think people should be held up as heores for performing heroic acts. I do not consider climbing a mountain as something that qualifies. I think that heroism is achieved when one is forced into a situation that he has no control over and acts in a way that is to the benefit of others and yet possibly to the detriment of himself...i.e. he behaves selflessly. That's just me. That's just what I think.
Laterz

Sunday 13th January
Okay, I am confused. First of all, it seems that Iran is not "off" the table as far as George Bush is concerned.
Second of all, Ron Paul is not going to pursue a recount in New Hampshire. I do not know how this is going to go down with his supporters, but I am most certainly mystified by this whole thing.
Laterz

Monday 14th January
I got sunburned today because my pool sprung a leak and I had to fix it. I drained all the water out,there was so much I found myself looking around for an ark and starting to seriously consider gathering two of each species closest to me...to pop upon soon to be discovered ark...which would have been the sum total of two Newfoundlands (both female) two rabbits (both boys) one guinea pig (that I figured I could pair up with a cat because I have a few to spare) two cats and two birds.
Which leads me to my question, are you one who reads instructions before putting something together or repairing something? I am not. Typically, someone who never reads instructions, never reads instructions (hey now wasn't THAT a surprise), but if a person who typically never reads instructions suddenly starts...as a last resort...they never read them properly anyway. People who usually never read instructions and who perform this terrible task (reading instructions) as their last resort, tend to start a few lines down and read them in a kind of scanning mode taking in only strange or new words...and inevitably missing all the important key phrases such as "unplug from mains" or "keep out of reach of incompetent idiots"...oops I meant "children".
You see, people who don't read instructions are typically one of two things: either too impatient, or too smart. Sadly, or pathetically (I haven't made my mind up yet on which one of those is appropriate) I fall into the the first category because, as you will see from reading further down, "smart" is a word that cannot possibly be applied to me today.
Anyway, so I got this pool patch repair kit and opened it (once all the water was drained out of the pool...every single drop) and decided to read the instructions, as my last resort, before I attempted the repair. The instructions instructed me to wear goggles and a snorkle while repairing the leak, which I thought was very odd. I thought, seeing as how the first lot of instructions were in French and the second were in what appeared to be hyroglyphics(sp) (did Egyptians have vynal pools? I did not think so, but I have been known to be wrong on occasion) that perhaps the whole instruction thingy had gotten lost in translation and perhaps they had not meant to tell me to wear a snorkle and goggles while fixing my pool. Then I stood there thinking to myself, "Well, that must be some kind of glue if the fumes can get to your eyes and make the air all gluggy when your pool is out in the open fresh air." Then I thought to myself, "I can understand the googles, but a snorkle?" Then I found myself thinking, "What will the neighbours think when they see me out there patching my pool wearing snorkle and googles? Why don't I just add a pair of flippers and water wings just to make it look completely and utterly strange?"
All of those strange thoughts flew through my head until I scanned back a couple of lines (because I was so totally confused by then that I could hardly think straight because even my last resort, reading the instructions, wasn't panning out too well) and read the words, "For Underwater Repairs".
I was so bleeped off...I drained all the water out for nothing! Ha ha ha.
Anyway but the pool is fixed now, which is just as well because it is so hot here and I got so sunburned fixing the pool (that I drained unecessarily). Anyway, so then I had to monitor it filling again and got even more sunburned...and then just got inside (it is 10.02) well, actually, now it is 10.37.
So, the moral of the story is that, unless you are exceptionally smart, like rocket scientist smart, or understand, perfectly, hyroglyphics, always read the instructions from the very first line until the very last and you will never go wrong.
Laterz

Tuesday 15th January
I cannot believe the audacity of the Neo-con propoganda machine, and yet I am, at the same time, unsurprised. Their latest scare tactic is to assert that therre is now a white, 15'000 strong Al Queda in England. They are saying that the white ranks come from those who have dfected to the Muslim religion and others have been recruited while in jail. Further to this, they are saying that now it is virtually impossible to detect who is a threat and who is not.
See, before, all you had to do to be identified as a viable threat is to be of Middle Eastern descent, be wearing a turban or the more obvious, carrying a bazooka through customs.
This turn of events, on the part of the Neo-cons should be laughable, but actually it is not. It is a deadly turn of events.
Why?
Well with the, albeit bogus, information that there is now an Al Queda white army out to kill us all, the Neo-cons have even more reason to further boarder controls and enforce more stringent means of identifying people, and let's face it, that is what it has been about since 9/11 and Britain's 7/7.
They have been pushin g for everyone to be "chipped" for quite some time now and this will most certainly further that cause. There is nothing like a threat that you can't readily identify to make people scared. When people are scared they are more apt to being compliant with those who deem themselves their "protectors". If the Government espouses the idea that it is your patriotic duty to be able to be readily identified so that everyone can remain safe, then people, in their heightened state of fear, will do so. And heaven forbid, if you refuse the chip, you are probably a part of the new white Al Queda, so it will sort of become one of those "damned if you do and damned if you don't" scenarios.
For further info and proof that this is not something that I have pulled out from a hole in my head, go to this link, read the article and watch the video. That's the very strange thing about life, fiction must make sense, yet reality is not confined by those rules. Here's that link.

http://www.prisonplanet.com/articles/january2008/011408_new_alqaeda.htm

Laterz

Thursday 17th January
Missed Wednesday. I never got around to coming in here and writing anything, not that much went on yesterday anyway.
But this morning I happened to see a video of Tom Cruise speaking of the virtues of Scientology and being a Scientologist. Let me be clear here, I am not a Tom Cruise fan. I have never been a Tom Cruise fan. When I discover that he is in a movie, more often than not, I will not purchase it. That is how much I am not a fan of Tom Cruise. It always makes me laugh if I happen to catch reruns of Tom Cruise on the Oprah show (not that I watch her either, I don't. I am not a fan of hers either. In fact I am not much of a fan of television period. I will watch docos and sometimes the news and my fave program "Outrageous Fortune", but that's it.) But as I was saying, if I happen to catch the rerun of Oprah where Tom Cruise is the guest, I squirm when I hear all those stupid women screaming and carrying on when they see him come on stage. What the heck is that all about all ready? If I were to find myself at a taping of Oprah (I am more likely to walk on the moon) and Tom Cruise was the secret guest, I would leave! That is how much of a fan of his I am not.
Anyway, I saw this video this morning of him talking about how wonderful Scientology is. He was going on and on about how he now knows "it" and how he has to just get out there and do "it" and how we should all study Scientology so that we can all get out there and do "it" and if we don't know "it" then we best get out of the way so that the great Scientologists can attend to "it" cos they get "it".
Funny thing is, that Tom never defined what "it" is. I wondered if "it" is something you are only introduced to once you have been in the church long enough to be introduced to "it".
During this interview he spoke of how if a Scientologist drives past an accident then that person is the only one who knows exactly what to do. Which made me wonder why they are not all ambulance drivers: being that they are all so familiar with the power to fix everything, they could simply heal them all at the scene and drive them home after. He also said that Scientologists have the knowledge and ability to make all races be in harmony with each other, which caused me to wonder why, if they are all so all seeing and powerful, they don't all relocate to Iraq and sell crazy there? Oh that's right, Iraq is all stocked up.
Tom also espoused the idea that Scientologists hold the key to the answers to all of mankind's ails, so that also caused me to wonder why there is still world hunger, since they are so powerful and all. He basically spent all 7/8 minutes drivelling on about the great "it" which, in Sarah terms, translates to, "how to say absolutely nothing without taking a breath for eight minutes and consequently making yourself look like a total twat!"
He spoke of Scientologists being able to create an alternate reality to the one everyone else is faced with, well, so can Acid freaks. He spoke of having his mind somewhat expanded and his sense kind of heightened because he understood "it" (yeah that again) and I have to say here that that kind of mind expansion/opening is also a regular feature of LSD use. That kind of self-expression on the part of Tom leaves me little recourse but to advise everyone to never wear an alligator T-shirt around a Scientologist freak, because the damn thing will eat 'em.
No, I am not a Tom Cruise fan. I never have been and I was never going to be. But now, at the end of the day, I also consider him to be a blithering idiot who extols the virtues of a religion that is based upon aliens burying themselves beneath the earth millions of years ago. If you don't believe me, read up on what Scientologists believe. Their belief system makes tin foil hat wearing UFO abductees seem sane and believable.
Laterz

Wednesday 16th January
Piczo is having some absurdly bad technical difficulties and, as a result, all my pics are floating around in cyber space somewhere. They assure me that the problem will be fixed, but one cannot help but wonder just how long that might take. I have never seen a problem in this place of quite this magnitude.
Monty arrived in for dinner tonight and he doesn't look the best. I don;t know if he is just over heating or whether something has happened to him. There do not appear to be any marks or injuries to the outside of his body. I hope he is going to be okay.

Thursday 17th January
This morning Monty could hardly even breathe and so I raced him to the vets. They said that he had some kind of serious chest trauma and that the kindest thing for us to do would be to put him to sleep. I spoke to Jonty about it and asked him if he wanted to go with Monty while it was done, seeing as how Monty is his cat. He became ver yscared and said no. I found out later that he thought that I meant, did Jonty want to be put to sleep with Monty. Poor kid!
I was horrified that Jonty thought that I had asked him that and it took a little explaining to get him to understand exactly what I meant. So we brought Monty home and Jonty wanted to spend time alone with him, which I thought was healthy and so I left him to it. Jonty has special needs and does not understand things as readily as the average person does. Anyway, I wanted to bury Monty and he would not allow it, so I had to do some fast thinking. Like all good resourceful mothers (who just plain and simple run out of all rational options) I opted for the irrational, helped by along by a little manipulation, on my part. I told Jonty that what Mont ywould want for him to do would be to be a loving and caring boy for another kitten, just as he had been for Monty. I told him that all that was left in the box was the vehilce that Monty used for this life, that the real Monty was now up in heaven with the other cats we have lost, Elmo, Chompski, Malfoy and Oggy. I told him that he was probably being introduced to Intaos (our Newfie that died about four years ago) as we were speaking. It is not a lie, at least I do not believe it is. We are led to believe that animals are in heaven too, and what kind of God would allow a human to love an animal just to lose it and never see it again? Maybe we won't see our animals again, but I do not think that that is the case. Anyway, what else can you say to a child like Jonty?
So, I took him into town and he agreed to choosing another kitten and he chose a black fluffy hair ball he has named Gizmo. Once he had Gizmo, he was a little more prepared to let go of Monty, and yes, I manipulated him by telling him every step of the way that he was doing the right thing and that it was what Monty would have wanted for him. Admittedly, I had to make some concessions. I had to allow Monty to be buried with a celphone so that if he wakes up, he can text or call us to let us know to come and get him. It did me no good to talk Jonty out of this, so I simply let it go. Secondly, I had to fork out for new cuddly toys so that Monty had something to play with, just in case he wakes up. Thirdly, I had to let Jonty go out and put chocolate biscuits on the grave, just in case Monty would like some.
I never thought it could be so difficult to watch a child enduring the loss of a beloved pet. My other kids have lost pets, but they have coped reasonably well, but Jonty, he has made me see the whole entire process with different eyes, as he has done in other facets of life. One things for certain, I have never cried so much watching a child struggling to cope and dealing with my own grief at the same time. I always take it very hard when one of our pets die, but this has been almost the hardest one.
Laterz

Friday 18th January
Piczo is still down, which is bizarre.

Saturday 19th January
Gizmo is very cute, but Gizmo is almost like a little human baby. I have to rock him in my hands to get him to go to sleep and then I have to carefully lay him down in his little bed so that I do not wake him again. Jonty loves to watch this process and yet has little patience for it himself. He adores his baby cat though and he goes to all kinds of lengths to ensure that Gizmo is happy and has everything that he needs and wants. The kitten is going to grow up to be a brat! I just know it!\
Jonty still makes his daily visits to go and sit with Monty and, to be truthfully honest, I am just as bad. I find myself sitting on the park bench staring at his grave and bawling my eyes out too. I know how he looks inside his little casket, holding his yellow teddy between his paws and to look at him, it seemed as though he were merely sleeping.
The last thing I said to Monty was that everything was going to be allright. I know that it is dumb, but it wasn't allright and I have this eerie sense of guilt.
Laterz

Sunday 19th January
Piczo is still having tech probs and I cannot imagine what it must be, except that it must be big. Fortunately script is still working in here and I can at least do my blogs.
Gizmo has made friends with Forest, Moo Moo and Sage. I think that they have accepted him so quickly because he is kind of like Monty. He is not exactly like him; clearly he is smaller and way more black, but his fur is similar, so they let him play with them and cuddle with them.
Matisse has been wandering around looking for Monty, he was like her child. She used to feed him when he was small, even though she had no milk and was not his mother. When she did have Forest, Moo Moo and Sage, she used to lay down to feed them and he would feed with them. She also used to go outside and he would get in the basket with the babies and stay with them until she got back. He used to bath them too. Monty was the only cat that she would let near her babies. If any of the other cats tried, Matisse would attempt to rip their whiskers out!
Monty was afraid of panda bear toys. Any other stuffed toy and he was fine, but bring a panda bear toy out, no matter the size, and he would run away and hide, scared out of his mind. I have pandas in my room and I would have to hide them all. He would walk in looking around suspiciously and so long as no panda was visible, he'd get onto the bed.
Monty also used to suck on our ears. Yes, he'd latch onto our earlobes and suck away as though he were feeding...it was very weird, but kind of cute. We adored him very much and we all miss him a lot.
Laterz

Wednesday 23rd January
Piczo images are still down and they are still promising to fix the problem, but it has been a week now. To be absolutely truthful, I am about ready to leave Piczo in much the same way as a rat leaves a sinking ship. Cowardly, I know, but I just about can't stand coming in here and seeing all my hard work, of nearly three years, completely munted. I will give it another week but if the problem isn't solved by then, I will leave this site and find a new one. I will transfer everything over to the new one and provide the link etc.
Read two really disturbing things in the news today.
First of all, when I was about ten years old I bought a copy of a Gary Glitter record at a Paddy's Market in the small rural town (population at the time 200) called TeHoro. When I saw the record, in 1977, the cover looked pretty "cool" to me at the time. The record cover was grey and Gary was on the front wearing a real tight fitting sparkly blue suit, high heels and what looked to be a big sparkly blue kind of ring on his left hand. I listened to the record and I kind of liked the music. Hearing songs such as I'm the Leader of the Gang, Babe Please Don't Go etc, I was temporarily hooked. This love affair with his music lasted about six months and yet never extended to the man himself. I remember being at a Youth Group camp at WYWAM in Waikanae one weekend. My friends Melanie and Carolyn (who was only ever my friend so as her best friend Shirly wasn't around, which was only ever at events such as this) attended that camp and they had this fun kind of jury thing that held each of us up on charges. Some were charged with not doing the dishes properly and others with keeping their room messy. Melanie, Carolyn and I were charged with talking all night. The jury found us guilty and we were sentenced to a rather odd form of reparation to our peers. We were sentenced to having eyes, a nose and a mouth drawn on our stomachs and made to dance with our shirts raised (so everyone could see the drawing) to the sound of Gary Glitter. I believe the song was Babe Please Don't Go.
Now, back in 1977 there was no issue with Gary Glitter, but these days, the idea of three ten year old girls dancing almost topless to one of his songs, in light of Gary's more recent contributions to mankind, is almost an irony...it is also very creepy! If someone had said, back in 1977, that thirty years later Gary would be some washed up pedophile languishing in a Vietnam jail, I think almost everyone would have laughed! But truth is stranger than fiction and there he is in a Vietnamese jail having just suffered a heart attack. Why is he in there? Molestation/rape of two ten year old girls. Makes you think, don't it?
The second piece of interesting and yet disturbing news came in the form of this sentence that I read in an article in the New Zealand Herald..."The first use of nuclear weapons must remain in the quiver of escalation as the ultimate instrument to prevent the use of weapons of mass destruction." Think about that for a few seconds and maybe read it back to yourself a couple of times.
That sentence came from an article titled, "Nuclear Dawn for the West". and is one of the most idiotic example of "double-speak" that I have had the misfortune to read for a while. The article was written by five of the West's most senior military officers and strategists. They identified a number of key threats to the West's values and way of life - including international terrorism, the spread of weapons of mass destruction and political fanaticism and religious fundamentalism.
Um, okay, I might be being a little fuzzy here, but aren't nuclear bombs weapons of mass destruction? Isn't a nuclear holocaust about as weapons of mass destruction as you can get? Isn't this, nuclear bombs, the very excuse that George Bush and Co are using to barage the world with the idea of war with Iran?
They are back to the old ideas that ran wild in the Cold War, "If we have them, then our enemies will not dare to strike at us because they know that we will strike back". Which is crazy because that kind of rationale feeds right into the next piece of insanity, the "Use 'em or lose 'em" idea. In other words, if you think/suspect that your enemy has launched theirs at you, then you have a set amount of time to strike back. That leaves little time to verify that the launch is not a computer malfunction or a red herring spewed out by a virus infected computer, or worse still, a computer that has been compromised by outside forces such as hackers or what have you.
And the last piece of idiocy in this whole new saga? THEY ALREADY HAVE NUCLEAR BOMBS in most Western countries, so that makes almost the entire idea a moot point! Except for one tiny little detail...the powers that be are running out of scare tactics. You see, if a human is exposed to the same kind of theoretical threat that never materialises, i.e. terrorist bombs actually going off in America, planes exploding in the sky etc, then people eventually become numbed, nonchalant and even complacent. When a threat never materialises into action, then people begin to see it for what it is and are no longer afraid. When people are not afraid, they think more rationally and with more perspective and less bias. (I remember, from late childhood and as a teenager, having very vivid dreams of worldwide nuclear destruction...the torment of having no place to run and nowhere to hide. Worldwide nuclear destruction was a common feature of teenage conversation in my circles in the 1980s. I remember being way out at the back of a farm in an old camping hut in the middle of nowhere with my boyfriend one afternoon in the late summer of 1982. Our conversation, as we listened to the native birds and the wind rustling the trees, was all about the time "it" nearly happened. I think it was an urban, or in our case, rural myth or legend. Some said it almost happened in the 60s, other myths and legends had it almost happening in the early 70s. Whatever the accurate story, the myth/legend about when nuclear war almost happened kept us in a fear state for almost all of our late childhood and teenage years in pretty much the same way as the local rural myth about mad old Jim had us setting out to go camping with fear and trembling.) But, as we became adults and became a little more aware of political tactics and personal fears real or imagined and the conditioning of a human as a result, the threat lost its oomph and suddenly it wasn't spoken about by teenager or adult, not on the news either, except for when the Wall came down.)
When people are not frightened they begin to be able to evaluate their fears of threats made and the threats lose their impact and thus the people are less controllable than what they were in their fear state. Examples? Cold war nuclear threat. Ozone layer depletion. Icehouse effect. Global Warming. Oil Crisis. Terrorists crashing planes into buildings. Finanacial crisis.
So, the powers that be must come up with something new, something more terrible than the previous terrible threats. And what a way to do it? By making people fear total destruction at the hands of some Joe-Terrorist who supposedly has access to illicit nuclear bombs...never mind that you need the IQ of almost a rocket scientist in order to be able to detonate one of them suckers because Nuclear bombs don't just go off. It might be a mere matter of pushing a button to launch them, but it is a whole different game when it comes to making them actually explode.
How do you think we have come this far with nuclear weapons for so long without completely erasing human life from this solar system? The milk of human kindness and empathy for their fellow man?
I think not.
Laterz
Ps Mad Old Jim was supposedly this man who accidentally shot himself, thus ending his life, while cleaning his rifle way back in the 1800s (no exact date has ever been given) and it is said that Mad Old Jim haunts Mt Bruce and the surrounding area. It is said that when teens go camping around Mt Bruce, Kiriwhakapapa Road and surrounding area, Mad Old Jim happens upon them and flaunts his half blown away face at them by firelight because he does not like those who still live. It was also suspected that if Mad Old Jim were to get his hands on you that you would never be seen again. As far as I am aware, Mr Bruce and the surrounding area never had any teen who ventured out camping never return. But it was a neat spooky story told during many a dark night out rabbit hunting or star gazing and it was enough to hurry your steps back to the sporadic lights shining across that rural community. That was our local rural myth in that area. That was Mad Old Jim.

Tuesday 29th January
Well, I finally admitted defeat with the other site. I am really annoyed though, over two years worth of work down the toilet. Piczo clearly is unable to fix the problem and they have completely and utterly wrecked my wisteriadrapedwishingwells site. Worse still, I could not create a new site using the same name without losing all of my writing as well, so I had to come up with a new name. I wanter to keep wisteria and the only other name I could think of to go with it was wolverine.
Back in 1985 I saw a movie and the group of kids in it fighting the people who had invaded their country called themselves the "Wolverines" so there you have it.
Wolverines are known as gluttonous, as are wolves and yet two things should be mentioned at this point. One, wolverines are not part of the wolf family as such. Two, although they are said to be greedy and gluttonous, this has been proved to be a false etymology that has been given life through translation of the original name of the wolverine in other languages. The animal's name in old Swedish, Fjellfräs, meaning "fell (mountain) cat", worked its way into German as Vielfraß, which means roughly "devours much". So, you can see how the reputation of the poor little animal has been misrepresented over the years. Anyway, so that is the wolverine.
We have had ten murders in New Zealand this year so far. The first was on January 1st and the most recent was the day before yesterday. Our violent crime stats are through the roof right now. There was almost an eleventh murder when a woman was slashed with a knife in a domestic incident in Manurewa (where two of the ten murders occured) but she was taken to hospital in time to be saved.
The two murders in Manurewa were of young people. One was working in a dairy when a sixteen year old came in and asked for smokes and money. He ended up stabbing the dairy worker, 22 years old, to death.
The second murder was committed by a 50 year old business owner and he stabbed to death a fifteen year old boy who was tagging on his property. I am soing to say something here and I know that I will not be very popular for saying this, but I can actually almost understand how that business owner could have been driven to doing what he did in a heated situation.
Where we used to live we had a gang of kids who like to tag everyone's fences and letterboxes. You name it, they tagged it. I am talking every day. The second you repainted your fence or letter box, it was retagged by the same idiot teenagers. They weren't even what you could call teenaqers and actually, kids like them give teenagers a very bad name. They were more akin to thugs.
They had no respect for property, life or limb. They nicked anything that wasn't nailed down and they terrorised other children in the neighbourhood. Even the cops knew who they were but, unless they were caught in the act, there was nothing that they could do about it. These same bullies used stand over tactics on other children to take their bikes, lollies or anything else a child might have that they wanted. When the law was involved, the kids were referred to Youth Justice, which, as anyone who lives in this country knows, is a joke! These kids aren't scared of the cops. Going to jail is a career move, a step up the ladder, not a thing to avoided nor to be ashamed of. Knowing all of that, I can understand how that man lost the plot.
If he has been victimised over and over again by those little juvenile thugs, whose parents, nine times out of ten, aren't any better, then I can understand how he might have relieved the little shit of his knife and in panic, stuck him with it.
I know, I know. I should not condone violence and normally, I don't. But comes a time where one might find themselves in a situation where they have to defend themselves. If the other person pulls out a knife to use on you, I don't care if he is a six foot four fifteen year old, if he is man enough to pull out a knife then he is making the statement that he is man enough to take the consequences, no matter who he is and no matter what they are.
New Zealand seems to have fallen into some kind of psychosis where we care more for the perpetrators of crime than we do for the victims.
Perpetrators, once they are "in the system" have all the stops pulled for them. They get free drug and alcohol rehabilitation programs, and our jails are very cushy too. Everything is about prisoner's rights and often going to prison is a holiday camp, truly it is. Our prisons are nothing like American, Russian or even British prisons. Ours are cushy million dollar complexes with air con for the summer and underfloor heating for the winter. Televisions and radios in cells. Visits once or twice a week. Phone calls every day if the prisoner so wishes. Free food and lodgings. No laundry to do. Everything is laid on for them. The only restriction on their freedom is the right to leave the hotel when they choose.
Meanwhile, the victims have to pay for councelling. They have to fill out numerous forms to even be represented in court. There are no people to come to their home to take over their affairs while they are recovering from whatever it was that was done to them. ACC is an ass! And the final insult is that, if a family member is murdered, they end up having to foot the bill for their legal representation during the inquest, even though they are told that they have to attend, by law.
All things considered, I think that there is likely to be a sharp increase in the numbers of offenders being dealt to by their victims during the process of their committing crime against them. And perhaps that will be the only deterrent that works? Heaven above knows that nothing else does.
Laterz

Thursday 31st January
The New Zealand Herald reported today that the ten murders in January are merely a blip, according to the "experts". They do not clarify who these "experts" are, but I found it almost repulsively humourous, in a sad kind of way. A blip? Ten murders a blip? Never mind that yesterday there was a huge gang gun fight in South Auckland which resulted in two men being injured. One has legs wounds and the other has a serious headwound. Perhaps if the one who got the serious head wounds has the good decency to wait until Feb 1 to die, then the "blip" might come to a halt? Insane!
More and more I am reading about and hearing references to the idea that George Bush may well declare martial law and thus remain in office indefinitely. I must say here that I still think that there is a good chance that that very thing might happen. I have been saying this for five years now and everyone called me "mad", but now, the tide seems to be turning. Not many can truly envision Barack Obama sitting in the Whitehouse, any more than they can envision Hillary sitting in there. Those two seem to be the ones that the Elite are backing and following, and yet, I cannot see the Elite allowing either to walk through the Whitehouse doors. Now, I admit that I may be very wrong here, but George Bush seems to be the sock puppet of choice. Aside from that, he is still spinning the idea of war against Iran.
In his state of the nation speech he went on about how they respect the Iranian's culture, religion and traditions. All that came to my mind was, "Yeah, just like you respected the Iraqi's culture, religion and traditions."
George Bush and his Elite puppeteers have to be one of the most evil regimes that there ever was, right alongside of Charles Taylor and Idi Amin. The only difference is that, Idi Amin and Charles Taylor confined their terror tactics to their own country. George and his little playmates have spread it out on foreign soil, while declaring psychological war upon their own.
On a lighter note, I bought a new cell phone yesterday and I really like it. It has GPS, but you can switch it on and off, so they say. I rarely use the phone for phone calls and use it almost exclusively for texting, but still she's a pretty phone...pink, slim line....lovely.
On the weekend I bought a new digital camera...it is 8.3 megapixels and it is one happening camera. I have taken more photos and movies with it than I could even number...it's GREAT!!!!
And my other piczo site is still down and all the pictures are still butchered, so I am moving everything over here, which is going to take some time, and then I will delete the other site.
Laterz

Saturday 2nd February
It is February...hello!!! Wow, January went fast.
I checked in on Gail's blog today and I saw this lovely video that she made about her daughter. The video was lovely and her daughter beautiful. It did bring home how fast time really does go. My first child was born in 1985 and although that was 22 years ago, it seems like it was more recent than that. I mean, where did 22 years go?
Gail's daughter is to marry soon, and I am not sure if she is Gail's only child or not, but it must be really weird watching your kids gearing up to be married. Nice but some how surreal, you know?
Gail also did a post showing me where she lives in the mid-west, which was good because it gave me a better idea of where she is at. The one thing I take my hat off to Americans for is their ability to cope with all of those time zones. We have one time zone here and that is it, thank goodness or else I would be confused 100% of the time instead of the 99.9.
Anyway, I am in the process still of moving everything from the other piczo site to here, so it will take some time. I will not move everything though, some things I will not bother with.
laterz

Saturday 2nd February
I do not normally make two posts on the same day, but there has been some late breaking news that is quite alarming and potentially may set the scene for something terrible to happen.
Four undersea Internet cables were cut without explanation. Internet blackouts are impacting large tracts of Asia, the Middle East and North Africa after four undersea cable connections were severed. Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Bahrain, Pakistan and India, are all experiencing severe problems.
Accrding to InternetTraffic.com, Iran has been completely cut off from the Internet, though Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's blog can still be accessed.
Most notably, Israel and Iraq are unaffected by the outage.
"Stephan Beckert, an analyst with TeleGeography, a research company that consults on global Internet issues, said the damaged cables collectively account for the majority of international communications between Europe and the Middle East," reports CNN.
Officials say that the cause behind the severing of the cables remains unknown, but United Arab Emirates' second largest telecom company said the cables were cut due to ships dragging their anchors.
Is this a pre-cursor to throw a veil over an imminent staged event in the Middle East?
"What are the odds? Who benefits? asks the Crimes and Corruptions blog. "Let's see. Iranian rapprochement: "Recent months have brought signs of a growing rapprochement between Iran and Egypt."
"What nation would not like this and has subs which could cut the cables? Why do it? Payback as over the net business is badly damaged? Or is this a setup for more? Note the internet is working just fine in Israel."
Over at WhatReallyHappened.com, Mike Rivero points out that the mysterious cable sabotage could portend another imperial Neo-Con crusade in the works.
"The biggest problem the Bush administration faced during Iraq were images coming over the internet that showed the horrors being visited on the Iraqi people, and exposed the government's lies about Saddam," he writes.
There is great concern that these undersea cable cuttings could be intended to prevent the world from seeing something that is about to happen in Iran. Think about it; if the internet is down, then the only place anyone will be able to see what is happening is through the propaganda spinning mainstream media. Half of what undid Bush's war in Iraq was the fact that independent media were able to plaster images all over the net that Bush and the Elite puppeteers did not ever want getting out. With the internet down in Iran, who knows what might happen. What I do know is that the version we will receive will be in no way indicative of what might really be going on.

Who knows for sure? All we can do is wait and see.
Laterz

Tuesday 5th February
More people are coming out of the woodwork and saying that they expect that George Bush, via some catastrophic event, will declare Martial Law and cancel the elections. Willie Nelson is the latest to do so.
Further to this, apparently President Bush's post-terror attack martial law plan is so shocking that even sitting members of Congress and Homeland Security officials are barred from viewing it. A chilling portent of what is to come, I think and finally, I am not a lone nut case any more. I wish to God I was, for the sake of all of those who may well be caught up in the snare that Martial Law will cast across the people and country of America.
There have been concentration camps built in America for a number of years and no one seemed to know why. My beloved friend, if you are reading this, considering the current murmurings, suspicions, facts and rumours, the house in the mountains is probably a dream that ought to be hastened to its conclusion. Even if I could never speak to you again, you will always be in my thoughts and prayers.
What is already known about Bush's recent spate of executive orders, and in particular PDD 51, is bad enough - the provisions outline preparations for the implementation of open martial law in the event of a declared national emergency.
New legislation signed on May 9, 2007, declares that in the event of a "catastrophic event", the President can take total control over the government and the country, bypassing all other levels of government at the state, federal, local, territorial and tribal levels, and thus ensuring total unprecedented dictatorial power.
It is important to understand that, although these powers have been on the books for previous presidents, Bush is the first to openly brag of the fact that he will utilize them and officially become the supreme emperor of the United States in the aftermath of a catastrophe that the government itself has said will happen on innumerable occasions.
George Bush is not a godly, righteous man. He is a counterfeit, a cheat, a liar and a murderer. He is a wolf in sheep's clothing in the deepest darkest deceptively evil way. I will say this only once, if you trust him to any measure of the word that trust infers, then you and your family are already in peril.
I can only hope that I am completely mistaken about the plans of the secretive elite who control George Bush's puppet strings, yet somehow I fear that I am not.
Laterz

Friday 8th February
The innocent age. Three little friends, dark-haired, brown-haired and blonde-haired; blue eyes all three. A house on a corner made of concrete, hearts, clubs, spades and diamonds. An old man generations ahead of his time and yet left behind. Country roads that lead to nowhere and yet to the weary heart, everywhere, anywhere, possiblities infinite. Twin bridges several years and yards apart. Playwright's loft, spooky in the dark yet filled with adventurous wonderment. Typewriter charcoal black, paper purest white.Clay banks great for sliding on. Pukekos, Night Owls, Possums. Love not won. Love not lost. Saints, sinners, in-betweens midst heaven and hell. Spiders, swing seats, pine trees. Black Death. Hop Scotch, maypole dreams. Magpie dives. Dark skies lit with tiny stars and a bridge that does lead to nowhere, yet took us everywhere, to the future and the past. Osmonds, Abba, Bay City Rollers, Pussycats, Bee Gees and Boston. Caravan in the middle of nowhere, yet existing just the same. Alive and vibrant, just waiting to become a simple memory. Video Killed the Radio Star, Voyager, Sara and Cool Change. Broken mirrors, baby rabbits, school camp, Sail On. Greek wedding, Dorseys, eight track. Kodi, Sally, Nicky, Maree and Renee...such lofty childish expectations that life never ends. Cross country, Paddy's Market, Old MacDonald's farm. Tennise lessons, Mama Cass, bull paddock. Beach, Main Road, forbidden zone. Jim and Sarah's cottage, river lapping its way to eternity and back in the still of the night.
Laterz

Sunday 10th February
I have been pretty slack at writing blogs every day. I always have the best intentions, but so many other things have jumped up to take my attention away, none less than having to entirely redo my Piczo site. They never did manage to fix the old one, which sucks a lemon, but what can you do?
Transferring the stories over from the old site is an extremely lengthy process and, of course, I am editing yet again, cutting certain parts and adding others. I guess it is not an entirely negative thing either, but it is crushing to have two or so years worth of work totally nuked!
World events are steadily getting worse and no more so here. Our murder rate has steadily climbed and the way things are shaping up, February's rate will be on a par with January, so much for their "blip".
On Thursday a woman attempted to hijack a plane here. In the process she stabbed the two pilots and claimed that there was a bomb onboard. She was a Somali woman who has been well known to Police since she fled here in 1994. She will face life imprisonment, which is around ten years here and then the real punishment will begin; she'll be deported back to Somalia.
The other case that has finally reached fruition in our courts is the one against the South African lady who asked for donations for her child to get an operation on her foot to fix the damage a dog had done to it in South Africa. The child was not entitled to free medical care here because she was not born here and so the mother had to find the money somehow else. Campbell Live ran an appeal and the New Zealand public literally gave thousands, some sum upwards of 30/40'000. Rather than get the child her operation, the mother took the money from the appeal account and spent it on herself. She was taken to court and this week sentenced to 6 months, which means that she will serve about 3. Unfortunately, who knows what will happen to her little girl, who is the real victim in all of this, while her mum is in jail.
Bought a new Van Morrison CD and I hate it!
Finally we have rain, although I don't know how long for. All of the lawns around here are brown and it looks more like Australia than New Zealand. And speaking of neighbours, my friend/neighbour brought me home two giant Yuccas yesterday and so I have planted them in pots and they look really neat. I am almost the Yucca Queen! Interesting thing about Yuccas though, in the shops a mid sized one, about two or three feet hight will cost you anywhere from 80 -100 dollars and yet, according to my friend/neighbour, they grow like weeds! I have stacks of them now and yes, I still want more. I love them, they remind me of these posters I used to have years ago called "Mordillo". Don't know why, they just do.
Over the past two weeks I have watched the entire seasons 1, 2 & 3 of HBO's Deadwood series and I have to say, for someone who does not really watch serials, I really enjoyed it and have been left with great hopes that there will be a season 4, however, knowing my luck, there will not.
Anyway, oh yeah and Dave also has a new YouTube channel called RedDawnWolverine...it is really neat and is the place where he put docos and other such vids. Dave is a nice guy, very sweet and helpful, kind hearted and decent. Helpful is the fact that our ideas meet and seem to be able to meld together quite nicely. We both have the password for it, just in case I want to post some docos...and I do not know that I will...but it is his baby.
Which brings me to the topic of another dear friend from whom I have heard nothing for some time now. Don't know what is up with him, but I have grown weary with trying to work it out any more. He will either contact me or he won't. Whatever, I will always love and respect him because he is a one of a kind; a four leaf clover.
Laterz

Wednesday 13th February
Matisse died today. She was having trouble jumping up on the bed yesterday so took her to the vet today. She was pretty much paralysed from the back of her legs down. The vet said the prognosis was bleak and that there was little that they could do for her. I stayed with her while she went and I was the last thing she saw in this world. She purred right up until she fell asleep.
Although I am upset, I like to believe that she is some place running around with Monty, whom she mothered and adored.
Laterz

Thursday 14th February
I woke up this morning thinking about something that I discovered yesterday, before we lost Matisse, not after. There was this young couple that I was friends with years ago. I was eighteen and they were both in their early thirties. They belonged to a charismatic church where everyone spoke in tongues, fell on the floor and all those other activities that you tend to see in a charismatic church.
They moved to Australia in the late eighties and bar one visit and a phonecall in the mid 90s, I have never seen or heard from them again. Anyway, I decoded to look them up on the net to see if they showed up anywhere and what do you know, I found them in Frisco, Texas.
The both of them have planted their own church, so to speak. Folks outside the church, planting a church is the same as starting one. Anyway, so I wondered if they had gotten out from under all of the charismatic hooha that you tend to see, you know the real extreme stuff, teachings of people such as Benny Hinn, Joyce Meyer, Reinhard Bonnke, Rodney Howard Brown and Co. This is what they say of some of those false heretical so called "men and women of God"...
"We were very much in the thick of the spirit of revival Rodney carried for such a long time and spent many long meetings under that large anointing, both in Sydney and here in Texas in the late 90's. Reinhard is one of my all time preaching heroes.
I love Joyce and her straightforwardness....Our Pastor and family member **** was a guest on her show sometime last year. Benny Hinn is quite a wonder....**** and I went to a "Benny" meeting in MA while we were living there and it was a warm / rich experience. A person along the row from us got a wonderful miracle healing. I have to say I am always in shock at the terribly old music he does, but that's his thing. He is definitely a spin-off of Kathryn Kuhlman for sure!
God was certainly there despite the music - hahaha. John Arnot (Toronto Blessing and Kansas City Prophets)came to our church a couple of times in Sydney, he was enjoyable and fitted in with where we as a church were headed and the touch from the Lord that was happening in that season."
I always wondered, especially back then, why life always conspired to separate me from the people I dearly liked, respected, trusted and sometimes loved? It always seemed that as soon as I got close to these kind of people, something would come along to destroy it. But now I look at where these people are and what they are involved with and I almost "get it". I am convinced that God will, in some ways, not often and yet sometimes, keep us separated from those who may not be the best for us. Specifically in the case of these two people, I think it is a fair conclusion to come to.
I have always felt quite alone and outside from most other people. Relationships take their toll on me and I most certainly probably, at times, take a toll on other people. And yet, it would be better that I never had a friend at all than to have been caught up in what it is that my old friends are caught up in.
Another thing; I always somehow felt safe because there was always someone around me who was far more knowledgeable about the ways of God than I. It was always a comfort to know that someone else, above me, better than me, more spiritual than me was there to tell me which direction to go in or what it was that I should do. It is an alarming feeling to continually discover that most of those people are wrapped up in something that is of such a sinister nature that, if they were to gaze upon it with the rose coloured glases off, they would see it for what it really is, because anyone who can trust Benny Hinn, Rodney Howard Brown, Reinhard Bonnke and Joyce Meyer, is not seeing too clearly at all.
It is quite unnerving to now look back at what I thought was one way only to see that it was actually another. I'm not really sure what else I have to say about this, except that it is sad.
Laterz

Thursday 14th February
I just watched an excellent movie called The Holiday. It is a really nice little movie, which is just as well, seeing as how I actually bought it. It stars Cameron Diaz, whom I love to loathe, but I almost managed to see past her glaringly obvious blonde dithery self...almost...I had to concentrate really hard. It was almost as difficult as watching Jack Nicholson, whom, if he is in a movie, I generally will not buy or rent it. There is just something insanely creepy about Jack Nicholson, he reminds me of a drooling mawed creepy slimey drunk who hides in dark corners of a pub. I know, it is horrible, but that is the impression that Jack Nicholson gives me...euuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuk!
Anyway, so I watched this movie, which also starred Kate Winslet, whom I think is just lovely. Point is, the movie was very real and had one of those sort of happy endings, which was also nice. Within the movie there was this scene where Jack Black is composing some lyrics and Kate Winslet kind of helps him and it was a real word rhyming game which was kind of fun.
Anyway, I shall shut up about it now.
My life sucks, did I tell you that? I haven't told anyone that, not really.
For nearly three years I have had a good friend, whom I love like a brother, and even he doesn't know why my life really sucks and has sucked pretty much since I first wrote to him. I guess it is that I know just how much the written word is actually unsafe. If you never write it down then no one can unexpectedly stumble upon it. If you keep it to yourself, then it is always safe. But bottom line? I sure know how to hold things to myself when it comes down to it. Not that I am proud of it, I am not. I am simply completely incapable of completely trusting anyone at all, which isn't an entirely bad thing, more it is unfortunate. And I know what he would tell me to do, I can already hear him and I know what someone else, on the outside looking in would say too, except for one thing, when Chris Cross said that all the words of wisdom sound the same, he wasn't joking!
It is so easy to be so helpful with advice when we are not in the centre of the debacle which we are trying to sort out. Logic does not come into play in these situations when you are at the centre of it, not really. All the voices around you become as clanging gongs because you know that what they say is absolutely right save for one issue, that issue being that you do not want to hear it. Oh for a magic wand. A magic wand to turn my feelings on or to turn them off. I don't mind, one or the other. What I cannot stand is this dallying about indecision gig that I seem to have going. Knowing right from wrong and being unable to do either and all it does is make me more lethargic and deepens my sadness and my apathy! I am such a dope sometimes.
Laterz

Friday 15th February
You know what? I am an exceptionally odd human being, in the grand scheme of things. All of us are odd from time to time but I am odd all of the time.
I have been a spectacularly catastrophic failure at many things in my life and I still struggle to discover what I am really good at. Not just medium good, but stunningly good. I have yet to find out what it is about me that shines, if anything at all.
Some say it is my nice nature, but sometimes I fear my nice nature is simply a bad nature that has been tempered with time and has learned to always be nice even when I don't want to be because I do not have the guts to own who I really am or what I feel. And yet, I know that I would never deliberately hurt anyone. I don't set out to hurt anyone or anything, so at some fundamental level I am probably not as bad as I am frightened I might really be.
I don't, as a natural course of things, take the most obvious side of an argument. For example, I don't hate Jews, I empathise with them and are deeply grieved at the things that they have endured, as a people, over the generations, but at the same time, I also understand the Palestinian side a little better than I once did and they are no better off. I don't support terrorism or terrorists and yet I do see how some of them have been unjustly accused of things that they didn't do, not that they are completely innocent in every aspect, they aren't. I can't pick a team and say that they are absolutely 100% innocent victims and correct in all that they do. It is way too complex of a situation to be able to say that. Does that make me bad?
I know, I promised I would not be introspective at all in here this year, at least I think I promised that, but really, I suspect that I am merely a nasty coward.
I try to understand what is going on in the world and just when I think I have it all worked out, my perceptions become clouded by trying to identify people's agendas and whether you want to acknowledge it or not, we all have agendas, even when we are being naturally selfless. There's always an agenda at play even if the agenda is to have no agenda.
What in the world am I on about? I don't even jolly well know. But what I do know is that right in this very moment I feel very lost. I feel disappointed and I feel led astray. Of course I am the one who led me astray in the first place, but backing up a little isn't an option because what lies behind me is no longer there. It is as though the entire landscape changed and I do not recognise it any more.
I had this idea of what I believed and it was so outrageous a contemplation that I could be right and everyone else I knew was so totally misled that it kind of shocked me. I am speaking of beliefs pertaining to God. I mean, everything pertains to God in one way or another, but I am talking of principle beliefs. There were people I admired and respected who have turned out to be totally walking up the primrose path, when all the time I thought it was myself walking on that path.
There have been times in my life where I have seen daughters being treasured by their fathers, wives being treasured by their husbands and I always wondered why it had never been that way for me? Sometimes I feel like Job, but on the inside!
Sometimes I am afraid that God might leave me. And sometimes I get scared that I only ever believed in him from a little child because I was too scared not to. I cannot fathom living a life without the lifeline of him. Does that make me weak and pretentious? I don't know.
When Matisse died, the one thought that zoomed through my brain and shot down my spine was, "Oh God I hope you are real. I hope that my belief in You hasn't been in vain, because if it was, then what is left to us? "
I am not one to ask God for signs, I never do that for fear he won't send one anyway. I never ask for proof of his existence because I know that He will not do that and because I have seen it enough to know anyway. I know that I have to have faith to believe these things and I do, but sometimes I just want to yell at God and ask him what the heck he's doing? What the heck am I doing and why in the world did you bring me to this place? What is my purpose? Do I have a purpose?
I am talking about dark moments. Those moments that come along to taunt us every now and then...a blue moon every now and then. To be honest, I think even the strongest Christian out there has dark moments where they wonder of things that do not normally enter their head.
So I breathe a huge sigh because sometimes I hate the way I think and I hope God will forgive me. Still I move along to another day, no wiser, no smarter, no happier and yet still present. Any day above ground is a good day.
Laterz

Saturday 16th February
I read yesterday's blog this morning and only one thought occurred to me and that was "Wow, I so shouldn't write blogs!"
Normally I would have come back in and deleted it once I felt better but I decided not to. It is not that I doubt God, I don't, just every now and then I am reminded of how much I am dependant on his existence...it is what keeps me going and probably the only thing that gives me hope and makes this life make some of the sense that it does. What I mean by some is that this life and the purpose of it has never made total sense to me at all, not ever.
Anyway, enough of that.
Heard from my dear friend. He has not taken off to his cabin in the mountains, at least not yet. He has been sick with the flu...again. It really amazes me how much he gets sick with flus and the likes. It amazes because he is such a healthy eater and a veg head and he takes all manner of homeopathic health supplements. I suppose it is true to say that he might get sick a lot but despite this and as a direct result of his healthy eating habits, he will live until he's two hundred and five!
I was pleased to hear from him and I had been missing him a lot.
But I must say, something he said surprised me. He is under the impression that I think that Iran should have nukes. Now, I can see how he might have arrived at that conclusion, but it is not quite what I meant. My stance is this: if the rest of the world wants to ban Iran from having nukes, then no one else should have them either. If they are going to demand that Iran not have nuclear bombs, then best the countries demanding that lead by example. But, if no one else is going to get rid of them, then why should Iran be held to an expectation that the people asking will not live up to? If it is okay for the countires demanding they not have a nuclear arsenal, to have one themselves, then I do not see how they can legally or logically demand that Iran not have them. In other words, if it is good for the goose then it is good for the gander. That is all I was saying. My personal view on this issue is that NO ONE should have them, no one at all for any reason.
I really hope that this clears up any confusion on the part of anyone reading this.
It is just like the Israel and Palestine situation. If Israel wants peace and to be free from Palestinian terror, then best they cease perpetrating violence upon them too. The way that the leaders in Israel have treated the Palestinian people is appalling! It feeds into the mindset of violence that exists on the fringe of any society. People can only be pushed so far before they kick back and if you read both sides of the story, which I have attempted to do from a biblical point of view and a historical one, you can see that Israel has perpetrated terribly appalling acts of violence against the Palestinian people. It is much like, in some instances, SOME of the things done to SOME Jewish folks during the Holocaust. By this I mean the denial of basic human needs: water, homes and food.
They have even had occasion to massacre, unprovoked, groups of Palestinian people...old men, women and children. A lot of this kind of violence was perpetrated under Menachim Bagen and Ariel Sharon. I am not defending violence perpetrated by Palestinians upon Israelis; suicide bombers and the likes, or vice versa, what I am saying is that Israel is not entirely the innocent victim that the mainstream media likes to portray her as. But nevertheless, any violence from any side is absolutely appalling and it all needs to stop because always the ones that get hurt are usually innocents.
It seems I might be incredibly inarticulate because every time I try to express what I think and believe on these issues I seem to be taken for one who hates Israel and loves Iran, which is total hogwash!
The other thing that annoys me is the situation that eventuated with Saddam Hussein. Now I am no fan of Saddam, I really am not. He was a tyrant and he did use biological weapons against those in his country who opposed him. Also remembered, those who opposed him used suicide bombers and the likes to strike out at the regime. The international media painted a rather skewed picture of Iraq and did not attribute to the correct sourses the cause of the starvation and medical and educational nightmare that existed there. You see, for ten years before Bush Jnr sent his troops in again, Iraq had been under severe economic sanctions. This saw many sourses of food cut off, educational needs cut off and medical supplies cut off. A list was made of all the things that would be included in the embargo, you should read it sometime. It cut trade between Iraq and the rest of the world. I will include a video at the bottom of this post so that you can see it for yourself.
My point is that the mainstream stance on any particular issue never gives you the entire picture; ever!
Yes Saddam was a tyrant, but world leaders conspired to make him look even more of a tyrant through their tyrannical punishments forced upojn the everyday Iraqi. Bottom line, Iraq did not look like it does today when Saddam was there. As for hanging him, that was not a smart move because all they managed to do was make a martyr out of him. He should have been jailed for the rest of his natural life. And if you are going to hang one tyrant, then hang them all! Clearly, they applied one rule to Saddam and a different rule to all the others. Why? It got Saddam out of the way and so long as Saddam had remained in Iraq, International forces would have had an even harder job going in there and doing the things that they have done. And Saddam would have insisted upon keeping his oil, after all, the oil DID belong to Iraq, not George Bush or any other person or country in the world. And, in my opinion, if anyone was going to go in there to sort Saddam out, it should have been another Middle East country and not done under the pretense that it was. At the end of the day, it is contended that the sanctions killed more Iraqis than Saddam ever did. They contend that yes Saddam was bad, but the US political machine was even worse, and from my stance, watching Madeline Albright and the other idiot at the end of the video saying that the sanctions resulting in over 600'000 - one million deaths, many of them children, alone was worth it. How incredibly evil is that? How would the American govt feel if Saddam was sitting there, having killed 600'000 American children, saying it was worth it? Goodness gracious me, people WAKE UP!
No one is there to spread democracy, far from it, and if that is what democracy looks like, then who wants it anyway?
Laterz

Sunday 17th February
It amazes me how you can say that you believe in a facet of one thing and then suddenly you're a terrorist loving, Saddam or Osama worshipping, Iran cloning anti-American idiot! Grrr.
Today on YouTube I listened to a guy called William Cooper. He is dead now, died in a shootout with Feds. But when he was in the navy he swore he saw an alien ship come up out of the sea and ever since that day, way back in the late 60s I think, he was never the same. He went on this quest of trying to prove that the American Government was infiltrated by an alien force and that they were making deals with aliens, yada, yada, yada. Now, I do not believe in aliens, flying saucers, alian abductions or anything along those lines. I never have and I never will. But I was alarmed and surprised at the number of people who vehemently supported the work of Bill Cooper. It was almost as bizarre as those who clone after Benny Hinn and his little minion buddies.
It is so easy to get caught up in hype and untruth and sometimes, even when dealing with truth, a little hype gets thrown in for good measure. Why am I speaking of this? Well, I don't know.
Haven't got a clue actually.
But take fortune tellers and the story that I am about to tell you is the absolute truth as it was told to me. What do I really think happened? Well, I used to believe that it was primarily anyway, far too much LSD. These days what I think it is may probably be considered bizarre, but I will share it nevertheless.
Now, before I share it, please, please, please keep in mind that I am NOT offering my ideas as final conclusions or as the only truth or even truth at all, they are simply my ideas, thought up in a mind that really has not been able to come up with anything more imaginative than this.
First of all the story and, again, this is absolutely the truth as it was told to me.
My mother-in-law Eleanor used to go to a fortune teller. This fortune teller wasn't just any old run of the mill fortune teller, as if there is such a thing, but she was downright spooky. I never met the fortune teller myself and never sought to, nor would I ever, but if memory serves me correct, it was a female fortune teller.
I don't know if she read cards, palms or tea leaves, I never asked Eleanor because I really preferred not to hear anything about it. Unfortunately, when things happen, such as what did happen, after a family member has been to see a fortune teller, then one cannot help but hear every ghastly detail when one is a member of that family.
I will try to keep the story as short as is humanly possible.
The first time Eleanor went to see the fortune teller, it was told to Eleanor that one of her three sons would die in a motorbike accident. Now, I don't know what year she actually saw the fortune teller before the event was to happen, but I am guessing it was anywhere from 1979-1981. Anyway, one late night in 1981 her youngest son Rodney stopped on a deserted country road to help a gang, Mongrel Mob I think it was, whose car had broken down just on the other side of a small bridge. Keep in mind that this country road rarely, if ever, has much traffic on it.
Rodney got the MM's car going for them, got on his motorbike and attempted a U-turn to head back to Rongotea when, out of nowhere, a car came flying across the bridge and collected him killing him instantly.
You would think that that would be enough to keep Eleanor from ever going back to that fortune teller, but oh no, Eleanor went back for more.
The fortune teller, knowing that Eleanor's son had been killed, just as she predicted he would be, went on to tell her that her blonde haired husband would die. Well, Eleanor was a bit confused by that one, you see, her husband had dark hair. Eleanor, assuming that the fortune teller must have gotten it wrong, made yet another visit to her and that time the woman predicted that one of her grandsons would die before he was a year old.
Two or three years went by and nothing happened. Come April 1989, another grandson was born and obviously the parents were rather nervous about all this talk of grandsons dying before they reached a year old. Well, Josh's first birthday came and went without incident BUT before Josh turned one, Eleanor's ex-husband, who was once blonde, died of a heart attack out of nowhere. He was only 55.
The grandson dying prediction took on more ghusto, but Josh's parents had decided to have no more children, so that left only me, who was pregnant. When our daughter was born, I knew that she was going to be just fine and so thought nothing more of it, for we were not going to have any more kids either. Josh's parents found that they were having another baby and so the panic started again, until at scan time they found out that their baby was a girl. All went quiet for a while.
Then I found out I was pregnant and at twenty weeks I had a scan and I found out that my baby was a boy. I did not tell my husband the sex of the baby. He hoped for a boy, but I still did not tell him. Partly because every time he asked me he would change his mind just at the point where I was to tell him and two, I didn't want to worry him with his mother's fortune teller rubbish hanging over our heads.
Now, I have never believed that fortune tellers tell the truth by nature. They do not tell the truth because no one can see the future. BUT, what I do believe is that if one delves into the occult long enough and with a certain level of determination, I believe that they almost issue a dare or a challenge to whatever spirits do linger in our world, those being good or evil spirits, but in this case I am referring to evil.
I don't think that what I believe is as bizarre as one might wish to think it. The bible is filled with examples of demon possession and also of people seeing and communing with angels. Therefore, being that I believe that the bible is the true word of God, it is safe to assume that both good and evil dwells amongst us in a way in which we are totally unable to really grasp a sound understanding of. And when it is said that you should never mess with what you don't undertsand, it isn't a joke. What I believe is that if one seeks the darkness and the secrets hidden in the darkness then those who have dominion over the darkness will oblige.
I believe that Eleanor's fortune teller invited the forces of evil to perpetrate those things and that Eleanor had a hand in it by going to her in the first place. I call it inviting trouble. Some might argue that Rodney and James might have died anyway, regardless of whether Eleanor went to a fortune teller or not. No one can say what the truth of that contention is with any certainty. But my guess, and it is only my guess, is that they would not have. Or, in the least, if a God fearing person had been aware of what was being unleashed upon that family, they may have been spared their cruel fate. My son is living proof that it can be undone.
Right from the moment that Jonty emerged into the world and for almost the entirety of his first 16 months, his life was in danger and freak accidents served to try to take him while at the same time miraculous intervention saved him.
Jonty nearly died when he was born due to a lack of oxygen. He may even have died inside the womb, had I not insisted on my doctor putting me into hospital that afternoon and inducing labour at ten that night. I had known my doctor for years and he had said to me a few days earlier at a checkup that if I wanted to wait and see if baby would come by himself then he was fine with that. But he asked that I go to the hospital and have a monitor run done, so I did. The monitor run was not good. Baby was not moving at all and his heart rate was a little low. No matter what the nurses did, they could not get baby to move. They insisted on keeping me in hospital, but I said no. My doctor said to me at that point, "You can go home, but you ring me as soon as you feel you want to and we will get labour started, but it is up to you."
One day later I just got this nagging inner voice that was telling me that I needed to have this baby and quick, so I rang the doctor and it was all set up for that evening. I was in labour for only two hours, any longer and baby would have died from oxygen deprivation. As it was when he came out, he was blue/black for lack of oxygen. I had never seen a baby look so unwell at birth. I just knew that if I had not gone to hospital that night, that the outcome for him would have been disasterous.
Within two weeks of having Jonty he was covered from head to foot in a rash that we simply could not get rid of no matter what we did. Out of desperation the family doctor sent us to a pediatrition at the local hospital where we lived, which was in a different town to where Jonty was born. We deliberately went back to our old town to have him because I wanted all my children born in the same place.
While we were with the pediatrition he asked about the history of my other babies and it came to mind the fact that Israel had been on an apnoea monitor for the first year of his life due to a cot death scare. He asked if any of my other kids had been put on monitors after that and I replied that they had not. He said that they all should have been categorised as high risk and put on monitors because if you have had one with apnoea problems then, according to research he had read, you could very easily have another. So, he got a monitor from the maternity ward at that hospital and made me promise that no matter what, I would use it with Jonty. I dallied a bit with my response because I really didn't think it necessary but, as a direct result of the doctor's persistence, I agreed to use it religiously. The doctor arranged for the Cot Death Society woman to visit us that very afternoon to teach all of us CPR.
I felt a certain amount of guilt taking up that woman's precious time when it could have been spent with families who had kids that really needed her expertise. At that time I still did not see it as necessary to have Jonty on a monitor, nor did I believe that he was in any danger of apnoea attacks.
Anyway, the woman finished teaching us all how to revive a baby if necessary and she also introduced us to the darker side of cot death, what to expect if our baby were to die. She went through the process of calling the Police, having a corrinor attend and she even explained to us what they do during a baby's autopsy. I won't share that info here, it is just not necessary. It was really disturbing to be told all of those things though and yet, I still felt the entire thing to be a slight waste of time.
One week later as my husband and I sat in the lounge watching TV, we heard what sounded like our alarm clock going off over the baby intercom thing we had. I looked at my husband and accused him of having set the darn thing wrong and he accused me of the same. Within a few more moments the penny dropped and we both went racing down to our bedroom and sure enough, Jonty had stopped breathing. That was the first instance of that happening. Over the next year of his life, it happened so many times that I could not recall each incident. It happened when he was with us and it happened when we were not there and he was being minded by friends. It happened so frequently that we came to expect it.
But, the important thing to remember here is that had that doctor not insisted that I take an apnoea monitor and use it on Jonty, we would have lost him the very first time it happened. Miraculous intervention. That is what I call that doctor's presence in our lives at that time. Miraculous intervention.
At four months, Jonty got what they referred to as the RSV virus...aka respiratory syncytial virus. This virus is often fatal. Clearly Jonty survived this after a period of hospitalisation.
At nine months old Jonty got Staphylococcus aureus of the blood which is also a very serious disease and in babies, sometimes fatal. Clearly, he survived this also after a period of hospitalisation.
Then there were the freak accidents. First he nearly choked to death when he fell against the crossbars of a highchair. The second, he nearly got strangled to death when getting wound up in a dog chain.
Thing is, I believe that God was watching over Jonty and as much as the evil of this world tried to fulfil the last prophecy of that fortune teller and thus the expectations of my mother-in law, Jonty was protected by divine and miraculous intervention many times. But a fortune teller is a dangerous person to mess with. Fortune telling is a seriously stupid thing to involve yourself with. When you mess with such things as that, then you open the door for bad things to happen and that just is not fair.
I do believe in the concept of demons parading around as ghosts or speaking through people who summons up the dead, like those guys you see on TV. I do believe that they feed accurate information to their subject at times, but just long enough to get the subject hooked, then all the inaccuracies appear, but because you are convinced by the first few truths, you refuse to see the inaccurcy for what it is.
Which brings me back to my original topic, alein abduction. Do I believe that it is real? In the minds of the people supposedly being abducted, it is probably very real to them. What do I think is really happening?
I think it is a dream like memory implanted into the minds of the subjects by said demons. As for accounting for their disappearance? Perhaps they are led off to some remote place where they endure their dream like stupor and time, in the mind of the subject, is filled with implanted memories that they believe are very real.
Think about it, one third of all the angels were thrown from Heaven with Lucifer. How many angels were there to start with? We do not know, therefore the number could be in the jillionths, quatillions or even tetragillions and if that is so, then how many angels is one third of a jillionth, a quatillion? How many angels is one third of a tetragillion? Point is one third of all the angels could still be an immense number of angels that were left to their own devices.
What became of the angels thrown from heaven? Some say they were left to wander the earth. Others say they were cast into the lake of fire but, in the book of Revelation it speaks of a time when the evil one will be cast into the lake of fire, so it is safe to assume that he and his cohorts are free, for the moment, to do as they so please. Therefore, if they so desired, they COULD pose as anything that they wanted. Remember, at one time they infiltated the gene pool and produced offspring, some called them Nephilim. If they did that then, is it not possible that they can still do those things now?
I do not know any of this with any real certainty, as I stated to begin with, these are just things that I have thought about and tried to work out. I admit that I could be wrong or off the beaten path, but there is something inherently dangerous in messing with something you do not possess the capacity to understand let alone control. And I think that that is what fortune tellers and people of that ilk are doing. They are messing with something that they do not understand and something that they cannot control. The end result being that they wreak havoc amongst the people and sometimes that results in real tragedies such as what happened to Rodney, James. I believe alien abduction to be along the same lines; Demons manifesting things that, although are potentially very harmful to those who are subjected to it, are not in fact exactly what they seem.
Could demons do this? Of course they could, they were angels once, remember? Angels are infinitely more wise than us and there are probably few limits within which they are confined. For God's angels, those limits would be first to do no harm, I should imagine. But for fallen angels? It would be no holds barred, as they are fallen and follow the lawless one.
Laterz

Monday 18th February
Jonty turned 14 at 2.30 am. It does not seem like fourteen years ago, it seems like such a short time ago, then again, it seems a lifetime.
The teachers commented that they noticed that he had gotten taller over the Christmas holidays...here in New Zealand the holidays run from around mid December until the 7th of February. I do not notice his growth any more as he is so much taller than me now that I have had to tilt my head to make eye-contact with him for some time. Scary part is that he has not hit puberty yet and when he does, he will have another growth spurt then too. I hate to imagine what his final height will be.
Got Matisse's ashes back today, which was very sad and very weird. Will enclose a photo at the end of this blog...her kitten were very weird when I put the box on the bed. I know that there is no way that they could know that the box contained their mother, but the way they acted, you would think that they did. They mooched the box, sniffed it, touched it with their paws and then all fell asleep on it. Was very sweet and sad.
I don't really have much else to say today.
Laterz

Tuesday 19th February
There is all manner of strange things going on in the world right now. Riots in Pakistan, Russian fighter jets invading US airspace over Canada, Iran president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad going to Bagdad to meet with the Iraqi president, USA saying they need to use some kind of missile to shoot down a satellite that is careering toward earth and George Bush threatening to throw his toys from the cot if waterboarding is outlawed as a preferred method of getting "terrorists" to confess their heinous plots against the USA.
Never ceases to amaze me.
I am not sure where all of this is headed to, to be absolutely honest with you. It would be sort of comforting to think of these things as every day occurrences in this day and age, somehow one might not be alarmed by them any more than one is normally alarmed, but I can't help wondering where this is all leading to.
I know, why worry about the things that you cannot control? Why not just learn to accept them? Like I have a choice? Like any of us do?
You can reject them all you want to but it still won't stop them happening.
I think the thing I find most worrying out of all of them is this water-boarding issue. What worries me is that the definition of a terrorist has change somewhat. No more is a terrorist defined by his turban, shoulder rocket launcher, out dated camcorder and dialysis machine. These days they have defined terrorist suspects by many different things. In the USA if you take photographs of buildings of interest, you could be a terrorist, If you have road maps in your car, you could be a terrorist. If you have blonde hair and blue eyes, you could also be a terrorist. Point is, that the definitions of a possible terrorist emcompass so many different things now that any one of us, in the wrong place at the wrong time, could be mistaken for a terrorist. That poor unfortunate person may well find themselves in a jail being water-boarded until they confess to something that they never did. See, garnering a confession from any given individual has got to be a tricky scenario. How far do you go with your water-boarding and electrodes applied to genitals until you have crossed the line to the point where the confession is furnished through fear of more harm and is given simply as an avenue through which to survive and is in fact a total fabrication?
Innocent until proven guilty has no meaning any more; just ask the inmates at Guantanamo(sp). If you are suspected of being a terrorist they will torture you until you confess. Worse still, people in the world sanction this idea of being able to torture terrorist suspects...and the operative word here is "suspect'. I wonder how much more it will be supported when it is our sons, daughter, mothers, fathers, husbands and wives who are being held on such suspicions and being subjected to prescribed methods of confession gathering?
Laterz

Wednesday 20th February
I started a little page in the infowars.com site...just to connect up with others regarding ideas and news regarding issues that are covered on the site. Will be interesting to see what happens. I have not spoken to anyone on the site yet, but when I do, if it gets weird, I will get out of there. So, thus far, just in case, I have not put too much effort into it so far but to put my age, a screen name and post two videos.
I won't write blogs there. I don't write them in MySpace any more either. In fact, I have pretty much written MySpace off and I should really go in there and cancel my account as I seldom, if ever these days, use it.
My other piczo site is almost back to normal, but I will not add anything more to that one. I will simply let it stand as one would a scrapbook on a shelf. Maybe I will go back to it to have a poke around. There might be something on there that I might want to transfer over to here...especially my 911 page and a few things like that. I will leave the redirection to here on there.
My ideas, perceptions and attitudes toward some things have changed since I first started that site. My understandings have changed, only in a couple of areas, due to more information and research, not that I want to go into any of the issues concerned, save for the fact that they are not incredibly big issues.
Anyway, that is about it for today. If you are a regular here a big HELLO!!!!! Hope I am not boring you silly but, I suppose if I was then you would not keep coming back, so thanks for stopping by and have a lovely day tomorrow.
Laterz

Ps How weird is this...Jonty's new kitten was is so much like Monty was that it is uncanny. I got in touch with the lady where we got Monty from and she told me that she had placed kittens in the same small shop as we bought Gizmo from. She had a kitten that matches Gizmo's description. We unknowingly bought Monty's little brother! It is a comfort though and has brought us a sort of peace that has eased the loss of Monty a little.
Matisse is still very much missed and I actually momentarily wondered where she was the other night when I fed the cats and there was food left over. Then I remembered and, as I stared at the leftover food on the plate, it made me cry.

Thursday 21st February
Watching the news last night I saw something that I can only describe as hilarious in a sad and ironic fashion.
Fidel Castro officially announced that he was stepping down as President and handing power to his brother Raul Castro. That wasn't the funny bit.
The funny part came when George Bush appeared in the article speaking about how now that Fidel has stepped down Cuba can now have open and free elections without any fraudulent behaviour being involved (i.e vote stealing, rigging and what have you). He also announced that he would help them, "he" being the "American elites" I assume bring democracy to Cuba.
I could not help but laugh.
Does he think that Cubans don't have television? Radios?
They know that George Bush and Diebold are the biggest election riggers there ever was and as for their brand of democracy, does he think that the Cubans have been shielded from seeing democracy at work in Iraq? OMGosh, I could not BELIEVE what I was hearing and I actually burst out laughing.
I simply couldn't believe the gumption of the man!
Cuba is not perfect; but how is the way Fidel came to power any different to how George Bush did? Seriously, how is it different?
George Bush stole the last election; everyone knows that. He has messed with the constitution and no one has stopped him. He espouses that spying on citizens and torturing terrorist suspects (note I said suspects) is perfectly fine. He espouses that holding suspects in Guantanamo indefinitely, without charges, without representation and without any kind of basic human rights is perfectly acceptable. He invaded Afghanistan on a pretextt. He has invaded another country that posed no threat to America and he has ruined that country so badly that it will probably never fully recover. He wants to go into Iran. HOW IS HE ANY DIFFERENT TO FIDEL? Easy, Fidel admits what he is and at least you know what you are dealing with and Fidel hasn't invaded another country and done what has been done to Iraq.
I am not sticking up for Fidel, but, in my opinion, until George cleans his act up and gets real, there's no way he should be sticking his nose into Cuba's affairs!
Laterz

"These Days"
by
"Rich Mullins"

Saturday 23rd February
Been an interesting couple of days. Met a person through YouTube called Chuck. I have spoken to Chuck a couple of times since and he seems like a nice person. Married his college sweetheart and has four kids, is a pastor and sounds like a pretty stand up guy. He also offered to send me some David and the Giants CDs, which is very kind of him and which I appreciate because I can't get them here.
Onto other news.
At the Barak Obama rally yesterday in Dallas, security was asked to stand down and stop scanning bags and people for weapons. They say that it is very suspicious that they were asked to do that and kind of reminded me of the Security detail stand down in Dallas that aided the killing of JFK. Who knows.
Write more soon, I have a coffee date next door.
Coffee was great.
Posted two more new vids in YouTube. The riots in Kosovo are getting worse by the day and have some origins in American influence having been exacted over a situation, I think.
We are having a cold spell right now right across the country and apart from the driving wind and rain, there has been the odd small tornado. They expect the bad weather to last until around Monday.
Laterz

Sunday 24th February
Piczo has changed the way that their tools work...again, so it has created a huge headache for me. I have to go through and justify every document here. Luckily on my old piczo I was so pedantic that I always scrolled the bar right down to the end of every block of text, even though there seemed no point to it because the text was still there whether you did it or not. Not now though.
Laterz

Later same day.
Okay, seems it is only a problem if you have used a background colour on your text, which mostly, aside from blogging, I have not done...and when I did used to use colour on the background I had taken the dooda down to the...oh never mind.
Totally off subject here. Do songs or the sounds of some melodies ever take you straight back to some place or time way back years ago? I have that happen and one song in particular that does it is Time Passages by Al Stewart (Mr. Year of the Cat). The first few bars of the opening is incredible, sounds like one of those real old Mozart days pianos but in actuality it is probably an old Rhodes, they replicate the sound of an old days piano incredibly well. They sometimes sound almost like something you would expect to hear playing in the background of an old Edgar Allen Poe story, you know the twanking, tinking, grinding yet beautiful music box type of sound? Maybe you don't.
It is weird, but I wrote these two books that intertwine with each other and it is very hard to know which one came first, they are so intertwined, even I have trouble working out which one should come first. The two books are "Seasons Change" and "The Misfortune of Luci-arnold Graham". The stories have never been published, but that is not to say that they shouldn't be, or that they should...but personally, I think they should. I think that they are clever, original and they keep you guessing to the last. Anyway, both of those stories contain elements of truth, I simply do not tell you which parts. Point being, and I have gone off track here, as I always do because I find it almost impossible to simply make a point...but I wrote both of these stories listening to "Time Passages". The reason being that both stories are set back in that era, in those days and in a particular area that I lived in.
The characters in the stories, particularly Luci-arnold Graham are very real. Luci-arnold Graham really existed. I don't know if that was really even his name, but that is what we called him.
He arrived in our area one summer's day riding a bike with a big bag on his back and he took up residence on our local beach. Everyone was suspicious of him; everyone. All the adults told us kids never to find ourselves alone with him and he became a creature of suspicion and ridicule. There were all these grand stories involving macarbe horror doing the rounds about him and of course, all us kids added to them at will.
Okay, I was just a kid and the adults around me, being mostly Christian and all, should have known better than to allow us to gaze upon that harmless old man with suspicion and fear. Anyway, so it was those days that inspired the story that I wrote, but the story that led into that one was "Seasons Change", which also contains much truth but some red herrings and I do not think I will ever tell which bits are real and which parts aren't, although some of it is obvious.
But if you get a chance, read the stories, they are quite good, I think, and I am not normally one to gas about my own work in a positive way. I am usually my own worst critic, which is probably why they have never been published. You see, I write well, my ideas are good and my stories engaging, but I tend to lack on the mechanics of writing, you know all the technical dos and don'ts that exist. I put words together that just shouldn't go together and sometimes I put the adjectives in the wrong place, whatever.
Editors scare me because I have seen them take a good story and shape it into unrecognisable form and the original work is so butchered that it bites! I don't even know why I am speaking of this really. I suppose so that I stay away from another subject.
Someone saw one of my videos and really liked it, said that they would contact me and I am hoping that they do, yet not holding out much hope that they will. I shouldn't care really. I should not care at all. It should be six of one and half a dozen of the other, but I have never had someone who was connected to anything that I have done like this before ever take an interest and I have to say that I am a mite curious as to what it is that they want to say.
I dreamed last night that this person did contact me and that I saw them, which is odd because I do not have the foggiest idea what this person even looks like. Anyway, I dreamed that he told me that my video was exceptionally terrible, Hogarthian in fact and that he was so embarrassed to have his music associated with it that he wanted it taken down immediately. See? I did it there...THAT sentence should have read like this; "He asked that I immediately take it down." Whatever.....Anyway, in my dream he was really angry, upset and not at all impressed with me, as a person, an artist or anything else.
Which brings to mind another question; am I really what one could define as an artist?
I don't even know why I am posting about all of this stuff. But I wonder if he will make contact in the end, when all is said and done? Or will it be another one of those things in life that intrigues one and yet adds up to nothing? Did I tell you that this band contacted me and asked me to make a video for one of their songs? Yeah they did and it got as far as them sending me the track but it never happened. I heard nothing more from them and if not for the emails I could almost convince myself that I imagined the whole thing. I hate it when that happens.
Another guy who was interested in my work, and keep in mind no money was ever involved because once you involve money, to me anyway, the love leaves it, but anyway this guy liked my work and he was a struggling muso and I offered to help him out with his vids, which he wanted. But in the end, I ended up being an agony aunt for him during his very nasty breakup with his girlfriend who was about as good for him as a hole in the head, just he was the only one who couldn't see it. Anyway, so for nine months I was friends with that guy and he even came up to see me a couple of times; just friends you understand, nothing more.
I listened to all of his second guessing himself in regards to her and all that goes with it. I thought that, all in all, we had become friends. But in the end, he went back to her and I have never heard another word from him since. I have to say that I feel just slightly used, even though I kind of suspected that the whole thing was going to go where it ended up anyway. I am not mad at him, just a little disappointed.
I am not even sure why I am even speaking of this to be totally honest, I suppose, as a friend, he hurt me. I didn't mind that he went back to her. I told him I would always be his friend no matter what he chose to do. What hurt me is that he has never spoken another word to me since.
Do I invite this kind of friendship? Am I just too darn accommodating? Maybe I am just being what I am supposed to be and taking it on the chin when it gets dished out.
I guess that is what we all do don't we? We be a friend where we can be a friend and we take it on the chin when it disappears like it was never even there.
Anyway, that is my blurb for the day.
All the world is a stage and I seem to be the only member of the audience. Oh well, at least I get to throw popcorn and jaffas at you all! Ha ha ha
Laterz
It is still Sunday. Was looking forward to hearing from Chuck and seeing the pics he was going to send, but it was his wife who emailed instead. She sent the photos that Chuck was going to send and I wondered why she did that instead of Chuck?
I was kind of looking forward to getting to know Chuck, but maybe he is just too busy, or something.
Laterz

Tuesday 26th February
I have been sitting here for the past five minutes waiting for a thought to come to me to write a blog and you no what? Absolutely nothing comes to mind.
The riots in Kosovo are not improving but the news media outlets have pretty much stopped reporting on it. The UN did release a press statement of sorts saying that if their food program does not get more money then they will have to start rationing food. How odd in a world where God designed it so that there would be enough for everyone to eat. I suppose, once you put currency into the picture, it becomes a whole different ball game doesn't it. The heart of man is deceitful but above all desperately wicked; who can know it?
I really can't be bothered with this today.
Laterz
This is the same day.
Okay, so I spoke to the Chuckmeister's wife a little bit and she seems really nice. Okay now I have run out of things to say again.
Laterz

Wednesday 27th February
Why do we allow things to injure us? More importantly, why do we allow ourselves to be scarred? I am not sure why we do that. I know that I have done my share of that...worried about things that don't require a concern and been hurt by things whose sting should simply be ignored.
Sorry for speaking as though life's issues are merely cryptic puzzles that we are meant to work out, but you know what? Some times I think that they are exactly that and I highly suspect that I cannot think laterally enough to work them out.
Laterz

Thursday 28th February
Did you hear about the doomsday vault in Norway? They say that they are to entomb a variety of seeds from all around the world in it. Why? I guess in the event that we all blow each other to kingdom come and there is nothing left of this place. That is a little problematic though, if you blow each other to kingdom come, then who will find the seeds? And if "who" finds them, how in the world will "who" know what to do with them? It could be one of those situations where you give a man a fish he eats for a day but if you give him a fishing rod then he eats for a lifetime, but in this scenario with the vaul and all, "who" could very well end up eating his fishing rod.
Want to know what I think? Of course you don't, but too bad...and I know that you can see it coming a mile off...this chicken is going to jump to some kind of conspiracy theory...aha...you are right. BUT it is NOT the theory that will have immediately sprung to your mind.
Firstly, yes the seeds are for the "Elite" who would be the only survivors of an all our world wide biological war. Secondly, I think the seed vault in Norway is a red herring. Sure it is a vault and full of seeds, but do you honestly think that they would broadcats the existence of such a place let alone provide you with an address? Of course not!
Does such a place exist? Of course it does, but nowhere that any man of ordinary means will ever be able to find.
Laterz

Friday 29th February
Well, someone somewhere is actually having a birthday for the first time in four years. Leap years, gotta love 'em.
Received two David and the Giants CDs in the mail today from a new friend "the Chuckmeister" in Indiana and I have to say that firstly, the American postal system is way faster than ours and secondly, the music on the CDs is awesome!!!!! Oh yeah, the friend in Indiana is Chuck.. .Chuckles...the Chuckmeister. He is a pastor of a church there. I think I mentioned Chuck and Lori in recent blogs.
There is this song on one of the CDs called "Show Them the Light" and it is a really amazing song. I had it in my head when I drove the kids into town for a while earlier this afto and honestly, I didn't really begin to get uncomfortable in town like I normally do. It really picked my mood up and it was also very calming.
It was so hot today that about 6.00pm I actually got into the pool and it was really nice, so nice in fact that I was reluctant to get out. I also had to scoop out of the pool all the leaves from the recent windstorm that we had...there were many of them...they didn't quite number the grains of sand on the earth, but at moments it seemed that they did. I look forward to winter. Autumn and winter are really my fave seasons, although spring and autumn probably come in at a tie. I am not partial to summer. I don't like the heat much at all.
Laterz

"Hoppi Polla"
by
"Sigur Ros"

Saturday 1st March
Isn't it odd how you can tell yourself something over and over and even though cognitively you know it to be true you experience a great deal of trouble convincing your heart? I think we do this as a lack of options as opposed to having exercised choice.
What am I speaking of?
Nothing in particular.
Us humans, collectively we are just a bumbling, stumbling ball of spaghetti...and messy, my goodness we really are just frightful. Sometimes I wonder what God was thinking!
If you compare people today to the people who lived in the days of Noah, what is the difference? Is there one, really? Yes, there is one glaring difference, we seem to be short one Noah. It scares me that as a representation of humanity we are what there is. We pick at each other, fight with each other, want to steal each other's toys and always always we are the one who is right.
You look back on history and it is glaringly obvious to see that we have learned absolutely nothing at all. Just as people were then, we are inebriated by our lusts, killing in our greed, rotting in our arrogance and drowning in confusion. Yeah, so it is not all bad news, there are pockets of hope, but they are becoming smaller by the day. What scares me most of all is that two hundred years ago someone probably wrote something very similar to what I have written about the folks back then. What is even more scary is the idea that two hundred years from now, someone will be looking back on us and writing exactly the same things. I hope the world doesn't go on for another two hundred years, for how many more miseries will we have dreamed up to bestow upon each other by then?
Laterz

Sunday 2nd March
Life seems so long, don't you think? It just seems to drag on and on sometimes and I find myself wondering why. Why do some of us simply crawl into a little shell and try to remain there? What are we afraid of?
I know what I am afraid of...I am afraid of the accidental barbs in life. I am afraid of the innocent things...the things that just happen to come to my attention at completely the wrong time. The barbs that come along and awaken things within me long forgotten. Journies to places looking for someone, or something...yet I have to admit that for me today the memory of someone from long ago who has always been missing and whom I have never met was awakened.
Odd isn't it?
Yes, it is very odd, but I do wonder about him. What does he look like? How old is he? Where has he been and why did he do what he did? And then I wonder what he would think of me? I think he would be embarrassed because I would remind him of things he probably wishes he had never done. Lines he wishes he had never crossed, thoughts he wished he had never toyed with and transgressions to which he succumbed. Hmm, that is a whole lot of remembering don't you think?
I think life is very mean with a lot of people sometimes. It has a way of creating an empty space within you that no matter what you do, without the right putty, it can never be sealed off and forgotten forever, and that makes life seem long and sometimes it seems so unfair. And boy do I want to scream at the sky some days that it is unfair and God let me take a look at that blue print because I think you missed something VERY CRUCIAL! AND WHY DO YOU LET ME FEEL EMOTIONS ABOUT BEING CAUGHT UP IN SOMETHING THAT I CAN NEVER CHANGE OR FIX NO MATTER WHAT I DO? WHY CAN'T YOU SIMPLY JUST MAKE ME NOT CARE?
Why allow people to feel pain about things out of their control? I am not talking about crying when terrible things happen like death. Death you can work through, its the situations that cause huge gaping endless black voids...that you feel emotions about and yet are powerless to fix or to switch off. Some days I just want to scream!
I wish...it doesn't matter what I wish, to wish is to simply chase the wind and no one can catch the wind no matter how clever they are.
Laterz

Monday 3rd March
My topic today; bullies!
I was talking to someone yesterday and the subject of violence came up and the person I was speaking with either in an email or during a "message session" commented that he had been prone to a little violence earlier in his life. I stated that I had never been violently inclined, but upon reflection, I realised that I actually accidentally told him a lie. There was one year in my life where I qualified as a bully. Actually, I qualified as a violent bully. Perhaps my violence was a little more subdued than the normal state of violence, but still, it qualifies.
When I was thirteen I changed foster homes and got moved to yet another new town where no one knew me. In my previous school, Otaki College, for reasons beyond my control and due to behaviour on the part of an adult male toward those of the opposite sex who were about my age, I got bullied. From form 1 right through to May 1980, my 3rd form year, I got mercilessly bullied.
I got punched out regualrly, tripped over, pushed over, called every name under the sun, got hit on the bus, burned with a match and well, you name it, they did it. Another factor that is interesting is that the bullies were always girls. And girls travel in packs and it is like they have antennas or something and instinctively know which girl to pick on, the most cutting things to say and they are adebt at being more vicious than a caged and cornered wild cat.
I could never escape these girls. I mean every now and then they would lay off for a while, but they always sort of reached the point where they realised that they had been neglecting to remind Sarah of her place in the grand scheme of things and so came back to remind me that they had not forgotten the indiscretions of my foster father.
So, when I got moved away from there and knew I was going to start a new school, I decided that it was kill or be killed, eat or be eaten. I decided that I would kill and eat, for lack of a better term.
I knew that I had to establish myself as a force to be reckoned with. I started my first day at my new school with one consuming thought; do everything you can to ensure that you don't become a target!
As I walked into my class for the first time I was scanning the room to see which person had the most throw in the class because whoever that was, male or female, I was going to "take them down to China town" baby! But like all well thought out plans, nothing ever pans out exactly as you expect, and this situation was no different.
Firstly, I had a great deal of trouble working out who the "top dog" was. And the class already seemed to have a target for all their loathing; a girl called Jeannie. Jeannie was a Maori but came from a home where money was very tight and she was covered in sores and very dirty. It was very unusual for a Maori child to be picked on by Maori or for other Maori to allow European kids to make a target of such a child, but everyone picked on Jeannie, everyone that is, but me. Weird eh?
So anyway, that state of affairs messed it up from the get go. I also had trouble establishing who the "in group" in the class was too, which I attribute directly to my having spent that past two years to that point walking around in my own little world and not really taking in what was going on around me. I never bothered to stop and study what the popular kids did that made them so popular. I think it was being born beautiful, I cannot attribute it to anything else.
But anyway, this cute little blonde haired blue eyed girl named Michelle was the one who ended up copping it in the end. I say cute little blonde haired blue eyed girl because, upon reflection, that is what she was back then. Just a little girl. So was I, but I never thought of myself as "little" I always felt so old, even then.
Anyway, Michelle always seemed to sit behind me in class on that first day and so she took to pulling my hair, not so it hurt, but just to get my attention. Then when I turned around to see who was doing it, she'd look down at her books or pretend to be talking to her friend Julia. I thought Michelle was doing it to "wind me up". But she was actually doing it as some kind of weird ritual initiation thing into their "popular in group". They did it to everyone who they liked and that they wanted to hang out with them. However, as I earlier stated, I didn't know that at the time. I thought she was making a target out of me and I was wired up to expect it and to deal with it.
In science class, the last class of the day and about ten minutes before the bell rang to end the school day, I finally caught Michelle pulling my hair. We were both standing by then and I can't remember why. But I just looked at her, swung my fist back and hit her right in the face. She stumbled and fell backwards to the floor.
Everyone just kind of stood there staring at me, particularly the rough kids at the back of the room. Then everyone rushed to Michelle to make sure she was okay. I got into trouble with the teacher but, because it was my first day in a new school, he let it slide. He did however tell my new foster father and that is a whole other story that I don't want to go into.
Anyway so the next day I turn up at school and word has spread like wildfire that I clocked Michelle and by lunchtime, the tough kids were ready to see what I was made of. This girl, her name was Katarina, she made absolute mince meat of me, I tell ya, she beat the living daylights out of me. I tried to hit her back, but it was useless and I was scared of all her scary looking friends, both male and female.
When I got home that night my foster father commented that he was pleased to see that what goes around comes around. He then demanded to know who had given me the hell beats, but I didn't oblige. Back then the only thing worse than being a reject was being a narc. You never narc, no matter what.
The next day at school one of the girls who had been with Katarina the day before, came up to me and asked me to meet them down on the field at lunchtime for a smoke. I figured that it was either genuine or they just wanted to give me more hell beats. I thought through my options right up until lunchtime and I figured that I had two choices. Go to them and be beat up, or have them hunt me down and still get beat up. I decided to make it easy for them and so went to meet them at lunchtime at the back of the field. Well, all I can say is that we hit it off and I was officially inducted into the "tough crowd".
A few days after being inducted into that group, I had occasion to have to deal with another situation. We were in the library and this boy kept rocking the table every time I tried to write. Now, if I had learned nothing else up to this point in my life, I had learned that one MUST always be a "man of their word". If you say you are going to do something then you MUST do it. To back down is to be cowardly and you never live THAT down. I looked at him and I said to him, and I was VERY specific, "You better stop rocking the table, because if you do it again, then I am going to knock your teeth out!"
He, being the smart ass type and not believing that a girl would EVER get up and take him on, rocked the table again. I think he was probably acting on principle too. Anyway, so me, acting upon mine, I got up, walked around to where he was and he stood up. The tough boys were wooping it up and making a whole bunch of noise.The teacher was totally oblivious to what was going on. Now, I really did not want to hit him, but I had said that I would and I knew that if I didn't make good on my threat that I would be toast forever. He sort of smiled at me and said something like, "Go on then." So I did, I hit him with a closed fist. I didn't knock all his teeth out though, just one. I actually even beat up a girl who was a year ahead of me when she challenged me in front of a whole bunch of her friends. I smacked her one and she ran, so I gave chase and hit her some more when I caught her. She never lived it down for the rest of her school days, being beaten up by someone younger and smaller than her. Poor thing.
But people made the mistake of thinking that I cared about anything. I didn't care about anything any more. I didn't even care about me and I was taking some crazy and sometimes dangerous risks with my life, which culminated in me, in November 1980 and aged fourteen, trying to take my own life. So everything that happened up to that point was proof perfect that I was definitely on the downhill slope.
But back to the bullying.
And so it went for about six months. Anyone who got smarth mouth to me, I smacked them one. But I had a very male mentality about it. You hit the sucker in the moosh and then its over. You don't call him names, you don't cast aspersion upon him as a person, you simply give him (or her) a darn good whack and its finished.
But girls? My, my, my.
Girls fight totally different to boys. They seem to have a knack of finding out your weakest point, they call you terrible names, make you feel like garbage, go for the throat, rip your heart out via the same channel, stomp on it, for about five minutes each, hand it back, smile and say, "Have a really nice day!" (which is basically their double-speak way of saying, "Eat dirt and die!").
To make it worse, that is NEVER the end of the issue. They will carry it over to the next day, week, month, year, basically until they tire of it. Girls are nasty! Females are nasty! When I was thirteen, I didn't mind getting into scraps with boys. The worst they'd ever do is knock your teeth out and maybe stick the boot in while you lay bleeding on the ground, but hey, once they are finished, its done!
Females, they never forget anything!
With boys, the worst offence that I could ever commit was to cast aspersion upon their manliness (is any thirteen year old boy "manly"?) or call them a chicken.
For girls, simply being different was an unforgiveable sin. Wearing your hair the wrong way or possessing the wrong shoes or bag, or earrings and for having all male friends, save for one! It's insane and I have never been able to relate to girls very well. Is it nature or nurture that makes them this way?
I say it is neither.
It is a case of pack instinct...kind of like goats...If a herd of goats identifies a weak, elderly or sick goat amongst their number, they will all bunt and gore it to death. Girls are the same, and this does not seem to ease with age. As these females get older it simply becomes a little more sophisticated, slightly less brazen and the reasons tend to be even more stupid than in childhood, if that is actually possible. The only upside is that admittedly the herd will be slightly smaller.
The only girls I could relate to were girls just like me and there weren't many of them. But in the end, guess who my best friend ended up being?
That's right, my best friend ended up being Jeannie!
Laterz

Tuesday 4th March
Jeannie.
I want to talk about Jeannie.
The first time I ever saw Jeannie she was sitting at the back of the class at a desk all by herself. It was very clear that no one in that room was willing to try and like her let alone befriend her and to begin with, I didn't befriend her either. I didn't befriend anyone and, as I have already described my first day at my new school in the same class as Jeannie, there really isn't any need to rehash that.
On my way home after my second day at my new school I notcied Jeannie walking the same way as me, so I slowed down and started to walk with her. We talked a little bit and I got the distinct impression that Jeannie's life was not too much better than my own, at that point in time.
From that moment on Jeannie and I were practically inseperable, well at least while I lived in the foster home I was in at that time. My foster father liked Jeannie...a lot and it is fair to say that he knew her well before I even met her. His being a teacher in a small town I guess it wasn't a big ask. Jeannie didn't like him much though.
Jeannie was really nice and Jeannie was funny. I was always laughing when I was with her. When I fell in with the tought kids, I took Jeannie along with me. They didn't say anything and I wasn't prepared to leave her behind. The kids in the class that had previously picked on her suddenly began leaving her alone because she was my friend and they knew I'd probably smack them one if they hurt her.
Jeannie's family was large and they didn't have a lot of anything. Jeannie had few things that actually belonged to her and their house was not only messy, it was downright dirty, and despite catching a scorching case of scabies the one night I did stay there, I didn't care. She was my friend.
I do not want to go into too many specifics about Jeannie, other than to say that she was a loyal and kind friend.
When I ended up in hospital in November 1980, I didn't get out until nearly January and somewhere during that time Jeannie's family moved away to another town some distance from ours. I never saw Jeannie again.
For years I looked for her, ringing people, writing letters just trying to find her, but it has been twenty-seven years and still I am no closer. Whenever I hear the first couple of bars from that Elton John song called Jeannie, which was around when her and I were friends, I always feel my heart kind of trying to leap into my mouth, ya know?
Jeannie was my friend and I missed her a lot once she was gone and because her leaving was so sudden, it is almost like she was never there. But I have never forgotten Jeannie.
I never will.
Laterz

Wednesday 5th March
Caught up with Prisonplanet today...haven't been there much lately because almost all of the articles on it are depressing.
Firstly, two US Marines stood on the edge of a cliff in Iraq somewhere and threw a puppy off a cliff and filmed it. That video has hit the net. Apprently many such snuff-like movies have surfaced out of Iraq from soldiers throwing grenades into groups of sheep, blowing up kittens and even videos of soldiers shooting parents in front of kids.
It is hard to believe that these kinds of things happen, but they do. We as humans are appalling. There is a part of our nature that is so dark and so evil that it almost doesn't bear thinking about. The things that we do and then try to justify or dismiss.
The biggest outcry against tha video of the soldiers on the edge of the cliff..."It was only a puppy...it is not like it is a child."
Other people have said even worse things like, "Good job, it was an Iraqi dog so they should have killed it."
Yet another person said, "What a pity it wasn't an Iraqi baby."
How emotionally castrated do you have to be to be able to dismiss or sanction sick behaviour like that? It should shock us beyond comprehension that these things happen and that things like that are spoken, but it doesn't. Rather, we excuse it with some kind of pathetic illogical psychopathic logic! What is wrong with us?
I did not watch the video. I could not bring myself to do that, but for all intents and purposes the video has been proved to be authentic.
The corporate media has stepped up an ongoing smear campaign against anyone who dares to question the government's leaky and falsified account of the events of September 11th 2001. One MSNBC reporter stated that he hoped that there were concentration camps for anyone who dares to question the official version of the events on September 11th, 2001. So, apparently thinking for yourself is becoming somewhat of a crime too...Goodbye free world, hello Nazi Germany and Communist Russia.
Laterz

Thursday 6th March
Was talking to a friend today (Chuckmeister) and he was telling me how he attended the execution of Roger Dale Stafford, whom I had never heard of before, but according to what I read, he was known as the most hated man in Oklahoma. Roger Dale Stafford, not my friend, my friend lives in Indiana...and is not the most hated man in Indiana...probably he is one of the most liked. I always so desperately want to spell Oklahoma "Oaklahoma". But that is a side issue.
I asked him what method of death they used to kill the guy and I have to admit that it felt very surreal to have such a conversation. He told me that they used lethal injection and again, the whole thing seemed so surreal and it caused me to wonder why I felt such abject weirdness about having that conversation?
I suppose it is that, at the end of the day, I live in a society that deals with our even most cold-blooded criminals passively. We do not have the death penalty here. We used to have it, but they discovered that it was too easy to make a mistake and kill the wrong person, so they abolished it. OMGosh, my sense of humour must be working over time, I just had this stupid flicker of an image in my head which I won't share because you probably won't find it at all funny, as opposed to me who does.
But I wonder if the death penalty is less of an assault upon your sensibilities if you have grown up with it being a part of every day life? You know, where it is normal to hear on the news that "so and so" is to be executed today? I remember when Bryan Chambers and Kevin Barlow were hung in Thailand back in 1986 for drug trafficking (sp). I remember the abject horror I felt at imagining what it must be like to know that you are going to die.
Yes, it is different I guess killing someone who muled drugs into a country as opposed to killing someone like Roger Dale Stafford, but is it, really? Is there really a difference? I am not asking because I think that there is or that there isn't. I just cannot seem to wrap my head around the idea of executions being an every day part of my life, like the morning paper and church on Sunday...not that church on Sunday is a normal part of my life, it isn't and hasn't been for a long time, but you know what I mean?
I guess too it is easy for me to feel abject horror when the people that a mass murderer has ended are unknown to me and I have never seen their faces. I remember when Raymond Ratima slaughtered his three young boys, as well as Bevan, Nicola, her unborn baby and Tony's little brother Phillip Jnr. He then tried to take out Phillip Snr as well, but didn't quite manage to. I remember the abject horror of being woken up to the news that it had happened. I remember almost having to deal with it very personally and refusing. If Raymond had been in Oklahoma he would have been sentenced to death for sure. He was found to be of sound mind, which I hardly understand, but he was. I thought that there would have to be something seriously screwy with your wiring to be able to do that but Raymond's crime was motivated out of jealousy.
But then again, it is like this anti-smacking law that we have here now, it only affects law abiding people and those who care nothing for the law still kill their kids and it has solved absolutely nothing except to make criminals out of mostly responsible parents. I think the death penalty might be the same because I know that it would not have stopped Raymond from doing what he did. That being the case, the only thing I can see the death penalty as is a quick cure for the badly behaved. By that I mean people who murder motivated out of greed, jealousy and other reasons that cold-blooded murder is committed.
But it has been proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that killing killers to teach killers that killing is wrong simply doesn't work. Oklahoma's death row numbers are clear evidence of this; there are 71 people awaiting death there. In a sad kind of way it sort of brings to mind the local pound and all the poor dogs on death row, except of course, as opposed to those on Oklahoma's death row, the dogs are innocent.
It all just seems so surreal to me and I struggle with seeing what the point is but to rid the world of murderers and send a clear message to other people of such ilk.
But to be absolutely honest, I don't know what to think; I really don't. This is not helped by the fact that I am incredibly overtired having not slept well at all last night.
Laterz

Friday 7th March
I feel exhausted by everything today. The things that happen in this world, the way we are so debauched just makes me wish I could turn this place and everything in it off for a while. I don't know what my purpose is. I used to think I knew but I don't anymore. Mostly I am confused.
I watched a preacher whom I had never heard of before today. Switched the thing on with a completely open mind. Sometimes I could see where he was going and it was clear and precise and I completely followed it. But every now and then I got this flicker of arrogance, just real raw, deep down, self absolving/loving arrogance. But then it would flicker away again and all was as it had been before.
He spoke about people being drunk in the spirit (church term) and I was totally uncomfortable with it. Everything inside me squirmed. I don't know if I am wrong or he is wrong. It is one of those things I just wouldn't like to take a guess at, I don't know if I have been out of church so long that I am simply uncomfortable with it because I haven't seen it for so long or whether it is that that kind of thing conjures up flickers of memories and that is why I am uncomfortable with it. Maybe it is simply that it just ain't right? I don't know. I have this other guy to watch too that a friend mentioned so maybe will check in with him and see what he is all about.
It exhausts me trying to work it out sometimes.
I also hate being at the mercy of other people. Wondering if they are going to bother talking to me or not. I shouldn't even care, but I do. My brain is so wired to think like that it is insane! Why can't I be like most other people and not care about so many things so much? I guess I tend to forget that I, as an individual, am actually supurfluous to both of those big pictures. By this I mean that so much occupies both of these big pictures that, on the importance scale, I am probably like the squeaky toy that got accidentally nudged under the couch. One day they will move the couch, find it and go, "Oh yeah. On no, I forgot all about that."
I'm out of here. I am shutting off my computer and pretending that I don't have one. I can't do this today.
Laterz

Saturday 8th March
I had this really horrible dream about my older and younger sisters last night. I dreamed that we went to this house where their mother lived, but it wasn't any house I had seen before. My little sister was not really that prevalent in the dream except to say that she was in it. But my older sister was in the dream and the entire time that we were in the house, she was of malevolent intent, just waiting to strike like a snake suddenly lashes out to bite someone or a wolf lies in wait to devour. Somewhere in the dream she asked me a question and as soon as I answered it I gave a little smile. She immediately turned to my little sister and saide, "See she is not here to be nice, she is here for revenge."
I woke up at that point wondering why I would even dream a dream like that. But it is odd what our minds will dredge up. I remember this dream I had repeatedly at the age of about twelve. In the dream I was walking down the race to bring the cows in for milking and I fell into this enormous puddle of water that suddenly became very bog and very deep. I began to drown and I started to call out to my Uncle David to come help me. He turned back and looked at me and he heard me calling too, but he simply turned his back to me and kept walking away. It was so odd.
I always dream vividly. I always have. At least five nights out of seven I dream a very vivid dream...usually it is almost every night that I dream something that I wake up remembering because it scares me or upsets me. I just say five out of seven to take into account the odd nights that I don't dream.
I wonder why we dream? Really, I mean what is the point of dreaming? Why not just go to sleep and have a restful break from reality and all it encompasses? Why doesn't our brain just shut off and stop thinking about things? It is so odd and I would love to know why we dream. Maybe I will google it and see what they say? Hang on...
According to a man by the name of Joseph Griffin unexpressed emotion while we are awake causes us to dream. For example, if you become angry with someone but cannot express it then this frustration will probably be played out during dreaming. The brain will 'flush out' emotional arousal by creating a dream of a scenario that parallels the real-life experience - a metaphor.
There were a whole lot of examples of how unexpressed emotion from daily life gets played out in dreams and it seems to make sense. It most certainly didn't come across as bizarre. Also, dreaming apparently happens only during REM sleep, which means that if you are having more than one or two dreams a night then chances are that you are not falling into deep sleep, which means that you probably are not sleeping properly. Hm, sounds like me.
Anyway, that's me for today because I am really tired.
Laterz

Sunday 9th March
Got up this morning only to discover that one of my rabbits had dug his way out of his hutch. He was running around the lawn as happy as Larry, (whoever he is.)
Didn't take too much effort to catch him which is just as well because I didn't have that much energy anyway. I am thinking of writing another novel, although I have no idea what ti will be about. I have no ideas and yet I know that one will come to me because they usually do. I was really amazed how well Luci-arnold Graham managed to go from a man who little was known about to a bright, vibrant and interesting person with a history that was really quite intriguing. Well that is what I think, but then, I was the one who created all of that history around him, so I would think positively about him wouldn't I?
I haven't listened to the Alex Jones show in a couple of days now. I find it depressing and every now and then just a little too much to deal with. I don't know how he does what he does every day without falling into ill-health. Constant negativity is not good for the mind, soul or body.
And speaking of negativity I am reminded of the story of Roger Dale Stafford again...remember, I spoke of him a couple of blogs ago? Anyway, I asked my friend about the woman who married him while he was on death row waiting execution. He said that the woman who married him was one who liked to put herself in any position that would make a victim out of her. I found that interesting. Why would someone seek out trouble and grief when in this world, grief and trouble seem to be on the prowl looking for us all the time without giving it a helping hand? What kind of psyche leads one to doing that?
Why would you want to marry someone who has done those things and is definitely going to die? I mean it is not like there is much chance of there being a "happy ever after". It also made me think about the victim's families. What kind of message does it send to them that this man can be in jail and yet continue life as though nothing has happened by marrying and sort of trying to create this illusion of future? It must be very painful for them being that their loved ones have been viciously and suddenly yanked from amongst them and the one who did it carrys on as though it was not he who perpetrated this. I would think that someone who had done those things would be wracked with guilt, but perhaps I am wrong. Perhaps a prerequisite to being able to perpetrate crimes, such as the ones committed by Roger Dale Stafford, is first the abscence of conscience?
I suppose I could go on a tirade of self righteousness here i.e. poor Roger Dale Stafford, what horrendous things must have happened to him throughout his life and childhood that rendered him so conscienceless. But I won't.
Lots of people have terrible childhoods and even teen years. They endure psychological, physical and emotional abuse and yet they do not go on to perpetrate the same upon others. So at the end of the day, I find it hard to believe that it is a result of childhood abuses that renders one conscienceless in every case where the person goes on to murder etc. I think the cold hard truth of the matter is that some people are simply motivated by selfish greed and they are quite capable of telling right from wrong. They are quite capable of caring and they do have a conscience, they simply choose not to abide by the moral laws and legalities that have been placed upon our society to protect us from ourselves.
I am still undecided about the death penalty too. Two people I know and respect say that it lines up biblically and yet they have not shown how. Is it convenient fence sitting for me to simply say that I do not know how I feel about it? Is it terribly safe of me to say that I do not know enough to take a firm stance? You see I used to have very definite ideas about it, but over the past couple of years my stance has gone from vehemently opposing it to not being very sure either way.
Not that I want anyone to make my mind up for me; I don't.
Oh yeah, David & the Giants did a cover of Get Together by The Youngbloods and it is not half bad. Being that it has been a fave song of mine for quite some time, I am surprised that I like it. I'm not usually into remakes, but sometimes someone remakes something that is actually almost as good or even better than the original.
Anyway, that's about it for me today.
Laterz

Monday 10th March
Elvis Presley.
Here are some little known facts about the "King of Rock 'n' Roll". First of all and most importantly, I always wanted to knock his lights out. I did not simply dislike the man, I loathed him with a passion that surpassed almost all of the emotions that I felt for anything else. This overwhelming emotion toward the "King of Rock 'n' Roll" started when I was around four years old. In 1977 when he died, I was actually able to muster up a genuine smile and not become confused by the sense of melancholy that tends to grip one when one's object of their affections (whom they have never even met...like get a grip!) dies and suddenly leaves their world a little incomplete, or as with some, a lot incomplete.
To the contrary when Elvis Presley died in 1977 I was fit to break into a rendition of "free at last free at last thank God thank God I'm free at last" by...hm...the name escapes me right now, but I was fit to burst into my own little rendition of that...and we will conveniently forget that at the age of eleven I did not know that song at all because it would be another twenty years before DC Talk (I just remembered where I heard it) would release THAT album...but anyway, that aside, that is how I felt when Elvis died.
Of course all this information begs the question, why? Why was I so relieved and happy when Elvis died? Well, in order to understand that we would have to go back to when I was a very little girl, which is odd because even when I was a little girl, I always felt so grown up and every time I did something wrong I always felt as though I should have known better and felt far more guilt about things than the average child. But that is neither here nor there in this Elvis tale.
My birth mother, whom we shall know as "Janet" adored Elvis Presley and she married a man who looked like him. Actually, she got pregnant and HAD to marry a man who looked like him, but I suppose way back in the 60s most young men did their best to look like Elvis, being that he was the idol of the day for many teen girls. Those who were not Elvis fans were heavily influenced by a few other young groups who were kind of Elvis clones, not in their music but in their style of fashion i.e. Bee Gees, Hollies, Monkeys, Rolling Stones...Oh my gosh is Mick Jagger really THAT old? That's shocking! I am shocked! Not really!
Anyway so those who were not cloning directly after Elvis were cloning themselves upon someone else who was in turn cloning themselves upon Elvis, so really, did Janet ever stand a chance of not marrying an Elvis look alike? And I can't talk anyway, remember that band Wet Wet Wet? I once dated a guy who could have been Marti Pellow's twin, I joke not and everyone used to ask if he was actually Marti, which he wasn't. Ironically, that boyfriend of mine was also an Elvis clone, but I found out a little too late. He used to listen to his music in the car, in the bath, in bed...and he used to sing along in the same deep horrible voice and he kind of sounded like him, which I guess isn't a major ask. I hated it, truly I did and I got my revenge, (hell hath no fury like a female repeatedly beaten)but I will leave that for another time.
Anyway, so Janet gets pregnant and subsequently gets married to the Elvis clone named Robert. The only difference between Elvis and Robert was that Robert was a loser and Elvis wasn't, well according to everyone else Elvis wasn't a a loser, but I thought he was because I couldn't stand him!
Janet had every Elvis record ever released and I mean every single one...well that she could get her hands onto. And we are not talking just all the late 60s and early 70s stuff...we are talking everything he ever released that made it out to this small hunk of mud on the underbelly of the earth. Now I know that by the aforementioned description you will naturally assume that I meant Australia, alas, you are wrong. I meant New Zealand.
I do not know what this country was attached to before continental drift occurred and I do not know what we actually fell off originally, some say it was Australia and taking that into account, I guess continental drift had its merits, but whatever it was that this hunk of mud fell off, it sure fell a long way. I mean, you couldn't get more out of the way if you tried. We are like the last train station before Antarctica and who wants to live there?
We are so out of the way that few rocks bands or any other musician of notable merit will even come here at the height of their popularity. We had to wait until 2004 or was it 2003 for Duran Duran to come here and yes, I admit it, that was the first concert I bothered to sneak into. But an old Duran Duran? That is hardly fair now is it? We had to wait until 1998 for the Eagles to come here and they were "has beens" by then too. The Bee Gees finally decided to grace us with their presence in 1999.
Have you ever been to the concert of "has beens"? Have you seen the sad and sorry way that those concerts play out? People don't jump up and down and have a really good time making a total dick (albeit temporary and very quickly forgiven and forgotten by all) out of themselves by screaming and hollering out the lyrics totally out of tune, which is a prerequisite of having a good time at any concert. No, the audience sits there politely drinking wine and listening to the band as though the band is some kind of background elevator music, (which is what the band probably deserves for having left it so long to come and grace us with their presence, but still!) Well, everyone but me that is.
When I went to Duran Duran, Simon LeBon yelled out to the crowd. "Hello New Zealand!"
The crowd stood there like stunned mullets staring back at him. Suddenly there comes this tiny little voice from the back of beyond that screams out at the top of its lungs, "Hello Simon!".......... that was me!
To add insult to an incredibly weird situation, Robbie Williams was on after Duran Duran and Robbie had had the good decency to come out here at the height of his career, but as soon as he came out on stage, I left the arena as fast as my legs could carry me because I can't stand Robbie Williams because he comes across as an arrogant little git! Arrogance is one vice of man that I find totally intolerable. And some could say that I was displaying great arrogance leaving the concert when Robbie came out to play, but I didn't pay for a ticket, so it doesn't count!
And then, as if that isn't bad enough, Toto never came here when they were big. No, no, no, this hunk of mud on the underbelly of the world was too far for them big stars to be bothered. But hey guess what? It is 2008 and finally Toto came to New Zealand this very month of March...an old Toto, now that is hardly fair either, but wait, it gets better. Guess who else came out here this month? Alice Cooper, Ozzy Osbourne and Kiss. Now come on guys, these dudes are all now "has beens" why in the world do they insult us like this? Didn't want our money 30 years ago, but now they'll take it. And the final insult? Guess who is arriving here in New Zealand to undertake a concert tour of our lovely hunk of mud on the underbelly of the world...and even you have to laugh at this because it is the all time sad and sorry tour that there ever was...Westlife! Westlife who are nothing now and barely rate on the "remember them" lists let alone have anything that even resembles music on the charts or anywhere else for that matter, are coming here to do a concert and you want to see the hype all around it. Seriously, if New Zealanders, my Kiwi comrades, have any dignity left at all, even if it is only an iota, they will point blank refuse to pay a red cent for a ticket to that concert and drive those little screaming, nancy, Malibu Ken mummy boys back to wherever it is that they came from!
Christian bands are not quite so arrogant with us here on the underbelly of the world. Petra came out when they were at the heady heights of fame. They came out here in 1987 or 1988...I don't remember which year. I couldn't go because they only came to Auckland and I didn't live here then and they haven't been back here since I moved up this way...go figure. The Newsboys have been out a couple of times. I did hear from one band, David & the Giants and the guy was at least honest and said, "Let us pray we get down your way one day." I have to admit that I do not for one second believe that he is praying with any ferver that he will get down this way any time soon...that and the fact that David and the Giants are no more, as such. They will get together if someone especially asks them, but I cannot see my beseeching them on bended knees to reunite and come to the underbelly of the world to play just for me working. Somehow I do not believe that I have that kind of throw...but it would be good if they did, but they won't. They are not praying to come here and I am not bothering God with a request to bring them here cos let's face it, God is a very busy guy and he has bigger fish to fry right now...Yes I am being a little silly and have gotten way off track. Back to original topic.
So, Janet adored Elvis. In fact, adored is probably a little off the mark; she worshipped the very ground that that man walked on...well she would have if she had been able to get to Memphis. Figuratively, she worshipped the ground he walked on. For a long time when I was a child they used to play Elvis movies on TV on a Sunday afternoon and kind of like in church, we had to sit there as still as mice while she ate chocolate and watched these dreadful movies. And they were dreadful. I don't care what anyone says, aside from the fact that they were in black and white, which I adore, the cinematography was terrible, the choreography was clumsy and the stories contrived! Ugh!
Many times I found myself thrown outside or down into the hallway for daring to sneeze, cough or speak at an inopportune time during these Sunday movies, which only served to make me want to punch Elvis' lights out even more.
Aside from the records and the movies, Janet had posters of the "King" everywhere. She also had mirrors that had his face painted onto them or behind them...it was like living at Gracelands but not...know what I mean? Everything was Elvis, Elvis, Elvis. Aside from her adoration of Elvis, everything in my life was abnormal...ha ha ha. No seriously, that was what her passion was in life, Elvis Presley, not her home, her children, her husband or anything else. And boy didn't I know it.
Everywhere I went in my little life back then, if I wasn't faced with Elvis' grinning maw as I walked down the hall to use the bathroom, or when I looked in the mirror, I was faced with an Elvis clone who walked in the door every night after the pub closed. Janet's Elvis clone was a very violent version. Now, I have heard that Elvis could be violently inclined and perhaps it was the cocaine...oops did I really say that out loud?
Robert was violent, but he was that way by natural inclination of course it was further fuelled by the amount of booze he drank. And in keeping with the whole Elvis gig he had going, he was also a womaniser, which, back in the 60s if you looked a little like Elvis was not hard to achieve. Have you ever noticed how much John Travolta looks a little like Elivs on certain angles in various different pictures?
John Travolta was another one whose lights I often dreamed about knocking out too. I did not like John Travolta because he looked like Robert, who in turn looked like Elvis. But that too is another story.
Anyway so this one night when Robert came home exceptionally drunk or exceptionally angry...actually I think he was exceptionally drunk and Janet then made him exceptionally angry...anyway long story short Robert proceeded to beat his four year old step child to within inches of her life and then he decided to suffocate her. Janet, having heard the original screaming, made it to the bedroom door just in time to see him suffocating her third born child. She yelled at Robert, "If you don't stop you will kill her."
When Robert did not respond to Janet's assertion, she simply said to him, "Bloody well kill her then."
Having said that, Janet headed back to the kitchen in the direction of her Elvis Presley music that she had been playing on her record player...pink record player to be precise. The song that was playing? Oddly enough or ironically, Jailhouse Rock. The child, finding herself unable to breathe because Robert's hand was held tightly over her nose and mouth while he continued to hit her with his free hand, began to panic. She knew that she was going to die. Even though her lungs were burning and her head was swimming, never mind the results of blind panic upon the human anatomy, she could smell death coming to get her. She could smell it and she could hear it. It was ugly and terrifying. The child who, having the usual human reaction, the overriding desire to live, had been trying to pull his giant hands from her face so that she could get air suddenly decided not to do that and instead attempted to bite his hand. I don't know if she actually bit his hand or not. I merely assume that she must have because it was at that point that he let her go and she was dropped to the floor. Robert called her an animal, but she was used to that. Janet and Robert often referred to her as an "animal" and a "mongrel".
He might have kicked her on his way out of the room. She is not too sure if he did or not because he often kicked her and so she might have let that memory merge with the memory of that particular night and have it a little skewed. But what she is sure of is that he snapped the light off and slammed the door leaving the terrified child in the dark. She lay there trying not to cry too loudly, trying to get air into her lungs and trying not to move just in case she made some kind of sound which might cause him to come back to finish the job.
All during this time the Elvis music continued to play.
The child lay on her red mat choking and crying in a way that she has never heard another child cry. Not that other children who go through similar things do not cry that way, they probably do, just she has never heard it from anyone else before and never wants to.
Many times, to the tune of Elvis songs, the child was beaten by the Elvis clone when he was in a drunken rage. Other times he did it sober...he was probably hung over, but still, he did it. Some times, if she cried too loud, he would hold the pillow over her face to shut her up and again, she would be faced with a life and death struggle. The most important thing was though, that that night when Jailhouse Rock was belting out from the record player in the kitchen, the child came to understand that Robert hated her enough to kill her and that Janet hated her enough to let him. Elvis being the thing that always seemed to be closely associated with these things for a very long time got the blame.
I used to think that if Elvis were to die or to disappear that Janet wouldn't be the way that she was. If she did not have Elvis, if Elvis was not "in the way" all the time, then perhaps things would be different? But that is what kids think, I think. They grab whatever explanation they can for the terrible things that happen that are too horrible to comprehend in any rational way, and blame that. They make that the problem and Elvis was my problem.
When he died in 1977 I was not glad because I thought that finally Janet would come right, I might be able to go home and Robert might actually start liking me. That is not what I thought at all. What I thought, in my own childish way, was that I would no longer be haunted by so much of what had happened, seeing as how Elvis was key to a lot of those things. But that didn't happen at all and over the years to come I subsequently forgave Elvis for all that he had done...I am kidding of course. I stopped making Elvis the focal point of what had gone wrong and slowly, as I appraoched my late teens, I began to see what had really happened and it had absolutely nothing to do with Elvis.
When I finally let go of the whole "I hate Elvis" gig, I did decide that I liked a couple of his songs, about three. I will not sit and watch anything that he is in, like movies or videos if it can possibly be avoided, but I do still find him kind of irritating, but it has little to do with him or the person that he was, not that I knew him, I didn't.
And having just reconciled with Elvis and being at peace with him (even though he had been cold in his grave for over ten years) it was suddenly undone and I found myself at war with Elvis yet again.
I met Paul early in 1989. I liked Paul immediately. He was gorgeous with a capital G. He wasn't really even just gorgeous, he was stunning. Perfect face, body, eyes, everything. Everything I looked for in a man, Paul had it. While we were dating there were clues along the way that all may not be what it seemed, but I ignored those clues, as you do when you are 23. With no mother or father to inspect the potential mate, minus the rose coloured glasses, I was on my own. I did not see this man coming, what a surprise.
The very day we moved into a place together things started to go wrong and they just continued on a downward spiral. Paul was the kind of man who said one thing, but really meant something else. I was not aware of it to begin with and subsequently found out the hard way.
Paul was an Elvis clone just like Robert had been and Paul was just as unbalanced as him too. As unbalanced as Robert, not Elvis. I am sure that Elvis was unbalanced too, but to what degree? Who can really say.
Paul was jealous, possessive, a manipulator, a hitter and a spitter. His own mother once said to me, "When Paul was born the umbilical cord was wrapped around his neck. The only mistake the doctor made was not pulling it tighter."
Pretty stiff warning coming from the guy's own mother, but knowing Janet the way that I had and knowing what she was capable of saying and doing, I lumped Paul's mum in with her and despite Paul having been a little aggressive up to that point, I did not believe what she said about him.
Paul was just like Janet.
He had every Elvis record and tape released to that point in time. He had old movies of him and he had posters and framed pictures. His collection must have been worth a bomb! Seriously it would have been worth thousands because he had rare collector items too. If he had have been a little nicer to me, he might still have them too, but I will get to that in a moment.
Paul started to hit me. At first it was simply me that he hit and I admit it, I should have left the very first time that it happened, but I didn't. I fell for the "I'm sorry and I will never do it again" line more times than I care to count. He also used to use sex as a weapon. If I was and I quote, "Good" then he would indulge in sex with me. If I, and I quote, "Pissed him off", he would refuse all sexual contact no matter what I did.
By the time he progressed to hitting my kids, I couldn't get out. I tried ringing the cops once when I was incredibly frightened and had run from Paul leaving the kids with him. The cops came, supposedly sorted it all out and Paul dealt with me once they had left.
I never made that mistake again either.
He hurt my baby so badly once that my baby had to go to the hospital, but still, I couldn't get rid of Paul or get away from him. My kids and I were his personal punching bags and whatever else he decided to do to us, most of which was cleverly hidden because I didn't have parents checking up on me or the kids anyway. We were mostly alone. My friends were mostly guys and they had no idea what was going on to begin with and some of them were friends with him or became friends with him and he was always careful about what he did and said around them. He was also careful to hit my face hard enough to hurt yet seldom left marks that lasted much distance, bar once.
He did all kinds of other things and one time I came so close to murdering him it is insane thinking upon it now. Keep in mind that this guy had completely degraded me and made me feel completely useless and worthless. I was eight stone if I was lucky and he still called me fat. I was a nice looking female in my twenties, but he would tell me I was ugly. He said and did all kinds of things that just reduced me to a shadow of the shadow that I had formerly been when I met him. Mostly though, I couldn't protect my kids. Finally, most of the nasty things he did to us occurred to the tune of Elvis Presley songs...I know, who saw that coming? Not me.
Anyway, so whenever Paul used to have a bath, I had to sit in the bathroom on the floor near to where he was. I don't know what he thought I was going to do on my own while he was in the bath. Maybe he thought I would bring some other guy into the house and make out with him? Maybe he thought that I might run? I had tried once and got a beating for my efforts and so I was never going to make THAT mistake again.
Whenever Paul had a bath he did the one thing that you are never supposed to do. He ran an extension cord from the kitchen into the bathroom so that he could play Elvis tapes while he bathed...I know, go figure....but he used to sit the tapedeck on the edge of the basin which was right beside the bath.
So during one of these times while I was sitting on the bathroom floor watching him singing along to his Elvis music a thought suddenly came to me. The thought? I could push the tapedeck into the bath and he would be electricuted. I seriously sat there on the floor staring at the tapedeck trying to muster up the courage to leap up and push the damn thing into the water. Paul must have been watching me and I must have been staring from the tapedeck to the bathwater and back to the tapedeck over and over because he got my number.
He looked at me and simply said, "Go on then, do it."
I stared at him and asked him, "Do what?"
He goes something like, "You know. Go on then, give it a go." He stared at me for a few seconds and added, "But I'm telling you that I will grab your hand before it even hits the water and you'll be coming with me."
He lay there in the bath with a real smug satisfied look on his face. He knew that I was too scared to have a go on the offchance that he was right. Even though I didn't think he could move that fast, I still wasn't completely sure and so I didn't give it a go, but I wanted to so much that I could almost taste it! There but by the grace of God go I, huh?
Anyway, months later and after having endured more abuse both physical and verbal. Paul disappeared one day. Okay again, I couldn't leave Paul because he threatened that if I did leave him that he would find me and burn the house down with me and my kids in it and trust me when I tell you that he would have. Paul was unbalanced to a spectacular degree!
Anyway so he disappears one day. He simply just doesn't come home from work. At this point my mate Mark, whom I had met through Paul and who was a total Toto head like me at that stage, started to come around, Mark and I were friends and nothing more.
Anyway, Mark finally finds out that Paul has taken up with some other woman that has a young child. Thing with Paul is that Paul leaves you, you don't leave Paul and Paul does not leave you until Paul is ready.
So Mark comes around on his motorbike to stay for a few days and my kids are off staying somewhere else for a few days. Mark and I get horribly stoned and suddenly I decide that it would be nice to have some revenge upon Paul. You know, teach him a lesson about treating other people with dignity and respect? Paul had left suddenly and neglected to take his things with him, so in my house, not only did I have all his clothes and shoes and stuff, but I had his priceless irreplacable Elvis Presley collection. I had his books, tapes, movies, posters, and framed pictures.
In my stoned stupor, which wasn't really much of a stupor because I remember almost everything I did in those moments, so I should really say that in my "uninhibited" state I went into the room and started to get Paul's stuff out. I had nicely packed it all for him to collect when he came back, even though I did not know when that would be.
I placed the boxes on the floor and in the meantime Mark was busy putting on another Toto tape...Hydra I think, but I might be wrong on that score...anyway so I am sitting there with all these boxes and bags of Paul's stuff. Everything he owned in the world was in those boxes and bags.
I wandered out to the kitchen and I got a pair of scissors. I went back to the lounge and I proceeded to chop the tips off all of Paul's socks. I then did it to all of his shoes and boots. From there I hacked off the sleeves from his leather jacket and Piere Cardon shirts...yeah, Paul loved his clothes and invested a lot of money into them.
By that time Mark is almost rolling on the floor in hysterics...prior to that he had been sitting there all wide eyed in total disbelief.
So having finished with all of Paul's clothing and I mean ALL of his clothing, shoes and anything else one can wear including his Elvis belt with the huge Elvis buckle, necklaces and his watch, I moved to the records and tapes. I unwound all the tape off the videos and tapes and shredded it into gazillions of pieces. From there I began to rip up the posters and the grand finale came when I put my foot through his two or three framed pictures. By the time I was done, the King was well and truly dead!
It sounds insane and it totally was, but I had endured so much at that man's hands that I could not in all good conscience let him walk away having gotten away with it scott free. Word soon spread around town in regard to what I had done that night. Mark was so blown away and found it so funny that he had to tell EVERYONE! As it turned out, some of my guy buddies were not at all amused with Paul and they got it into their heads to keep an eye out for me just in case Paul did come back, which he did in the end. That was amusing.
I was at the pub when he rang to say that he was on my porch waiting for me. I went back into the pub and let my foster sister know that he was there. She in turn told "the boys". A couple of them got on their bikes and went around to my house to "talk to him", but as soon as he saw them he took off and was branded from that day forth a total chicken hearted git.
Paul bided his time and waited until he had the good fortune to catch me at home. Eventually he was able to do this and luckily my kids were not there. He came into the house, not realising that I had a couple of friends there, but they stayed out of it. He asked for his stuff and I told him where it was; in the spare room in boxes, so he disappeared into the room. Have you ever heard a Banshee scream? I have.
He came roaring back out to the kitchen and he started. Something inside me just snapped and I attacked him. I slapped him, punched him, kicked him, pulled his hair (like a girl) and called him every name under the sun. He did not dare to hit me back or to even try, seeing as how my friends were there.
Paul left the house and I followed him out onto the porch. He went to get onto his motorbike and I ran and grabbed a reasonably big stone which I fully intended to throw at the tank of his bike. One of the guys there with me grabbed my arm and he said something like, "Not the bike, man, not the bike! We can let you hit the guy, but we cannot stand here and let you hit the bike."
Considering the circumstances, you surely can see how I found that odd. What is it with guys and vehicles? What is it with guys and bikes? It is like totally against all that is good and holy, in the eyes of a man, for a motorbike or car to be beaten beyond recognition, no matter what kind of chump the man who owns it is. I call THAT crazy!
Anyway Mark consoled me with these words later on that day, "Don't worry, Hun, I poured a cup of sugar in his tank while you all were having a go inside."
So I walked away from that situation smiling. Remember, I was only 23 and I was on my own in the world. All things considered, I think I handled the situation pretty well for where I was at back then and for what I had been through up to that point and the truth of the matter is, it is by the grace of God that Paul walked away with his life. He had tormented and beaten my kids and me to the point where I was actually capable of thinking of killing him.
To this day, I have never seen Paul again, but when I was working as a Probation Officer I looked him up to see if he was in the system and there he was. He had just done two years for beating up his girlfriend and her two year old son. The psyche report was pretty interesting too. Seeing his face again caused my stomach to be possessed by butterflies. Discovering that he was actually living up here in the same area as me caused a shiver to run down my spine.
Moral of story? I should never get involved with Elvis clones cos baby, they are all very bad news! No, seriously it never had anything to do with Elvis at all, he just seemed to be the focal point of their adoration and being that I knew more than one person in my life who was very close to me with the very same kind of adoration and natural proclivities, I find that kind of weirdly and ironically coincidental.
But are there really any coincidences in life? I don't know.
Laterz
Ps Did you know that three people die every year seeing whether a nine volt battery works on their tongue. Puts it all into perspective doesn't it? ha ha ha

Tuesday 11th March
Have you ever noticed how proficient we are, as humans, at making a bad situation even more negative? Have you ever noticed how at just about the same time as you think that things can't get any worse, they do?
Why is it that we feel the need to make the same mistakes over and over again? Isn't one error that, by virtue of not being corrected in time, becomes a mistake not enough times if only experienced even just the once?
I do not get it. I do not understand the human condition at all. We see the carnage, not even simply that, but we actually watch the cars as they hit the slick and start sliding toward the path that will soon lead them down the road to becoming wrecks thus creating carnage out of the occupants. We watch the ambulance come and we watch the officers scrape what is left of the human remains that have formed the messy bloody pile of carnage and even then it is still not enough of a lesson. Despite what we see and despite what we experience we still have to go back and do it all over again. And when all of that is said and done, we still don't learn a thing.
What is the matter with us?
Laterz

Friday 14th March
Now, maybe I have warped into the Twilight Zone and simply just not noticed, but someone told me yesterday that Easter is to fall on the 23 and 24th March. I checked a calendar and sure enough it does.
I find that odd.
Why?
As far as I am aware, Easter has always fallen in April and usually occurs during the first set of holidays that the kids have from school. Why now has it been moved to March, when did this happen and who moved it?
Is it simply an anomoly that will only occur in this country, or is it happening everywhere? You know, according to the calendar, they don't even call it Easter Sunday any more or any of the other names that they used to give it. On the calendar now it is noted as simply "Easter Day". I am thinking that it must be one of those PC things that they are doing like you know in America you're not allowed to say Merry Christmas, rather you have to say happy holidays. At least that is what I read somewhere.
I really see the clear move to erradicating God from almost all that we do, but being that this planet is becoming more of a Godless place, I should not be so surprised.
I wonder what would happen if you brought someone from 1856 to today and got them to tell us how different everything is now, in regard to God and observing his ways, compared to what it was then?
Might they think that we have attempted to make God change for the times, in total disregard of the fact that God is the same today, yesterday and always? I think they would think that and I also think that they would see this world for the truly Godless place that it is.
It is kind of like that story about the frog. You know, put him in a pot of cold water, slowly heat it up and the frog will stay there until he boils to death. Yet if you put a frog in a pot of hot water he will immediately jump out.
The last few generations have been the frogs in the pot of cold water and still we sit in that water not really understanding what is going on.
Laterz

Saturday 15th March
Having been a teenager in the early to mid 80s, I remember Paula Abdul quite well. She was quite a good singer and a rather talented dancer. Other than that, I have mostly seen her associated with American Idol, which for the most part, I have never really bothered watching. Except, of course, for the auditions that they undertake all over America.
But who doesn't watch those?
I think we all have this slightly warped part of us that seems to get a kick out of watching people making total gits out of themselves. This is especially so when we see the most deluded of the deluded who are possessed of the idea that they absolutely can sing and sing well. Those ones make the whole experience of watching that much more enjoyable, so I am told.
I watched the last round of American Idol auditions and some of them were insanely funny. Others were simply downright scary! But back to Paula.
Having watched her on Idol, particularly during the audition phase, I got the impression that she was a very warm, outwardly thinking person. She seemed to care about the people who auditioned and was loathe to hurt anyone's feelings.
But then I saw a program today and I was quite surprised to see another side of her. She was a prima-donna who lamented loudly how she was tired of not being treated like the gift that she is. Yeah, that is what she said.
She threw tantrums, treated people like garbage and basically came across as one of the most self-absorbed people I have ever seen. Paula was what I would refer to as the female version of Elton John. Everyone knows about Elton John's hip, detatched and precious persona, well Paula was just like him.
It is interesting what you notice when you see someone in an environment that is not the norm that you are used to seeing them in. Anyway, they were my observations and I suppose, in a way, I should not be so hard on Paula because all of those attributes are symptomatic of someone who has been portrayed, through the Hollywood machine, as someone who is only slightly less a god than God himself.
Laterz

Diebold Accidentally Leaks Results Of 2008 Election Early

This video is a little tongue-in-cheek humour but, oddly enough, it is not as far fetched as one might at first think.

Tuesday 18th March
Was bored and decided to read something a little different. What I read was a debate about the following question, "Is George W Bush the anitchrist?"
My first reaction was, who cares? But I read on anyway and the more I read the more intrigued I became.
The person who made the site used various method of modern and ancient numerical systems to ascertain the "numer of the beast" whcih is spoken about in the book of Revelation. It says that he who has wisdom can work out that the number is the number of a man, some say "name" of the man. But despite the word used, I think the meaning is the same.
Now I am not a maths genious at the best of times. I hate math and was never any good at it. I understand the method of assigning the letters of alphabet with numbers in numerals of 6, but other than that, I was totally lost. I cannot say whether his use of the Hebrew numerical/alphabetical system is correct or not. He used also the Chaldean(ap) and two other numerical systems and to be honest, I was quite lost when trying to understand it, so eventually I did what teachers always advise children who are trying to read the Lord of the Rings books for the first time..."Some of the names are strange and hard to pronounce, decide in your head how you think the names are pronounced and simply keep reading."
So that is what I did.
The part that I did understand was all the correlations he made between biblical prophecy and modern events in regard to Iraq, Saddam, George HW Bush and George Bush. He made many connections that read very realistic and that were not far fetched at all. The imagination did not have to be challenged too much to be able to understand what he was saying.
When I was done with that site, I went to a site that was debunking his site...being one who believes in reading both sides of a story, I thought it was important to do that.
There were a few things that struck me between the two sites. The site that espouses that George Bush is the antichrist most certainly backed up everything it asserted with proof and biblical scripture. Now, I know that people can justify just about anything with a little scripture twisting and tweaking here and there, but I did not see any such thing in that site.
On the other site the person rubbished all of his numerical issues, but with insults and no proof to show the way that he should have done it.
The other site completely lost me when they espoused that George W Bush iss a man of God acting on God's mandate...that God speaks to him and that he is righteous and acts righteously.
I do not know that I believe George W Bush to be the antichrist or not, but I can say, and I do not fear God's wrath for this because I am 100% confident saying this, George Bush is not on a mandate from God. He might think he is, but he is not. George Bush is not a man of God, he might think he is, but he is not. George Bush does not act righteously. Perhaps, according to George Bush's own definition of righteousness, he thinks he behaves that way, but it is clear to see that by the biblical standard, he misses the mark by a long shot.
Christians who think that George Bush is a God fearing Christian man have been sadly fooled by him, just as the bible predicted that they would be. Because in seeing everything that he has done, God would never condone killing innocents, being motivated by greed or most of the other things that he has done.
Anyway, I could talk way longer about this, but I am done for now.
Laterz

Saturday 22nd March
I did something last week. Something I have needed to do for a very long time. I thought that perhaps it would bring a sense of release to do what it is that I did, but it has not really done that at all. To the contrary, I have felt as though I am stumbling through each day just as the somnambulist staggers through each night. Unco-ordinated, falling over the smallest of things and unable to make sense of much of where they're at.
It is surreal and frightening and it has left me feeling somewhat disconnected with how I really feel about anything much in general terms.
I know that this must all sound dreadfully metaphoric and disconnected, and to a point, it is. I cannot, at least I do not want to, put in words exactly what it is that I am speaking of. Perhaps somewhere down the track I might, but let me just say that I hope that the ghosts of the past do not let me down this time. I hope they find their voice and I hope they tell their secrets with as much volume as is humaly possible to muster.
One ghost in particular has never been shy about giving voice to the most bizarre of human utterances and I sure hope that the particular person does not come down with a curious dose of stage fright this late in the picture. I hope the person laments loudly and longly about all the situations that gave birth to the melancholy that lives inside them. When chattering about their grievances, I hope that they remember everything as vividly as I do.
As for the other, I hope their arrogance is as strong as it always was, so that in that arrogance, they may be seen for what they really are.
One can only hope.
Laterz

"The End"
by
"Roadrunner United"

Friday 28th March
I just finished re-reading Kill Me by Stephen White. Now, I am not a Stephen White fan, as such. I had never even heard of him and actually bought his book from a junk bin for ten bucks two years ago while waiting to deposit my youngest son onto a bus to travel all the way down the Island to go see his mostly absent father.
I read the book the first time and absolutely loved it.
I re-read it again this week and it actually made me laugh and it made me cry. If you have never read this title it is a must. Yes it came from a junk bin, but then every really good book that I have ever bought has been bought firstly as an act of impulse buying and second always from a junk bin. That says two things about me I think.
First, either I would like every book I were to ever buy and therefore the fact that they were bought on impulse and from a junk bin means absolutely nothing. Or alternatively, I am simply exceptionally lucky that I happened to buy a really good book from the junk bin every time I have impulse bought via that method.
I bought Do White Wales Sing on the Edge of the World from a junk bin and the book is genius, pure genius.
I bought Snowfall from a junk bin too and that book is absolute genius.
But I really believe that Kill Me is more genius than most, even though I bought a junk bin book more recently called Ice Moon, which I would also describe as genius. But Stephen White's story Kill Me is definitely the most original in concept and in presentation. I actually dreaded reading nearer to the end, knowing that the main character was coming near to his end. I thought about Thea (his wife) Cal and Haven (his daughters) and Adam (his long lost son). I thought about how the time would stretch forth eternally for all of them once he was gone. Oh hey, I just realised something, I don't know the main character's name! In fact, I don't think through the entire story that anyone actually even speaks his name. Maybe they did and I missed it?
Weird.
But anyway I actually almost cried when the end came. Especially when at the end at his memorial service Jimmy Lee was there with Thea. Jimmy Lea was the one who introduced the main character to the "Death Angels" in the first place.
Anyway, if you can get a copy of the book, you should read it. It is up on my shelf where all of my faves reside.
Laterz

Saturday 29th March
Have you ever been in the odd situation where everyone thinks that you have been dead for years? Have you been in the situation where it is your own mother who has deliberately perpetrated that lie?
I have.
I was seven in 1974, and 1974 was the last year I had with my family. Well, actually I was only with them up until May 20th 1974 and I was seven when I truly understood that saying that goes on about not knowing what may lie around the corner. At the age of seven, I came to understand the true meaning of that. It is not easy to have your whole world taken away. It was like my whole family died, but yet I was not allowed to grieve because they hadn't in fact died. They decided, as far as I was concerned, that I had ceased to exist. Seriously, once I was 'out of the way' my mother told the kids and the neighbours that I died. My brother and sisters went to school after the holidays and told their teachers, my friends and theirs that I died during the holidays. (My first knowledge of this lie came many years later while at a pub with my two sisters. My older sister introduced me to this woman [who I had known as a little girl] and said, "This is my sister "****'."
The woman looked at my sister and said, "But she died!"
I just looked at her, smiled and said, "Surprise!"
What else could I say? (When I was thirteen I had been told by my sister that it had been said that I had died. She also told me that her mother had burned all the photos she had of me, but I did not believe her at the time, not really)Then I sought an explanation from my sisters as to why the woman was so sure that I had shed my mortal coil so many years ago? That was how I found out for sure that it was actually true.)
So yeah, 1974 was kind of a strange year for me.
Just like it was kind of weird finding out that I was dead, dead to that town anyway. Let us examine, for a moment, just what dead is defined as.
‘Dead’, according to the Oxford Thesaurus (the World’s most trusted dictionaries) can also be called ‘passed on, expired, no more, lost, lamented, perished, fallen, slain, slaughtered, killed, murdered, lifeless, extinct, obsolete, defunct, disused, abandoned, vanished, forgotten and archaic’, to name but a few. Informally dead can be known as (according to the exact same book) ‘dead as a doornail, six feet under, pushing up daisies, kicked the bucket, sucked the fat one, bit the silver bullet, crossed over, graduated, fertilising grass and nurturing the worms’.
Oddly enough, almost none of those terms equate to me during the period of my death. Except for maybe ‘lost, obsolete, abandoned, vanished and forgotten’. Some might argue the use of obsolete, but it does mean ‘passe, antediluvian, anachronistic’ basically out moded, outdated etc. That could apply, if you knew my mother.
When I stood in front of that woman in the pub that night and she said, “I thought she died?” I felt really embarrassed about showing my sisters up like that…isn’t that odd?
I was livinmg and breathing proof that they had lied...I mean they couldn't even deny it!
And me, my insides screwed up pretty bad to be faced with the reality of my mother's deep hatred of me...I mean I never missed her or anything and I never felt the need for a mother, but to be faced with a reality such as what jumped up and smacked me in the face is an exceptionally disconcerting thing.
I felt terrible that I placed my sisters in a position of extreme embarrassment. I felt awful for them and did not really stop to think about me, or how it made me feel until way later. That’s the really whack thing about this whole situation, all the way along I have worried for my siblings and how they must feel. How bizarre is it that someone would feel embarrassed about accidentally showing someone up for having told a porky? Admittedly, my untimely death was a whopper of a porky in the big scheme of things within the porkies realm. But I suppose it just shows how certain my mother must have been that we would never see each other ever again.
I remember sitting there while my sisters spoke with the woman and the entire time she just kept staring at me and I felt very awkward, terribly awkward and uncomfortable. I was also worried that my sisters would be mad with me, and as it turned out, my little sister was exceptionally cross with me. I spent a little while later wondering what it was that I could have done differently and as I could not come up with anything, I went outside, scored some dak and got horribly stoned. I then returned to the inside of the bar and proceeded to add shooters to my little cocktail and got incredibly drunk!
My little sister got the hump and wanted to go home. My older sister wanted to go party at some other places. For the first time in my life I had to choose between the two. My little sister was hanging onto my arm trying to pull me to the car. My big sister was hanging onto my other arm trying to pull me away from the car to go with her. I felt as though I was between a rock and a hard place, no matter which one I chose to go with, I’d be in serious strife with one of them. Normally being in strife with my younger sister upset me more than being in strife with my older sister. Anyway in the end I yanked my arm out of my younger sister’s hand and said, “Nah, I’m going with her.”
We went to another pub and I got even more drunk than I already was and we danced on tables (shortly after scoring free beer for dancing in our nickers…I was sooooooooooo drunk… which is totally out of character for me.)
We staggered off to McDonalds in the Square to get some food because I had the munchies like I’d never had before and my sister got into an argument with some guy outside. She is incredibly mouthy and can go to violent behaviour when drinking, I merely get a little devil-may-care cruisy. Anyway we ate and then my sister puked everywhere, which means that she drank way more than I was aware she had because she is a hard core drinker. Then we staggered home at around four am. Her husband opened the door to us, took one look at us, shook his head and went back to bed.
The next morning we ran into each other in the hallway of their house and we just looked as each other and groaned inwardly. Later that day we went to her softball match and then I split and went and saw my little sister. She still had the hump and so I went home. It was on the way home that I really began to think about the fact that everyone had made me dead to that place and to everyone I had known as a kid and I felt really weird about it. I also found out that same night that our mother had burned every photo that had ever been taken of me too, I had, effectively, been erased.
It was hard enough to live with the knowledge that she had sent me away in the first place, but to find out that she had systematically erased me was devastating. She further confirmed her denial of me when I went to see her about eleven years ago. Long story short, she asked me which daughter I was and when I said my name she said that she had no daughter by that name. When I questioned her further, she denied to my face that she was my mother. That was pretty devastating and very, very strange. I went away from there and my friend drove us around the corner and suddenly I had to get out of the car. Once I was standing on the footpath, I didn’t know whether to laugh, cry, scream or puke. As it turned out I did none of those, I just started shaking and felt like I wasn’t even in my own body, it was very bizarre and lasted a few hours.
The one saving grace for me? That verse in the bible that says something like, "even when your own mother forgets you, I (God)never will."
As for my older sister, some years back now she made one of her phonecalls that she is prone to while she was drunk. She told me that she hated me and that my mother should have aborted me and a whole bunch of other things that I just don't care to write about. She blames me for all that went wrong between her parents, and that is okay. But she decided that I probably should have stayed dead and she would prefer if I stayed in that state.
It is not their fault, they too carry their scars, just not as well as others and if keeping me out of their lives eases their memories and saves them pain, then I should have the good decency to oblige and I do. It has been this way for a long time now and is better left that way.
Laterz

"Heavenly Love"
by
"David And The Giants"

Wednesday 2nd April
I pulled out my old Rich Mullins CD to listen to and I heard a song after having not heard it for a few years.
It made me think.
It made me wonder what Jesus (whom I believe in, just so that there is no confusion here) must have thought as he has looked out upon the earth since he ascended from it.
Does God allow him to see what we have done?
What does he think when he looks down at us?
I can only imagine that it would be extreme anguish at the horror of what we perpetrate upon each other.
So I made the video that I have posted above this blog but then I took it down...HA! gotcha!...actually I took it down and meant to repost it again and then forgot!
Laterz

"Always On My Mind"
by
"David And The Giants"

Sunday 6th April
I have been incredibly slack at posting anywhere near regularly in here. I had good intentions of posting every day but some days I just don't have anything much to say.
Some would argue that even when I post that I have nothing to say and some days I wouldn't actually argue with them.
So, I am sitting here listening to Abba...the song is Tropical Loveland and it came out when I was like eight or something, but it actually has some lovely harmonies at the end of the song, which makes listeing to the first three quarters of the song more bearable.
Made some new David & The Giants videos over the last few days and actually finished one that I had been making for a while. I made like three versions of the same song but when I watched them through, they were so flat that I did not even post them. The fourth attempt went well and I have finally posted it in youtube.
The one that I have posted above this blog came together pretty fast and I was completely happy with it first time. I don't want to be taking an axe to the work of David & the Giants, so I try to make sure it does not look silly.
Looking back on my videos there is most certainly a resounding underlying signature to my work...if I had done a video and you knew my work then it would be like hearing Sting's voice on the radio; instantly recognisable...at least that is what I think. Maybe I am wrong...it has been known to happen from time to time...ha ha ha.
Well the marmite that I sent to Indiana was a resounding flop of a social experiment. If you weren't raised on the stuff then chances are that you will hate it and never want to eat it again.
Chuck is saving some for when David visits next and he is going to let me know if it makes David huff....his last name is Huff...that was a joke...never mind. I should stay well away from comedy because I am so not funny!
I have an admission to make, I listened to Demis Rousos today...I know, I ought to be lined up against a wall and shot for listening to the biggest guy of '75...but he does have a kind of nice voice. I could probably have grown to like opera if I had not been so swayed by pop at such a young age...which goes to show that diet is everything. I was raised on radio and soft pop/soft rock and it is generally the kind of music I naturally gravitate towards...but not to be forgotten are the kinds of music that I like that totally do not fit into the soft pop/soft rock genre really. Mary Chapin Carpenter, Mazzy Star, APP, ELO, Wilco and ones like that.
I spent my first 7 years with total exposure to the Hollies, Freda Payne, Left Banke, the Bee Gees and unfortunately Elvis! But as I once stated in a previous blog, hating Elvis is a decision not a natural course of events...or maybe it is...maybe I was never meant to like Elvis?
I don't know why I am here posting a blog, I really have nothing much to say and are probably rambling a little.
Laterz

Wednesday 9th April
I haven't written anything in a few days because I been feeling a little out of sorts...emotionally speaking. Just as I thought I was starting to feel a little better another thing comes along to totally tip everything upside down again.
When I first started feeling out of sorts, I simply felt a little jumpy and on edge, but then I got a visit from someone and jumpy and on edge turned into 'couldn't breathe, nausea and total tummy ache...along with tears and anguish and all of that garb that comes with it.
Begs the question why.
Well, it is not a simple answer, so I will simply tell you a story.
There once was this girl I knew and when she was seventeen she found out for sure that she had been born through rape. Further to this, she carried a lot of memories of very violent things perpetrated upon her and in front of her.
Deep down inside her she knew that as a little girl she had been attacked sexually by someone. She suspected that she knew who, but always tried to deflect it onto someone whom she never could remember ever seeing and yet who had lived with her when she was small. Not that she ever told anyone that she had this knowledge, she didn't really ever tell anyone anything for a long time and even then, she never really told the whole story of those dreadful events...and why would she? It is disgusting and revolting!
Some time ago, while driving down the road and when it was the last thing on her mind, she finally remembered his face. He used to put the pillow over her face so that she could not scream so loud and she did not remember for a very long time ever having seen his face.
Much to her horror it was the only person from her childhood that she had ever truly loved. Her step-father...the man whom, at that stage in her life, she knew only as her father.
To make matters worse, she spoke to her sister about it and she said, "Oh yeah, he did it to me too." But she was blase because she does not remember it...her mother felt to share that information with her, probably as a cruel taunt somewhere along the way...maybe not...but why tell your kid that kind of thing if, mercifully, their brain has chosen to lock it away in the dark eternal recesses (sp) of the mind?
That information, all of it combined took a while to sink into her head.
Then yesterday she was told by her sister, "Mum told me that he (stepfather) had always said that he was going to, and I quote, "break his daughters in." And thus he did. And their mother knew and she let him!
Anyway, upon hearing that story she felt literally sick, like she just wanted to heave. Then her stomach started hurting and then she felt like she just couldn't breathe. Her head started to spin and she felt like she had been absolutely flattened...you know, run down by a truck...emotionally, physically and cognitively.
She cried and cried and cried and she is still crying. She can't get up out of bed today. She just can't make herself move or do anything. And the worst of it is that she has no one that she can tell this to. No one.
All she keeps asking is, "God, how could he do that? How could he do that to a little girl?"
She feels so disgusted that she cannot even look at herself in the mirror knowing what it is that he did.
This is like the worst time for her to be alone and the first time that she truly is and she feels like she's drowning.

Thursday 10th April
Sometimes people just don't need details, you know? They didn't need them and they didn't want them, but one day they simply discover that have them. And they are like little nuclear bombs disguised as worms crawling through the brain just waiting to go off!
But they keep their own temporary little private hell to themself and speak to people like nothing is wrong...because really, how the heck do you tell someone what they have come to know?
Got an e-mail this morning from someone I am slowly getting to know...actually, I am not really getting to know them at all...he is a man of very few words and I find it impossible to write down any simple explanation at all in less than at least one thousand words...I must drive him nuts!
People often toy with the idea of pouring out their heart and sharing what is wrong, but who needs that kind of sharing, right? It is bad enough that one person has to deal with it, why make someone else have to deal with it too?
They say that in Christ all people are sisters and brothers, but really, like everything else there are boundaries that you simply cannot cross...and ...blah, I don't even know what I am trying to say.
I think that I am writing so that I do not have to think...kind of ironic, I know, but it makes sense to me and that is probably all that matters at this point in time.
By the way, she is still feeling very hollow and the overriding emotions are still complete and utter shock and revulsion...she's kind of still swimming around in that and simply do not know what to do with it.
But it is fair to say that she wishes that this had not happened to her and, by the same token, if it is her it is one less someone else and she guesses that has got to be a good thing...but how do someone get past that? How do you stop those powerful emotions and move forward? She has never been quite this stuck before and she is not quite sure what to do with it.

Friday 11th April
It is amazing how a person can appear so calm and together when inside they are temporarily totally messed up...and she knows that it is only temporary and that this too shall pass. She already feels a little better...I think. To be certain, she shall never be exactly the same as she was before, but life's experiences do that...they impact upon you and shape you some more...maybe it is even what you could call a refining process.
She has never let bad things change her for the worse...maybe temporarily they make her stagger around a bit, but she always gets up again and moves on stronger and a little wiser for the experience. And at the end of the day, what else can you do?
Choices are limited in life when it comes to things that you cannot change.
What I do find myself thinking though, is how does a man come to the conclusion that it is fine to hurt a child like that? How does he rationalise it? How does the process of him thinking the thought and then crossing the line to put thoughts into actions come about?
Maybe the point of thought is actually where the line is crossed and then the rest is just a natural ugly progression? I can't help thinking that there must be a part of their heart that is dead and perhaps a part of their brain that has stopped working...or perhaps it is that it never worked in the first place.
How do they continue on through life knowing what they have done and are yet seemingly at peace with it? I cannot fathom an answer to that...it is illogical to my mind.
If the perpetrator can go through life not caring and being completely unbothered by what he has done, then why can the same "don't care" attitude not be mercifully gifted to the victims too? It seems unfair that the victim struggles with his choices for the rest of her life...can you not see the irony in that?
But by the same token, the victim struggling with what he did is most likely what separates every other human being from ones of a perpetrator's ilk? 90% of other human beings cannot allow their brain to justify or forget the horror of what he did...of what someone like him did...that keeps our humanity intact and our moral radar firmly pointed in the right direction.
Yes, that's probably it.

A while back I explained my complete and utter loathing of Elvis Presley and why. But I have to post this vid because this is really quite beautiful...and it gives testament and celebrates, I think, the relationship between fathers and daughters the way it should be...(not the song itself, but the way that the video has been made...you'll know what I mean when you watch it).

Sunday 13th April
Went out last night...not far, but out nonetheless. We just sat around at a friend's house under stars with a fire burning in a drum in the dark and talked. We had quite a few laughs as well and it was nice.
The dampner on the whole thing? One very drunk young guy who could hardly even stand up once he was done drinking...he was staggering around and I was just waiting for him to completely collapse. Reminded me of all the reasons I never drink and never have really, bar a couple of occasions quite some years ago.
Went and saw someone Friday, a councellor/counselor...I always get those two mixed up...anyway she was trying...actually, you know what? That doesn't matter.
Winter seems to be taking a hold of the country right now...freezing at night but still hot during the days. I reckon that this winter is going to be a cold one...but no one can tell for sure until it truly gets here.
Got another letter from Ashaan...he joined the army a few months back...okay maybe six weeks ago...can't remember the exact date. He said that the COs are quite nice to them, which surprised me a little. He has been in full uniform now for about four weeks and has had that many injections for one thing or another he is sick of it. I asked him what the jabs were for, but he didn't know. Clever!
But he likes it there and is doing really well and he also made comment that the physio lady on the base is rather cute...typical! I am laughing though, Ashaan is a really neat guy and I am very proud of him...I just hope that if we get a change of Government this year....(and there is no way of really telling if we will or not because it is all very neck in neck at the moment)...I just hope I do not find myself at Auckland International Airport waving him goodbye as he heads off to Iraq! Actually it wouldn't be Auckland International Airport, it might be at Ardmore up the road.
Whatever, I do not want my son going there!
Had a few e-mails from someone I am slowly getting to know...at least I think I might be getting to know them and so that was good. Also heard from Sylvie, in a round-about kind of way. I read all the posts that go on in the JN club that they have and she seems happy, so that's good to know.
Anyway, that's about it for now.
Laterz

"Let Go Let God"
by
"David And The Giants"

Monday 14th April
It is raining...oh joy...and has been since yesterday. Winter is definitely taking a hold on the place, which will be great news for my American friends as this is a sure sign that summer is leaving. Whenever summer leaves here it always seems to wander on over there, ha ha ha.
I am not really a fan of summer and never really have been. I have been invited to visit American friends before (American people are extremely friendly that way, very hospitable) and I have always said that if I ever do front up that it will be in winter...I want to see the snow. I want to shovel snow and build snowmen! Really, I do.
I would also love to be able to film a tornado and some really awesome lightning like they get over there...preferably the kind where no one gets hurt. Nature's displays are fantastic over there. One day I want to see Aurora Borealis for myself and of course film it...but I think that mostly happens in Canada.
I reuploaded my latest David And The Giants video because the first one was awful with the timing...ugh! So I will need to repost it here too because the one I have included will no longer be available. But it will be in about 30 seconds.
Laterz

Tuesday 15th April
I found myself looking at a picture of a woman today. She is pretty and she is also a Christian artist.
Clearly she was raised with her father and mother either there or very nearby her entire life and they have done well by her in raising her right so that she could become what she is. As I looked at her it did cross my mind to wonder why I had not been that fortunate. I also found myself wondering if she really knows just how fortunate she is?
But if you have your parents all your life, do you really understand how fortunate you are? I mean really? If you never knew any different, then how would you comprehend your fortune? Does it not matter one way or the other? Would you still think life had been rough on you because of your parent's beliefs or behaviour or something?
Why am I asking this?
Because in looking at her and thinking about it, I was reminded of just how much licence you have with your parents. Naturally, they steer you in the right direction and do everything they can to enhance your ability to chase your dreams and maybe even realise some of them.
This woman, her dad produced both her albums and when I saw his name as the producer, I just thought, yeah, that is how it should be.
You know, you cannot reclaim anything back from the past, not a moment, nothing and it can be quite difficult to wrap your head around the idea of why life was the way that it was.
Why did life conspire to make events play out as they did in my little corner of the world and her corner worked out fine? Not that I begrudge her, I do not, but I wonder why me and not her...not that I want it to be her, I don't, but I wonder of the random nature of the way things happen.
What might I have become if it had been different?
Was listening to "Mental As Anything" today...interesting one hit wonder band from Australia...but they were quite good. Reminded me a little of Andrew Fagan and The Mockers...in their one hit wonderish kind of way. Same with old "Black Eyes"...Jon English.
I told someone a few days ago, a guy that is a reasonably well know Christian artist in the States...I heard two of his early day secular songs and anyway I told him that they sounded very British back street tin grit, kind of like the Hollies did when they started out. I cannot believe that I said that to this man. I am sure he knew what I meant, but still....the guy has been in the music industry for what turned out to be decades and little old me summed up the origins of the sound of his music with 5 words. But the secular music was okay, kind of obnoxious, as secular music written by hormonal young guys tends to be....and he was a young guy back in 1968.
But I still had to laugh at myself for saying that. I am not sure if he found it funny or was offended by it, he never said. But my intent was never to offend...I actually thought that that was exactly what the music sounded like.
Laterz

later the same day
Woke up around 7 and it was pouring with rain...when summer leaves, she goes out with a bang...or a flood...whichever one seems more appropriate.
Anyway, so I decided that today I want absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with the world that exists outside my house...in other words it is a pyjama day. I don't have them often, but every now and then I do and it is really good for your mental health...which, if you are like most people, operates on a sliding scale...one day you feel sane the next day not so sane...ha ha ha.
So I am sitting here eating my marmite toast and typing and, as I gaze at my hands typing, I realise that I type as one would play a piano. I learned piano...did I ever mention that?
Yeah, I was going to be a singer song writer when I was eleven...so I was allowed to take piano lessons. Unfortunately something happened to me at the hands of my piano teacher's husband one afternoon when she forgot I was arriving for my lesson and took off to town.
After that I hated the piano. I really detested it. Every time I sat down at the piano I saw his face and I heard his breathing and I remembered vividly his hands on me...okay so that was a little graphic, but hey, it was...graphic I mean...for me at the tender age of eleven...are you kidding? Of course, so I'm not going to apologise for explaining how he made me feel.
I couldn't tell my foster mother because...well, I don't even want to go into why I couldn't tell her. But I remember getting into the truck when she picked me up and screaming at her that I was never going back for another piano lesson again.
She screamed back at me that I had no choice, that I would have to finish out the year, which meant that I was at the mercy of that...I don't even have a name for him...for another six or so months. It was hell, let me tell you, and if I hated the piano the first time he "got me", well I loathed it by the time the year was up. Having to go once a week to the house of my attacker and having to be hyper vigilant and trying to make sure that I was never alone on my own there wore me down.
I used to freak out every time I arrived there that she might have forgotten about my lesson again and that I would get cornered by him. It was really horrible.
So along with the dying dreams of playing the piano died the dreams of being a singer/songwriter. But maybe that is not so bad, there's enough of them out there.
But some habits never die...keeping my wrists up while typing is one of them, so now I shall make a conscious effort to be extremely lazy and let my wrists rest on the laptop either side of the mouse pad. Ha!
Well, it is raining cats and dogs and I would not mind betting that if it keeps up there will be flooding somewhere around the country.
That's me for now.
Laterz

"Quiet Faith"
by
"David And The Giants"

Thursday 17th April
I put the latest vid I made above this blog. I was working on another one called "Don't Take Away My Dream" but I have come down with a rather nasty migraine and there's nothing like that to thwart the creative process. As a result I am about to crawl into my bed and ignore the existence of my head altogether.
I haven't had a migraine for a while now and I had almost forgotten what they are like...memory comes back fast though once one hits you. So I am off to bed to watch a dvd called "A Good Year" stars Kiwi ex pat Russell Crowe who I cannot stand, so that's always a good thing to do...watch a movie starring someone you can't stand as an actor when you feel miserable enough already. Nothing like making yourself feel just that little bit worse.
I could watch Never Been Kissed...and almost did except that that is about the last kind of movie I need to see right now.
What I wouldn't give to be special to someone, even if only just the once! Seems I have been saying that all of my life. I have never really been that to anyone and I have never really ever stood out either...unless you count...no, that was an accident and doesn't count...I say laughing! I don't know, I suppose I just wonder when it will be my turn? I don't mean rock star stand out...goodness no, I couldn't stand having everyone staring at me or anything. But I wonder, when will someone ever look at me and speak of me the way I hear other people speak about the people they love? Does that sound petty and immature? It probably is.
I am going to bed, my head feels the size of China and not in a good way!
Laterz

"I Was The Nails"
by
"David And The Giants"

"Don't Take Away My Dream"
by
"David And The Giants"

Sunday 20th April
Finally my ugly migraine has finally lifted...they are truly awful and anyone else who suffers from them has my deepest sympathy!
Spent the evening and some of the early hours of this morning...well...one hour actually...at the friend's house playing "bullpaki" a card game where you got to get rid of all your cards...but you can lie as you put them down and say that they are something that they are not...you put them face down and the other players have to try and work out if you are lying or not. I am the Bullpaki queen and have not lost a hand yet. My punishment is that they are going to make me hold a sign that says Bullpaki Champion and they are going to post it on YouTube and Bebo...I told them that they have to actually get the pic first...which will be a struggle for them, as I like to be behind the camera, not in front of it.
The camera so does not love me any more!
I used to photograph well and even did some photography modelling for one or two people in my twenties, but I look something shocking in photos these days...so that picture will never happen!
It is so cold now...winter is here with vengeance! Ooh man is it cold! After a couple of hands of Bullpaki sitting out by fire in trash can...I was convinced I no longer has fingers, toes or kneecaps! Got some more good flame footage though and made a new D & G video with the footage I got last night...it came up really good! The footage...the video remains to be seen and is uploading into YT as I speak. Will post it here when it is done.
People really like the videos that I make...having good music helps of course...but they really like the videos too and I am so surprised...I really am because they are so personal to me and really reflect what the music brings to mind when I listen to it. Anyway, that's about it for now because it is almost 2.39 am and I am tired.
What about my whinge in here a couple of days ago eh? I was going to take it down and post something else...but that would not be very honest of me would it? No...that's what I thought.
Laterz

"Inside My Heart"
by
"David And The Giants"

Sunday 20th April
Later the same day:
Have you ever heard a song that just wammos you out of nowhere? I have heard just two in my life that have really completely floored me without warning. The first was a song I once heard on the radio by a Christian guy...I don't know his name...but the music to the start of it sounded really nice and so I taped it...this was back in 97 I think it may have even been the same day that I first heard "Here's My Heart" by David And The Giants.
Anyway so I flicked on the record button left the room and thought little more about it except to notice that when I got back into the room I had forgotten I had started recording and so ended up recording all these songs I didn't want. A couple of days later I rewound the tape to see what the song I had heard the start to was like. I knew it was the first on that side of the tape. So I am sitting there listening to this guy singing and he's singing about having prayed for his little boy's future wife from the time that his son was born. I think the song was called "Hold Onto Jesus", but I am probably wrong.
It just sucker punched me...that song...they way he cared so much for a little girl he had never even met and yet whom he knew he would meet some day and it was so beautiful. But in part of the song he sings about how he imagines her relationship with her mother and father were preparing her for the time when she would meet his son....I only ever listened once...I couldn't listen again. I still have the tape. I know exactly where it is, but I won't listen to it.
It happened again the other day when I heard a song called "Blue Eyes Like Janey's".
It is a funny thing when you crash into a song like "Blue Eye's Like Janey's". On the one hand it stirs very deep and painful memories and emotions within me and part of me swears that I will never listen to that song again. But then there is this other part of me that kind of thinks, well maybe if I listen to it often enough, those memories won't surface and cause me to feel what they originally did...but then I think, well, if it stops inducing those emotions within me, then does that mean that I no longer care about what formerly upset me when I heard the song? I ask myself, do I ever want to get to the place where I don't feel those emotions? If I do get to the place where those emotions don't surface when I hear it, does that mean that I never cared to begin with?
If I can eventually switch them off and I no longer get upset about that, then what kind of person does that make me? Do I want to be that kind of person? Does it mean anything at all?
I did listen again, maybe two times over a period of days...but I can't listen to it again...it just stirs up so much within me that I cannot do it.
California by Manfred Mann is one of those songs that emotionally slams me...not in the way that "Blue Eyes Like Janey's" does...it is different. It is more of a haunting song...it reminds me of how when I was a kid I was always being left behind...or always dreaming of what a place that I was once in was like now that I was no longer there...and it made me think about the people I had lost because it was always as though they had died...sometimes it was as though I had too...it was strange...very weird...I moved fifteen times between the ages of seven and seventeen...you'd think I'd have gotten used to it...and I used to do a good job of pretending that I had...but I think I was just numb...tired...had lost faith in everything and everyone. I learned very early on not to believe in happily ever after. Even when I hear the first few bars of that song my heart leaps into my mouth...and yet to others it is just a song. Just a pretty song and nothing more. To me California in the song represented that elusive home...those elusive parents...the elusive family...the every day normal things. And yes, at this point I agree that I think way too much and...whatever...heck it is my blog and I can say whatever I want.
Sometimes...when I am having doubts, which isn't often, but every now and again...I think about Christ coming back. I been thinking about it since I was ten or eleven on and off. But every now and then I get scared that it is going to be like everything else that happened with someone who meant so much to me...that I will wait for Him and He will not come. That even when I die, He still will not be there and that like all those other times...it will be California all over again. I don't think those thoughts that often, but it is one of my deepest secret fears...as secret fears go...well...I guess it isn't a secret any more. Actually, I don't think anyone who really knows me reads this anyway and besides, it is simply a collection of my meandering thoughts and it probably don't mean a whole bunch of anything. Besides all of the aforementioned, it is not as though I am speaking of anyone else or saying something bad about them...it is not about someone else so I think it is okay to say what I have said. I just wish that I didn't feel so sad so easily in those moments...not depressed sad or anything like that...just a tinge of normal sad...you know....whatever that is!
It is as cold as ice today again...winter is definitely here.
Laterz
Ps Did you know that the original maker of the burglar alarm had his design stolen? Now that contains an element of humour if you think about it long enough.

"Selah"
by
"David And The Giants"

Monday 21st April
Well I am an idiot.
I was going to make a YouTube channel for someone...it was going to feature their music. I put the idea to that person and that person thought it was a great idea and so put me onto someone else. THAT someone else asked what songs I was interested in posting etc....now he has gone and created the channel. Didn't tell me...just did it and bombed me with it in an email today.
I cannot believe it!
My first reaction was dismay...which quickly gave way to tears...then I got over it.
Laterz

Tuesday 22nd April
Actually I am not over it...not really...but, as King Leonidas of Sparta said...in his very deep gritty Scottish accent, "Aye, what can you do?"
Hey, that's not right. Leonidas would not have spoken with a Scottish accent! Thanks Gerrard Butler!
Hey, I spoke to the Chuckmeister by phone today. It is not something I would normally do but he is a minister and his wife and he are very nice people, so I thought "What the heck."
The Chuckmeister lives in a little place called Alexandria...at least he did until I spoke to him. According to him he lives in "Alexendria" and when he's thinking he is actually "thainkin"...it was really funny hearing the way he says some of his words. But he is very nice...very nice indeed and it was nice to talk to him.
Didn't get to talk to Lori though as she was out and even when she got in she was still obviously out, so I just spoke to Chuckmeister.
Also spoke with my other new friend...not by telephone but by blackberry with sprint speed...ha ha ha...he emailed me from it and he was in Canada...I don't have one...a blackberry...they don't sell those here. Man twenty years ago I would have had to wait two weeks to find out that he was in Canada...and by then, he would no longer have been in Canada. Funny how technology has shrunk the world some...in fact it has shrunk it a lot. Anyway he went there to sing...as he does...and he said that people are talking about "Nails".
I took this to mean two things.
The first is that he meant the video and secondly he was possibly referring to the people he was with in Canada... well, not all of them but a few of them. Then again, I could have totally misunderstood what he meant.
I cannot believe how tech savvy this guy is and I mentioned it to Chuckmeister...Chuckmeister is a friend of his and I met him through the Chuckmeister...but this guy is in his sixties and he is using a blackberry with sprintspeed and he emails and does all the tech garb that would, under normal circumstances, induce intestinal explosions in other people his age. Which just goes to show that age really is just a number!
Chuckmeister said that he is going to send more D & G music which is good because it is all I listen to these days...well except for the odd listen to California by Manfred Mann and a couple of other oldies but goodies.
I hope I get to go to America one day. I would really love to meet Wolf, Chuckmeister and David in person.
Never hear from Wolf any more though...he just kind of dropped off and I do not know why. He did mention something about the process of natural selection, so maybe I fell afoul of that process in his life? Who can say?
Anyway, I am working on a D & G video right now so want to get back to it.
Laterz

"Light The Fire"
by
"David And The Giants"

Thursday 24th April
Had this insanely strange dream last night about an old friend of mine. I asked him to come here if he wanted and help me paint a room. When he arrived I got the impression that I had agreed to pay him for it, which was a bit of a problem as in the dream I didn't have any money, but in the dream I was also very aware that if he knew that then he would not have come.
We started to paint the room and all the time I worried about what I was going to do when it came time to pay him. But the room we ended up painting wasn't in a house but inside some kind of army tank and as for paying him, soon it was not going to be a problem.
We were half way through painting when I saw someone from outside the tank pointing a rocket launcher at it. I saw them fire at us and I told my friend, and another person, who entered the dream out of nowhere, to run.
The three of us took off running and we ended up down an alley before the rocket hit the tank, but when it hit, it went off like a nuclear bomb. The three of us jumped down onto the ground and covered our heads with our hands and we felt the heatwave go right over top of us.
As I was lying face down on the ground I had two of the the strangest thoughts.
The first thought was that although we survived the initial blast we would end up dying slowly through radiation poisoning. But I rationalised it as okay because at least we would still have more time together.
The second thought was, oh well at least I don't have to worry about paying him for painting the room any more.
Weird eh? I wonder what that was all about then?!
Laterz

"Can't Live Without You"
by
"David And The Giants"

Saturday 26th April
I was trying to work out why I have such vivid dreams of destruction when that subject is way far from my mind. I think that it is very strange. But almost all of my life I have dreamed dreams like that and I have always wondered why.
Been busy making videos and made one with Jonty yesterday. He wanted to help me make one and so he told me some of the things that he wanted me to film.
We went to the railway station which had this sign that said "Access to platforms 1, 2 and 3" and it had an arrow pointing skyward. I thought is was kind of cool and could be figurative (in a video) for father, son and holy spirit...so I filmed it and it fit in with the video really well.
The song that I used, "Everybody Needs Love" fit in with everything we filmed too, so it ended up really nice. Will post the video after this blog entry.
Well, not much else to say really.
Have had two requests so far; people wanted to use the videos in their church. David was readily agreeable to the first and I have not heard back about the second...but I imagine that he will not have a problem with it.
I do worry about the fact that the use of these videos, thus David's music, in a way, is kind of robbing them of income from their music. I tried to think of ways around that and I wondered whether these people giving a donation or something to the church that David goes to to support their church outreach program might be appropriate? But still, it does not solve the problem of David and Co losing out on income from their work.
Anyway, I guess it will sort itself out in the end.
Laterz

"Everybody Needs Love"
by
"David And The Giants"

Sunday 27th April
Had another weird dream last night but this time it was about the Chuckmeister.
I dreamed that I was sitting at the computer in the lounge at our old house. I looked out of the window and saw a gray and white cat sitting across the road about to run out onto it and get run over. I bolted out of the house, across the road, grabbed the cat and brought him home. I decided to keep him.
All during this time, Chuckmeister was trying to IM me in Yahoo and I kept missing his IMs and when I finally did catch them, it was his son Caleb and not him.
All of a sudden in the dream Chuckmeister was no longer in the States but here in New Zealand and for some reason, unknown to me in the dream, he began chasing me. I did not know why he was chasing me but I ran anyway.
I ran until I came to a one way street and Chuckmeister was not far behind me at this point. On the side of the road in the one way street a car was parked and as I got closer to it I realised that it was my car. At the same time I also became aware of the fact that Chuckmeister had planted a bomb in the car and I knew that it was about to explode.
Chuckmeister, realising that in chasing me I had led him into his own trap, turned tail and began to run out of the one way street again.
I knew that I should run too at that point, but I saw something on the road and decided that I needed to pick it up before I began to run. But upon closer inspection of the object I decided to leave it behind. Knowing that there was only one way out of the street I began to run along behind Chuckmeister in order to escape the explosion, but I knew that I wouldn't make it, so I began to look around for somewhere to hide.
As I was looking around I remembered the movie "Independence Day". I remembered how the woman, her child and the dog hid in that little shelter and how the flames went straight past them but did not touch them. Immediately upon remembering that I saw a little door in the side of one of the buildings. I opened it and saw that it was a little cubbyhole and so I climbed in and crouched down. I was not sure whether I should shut the door or not. Just as I was thinking that, the explosion occured and the flames shot past the slightly open door and then I could smell the strong aroma of jet fuel and I thought that I might suffocate to death.
I began to pray that God would allow me to live and as soon as I prayed that the smell of the fuel went away and the flames disappeared.
I climbed out of the cubbyhole, careful to look around making sure that Chuckmeister wasn't anywhere around and, seeing that he wasn't, I went on my way.
As I walked out of the one way street I saw a roundabout and a man riding a Pennyfarthing around and around and all over his bike he carried big boxes. I moved closer to see why he was doing that and I saw that it was Chuckmeister and he looked straight at me and smiled.
Then I woke up.
Was that weird or what?
I thought about it for ages trying to work out why I would dream a dream like that about Chuckmeister and I have no idea why.
Weird.
Laterz

"Noah"
by
"David And The Giants"

Monday 28th April
I am in a very strange mood today. If I had to compare my mood to a piece of music it would be the progression of the paino notes in U2's song "Lemon" (the song and video itself, of course, bites something shocking). But that piece of piano...the progression of the notes... is one of the most stunning and yet simple pieces of piano music I have ever heard. It is only surpassed in impact by the two solitary piano notes in "Always On My Mind" by "David And The Giants".
However, unlike the notes in "AOMM" by "D&G", the notes in "Lemon" are solitarily haunting...they make me feel kind of slightly lost and in a very hauntingly lonely way, if that makes any sense. And the notes themselves...it is played with one hand and terribly, terribly simple...and yet the emotions it stirs up within me are wildly complex...like a storm of lost, helpless, alone and hollow.
That piece of music reminds me of those days where I wake up thinking, Why? Why am I here? Why did you, God, in your infinite wisdom, make me who I am? What was your point? What is your purpose?
And then I stare out the window at the green leaves on the trees that are slowly turning orange and as I hear those notes moving gracefully through their progression, I realise that it is no more clearer than the first day that I was ever able to consciously ask myself those questions. I think I was seven the first time I really asked. And asking is like staring down an endless light green corridore that has shadows creeping up and down the walls from the branches on the dying trees outside the foggy windows. Shadows that linger for a while and yet on other days fan across the glossy paint at the whimsy of the wind. And for all of the watching those shadows, I am none the wiser and the voice of past solitary hurt is verbose!
"I feel like I'm slowly, slowly, slowly slipping under...
I feel like I'm holding onto nothing...
I feel like I'm drifting, drifting, drifting from the shore..."
All that remains beyond the thought and the music is silence. Always deathly silence.
Laterz

Tuesday 29th April
Disclaimer: "Don't ever try this at home, folks. This stunt was performed by a complete amateur and well, you be the judge of the results!"
Have you ever convinced yourself that something is a really good idea when, in fact, it actually isn't?
Was there ever a time where you took a totally calculated risk thinking that the odds of it going horribly wrong are fairly slim to practically none? Even though the fallout from it going wrong could be huge?
I am not talking about life threatening risks...you know...not something that might see you walking away from it minus a limb or something worse. Just a little calculated risk.
I do not know why but today I am reminded of the time that I thought about doing something, knowing that it was totally brainless and yet did it anyway.
You see, I had seen too many movies to that point in my life...way too many, as you will see in a moment.
Anyway, about these movies...they were ones where guys said something to a total stranger...girl obviously...and it was perfectly okay. Well, it is the movies and so anything goes and in fact movies are not one bit like real life and it is at this point that I must draw your attention to the fact that it was very unfortunate that I had not kept that in mind in relation to my calculated risk!
But men, you know it is as though they are born with some kind of licence to say whatever they please any time that they like and it never backfires...well seldom...somehow licence dictates that they can make a total moron out of themself and it is perfectly okay.
I did take that into consideration when contemplating my calculated risk...my, my, my how selective a human being can be when they get an idea into their head!
You see, there was this guy at my gym...this was about...I don't know...maybe twelve years ago... Anyway the first time I lay eyes on him I was fit to pass out...he was so cute! He was older than me and I set about doing some very discreet homework on this guy.
I found out the most important thing early on...one...he did not have a girlfriend...two...he was not gay. Anyway and so that is where the calculated risk idea started to formulate inside my mind. He was so cute...devastatingly cute...gorgeous brown eyes....dark hair...beautiful hands...skin just a shade shy of cafe aulet...man he was cute...oh sorry, you're still here....hm...back to the story.
Anyway, so I got it into my head that the very next time I saw him that I would drop a very subtle hint that I was interested in him.
Now don't laugh, but that was huge for me...first of all, I had never ever considered myself to be the type of girl who could afford to put herself out there...fact of the matter is that I could get away with it very easily, but I did not know that at the time so, for me to even consider doing what it was that I was contemplating was HUGE!
I had been seeing this guy about every second day for about four months by the time I finally decided to take my calculated risk.
He talked to me every day but I always felt so clumsy and nervous around him...he just made me feel so...so...so...I don't know...jittery! I was always so scared that I would say something really dumb or offend him or not say the right thing or...man a million things used to fly through my mind at the mere thought of him.
So anyway, despite my aforementioned fears, one day I just plunged right in and said what it was that I wanted to say to him. To this day I had no idea that I was going to say that to him at the precise moment that I did. But I did it. I said something dumb! It was the fartherest thing from my mind and I hardly believed that it was me who had spoken at the time.
So, what did I say?
I said, "You have gorgeous eyes."
What did he say? Nothing. He stared at me as though I had gone completely mad...stark raving bonkers...do lalli tap...you name it, it screamed out from those beautiful brown eyes as he stood there staring back at me.
What did I do then to break the terribly awkward moment?
I blurted out, "Hm...oh gosh, look at the time...I gotta go!"
I all but ran out of that place and I never ever spoke to him again...not a word...not a sound. Every time I saw him at the gym, I always looked away before he stared at me. If he was on one side of the gym, I went to the other side. When I saw him down the street, I crossed to the other side. I could not believe that I had been so dumb! I could not believe that I had had the audacity to say such a thing to him and I felt really, really stupid!
I did run into him at a party and all I thought was, "Oh my gosh, now he is going to be sitting there thinking I'm stalking him!" and I left the party and after that was sure never to go anywhere that I thought he might be.
So, my calculated risk was a major flop...a disaster...and I never did hear what he thought about what I had said to him.
Perhaps he was as dumbfounded that I had said it as I was?
I mean I laugh about it now...it really was very funny...but I would never ever do anything like that ever again...no way!
Laterz

Later same day
I had coffee with a friend today who wanted to talk to me because they been having a tough time lately. During the conversation the person told me that they arranged for someone close to them to get a quickie abortion.
I didn't really know what to say.
What can you say? After the fact, what is left to say?
It is so odd that it was said to me around this time...when you see my next video...if you ever see my next video, what I have just said, it will make sense. It is not a topic that I readily discuss with anyone, but I did speak of it recently to someone for the first time in a very long time. They were perfectly kind and caring about what I shared, but still, it is a topic that I just find myself mostly unable to speak about.
When it comes up in general conversation, I rarely have a word to say. My mouth becomes dry and I just cannot, for the life of me, formulate words. And it is not for lack of opportunity.
I have sat at many a table and listened to anti-abortion speeches...and I, in my mind at least, whole-heartedly agree with them, but stop shy, in my mind and my heart, of the part where they think that females who have abortions are cold hearted killers who entirely lack maternal instincts.
Even harder are the conversations where they express their ideas that there is only one time that a woman should be granted an abortion...when she is impregnated as a result of rape. They think that abortion after rape is the only natural course to be taken...after all, what poor woman should be made to give birth to a child of such a monster/beast/bastard and all the other names they give to those faceless men. Well, my father was one of those faceless bastards/monsters/beasts or whatever descriptions that they so eloquently slap them with.
Thing is that despite what they did, they are still men...they are still human...yes they might lack some fundamental understanding of what the word "no" means, but still...I have to be compassionate especially to the children born of such a union. How can I not?
The worse conversation about abortion I have ever had the misfortune to be subject to came from my own older sister's mouth one night on the phone when she was very drunk. She said to me, "My mother should have aborted you. You should not have been born at all. You cannot even begin to imagine what your birth did to my mother, my father and my family."
Note she personalised the family to her, her parents and her siblings, which shouldn't come as a shock to me, for this is the same girl who was forced to go to school and tell everyone that I had died. The very same girl who was forbidden to ever speak my name in her mother's house again. What must that have done to her? What must that have done to the child in her?
She hung the phone up on me after that... and damn it, it was MY dime!
No, seriously, she hung up on me and has ultimately pretended that I do not exist any more. That was nearly five years ago now...and I sort of think that she needed to lay the ghost of me to rest. Know what I mean? I think she was terribly haunted by all that happened and that was the only way that she could deal with it and still remain whole as a person and I do not begrudge her that.
Oddly enough, I can sort of understand how she could feel as she does. I can understand her pain to the extent that, had the rape not occured, her parents might still be together today...whether that would be a good thing or not, who can say? But, that she needs someone to direct that hate and anger at, I also understand.
Yet sometimes I think that I carry too much on my shoulders. I deal with feeling responsibility for things that are not, never were and can hardly ever be, in my control.
But the abortion conversation in conjunction with rape, if I had a dollar for every time that I have had to hear that conversation I'd be a rich! If I had a dollar for every time I have sat through it and never uttered a word, I'd be a millionaire!
Laterz

Wednesday 30th April
So much for my NYR to send a piece of writing to a publisher every month...I am so slack...guess how many pieces this year so far?
Numero none!
Topic for today...shattered dreams... but who knows where it might lead? I never do! I know that I have been very dark and bleak sometimes in here. But you know...no...that doesn't matter.
I do not know if I have spoken of this in here, but I want to speak about it now.
When I was about four, must have been my birthday, my step-father walked into the kitchen holding something wrapped in brown paper. Every time he showed up I was always intensley scared...he was a frightening man and his physical presence was even worse than that. But he came over to where I was and he crouched down in front of me and tilted the package that he was holding and it growled.
I burst into tears. I remember being very afraid of whatever might be in there...or maybe it was just him? I am not sure. But anyway he put the package down and lifted me onto his knee. He then picked the package up again and opened it to show me what it was.
It was an enormous black and white panda bear and he told me that it was for me.
I loved that bear...it was my favourite toy.
More than that, it was the one and only time that he was ever kind to me. For years that one memory was the salve that made me able to forgive all the terrible things that he did to me...and he was a ferociously cruel man. Yet I was able to let that memory be the biggie in all of it...the one thing that I held onto.
When he finally left, my sibling's mother took my panda off me and hid it somewhere. I constantly asked for it and she would never give it back. Even after I got taken away I made my Social Workers go back and ask for it. I was fourteen the last time I asked one of them to go back and ask her for it...but she wouldn't give it back no matter what.
The point is not actually the panda, it is the memory.
But with everything that has happened of recent days and with the information I have come to know, that memory has been rather sullied, you know? Letting the memory go was very hard and I cried a lot...it really broke my heart because aside from that, there was nothing else from those days to hold close to my heart.
I don't feel sad writing about it...not today at least.
The detective got hold of me last week, or maybe it was the week before and he came to see me. He told me that they are going to pick him up and take him in for questioning. He said that he thinks that he will simply fess up because they have enough evidence on file from back in those days...but still, he said that they have to be careful about timing when they do pick him up. They don't want to have to do it twice, least he start accusing them of police harrassment.
I am terrified of having to see him. I am scared of how I will feel having to look at him knowing that he shattered the one memory that kept me going for so long...my hope. I am nervous about having to look at him and know what he did to me...what he did to others. I am scared that I might cry in front of him and I don't ever want to do that. I do not want him knowing just how much he truly devastated me. There is no way that I want him knowing that he held such power over me; ever.
What I want him to see is a strong confident person who is as together as one can be considering the circumstances. What do I want to say to him?
Well, I want to say, that in most aspects, despite what he did, my father is probably a better man than he will ever be. You see, my father...it may have been a one off mistake...okay mistake is a pithy word to describe what he did... but maybe it was just a momentary lapse of reason... maybe it was something that he only did once... perhaps he was drunk and not in complete control of his senses... perhaps there is more to the story that I will never know?
Look, I am not trying to excuse what he did. I am not trying to make it okay. I am just trying to make it make some kind of sense to me. Is that so bad?
I go through phases where sometimes the thought of what he did is just so abhorrent that I cannot feel anything at all but complete contempt and disgust for the nameless faceless man. But other days, mostly for my sake I suppose, I have to try to be compassionate about it. In my job as a Probation Officer, I had rapists sitting across the desk from me all the time. It was quite often very surreal...for me...obviously they were clueless to the plethora of emotions that ran through me at times like those.
I used to look into their eyes and try to see if I could see anything that might explain their actions...the psyche of such a man, but there was never anything there to indicate anything out of the ordinary. But upon reading their files, the act was almost always preceeded by a switch to the predatory, perhaps stone age instincts that for all we know resides in us all somewhere, but that normally, in most cases, does not get to know any life! What I mean by this is the survival of the fittest, the divide and conqueor gig that we all had going on for so long as a people. Look at war for an example, almost always...in fact forget almost...always females get set upon by the males... Some say that it is a man's way of showing his contempt and disgust for and power over other men and that it has little to do with the females themselves...in war anyway.
But what is it all about when it is perpetrated minus the war? Or perhaps it is that we are constantly at war, whether we realise it or not? I don't know. I am just throwing stuff out there... I am trying to understand the man who gave me life.
I am not trying to understand my step-father... men who do that to little kids are just sicko whack jobs in my book! Sorry, I cannot dredge up an ounce of compassion for that. I do not understand that and I do not ever want to! The only emotions that I find rising up within me are utter contempt and disgust!
But back to the men I actually had to deal with on a daily basis. They were never sorry. Somehow they were almost always able to justify, in their own minds at least, what it was that they had done. I was always caught between doing my job and wanting to "accidentally" give them a good hard kick in the shin under the table. I never did though. I do not regret that I didn't.
But to all intents and purposes, on the outside anyway, they looked like perfectly ordinary men who came from all different walks of life. White collar. Blue collar. Labourers. Career criminals. There wasn't even anything in their childhoods to indicate that they might take the path that they did. There wasn't even anything in their pasts, behaviours or otherwise that caused me to think that they all mirrored each other to any extent. There was nothing. No hints, no clues, no rhyme nor reason. It just was! One day they simply made the decision to do something that was really predatory, vile and for most of them, very opportunistic. For the most part, it appeared that even they didn't really understand it to any great degree, which is probably why they were able to justify it within themselves. I don't know.
It was all so disappointing really. There were no answers.
Laterz

Ps... did you know that the second longest name in the world comes from New Zealand? Let me write it down for you...
"Taumatawhakatangihangakoauauotamateapokaiwhenuakitanatahu."
Can I pronounce it? Stunningly, yes I can.

And, what does it mean in English?
"The place where Tamatea, the man with the big knees, who slid, climbed and swallowed mountains, known as 'landeater,' played his flute to his loved one."

Weirder than that, the rock with the plaque that bears this name is five minutes North of the town where I was born.

Later same day
I know, I am so annoying how I come back later because I have forgotten to say something at the time or because something new comes to mind. I do it with e-mails too!
But I was thinking about what I wrote about the abortion thing. Sitting around the table listening to those people saying what they said about it. I was sitting here wondering to myself, what might have happened had I have ever had the courage to speak up?
Can you even begin to imagine the pickle I would have found myself in? Imagine how they might have felt?
It was that situation (and ones like it) that taught me that we must always be very careful with our words on contentious issues and how we express them in live situations. We must always err to the side of kindness and compassion as much as is possible, even though it may not be entirely how we feel inside, for we never really truly know exactly who is sitting at our table, or in our midst for that matter.
Laterz

Ps...was talking to (sort of for he is a man of few words) a new friend earlier and he has this really narly nifty phone called a "Blackberry". Now, this might not come as a surprise to you if you live in Blackberry land...but he can e-mail from it...like read his e-mail and then send e-mails out to people from it...and make phone calls...well doh, it IS a phone. Now I want one!!!!! But you know, I have never been good with celphones and the likes. It really tipped my world upside-down having to buy a new one when my old one died. Not because I didn't want to part with the moolah...hardly...I was just really attached to it because I knew exactly how it worked and there were no nasty surprises. My new phone...much as I love her...she is pink and slim line...gorgeous...but still, it took me weeks to get to work out all the bells and whistles and I am not that un-tech savvy myself.
Hm...I have a sneaking suspicion that I might have mentioned the Blackberry thing before...oh well...

Thursday 1st May
It has rained solid for three days now. We were supposed to get some really wicked weather...tornados, flash flooding, thunder, lightning etc, but it didn't happen. Most disappointed about the thunder and lightning, but the rest I can live without.
Three activists attacked the Waihopai Spybase and busted one of the balloon domes that protects one of the satellite dishes...I thought it was great...but they will probably get ten years for it. Isn't that amazing? You get more time in jail for busting a dome than you do for many other crimes...most of which are violent. We sure do have some screwy sentencing laws here.
Went out last night...fire in trash can and general chitchat from around 6.30 until midnight. Wasn't the sort of general chitchat that I am used to and so I didn't have a lot to add to the convo...mostly because the convo was pretty gross, explicitly(sp) graphic...about things I would never even speak about anyway, let alone in public.
Some of them went inside to watch porn clips on the internet and so I stayed outside watching the fire and drinking many cups of coffee. It is interesting the vast array of things that perk the curiosity in humans...more interesting the great array of things that do not perk the curiosity in me. I have never had an interest in porn or any of the other things that go with it...never have and never will. They called me a "prude" because I was really embarrassed by some of the things that they were talking about and I even covered my face with my hands at one stage because what they were saying was so extremely graphic and I could not believe that people would actually speak those things. It is not that I have led a sheltered life or anything like that, it just isn't the kind of conversation that I have ever really participated in, nor wanted to and some of the things they spoke of...I did not really think that people actually did those things, but clearly, according to them, they do.
They laughed at me...all in good humour of course...they weren't being nasty or anything, but still, it reminded me of the depth of my weirdness compared to some other people.
I think it is safe to say that I am truly a loner! But in saying that, you also have to be true to yourself and it does you no good to pretend to be something that you are not.
Laterz

Later the same day
I have an ex-husband. Many people in the world have one of these, well, females at least. But I reckon mine is up there with the worst of them.
When we were married he was a drinker and he took drugs. Not only that but he also was a womaniser...of the Tom-cat variety. When our youngest was four months old, and after a certain level of taking a bit of fisty cuff from him when the mood struck him to lash out, I decided enough was enough. Not to mention the fact that I found out that he had a baby with my best friend between my two youngest kids. At the time when I found out, the kid was three months old, and at the time, I still forgave him...after telling him what I thought about him and her!
After we split up he moved in with her immediately and the only consolation I have from that situation is that he treated my best friend worse than he ever treated me.
It is true to say that we had good times too and my husband was the sort of man who when he was good he was brilliant, but when he was bad he was awful and it was always either one or the other and seldom was there ever anything in between. At the end of the day, when his awful side was far mopre prevalent than his good side, it was time to call it a day. Not that I wanted to call it a day or had set out with that in mind, I had not. I had intended that I would grow old with him and I always said that I would only ever marry once.
To be remembered also, people can only do to you, to a certain extent anyway, what you allow them to once you become aware of what it is that they are doing. Once you know, you make a conscious choice to accept it or to reject it. I chose to accept it way longer than I should have.
Anyway, so I have been raising my kids alone now for almost..hang on, no it is May already...I have been raising my kids alone for fourteen years. The few times I have asked him for help with the kids, financially speaking, he has always had some grand excuse as to why he can't help out.
When Jonty was two, I was really broke and it was nearing the end of Winter and he needed some socks...I was scraping by just making the rent each week, keeping the electrics on, the water running and food on the table. So anyway, I asked him to buy Jonty some socks. He told me he couldn't afford it...and at the end of the day, what was I going to say to that? But one week later he took his new girlfriend to The Eagles concert at Western Springs...which meant that he had to drive eight hours to get to Auckland, pay for a motel and concert tickets...but he couldn't afford to buy his son socks! Needless to say I was not gentle about telling him what I thought of that!
Anyway, so my daughter gets it into her head tonight to ask me to ring their dad to ask him to help get them some winter clothes.
I said to her what I have always said, "Why, he will only say no!"
"Oh but mum," she goes, "he won't say no and you won't know if you don't ask."
I was like, "But, sweetheart, I do know without asking him what the answer will be. It will be the same as almost every other time that I have been fool enough to ask him."
"No he won't," she implored.
"Sweetheart," says I. "I know that man back to front and inside out. He will say no and I do not want to give him the satisfaction of saying no to me. It makes him feel like he still has control over me and it makes me feel like s**t!"
She looked at me with them big blue eyes of hers, "Pleeeeeeease, mum."
I heaved a frustrated sigh because I could hear the conversation before I even had it and I knew that once I had had the predictable conversation with him that I would be angry, upset and totally frustrated!
But I rang him anyway because she simply would not let it go.
Predictably, he said exactly what I thought he would say. Predictably I had the same reaction that I normally do, which is why I make it a point not to ask him for anything; ever! He rattled on some big fat lies like he usually does, da de da de da! I said to him, "I don't want to listen to your excuses and your s**t tonight!"
My youngest son took the phone and spoke to him and then my daughter spoke to him even though by then she didn't want to speak to him any more because, as per usual, he let her down...yet again! When she was done, she looked at me sheepishly and said, "Sorry, mum."
Some men! I tell you, what is wrong with them? What is so hard about helping out with your kids every now and then? Are they so devoid of any kind of sense of responsibility for them? I am so mad right now that I could literally scream!
It is funny, but I alwasy intended on marrying a Christian guy, thinking that they were of a somewhat better ilk than their worldy counterparts. I could not have been more wrong if I tried because many of them are not! And I did try.
I met S.... when my firstborn was three months old. I had known S.... before as a buddy...most of my friends always having been guys and all. What attracted me to S.... was his committment to God...silly me! Anyway, so we got together and he always went on about how he wished my baby was his and how he'd never leave us blah blah blah! He said all the right things to get me into the sack with him and I got pregnant. What did he do?
He told me that he could not be with me because he could not do God's work with a wife and two kids and so he left me. I went through the pregnancy alone and birth alone and then raised my kids who were then one and a newborn alone. I had no family to help, no one and S.... knew it. The church that we had been in ostracised me and embraced him and supported him in doing what he did to me.
But, when I was about six months pregnant, I found out that he had taken up with an old girlfriend who wasn't even a Christian and he came to see me one day thinking that he wanted me to hear it from him before someone else told me.
I was nineteen and I lost it. I remember throwing rocks at him as he walked down my driveway to go back to his girlfriend and to do God's work. But, as my old chum Forrest Gump would say, "Sometimes there just aren't enough rocks!"
I sure know how to pick them!
Part of it is that I think I had so many different male role models for fathers, like 20 all up from birth to 17 and they were all so different that by the time it came for me to be out there and choosing a partner, I had no fricking idea what I was doing nor any concept of what a real man was meant to be.
I just wanted to be loved, accepted and protected and I fell for the garbage every time.
Except with S.... I truly thought...I truly believed deep down in my heart that he was different because he had Christ and he knew not to treat people in a way that would be hurtful. I was such a complete moron back then that I hardly even recognise that stupid, idiotic, dreamstruck, trusting deluded fool girl any more!
That is why I have stayed single for almost 14 years (yeah I have had the odd date but nothing serious)...I know that I have terribly lousey judgement in men. Extremely so and I know that my judgement in selecting potential long term realtionships with men that extend beyond friendships is so bad that it cannot be trusted, so I don't go there. And just about every potential mate I meet simply ends up reaffirming my initial suspicions that I should remain single! I am a lousey judge of character when my heart gets romantically involved in the process.
And I do not think that many Christian men have any better principles than worldy men do. At the end of the day, it is all the same except that those same Christian men use God to justify using women and don't tell me that they don't, they do and I have seen it happen so many times! Note I said some, not all. I am sure that there are some really nice Christian guys out there.
And at the end of the day, it is just like the old manipulation when some Christian people want to manipualte you, (and there are a feew out there like that...not all, not even some, but just a few) they start their sentence with, "God told me to tell you..."
I have made it a permanent and unwavering rule to run very fast in the opposite direction the very second a Christian has started a conversation with those words. Because, at the end of the day, if a guy uses God to justify leaving you, or a Christian uses those words to make you do something that they want you to do, how can you argue with it? To do so, to their mind, is to argue with God! And if you argue with it, they accuse you of resisting God.
You can't win!
That is why I stay away from guys and real life living breathing Christians because I do not ever want to risk feeling what I have been made to feel in the past again. And no, not all Christians are like that, few are, but often times you find out which ones are far too late in the picture.
So these days, I am really picky about who I want to be friends with and who I don't. I have to be....for my own sanity!
Boy, did I get on a roll here or what?
Laterz

Friday 2nd May
UMG made a copyright claim in YouTube against my Youngbloods video. The song is "Let's Get Together". I do not mind that they have done this, it is after all their right to do so. But hats off to them for being good sports...they said that the video can stay there but that they will monitor stats for it and place advertisements beside the video every time it is played. I have no problem with either of their remedies.
Billy Joel, however, said nothing but simply had the sound muted on my video, which I thought was kind of nasty and underhanded. If he had posted a notice, I would have taken it down. But being that he was that way, I determined never to buy another album or DVD or anything else connected with Billy Joel again 'cause I thought he behaved like an ass!
Well, come on, no one makes money off YouTube videos, but admittedly if they did then they deserve to have their videos messed with, but mostly, I have never heard of anyone making money off them and I do not believe that anyone should.
I see YouTube as a way for people to use music to portray a message, to be artistic and to simply expose and enjoy thoroughly good, worthwhile music. To boot, artists, who may well have been long forgotten in some instances, get exposure through a new avenue and maybe even some unexpected new CD sales. I know that I have gone out and bought a couple of new CDs simply because I saw the music in YouTube and liked it. If not, I would never have bought those CDs.
Also, because I really like D&G music and have posted many videos to their songs, someone has been going out and purchasing their CDs for me, so there you have it right here, more CD sales for them just in this alone. I think everyone wins when it happens this way. Maybe not everyone would agree with me and that is okay too.
Took my youngest back to the doctors yesterday so that they could check up on his growth. He is now 6.3. Originally endocrin stated that his height at full growth would be 7.5...fortunately that was scaled back at a later date to 6.9. So we will see if he grows as high as they say...for now, most certainly he has not stopped growing yet.
Yes, it would appear that I am a breeder of giants! None of my sons are under 6 foot and my daughter is about 5.9/5.10. Yet I am around 5.5/5.6.
They think (endocrin) that my youngest has inherited a height gene from me, which does run in my biological family, and the height gene from his paternal side too, which might explain his insane height! Insane because he has only just turned 14. Ever since he was six months old the normal docs kept saying that he would slow down, that his growth spurt would stop...I sit here tapping my nails whilst murmuring..."I'm still waiting."
Anyhoo, (as Mr Burns would say), that's about it for now.
Laterz

Later same day
Got a letter from army boy today...my son...and it is not the sort of letter you get every day so thought I would share some of it because the whacky nature of it made us kind of laugh for a while.

"I graduate on June 7th. in about five and a half weeks...The food here is pretty good. Breakfast is brilliant, hashbrowns, eggs, spaghetti and bacon every single morning; yummi!!!!
We get to use grenades on Friday, learnt how to safely operate a rocket launcher today....
Found a couple of hotties here in Waiouru...ha ha ha...but there are more guys herre than girls!
We have been camping for the last week at Ruapehu (at the bottom) which was a lot of fun but very cold. All the girls got sad because of the bad weather, ha ha ha.
We got some steel helmets today, having fun headbutting each other with them!!!!!
Well, we have to go to bed now."

I loved this letter, it was just so funny being told all those things as a natural course of events...OMGosh, I just realised something...I am going to be an army mummy! Oh dear...didn't see that coming! No, not am going to be...I am!

Saturday 3rd May
Some people are really vain, even when they think that they are not. Some people are sneaky even when they think that they are not. Some people are pissed off even when they tell themselves that they are not. I am one of the latter, except that I am very aware that I was lying to myself.
I was checking in on a certain channel today and I tell you something, the person who made it is...no I won't even say it because it is mean. I know that I said that I would be very honest in here, but some things you just don't put voice to...or words, as the case is here.
It really annoys me still that someone bogarted my idea and made it their own. I am really annoyed about it, so annoyed in fact that I have not spoken to the person since because I have absolutely nothing to say to them whatsoever. I should simply be happy that it has been made. The music needs to be there.
People can be ruthless and not even realise that they have been that way and as far as I am concerned, that person was ruthless, cunning and really deceitful! I am so mad about it and yet I know that I must be nice and gracious and polite...even though I don't want to be!
They didn't even apologise. They think because they called it something else that it makes it different and okay. Not only that, but I thought that the clips they had loaded belonged to them and so let them know that I had pinched like three seconds from one of them and they said nothing to me at all. Turns out that the clips didn't belong to them but belonged to someone else. That someone else contacted me thinking that I had acted dishonestly, which really irked me because all the first person had to do was say, "No, the clips don't belong to me, this is who they do belong to so ask them."
Clearly they knew who owned them if they had permission to post them in the first place!
Anyway, all of my YT buddies and subscribers are plugging my vids hardcore, which is good because the more that they are viewed the more people are being exposed to the message in the music, which was the point of posting them.
And no, I shouldn't winge and moan about it. It is not gracious nor polite to winge, but unless you are "they" or the person who owned the three seconds I pinched, you do not know who I am talking about anyway. But having had my original idea and concept totally bogarted from me by someone else has really peeved me off and I am really cross. I am angry...yes...that feels better...I am angry!
Laterz
You know what is worse? No one who knows what he did seems to give a flying fig tree that he did it! Grrrrrrrrrrr!

Sunday 4th May
Went out last night. Played cards..."bullpaki" and I am still the Queen of Bullpaki having remained undefeated to this day.
Isn't it great to really shine at something that doesn't mean anything at all...good for nothing skills should be attained by all at some point in your life.
It stopped raining long enough for us to sit outside on the deck to play cards.
Started part 12 of my series of Sandanizta novels. It is going pretty well so far and it is amazing how you can drag so much out of so little. When I started the series back in 2006 I would never have guessed that by 2008 I'd still be going.
I finally uploaded my four single novels into this new site. Had to rewrite one whole chapter as somehow, when Piczo screwed up my old site, it got lost.
It is funny but I feel my best when I simply write and do not bother to fret about friendships and things such as that.
Chuckmeister was supposed to check in on Yahoo yesterday. I was on for ages and then went off to do some other stuff. He checked in while I had wandered off, so I missed him, which sucked!
Haven't heard anything from David, but then again, unless I e-mail him I don't hear from him. He only ever independently e-mailed me once...every other time it has been me who e-mails first...I suppose I should get a clue and realise what that actually means.
He clearly has enough people around him without having to add me to the list of people that he stays in contact with. But let us be real here, what am I really to him? Some silly girl on the underbelly of the world who makes semi-standard videos to his music and who cannot explain how she feels about a song in under one thousand words.
It is a pity though because I thought that he seemed a really nice person, well, not that he seemed nice...he IS nice, but then I always appreciate people who bother to give me the time of day and I don't tend to take it for granted. But truly, he really is a very nice person.
I have always been quite content to be someone other people bother with when they can be bothered...if they ever even remember who I am in the first place! That was kind of a joke! A wry one I guess.
I still kind of laugh about how I ended up being an agony aunt for that guy...that was kind of wild. I don't know why he even sought a considered opinion from me because he really didn't want to hear that the girl was using him. He had to go back be chewed up and spat out by her all over again and now that he knows beyond a shadow of a doubt that she is about as good for him as a hole in the head, I never hear from him any more.
AND...most importantly, I never said to him, "I told you so"...as much as I was tempted, but "I told you so" ain't a pretty colour on anyone.
But I would be a liar if I said that I didn't wish I was a little more memorable than this and that I was the kind of person people wanted to be a friend to despite what happens.
Perhaps it is that I was meant to be someone who kind of swims alone...you know? I am not sad or anything at all, just trying to make sense of why I am so forgettable! I say that with a slight chuckle, I do not for one moment believe that there is actually anything terribly special about me in comparison to anyone else. I just "am". Or my life just "is".
So, at the end of the day (she says with a slight smile) its all good. I guess they will e-mail when they remember or if they feel like it. Meantime, I am sinking myself back into my writing again because the world just seems to contain more balance for me that way.
And no, I am not sad or unhappy, I am merely resigned to the honest truth.
Laterz

Speaking these words so clearly
But they're never heard
Your strength just fades away
Tears will burn
Dreaming of conversations
I picture your words
All this senseless searching
When it all seems so wrong
The dream's not gone

Don't go too far from here
Don't stay too long
Don't say it's not easy
'Cause you know you could be wrong
Yes, you know you could be wrong

Hearing a thousand voices
They're so disguised
I'm shadowed by your fear
When it all seems so wrong
You know you could belong

later same day
I re-read "Deceptive Cadence" the other day. It didn't take much time because it is not that long but I thought to myself, as I read it, what a clever story it is. I actually found myself having a slight chuckle in places...and when your own writing can produce a wry smile about something that is sort of funny, but not really, you haven't done to badly.
Because it had been a while since I had read it, every now and then a line took me by surprise and it actually made me realise that I am actually a little clever in my writing at times.
It is good to see something good about yourself, even if few others do...and it is sort of more believable if you actually recognise it yourself...sometimes people tell you that you are good just to spare your feelings or simply to be kind, which has its merits too, but for someone like me, who is my harshest critic, to recognise something and think it to be good, well, at least I know for sure that it is real.
Got an email from a guy in Georgia this morning, some place called Buford...anyway I only know that GA means Georgia because some guy who asked for copies of my D & G vids told me...but anyway, this other guy from Georgia, he was really nice and complimentary about my vids...which was a little embarrassing...but he was mostly talking about the Dan Fogelberg ones I made.
I have had a few requests from people asking me to make more of the Dan ones, but what they don't understand is that the music either inspires me or it doesn't. They were the only tracks that really inspired me to make vids to them. Beyond that, I can't force it.
I am really inspired right now by another D & G song, but I am waiting to find something that fits with it because although I am inspired, no images have come to mind yet, at least none that match what I see in my head when I listen to it. So one day it will fall together, it usually does...one day I will see what I am looking for and off I'll go again.
Oh yeah, I also re-read Misfortune of Luci-arnold Graham and Catch a Falling Star.
I listened to U2's "Lemon" for almost three days straight. I do that sometimes, if I like a song and haven't heard it for a while, I'll thrash the life out of it. Finally moved on and thrashed this song by D & G called "Love Has A Place"...was it Michael McDonald who was the lead singer for the Doobie Bros for a few years there? I heard him inside a ToTo song once...but I would swear that whoever is singing in "Love Has A Place" sounds just like him. But all in all the song is really nice and so I been thrashing it a little.
There is another one that kind of reeks of Doobie Bros too, but I cannot remember which one. It is kind of odd though because D &G come from the southern States...but the Doobie's heritage sort of lies in Southern California...but there seems to be something inherent within the sound which would almost suggest a Southern influence...by Southern...I mean Mississippi, Georgia, Alabama etc....that is the same. Not sure what, maybe it is that kind of...hm...can't find the word that I am looking for.
But then again, perhaps it is simply coincidence!
Laterz

even later on same day
I listened to Gary Moore today...haven't listened to him for yonks. He is afab electric guitar player...a fabulous any guitar player actually. My three fave electric guitarists would have to be David Huff, Neal Schon and Gary Moore. My absolute fave drummer in the entire world is Phil"babyface" Collins...he is an outrageously great drummer!
Fave vocalists of all time...hm... David Huff, Bobby Kimble, Steve Perry, Phil Collins, Randy Meisner,Dan Fogelberg, Lou Gramm, Jeff Lynne (OMGosh he rocks!!!).
Fave lyracists...David Huff, Phil Collins, Don Henley, Randy Meisner, JD Souther, Mark Hunter, Eric Wolfson and the ever talented Dan Seals!!!!!
Fave keyboardists Johnathan Cain, Elton John, Freddy Mercury, and the guy out of the Barrett Band, forgot his name!
Re-read "Kill Me" by "Stephen White" and I have decided that it is my all time fave book now. That guy writes like a cracker jack, he is so good!!!
The character in the story does not deal in details, only in the big picture...I myself, as much as I like to deny it am a details person, so it is quite interesting reading a story about someone who isn't like that.
The one liners jump out at you about two seconds after you read them and some of them are actually quite funny and you cannot help but laugh. I like books like that.

Monday 5th May
Yeah it is 2.15 in the morning and I should be sleeping but alas sleep won't come.
I saw the most amazing thing today. I saw horses prancing in a rain storm and it was so beautiful that I had to go home get my camera and go back there to film them.
Once I got back though, they were tired and had stopped prancing. But when I saw them the first time, one of them pranced so high all four of his hoofs were off the ground. It was truly magnificent and I stood in the pouring rain for 15 minutes in the hope that they would resume their play.
Alas, all I got was wet and no footage. But now I am going to go there every day in the hope that I catch them at it again. I have the perfect song for the footage...the song by D & G that I have been waiting to see the right image for.
This thing I saw with the horses today, those horses were celebrating something...be it life...the rain or just an innate knowledge that something vastly superior to any of us created them. Who knows, maybe God had them prancing to inspire all who saw them so that they can appreciate the majestic beauty of all that He created.
It was so beautiful and I hope I manage to catch that on film.
Laterz

later same day
It has rained today for what must be the seventh or eighth...heck, I don't know how many days it has been now that it has rained straight. What I do know is that it is getting real old real fast.
But the rain has made me think...especially the incessant nature of the rain that we have had. It made me think about the great flood...you know...the one that happened back in Noah's day.
I thought about the people outside the ark and I thought about the people inside it. What must it have been like to be either of those two groups of people? Which would have been worse, being outside panicking trying to get Noah to open the door and let you in. Or being inside the door and hearing everyone screaming to get in?
They said that the door was shut by God, not Noah...at least that is the way I remember it...I could go quickly read it again just to be sure, but for authenticity's sake, I won't...but I bet God shut it because he knew that Noah had a very kind heart and would not have kept it shut knowing that people needed his help.
I mean think about it for a second from your point of view. Assuming that you are a Christian and you have warned someone about something because you know that they are going to get hurt, now assume that that person goes ahead and does it anyway and gets hurt. As a person who hasd a heart for people, which is what Christians should have, if they want to come anywhere near emulating the virtues of Christ, then you wouldn't stand there laughing at them and telling them you told them so, right? Well I would hope not. Rather, you would feel a great deal of pity and perhaps even empathy and compassion for them and no matter what it was that they had done, you'd want to help them. It would be your natural reaction, so imagine being unable to do so. Imagine having to not so much watch them further suffer, but hear them further suffer and be totally unable to do anything at all.
Perhaps it is that God made it so that nothing could be heard from inside the ark. Perhaps Noah and his family were spared enduring that kind of feeling of total helplessness.
Some people would be heartless enough to say, "Oh well the people outside the ark were warned."
I do not argue with the words I simply argue with the sentiment.
Laterz

even later same day
I do not even know how I missed this piece of news, but apparently the remains of Maria and Alexei Romanov have been found in a field near to where they were held prisoner in Yekaterinberg in 1918 just before they were murdered.
I think it is good that they have been found and I hope that the Russian Govt allows their remains to be interred in St Petersburg (Petrograd) with their parents and three siblings.
It is appalling what happened to them...you would think that they would have at leats spared the children, but Machiavalian teaching dictated that it was better for the Bolsheviks to wipe the entire family out including all cousins, aunts, grandparents etc. Few made it out of Russia on the Marlboroug, but one who did make it out was Felix Yussupov survived, but it is believed that he was deliberately left alone because he took Rasputin out...in his own home...Felix's home, not Rasputins.
Tsar Nicholas's mother made it out too as well as his very tall cousin Nicholas (he was like 6.6 in height). The mother of the Tsar refused to believe right up until she died that Nicholas and his children had been killed. She believed them to be hiding in exile. She was just repatriated to Petrograd (St Petersburg) from Denmark and now lies with the remains of her husband who died very young.
It is a fascinating story that I could talk about all day...even though I pretty much know the story back to front, I still find I am always intrigued.
Laterz

"Blue Eyes Like Janey's"
by
"David Huff"

Wednesday 7th May
I am proof perfect that modern technology is simply not meant for everyone. I thought I had killed my lovely pink celphone yesterday...I am not even going to go into why...point being, it is still alive and well. BUT...I had already bought a new one and it arrives either today or tomorrow.
Hey, I never said I was smart, only that I have a high IQ. Smart and IQ does not necessarily go hand in hand!
What a predicament...keep the new one with world wide roaming, video, mp3 player etc or keep pinky and give the new one to my daughter?
No, as far as phones/upgrades to more recent technology goes... I am treacherous of heart... pinky is history and I will not go back to her now. I have decided to palm her off to my daughter who is sure to love her well and I am moving onto a black Okta Mondo...he is a pretty good looking phone and he has a lot of tricks that he can perform...way more than pinky.
Poor pinky!
Oh well, you get that on the big jobs don't you. No, that wasn't a question.
Wow, guess what? The sun is finally shining after...seven...eight... 100 months of rain. At least that is what it felt like.
I had to go a hunting for food the other day at the great safari park called Countdown (super market). I got caught in a torrential downpour going in, which promptly stopped once I was inside (for a little while anyway) and then I got caught in another leaving.
Okay, well that last one was kind of my fault. I got out of the supermarket into the foyer where all these shoppers were standing there with their trolleys watching the second torrential rain falling... that is just another way of saying that they were being held hostage by the weather! As Forrest Gump would say, "there were big fat drops"...and there was. I haven't seen drops of rain that big for yonks. Anyway, so I am standing there with all these other chicken hearted shoppers, all of us quaking in our shoes at the idea of getting a little wet. Well I had a charge of "stuff this... some stupid little torrential downpour is not going to imprison me in the supermarket (which by the way I hate...supermarkets are my least favourite places right up there with doctor's surgeries, hospitals and dentist chairs)... and so I decided to tackle the beast head on...so I counted to five and then I ran!
I did not glance behind me again, not a good idea in a supermarket carpark...best to keep eyes firmly fixed out front... but I could imagine the thoughts that must have gone through their minds. Some of them would have been as follows... "what an idiot ... hope she falls over ...should I do that too ...her stuff is going to get so wet!"
But I made it unscathed to my car ...yes I got very wet, but I made it!
And then the rain promptly stopped!
It is that time of year where everything decides to die. Not people, but appliances!
This time last year I had to get a new TV and a new fridge. The year before it was the microwave and I think celphone.
This year it was my dryer. One or two weeks before the heavy rain set in my dryer decided that it would be a great time to shake off its mortal coil...okay its heat coil... then it decided that it was too tired to even spin around any more. I was like, "I knew that!"
So while I was out hunting for food, I also had to hunt for a new dryer.
Once upon a time, dryers used to be dryers, right? A dryer was a dryer was a dryer, six of one and half a dozen of the other (this shows how long my dryer actually lived for...I had it for years!)... but, not any more.
You can get a 3.5kg, 4.5 kg, 5.5kg, 6,5kg and on and on it goes. You can also get one that blows the air out the front on the door or one that blows the air out the back. One filters out all the garbage, while the other blows it into whatever place you happen to put the dryer. And the price differences were incredible. Anyway, so in the end I opted for the dryer that blows the air out the back and is 4.5kg capacity (not that anyone cares)... but I did cause I ended up going home $704.00 lighter in the pocket... not a good outcome!
But, upon delivery of the dryer, I discovered a really nifty thing about it. It comes with a pin that you slot into the back to stop the thing spinning round and around and it has a rack that you can stick inside it and sit shoes on to dry or hats or small pets and that kind of thing ...I am kidding about the pets!
Posted my new vid in YouTube yesterday and it went nuts and got up to about 795 views in twelve hours. Today it is totally still! YouTube is so fickle like that. One day something flies, the next day it dies. It is so odd, I think.
Laterz

Later same day
Okay so my Okta Mondo arrived late this morning and he is a cool...seriously cool phone. I downloaded Sweet Home Alabama as the tone for incoming phone calls. Then I downloaded this nifty ringtone thing for the text messages. It is an impersonation of "Scary Movie" where the guy rings Sidney.
It goes something like this:
(Sidney) "Hello"
(Caller) "Wanna have a little fun?"
(Sidney) "Who is this?"
(Caller) "Do you like scary phone calls?"
(Sidney) "If you're trying to freak me out it's not working."
(Caller) "Celine Dion's husband just added you on Facebook!"
*Sidney screams*

Well, I thought it was funny!
Laterz

Thursday 8th May
It is quite weird, but May is always a horrible month for me, filled with many memories I would just as sooner forget.
It was in May that I was taken away from my family when I was seven, and often May was the month that I was moved away from families. The reason it always seemed to be May? May used to be when the school holidays fell when New Zealand schools operated on a three term school year. The idea was that if I got moved in the first week of the holidays I had one more whole week to settle into my new home before I had to go to my new school.
Think about that for a moment.
One whole week to grieve losing your whole world as you know it and everyone contained within that world. One whole week to get used to an entirely new world that contains absolutely no one that you have ever known. Only to then be plunged head first into a new school on top of it.
I just thought I would mention that.
When I got taken from my family for the last time at age seven, I thought that I was only going to be gone for a little while, even though somewhere deep down inside of me I knew that I was never going back. The new house I went to was big and felt very strange.
I didn't know anyone. The food was very different. The house smelled different. The people were strangers and the bed I slept in and the pillow I had weren't mine.
The first night that I was there, I remember staring out the window at the park beside the house that was lit with floodlights. I was watching a rugby team practising for their up coming game. As I watched them I remember thinking that the world seemed so strange to me. The loneliness was awful and I missed my room back home.
At that time, when I was seven and staring out that window into the park, I had no idea of the path that lay before me. I had no idea just how much of a nomadic journey I was about to take. That is probably just as well. But what was the hardest thing to deal with was that there was no affection from anyone and the only affection I saw being bestowed onto the girl I shared a room with, I would have been better off never seeing in the first place.
Sometimes I cannot imagine how I managed to not go crazy. I cannot imagine how I did not recoil inside myself and stay there. And yet, at the same time, I know that it can only be attributed to God. Maybe he made me tougher than I ever realised I was, even as a child.
But that kind of life also garnered within me some very unattractive attributes. Fear being one of them. Trusting the wrong people at the wrong time. Not trusting the people that I should have trusted. By the time I was in my teen years, I was ripe for making the biggest mistake of my life.
I have never talked about this openly to any great extent, although I did share it with one person recently. Again, I took the risk of trusting someone I didn't really know, but it is okay because it turned out that he was very trustworthy.
I met S when I was fifteen at Wairarapa College in my fifth form year, 1982. He was gorgeous and I was smitten...well as smitten as a fifteen year old girl can be. He was two years older than me, actually maybe two and a half years older than me.
He asked me out. Knowing my current foster parents who I had been living with for about six weeks were total closet hippies and would be totally agreeable to me having a date, I said yes.
S came from a Catholic family and thus that family was large. There were seven of them all up. S was the eldest. His mother had fallen pregnant as a teen and a marriage between her and S's father had been forced by both sets of parents and they had lived with the dread that one of their children might make the same mistake... but I did not find this out until later.
S's parents liked me (which was probably a first and a total last) and his siblings also liked me and we all got on really well. My foster parents liked S's parents and so it all got off to a very good start.
Then one night in around mid-August, S's dad took the family (including me) out for dinner. S's father bought me my first "legal" drink. In fact, he bought me three or four! After a while S and I became a little bored and told them that we were going to walk home, which was some distance from the pub where we were.
I had taken the opportunity to try out high heels for the very first time. That was also pretty much a first and a last. But anyway, being that I had these ridiculous high heels on, I couldn't really walk that fast or that far in them so S told me to jump on his back and he would piggy back me home. He was very sweet like that and he did in fact piggy back me all the way home... to his house.
When we got there clearly we were alone because everyone else was back at the pub. Teenagers thinking that they are in love, that they can beat the odds, maybe so arrogant that they never even think about the odds, in a house alone... well the inevitable happened. As soon as it was done, THEN I went into a blind panic and I said to S, "What if I get pregnant?"
I don't know why I asked that, it was just the first thing that came to my mind. S suggested that I ring home and talk to my hippy foster parents because they were cool and would know what to do. So I did.
They were totally cool about it, but they did say that the time to do something about not getting pregnant is before you have sex, not after. Great advice, except that it was kind of like shutting the stable door after the horse had bolted!
But no one had ever spoken to me about sex. Not really. Not in a way that was helpfully educational! I think it just got overlooked and everyone assumed that someone else would have said something. No one had said anything at all.
The next day was where it all started to fall apart really. I remember S driving me home and Fleetwood Mac's album "Mirage" was playing in his car...(it was my tape...he always played the music I liked). I remember looking at him as we drove out to the countryside where I lived (about 20kms away from the town) and as I stared at him, I felt something changing inside me. My feelings for him changed in almost an instant. It was something I would experience many, many times in the coming years in regard to males.
I didn't know what it was then and I am none the wiser to this day. But I would like the guy until I had sex with him and as soon as that happened I would start to feel very sick when I looked at the guy. Sick, detached, cold and all I wanted to do was get as far away from them as quickly as possible. That feeling would soon turn to intense dislike and I could not help it and I could not control it and it had very little to do with the guy. It was something inside of me.
By 1983 in my diary I referred to this strange reaction as my "defence mechanism". That was all that I could think to call it because I didn't know what was wrong. I didn't understand why it was happening and I couldn't stop it happening. It was horrible and confusing! But S was the first guy that it happened with...but then again, he was the first guy that I willingly stepped into a full relationship with, so perhaps it stands to reason that it happened first with him.
Sometimes, and this is really personal, but sometimes I have wondered whether it was something associated with guilt? I had been abused and not been able to control what happened to me. Once I was in the position of being in a relationship where I could control what happened to me, I allowed the same kind of behaviour to occur, but it was my choice, so maybe somewhere in my head I felt guilty like I had betrayed myself...or that I had enjoyed an activity that formerly had not been enjoyable at all. Perhaps because the sensations were similar between choice and force, I blurred S with other people and thus my psyche wandered from seeing him as someone I adored to viewing him as someone disgusting? I don't know. I really don't.
But anyway, come the end of August it became clear that I was pregnant and a pregnancy test confirmed it. By mid September I was having the worst morning sickness all day and all night. I was so sick that I couldn't keep anything down and I could hardly get up out of bed and when I did get up and around, it didn't last long. But, at that stage, I had determined that I was having my baby, much to S's delight, but everyone else was not happy at all. Not my Social Worker, not my foster parents and not S's parents.
By October my sickness was so bad that I did not go to school at all. By that stage my dislike of S was inceddibly intense, even though he was still coming out to see me and treating me like I was his girlfriend.
At the end of October, my foster mother brought up the idea of abortion.
I didn't even know what that was. She told me that the baby wasn't a baby, that it didn't even look like a baby. Oddly enough, she was pregnant herself, just a couple of weeks futher along than I. But she espoused all the virtues of abortion and she said that S's parents did not want me having the baby either that it would destroy S's grandparents completely if S made the same mistake as his mother and father had.
After that talk, I began to doubt the wisdom of having my baby. My foster mother had painted a pretty bleak picture. I decided that I should have an abortion.
S, upon hearing that I had relented and decided to take that path, came out to see me. He asked me to marry him. He said that he wanted me and the baby. He wanted the three of us to be together and to be a family. Now, many things went through my mind as he asked me to marry him.
The first? I had always thought that my birth parents had been horrible to me because they had gotten married because my mother was pregnant. Don't ask me why I thought that. I think it was simply me trying to make sense of something that I had no understanding of, but, as a result, I had determined that I would never marry because of a baby.
The second? My childhood was still very vividly etched at the forefront of my mind. I was totally scared that I would be a terrible mother to my child and that my child would grow up to be just like me and to live just like me.
Thirdly? I looked at S and I thought about his mum and dad and the way their lives had played out. I saw me and S twenty years from that day with eight kids and both of us totally miserable!
Fourthly? I hated S by that time. I despised him. I couldn't stand seeing him and I could not even stand the sound of his voice. I am not talking figuratively, I am speaking absolutely literally. I didn't understand why I felt that way, I just did.
I was really nasty to him. Extremely nasty to him and he left crying. I did not see him crying, my foster mother went mad at me when she saw him crying and that was how I found out. But I didn't care at the time. I was just so miserable, sick and confused and under pressure (I was also trying to attend School C exams between all of this) that I couldn't take too much of anything by the way of emotional exertion.
But after that day, I wavered again. I decided that I would have my baby and raise it by myself.
My foster mother was most displeased. Two days later a friend of hers came to visit. Her name was Robin.
Robin came into my room to "talk" to me. She sat down on the side of my bed and told me how she had had an abortion and how it was the best thing that she could ever have done. She spoke for at least an hour trying to convince me and by the end of the few days that she stayed, she had me totally convinced that it was the best thing for me to do.
So ensued all the docotrs visits. I had to see three separate doctors and all three had to individually agree that I could have an abortion.
I had to lie and say that I was under emotional stress and that I would most likely have a break down if I did not get an abortion. Everyone knew that it was total bullshit (excuse me I am kind of angry), but the lies got told, the papers got signed, all three agreed and my abortion was set for November 30th..which was around one week away from the date of seeing the last doctor.
Why such a hurry? I was right on the cusp of actually having the abortion being illegal as I was more pregnant than what a female should be to qualify for an abortion... in other words almost beyond the point of no return!
All the week before I anguished about the decision I had made. All week I had nagging doubts.
Then the night before I was due to go to the hospital I was sitting outside on the steps with my foster sister and I looked to her and I said, "I'm going to have my baby. If it is a girl I am going to call her "Angeleeya".
My foster sister nodded her head and then disappeared inside. Not to be too dramatic or anything, but I did sit there saying that name over and over again and I came to the firm decision that yes, I was having my baby and that was that!
Two seconds later my foster mother came out to the steps where I was sitting and she startled me. To top it off she yelled at me, "What do you think you are doing?"
I looked at her and said, "Nothing."
She said to me, "**** said that you are choosing baby names."
I said, "Yeah, if it is a girl I am going to call her Angeleeya."
She yelled at me. "You can't do this. You can't change your mind now. It is too late to change your mind. Everyone has gone to so much trouble to organise this abortion for you that you cannot back out now! You are not having this baby. You have already made your decision and so I do not want to hear another word about it!"
She stormed off back inside and that was that. I sat there crying thinking that she was right that I had no right to change my mind... that I had to go through with it. It was no longer a choice. It was a done deal. I did not understand that they couldn't force me to have an abortion. I no longer understood that , right up to the moment before they put me to sleep for the procedure, that I could have said no and that it would have held some weight. I just didn't understand.
Lastly, and this is the kicker, when my first child was born, that very same foster mother held him in her arms and said to me, "I don't know how anyone can have an abortion."
I just stared at her incredulously and didn't say a word. What could I say? Besides that my mouth wouldn't work and I felt like I was outside of my body.
I saw Robin a few years later after my first was born (I had a second child by then) and I was visiting my foster parents while passing through that way. Robin looked at me with my two little boys and she burst into tears and then she said, rather hysterically, "Its not fair. I lose my baby at birth and there she is a young girl with two!"
About three years after my abortion, Robin had given birth to a son and lost him within moments of his birth. At that time I simply looked at her and thought that there was definitely a sad irony about the way that the entire situatiion had played out because once I had found out what abortion was and I had come to understand what it was that I had done, it was Robin's forceful asserting that I should kill my baby that rang in my ears the loudest.
I do not think now what I am about to say, not at all, but at the time, all those years ago as I stood there staring at her crying all I thought was, life has a way of dealing it back on us sometimes.
So, that is the short version of my abortion story. Yeah, imagine the long one?
It was not anywhere near as simple as I explained it here, but this is the crux of it. I can say that I have regretted it ever since I came to understand what abortion really was, and that understanding did not come until the start of 84. Once I came to understand it, I felt lied to, cheated and most of all I felt terrible guilt and loss and there was nothing that I could do to ease it. There never has been and I do not think that there ever will be.
People say that you get over it. You don't. You always wonder. You always imagine and you always toy with "what if".
So, my baby would have been twenty-five this May. Twenty-five. Every year I think about my child's birthday. I do not think that a day has gone by where I have not thought of that child, especially in the deep of the night. Hardly a day goes by at the moment where I am not saddened to the point of tears.
This has especially been so since I first heard that song, "Blue Eyes Like Janey's". When I heard it, the very first time, I knew I had to do something with it. Problem was that it was so painful to listen to that I never wanted to hear it again. When I made the video, I pretty much figured that David Huff would never let me post it on the net and I was content with never posting it. It took him so long to get back to me that I really thought he was simply going to ignore it altogether, which suited me fine because I really didn't want to post it at that point in time.
But then my friend told me about the abortion that she had arranged on the hop for her son's girlfriend and that was when I knew that I had to post it on the web. I had to do it.
It was no longer a choice.
My hope is that people will listen to the story within the song and learn the lesson vicariously; that they will never have to learn it after the fact.
I believe my baby is safe in the arms of Jesus and, if you did the same as I, He is looking after your's too. So try not to be sad. Try to make the best of the joy afforded you in knowing that your baby is in a joyful place. When the tears come, let them fall and once you are done remember that your baby is okay and in the care of the Almighty in the company of the people of renown and the heroes of old.
Learn from what you did and somehow find a way for others to benefit from your experience.
For me personally, I have only ever once successfully talked someone out of an abortion. But because I told that person what I did, there is a little girl who lives today. She has blue eyes, blonde hair and she is fifteen years old and her name oddly enough is Jamey.
No that wasn't a typo, her name is Jamey!!!!

Laterz

Saturday 10th May
My friend in the States...the one whose life I thought that the process of natural selection had seen me eliminated from...well, he just had a new baby daughter. Well, his wife had the baby...clearly he is responsible to a point anyway...never mind...point is that they have a new baby girl.
He wrote letting everyone know and I must be a part of the mass e-mail thingy he sent out because I got the e-mail and the photos. He also asked everyone to sign her birth page.
I haven't done it yet because I really don't know what to say. Useless eh? But I really don't know what to write there. On his other daughter's one I think I wrote something dumb like, "Ice cream fixes everything."
Hardly original or wise...not that I have a fixation with struggling to be either, I don't.
It must be very hard to be a daughter when you actually don't know how to be one and it struck me just recently that I haven't actually ever been one. I wouldn't have the first clue about what being a daughter is supposed to be.
I know what it means to be a mother and to have a daughter. My daughter and I are really close and I have often been tempted to ask her what it is like to be my daughter, to know that I am her mother and that nothing can ever take that away from her. But I have never asked her and I probably never would. I like that she takes it for granted that I'm her mum and that no matter what she ever does I will never abandon her or stop loving her or being there for her.
I like that it is something to her that just "is".
I remember this place that I went to live at. I went there straight from a born again Christian home and this new home was anything but. That morning it had been a bad thing to chew gum after midnight on Saturday and the next moment I knew it was alcohol and doobies all round. Anyway that is besides the point.
My new foster father was a total schmuck in the entirety of the sense of the word "schmuck". But the one thing that won me over with him in the end was that he was on the phone one day arranging a weekend stay in my old area with a friend that I hadn't seen in ages. As he spoke to my friend's mother he called me his daughter. And I know that I should not have been won over by simple words, but I was.
Up until that point in my life I had always been referred to as a "foster daughter". The mere mention of the word "foster" before any other word was indicative to me of the fact that there was a separation between myself and everyone else in the family. And everyone said it, my aunts, uncles, grandparents, parents and even siblings and cousins. And I hated it. Seriously, I used to cringe every time they put that word before every other when introducing me.
I used to feel as though I weren't real and it is no wonder because people upon being introduced to me would blurt out right in front of me, "Oh so she isn't your "real" daughter?"
As if the word "foster" wasn't a big enough clue to begin with, they had to make absolutely certain that I understood that they understood that this whole parent/daughter thing was a total farce!
To be really honest, every time it was said, it just unpicked me a little more inside myself and it made me feel just that little bit more separated from everyone else.
Anyway and as I was saying, this schmuck father of mine called me his daughter and in the very instant he said it, I loved him and he had my total loyalty. I swear he did. I also swear that he knew it and it was probably the very reason that he said it.
No one else ever said it again, not even him, not to this day.
I know that often times people who have never fostered children think that people who do are just wonderful; and most of them are. Often times people who have never had foster children and who have never been a foster child believe that foster children should ever be thankful that someone was willing to give them a roof over their head and a place to live and, for the most part children are thankful for that. I know I was. But at the same time I used to hate that I had to be thankful because the bottom line was that I had never asked to be a foster child and I had never asked them to take me to live in their house and I hated being made to feel like I owed people something all the time. Even as a little kid I knew that I was living in homes at the benevolence of others and it is a horrible thing to grow up knowing, because being aware of that makes you aware of a whole host of other things that kids like that should not have to be aware of.
That is sort of the reason why I do not go back and see the one family I lived with that I really liked. I don't go back because when I did for a while there, which would be over ten years ago now, it was the same thing all over again. The "f" word was still used...and yes, it is the truth of the matter and there is nothing wrong with them using the "f" word, but for me, I can choose what I do and do not want to be reminded of these days. I can choose what I do and do not want to be caused to feel by way of emotions.
Sometimes if I was going down that way to see my best friend I would briefly call in and say hello, but it got real easy to just pass their road 20 kms out of town and simply keep driving.
The family got hold of me about three years ago and told me that they were having a family reunion and I thought okay, that might be fun. But then they told me it was just a foster kids family reunion; that none of their family would be there. That told me that I wasn't really a part of the family; that none of us really were or else why would there be a need to separate the two?
To be nice I said I would go, but I simply never turned up, so in a way I guess that wasn't very nice, but I had been feeling quite real for a while to that point in time and I wanted to stay that way.
But this little stroll down memory lane has made me none the wiser about what to post on that little girl's birth page. Okay, well maybe something might come to me over the next few days?

Laterz

"Love Has A Place"
by
"David And The Giants"

Monday 12th May
What separates a storyteller from a liar?
This question was brought to mind yesterday and this morning after I viewed a series of videos about two interesting men who have the art of fabricating stories from imagination that may have contained, in part, once upon a time a shred of reality and selling it to people as the ultimate truth that stands above all other truths and yet which really is, when you pare it back, a total lie.
The saddest part of the lies sold as truths by these two men?
In one case hundreds have bought his story and their lives have been irreparably damaged and altered for all time. In the other case, his story has impacted upon millions of lives and has seen people enter into what can only be described as one of the biggest life-changing hoaxes ever.
Being that I am a storyteller from way back, having written my first novel at the age of fourteen, this question has always intrigued me.
So what separates a storyteller from a liar?
Not very much.
Both sorytellers and liars have the ability to spin a great yarn. They have a fantastic imagination and can draw volumes of paragraphs from pretty much nothing and make it a really big something.
They do not necessarily have a great control over proper grammar and punctuation yet they have an awesome command of the English language when it comes to being wordsmiths.
One thing that intrigues me about storytellers and liars, and sometimes this actually puzzles me too, but storytellers can always remember the plot. They can always remember their characters, pretty much the nature of each character they have ever written and almost every word spoken by the character...be they painting the character as an honest upright person or a liar.
Liars, however, do not possess the same ability to absolutely recall all that they have said and all that they have attributed to others.
I puzzle over that phenomenon.
Why is that?
Could it be that the storyteller spends copious amounts of time developing the character, so therefore the truth and lies told by the character are deeply engrained in their mind?
Whereas the liar probably works on the hop...improvising as he/she goes and sooner or later not being able to commit absolutely every word spoken to long term memory?
It could be the case, if the first thing I mentioned about storytellers is correct in all cases. But it is not.
How do I know this?
Because when I write a story I do not puzzle over the nature of my characters. Sure I have a general idea who the protagonist of the story is and who the antagonist is, but beyond that, I do not make any plans as to where each one will venture in the truth/lies realm. I simply start writing and it either happens or it does not. The character may fly or the character may die. I might make a character upright and good and then in the next chapter tear he or she down and make them totally awful. And yet, I can still explain to you in intricate detail the workings of any character I have ever created.
I can tell you where they went, what they did, who they spoke to and how it all ended. But the crux of the matter still remains; my story is a cleverly woven together bunch of intricate lies about poeple who never existed, places they never went and people whom they spoke to, sometimes very intimately, who also never existed, not even for an instant.
Some might say that it is easier for a writer who spends copious amounts of time developing his/her characters.
I have even heard of a writer who wrote one line a day and he would spend all day, like 10 - 11 hours working on just the one line.
Personally, I believe that anyone who finds it impossible to write more than one line in 10 - 11 hours, needs to find a new line of work or hobby. I have been known to write 10 - 15'000 words in that amount of time. People may also contend that that is not a good thing either, but to each his own opinion.
But back to one of the original questions; why am I so proficient at remembering my complexly intricately woven pack of total lies; i.e story ...when a liar can barely remember what he said two minutes ago?
I do not know.
Perhaps it is that I invest myself, as most writers do, into the characters themselves?
Could it be that our characters, no matter how good or bad, are parts of ourselves? Or they are built upon our own shames, desires, truths, lies, dreams, ambitions, secret longings, need for revenge, love, hate, ghosts, demons, things that haunt us, make us happy, cause us anger, feelings of avarice, malice, compassion, mercy and unforgiveness?
I don't know.
But what separates the storyteller from the liar?
Despite all that I have said, the separation is very simple.
When I write a story, I know that it is not true, real and that it is simply birthed of imagination, possibly based very loosely upon personal experience, but the bottom line is that I know that it is not real; that it did not happen, unless of course I state otherwise.
When it is presented to the reader, the reader undertakes the partaking of the story in the full knowledge of the very same things that I just mentioned.
But with a liar, the story is presented as the absolute truth and maybe, in part, the lies are so believable because they do contain, sometimes anyway, an element of truth. Truth that has been embellished, built upon, added to, expanded, twisted slightly and yet, still offered up as total truth.
If the perpetrator of the lies is well known to the recipient of the same, or perhaps has not yet had the opportunity to develop a reputation with those to whom he is imparting his truth, which is really mostly lies, then the recipient is none the wiser. Knowing that the recipient is none the wiser, the liar relaxes and allows his/her mind to venture to wherever it will. Or perhaps it might be that the liar will be very careful about how far he, she allows their mind to go. This might be especially so if the liar is encroaching upon the reputation of someone else who might be better known to the recipient of the truth/lies.
And here is a little twister for you.
Perhaps I, as the storyteller, have become so proficient at the craft of weaving lies together to create a story, even though it is understood by myself and the reader that it is in fact fictitious; i.e a lie, that it frees me up to turn it into a certain type of truth that exists inside another reality, even if that realm is only imagination? But being able to make the story known simply as a story, yet because it is a certain type of truth to me, has it become so real in my mind that it becomes a certain truth, even though it is lies? Is that why I can remember it in intricate detail.
Yet the liar knows right from the start that what he says is a lie, therefore he holds no value in it because it never existed in any reality...one real or imagined and yet he/she has presented it as having existed for all time as truth and that is why he/she cannot ever remember it in as intricate detail, as I can remember my known and openly accepted intricately woven together lies; i.e story?
If I say something about anything in my stories, because I am its creator and author, I care for it therefore I take it to my heart, as silly as that might sound, and what goes into the heart tends to be remembered for all time.
Whereas the liar probably does not care for what he is saying, nor his subject, nor his audience so therefore it becomes hot air that vapourises never to be recalled in any kind of certain detail at all and is generally the liar's downfall.
Therefore, I think that we can safely conclude that the difference between a storyteller and a liar is not an element of truth at all. Could the difference be the belief in the lies being told? The manner in which they are presented in or is it in fact the understanding between the perpetrator and the recipient that makes the difference? Is it that understanding of the presentation of the lies that enables another to differentiate between the two?
The difference?
Maybe it boils down to almost a licence issue.
As a storyteller and only in that role and within that realm and in relation to telling a story, I have absolute licence to lie my face off to you, but so long as you are aware of this then that is okay.
In other words if I tell the truth about telling a lie, then I haven't really lied, yes? So perhaps the question really should have been, what constitutes a lie. Because if a lie is presented as truth and it is known between the perpetrator and the recipient, then truth isn't really a lie, its the truth, even though it is a lie, but it is not because I outed myself before I told it and you accepted it.
Perhaps I should stop now!
It is mind boggling to think about for too long and even I am struggling to be articulate in what it is that I am trying to say.
You know what I would be really interested in doing?
Having a lie detctor test done on me while the interviewer asks me questions about any one of my stories, whilst he supposes the story to be the truth even though he knows it to be a lie and I tell the truth about the story which is in fact a lie. This would be especially interesting in regard to the ones that contain mostly fictitional information. Being that I made the story up and yet portray it as truth for the sake of making a story and even though this is understood between both the questioner and myself, how would I fare? Would I pass? Could I fool the test?
Even though under the very same circumstances the liar would absolutely fail, would the storyteller come out triumphant?
I suspect that the storyteller would.
And if that was the outcome then that would make the storyteller a more proficient liar than the liar himself.
Interesting, I think.
Laterz

later same day
So, who were the two men who seemed to promote the liar vs storyteller dialogue of earlier?
The first was a guy called Wayne Bent aka Michael Travesser. The second was a guy called L. Ron Hubbard.
Wayne Bent is not really somebody who is well known. He apparently dropped out of the sky, for all intents and purposes, and I have had rather a job finding any info on him in regard to his pre- Michael Travesser days.
L. Ron Hubbard, however, did not fall from the sky at all and, oddly enough though, this was the thought that he preferred his believers to possess about his origins. But for those of you who do not know, L. Ron Hubbard is the founder of the Church Of Scientology.
Wayne Bent's motivation seems to be born out of a need to sleep with many woman, but not only this, but also to be able to marry them and back it up biblically. He moved to the desert and built a house where 77 or so members of his new found religion live and they call it Strong City.
Wayne Bent also claims to have the messiah manifest in him. The crux of it is that he believes himself to be the Messiah/Jesus Christ and those who live with him in Strong City also believe this.
What does he batter his detractors and critics with when they claim to disbelieve his irrational claims of messianic origins? Well he does not come out with a Holy Ghost machine gun or anything quite so violent. No, his detractors are met with something a little more insidious than that. He says that if God is really the God of you then He would have told you that Wayne Bent/Michael Travesser is the Christ manifest to this world. If God has not revealed the truth of Michael Travesser to you, it is because you are not of God.
Pretty neat trick huh?
Kind of reminds me of the old manipulation line I used to hear all the time, the one that goes something like, "God told me to tell you...."
And like I have said before, to the mind of Wayne Bent and any Christian who dares to use the "God told me to tell you..." line, if you argue the point with them then they declare you to be arguing with God or God is not in you. So you are lost or arrogant, but you could never actually be right, could you?
No, that wasn't a question.
Anyway, as far as I can tell from my hours of researching Wayne Bent, he came out of the Seventh Day Adventist movement and one day just simply stopped showing up at church.
Now, I do not know if this guy dropped LSD in the 60s or what, I could not find any information on him back that far, but I am willing to bet that he did. You see, not only did he just one day drop out of church, but he sent this letter to the church explaining his absence and I got to say it, that was one freaky letter. Now keep in mind one vital piece of information here; Wayne Bent was the minister of the church.
Picture the following in your head.
The minster that you have trusted to shepherd you for x many years suddenly stops coming to church and his reason for his sudden absence is that God has revealed to him that he is the Messiah come back to earth. Now, wouldn't you be just a little worried about his state of mind? In the least would you not suspect that something might be slightly amiss with the guy?
Never mind that it was made very clear to us when and how Jesus would return to us. The minister of all people would have learned the same thing as we know, so it would be very disconcerting to imagine how he had managed to upend all of that, suspend all rational thought processes and suddenly believe what can only be a lie promoted out of some kind of satanically based delusion!
I mean, I am not a "devil made me do it" kind of girl. I never have been.
If God deems it unacceptable to interfere in our free will, how in the world can the devil have licence to do it? I think we make our choices and we suffer our own consequences in some of the things that we do....but for Waybe Bent to have gone off on this tangent from the position that he was in, something must have gone awfully, tragically wrong.
Further to this, somehow, seven women got it into their heads (and there has got to be more to this but darned if I can find out what it is) that Wayne Bent was the Messiah manifest also. They were suddenly taken with the desire to be with him...yes also in the biblical sense of the phrase "be with him".
These seven women all claimed to have been visited by God who told them that Wayne Bent/Michael Travesser was the Messiah manifest. They all went to his house individually and all ended up moving out to the middle of the wop wops with him to their home "Strong City".
Wayne Bent uses two scriptures to rationalise what it is that he has done. One is in Isaiah: "And in that day seven women shall take hold of one man, saying, We will eat our own bread, and wear our own apparel: only let us be called by thy name, to take away our reproach" (Isaiah 4:1).
Oddly enough Wayne Bent only uses three quarters of that scripture and makes no reference to the five lines before or the five after. Clearly the way that he has interpreted it leaves great room for speculation.
I can only assume that through some kind of emotional or mental breakdown or having cut off from all rational thought for an extended period of time, Wayne Bent became obsessed with this one scripture and went off on a tangent. As for the seven women, I have absolutely no explanation whatsoever.
I do not recall what the other scripture was, but it has something to do with taking off into the wilderness.
As I said, I did watch a series of videos and what struck me the most was not so much what the seven women were saying, but HOW they were speaking.
They spoke very slowly, almost as though the receivers of the information might in fact be learning impaired. What struck me most though was it seemed that they were in some kind of trance or maybe even drugged. Perhaps it could be the result of a lack of sleep and bad diet, not sure, but they did not speak as normal human beings speak. They were lethargic, lacked life, lacked animation and they seemed as far from joyful as any person can get.
But Wayne Bent seemed fine and so he should I suppose, he has seven women out in the middle of nowhere fawning all over him. That has got to be about as paradise as it gets here for him. Some men can only dream of such a thing....oh I am kidding already!
More recently, Wayne Bent/Michael Travesser has been arrested for having sex with minors and for contributing to the delinquency of a minor (can anyone tell me what that last charge means in English? We don't have that kind of charge here)... and it seems that he will be facing quite a stretch in jail if found guilty. And it was amusing, if not downright sad, to read Wayne Bent/Michael Travesser comparing the accusations lodged against him to that of the betrayal and crucifixtion of Christ. I couldn't see the similarity myself, but apprently he and his followers can! Maybe its just me? I don't know.
And come on, when I first read about this guy I thought he would be some kind of good looking stud muffin come rock star wannabe or something, but he's not. He's an old guy who apparently has the gift of the gab because even as a red blooded woman, I looked at his pic and I thought, "Nah, I can't see it!"
Now, when I started watching the documentaries on L. Ron Hubbard, as per usual I assumed that his motivation for what he did was also was sex. With men who go awry within a religious context it often is.
To name but a few: David Koresh had sex with most of the women at the compound. Jimmy Jones also had a lot of sex with a lot of his parisheners. Rasputin had a penchant for beautiful women and apparently Jimmy Baker could have given Hugh Heffner a run for his money in his young days too.
So, as is the case with a lot of other men, I expected to discover that he had a very convoluted sexual history, but I was surprised to discover that he did not at all and sex seemed to be the least of his ambitions.
He seemed to be motivated out of a need to be adored, worshipped even, as though he were seeking some kind of imortality. Now don't get me wrong, the guy liked his women, but not in the sense of the carnal. He seemed to remain happily married so long as he was able to control the female to whom he was married. As soon as he could not control her any more, he divorced her...if she didn't leave him first.
One wife by the name of Sarah actually left him and such was his intense rage that forever and a day after that incident he refused to acknowledge that he ever had a wife by that name; literally.
Hubbard was definitely a control freak, even a megalomaniac. He liked to control all of the individuals around him and he also seemed to like them to believe him always to be slightly above them in inteligence and in stature. He went so far as to creating levels in his religion of Scientology that only the wealthy Elite of this world could ever rise to. By Elites I mean extremely rich, not extremely more worthy than you or I...not that I have ever had the ambition of becoming a Scientologist...to the contrary I'd rather attempt streaking naked through the Whitehouse than to become an Operant Thetan!
Point being though the Operant Thetan levels go up to eight (POUI...Tom Cruise is an Operant Thetan 7)...and even Hubbard was much higher than an 8...well he would be wouldn't he because he was so much better than everyone else.
But that Hubbard found workable ways to render the human mind a marshmallow and the human will non-existant in some people is fact. He did this and he did it well and he became awfully rich off the misery of others. And the church of Scientology gets richer by the minute even though L. Ron Hubbard has left his body to go and do the work of higher Operant Thetans...aka he kicked the bucket...died...shed his mortal coil or whatever else you would like to call it.
The interesting thing is that Hubbard was a storyteller, but of an exceptional variety and you got to admit it, there aren't a lot of authors who can claim to have been able to get people to believe wholeheartedly in the fruit of their imagination, turn it into truth and make it become their life, right? But that is exactly what Hubbard did.
In Poe like fashion much of his writings were inspired while he was "under the influence" but even Poe did not possess the mystifying ability to start a religion out of his works of fantasy, no matter how bizarre or life-like they might have been.
But Hubbard, his religion's roots came from a book that he wrote and never even published called "Excalibre". He often quoted the book as being too dangerous to publish, but it has recently been read by someone who managed to find the manuscript somewhere and according to that person, the manuscirpt is terrible. So how did Hubbard manage to do this?
Storyteller writes terrible story and it is so bad that it never even gets published. Same man goes on to use terrible unpublished manuscript to create false religion that has absolutely no foundation in reality whatsoever, turns it into truth, milks millions of people out of billions of dollars and is immortalised, if only in legend, well after his death in 1986.
Go figure.
The last thing left for me to say, my only bastion of literary comfort left is, "Only in America."
Laterz

Wednesday 14th May
It has been so quiet in here lately I can almost hear an echo.
Seems it is the time of year where statistics are released...well some at least. The ones I read today were quite interesting and disheartening.
First of all it seems that we no longer have 40 million sheep in New Zealand anymore. The number is now 38.5 million.
The abortion statistics were the disheartening part. In 1980 there were 5945, which is a staggering amount I think, but the stats for 2006 are much worse...17,934 abortions. That is an unreal number of babies to have been lost. That is tantamount to filling Mt Smart stadium and erasing the entire crowd! Okay, well not quite because Mt Smart holds about 30,000 people, which for a place like this is big. But imagine erasing almost 18,000 out of a crowd of 30,000...you would definitely notice that number if they simply disappeared!
So why is abortion so prevalent?
I think that we live in a society that no longer believes in taking your time with anything. We live in a fast moving, ever changing, here today gone tomorrow kind of society.
Because everything is changing so fast we are very much a "throw away" society now, a "nothing lasts forever" kind of people. We are ever made aware of our own mortality and that of others through the horrible events we see playing out on the news every night...suicide bombers, wars, famines, plagues etc...and even though we are aware of it we have also become slightly removed from what life actually means too. Through movies and societal pressures, I think there is a general misconception in regard to even the sanctity of life to a certain point. We no longer fear consequences either. Somehow we have developed a pill for this, a theory for that, a therapy for the other and a name for just about everything that ails the human psyche, so when stuff goes wrong or we do something wrong, we no longer seem to fear the consequences to the same measure as perhaps earlier generations did.
We have made love a temporary thing, twisted the meaning of compassion and we have perverted what it means to love and obey God. We have allowed false teachers and prophets to enter into our churches and sat back while thousands, perhaps even millions throw their adulation at the very same, while expressing their love via their cheque books. We have lost sight of what is true and just and we have embraced that which is plastic and empty.
Pop a pill and all will be well with you.
We are indeed, in general, an extremely wicked generation. We allow people to starve to death while others live in disgusting opulance. Technology has the answers to so many ailments but, for the sake of a few dollars and change, we will not allow the medical help to be extended to those who cannot afford it.
We abuse and exploit the most vulnerable members of our society because we allow our elders to be homeless, alone and to suffer while killing babies and calling it "woman's choice". And we will only get worse. There is no hope that this will ever right itself because there are too few who are prepared to stand up and say "NO!"
You may say to yourself that you are not one of those who does such things and I would stand up and say exactly the same thing, and it may be very true but at the end of the day, you and I are members of the very same bumbling stumbling mass of so called humanity who cannot seem to change a thing because it is so far out of our control to be able to make any great difference. Though I do not detract from the importance of doing what you can to ease the suffering of others where you can, but as a whole, as a collective, as a race, we are a degenerate generation.
What have we become?
What is to become of such a generation?
Laterz

Thursday 15th May
When I had just turned fourteen I ended up living at this place called a Social Welfare Family Home.
My Schmuck foster father had informed me that I had reached my "used by date" and that he was getting rid of me. Yeah, that was about the extent of his giving me the wonderful news. Besides, he was getting a new model of foster daughter so to speak. One who was a little more unsuspecting and thus would be more co-operative in his little schemes than I had become by then. I knew what would happen to her before she arrived. I knew what he would do to her and what he would go on to make her do. Even so I envied her because, at that time, I thought anything was better than going to live in a Social Welfare Family Home, and I was absolutely right.
You see, those were the kinds of places where the hopeless got dumped and left to rot away until their eighteenth birthday. When prospective foster parents turned up I never batted an eyelid. I knew that us older kids were the ugly puppies at the pound; a last resort. No one wanted teenagers. We were no longer cute, pliable or co-operative in the way that a parent knows their own child will be. All teenagers are searching for themselves during the teen years to a certain point, but a foster child teenager? No way! No one wanted that and so we got dumped in these houses and that was where we stayed. But it is a fact that most of the children in that place went home back to their birth families. I knew that that was never going to happen for me and so did they. None of us laboured under the delusion that some kind of family reunion was ever going to happen. I was definitely the unanswered question and the unsolvable puzzle/problem when it came to placement.
My schmuck foster father pretty much dumped me and my things there, reminded me that what went on inside his house was to stay there and he drove away. He never was one to stand on ceremony, but unfortunately I was and I was still labouring under the very slight delusion that he cared for me deep down...well he had called me his daughter...so it really kind of hurt.
I hated the new place.
It was everything I knew that it would be.
By the end of that year I decided to try and kill myself so that I wouldn't have to be there or to live the life that I was living. It was very hard to be me at fourteen. But, as medical practitioners tend to do, they saved my life, made me as well as well gets under those kind of circumstances and returned me right back to the threshold of the original misery that saw me trying to check out in the first place.
So when I returned I endured much retribution for embarrassing the people who ran the place by trying to kill myself. It was incredibly embarrassing and hurt their egos to have people staring at them wondering why in the world a child would go so far as to trying to kill herself to escape them.
So, they devised new and interesting torments for me to endure and there was little that I could do about it. All I could do was shut up and put up with it whilst praying to God above that someone new and more interesting would come along for them to focus their attention onto, or simply that someone else would piss them off more than I had!
Alas, that never happened and they never really tired of making my life a misery with their verbal/physical assaults and other little digs intended to make one feel more helplessly miserable than they already did. Yes, there ARE people like that in this world and I seem to have run into more of them than I care to count.
The foster mother was a little more insidious than her husband, for some reason the woman always were. I don't know why that is, but I do have a theory. They are females!
No, seriously, I always got on with males way better than I did females, no matter how old or young I was, this was always a truth and like all truths, no matter what you did, it still remained. I know that some of my foster mothers hated it. I know that one or two felt threatened. Maybe they suspected what their schmuck husbands were up to? I don't know!
But in this home I did not like either of them, not the mother nor the father. They were cold and devoid of emotion for anyone but their own flesh and blood and they made absolutely sure that we knew it.
I knew never to cry in front of them and I knew never to let them know that anything they did or said to me bothered me. I shut myself away from them as a way to survive them. Especially during school holidays.
We didn't have computers or internet then so all I could do was jigsaw puzzles. I used to buy really giant ones and use my mat to make them on. While I did this I would listen to the radio or tapes. Music and jigsaw puzzles shut away in my room all day and mostly all night. I only left my room if I had to and under no other circumstances.
While I did jigsaw puzzles and listened to music I used to imagine other lives and the way that they might be being lived. I would imagine stories, form plots and invent people and I would imagine what kinds of people that they would be. I used to wonder of ordinary kids too, you know, ones who lived in normal houses with normal people.
In the end to escape the totally emotionless void of that place, and so that I could support myself, I got three part time jobs and joined the soccor team. It was good that I did that because it meant that I was away from that place almost all the time.
When I left there I realised that I had lived almost two years without so much as a hug from another human being. It is funny because my new foster parents were really touchy feely kinds of people and I found that terribly difficult to deal with. My foster father, I think, was very confused by me. I would talk and be friendly to him but if I was left alone with him I was on red alert and very jumpy around him. If he tried to hug me I would slink out of his reach and unfortunately he wasn't a creepy guy. He was totally on the level.
He was softly spoken, gentle natured and patient; remember this for later.
He did fun things with me like he taught me to drive and he used to get the guitar out and sing with me. He taught me how to use a computer, to a point anyway, and he once wrote this really cool poem about me for me in my autograph book. But I ended up having a seriously bad shit fight with him when I was sixteen not long after my abortion.
I was very confused at that point in my life and he was incredibly frustrated with me. I had met a new guy (who he absolutely hated because he knew that he was totally wrong for me) and I was entertaining outrageous behaviour like doing stunts on his motorbike and just general high risk taking kind of activities. Anyway, it all came to a head one day between my foster father (there's that f-word again) and I. He ended up grabbing me by my arms and dragging me down the hallway to his room where he proceeded to slam me up against the wall and yell at me.
I tried to leave his room and he wouldn't let me. At that point I stared at the big bedroom windows and actually seriously contemplated running and diving through them to get away from him. I didn't do it though. I can't remember how the whole thing resolved itself, but what I do know is that after that incident, I never trusted him again!
I have been very good at making the wrong decisions about the wrong people. I was very good at giving my love and loyalty to those who never deserved it and denying it to those who did. Seriously, I was so screwed up I didn't know if I was coming or going with people most of the time. I think a part of me is still that way. I think a small part of me will always be that way...I think that it is a permanent part of my human frailty/condition.
These days I still do that thing where I sit back and let people bother with me when they can be bothered. I hate it, but I do it. There are people in my life, well maybe not even in my life, on the peripheral who only speak to me if I speak first. If I did not speak first to them they would not speak to me at all. I am very easily out of sight out of mind. I hate being that.
I dream that one day it will not be so easy to be that way, and yet I fear that it might always remain the same.

Laterz

Friday 16th May
A thought occured to me today, as thoughts tend to do, but this was a kind of "out there" thought. Remember, it is just a thought and the related things that sprang to mind with it. I am in no way espousing this as truth or otherwise, it is just a string of thoughts and nothing more than that.

I was thinking about how the fallen angels bred with the daughters of Cain: Genesis 6:4 "The Nephilim were on the earth in those days—and also afterward—when the sons of God went to the daughters of men and had children by them. They were the heroes of old, men of renown."

That was before the flood. But this same thing is spoken of again after the flood in Numbers. Numbers is after the flood: Numbers 13:31 But the men who had gone up with him said, "We can't attack those people; they are stronger than we are." 32 And they spread among the Israelites a bad report about the land they had explored. They said, "The land we explored devours those living in it. All the people we saw there are of great size. 33 We saw the Nephilim there (the descendants of Anak come from the Nephilim). "We seemed like grasshoppers in our own eyes, and we looked the same to them."

I wondered if I would be safe assuming that because the flood only wiped out earthly flesh i.e it didn't wipe out Satan, therefore it hardly would have wiped out the third of the angels cast down to earth with him. Being that they were not/are not human, they would have been able to supernaturally save themselves. It would also make sense as to why after the flood the days of man's life here upon earth was drastically shortened. Perhaps God did that knowing that it was the only way to really exert any control upon the offspring of these fallen angels? Think about it, He said that he would never encroach upon our freewill, that being the case, He would not do it to the offspring of those fallen angels also, in that the offspring is, in part anyway, human. The only way to lessen the damage that they might exert was to shorten their days.
Numbers makes it resonably clear that what happened before the flood i.e fallen angels breeding with the daughters of Cain, happened after the flood as well. Being that this is the case and that it is a biblical fact and not something some person who had nothing better to do with his time dreamed up, then when did these fallen angels stop breeding with the daughters of Cain? I guess that is kind of pre-flood so the better question might be, when did the fallen angels stop breeding with human females? Is it safe to assume that they probably never stopped?
Another interesting point to consider is that if you go back to chapters 4 and 5 of Genesis you find two different genealogies written of. One is of Seth and the other is of Cain. Seth worshiped God. Those who worship God are often referred to as the sons of God.
Cain's linage was evil. This would refer to "the daughters of men". These were the women of Cain's linage. The reference to the sons of God looking upon the daughters of men refers to the intermarriage of Seth's descendants to Cain's. This resulted in wide spread evil. It is also believed that the mark of Cain was giantism.
As a result of anyone trying to kill Cain sevenfold vengeance would be taken on them. In Genesis chapter 4 verse 23-24 it speaks of Lamech, a descendant of Cain, bragging to his wives about killing two people and saying if Cain is avenged sevenfold then Lamech seventy-seven fold.
Reading the excerpt in Numbers gives a fairly clear indication that the breeding of angels with the daughters of man never stopped and perhaps good old Goliath and his kind are also further proof that they continued on their merry path, which brings me to the thought that I had. Get ready because this one is a weirdo.
Could the giantism of the mark of Cain be literal as well as figurative? Look at the descendents of Cain. They were not all always giant in physical stature, but some were giant in their ability to exert authority and influence.
You see, all throughout history there have been heroes of old and men of renown. In order to understand what this means, I guess you have to understand what heroes are and what renown is.
Hero is simple, we all know what that means. Heroic deeds can be performed by all kinds of people at any time. But depending upon the way in which the heroic deed is performed, what may be heroic to one person may actually be a form of cowardice to another. Example: a suicide bomber who walks into a market place with a load of TNT strapped to his middle and blows himself up is a hero to all of those who sent him. But to those of us not involved in that kind of system or those kinds of beliefs, someone who walks into a crowded market place and then proceeds to blow him or herself up thus killing and maiming others, to us is a coward. So it is clear to see that heroes are defined by not only those whom they serve but by those whom they oppose. What is heoric to one is cowardice to another. Heroism is very different to courageous.
Renown pretty much works the same way in that they are well known or well remembered; Goliath was a man of renown to the people whom he served and he has never been forgotten or become lost to history. David was a man of renown to those whom he served as well and is well remembered having also never been forgotten or lost to history. But, at the end of the day, neither man was without sin and each man, in the view of those that he was in opposition to, was not viewed either as a hero nor a man of renown.
In summation, a hero or man of renown can be applied to any man who serves any people loyally despite whether his agenda was determined to be good or righteous by an opposing group of people or not. That being the case, it is fair to say that the Nephilim offspring could very well be heroes of old and men of renown. That also possibly being the case, brings me to my next weirdo thought.
Again, all throughout history many males and females have been born. The majority of these men and woman grow to be nothing out of the ordinary and quite often simply blended in with the struggling masses and were never really noticed for anything at all. They are not remembered and have been easily forgotten; lost to history for all time. But, from time to time, heroes of old and men of renown have been born.
Remember; renown=remembered/well known.
Hero=any act that is deemed courageous to an ethnicity or group of people.
Some of the men are as follows:
Sennacherib the son of Sargon. Sennacherib was king of Assyria (and Babylon) in 704 BC. He was a brute, ruthless and evil to the core. He waged many bloody battles, most of which he won. Sennacherib waged war with the Edomites. It was a particularly bloody war, and he soundly defeated them. Then, in 689, Sennacherib again marched on Babylon. This time, he laid the city waste such that it became a marsh. In essence, he depopulated the city. But, just 8 years later, Sennacherib, the challenger of God, was dead, murdered by his own sons.
Atilla The Hun (Attila was Khan of the Huns from 434 until his death in 453. He was leader of the Hunnic Empire which stretched from Germany to the Ural River and from the Danube River to the Baltic Sea. In much of Western Europe, he is remembered as the epitome of cruelty and rapacity. An unsuccessful campaign in Persia was followed in 441 by an invasion of the Eastern Roman Empire, the success of which emboldened Attila to invade the West. He passed unhindered through Austria and Germany, across the Rhine into Gaul, plundering and devastating all in his path with a ferocity unparalleled in the records of barbarian invasions and compelling those he overcame to augment his mighty army.)
Vlad III of Romania (also known as Vlad the Impaler) was Prince of Wallachia three times between 1448 and 1476. Vlad is best known for the legends of the exceedingly cruel punishments he imposed during his reign and for serving as the primary inspiration for the vampire main character in Bram Stoker's popular Dracula novel. In Romania he is viewed by many as a prince with a deep sense of justice. His method of torture was a horse attached to each of the victim's legs as a sharpened stake was gradually forced into the body. The end of the stake was usually oiled, and care was taken that the stake not be too sharp; else the victim might die too rapidly from shock. Wikipedia has an article that describes, in great details, the methods of Vlad's cruelty. The list of tortures he is alleged to have employed is extensive: nails in heads, cutting off of limbs, blinding, strangulation, burning, cutting off of noses and ears, mutilation of sexual organs (especially in the case of women), scalping, skinning, exposure to the elements or to animals, and boiling alive. There are claims that on some occasions ten thousand people were impaled in 1460 alone.
Maximilien Robespierre was a leader of the French revolution and it was his arguments that caused the revolutionary government to murder the king without a trial. In addition, Robespierre was one of the main driving forces behind the reign of terror, a 10 month post-revolutionary period in which mass executions were carried out. The Terror took the lives of between 18,500 to 40,000 people, with 1,900 being killed in the last month. Among people who were condemned by the revolutionary tribunals, about 8 percent were aristocrats, 6 percent clergy, 14 percent middle class, and 70 percent were workers or peasants accused of hoarding, evading the draft, desertion, rebellion, and other purported crimes.
Pol Pot was the leader of the Khmer Rouge and the Prime Minister of Cambodia from 1976 to 1979, having been de facto leader since mid-1975. During his time in power Pol Pot imposed an extreme version of agrarian communism where all city dwellers were relocated to the countryside to work in collective farms and forced labour projects. The combined effect of slave labour, malnutrition, poor medical care and executions is estimated to have killed around 2 million Cambodians (approximately one third of the population). His regime achieved special notoriety for singling out all intellectuals and other "bourgeois enemies" for murder. The Khmer Rouge committed mass executions in sites known as the Killing Fields. The executed were buried in mass graves. In order to save ammunition, executions were often carried out using hammers, axe handles, spades or sharpened bamboo sticks.
Joseph Stalin was General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union's Central Committee from 1922 until his death in 1953. Under Stalin's leadership, the Ukraine suffered from a famine (Holodomor) so great it is considered by many to be an act of genocide on the part of Stalin's government. Estimates of the number of deaths range from 2.5 million to 10 million. The famine was caused by direct political and administrative decisions. In addition to the famine, Stalin ordered purges within the Soviet Union of any person deemed to be an enemy of the state. In total, estimates of the total number murdered under Stalins reign, range from 10 million to 60 million.
Adolf Hitler was appointed Chancellor of Germany in 1933, becoming "Führer" in 1934 until his suicide in 1945. By the end of the second world war, Hitler's policies of territorial conquest and racial subjugation had brought death and destruction to tens of millions of people, including the genocide of some six million Jews in what is now known as the Holocaust. On 30 April 1945, after intense street-to-street combat, when Soviet troops were spotted within a block or two of the Reich Chancellory, Hitler committed suicide, shooting himself while simultaneously biting into a cyanide capsule.
Idi Amin was an army officer and president of Uganda. He took power in a military coup in January 1971, deposing Milton Obote. His rule was characterized by human rights abuses, political repression, ethnic persecution, extra judicial killings and the expulsion of Indians from Uganda. The number of people killed as a result of his regime is unknown; estimates range from 80,000 to 500,000. On August 4, 1972, Amin issued a decree ordering the expulsion of the 60,000 Asians who were not Ugandan citizens (most of them held British passports). This was later amended to include all 80,000 Asians, with the exception of professionals, such as doctors, lawyers and teachers. Amin was eventually overthrown, but until his death, he held that Uganda needed him and he never expressed remorse for the abuses of his regime.
As I earlier stated, all sorts of men have been born to the world over the ages.

My point being that these men to some, were arch enemies but to others were heroes and men of renown. But that is not really the issue at hand or the weird thought that occured to me. Those things are connected to it for sure, but are not the crux of my weird thought.
What separated those men from the ordinary masses? What did/do they possess that everyone else did/does not?
Look at the people from recent history like Rasputin, Hitler, Stalin, Jim Jones, L.Ron Hubbard, Benny Hinn, to name but a few. What did/do they possess that enabled/enables them to exert authority and influence over thousands, in most cases, millions of people? What is it about them that enables them to be listened to?
You see they all possess/possessed Mephistophilistic characteristics i.e charachteristics of Mephistopheles such as the ability to feel no compassion, mercy or empathy for others. Okay so some might ask, who was Mephistopheles? He was supposedly a familiar demonic entity in the legend of Faust. But he was widely known of as an entity way before Faust.
It could be asked, what is the point of defining the charactertistics that people might have that can only be attrributed to a myth or a legend?
Point taken.
But what if he was more than simply a myth?
Mephistopheles was known widely as one of the seven princes of Hell, according to legend and according to fact. Where does legend become fact or fact merge with legend? Who knows?
In the ancient Mesopotamian religion the Intelligence of Jupiter was Marduk, "the lord of light," whose antithesis was accordingly conceived as the lord of darkness.
Mephistopheles, then (or rather Mephostophiles, as the Faust-books spell the name) is "he who does not love light" Whichever way you look at Mephistophiles/Mephistopheles the one thing that we can conclude was that he was not good and it is quite probable that, as a demonic entity, he exists in much the same way as Satan himself does. We know that the angels have names because we know who some of them are. There is Gabriel, there is Michael and we know that Satan's name was, while he remained in Heaven, Lucifer. If those three have names, is it not reasonable to expect or to even assume that all the other angels, including the third cast from Heaven, have names also? Therefore I could conclude that there is every chance of there having been an angel named Mephistopleles who was amongst the third cast out form Heaven with Lucifer who was their leader. And another thing, all the angels seemed to have a specific specialty; we know that Lucifer's was music. Perhaps there are other specialties that angels have of which we are not aware? I think that it is not only possible but actually probable. So what abilities or speacialties do the other angels cast out of Heaven with Lucifer possess? Who knows!
Those men mentioned earlier, all also possess/possessed the one common Macheavalian thought which was always; the end justifies the means.
They didn't/don't care what they had/have to do to get what they want, so long as their goal is achieved. And all the goals seem to be to separate one group from another. To create a system of "us and them". To protect and preserve the lives of those who qualify as "us" and to end the very existence of those who qualify as "them". The methods that they used were cruel, vicious and inhumane. They still are.
Those men possessed qualities that separated them from other men, i.e Mephistophilistic and Macheavalian traits and tendencies, demonic influences that enabled them to almost magically cast their spell of stupor over people and make them do things that under normal circumstances, they would never usually contemplate.
The objective?
To kill and destroy and sometimes to forever separate from God. All of those men seemd to labour under delusions of their own importance and yet there was something within them that allowed others to also begin to labour under the same delusions, of course, by proxy.
Have you ever noticed that good men are seldom ever followed by the great masses and that good men seldom possess the power to cast any kind of stupor over people that leads them to the real light? Not even Jesus went about doing that. Why is that? Because God is not a trickster and therefore those who truly follow him do not entertain the vices of a trickster either.
So what led those M & M men to do the things that they did? How could they be so barbaric?
I consider even the likes of Benny Hinn to be barbaric...he is barbaric as far as the soul of a man is concerned. He deceives the soul and leads it into darkness, darkness destroys, therefore Hinn qualifies, in my mind, as a destroyer, not as outwardly violent as perhaps Hitler or Stalin and yet he is just as insidious! And even he has stated on many occasions that the end justifies the means.
Could it be that these men do not originate as ordinary men come to be? Could it be that these men were conceived by something more insidious than man himself? Could it be that they were conceived and birthed by something that dwells within the human race but that is not originally of it, and were they born for a particular and yet peculiar purpose? Could it be that without the genetic influence of a particular entity, that these men could never have reached the heights that they attained?
Look at where most of them came from.
Most of them came from backgrounds which never even hinted of anything remotely resembling greatness, in the eyes of man or otherwise. Genetically, most of them had no ties to any kind of bloodline that runs remotely blue. No one saw them coming. There was no warning. Like a magician reveals a white rabbit from a seemingly empty black hat, they rose up out of nowhere. I am wondering if many are conceived with the same plans for their lives in mind by their creators and yet few succeed at becoming anything other than a serial killer or religious fanatic who leads everyone astray. The few evil success stories became greater than most and yet their influence upon the world is mystifyingly widespread and terrible. Their acts of injustice too great to count, their acts of inhumanity upon the people so great that they can only be recorded in effect upon the masses; individuals are buried amongst it.
Think about it, Hitler, for example, managed to convince his own people, not the Jews, but his own German peers to take their handicapped, disabled, deaf, blind, lame and genetically imperfect children to places where they were to be systematically strapped down and killed. Then he extended this to homosexuals, prostitutes, alcoholics and the mentally disturbed and everyone went along with it and those who did not, were swiftly dealt with. This was before any move was made against the Jewish folk on his part. He found it so easy to bend people to his will that to look at it now, it seems a thing of insanity. At the time, and these days, it is also a well documented fact that he was heavily under the influence of the occult, as were many of his officers and followers.
He used stealth and trickery to get what he wanted. But why did he want that? Why did he want to exterminate a sector of people? Because satan comes to kill and destroy and I cannot help but wonder whether these men are not of entirely human birth, that what separates them is their genetic lineage.
Are they of fallen angels?
They are giant in stature, not necessarily genetics, in fact if anything, if you look at most of these men, they are not even what one would call tall. Perhaps the gene pool runs down inall forms of life to the same measure if it is repeatedly repeated? You know, copies of copies of copies. That is what we are really, copies of the originally created pair; Adam and Eve.
I looked at the dates of the births of these men and matched them against a Satanic calendar and I found that, in the case of Jim Jones, Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin and Benny Hinn, all four were born one day preceeding a significant Satanic calendar event. Keeping in mind that the Satanic calendar event days tend to change with each year, either moving backward or forward a day for each celebrations, it is quite feasible that these four men could actually have been born on those significant Satanic celebration days. This might be quite indicative of many other things. Then again it may be indicative of absolutely nothing.
I found it interesting anyway.
So, in conclusion, could these men from history, and others like them, actually be the offspring of fallen angels? Being that there is no indication that the breeding of fallen angels with the daughters of man ever stopped, could it be that it is still happening today? Does that explain the ilk of these men (and in the odd instance, women)?
And then we look at the more unsuccessful members of this terrible elite. Jack the Ripper, Ted Bundy, Larry S. Bittaker, Roy L. Norris, Phillip C. Jablonski, Westley A. Dodd, Jeffrey Dahmer, Dean Corll, Richard Chase, William Bonin, Herbert R. Baumeister, Gary and Thaddeus Lewingdon, Richard Ramirez, John Wayne Gacy, Ed Gein, Juan Corona, David Berkowitz, Harold Shipman to name but a few of those people who have committed the most terrible of brutal sadistic murders of innocents.
To my mind, there has to be more to it than what meets the eyes. Come on, bad human beings are not formed as a result of childhood. In looking at the very early lives of most of these men, there was no common denominator amongst them. Some of them had very priveledged upbringings, others were poor. Some were abused as children, others were not. (It is a proven fact that most abused children do not go on to become abusers themselves. Children born of rape do not go on to become rapists and children born of murderers do not go on to become murderers. Not even children raised by aforementioned people grow up to become what their parents were.)
Yet all of those men were able to live seemingly normal lives while in the darkness, where it was hidden, they committed extremely terrible crimes. All were found to have reasonably high IQs, so their crimes cannot be attributed to lack of intelligence nor to upbringing. So that leaves me one strange conclusion; these killers were born, they were not created by their environment.
It is almost like they were born with a switch in their head that just waited to be flipped on. Once on, they were unable to stop what it was that they began doing and they derived sick, inhuman sadomasochistic pleasure from the extremely violent torture and suffering of their innocent victims. The need to kill and destroy and the ability to derive pleasure from such a thing seems innate within those men and it came from somewhere. Did it come from fallen angels?
Just as Benny Hinn and men of his ilk seem to derive pleasure from deceiving and leading souls into darkness thus destroying them. Even the bible reminds us that we do not fight against flesh and blood, rather powers and principalities. What are those powers and principalities? Are they the influence of fallen angels amongst men and their power to pursuade such beings to the path of evil? Or is it their power to create such beings in the first place?
I don't know, but it sure makes me wonder.
That, in a rather large nutshell, was my weird thought.

Sunday 18th May
I never really was very interested in the Greek deities/gods, but one that did kind of intrigue me recently was Dionysus the god of wine and the inspirer of madness.
Why?
Because some clown in YouTube tried to compare this mythological deity to God...the God of Jacob...the father of Jesus Christ. This person asserted that God is a a meniacal jealous being threatening eternal damnation unless we submit and further to this that I live under a eternal dictatorship.
He then went on to assert that we are star dust, the conscious universe herself, atoms self-aware, the majesty and that the beauty of it would be insulted by blind faith in long discredited myth.
Dionysus, also commonly known by his Roman name Bacchus, appears to be a god who has two distinct origins. On the one hand, Dionysus was the god of wine, agriculture, and fertility of nature, who is also the patron god of the Greek stage. On the other hand, Dionysus also represents the outstanding features of mystery religions, such as those practiced at Eleusis: ecstasy, personal delivery from the daily world through physical or spiritual intoxication, and initiation into secret rites. Scholars have long suspected that the god known as Dionysus is in fact a fusion of a local Greek nature god, and another more potent god imported rather late in Greek pre-history from Phrygia (the central area of modern day Turkey)
According to one myth, Dionysus is the son of the god Zeus and the mortal woman, Semele (daughter of Cadmus of Thebes). Semele is killed by Zeus' lightning bolts while Dionysus is still in her womb. Dionysus is rescued and undergoes a second birth from Zeus after developing in his thigh. Zeus then gives the infant to some nymphs to be raised.
In another version, one with more explicit religious overtones, Dionysus, also referred to as Zagreus in this account, is the son of Zeus and Persephone, Queen of the Underworld. Hera gets the Titans to lure the infant with toys, and then they rip him to shreds eating everything but Zagreus' heart, which is saved by either Athena, Rhea, or Demeter. Zeus remakes his son from the heart and implants him in Semele who bears a new Dionysus Zagreus. Hence, as in the earlier account, Dionysus is called "twice born." The latter account formed a part of the Orphic religion's religious mythology.
As much as I read about Dionysus, I have trouble in any way making a comparison between that deity and God. Perhaps it is because Dionysus is a myth and God is not?
But the meniacal part that he referred to did get me thinking about one point that I often choose not to think about simply because there really is no logical answer. But why would God create beings, give them the freewill to choose and then dam,n them all to eternal hellfire and brimstone because they did not choose him? If you pare that back and take all preconceived ideas and ideals of faith in God away, it is a very interesting concept.
Free choice, but choose any way but mine and you will eternally die. Do not worry, I am not about to become an atheist or anything, but that thought is a kind of scary one, which is why I mostly choose not to think upon it too often.
laterz

Monday 19th May
Was listening to 10CC's song I'm Not In Love tonight and it is such an eerie haunting kind of song.
If you have never heard it, the song is basically about a guy who is clearly in love but yet in total denial. Maybe he is scared of being hurt, but he goes on about having her picture hanging on the wall becasue it hides a nasty stain on the wall, as opposed to him actually being attached to it. Yet he tells her not to ask him to give it back because he knows that she knows that it doesn't mean that much to him.
Lyrically it is a very clever song, but composition wise, in regard to the arrangement of the muscial instruments, it is pure genius! Same with the voices in it...the background harmony sounds almost like a Gregorian monk chant.
Not that I am entirely familiar with Gregorian monks chanting, I am not. To the contrary, not only do I not know any Gregorian monks, I do not know any monk full stop. The only reason I even know that Gregorian monk chanting exists is because someone I knew used to have it playing in the background because he thought it was awfully sophisticated of him to have such a thing droning mercilessly from his hi fi. Personally I thought it was a pretty desperate measure to resort to in an effort to make yourself look like you have more brain cells than you really do actually possess.
Gregorian monk chanting is actually really quite a painful thing to listen to and I think the only place it would actually fit in place is while you are in the dentist chair.
Why?
Because Gregorian monk chanting is about the only noise that irritates me more than the dentist drill!
Did you know that people even attend concerts where Gregorian monks chant? I know, I could hardly believe it myself.
Picture twenty four or so short bald men wearing brown robes (with nothing underneath them I suspect) swinging incence holders that billow out smoke (totally adding to global warming...I wonder how big their carbon footprint is? Those monks eh, it's probably all their fault that the earth is heating up and there those horrid politicans tried to blame the cows!) anyway as I was saying twenty four short bald men wearing brown capes swinging incence holders (suspended from rusty chains that squeak as they move from side to side and the result is somewhat akin to fingernails on a blackboard that insults the ears terribly, frays the nerves of even the hardiest of souls and has a dreadful impact upon the human psyche) making the most awful sound you ever heard in your life and the kicker? You paid good money to subject yourself to such a horrid display of...inane insolent noise!
Anyway, back to 10CC. What was I saying? Oh that's right the Gregorian monk chanting in the background. Actually, you know what? It isn't Gregorian monk chanting at all, it just sounds a little like it, but the way that they have put it all together it sounds really eerie and haunting. I like songs like that.
And the very second I hear the very first few seconds of that song, I am taken away, way back in time. No, I am not abducted by aliens and taken anywhere physically.
I do not even believe that aliens are real. Well they are probably real, but not aliens. I often wonder if they are fallen angels sucker punching those whom they mess with into thinking that they are aliens. If they can convince humans that there is life on other planets, well that might get their eyes off God. And let's face it, it worked for L. Ron Hubbard now didn't it?
Just because you find a rather large piece of wire protruding from your nose and when you pull it out it is attached to a rather large ball containing a silicone chip that mysteriously became lodged in your left frontal lobe, that is no cause to jump to the conclusion that aliens did it. You may have breathed in rather a little too deeply at an electronics shop (Dick Smiths and for our US peers The Radio Shack) and not even noticed as the thing shot up your nostril and became lodged in the front part of your brain.
I love Dick Smith's PowerHouse...have you been to one? It is sort of like the Radio Shack on speed...actually I think that the young men who work there really do drop speed. They zoom around the place at the speed of light trying to sell anyone anything that is not physically nailed to the floor and they speak at one hundred miles per hour. Their eyes are glazed and their pupils fixed and they are kind of scary because they froth at the mouth as they espouse the virtues of owning something that you have absolutely no use for and never will. Before you know what's happened it seems a mortal sin not to purchase the item and before you can say Lysergic Acid Diethylamide you're EFTPOSing an amount of money for some gadget you never had any intention of purchasing when you arrived there and the amount you paid is practically at levels that qualify as extortion and yet, oddly enough, you always leave that shop smiling!
Yes, they must all be on speed to be able to pull that blinder! Not that I have ever done speed...well not intentionally anyway and I am speaking years ago. In fact it might not have even been speed it might have been Ketamine or something like that. Who knows...but anyway...how did this go off on a tangent about drugs?
Oh that's right Dick Smiths...it has so many shiny electronic things that I could wander around in that place all day playing with all the nobs and buttons just seeing what each machine with bells and whistles does. I never used to be an electronics freak...not really. But I always had a knack of being able to make dead stereos live again and I even once fixed a radio with bubble gum. No word of a lie, I used bubble gum. MacGyver stole that from me you know and I know this because I was ten when I fixed that radio with bubble gum and he hit the screen in about 87 or so. And the most senseless part of it all? It actually worked!
But that song, it takes me back to when I was around ten years old. I think that is when I first heard it because I remember it being around when Pablo Cruise's song I Go To RIO was around and darn it, I liked that song too as annoying as it could be. Nowhere near as annoying as Gregorian monk chanting though.
Some other songs around at the same time were Name Of The Game by Abba...whom I absolutely hated until I was around sixteen, although I did like Name Of The Game right off the bat and it was just after that song that they fell off and didn't come back until Muriel's Wedding. And what a movie that is.
Another song around at the same time was Year Of The Cat by Al Stewart. I was born in the year of the horse according to a Chinese calendar. Year of the horse...well I did like horses and actually owned one as a kid, so year of the horse is not so bad. Year of the dog would have sucked, but year of the cat would have matched me best.
Speaking of which, did I mention that I have a dopted a cat? She doesn't live with me, but I go to the house where she does live and I feed her. She was Monty's mum and her name is Booshka and she's gorgeous. She likes me ...I think because I feed her. But she did come to see me before I began to feed her, which is sort of why I started to feed her. I would bring her home but my cat family would beat the whiskers off her!
Oh and speaking of Booshka's house there are human there who have decided to call me Mrs Hoff. They have somehow gotten it into their heads that I like David Hoff...Mr Baywatch himself...puke and vomit! I really like Gerrard Butler but not the Hoff. I think the Hoff is gross with his hairy chest and little red speedoes. I wish aliens would abduct him or that Gregorian monks would chant him into a coma!
Okay well, clearly, as evident by all I have written, I am seriously sleep deprived! So I am going to go and get some shut eye.
laterz

May 20th May
I just watched a movie. It was one of those ones where the characters start off all disjointed and you wonder how in the world anyone imagined that they could make a coherent story out of it, yet, somehow it all comes together and ends up being a really good tale.
The kind of tale where a bunch of strangers lives collide and all that is apparent to begin with is how badly matched they are.
Somehow their lives intertwine and they manage to forge forward in life all newly connected with someone else and it leaves you with the feeling that all will be will with them forever.
But then once the credits roll you are reminded, acutely I might add, that what you just witnessed and invested yourself in is acutally merely an intricately woven together pack of lies.
As you sit there and think to yourself, why isn't life like that, you realise that life isn't like that because that isn't life. What it is is a story that someone somewhere along the way wrote. Perhaps it is the sum of their experiences in life or maybe it is simply just some story that they made up that means absolutely nothing at all.
Strangers' lives colliding and merging together to bring more meaning or perhaps fullness to each others lives. Does that ever really happen?
I thought about that and in order for what I saw in the movie to happen in real life it would require a seemingly selfish race of people to become selfless. Selfless enough to do the right thing at the right time when it is in fact human nature to do the wrong thing at the absolute worst time. It is natural for uss to miss all the signs. We innately miss opportunities to enhance some one elses life becasue seldom are we outside ourselves enough to even see the clues that someone else might need us.
Even if we did recognise it, we are rarely selfless enough to take the time to act upon it. Sometimes all it takes is a kind word, five minutes from your day to let someone else know that you noticed that they exist. Five minutes of your time to write a few words to speak a few simple phrases.
Sometimes we are taken with the idea to do this for someone else but it doesn't last. It becomes all too easy to push them to the back of the mind and forget about them. We are good at that. Humans are good at that.
There are times where people feel invisible and then someone notices that they exist and give them five minutes of their time. When the person who noticed that the other exists finally drops off into thin air, the other person feels slightly hurt by it. But they shouldn't do, because the truth of the matter is htat they were merely a blip on someone's radar for a second and beyond that second, no one observed them any more.
It is not the person that noticed them who dropped off into oblivion, it was the person who got noticed. At least I do not labour under any illusions; I know that I fell off years ago.
laterz

Thursday 22nd May
I am listening to 10CC again, that song "I'm Not In Love", but I promise that I shall not go off into an essay about Gregorian Monks, Abba, aliens or drugs!
I watched a reasonably interesting movie today called Cloverfield. It is sort of filmed like Blair Witch was. A few young people with a camcorder film the invasion of Manhattan by some kind of alien force. But the way they did it was quite cool.
Right at the beginning it has some type print across the screen that says that the video is the property of the American Department of Defence and that the video must not be reproduced in any way. Next there is more type stating where the video was found which, at the beginning makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. It is only when you get to the end of the video and then watch the beginning again that it all falls into place.
Okay, so I broke my promise, I have mentioned aliens!
Someone in YouTube nicked my video I Was The Nails and posted it under his own name. I had to watch the whole thing first to be certain that it was my video he nicked. But he has taken it down after some of my subscribers apparently read him the riot act. He even sent me an e-mail apologising, which was nice of him.
Others would assert that so he jolly well should have apologised but, being that I am one who expects little and is happy when something out of the ordinary happens appreciated his gesture and thought it to be kind and gracious. But that's just me.
I watched another movie last night that focussed on South Africa while it was still under apartheid. It was interesting and maddening to see just how badly the justice system was rigged so that Black South Africans could never get justcie even when it was crystal clear that the powers that be had been criminally negligent and downright cruel with their loved ones. I don't know how anyone survived under that regime.
Donald Sutherland was in it with Susan Sarandon. Now I am not a big fan of Donald's but this movie was very good and would you believe it, the title escapes me at the moment.
What is it within the human condition that makes some of us have to assert that we are better than someone else? Why did the white South Africans find it so necessary to stomp the black people underfoot so easily? Worst of all, they held a deep rooted belief that it was right and sadly, some still do.
It is even that way these days amongst many different groups. Catholics, Protestants, Christians and non Christians.
In one of the houses where I was raised they believed that it was wrong to associate with anyone who was not born again. It was terribly hard to be a kid in their house. They hated Maori and not once was my Maori friend Beryl ever allowed to stay the night at our house. She was never even allowed at their house.
I used to resent it and I always thought of my foster father as a racist as well as all the other things that I knew him to be. I could not understand how or why he could be so hateful toward people with dark skin but, as I have gotten older over the years I have noticed that racism and stereo-typing is still very much alove and well in this country. It is not an affliction of the few, but in some areas it is an affliction of the many.
How did man become so hateful?
Perhaps it is that it was always this way. Right back at the very start, look at Cain and Abel. One brother was jealous and hated the other. One brother was good the other was not.
Which brings me to another thought, why must there always be something in equal opposition to all that is good? All throughout history there has been this equation with good and bad and I do not understand why that must be.
We war.
We are always at war with something or somebody.
I was talking to Chuck yesterday and we both came to the same conclusion, that Jesus might actually come back in our lifetimes. Although it is true to say that many generations before us have held this very same belief, the truth of the matter is that the signs are more apparent that we are in the end times than they ever have been in the past. Although I am sure that there must be some great theologan or historian who would totally disagree with me.
But I hope he comes back soon. I hope he comes back real soon.
Laterz

Saturday 24th May
I hate modern technology today. In fact, I hate it so much that I really do feel inclined to swearing my damn head off!
I hate it because there is no longer any anonimity! I hate it because it screws up all the time and let us face it, we are totally at the mercy of the manager of whatever darn stupid website you were fool enough to sign up with. Even worse than that, you are at the complete and utter mercy of your service provider and if he falls over tomorrow, then what the heck can you do. Really, tell me, what CAN you do?
If your service provider has a glitch then you are powerless to do anything and everything that you have electronically created upon your website becomes pretty much theoretic and no longer literal! If you cannot bring it up on the screen of your PC/Laptop, how can it be anything but?
And what if the website you have signed up with goes on the fritz, even though your service provider is fine? I mean come on, do you not see such how much of a delicate balancing act we enter into when we decide to go electronic?
You are at the mercy of so many different variables that it is a wonder you can ever do anything at all. It is a wonder that all remain as synchronised as they do for as long as they do. But when one of them crashes, boy well you just better look out mister!
It has been one of those days where I have longed for the days of scrapbooks, scissors, magazine pictures, pen, paper and glue! No it does not get as much exposure and yes you are probably the only one who appreciates it but, damn it, it is always just as it was when you left it every time you return to it! Unlike the severely stupid and idiotic internet!
I am in a really bad frame of mind tonight. I am not really sure why. Perhaps it is...actually, you know what? I know exactly why I am in a bad mood.
Annoyance number 1. First of all a semi-friend made a big play of wanting to have coffee with me today so I cancelled some other things to do it and then that person changed their mind.
Annoyance number 2. I wrote an email to a friend who seems to respond when it suits him and not when it doesn't. It annoys me because I hate half way. I do not do half way. I am an all or nothing person and I detest being treated half way. Grrrrrrrrrrr, it really irks me.
Annoyance number 3. A stupid internet site kept playing up.
Annoyance number 4. I entirely cleaned the kitchen and lounge today because my resident tornado Jonty (God love him) was away. But he came back just as I had completed the house and I had my mind set on a quiet evening writing. Not only that, he brought a friend with him.
Annoyance number 5. I cannot settle on what music I want to listen to.
Annoyance number 6. I am half way through making a video to a song and it is just not coming together and it is driving me bonkers!
Annoyance number 7. I have watched far too many movies that have happy ever after conclusions and it is driving home now more than ever just how crappy my life is!
Annoyance number 8. So called friend who thinks he is a brainiac and yet whose mind lives in such a small enclosed space that it is a wonder he can think at all, espoused some really bizarre things and though he claims to be open minded is one of the most deluded people I have ever come to know and yet I am not free to tell him this. But he is fast to say it to me!
Annoyance number 9. Friends who goof off on all these weird co-incidences between lives and how they must mean something, causing people to think that they were worth investing emotions and time into only to have them just write people off so easily and attribute it to the process of natural selection.
Annoyance number 10. That number nine isn't actually what is so annoying as much as the fact that they could so easily discard people.
Annoyance number 11. That people treat me like an after thought! If something better comes along then I do not matter or do not rate as a priority.
Annoyance number 12. That number 11 is actually true.
Annoyance number 13. I have let people continually perform annoyance number 11.
Annoyance number 14. I am powerless to change number 11 because I seemingly hold no cards and have no leverage.
Annoyance number 15. That annoyance number 8 cannot be equitably addressed because they will just swear and call the subject who addresses it names like they did last time.
Annoyance number 16. That what happened in number 15 was not readily addressed. They should not be allowed to swear at anyone or call others names.
Annoyance number 16. Readily accepting his apologies and feel like such a spineless fool for doing so.
Annoyance number 17. Resident tornado will not leave the cats alone and keep knocking on my door annoying me!
Annoyance 18. Knowing that you now know that I am not the patient virtuous person people like to think I am.
Annoyance 19. Knowing that given an hour or two to reflect upon my current feelings, I will discover that they have abated somewhat and that I will come back in here and delete all of this because I will not want you thinking badly of me.
Annoyance number 20. That number 19 is incredibly accurate and probably the most articulate I have been all evening!
Annoyance 21. That none of the aforementioned will ever change!
Annoyance 22. "That I am too scared to simply write F#*k, F#*k, F#*k and simply be done with it. Why? I do not know.
Laterz

Monday 26th May
It has been raining cats and dogs again. And speaking of dogs, went around to a friend's house tonight and they nearly lost their dog today from a, get this, calcium deficiency. I have never heard of a dog nearly dying from that, but they were saying that the vet said that if they hadn't got the dog there when they did that she would have died. Apparently the dog was really sick and partially paralysed when they took her to the vet, but she recovered really fast once treated and was most certainly a box of fluffies tonight.
Now they have to feed her pups every three hours because the mummy dog is not allowed to feed them any more or else she will go downhill very fast again.
We spent some time scooting around in YouTube and just before I went over there I had posted a new video, which I will post in here when I am done, but I discovered that Eddie had posted the same song...but he posted the live version, whereas I posted the studio one.
My friend said my one is better, but he was probably just being nice because he saw the version that Eddie posted too and he said it was quite good for a live performance. When I went to check on how my one was doing it had gone through the roof, but apparently Alex tagged it to his V-log so it is kind of hitchin a ride with his for the moment. It was good of him to do that though because he has like 2000 subscribers or so and I only have about 191. I thought I was doing real good until I saw how many he has! His channel is doing really well also but then again he posts some really awesome videos.
So, if you have been reading my blog for at least the last year, you will remember the death of the Kahui twins. If not, let me refresh your memory or bring you up to speed.
In 2006 two identical three month old twins were admitted to the Starship (that's a children's hospital here in Auckland and yes, it is called the Starship). They had mutiple fractures and serious head injuries. They both died from their injuries about twelve hours apart.
For a long nine months, maybe even longer, the police made no arrests because the family refused to co-operate with the investigation. But in the end they arrested the father, Chris Kahui, and they charged him with the murders of his three month old twin sons, Kris and Kru.
Just last week after a six week trial, the jury took ten minutes to find him innocent and that was that. The police said that as far as they are concerned the case is closed and that they will not be re-opening it. But it sounds like our Prime Minister, Helen Clark, is not happy about that and may in fact be going to wade into the fray and demand that the case be re-opened and reinvestigated.
I also read another article about how the baby's do not even have a headstone at their grave, no fresh flowers and no new memorial trinkets. The paper reported that the grave has been untouched for months. Someone else commented that, but for a death certificate, there is literally nothing to indicate that the two little babies ever lived at all.
Their deaths were brutal and their short little lives were clearly filled with much pain and suffering right from the start, as there was evidence that the babies had sustained earlier injuries than what they initially presented to the Starship with, and they were only three months old then, so think on that for a moment.
Also, their head injuries and leg fractures were consistent with having been swung by their feet and their heads coming to a sudden stop against a wall or floor.
In a so-called humane society we have to ask ourselves how it is that two little babies, identical twins, can be brutally abused and then murdered and no one is held accountable for it. No one.
How does that happen?
I guess that, essentially anyway, we are a terrible breed of living organism. Animals do not abuse their young. Yes they might abandon them, but they do not make sport of them. They do not beat one of their own up while the rest of their kind stands on the sidelines cheering. Even if they did you could excuse it as they do not possess the power to reason, but humans supposedly do and yet look at what we do to each other and the most vulnerable amongst us.
And another thing, seeing as how I am on a roll, I was watching a whole bunch of videos this morning on the Israel/Palestine situation and I have to say that the Israelis are absolutely brutal in their treatment of the Palestinians. Even in their treatment against the Lebanese during the skirmish last year, or was it the year before? The years go so fast that I can hardly keep up some days.
Some statistics for you:
1. During Fiscal Year 2007, the U.S. gave more than $6.8 million per day to Israel and $0.3 million per day to the Palestinians.
2. Israel has been targeted by at least 65 UN resolutions and the Palestinians have been targeted by none.
3. One Israeli is being held prisoner by Palestinians, while 10,756 Palestinians are currently imprisoned by Israel.
4. Zero Israeli homes have been demolished by Palestinians and 18,147 Palestinian homes have been demolished by Israel since 1967.
5. The Israeli unemployment rate is 9%, while the Palestinian unemployment is estimated at 40%.
6. Israel currently has 223 Jewish-only settlements and ‘outposts’ built on confiscated Palestinian land. Palestinians do not have any settlements on Israeli land.

I found those facts and figures interesting and they did cause me to wonder about my notions in regard to Israel. Just about every leader Israel has had since it was made a nation on the 14th day of May in 1948, has been nothing better than a godfather, Don Corleone, Mafia type man with a persona to match. David Ben Gurion, the first Prime Minister of Israel, did not think that Palestinians had any collective rights whatsoever, such as the right of self-determination. He did not believe that they had any sense of nationalism, therefore, they could be ignored. Sometimes he argued that even if Palestinian nationalism did exist, that it could be bought or bribed. Ben-Gurion felt guilty for what happened during the holocaust (as Menachem Begin did), and in a way also felt responsible. It agonized him that Jews could be led to the gas chambers without fighting back. This fact drastically changed him, and as a result he became cruel, insensitive, inflexible, undiplomatic, and quick to use force to send a message, especially to the neighboring Arab states. While self-restraint had been his motto during the First Palestinian Intifada between 1936-1939, he now became the complete opposite. Ben-Gurion was the primary force behind the collective dispossession and ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people during the 1948 war.
Moshe Sharett was probably the only leader in the history of Israel who did not participate in ethnic cleansing and actually refused to behave toward the Palestinians in that way. Sharett was one of the few in the Middle East to recognized that terror and counter terror between Palestinians and Israelis is an endless cycle of violence, which (as he predicted) if not controlled would become a way of life. His political and diplomatic wisdom was always portrayed by the Israeli mainstream as "weak & cowardly".
Levi Eshkol continued on with the policies of David Ben Gurion in regard to the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from Israel.
Golda Meir did not even think of the Palestinians as humans and this was a fact he held as a matter of public record. He too continued the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from Israel.
Yitzhak Rabin Munich Olympics, not what happened, that was an absolute tragedy. What occurred after to the people who took the hostages. This was one of the first almost open cases of the Israeli Mossad operating on foreign soil under the direct orders of Yitzhak. Terrorism, but it was not called that because it was the Israelis performing the terrorism both on domestic soil against the Palestinians and one foreign soil. The Deir Yassin massacre is a classic example of this Don Corleone mindset. Under the leadership of Yitzhak, Menachim Begin entered the peaceful Arab village of Deir Yassin, massacred 250 men, women, children and the elderly, and stuffed many of the bodies down wells. There were also reports of rapes and mutilations. The Irgun was joined by the Jewish terrorist group, the Stern Gang, led by Yitzhak Shamir, who subsequently succeeded Begin (who was a real sweetheart in his own right!) as prime minister of Israel in the early '80s, and also by the Haganah, the militia under the control of David Ben Gurian. The Irgun, the Stern Gang and the Haganah later joined to form the Israeli Defense Force. Their tactics have not changed.
Menachem Begin was born in BrestLitovsk in 1913. He wrote the original book on terrorism and was involved in many false flag operations, which also required the slaughter of many innocents along the way.
In 1940, Begin was imprisoned in Siberian labor camps by Josef Stalin's NKVD (a forerunner of the KGB). After the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941, he was set free by dint of his Polish citizenship, and joined the Free Polish Army, which in 1943 made its way to Britishcontrolled Palestine for training. Contacting the dormant Jewish underground, Irgun Zvai Leumi, Begin set about planning a Jewish uprising against the British authorities. This began in 1944, but increased in pace and scope immediately after World War II and continued until late 1947. Begin ordered many of the Irgun's operations, including the Akko prison breakout and the destruction of the central British administrative offices in the King David Hotel. Following the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948, Begin disbanded the Irgun.
In 1977 Begin was elected Prime Minister of Israel and he served in that capacity until 1983.
I could go into all the other leaders but they are recent enough that you would be well aware of their penchants for terrorism of the Palestinian people, their policy of ethnic cleansing and their fascinating ability to blame other so-called "terrorist Arab groups" (and no the Arab groups are not all innocent either) and stunning luck to have all other nations of the world, aside from some of the Arab nations, believe them. And those Arab nations who called a spade a spade have been labelled "Islamic terrorist nations". The absurdity of this line of thought is evident when you see the orators of modern history placing Shiite and Sunnis together as brothers fighting shoulder to shoulder against Israel. Even though there is a huge difference between a Shiite and a Sunni, the majority of the rest of the world is so uneducated on Eastern religions that they don't even know that there is a difference at all! (Asserting that Shiites and Sunnis would work together as one people is as ridiculous as saying that Hare Krishnas and Christians could convert a believer to their combined faith; point being that there could never be a combined faith that was a fusion between Hare Krishna and Christian beliefs). Study Shiites and Sunnis sometime and you will see what I mean.
(Do not for one moment start to call me an anti-semite or something. I am not. I have the utmost respect for people of Jewish descent. What happened to them during the Holocaust was vulger, wrong and totally evil, but it does not give them the right to perpetrate those same kinds of things upon the Palestinian people, and yet, the Israeli governement does and always has since its inception. Israel has absolutely every right to exist as a nation and no one should threaten that nation, or any other nation for that matter. But Israel does not have the right to make her nation through ethnic violence, littering the path behind her with the bodies of Palestinian men, women and children. They di not have the right to falsely accuse another nation of having said things that they did not actually say and then use it as leverage to get away with even more. Oddly enough, that was the very same tactic used by Hilter when he invaded all of those little European countries. He used ruses and intrigues and I am afraid that the Israeli government (and this in no way applies to the average Israeli citizen), with help from American spin doctors, uses the same tactic against, Iran, Lebanon, Syria and Palestine.
The Nazi's were hanged for the very same things and their arguement was the same as the arguement used by Israeli soldiers today, "We were just following orders." That excuse didn't wash then and it shouldn't wash now and yet, internationally speaking, it washes with most nations. IT IS WRONG!)
To continue our list there was then Yitzhak Shamir, Shimon Peres, Benjamin Netanyahu, Ehud Barak, Ariel Sharon (google "Sabra and Shatila massacres" sometime and see what you find) and the latest in this list of darlings, Ehud Olmert.
Yes this fine God-fearing nation has been led by a group of thugs since its inception bar one, Moshe Sharett, and look at what they called him, "spineless and a coward" because he would not continue on with the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians because he believed that there could be peace between the two people if both steered well away from violence. He was the only one with enough wisdom to see that violence begets violence and that if they did not stop the violence soon that it would be something that would forever mar the region and wouldn't you know it, he was right!
So my position has changed quite markedly toward Israel now. I used to view her as a poor, righteous nation being terrorised by everyone on all sides, but the facts of this matter seem to say something otherwise.
I do not advocate that anyone should respond to violence with violence, but that seems to be the way that we humans deal with a lot of confrontational issues isn't it? The few wise voices in the wilderness who advocate that they should be the side to stop first are drowned out by the rallying lies of the Elite minority who has an agenda all of their own.
A lot of Americans, New Zealanders, Canadians, Brits and Aussies (to name but a few) believe Iraq to be a nest infested with terrorists because they fight against the American forces in Iraq. But hang on a minute, what if Saddam had been the one to call America a nation that has weapons of mass destruction and who had used them before...like oh my gosh, that is actually true on both counts... but regardless, imagine if Saddam had given the UN the middle finger, just as George Bush did, and marched his troops along with, say some Iranians, onto American soil and started patrolling the streets, bombing buildings and, oh just for fun, handed George Bush to those Americans detractors (you Heathens you!) who don't like him so that they could hang him, record it and post it on YouTube, CNN and BBC, and then continued on to systematically starve the children to death, or blow them to bits, whichever got them first, rape the women and imprison a lot of the menfolk in places like, say Guantanamo or Abu Graib, where there is no such thing as a human rights violation, and then paid all of it's elite contracting firms to come into America and rebuild all that they had destroyed just so that they could make a profit from it.
Come on, how long would it have taken for Americans to start fighting back on their own soil? Would we have called them terrorists for defending themselves? Of course not. You're only called a terrorist for defending your wife, kids, land and country if you are of some kind of Arab descent.
Yes, I feel sorry for the average Iraqi and Palestinian. They have had a bloody terrible deal. They have had their homes destroyed, their land taken over and they are a dispossessed people who have had to watch their children being killed and their country being raped. To make it worse, history will write them off as terrorists who reaped what they sowed because let's face it, history is always written by the victors and neither the Palestinians nor the Iraqis are likely to ever come out on top with things the way that they are.
But are they terrorists for fighting back? In my book, no, absolutely not. You come to my house and try doing to my family and my home what you have done to the Palestinians and the Iraqis and just you see what you will be met with. Any red blooded human being with an ounce of humanity is going to defend what is his and fight, if necessary, to the bloody death to defend his mate and his young. Don't call them terrorists for doing exactly what you would do. And don't even go to the 9/11 tirade, it doesn't wash with me. That was a self-inflicted wound by a selfish evil elite who cares not for even their own kin and kith and will sell it out if they can get an extra dollar or another inch of gain in the pursuit of absolute power. And yes some splinter groups exist who are quite happy to resort to just about any kind of tactics to get what they want and I do not deny that these groups exist. But why do they exist. How did they come about? Are they like Menachim Begin who was so totally horrified by what happened to his own people that instead of making him feel compassion toward others it turned him mean? Is that how these other groups come to be, because the things in life that they experienced were so terrible that it turned them mean?
And what of the children of Iraq and Palestine? Will all that they have seen in their childhoods turn them into yet another mean generation? Sadly, I believe that it will.
A vast majority of mankind is essentially vulger and evil. Just look at what happens in the world and look at the disparity amongst the nations. I could go on, but I won't for I fear that I may cross from blog into tirade myself.
My final words for now, violence does beget violence and humans do it better than any other entity on this planet. Look at the Kahui twins and look in any national paper on any given day, someone has always been murdered by someone else, if not on an individual level, then en mass!
Laterz

"You Surround Me"
by
"David Huff"

Wednesday 28th May
Wow May has just passed so darn quickly I can hardly account for the days at all.
I babysat my friend's puppies today while they went out and did some things and then went home to sleep. I had the pups from about lunchtime today until around 9.30 tonight. They are so cute. They are Chihuahua Foxie cross and they are so cute. I fell in love with the little tiny one and he seemed to like me too. But perhaps I was not a choice, I was probably a lack of options...well he is only like three or four weeks old poor little sausage! He was so very cute though.
I love small animals. Any animals actually, big or small.
My cat Selphie is the boss of the pack here. She decides who can sleep on my waterbed and who cannot. She runs around the edges of it patrolling who can climb up and who can't. The other cats sit on the floor looking at her ever so pleadingly to let them sit up there too.
Selphie is also a le snack freak. Okay, that's not quite the truth, I am the le snack freak, but she always knows when I am having one and the first time I ever did I made a big mistake. I allowed her to lick the foil lid and then lick the container when I was finished. Now, every time I have one, she thinks that it is her God given right to have the lid and container at the end. I once let Forrest have the container at the end and Selphie waited until she thought I was not looking and she smacked him over for his trouble.
She knows the sound of le snacks too. When you pick them up or move the package, even just slightly, it makes a crinkly sound and she knows that sound well. She was asleep earlier and I thought I would see if I could eat the le snack while she slept. I didn't even get the darn thing out of the draw before her eyes were wide open and she had moved so that she was staring at me an inch away from my face. Then she started waving her paw in my direction...that means "give me some or else."
Anyway, the puppies have gone home, the cats and Newfs are asleep and the only one awake is me. That is because I fell asleep earlier tonight for about an hour.
Was listening to the Alex Jones show today and normally I don't mind it because it is really informative, but today he had this guy called Joe Rogan on it. He is a TV show host and comedian amongst other things. But I could not believe that Alex Jones humoured the guy on his show. Especially after some of the things that the guy said.
He was talking about sensory deprivation chambers being really good for you to basically trip out in. What it is is a pool with hot water in it and so much salt that your body floats. Apparently once in the darn thing, you pull the lid down and it is dark and sound proof. So, you lie in this hot water in a dark enclosed space where you can neither hear nor see anything. I would trip alright if I found myself in one of those. I couldn't think of anything more horrible.
In fact, Joe Rogan did not sound too different to Tom Cruise when he gets going. Totally obsessed with wacky things. Then he went on to espouse the virtues of Kundalini yoga...by that time I had heard about enough and turned it off. I could not believe that Alex Jones humoured that, especially seeing as how he professes to be a christian. Worse than that, Alex actually described himself as secular today, which I found odd. Now I do not know whether he is Christian or secular any more. Not that it matters terribly much in the big picture and I am most certainly not judging the guy. It is just that I used to think that I knew where he stood and where he was coming from. But now I am not sure, that is all.
Personally though, after hearing Joe Rogan talking, I am not too sure that there is much difference between Joe and a fruit loop.
Laterz

Friday 6th June
I have made two posts this month so far but I came in and deleted both.
Why?
Because I could.
Supposed to be going to Waiouru tomorrow. In fact, I should already be there but finances have conspired to make going a thing of dreams as opposed to any kind of realistic goal. We have every intention of going, but I warned Ashaan that we may not be able to make it.
The price of gas has certainly narrowed down the possibilities for long distance travel, but there was also Jonty's health to consider as well.
Temperatures down in Waiouru have been zero overnight and not much better during some of the days. If he gets too cold his asthma goes bezerk and chances are that in those temperatures we'd find ourselves at Taupo hospital as opposed to Waiouru Army Camp. Add to this the fact that we would not have gotten to spend any time with Ashaan because once the parade is over he has to go straight back to barracks to pack up and do all the admin paperwork for his transfer to Burnham on Sunday morning.
Anyway, as much as we are a little disappointed we are not sad and Ashaan knows that we will be thinking of him.
The weather up here in Papakura is still getting colder and colder.
I actually have some good news but I am almost too scared to share it because I am afraid that the second I do, everything will fall over and nothing will come of it. But if it all works out, then I will share it. It is nothing major in the grand scheme of everything, but for me, it is exciting and I look forward to the coming days, weeks and months.
I got paid the most excellent compliments and words of appreciation from someone and I was not sure how to respond. I waited like twelve hours to say anything back because I was so lost for words. Normally when I get e-mails I am pretty pronto with a response, but that one floored me...in a nice way and yet at the same time it was kind of scary. I kind of wondered if the person who sent the e-mail had clicked on the right name on his e-mail list...he did click on the right one, but it was just so unexpected.
Anyway, I am going to wander out of here (here being home) for a few hours and go have a coffee with a friend and indulge in some mindless chit chat and laughter...there's always laughter and everyone needs that.
Laterz

Saturday 7th June
I heard some 30 second snippets of music today...about twelve tracks in all I think. The music was incredible...absolutely incredible!
I have finally done something right...like something that matters really right. And yet and in having done that, I have really made a difference for someone else and that means more to me than anything else. Making a difference for someone else, may go some ways to making a difference for a whole lot of someone elses in the end. I sure hope so.
A cool thing is that few know that I have done it and there is something so enjoyable about being able to do something to help and yet few know. It is so contrary to the world's ideas and ideals about doing something good for someone else or making a difference and yet it is far more rewarding.
I am really excited about what the future might hold at the moment. More opportunities to help I hope. And it has absolutely nothing to do with money or accolades...neither are involved...it is all about a love for God and then having someone else who loves God actually maybe capturing a glimpse of the odd talents God gave me and maybe also what it is about me that He made special. Maybe it isn't even that.
The funny thing is that that person thinks that I have helped them and that is probably true, but he cannot know how much he has helped me maybe begin to see a purpose, a method to the madness that has been my life for so long...you know, the working out of why God made me as He did, what He thought He was doing. Perhaps it is just as well that God is the only one who possesses the blue prints that are me.
Life is so funny sometimes.
You really honestly cannot know what is around the corner and it is not always nasty surprises. Sometimes it is a joyful thing. I feel joyful, really joyful. I feel alive and vibrant and a part of the human race again. But most of all, I am glad for the opportunity to be a part of something which has the potential to make such a difference to so many other lives. And I get to do it through being a part what I love most doing.
It is easy to be me today and it is a good day to be me too.
laterz

"Show Them The Light"
by
"David And The Giants"

Friday 13th June
I have been so slack this month at blogging...well...whatever this really is.
You know, sometimes this is almost like a confessional, other days it is simply somewhere to dump the junk. And even more than that, it is kind of like a diary come place to share the good stuff too. And life has been good lately and I have felt really inspired about the future for the first time in a long time.
So inspired am I in fact that I have decided to honour my NYR, even though for the past two years I have totally flunked at following through on that decision.
The decision?
To submit one piece of writing to a publisher every month. I think I am ready to deal with the rejection now because last night I copied off three copies of Deceptive Cadence and I am submitting it to three publishers. So that really makes up for January, February and March. For April, May and June I may well submit Seasons Change.
I do not expect success in getting published, but I guess the process of trying might be fun. Rejection is not personal, it is all about money in that arena and I know it. The chances of me getting published are very small, especially in New Zealand, but hey, you do not know if you never try. Nothing ventured nothing gained. And besides all of that, I do not write under my own name anyway so it is not like anyone of those publishers will ever know it was me...chicken hearted I know, but hey, we all have our ways and that one is mine.
Heard from Wolf...very good. New baby is doing well and all have recovered quite nicely from the ordeal which is great to hear. He has a new job but one he is really enjoying, so that is good. He has also been writing and working on his shattered glass art. Wolf really is very talented and I hope his books get picked up by a publishing company sometime soon. He is a very good writer.
I am also a very good writer, but I lack some of the fundamentals when it comes to actual writing rules...I obey few of them and that may well be my downfall, but in saying that, my stories are good. I never aspired to being a well known writer, but that I love to write is true. But my first love has always been music and I do not think that that is something that will ever change.
Anyway, not much more to say except walk under as many ladders as you can today, smash a few mirrors, scream out "MacBeth" at your local playhouse and buy a lottery ticket...all the Friday the 13th bad luck nonsence is just that...stuff and nonsence!
Laterz

Saturday 14th June
There have been two murders in my area in the past week. Shocking. People doing things to others that costs lives...who do some people think they are? Why do they think that it is okay to just take what they want and to hurt people in the process?
One of the murders was a home invasion and they beat an 80 year old woman so bad that she died. The other was a liquor store hold up and even though the owner told them to take whatever they wanted, they shot the guy anyway.
So that is about it for now. Very boring I know.
laterz

Sunday 15th June
Last night my daughter went out with her friend to a nightclub and they joined up with a few of her friend's friends, so there was a group of them.
I got a call at three this morning on my cel to say that my daughter's friend had been hit in the face with a bottle in an unprovoked attack inside the nightclub. As a consequence she has ended up with thirteen stitches to her face and has a nasty black eye.
My daughter tried to protect her friend by stepping in between the attackers and pushing her friend out of the way, but the one who attacked her was really gunning for her and determined that she was going to do some kind of damage to her.
From what we have been able to ascertain, the attack was racial in nature. My daughter and her were almost the only Europeans in the place and the ones who attacked them were Islanders. Nothing had occured between them, no words and no kind of indication that anything was up, except that the Islander girls kept bumping into them on the dance floor...and it was on the fourth or fifth bump that my daughter's friend realised that these bumps were not accidental.
Thinking that they might be in harm's way, she took my daughter and they moved right away from the girls and that was when they were pursued and my daughter's friend was hit with a bottle. She was hit so hard that the bottle broke!
Again, what is wrong with people?
Why do they think that it is perfectly okay to pick on someone, for whatever reason? What kind of mentality tells one that it is okay to smash a bottle into the face of another ?
It is beyond me sometimes, truly it is.
Laterz

"When Mercy Found Me"
by
"David Huff"

Tuesday 17th June
I woke up this morning thinking about souls in distress. You know, people in distress. Not your average worrying about whether they should take that promotion and things like that, but real emotional and spiritual distress.
Often times when people are experiencing that sort of distress they are not actually aware that they even are, but the signs are all there. The real clues are in their behaviour and the way that they relate to others and more often than not, they themselves think that they are just fine.
I remember when I was nineteen I belonged to this reasonably sized church in a small town. By reasonably sized I mean that there were about two hundred congregation members and by small town I mean population of about 25'000.
Anyway there was this girl who went there and she was about a year older than me at the time. She had a young baby girl and she ended up marrying this guy who went to the church. Looked to be the great happy ending, but it wasn't, it was the start of a nightmare pretty much...for him and her.
Sophie (not her real name) came from a pretty bad background and by that I mean that life had dealt pretty harshly with her during her childhood and teen years. As a result she fell into more of the traps open just for girls like that than the average abused girl would fall into. Sophie got into drugs, alcohol, casual sex and life generally became a nightmare for her. When she came to the Lord most of those things righted themselves, but it is safe to say that the scars were still really evident and she was not free of a lot of what had happened to her. No one at the age of nineteen/twenty really is because you have just walked out of it and it does shadow you, to a certain extent, for years.
Sophie was no exception to this rule.
Anyway so she married Travis (not his real name). Travis came from a very stable background where very little, if anything at all, had really ever happened to him, so he didn't really see Sophie coming, in my opinion. He had no idea what he was dealing with and neither did his family.
They had chosen to more or less take the high ground idealism that because Sophie had come to the Lord that all her problems were over and her scars no longer existed and she was now miraculously an upstanding pure woman of God with no ghosts in her life whatsoever.
That was the way wrong conclusion for them to arrive at in this instance. Maybe that happens to some people, but it is not the case with most. Oftentimes it takes years to work through those kinds of issues and I would even say that for some people, even years later, it is still a work in progress between them and God. They do get better and they do heal but it is almost always never an instantaneous thing. Trust is often a huge issue with people like Sophie and I do not think that God would even just fix your trust radar overnight. I think He would gently lead you through learning to understand people and learning how to decide whether you should trust everyone you meet. God undertsands the heart and I believe that this would be a very gentle and slow process where He would surround you with those worthy of trust. I think the very last thing he would desire is to thrust you into a deep meaningful relationship such as marriage with a human being of the opposite sex who represents everything that has hurt you in the past. I just don't think God would do that straight away. God is terribly sensible and understands things so much more than we ever could and I just cannot see God desiring something like that for someone like Sophie so soon. It makes no sense at all to me.
That is just what I think and I might be wrong, but that is the way I have seen it play out with most people like Sophie.
But anyway, Sophie married Travis and within six months it was ugly and over.
At the time I didn't see it coming.
You see at that age, nineteen years old, I still believed in happy ever after. I was still of the mind that people who have been treated the way that Sophie had been treated deserved a happy ever after and that they would actually find one and I thought Sophie had. It took me a long time to discover that happy ever after only happens for "nice" girls, and let's be real here, neither Sophie nor myself could ever have been classed as "nice" girls.
By that I mean girls who have lived a reasonably stable life and have arrived to their twenties reasonably unscarred, their nice family standing behind them, having been in the curch all their lives etc. Nice girls are the ones who never fell into too many of the natural traps laid for teens. Maybe they might have fallen into one or two very temporarily, but basically they came good again pretty fast.
Girls who are not nice girls have very convoluted pasts, filled with things that they feel the need to hide, and yet they are the very things that should not be hidden because if people knew about them then they could be dealt with. But you see, people like Sophie and I had been judged all of our lives by people and at that stage of our lives, the last thing we wanted to do was invite more of the same.
Why did Sophie and Travis end up ugly and over?
Travis was bathing Sophie's baby girl one night and she walked into the bathroom as he was doing so and she thought she saw him doing something that was "questionable". She freaked out big time, took her baby and left him there and then.
Now, I knew Travis, having been on a couple of dates with him and he seemed a nice enough guy, but I am not so deluded as to sit here and say that I know for a fact that he didn't do anything to Sophie's baby. I do not know that to be fact and the truth of the matter is that it is possible. Child molesters do not come with name tags. There is nothing about them to indicate that there is anything different about them at all in comparison to other men. I am not being mean herre, it is just a fact. I was abused by three men in the church when I was a girl and two of them were elders, the most trusted and upstanding of all the men in the church, so yes, I think I am qualified to say that they do not come with signs and you can never really know who might do something like that and who would never. You just can't tell and usually never can until they are caught red handed.
So Travis may well have been doing something that he should not have been doing.
On the other hand, Sophie's radar was up. She was looking for it. Sophie did not trust men and just because she had come to the Lord, it did not mean that all her hurt, suspicions and mistrust of men had simply vanished. It was very foolhardy for them to have assumed that they had. For if they had assumed that Sophie was still suspicious of men, then Travis would never have been put in the position of bathing the baby thus placing him in a vulnerable situation that could very easily be read the entirely wrong way, and I am not saying that Sophie read it wrong. I am saying that I don't know either way.
End result?
Sophie ran around town telling everyone that Travis was a man who sexually abused children. Travis ran around town throwing Sophie's past in her face...saying that she was messed up in the head, a woman of illrepute so what did everyone expect etc....so much for her past having vanish overnight huh?
This went on for some time and camps were established.
There were two camps formed within the church and in general society. One camp supported Travis and the other supported Sophie. Needless to say, at that point in my life and in line with what I had experienced as a child, which was nowhere near to even being dealt with at all let alone having vanished, I supported Sophie. I did not support her to the point of total hatred of Travis, but it was simply easier for me to support Sophie.
Now I do not know how best to explain what happened next. I can only tell you what happened and perhaps a little of what I suspect happened.
The situation with Sophie and Travis was terrible. Sophie left the church and went to another, thinking she would be able to simply get on with her life in peace, but some church folks just cannot allow that to happen.
I do not remember exactly how long after Travis and Sophie split up that this next thing happened. I only know that it happened.
Someone, a man, had a dream which he passed off as a vision. By this I mean that he said that his dream was not in fact a dream but a vision from God.
Now let me say something here. I am very sceptical of people who say that they have had a vision from the Lord, especially when it is a vision that seeks to destroy someone else. His so-called vision was not something to uplift the people or to warn the people of something general. This vision seemed designed to destroy Sophie. It seemed, to all intents and purposes, designed to ensure that she would be ousted from any church in the area that she went to. It seemed designed to ensure that she would be viewed as and treated like a pariah and it was absolutely effective.
The vision.
This man stood up in church (I am telling this from memory so I might have forgotten some little part here or there) and said that he had dreamed that he was standing in a field and in the field was a beautiful fruit bearing tree. He was simply standing there staring at the beauty of it and suddenly a woman walked into the field. The woman walked over to the tree, touched it and it immediately wilted and died before his very eyes. He finished the explanation of his "vision" by saying that the woman in the dream was Sophie.
The explanation to me was that every Christian that Sophie came into contact with she would cause to spiritually die. Every church that Sophie went into she would spiritually destroy.
At the age of nineteen, I believed this man. He was upstanding and someone that I did trust. I believed what they said about Sophie and I am ashamed to say that I quit having anything to do with her too.
After that everyone was always nattering about Sophie and reporting her latest antics. Sophie fell back into drugs, sleeping around and other such charming behaviour and all everyone could say was, "See, what did we say?"
But hang on a minute.
With age and a little wisdom, why is it that I can see that they completely pulled the rug out from under Sophie? They used a vision to reject her after she accused a man of molesting her baby. Yes she may have been wrong about that. Or, alternatively, she may well have been right. But what gave everyone the right to pull the rug out from under her and reject her? No one tried to lovingly support her through that time. No one tested the so called vision of that man. No, they just threw Sophie out into the world with the wolves and let them have her!
Sophie ended up pregnant with twins and was taking so many drugs that one of the babies died inside her and the other only just survived. Further to this she ended up with multiple babies to many different guys.
Now I am not saying that that is the fault of the church. Sophie also made her choices.
My point is that Sophie was very vulnerable and I believe that she was not dealt with fairly or appropriately and the end resault is that she was lost to everything that should have saved her. I saw people who should have known better deal to her in a most unbecoming way. Most certainly I cannot see that God would have looked upon what happened to her with a smile on his face.
The last time I saw Sophie, which was around eleven years ago, she was still floundering around trying to find meaning in her life...taking drugs, having babies to goodness knows who and desperately trying to swim against the tide of the world that daily generally threatens to drown her.
I do not know why I woke up with Sophie on my mind nor why I felt compelled to write about this today.
I just did.
Laterz

"My Song Of Praise"
by
"David Huff"

Sunday 22nd June
Wow I have been really very slack at writing anything this month and yet some months you simply cannot shut me up!
Well, I didn't post those three manuscripts, not because I didn't want to. I simply didn't get around to it, but they're still good to go.
I got accused of being a Nazi sympathiser today by someone in YouTube today. Can you believe that? The reason why is because someone else posted a comment on there saying that the Jews let the Romans crucify Jesus and I didn't say anything.
The reason I did not say anything is because it was a comment that was not meant to be malicious. Some people are of that opinion and it is simply an uneducated benign assumption that they have. I say benign in this instance because I checked out the profile and videos of the guy who said it. He is young and loves music and he had absolutely no content whatsoever that had anything to do with Jews, Germans, Christ or any of it.
You see, you have to pick your battles wisely. Now, if he had added to that comment and said something blatantly racist or anti-semitic, I would definitely have jumped on it, but he didn't.
Someone else asserted that I should have jumped on it anyway and he said that me letting it go said volumes about the sort of person that I am.
Why didn't I jump on the comment?
Because, in part, it is true. Both Gentiles and Jews stood back and allowed Christ to be crucified. When asked who they wanted to free, Barabus or Jesus, the entire crowd of people, both Gentiles and JEws said Barabus. I corrected the fact that he had left the Gentiles out of the equation, but that is all.
Note to self: Toasted sandwiches hold their heat way longer than ten minutes after having been removed from the toasty machine!
Just burned my mouth...clever me!
Okay now I think it was really unfair of that guy to accuse me of being a Nazi sympathiser.
On a simple level, and there are many levels from which to scrutinise his assertion, it is outrageous and down right revolting. On a more complex level, how the heck does one jump to that conclusion from such a silly matter if one does not have their antenna up looking for it?
This is the same guy who asserts that the bible is fiction, Jesus a man of myth and Christianity in general the cause of child slavery, brain washing and a whole host of other things that escape my memory at this moment in time. He has also asserted that nuns and priests are all sadomasochistic people who derive pleasure from the suffering of others...and to be certain, as far as the last feew hundred years go, some nuns and priests go, he might just have a point, but they are not all like that. Most of them are not.
I find it interesting how people can assume so much from one little thing that has relatively little to do with them anyway. In that the person denies that Christ was even real to begin with, why take issue over something to do with it in which a prerequisite for being concerned about it would necessitate a belief in the subject matter to begin with in order that it offend?
Crazy, crazy world we live in.
Laterz

Monday 23rd June
I was thinking about that person in YouTube from yesterday. He asserted that my contention that the people said to free Barabus was entirely fictitional and added to the story some years after the actual event occured. His contention is that there was no way, back in those days, that the people would have stood by and allowed the Romans to free a man who had killed Roman citizens.
He might be right on that count, except for one tiny little detail.
Jesus.
Okay so Jesus was not tiny and so the detail is actually rather large and important, but it was simply a figure of speech.
Think about why Jesus came.
He came to set people free. He came to free the people from all kinds of things up to and including religious oppression, or the oppression forced upon people by the rigidity of the church or religious establishment of the day.
Where did that oppression come from? Which direction? The religious establishment and the Scribes and Pharisees upon the people. Before Jesus came, the people had no way to exert any authority upon the church, religious establishment nor the people contained within it. They were completely at its mercy.
What kind of dependency did the people of the day have upon the church? It was the crux of their existence. It always had been.
But even bigger than that, what dependency did the religious establishment have upon the people? Way more than the people ever had upon it.
Now, think about what Jesus was there to do, aside from healing people and spreading the word of God.
He was there to establish a new covenant...in that the people would no longer have to go to the priests inside the temples giving the church gifts and money to get the priests to approach God for them. No, Jesus said that they could go to God through him. And how much was this going to cost people?
Six sheep, three cows, ten chickens and seventy five sheckles of gold?
No.
It was going to cost them nothing.
Jesus was free.
A free ticket to approach God in the name of Jesus.
No cost.
What did it cost to go to the temple and get the priests to intercede with God on their behalf?
A lot.
Probably way more than the aforementioned sheep, cows, chicken and gold.
The church, religious establishment did not keep the people, as such. The people kept the church...the religious establishment. Without the people and their huge contributions, which were not a choice but a lack of options, the church/religious establishment would have been no more.
Think about this a little.
Imagine your own local church.
What would happen if everyone withdrew from it?
The church would fold and be no more.
Whether we like to acknowledge this or not, the church exists at the will of God and the people. If God decides to lead the people away from your church, then it be all over Rover.
Now, think about the religious establishment back in those days. Think about the priests. Think about the leaders dependency upon the priests. That is how they exerted a lot of their control; in the name of God and through the priests. They based their wars and most of their other activity in line with what the priests said or advised in relation to whether the priests would advocate that their actions were in line with God's will or not. Oftentimes, Generals or high Roman officials would pay the church a princely sum in order that the priests speak in favour of whatever it was that they intended to do. Very Mickey Mouse, but essentially true. That is how it worked!
What might have happened to the religious establishment if all men had accepted the message of Jesus Christ? What might have happened to the Roman strongholds if there were no preists left to "advise" them of God's will? How would they be able to maintain their strangle-hold on the citizens?
What actually happened anyway as many people accepted His message?
That is right, the church coffers started to empty and the priests started to lose out big time because more people decided that they did not need to go to them because they could now go to God through Jesus Christ and it was free. Their so called, "line" to God was in danger of holding no merit and thus the Roman leaders stood a very great chance of being overthrown, for without the support of the people, be it by choice or fear, how can leaders rule?
Now take your mind back to Barabus and Jesus standing there on the podium. Think about the choice placed before the people in the crowd. Think about who would have been in the crowd. Poor people? The ones that Jesus came for? I doubt it. To have been in the midst of the great Pontius Pilot, I should imagine that the people would have been people of influence.
But even if they weren't, poor people or people and influence had everything to lose personally by freeing Jesus and absolutely nothing to gain, in a manner of speaking...in human terms. Poor people may well have lost their lives for speaking out in favour of freeing Jesus and they knew it. Influential people would have lost their influence, amongst other things for daring to swerve away from the status quo...the church/religious establishment.
Think about what might have motivated those in the crowd.
People feared the priests and people feared the Roman leaders. Even if they had wanted to shout out to free Jesus, do you honestly think that anyone would have felt compelled to raise their hand anyway in defence of a man that they were all well aware that the church/religious establishment viewed as a viable threat to their very existence? Do you think that the people in that crowd wanted to risk the wrath of the church/religious establishment coming down upon their heads?
Why would that have come down upon their heads?
Jesus was the antithesis of everything that the church/religious establishment stood for. To call for his freedom in that place would have been to openly admit to not supporting the church/religious establishment, and whether you want to acknowledge this or not, they ruled the world...in a manner of speaking.
Jesus, the one who could cripple the church/religious establishment?
Barrabus who murdered a few Roman citizens?
I think it is easy to see who they would have opted for, given their understandings of truth and consequences.
Knowing what the church/religious establishment could have done to you for openly showing that you were against them by asking for Jesus to be freed, knowing that they would most likely take everything you owned and murder your entire family to make an example of you or worse, what would you have called out if you had been standing in that crowd?
The Romans were barbarians. Their cruelty knew no bounds. The church/religious establishment ruled supreme and had for years. The church had the power to bestow upon you any name that they wished to. They could use the name of God to accuse you of things that you had never even thought of let alone actually done, and they did.
Whose name would you have called out?
Barabus or Jesus?
This leads me to my conclusion, which I am sure you are relieved to note that I am approaching.
The contention of the YouTube user that Barabus was in fact added to the story of Jesus later and that there is no way that the people of the day would have set him free anyway because he had murdered Roman citizens, is unfounded. Having taken an in depth look at what MAY have happened, (and I say "may" because I was not there and neither were you, so we can only guess), in my humble opinion, makes that YouTuber's assertions more of an unlikelihood.
Think about this again and honestly answer this question; accepting that everything that I have written about that situation, to an extent, may well have been how it all went down and knowing the risks, the truth and the consequences, whose name would you have called out?
Jesus or Barabus?
Knowing that you would have been tortured to death, not mercifully simply just killed and their methods of torture were quite exquisite, pardon the use of that word in this context, but they were pretty terrible.
Disembowelment, ripping out of fingernails, cutting off of nose and lips, blinding, crushing of sexual organs and exposure to other certain things that are so terrible that I will not even write them (oh how mankind has always been well versed in how to be beastly to each other, especially using the name of God). Knowing that the priests and high officials would have deemed your torture as necessary, as a sort of purification from your sin...to make you recant...to purge your soul of so called devilish ideals and ideas so that you could enter into heaven and not be lost to all of eternity, according to their own superstitions that had actually little or nothing to do with God. Knowing all of this, whose name would you have called?
Jesus or Barabus?
And seeing as how I have extended this question to you I will have the good decency to answer it myself.
I like to think that I would have called out the name of Jesus because it is very easy to sit here now and for me to be piously sure of my faith and love for Jesus Christ to the point of torture and death. I have never been faced with that situation and so how can I know for absolute sure that I would have stood up for Jesus? In my pie in the sky, all things being equal, level playing field kind of way, I would have.
But in quite unadulterated honesty, and in thinking about just how barbaric they would have been back then. Knowing that it would have cost me my life and the life of my entire family and being that I fear pain intensley, especially anything that remotely resembles torture and knowing that I would have been standing alone with absolutely no support from anyone else, in all honesty, as terrible as this truth is, I know that I would have called out the name of Barabus.

laterz

Saturday 28th June
If you can count on more than one hand the times that someone has stood up for you against others, then you are doing way better than I.
I can actually count the number of times that others have done this for me and let me tell you, I do not even need the entirety of the digits on one hand to do so. Amazing don't you think?
I think so.
Why?
Not sure.
Part of me knows how very hard it can be to stand up to someone else and say, "No, you're wrong."
It can be a demanding and strenuous thing to have to swim against the tide of popular belief in regard to someone else. But when someone is determined to undermine someone else, it can be a pretty tough thing to stand up to. Not because you cannot prove that they are wrong, but for the fact that you find yourself in that position in the first place. Never mind the subject itself.
I take my figurative hat off to people who stand up for others, especially when it is the harder road to choose.
There are many reasons why one person sets out to undermine another. Jealousy, avarice, malice and sometimes there is no logical explanation for it at all. The worst of it is that sometimes the undermining of someone else comes so easily that little proof is need to back up the claims.
Sometimes it is simply easier to believe the worst in people.
When I was a kid, I never used to argue with anyone. I would just put my hand up and plead guilty. Whether I was guilty or not did not even feature because I knew that I was found guilty and sentenced without any plea on my behalf. Didn't matter what I said, I was always deemed guilty, so it was just easier to skip all the stressful trying to prove myself innocent and jump straight to agreeing with their assessment of me. I'd spend the next week trying to win back favour again and just hope everyone would forget about it until the next time.
But I always knew that it didn't matter what I said or did.
I always knew that.
I was ever aware that those things were completely out of the bounds of my control.
The first time it ever happened to me, that I can cognitively recollect was when I was five. I had been at school for about seven months or so at this time.
A bottle of perfume went missing off my teacher's desk. No one knew who had taken it, but she went balmy about it, yelling and carrying on. The next day I was hauled to the front of the class. My teacher stood me there and then asked the rest of the class if they knew what they do with thiefs?
I was a little scared and wondering why in the world hse was speaking about that in relation to me.
One kids offered up the fact that they cut of thief's hand as an answer to the question that my treacher had posed.
I do not recollect exactly how the next few seconds played out, but my teacher asserted that my ilder sister had told her that she saw me stealing it off her desk the day before.
Now, as I stand here before God, I can say in all good conscience that I never touched her perfume. Now, had it have been an apple or a biscuit...any kind of food really, she may have had a case, but I would never steal perfume. I had no interest in it as a child and what is more, I probably didn't even know what it was. I most certainly can say that I had no idea what her perfume looked like or smelled like.
I was stunned and didn't know what to say. But I didn't get a chance to say anything anywa.
The teacher pulled out her ink pad and got a piece of paper. In front of the whole class she pressed each of my fingers to the stamp pad and then pressed my finger print onto the piece of paper. As she did this, she expl;ained to the other kids who were watching that she was going to take my finger prints to the police and that they would compare them to the prints on her perfume bottle (when it was found) and it would prove that I was the thief.
I stood there staring at the other kids feeling so embarrassed and scared. I knew that there was no way that the police could match my finger prints to her perfume bottle because I had never seen it let alone touched it. But still, I was afraid of what the police might do to me and I knew that all the kids hated me anyway without that day's events.
I also knew that the teacher believed my older sister. She was good act. She always has been and I knew that they believed her and that made me even more scared.
You'd think that that display in the classroom would have been enough, right?
You'd be wrong.
That lunchtime the teacher packed me up in her car and drove me to the house where my mother lived. Mother was out. The teacher forced me to climb in an open window and pass her a bottle of perfume off my mother's dresser to give her, and so I did.
That was terrifying.
Firstly because I was absolutely forbidden to ever go into my mother's room let alone touch her things and there I was handing a bottle of her perfume to my teacher.
My older sister was very pleased with herself because not only had she gotten me into trouble but I became the pariah of the school for good. I got called flea bag and thief and goodness only knows what other names from the other kids. Some kids beat me up and some kids chased me on the way home from school to beat me up. When I got home, I had my siblings and their mother who also picked on me mercilessly. And you know what?
No one person ever stood up and said that it was NOT okay for them to do those things to me. The teachers didn't stop the kids at school. Kid's parents didn't stop their kids doing that stuff to me and no one stopped the teachers.
Do you know what iot is like to be absolutely hated and loathed and hurt by absolutely every single person in your life? Do you know what that is like? I knew what it was like and that is why I find it so offensive to be accused of things that I did not do or am not doing. Not only is it wrong, but it brings back terrible memories for me.
When I was a little girl, there was nowhere I could go to escape those things and there was no one I could go to. My mother did it to me, my siblings did it to me at home. The teachers at school did it to me and so did the kids at school.
The only safe place I had was in the local graveyard and the reason I was safe there was because all the kids were too scared to go in there. I would go in there and hide.
So, I get really upset when I get accused of something. I feel the need to defend myself, but as for the accuser, I become so disgusted by them and feel so disempowered that I have nothing to say to them. Not a word. I feel so afraid that others will believe my accuser and I feel almost powerless to be able to prove myself innocent.
It is a horrible thing when someone trys to undermine you in the opinion of others with things that simply are not true.
Laterz

Sunday 29th June
I am not a person who likes to be in the middle...of anything really, but I woke up today and I realised that I am firmly in the middle of something that I never realised.
I am the daughter of Baby Boomers and the mother of children who comprise Generation Y (aka the Millenials), which makes me, of course, a member of Generation X.
Interesting.
What defines Baby Boomers?
They were born between 1946 and 1964, according to some stats. The oldest wave of the Baby Boomers is currently considering retirement options and looking at ways to make their elder years meaningful. The youngest group of Baby Boomers are managing the Millennialsand Generation-X groups of employees - and in some cases, being managed by them. Pretty much these people were born post-war and lived through many of the more interesting phases of modern history such as...Elvis, the assassination of John Kennedy, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy. They witness man supposedly walking on the moon, sputnik, Woostock, Manson, the Hippy movement, Women's Lib, the Cuban missile crisis, the false doctrine of Secret Rapture and the build up to potential word wide nuclear war, to name but a few things.
All of the things that the Baby Boomers witnessed affected their perspectives on life and their choices. Of course, how ere they to know that some of them would go on to be the parents or grandparents of the worse generation that ever lived, Generation X.
Generation X was born between 1965 and 1982.
I am a member of Generation X, according to the stats.
Here is an interesting fact: some parents and their children managed to be born as part of the same generation. For example, my older sister and brother are a part of the Baby Boomer Generation along with their parents, who are also members of the Baby Boomer Generation. However, myself and my younger sister are definite members of Generation X.
None of my children are born in the same Generation as I. All of my children are members of Generation Y, which I will get to in a little while.
What defines Generation X?
Hmm, I had to think about this for a while. But if I had to nail it down it would be the following: the possibility of worldwide nuclear war, going from glass milkbottles to plastic, the withdrawing of door to door milk delivery, flare jeans, the Bee Gees, Michael Jackson, Donny Osmond, being able to buy anything under a dollar, getting money back on fizzy bottles, Space Invaders, legalised abortion, test tube babies, disco, roller disco, punk, reggae, techno, designer drugs, victims of the perpetrating of the Secret Rapture doctrine, divorce, single parent families, working mums, latchkey kids, televised war and the very first few seconds of the dawning of the computer age...to name but a few. But to nail down a number, there's 51 million of us world wide...out of 6 billion people, that's not very many is it?
What defines Generation Y?
Generation Y are not individuals as were their predecessors...they are Global Citizens and they are the most tech savvy generation of them all. They have i-Pods, cel phones, computers, laptops and can pretty much do almost anything at all with any gadget that you may care to hand to them. It is like they were born in some kind of evolved state! Not that I believe in evolution, I do not. If you cut off the ears of an entire generation, their offspring will still continue to be born with ears. But there is something decidedly different about Generation Y, these so called Millenials. They are no smarter than Generation Xers and they most certainly seem to mature at a much slower rate. They are defined by the "see, want, must have ideal and their world is very temporary and throw-away. Every new experience must be greater than the last or else it is not worth undertaking. Technology has seen the loss of many things from Generation Xers, but these Millenials have lost even more. No longer must they be able to write literally or correctly, fancy machines fix all their spelling and grammar mistakes in the same way as Therapists fix all the injuries pressed upon them by their Generation Xer parents. They are not allowed to be spanked and their self-esteem in all things must be upheld all the time to the highest standards even if some of them are total rat bags! They are subject to propaganda that feeds strife, and war in other places is normal. Weapons of mass destruction and terrorists are the biggest threats to their collective.
I don't really know what I think of all of this. Maybe there is some truth to all of it.
Laterz

Tuesday 1st July

These lyrics were written by Phil Collins and were indicative of a personal relationship that came to grief. For some reason, every time I hear this song, it reminds me of the day I went to see the woman who gave birth to me. It reminds me of the time when I stood on her porch and she looked me straight in the eye as she denied even being my mother. It came to mind today, not sure why.

There is never a time to say
'Cos it seems to me we've lost our way
So we carry on down the road
And we live our lives haunted by
All the things we say and do
Keep on missing when I'm alone with you

No there's never a time to change
You don't get a chance to re-arrange
It's a long long long way to go
Just to find out something we both know
Can't you see what's going on
Its so sad that a love so strong has gone

All I know is what is true
All I ask is for you
To just look around and see

You live your life locked in a dream
Where nothing is real
and not what it seems
We can't go on another day
Just being afraid to say

It's a long long way to fall
When we both thought we had it all
Well you know it's the time to say
'Cos we're all played out, we've lost our way
Oh I hoped that you would be
oh so understanding
And by now you'd see, but oh no
So sad, oh so sad
that's the way that it goes
I know
I'm gonna tell you right now

Thursday 3rd July

A thought occured to me today after having read something that a friend said to me. He reminded me of that proverb that goes, "The love of money is the root of all evil". God sure knew what He was speaking about when He laid that on the writer's heart. It is so true.
Look around the world at the things that are happening. The illegal arms trade, the blood diamond trade, third world hunger and many other atrocities that happen. If you look at what is behind them, it is a love of money.
Some would espouse that it is a love of power, but the precursor to a fulfilling of the lust for power has to be money, for without money, you can garner no power. Money makes the world go around.
Pesos, Rubles, Dollars, Pounds, Euro, Deutsche Mark, Rial, Sheqel, Dinar, Riyal or Yen, it is all the same...those names are irrelevant, it is what they represent...a value...a monetary value...that is what makes this world go around.
It is those very things...the number of them that you possess that is the deciding factor in almost everything that you do. Absolutely everything that you do is dictated by how many of those you happen to possess. Does that not make your head spin a little? And here are we, simply ordinary folk, the cannon fodder. The elites, they possess many of the aforementioned currencies, mostly admittedly the Euro, Riyal, Deutche Mark, Sheqel, Dollars and Yen. The other currencies have their place but those six are six of the main contenders in the world today.
Do you know why hunger exists in Africa?
Think about it. Why does it still exist?
Is it because the cannon fodder, that would be you and I, are not donating enough to fix the problem? Or is it because some countries are too busy taking care of business to care? By taking care of business I mean trying to make nuclear bombs or sending probes to Mars to take pictures of some place that may or may not exist?
What is more important?
Taking photos of Mars and making a nuclear bomb or feeding starving people and preventing curable diseases from killing them?
You know, there are some truly evil vile people walking our planet, their hearts are cold and their conscience numb. They are drunk on the power that their almighty god their personal or collective wealth affords them. People in Africa, those people hardly view them as even human any more. To them they are simply a mass of expendable laboratory rats. Nameless, faceless cast-offs that they believe no one else cares about anyway. When evil men set out to do evil things, nothing can stop them. Good men who stand up against them are crushed underfoot like bugs...evil men...their wealth is immense and their reach endless and their ability to keep doing what it is that they do unstoppable. Even when exposed, oftentimes the truth is so ugly that few can even allow it to penetrate their minds as having any basis whatsoever in reality, such is the terror of the images that the truth conjures up.
When it is said "that the heart of a man is deceitful but above all desperately wicked", they weren't playing around. We were all created with free will. There is a beautiful side to us and there is the potential for an ugly side. If the ugly side gets to overrule the beautiful side, then look out anyone who is unfortunate enough to get in the way.
Every single problem under God's sun is manmade. We did it all. This place, this world...it should have been able to sustain us all. It was designed so that there would be enough for everyone to eat, enough raw materials for us to make all of the things that we might need. God created it beautiful and he created it good. He even created animals for us to admire, to have dominion over...to make pets of...and look at what we have done. As a collective, as the human race...we are so cruel, so vicious...so selfish. We destroy almost everything that we touch, even each other. What hope can we have but that which we have been fortunate enough to have been given through Christ. For without Christ, what redemption would there be from all that we have become?

laterz

Friday 4th July

It has been so cold today that it has been unreal. We had the most massive and yet beautiful hail storm which I recorded to video and will use for something eventually.
Having a digital camera that can video is almost like having a pair of scissors with you constantly. You know how sometimes when you are in a waiting room... doctors or maybe dentist... and you see a magazine and you flip through it and see something you really like?
I know that many times in the past, although not recently, I would sit there and slowly rip the picture out of the magazine...in such a way so as not to draw attention to myself. I would rip it slowly...by the milimetre and each tiny tear was so faint that it could not be heard. Then I'd finally get the picture out of the magazine, fold it up (thus wrecking it anyway) and put it in my pocket.
Well having a digital camera is kind of like that. I film all kinds of things all the time and then I tuck them away in my laptop for "just in case".
Truth be known, for a very long time, if I want something out of a magazine these days in a waiting room, I always ask and they always say yes... but then again, it has been a while since I saw something in a magazine that I wanted.
By a while I mean years... literally.
I am not really a magazine reader as such... unless it is Readers Digest or National Geographic and Times. Although Times does not really appeal to me all that much... one decade they've got pictures of the man of the year on the cover, usually a tyrant and the very next decade they feature pictures of his hanging!
Moral of story?
Do not ever accept a "Man of the Year" award because sure as eggs the very next decade will see you on the cover once again but this time fanning the breeze from the end of a piece of rope! Which just goes to show that there really isn't such a thing as a free lunch. Man of the Year may well equal fish biting worm attached to hook!
But we live in a world of "just in case" don't we?
Have you noticed that?
Has it come to your attention just how fleeting things last in this word... love, nations, tyrants and other people? It is really quite sad.
I have often referred to this generation, meaning you and I and all of those born since us, as the "throw away" generation... and we are. Look how fast technology outdates technology. No sooner do you get that new laptop or computer to your car and it is time to get an update. I notice that with software too... although I guess that is to be expected and works much the same as books do.
I personally have a great laptop, but the screen is kind of small. I dream of a seveteen inch or even twenty inch screen laptop, but one works with what they have and remains happy for even that.
But we do live in the "throw away" generation. A lot of the arts from the last generation have been lost. When I say arts I mean things that are useful to know. Not things such as a Smith And Wesson beating four aces or a 300 dollar picture tube blowing first in order to protect a 3 cent fuse, athough I cannot deny that information like that does sometimes have its place.
I mean things such as preserving memories in scrap books and diaries... writing and things like that. Preserving of food... how many people do you know under fifty years of age who are not Amish, that know how to do that?
I remember the Satruday afternoons in the summer when one of my foster mums would have all the jars boiling in pots and the fruit boiling in another. When everything was ready she poured the fruit into jars and sealed them carefully with the tin lid things. I wish I had gotten her to teach me how to do that, but she lacked the patience and at the time I lacked the desire. She did try to teach me to cook, but every time I screwed it up she'd yell at me that I was never allowed to cook that thing again. It wasn't long before we had written off the entire Cakes And Sweets section of the Edmond's Cook Book and that was pretty much the end of that.
I had another foster mum later on when I was like seventeen and she was a very good teacher when it came to cooking. Nothing was ever considered a disaster. If your lollies didn't set then they became ice-cream toppings. If your biscuits crumbled then they too became ice cream toppings. If your cake flopped, you put custard on it and called it pudding. Worse case scenario, if the house burned down, you simply toasted marshmallows on the flames!
Seriously, she was really cool, but I was kind of past it with the mother/father scene and had pretty much well and truly given up on it.
I got a job and lit out of that place by the time I was seventeen and a half. I had worked out that sometimes when a cake fails, it cannot become pudding. That sometimes when a lolly doesn't set, it does no good to lie about it and try covering it up by making it an ice-cream topping.
I wasn't a cake, biscuit, lolly or ice-cream topping. I was a kid whose problems were far more complex. I was played out and tired and all I wanted was to be alone. I felt like a bird in a cage and I could not wait for the little door on the cage to open and for me to be able to fly away.
And so when the time came, at the first opportunity, I flew away and then many years later I woke up and realised that I was a part of the "throw away" generation, in fact, I am a shining example of it in a way. My life was throw away to most people and in the end, by the time I was seventeen, it didn't really mean all that much to me either.
But these days, being older and wiser (I am 41...when I was seventeen, 41 seemed ancient and seventeen seemed so grown up...now days, I can see just how baby seventeen really is and how 41 is really spring chicken material... kind of) I see the "throw away" generation in different terms. I see it as more of a temporary kind of throw away. Nothing lasts forever, which we are all only too painfully aware of, but what I mean is that we even view some people like that.
Consider some of the problems in the world. Things like starving Africans. There are so many of them, they are so far away and it has been going on so long that we have almost become apathetic about the whole thing. It seems like an endless deep well and it doesn't seem to matter what we throw at the problem, it never seems to resolve or go away. And in this generation, we seem to like things to right themselves or to simply go away. When neither of those things happens, we tend to become impatient and apathetic. It is not that we mean to be this way or that all individuals are this way, but as a collective, and we are part of the collective whether we want to be or not, we cannot tollerate problems going on and on. This is the temporary world, the throw away generation, get right or go away!
Two of the saddest pictures I ever saw were the following; the first was a little African boy, probably only two years old... he was sitting on a dirt road all naked and alone and he looked as though he was in abject misery. Standing behind him was a Carrion... bird of prey. He was simply standing on the road behind the boy and looked as though he was simply waiting for the child to die in order that he get his next meal. I stared at that picture and it occurred to me just how eloquently that picture represented the world in general.
The other picture was of a man who was holding a dead child in his arms. He was kneeling down on the side of a hole that he had dug to place the child into and the spade was kind of stuck in the ground beside the hole and the look on the man's face as he held that child just before he buried the child...it was surreal and it reminded me that it doesn't seem to matter how many are lovingly and sadly buried having died before their time. The people who can affect change... the ones who have the money and the power to make a real difference, go about their lives as though nothing is happening at all. How sinful it is that those who can affect change will do nothing. Those who can help have few resources and those who have the resources to help don't care any more.
And think about how backward-assed everything is these days...excuse the French, but think about it... That which should cause us horror simply causes us to stare at it all very ho hum and that which should be normal astounds us.
By this I mean that when we see yet another genocide on TV or a murder, or footage of war or bombs exploding on trains, buses, planes or in buildings, we are all so very complacent about it like, "Oh yeah, another one."
But random acts of honesty fill us with awe...We stare at the TV with the face of a man who perhaps found a wallet with 200 dollars in it and rather than keeping it, he handed it in splashed all over the screen and we are like, "Wow, how cool."
HELLO!
THAT'S what he is SUPPOSED to do! That is not abnormal or astounding and should most certainly not fill us with awe! And yet honesty is so rare that we are awe inspired by his behaviour and yet we are apathethic when it comes to grizzly scenes of carnage and human misery.
Do you not see that backward-assed state of our psychology? The absolutely astounding up-side down idealism that we has been instilled in us? The saddest part of all is that until it is pointed out, moat of us do not even know that we have everything upside down!
I mean, who cares if Paris Hilton carries her Chihuahua in a Gucci(sp) bag or whether she's having a baby to the other Maddon twin to keep up with Nicole Richie? Who cares if Obama sounds like Osama? Who cares if Angelina Jolie has twins or triplets? Or whether Madonna adopts more Milawian babies? Actually I do care about that and I do not view it like others do. I see it like the starfish stranded on the beach... you can't save them all, but even making the difference for a few counts for something. But you know what I mean. We have our priorities all screwed up. We worry too much for the silly things and not nearly enough for the things that really matter.
You see, I care if millions of African babies are going hungry. I care about the mothers who have to watch them slowly dying save for a meal. It is disgusting, sad and sickening and should not be that way. As I sad the other day, this world has enough food to feed everyone and yet so many are starving and oddly enough, 90 % of the ones starving are not of Western origins or Anglo Saxon origins. That says somethiong about this world. It speaks volumes about how we value people...who we consider important and whom we do not.
Remember Katrina?
Remember 9/11?
Remember 7/7?
Splashed all over our tellys 24/7 they were and yet Africa is a way bigger disaster and it gets scant attention. Why?
Because it is not getting "right" so we simply want it to "go away". This is the "throw away" generation and as a "collective" that is how we deal with things. Sad but true. Again, remember I am talking about the "collective" being the majority that is ruled by a minority, the minority being the ones who could actually do something to help. We elected them, therefore they represent us...us being the collective. Actually, that's probably not fair either. I mean think about it, most of us live in democracies and democracy is merely the recurring suspicion that more than half of the people are right more than half the time. Slightly less than half of us probably didn't elect those leaders, but I think you know what I am meaning.
I look at us... at the "collective" that is "us" and I stare at this "throw away temporary, decadent" generation and I despair! I do not understand how we became like this.
I know, I have been ranting for days about the state of the world, but look at it, really look at it and see if you cannot see it too.
By the way, my cat's a dork!
laterz

Saturday 5th July
Have you ever felt as though you need to keep things to yourself? As though it is not safe to really speak to anyone what your innermost thoughts are? I think I knew when I was ten years old that there were things you could think, but those very same things could never be spoken.
When I was nine I lived in this house with a man named Blair. Clearly his wife and his own children lived there too. So did about eight other kids who were foster kids just like me. Well, actually, not just like me. We were all very different.
There was T, S 1 and S 2, R, G, L, S and C. Add to this little melting pot, the three children that belonged to Blair and his horrid wife, V, R & B.
And his wife was horrid!
She was one of those weak willed spineless creatures who seemed to goof off on other people's misery. I am not sure what motivated her.
I am not sure if her husband Blair scared her so much that she dared not to defy him and thus joined in on perpetrating the misery in her mentality of "me or them" born out of the sheer misfortune of having been backed into a corner (aka married), by Blair, or whether she actually enjoyed what it was that she did? I would not like to make a call on her internal dialogue or what really possessed her to be as she was, but she seemed pretty happy, so I am inclined to think it was a choice as opposed to a lack of options. But one can never really know for certain.
I used to think that Blair would have fit well in the army as one of those crazed officers that scream and torment the new soldiers to the point of suicide, you know? But perhaps he was rejected from places such as the army? It might explain his sadistic nature.
And he was sadistic.
He lived to make our lives a misery.
Well, not all of us. He had his pet projects and I was one of those. By pet projects I do not mean anything nice or endearing. Far from it.
Blair's sole purpose in our lives was to make them as miserable as possible and by golly, was Blair good at what he did.
He was a bully. A born and bred bully and like all bullies, he took much delight at picking on the defenceless.
At nine, I was about as defenceless as they came. I was four feet and five inches tall at nine years old and I weighed all of maybe 4 and a half stone. I only know how tall I was at nine because my former foster parents, who were just lovely, had taken me overseas and thus had a passport made for me and it stated that I was 4'5 in height.
I don't know what it was about me that made me appear as an easy target, I only know that I appealed to him greatly from the very first moment I arrived. Perhaps I bore the last same name of someone who once bullied him? Maybe he even knew some member from my birth family? I don't really know.
All I know that for the first time in my life, I saw it coming. I saw Blair coming and it terrified me. He terrified me.
At the first meal time, for some reason unknown to me, he got started right then. He made me go and sit at a table where I faced the wall. I sat with T, whom Blair also disliked intensely. The table we sat at was called the "disgrace table". I was a little in the dark as to why he made me sit there straight off. I had not been there long enough to do anything to disgrace myself, I swear I hadn't. I'd only be there all of two or three hours by the time tea time came around.
At the disgrace table there were rules.
No talking and no turning around and Blair, during the meal and unannounced and for apparently no reason, would quietly leave his seat and smack us around the head. Why? I haven't a clue. All I know is that he would do that, but with stunning irregularity. I'd just get over the first slap and be almost calmed down to the point that I had forgotten that he might do it again, so that when he did it again, I wasn't expecting it, so fright was also a big part of it.
After the first meal was over he asked me if I had a hair brush, which I did. Silly me didn't see this coming, but he told me to go and get it, so I did. When I returned to the kitchen with it he asked me if I wanted to play a game with him. Being a kid, I couldn't see the problem with playing a game and aside from that, I had already worked out that Blair was probably not someone that I should try saying no to.
He explained the rules of the game. It was simple. I had to march across the kitchen and back like a little tin soldier and he in fact named our game, "Tin Soldiers".
So I started to march, initially thinking that perhaps it was going to be a good thing after all. All the other kids were still sitting at the table watching and so I really didn't know what might happen. Then I found out. As I walked past Blair the first time, he hit me as hard as he could on the backside with the hairbrush. I cried.
Did the game stop at that point?
No.
It continued on for about another five or ten minutes, although it seemed like an eternity to me and every strike he made with the hair brush hurt a great deal. When he tired of the game he told me to f-off to bed. So I did as I was told.
Thing with Blair was that his punishments were not only meant to hurt physically, but in order that they satisfy him completely, they had to also humiliate and demean the target of his uninvited attention.
I lay there in bed crying, wondering what it was that I had done wrong. But that was the point of the game. That seemed to be Blair's life goal to make me be wrong no matter what I did.
That was the thing with Blair, no matter what you did you knew it was going to be wrong and you knew it was going to be wrong before you even did it, but you did it anyway because to do absolutely nothing at all was also the wrong thing to do.
Blair was heartless and I knew it.
I knew that no matter what I did that I could never appeal to his gentle side or his heart. He simply didn't have one. He was out to get me and that was that. The entire seven months that I lived there he made me play that tin soldier game. It was demeaning and painful, but there was nothing that I could do to stop him.
One time, due to a sitaution that arose between myself and G, he tried to get me to put my head in the fireplace. By the time he was finished with me, I knew that I had to put my head in there...that's a trippy kind of fear to experience. To be so scared of someone that you will put your head in the fire rather than risk irritating them by not doing as they asked. When I finally knelt down to stick my head in the fire, he kicked me away from it with a foot to my stomach which saw me go almost airborne and then stood there laughing at me calling me a retard. And yes, he was right...at that time everyone thought me retarded, even the experts, but that too is another story.
Blair did everything he could to destroy anything that brought me joy. I used to climb the trees and pretend that the branches were horses, so he cut all the branches off the trees so that I could not climb up. Every time we played a game as a group, he came out and violently destroyed it.
We were playing wrestling one weekend me and some of the other kids. I was the Ref, elected by majority vote...and so I was standing in the ring, which we had made by tying a piece of rope around the hedge and over to the fence, and I was telling the opponents to hit each other and what have you. I had little idea of what went on in a wrestling match at that point in my life...it was 1976! Suddenly, out of nowhere, came Blair.
As soon as I saw him I knew that he was enraged! The way he walked, his expression and the colour of his face gave it away. He walked up to the ring and threw T out by swinging him by his hair and sending him in full flight across the lawn. The other guy he sort of threw out of the ring after applying some light fisty cuff. But he saved the best until last.
He grabbed me by the back of my shirt and by the seat of my pants, lifted me into the air and body slammed me onto the ground outside of the ring. I hit the ground on my front with such force that it knocked the wind out of me. I wanted to cry but could not even get enough air in to breathe, let alone cry.
All the while I am lying on the ground thinking I'm going to die, 'cos the pain was so bad that I could not even breathe, Blair was screaming obscenities at me. As I lay on the ground thinking I was going to die, I happened to look over at the big dining room windows and I saw his wife standing there just staring out at us. She had been standing there the whole time just watching us and she did absolutely nothing to stop him and nothing to defend us. She just let him do whatever he wanted.
Every day saw Blair dreaming up new miseries and he never seemed to run out of ideas.
Take food, for example.
He would allow us to eat just enough to make us even hungrier, but it was never enough to satisfy or make the hunger go away. I was constantly hungry and in the summer it was not so bad because there were apple trees on the way to school and so I could eat those, but in winter, there was nothing. Also in winter, no matter if it was raining or not, he would lock myself and T outside until well after dark some days. It was so cold that I would simply sit there too cold to even speak! The temperature where I lived then was easily in the lower single digits in winter. The cold and hunger made me feel abjectly miserable, never mind all of the other delights that Blair dreamed up. The emotional and psychological abuse was constant and after about five months of it, it really wore me down.
I started thinking about killing myself. Seriously, I wanted to kill myself and the only way that I could think to do it was to step out in front of a car.
Every day when I walked to school and home I had to cross a very busy road. Cars and trucks barrelled down it like it was a race track and I knew that if I stepped in front of a car or a truck then I'd be dead for certain. And truth to be told, I did not care to be here any more at that stage. So came the day I decided that I would do it. I was kind of glad and relieved when I left the house that morning, knowing I would never have to come back to that place again made me feel happy for the first time in a very long time. As I got closer and closer to the road where I was going to step out in front of a vehicle and be killed, I felt like a bird about to get its very first taste of freedom.
I stood on the road daring myself to step out in front of a car and suddenly I was not quite as sure as I had been to begin with, but I stayed the course and saw my choice of car heading straight toward where I was standing. Just as I was about to step out, the car slowed and a man stuck his head out of the window and yelled at me. He yelled something about me getting hurt if I kept standing where I was.
Interesting.
That made me think.
What if I wasn't killed but was only injured?
I knew that I would be in so much trouble with Blair for getting hurt that I would never hear the end of it. I stepped back from the road to re-evaluate my current circustances. Because I decided that there was no way for certain to be sure that I would absolutely be killed outright, I gave the idea up as too risky. So from then on I had no choice but to surrender to the abject misery that had become my every living, breathing, waking moment.
I was not the only one he bothered with.
He was rather fond of R and used to make the odd nightly visit into our room to, well, I will leave that to your imagination. But one night I turned around and looked, thus catching him with his hand in the cookie jar, so to speak. He became enraged and dragged me from the room and belted me all the way down to the hallway. He decided that I would sleep in the hallway from then on. He told his wife that he had removed me from the room because I had been stirring with R and G, and she bought it. But I knew from the way that he had been making me kiss him on the odd occasion that whatever he was doing, it was pretty wrong because he was hiding it from his wife.
Sleeping in the hallway opened up a whole other can of miseries as well. You see, the other kids had already worked out how to get on Blair's good side from time to time. If they were mean to me then they scored brownie points with him, so the other kids were not beyond applying their own brand of misery upon me too. I don't know how I managed to become the pariah in some situations as a kid. Maybe it was my retarded status that begged the attention? I really do not know.
Once sleeping in the hallway, Blair's tormenting of me just became worse and my need to escape him became stronger than ever. In the end I built a little hut down behind the shed where all the rubbish and other bits and pieces were strewn in an effort to be rid of them. They left all that stuff in the hope I think that one day it would simply just magically disappear, but it didn't. However it was good for me in that there was enough stuff to use to build a hut. No one ever knew that I was down there and I never told anyone about my hut least Blair find out about it and destroy that too.
Every day that I could, I would climb into my hut and just stare up at the sky daydreaming about other people and other places. I used to hum Wildfire to myself and the odd time that I used the swing that was on the property, I would swing high, gazing at the ranges pretending that I was on Wildfire riding far away from there. Other times in my hut I would watch the clouds rolling by in the sky and imagine what other people might be doing, you know?
I got so desperate at one stage that I wrote a letter to the Bee Gees asking them to come and get me. I said something like I'd be good and that they wouldn't have to feed me much. I had no stamps to post the letter and no address to send it to, but I posted it anyway thinking that the post lady would let me off with having no stamps just this one time (what convinced me of this I will never know) and that because everyone knew who the Bee Gees were that somehow the letter would get to them.
I waited.
I waited.
And I waited.
Every day after school as I walked home I wondered if today would be the day. I wondered if that would be the day that I would get home and there the Bee Gees would be waiting to take me home.
I waited.
And I waited some more.
Somewhere along the way I stopped waiting, realising that they weren't coming and I must say at this point that I was very disappointed. But then I figured that it was probably just as well that they hadn't cone to get me because by the time Blair was finished with them, they'd well and truly change their minds about taking me anyway.
It was very hard to be a kid in that situation. It was hard knowing that every day Blair was going to do something, or maybe several things to me. He had a very cruel mouth on him too and knowing that I had no way to appeal to him on any level to make him stop, to make him care was the wall I struggled against the entire time I lived there.
I do not know whay Blair was the way he was or why he particularly gunned for me. I haven't got a clue, not to this day. He just seemed to "get off" picking on someone littler than him, someone who could not fight back. Probably he had been picked on as a kid too. And then again, maybe not. I most certainly have never been a bully by nature, except for about six months when I was thirteen/fourteen, but that was because I was faced with kill or be killed, eat or be eaten and had determined that I would be the one to kill and eat for a time.
I do not know what makes people like Blair the way that he was. I do not know what it is that is missing from their personality makeup that allows them to perceive that it is perfectly fine to torment and hurt children. I can only attribute his ability to get away with undetected to dumb luck because there is no other way to explain how he never got caught doing some of the things that he did. Mind you, I never told on him. I was too scared to. Probably everyone else was too scared to tell on him too. Fear is a very powerful thing, especially when exerted upon the psyche of children.
I did wonder if it was because he viewed me as some kind of sub-human? He was told that I was retarded, everyone thought that, and maybe he saw it as an inexcusable weakness on my part? I really don't know.
What I do know is that about three years ago I heard that he had died and you know what? I wasn't sad. I was glad. I was relieved. His wife is still alive and is actually living in my old town. I have thought about going down there just to look at her...she works in a chemist there. But then I thought, well what would be the point? I wouldn't have anything to say to her. I am not one to seek revenge, so what would be the point?
There isn't one.
But that Blair scarred a lot of kids is a certainty and that the world is a better place without him, undeniable. So that was the inner thought that I seldom give voice to and the reason why I brought up the subject of inner thoughts that we mostly keep to ourselves because they present us with a very tricky thing. I find myself struggling with the fact that I see the world as a better place without him in it and yet, somehow I feel that it is wrong to think this about anyone and yet, I cannot change how I truly feel.
Laterz

Sunday 6th July

Every community, whether urban or rural has its secrets and its suspicions. It has its overt characters and it has the normal every day Joe and Jane Bloggs types. It has the hob nobs, closet hippies and the radical religious (with fire and signs following) nuts. There also to be found are the cool, calm and collected Sunday church goers and some dirt poor folk. Any given community usually also contains at least one playwright, one local drunk, an eccentric and not to be forgotten, at least one shady character, usually male. (life is so darn predictable sometimes don't it make you just want to scream and tear your hair out?...ha ha ha)
Although I lived in the country (from the age of ten through to almost fourteen) we were still a cohesive community; sort of, and we were no different to anyone else. And yet, I was a kid in the era where when you made a mistake you owned it. When you screwed it up, you didn't need a therapist to explain to you how exactly THAT happened. Mummy didn't have to go and get a job and was frowned upon when she did. If daddy took his belt to you for something you did wrong it was not called abuse and was not thought to have the potential to damage you for life. The worst thing that could happen to anyone from unprotected sex was pregnancy. Teachers were prats but no one went on a shooting spree. Records buckled in the sun and you stopped your fizzy from going flat by sitting a teaspoon in the bottle. If you got a hangover you dealt with it and lastly but not least people could take drugs without generating a body count! But I was still a kid then and some of those things just did not apply to me and my little circle of friends.
Our playwright was a nice guy and the local drunk was Noel's dad, but sometimes Mel's dad qualified. The hob nobs never spoke to us, the hippies gave us cigarettes and provided us with the most intimate sex education a kid can get (albeit unknown to them most of the time). I would like to say that my foster family was the calm, sensible Sunday garden variety born again Christians, but they weren't. They were religious (with fire and signs following) nuts. The eccentric in our community was a guy named Sidey and the shady charachter was a man by the name of Luci-arnold Graham. Well, that might not have been his name at all, but that is what we called him.
No one knew where he came from, he just showed up one day and parked himself up in his tent at the beach. Luci used to ride around on a push bike and no matter whether it was summer or winter, this guy wore an old grey raincoat, a hat and boots. Luci had grey hair and his entire face was covered in a white unruly beard and moustache. He fulfilled the classic ideal of a scary, dirty old man who hung around in the park waiting for little girls to happen upon him. (I wasn't completely convinced that Luci was actually a viable threat to my safety, yet I was unsure enough to stick with everyone else on the issue of the strange man who never even spoke to anyone!) However, we didn't have a park and the school grounds were patrolled regularly by the live in Principal, so Luci's hunting ground was basically wherever he laid his hat.
No one knew anything about Luci and no one ever tried to find out. The local kids were all scared of him, the words "There's Luci-arnold Graham," struck fear into the heart of any child present at the time that he was seen. If he was in the local shop on the main road then we would not go in. If we saw his bike parked up against a fence to a paddock, then we would not go in there. If we saw him coming along on his bike and we were alone, we hid! The teenagers taunted him, threw things at him and often ran him off the road with their cars. The adults despised him and were suspicious of his presence in our happy little slice of paradise and they pretty much poisoned our minds against him with their lurid cautionary tales!
Then it happened, some kid made an accusation against him. Luci-arnold Graham had tried to make this girl do things with him, unmentionable things. Now whether he did or not, I do not know, but have you ever watched Shrek? Seen the part where all the menfolk go off to rid themselves of Shrek and they are carrying lanterns and pitchforks? Well that is kind of what happened here, it was VERY Children of the Corn! (Luci's biggest crime, I think, was just being different!)
We never saw Luci-arnold Graham again after that and for all I know, they killed the old guy and buried his body somewhere in the ranges never to be discovered by anyone. I mean, our local playwright had to get his material from somewhere!

Monday 7th July
Yesterday I spoke about some of the different personalities that go to make up a community. Well in that community, when I was a kid in the mid to late seventies, our eccentric was an old guy by the name of Sidey Russell. Sidey was living proof that a deranged artist may well lurk in us all and find expression in the most unusual way. Every map has a road that has seldom been travelled on and every person has a song to sing, no matter how out of tune it might be!
Now Sidey was, for a while at least, the shady character in our community. But with the arrival of Luci-arnold Graham, Sidey got promoted to eccentric, and once Luci 'disappeared' he never got demoted back to his former status.
Around the mid 1930s or maybe even in the mid 1940s Sidey acquired a block of land in the community and began to build a house. Now, lucky he was not Noah, because in the late 1970s it still was not finished. Not only was it not finished, but, according to the locals, his house was an eyesore. It was parked right on a sharp bend in the road and lots of people from outside our district came to grief on that corner because they slowed down to stare at Sidey's house, instead of watching where they were driving. Why did they stare? It is well that such a poignant question be asked.
Sidey's house was constructed out of solid concrete and there was not a length of wood to be seen anywhere. (I dare say that the building permits alone would have made interesting reading.) Not only was it made of solid concrete, but he had etched into the concrete rather large hearts, spades, diamonds and clubs, like on playing cards. The only difference was that Sidey had painted all the hearts, clubs, diamonds and spades all kinds of different colours. Some were green, some were pink, some were yellow, some were orange, some were red and some were aqua.
As if a house like that alone is not enough to grab your attention when you pass it, all through his gardens he had planted flowers made out of tin and he had painted them in all kinds of different colours too. (I used to think that they were made of plastic, but now I believe that they were probably made from tin. I say this because they never faded in the sun.) Now, I do not know what Sidey was attempting to say through his very unique artistic expression, however, I can tell you how it was interpreted. Before Luci-arnold Graham came along they thought he was a dangerous potential psycho, but with the arrival of Luci, Sidey became merely stark raving bonkers, in a harmless kind of way. Except for one thing...Sidey liked to wear as little as possible. It is with regret that I have to inform you that Sidey got around in a g-string...which in this day and age might be very cool on the beach in Paris or Milan if you are aged 20 or under...but this was rural community 1977 in New Zealand and Sidey was pushing 75-80 by then. Totally not cool! And it did not matter the season...if it was winter Sidey just wore a jersey with his g-string.
We had to drive by his house on our way to church every Sunday and my foster father would tell me to avert my eyes so that I would not see Sidey's behind...which I found kind of an odd request coming from him. Every day while I was at Primary school all of us kids, who lived on the ranges side of the railway tracks, had to go past Sidey's house to get to school, so we were all well familiarised with Sidey's way of life and personal attire.(Kids who lived on the beach side of the railway tracks hardly ever saw Sidey and did not bother with him much.)
As with Luci, our perspective on Sidey was shaped by the adult's stubborn and warped refusal to accept someone different. Sidey was eyed with suspicion, as was Luci, and even after Luci 'disappeared', people still viewed Sidey with total tunnel vision.
I was always very fascinated by Sidey and a couple of times I attempted to speak with him. On my way home I would wait until my foster brothers were way ahead of me and I would get off my bike and walk past Sidey's house. If he was in his driveway I would call out to him saying 'hello'.
Sidey always grunted a hello back, but questioning him on anything at all was futile because he never answered me. He might well have been that way because, like Luci, the people of our community never bothered to get to know him at all. No one ever stopped to visit with him or to see if he needed anything. If he had gotten sick and died, no one would have noticed for weeks I think. And as with Luci, no one knew where Sidey came from, but it appeared he didn't have a friend in the world or any family. The adults around us, when speaking of Sidey (apart from lamenting loudly and long his choice of clothing) always joked that if there was a world war three then we would all pile over to Sidey's house. They reckoned it was so solid that even a nuke couldn't fell it!
I would be a liar if I said that kids did not take on the mantle of the adults around them when it came to Sidey, and they got smart to him all the time. Often they ridiculed him as they pased him on their way home. They'd yell out to him to "Put some clothes on," or call him a 'dirty old man'! My foster parents were no better than anyone else. On our way home from church on a Sunday (after having been preached at about treating others the way we would like to be treated, etc) they would laugh at Sidey as we drove past or make snide comments about him. My foster father once threatened (jokingly) to staple cardboard hearts, clubs, spades and diamonds all over Mr S's house (which was just up the road from Sidey's) because he had dared to paint his house three-toned (blue, red and white) and it was on the next corner. Hypocrisy is a lousy teacher at the best of times!
Being that the adults detested him and all he stood for (with much ridicule and scorn) we oftentimes did not view Sidey with the level of respect that we should have. We too made sport of Sidey's house, but in a different way. We made a game out of sneaking into Sidey's house and stealing all his coins that he left lying around. It wasn't just a game, it was almost a rite of passage, and most certainly it was a mission to accomplish because Sidey hardly ever left his property! Mel, Jan and I were no different to any of the other kids and we too undertook our rite of passage at Sidey's expense; literally! When my turn came around, I nearly got caught. I had crawled across the grass and sneaked in through the front, door while he was out the back making more flowers. Anyway, I was lying on his floor scopping up all his coins when he walked right into the house and into the room where I was. He stared straight at me, I swear he did, but he never said a word. He simply turned around and walked out again like I wasn't even there. Man I ran from there back to the ditch under the little bridge where Mel and Jane were hiding and waiting for me. It was a horrible thing to do to the old guy and I feel bad about it to this day, I really do. But you know, when adults flip somone off the way that they flipped Sidey off, is it any wonder that children will learn not to respect the person too?
It's funny the things you miss, and you do not miss them until you no longer have them. For almost fours years, on almost every day, I saw Sidey outside his house pottering around, rain, hail or shine. His house was one of the things that went to make up a life, my life. It was something that was always there and his beautiful tin garden was always filled with more beauty and mystery than any other place I have ever seen. Once I got sent away, I really missed seeing that place. Every now and then, when I get down that way, I become one of those people who slow down on the sharp bend to take a look at his house. But I do not think it an eyesore, I think it a part of my history. Sidey was part of the colours that went into creating the rich tapestry that was my childhood. Sidey and his house were something that brought me comfort, and the last time I saw it, I longed to see Sidey outside pottering around, but he had died.
Fact is that Sidey never did a stick of harm to anyone and was merely content to build his house. He never got involved with community events, and let's face it, could anyone really blame him? Everyone knew who Sidey was, everyone knew where Sidey lived and Sidey, himself, was talked about often, and yet no one knew him, no one really knew him at all. The only thing Sidey was guilty of, which is not all that much different to Luci, was daring to be different.
Laterz

Wednesday 9th July
It will be my brithday soon, God love me...and God help me! Inevitably, around this time I of the year I take to thinking upon things that most of the time I do try to keep far from my mind. With every year that passes I live in the vain hope that they further remove themselves down the ladder of importance. I say vain because that does not seem to be happening just yet.
And I must admit that I do, from time to time at least, wonder why.
Sometimes I wish that life was kind of worked out like chapters in a book, you know. Birth, end of chapter. Childhood, end of chapter and so forth. It would be really cool because then you could close that chapter and with any kind of luck, you would never feel the need to go back to it and re-read it. You know? You know how it starts, you know how it ends, end of chapter, move right along.
But it does not work that way and I often wonder why not.
All sorts of keys unlock all sorts of doors and all sorts of doors are the keepers of secrets sometimes way too big to ever be told. Okay, so that must seem kind of random, but it wasn't, not really. Some secrets are kept by silence and other's are kept by ignorance. But most secrets are secrets by virtue of the fact that someone knows the truth, in the abscence of the truth, there would be no need for the secret. And I often wonder who holds the key to the door that hides the secret that is me, other than God?
No, I am not making out that I am some kind of enigma, I am not. Far from it. I just mean that there are things about me, [pertaining to me and yet completely out of my control] that are secret. I wish to have those secrets revealed, and it is true to point out that I actually should be very careful what I wish for because sometimes those secrets ain't nice.
Like when I found out about my step-father having made his intentions plain to my birth mother and her stepping aside and letting him do what he did with her full knowledge and agreement. That wasn't a nice secret to have revealed at all and it set me back some, I must say. Made me feel sick and headachy for a week straight, never mind what it did to my heart.
It still does, but only if I dare to move myself from the third person into the first, which I mostly try very hard not to do when it comes to that. It is simply easier this way and I cannot really articulate why, well not to any degree that would make any sense to anyone but me, which would make it very foolhardy thing for me to undertake as I would only make myself seem worse than I probably already do. And people do judge, as much as we like to kid ourselves into thinking that they do not. Having been on the receiving end of some subtle judgements myself lately, I can absolutely attest that people love to judge others, especially when it comes to this sort of thing. It would be great to be able to say that perhaps they do not really realise that they are judging, but judgement takes an ounce or two or forethought put into it in order that one can draw their conclusions, thus arriving at said judgement. Heck, I don't know, may judgement can be arrived at without one realising that they are doing it or have done it.
Anything is possible, I guess.
And when it goes to court and I have to stand before him, do not for one second think that his lawyer will not exact a whole heap of judgements upon me. Anything to stop his client having to pay with even a single day of jail time for what he did to me as a very small and young child.
I think about him, you know.
I think about him a lot.
I try not to.
But inevitably I do.
Years have gone by and he has seemingly gotten away with what he did. I wonder what his reaction will be when he realises that he hasn't gotten away with it and will have to give an account. Will he still approach me as the same bully that he has always been? I think he will. I think the arrogance within him is that strong. How can a man who is supposed to be a father be so very disgusting?
How could he think that it was okay to do the things that he did to me? Is that why he drank so much? To bury the guilt?
Should I hate him?
Should I pity him?
I feel neither emotion to be truthfully honest.
Most of the time when I think of him, all I feel is fear.
Fear that makes my skin go as cold as ice. Fear that makes my breathing go shallow. Fear that makes my adrenolin race, my head to go dizzy and my emotions to numb. Every thought of the here and now or even the future flee from me like leaves on a breeze and all I can do is see the black abyss of his misery which was the past. I know it sounds awfully dramatic, but that is what it is like and I hate that he still possesses the ability to make me feel those things.
He should not still have that kind of hold over me, but he does.
Or maybe it is not him.
Maybe it is just the memory?
I know that at the time I used to just switch into survival mode and somehow my little brain would simply shut off and yet there was no real denying what was happening whenever he took his frustrations or whatever out on me. You can't pretend something like that away and yet, somehow I must have for all of the emotions that I should have felt then to be setting themselves upon me now.
Ten points to him for trying.
He tried to mess me up pretty good.
So did she, for that matter.
Not that anyone who really knows me would know because I hide it pretty well because most of the time even today, I still pretend it away. The tears it causes if I think upon it too long are something that I cannot handle. Sometimes I feel the grief coming and I simply switch it off because I am too scared to go there and other days, I do not feel the grief at all.
But I know that inside myself I am messed up to a degree. I don't trust easily and I do not trust people's words too well. Hardly at all, in fact. When they say that they are going to do something or express some kind of emotion, I find that very difficult to deal with. It is not that I do not want to believe them, it is just that I know better than to believe them straight off the bat.
So adjusted to it or not?
Who can say?
What I do know is that for the most part I simply try not to think upon it. But secrets are terrible things sometimes, especially when someone reveals the truth. Even though you long for the truth, truth can be a very ugly thing. They say that the truth sets you free and in a lot of instances that is exactly what the truth does. But in other instances, every now and then, like once in a blue moon, the turth can totally wreck your world.
And as for him, the mystery man whom I shall never meet, whose face I shall never see and whose name I shall never know. I wish to honour him, but you cannot honour what it is that you do not know. Another one of those unfortunate by products of not actually possessing the complete truth as well.
You know what? This year so far I have run many of the red lights on memory lane, some might say wrecklessly, but I ran them all the same.
Oh well, as the great Spartan King Leonidas would say, "What can you do?"

Laterz

Friday 11th July
Woke up this morning thinking about Luci-arnold Graham and Sidey. I was wondering how both men ended up where they were when I came to know of them.
I know that when I wrote "The Misfortune of Luci-arnold Graham" I was trying to answer some of those questions for myself because it is a fact that there was a certain fascination secretly held within me in regard to both of them.
Part of that fasciantion came from, I think anyway, knowing the truth, that those two people were not absolutely everything that they were portrayed to be by the gossip-mongers of our community back then. Somewhere inside me I saw them as simply "different" and a part of me actually felt quite sorry for them.
You see, when I first arrived in that community I was eyed with much suspicion as well and I was only a little kid. Ten years old.
I was a foster child back in the days where we were viewed at the sole authors of our own downfall. People perceived that we were foster children because we were bad kids. They perceived that we were so out of control that our own parents couldn't cope with us and so the State had stepped in and relieved our poor, unfortunate parents of their burdens. Worse still, I was absolutely aware of this fact back then and it defined, to an extent, how I felt about myself and how I viewed myself and became the mathematical equation that I used to reach the sum total of my self-worth.
Not helped by the fact that I already had made up a story in my own mind to explain why I had been sent away/taken away from my birth family. The people around me had mostly served to confirm my inner dialogue about who I was, what I was and how I had come to find myself in my most current predicament.
The first day at school I was eyed with much suspicion and even the Head Master of the school viewed me the very same way and he treated me accordingly. He sat me at the back of the class with the "slow trouble making kids". When it came time to decide what sport house I would belong to he said, "You can go into Yellow Club". He did this even though my foster brothers and cousins were all in Red Club. As he said to me that I could be in Yellow Club he followed it with this statement, "You're not really a memebr of the family, so it doesn't count."
Right before everyone he completely took away any right/hope I might have had in being simply accepted as a family member. To my foster-father's credit, when I went home and repeated the words of the Principal, he immediately got on the phone and threatened him with hell fire and brimstone if the principal didn't take back what he had said before the entire class and put me in Red Club with my brothers and cousins.
The very next day one red-faced Principal did exactly as he had been asked, but he was not a happy camper and he never forgot it! And besides that, it didn't really make too much diference as the damage had already been done.
There were many kids who were forbidden to play with me or to be friends with me. I was not considered appropriate "friend" material. The only kids who were free to befriend me were the kids of parents who didn't really give two hoots where I came from. Unfortunately these parents were considered irresponsible, of lower intelligence and did not belong to our church. Thus, in my foster parent's eyes, their kids were not really suitable friend material for me. Kind of a lose lose situation if you think about it for long enough.
(In an odd kind of way, those people were more an example of Jesus Christ than any one of these church going people in the way that they treated me. They welcomed me into their homes, let me play with their kids, eat their food and sleep under their roof. Not once did they EVER make me feel like I was an "outsider" or "different" or "not good enough" to be bothered with...and these people were not church going folks nor Chrisitans in any sense of the word as I knew it to be back then, and yet they were the best example of compassion.)
But despite everyone's concerns and objections I ended up being friends with kids who crawled out of the same gutter as I did, much to my foster parent's chagrin, but as King Leonidas would say, "Aye, what can you do?"
So I knew what it was like to be eyed with suspicion and have things thought about you that simply weren't true.
But suspicions and the behaviour birthed as a direct result of suspicions is a really strange thing, you see those suspicions tend to shape their subjects into the very things that suspicions perceive them to be.
Why?
Not sure.
But think about Sidey. They thought him creepy, wouldn't go near him, made us kids wary of him and thus we would not really go too near to him either and thus he became what they said that he was...strange, creepy and weird.
Same with Luci, they thought him a creepy old man who was out to get little kids. No one came near him. No one bothered to get to know him and so he became the thing that we feared by virtue of us never getting to know him before he was "storied".
I studied "storying of children" and a wrote a paper on it while I was at University and it is very very interesting... the psychology that powers the "storying" of both the subject and those doing the actual storying.
You see, through being storied, I was perceived a certain way and so I was treated that way which just served to make the symptoms of the storying more life-like. They thought I was retarded, I got tired of being thought of as retarded...resented it greatly actually, but despised them so much that I thought "fine, you want retarded, I'll give you retarded."
I was reading way beyond my age by the time I was about nine or ten, but I never read those books anywhere near them. When I did the word tests at school, I deliberately flunked them. I always chose picture books at school because the ones they wanted me to read anyway were simply stupid! I had no respect for teachers who treated me like I was cabbage! I didn't have to try to flunk math. Basic math I was fine with, but anything beyond that completely confused me and I had a personal loathing for numbers anyway, so that just further served to cement their belief that I was retarded.
Even Social Workers claimed that I did not understand what was happening around me and thus when they moved me from place to place they behaved with almost overt contempt! I understood exactly what was happening. Almost every time I understood what was happening.
Same with Luci and Sidey, I am sure, beyond a shadow of a doubt that they understood exactly what was happening around them and to them as well. What happened to lead them to their two separate and yet similar paths in life? Who can say?
But I do not mind betting that for either of them that, just like me, there was an element of tragedy to it that no one ever stopped to consider. They victimised them, storied them, but they never stopped to think about what their behaviour might be doing to those two poor old men. They were both very old. What a way to spend your final years; as someone to be afraid of, someone who is a victim of lies and fantastic and yet dirty stories?
I rememebr those two old men well.
I will always remember them.
When I think upon them now, I feel a great deal of pity, pride, empathy and sometimes compassion. Might sound weird, but they lived and they ought to be remembered as more than just two weird old guys.
I most certainly remember then as more than that.
Laterz

Sunday 13th July
The world scene, the very big picture, looks bleak to say the least. Israel and America are determined to attack Iran come what may. Iran did recent missile tests that prove conclusively that they do not really possess the means to adequately protect themselves, never mind actually perpetrating the widespread lamestream media reports that they desire to wipe Israel off the map.
The money markets are sick to the point of vomiting everywhere. Fannie May and Freddie Mac, one of the largets financial institutions in America is bleeding out of its eyes...they deal in billions of dollars every year and apparently they are bleeding out like they have the financial equivalent of the Ebola virus.
Not good.
Not good at all.
Petrol is still rising in price. Food is becoming priced out of the reach of some people.
One year ago a 1kg of cheese cost $6.99. I went to the supermarket on Friday and they had a sign by the cheese "Special, 1kg cheese $13.99".
That is insane.
The cows that are milked to make the cheese live just down the road from me so how in the world can a one kg block of cheese cost $15.99? That is the usual price now. How can that be?
They say that it is the price of petrol that is pushing everything up in price. The cost of moving the products from where they are made to where they are sold is the deciding factor in price.
So let us sum up the climate of the world stage right now.
So, food is becoming a luxury item, there are natural disasters...big ones on a regular scale, there are wars and rumours of wars, and the leaders of the world, for the most part, seem corrupt.
I think it is safe to say that we are indeed in the end times. It is a scary time, but in God, no matter what happens around us, there is always hope.
Laterz

Monday 14th July
Okay, I have to admit here that I am a little confused and conerned about an article I read today. The following is an excerpt from the article:

President George W Bush has told the Israeli government that he may be prepared to approve a future military strike on Iranian nuclear facilities if negotiations with Tehran break down, according to a senior Pentagon official.

Two things concern me about this.
Firstly, I always laboured under the understanding that any plans of war, sanctions or anything else had to be presented before the United Nations. I thought that the United Nations had to approve any kind of action being taken by one nation against another.
Was I wrong?

Second excerpt from the same article:

Despite the opposition of his own generals and widespread scepticism that America is ready to risk the military, political and economic consequences of an airborne strike on Iran, the president has given an “amber light” to an Israeli plan to attack Iran’s main nuclear sites with long-range bombing sorties, the official told The Sunday Times.

“Amber means get on with your preparations, stand by for immediate attack and tell us when you’re ready,” the official said.

Since when was George Bush elected as the head of the United Nations? Since when does a country have to go through George Bush instead of the United Nations when planning an attack against another nation? If Israel is more concerned about what George has to say about their possible military action, what does that say about Israel, the United Nations and George himself?
Now, this next excerpt is VERY interesting:

"But the Israelis have also been told that they can expect no help from American forces and will not be able to use US military bases in Iraq for logistical support."

Why, when George has been beating the war drums against Iran for at least two years now, is George suddenly saying, "Yeah, go ahead make your plans, but if , we aren't going to help you in any way in making an initial strike."
Is George trying to get Israel to do the initial dirty work? Letting Israel make the pre-emtive strike? Could it be that he is planning to let Israel be the bad guy, George keeps his hands clean, and then when Iran defends herself, which she has a God-given right to do, George will point his finger as Iran and scream to the rest of the world, "Look, I told you Iran was a terrorist nation. Come on, we must defend poor little Israel."
And thus, Israel will then be allowed to use the bases in Iraq and the rest of the world will be expected, as mandated by the United Nations, to enter into the war that was started by the puppet government of Israel on behalf of George Bush, who let's face it, has been chewing at the bit now for quite some time to give Iran a bit of fisty cuff!
I smell a rat here.
I smell an ENORMOUS rat!

And one other thing to remember. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is not a stupid man and neither is the Iranian Government. They know who pulls the strings of the Israeli government. They have pointed out that the Israeli government is an organisation that serves American interests. If George thinks that he can tell Israel to strike first and that Iran will contain their indignation, outrage and retribution to just Israel, he is more deluded than I first thought. Iran knows EXACTLY who is behind the current push to "wipe THEM off the map". Yes, it is not Iran wishing to wipe Israel off the map...despite the fact that that sentence was never uttered by Mahmoud in the first place, but still, the sentiment of wish to wipe someone off the map is not coming from Iran toward Israel, it is coming from George Bush toward Iran.
Isn't it funny how the Bible told us how men would call good, evil and evil, good? The mainstream media (aka lamestream media) has managed to warp information so badly that a lot of people in the world see the invasion and destruction of a nation who did absolutely nothing to those espousing aggressive intent toward them, is a good thing. Even the evangelicals are saying that killing innocent Iranian men, women and children is a good thing. How can those people live with themselves? How can good supposedly God-fearing people think that God would place His blessing upon this potential action? No Iran is not a melting pot of happiness and I most certainly would not want to live there, but come on, they have the right to exist in peace just like every other nation. And if all other nations asking them to stop a nuclear program have nuclear weapons themselves, then their request is invalid and wrong. Iran has never invaded another nation. They have fought back when attacked, but never invaded another nation.
People say, "Oh but they support Iraqi insurgents", but that has never been proved and in fact when Iraqi insurgents have been caught, many times they were found to be British MI6 agents dressed as Iraqis. Don't believe me? Google it.
And never forget, someone is supporting people who invaded that country. If someone came into my country and tried to do to my house, family and community what the invading forces have been led to do there, you bet I'd fight back. I'd fight back for all I was worth.
Wouldn't you?
Wake up people and start really smelling the coffee because at the moment it is almost boiling!

Other things that have crossed my mind as a result of this article that I read:
Could it be that the United Nations is defunct? Or is it that the United Nations is merely defunct in the mind of George Bush and his administration and heads of elite interests? Could it be that the Israeli government really is a puppet government that cannot even go to the bathroom without the permission of the US Government? Well, one must ask these questions as the USA does send billions of dollars every year to supposedly "help" the government keep Israel on the "right tracks". Did you also know just how many nukes Israel has? Where did they get them?
Do you know how many nukes Iran has?
None.
Israel has at least two hundred.
Those are the officially released numbers and being that it is probably not in Israel's (or any country for that matter) best interests for the rest of the world, including any potential enemies, to know exactly how well she may be able to defend herself, even in the event of using nuclear weapons, the number is probably higher.

But what concerns me most is Israel's idea that so long as they have George Bush's permission to strike against another sovereign nation, as opposed to going through the normal channels, the United Nations. One must ask the question, "how much power does George Bush really possess?"
And even more important, how did he come to hold so much power and why?
laterz

Saturday 19th July
Economically things just continue to get worse. I went to the supermarket yesterday and I bought a blcok of cheese, a 1kg block for ten dollars...and the sad part is I felt like I had gotten a bargain! Not even one year ago that same block of cheese was six or seven dollars and now it is fourteen. Astounding just how quickly your thinking can change with the times and with everything that is happening around you.
I am not big on economics. During my fourth form year at college I took economic studies, but I spent the entire year in that class writing a novel because economics bored me so much. The only thing I remember from that class was when Prime Minister Muldoon announced the price freeze because the economy was so bad. For one year from the day that the price freeze was announced, no one could put the price of anything up...not rent, not food, not cars, not wages, not anything. I was too young to appreciate the effects of that nor the importance of it.
But seeing what is happening around us now, I cannot help but wonder if it might happen again.
Been watching what is going on in America too and things look decidedly spooky there. If I was living there right now, I would be stocking up on food and I would have a viable escape plan that would allow myself and my children to fall off the grid with little notice. Things are going to go very badly there very soon. If people get caught inside of it unprepared, it is going to be a nasty situation. The mainstream media there is already murmuring about possible food riots in the near future and when the mainstream media begins to admit what the alternative media has been saying for two years, then you have to start taking it very seriously.
I can see Martial Law on the distant horizon for America and not far behind them, for us. I know you might think, "Oh she's going off on a tangent again." But I have being saying that they were going to hit Iraq and Iran since 2001 and look at what happened. I am not saying that I am getting special messages from God or something like that, I'm not, the thing is that simply studying history and applying it to what is happening in present times, history is almost like fashion trends, they just keep going around and around and coming back up in your face. But it would be true to say that since I was about sixteen, maybe a little younger, I have had very vivid dreams about destruction and what it was going to feel like when the spirit of God is lifted from this world for a time and it is a very strange and peculiar feeling/sensation within your very being. To know that He is no longer present in that way is very odd and everything seems very bland and pointless and the lack of hope, no longer having hope reduces one to a shell of former self with very little meaning. I know this because I have dreamed it many, many times over the years. So take it seriously; if you're considering Jesus as an option, accept Him while you still can, for once the opportunity is no longer there, you will sorely regret that you never gave him a chance and you will fare very badly without the hope that He gives us. And that is not some divine threat or anything like that, it is simply a fact because every time I have dreamed that dream, it has been from the vicarious position of someone who had the chance and yet didn't take it.
For once I am glad that I live here in New Zealand. If things crash in America, it will be notice served on us that we are about to go down too, but we are fortunate in that we will get a little warning...not much, maybe even only twenty-four hours, but when you live in a country like this, twenty-four hours is plenty of time to get moving if you have to.
Many of the things that were seen by John on the island of Patmos, and that went to the compiling of the book of Revelation, are happening. They are saying that there is not enough food in the world for everyone. Technically speaking there is. But if you mix it in with the economics of the situation, not many will be able to afford to buy it. Look at Afirca...it is not that there isn't enough food and medicine, it is that there is not enough money, which sucks. How can you allow people to die for a lack of food for goodness sakes. FOOD? There is enough for everyone, screw the money, give it to them for nothing...they are human beings! How can the elite of this world sleep at night knowing that babies, children, men women and the elderly are dying for lack of a meal and those elite possess the solution? What kind of conscience must you possess to be able to say, "No money, then no food?"
Then there are all the natural disasters that have happened. The aid needed to help the survivors, again, comes down to money.
Everyone's personal freedoms and liberties are being slowly but surely chewed away at, but the biggest sign of all?
Love has grown cold.
I despair for what it is that we have become. I know that I have said this before, but I really do despair for what we in the Western World have become. Not as individuals but as a collective. Love has gone cold, conscience is in a coma and morality lies dead upon the ground.
Laterz

Sunday 20th July
Was speaking to a friend this morning via e-mail and he told me about how he had thought about taking his own life years ago. This conversation brought to mind the friends that I have lost along the way to the very same thing.
Their names were Carla, Kevin, David, Sarah and Priscilla.
I was never told what method Carla used to kill herself. I was nineteen at the time that it happened and I didn't want to know. In all the times that I have spoken to Carla's dad over the years, I have never asked and he has never said.
Carla met a guy who she fell madly head over heels in love with. She became pregnant and out of the blue he told her that he didn't want her or the baby, so Carla ended her life.
The one thing that has always stood out in my mind when I rang her house and spoke to her brother, father and mother was something one of them said to me. They said, "All Carla had to do was get on a bus and come home. Get on a bus, that was all she had to do."
In breaking the whole thing wide open with Carla, it came down to something very simple; get on a bus and come home, but for some reason, Carla could not do that.
Carla's death is something that has always haunted me and troubled me over the years. Every time I go to the town where we lived, Carla and I, I always go to her grave. I don't speak to her or anything, I just stand there and I ask myself is "why didn't she get on that bus?"
I also stand there and think about all of the years that she has been gone and I think about all that she has missed and all that her family has missed with her. Carla was a beautiful girl; stunningly beautiful. She was outgoing, good at sports and always laughing. Always laughing and that is one thing I will always remember about her.
Kevin.
Kevin hit the skids pretty young in life and I never really did know why. I met Kevin when he was pretty much on the downward spiral and hope was something that was never even associated with Kevin. e was local drug addict. The one who turned up at almost every doctor's surgery drug seeking. One might ask how I came to be friends with someone like that? Well, I met him through his sister and I was friends with him to the point where if I saw him, I always talked to him and I saw him a lot at my friend's house. Quite a few times he turned up at my house, but I knew better than to ever let him inside. I always sat outside and talked to him.
Kevin was always stumbling around town in his drug induced stupor and Kevin snorted, dropped and injected anything that he could get his hands on. It was just some ugly journey he set out on years before and that everyone around him who actually cared for him were powerless to stop.
He was also the first person in my hometown to be disgnosed with HIV and that was a widely known fact that simply served to ostracise him even more in the eyes of most people. I always felt sorry for him. Scared for him, pretty much guessing where he was headed. I was powerless to be any help to him at that stage in my life. I didn't understand things then as I understand them now. Predictably, Kevin died of an overdose. I was pregnant with my daughter then, it was 1990. I was really sad when he died but not shocked.
There were rumours at the time that his girlfriend deliberately overdosed him, but the coroner ruled it a suicide and to be very honest, the majority of the people didn't care. All that mattered was that Kevin was no longer around to litter their pretty little town with his presence.
Sarah.
I met Sarah when I had my first child. Her first child, a little girl was born, I think on the same day as my baby. We made friends in the maternity annex. Her baby was born an addict and as it transpired, she was a friend of Kevin's, but I did not know Kevin at that time. After we left the annex with our babies, I saw Sarah often and we visited with each other every now and then. Eventually Sarah moved away to Christchurch and she rarely came back to visit anyone and I lost touch with her in the end. I was pregnant with my fifth child when I found out what had become of her. I was at a friend's place and she was being visited by her midwife who just happened to be Sarah's aunt.
When she was finished with her we engaged in idle chit chat, as you do and I happened to ask her how Sarah was. She looked at me funny and took a moment to answer. While she took her moment, I looked at her and said, "What?"
She looked at me and told me that Sarah had died two years ago. That she had had a fight with her mother, gone home and taken a truckload of pills. That was on a Friday night. By Monday her mother became suspicious having not heard from Sarah. Usually Sarah got over the fights pretty quickly and by Sunday would normally have made contact. Her mother went to her flat on the Monday and found her dead.
I said to her aunt, "I never knew. I never saw anything in the papers, nothing."
She said, "I know. Her mother buried her quietly and few people know what happened to Sarah."
You see, Sarah's mother was embarrassed by her daughter and her behaviour and the last thing she wanted anyone to know was that Sarah killed herself leaving her only child alone. My prayer since then has been that her daughter Sophie will be spared from going down the same road.
David.
David was a very sad case. An extremely sad case and I watched the whole thing from start to finish and to be very honest, like everyone else, I simply did not see this one coming, although with hindsight, I can say that we all should have seen it coming because it was so obvious.
I met David's girlfriend when our kids went to Kindergarten together. As it transpired, we were both pregnant and our new babies were due about the same time. As it turned out, our babies were born on the same day. My baby was born at 6 that morning and her's was born at around 6 that night, so we both shared a room together at the annex. We had already been spending time together before the babies were born, but their births on the same day just served to further cement the friendship.
David was lovely. From the very first moment I met him I liked him. He was funny, gentle, caring and kind to myself and my children. He was always that way. David was also a very good looking man. He was tall with black hair and very deep brown eyes. His eyes always seemed to twinkle and there was always an air of happiness about him.
I distinctly remember one occasion when my second-born had let all of David's chicken's out of the coop. I remember watching he and David chasing them all around the place trying to get them back in. My husband got to know David too when we married and he really liked him as well because he was such a personable guy. But it is true that David was into things that I would never touch. He had a rather nice green garden way up in the back of the ranges where he would disappear to for days to tend his plants. At harvest time it was always a particularly stressed David because he never knew when the cops were going to bust him next. My friend found that part of life tough.
Many times the kids were pulled out of bed at some strange hour of the early morning when the police turned up to raid their house. Fortunately David never kept any of his "plants" there, so it was more of an inconvenience than anything else, but it is true that it drove my girlfriend to drink; literally.
I would go there at nine in the morning and she would already be half off her trolly due to the wine and so I would concentrate on taking care of her baby and mine. Other than the drink, she was a really nice person and I liked her a lot and so overlooked the drinking.
Anyway, about 18 months later, (I had had my daughter by this time and David had seen her on many occasions) one day I got a call from her where she told me she had left David. I was really shocked, the day before I had visited them and everything had seemed fine and the very next day she had left him.
I don't know if it was all the dope he'd smoked over the years, but David went from perfectly sane to toally crazy and within days was arrested when he turned up at her house with a machete with every intent of killing her and the kids. He was promptly arrested and placed in a psychiatric facility and it was all downhill from there.
When he got out of the psychiatric facility the old David was completely gone. When I visited and he was at my friend's house visiting his kids, he didn't even recognise me. He had no idea who I was, but he knew exactly who my daughter was and was very pleased to see her again. It was very sad and very strange.
This bizarre behaviour of David's went on for a few more years and he was no longer the guy he had once been. The real David was buried and gone and he swung between violent and passive behaviour all the time. It was about six weeks after my youngest was born that I got a call from my friend at about five or six in the morning. David had gone out into the paddock behind his house, lined up photos of his kids on the ground in front of him, put a gun to his head and pulled the trigger.
I couldn't believe it.
Priscilla.
Priscilla was a young girl, 18 years of age. She lived in the house behind us. She was a young mother to two and living in an extremely violent relationship. My daughter was very close to Priscilla and used to spend a lot of time with her. I had Priscilla over for coffee a few times and also spoke to her whenever I saw her at the letterbox. But it is true to say that Priscilla was pretty closed off and guarded. She was constantly being hurt and I often encouraged her to leave her partner, but she never did. I think she was too scared and I understood that.
At around two one morning she sneaked out of her bed, went into the garage and hung herself. It was around ten days out from Christmas. My kids woke to the screaming of her partner and by that time I was already out there. My kids saw Priscilla's partner cut the rope and lower her down from the rafter and carry her out to the front of the house.
My daughter was absolutely devastated by what she saw and would not sleep in her own room or bed for years, even though we moved away from there. My youngest does not remember it a nd my oldest son never speaks of it. The other two were not home when it happened.
Losing people like that is incredibly difficult. You find yourself always wondering what in the world you could have done differently. But when you pare it all back you realise that there was little that you could have done. When someone is determined to do this, you cannot stop them. Normally the ones dead set in their plans give nothing away about their plans and you simply do not see it coming.
I miss them though.
I will always miss them.
laterz

Tuesday 22nd July
I was not ever going to write about what I am about to go ahead and write about anyway. I thought it might be better left alone, but I need to speak it.
The other night I thought I was going to die.
Sunday night.
Let me tell you what happened.
I got a call from a friend not long after I had just returned home from her house. She had a few family members there and things had started to go a little wrong, so she texted me and asked me to come back. She was in tears and being that I am the sort of friend who doesn't have to be asked twice to go and be there for her, I left immediately.
When I got there she was sitting at the table basically at the end of her tether crying and what have you. Her ex had landed on her some weeks before, and being that he had nowhere else to go, she let him stay. Her son also left his partner and landed at her house with two of his children, being that she is the way that she is and would never turn anyone away, she was happy for them to stay too.
Her ex went out on Friday and some hours later returned home with a young girl, 24 years old, who is a prostitute and also had nowhere to go, so she said. So anyway, my friend sort of got landed with her too, although begrudgingly.
By the time I got back there on Sunday night they had consumed quite a bit of alcohol and her son and the prostitute had apparently been outside smoking crack...although I did not find out about this until later. Anyway, my friend's son and her ex moved into the lounge and started to have a fight right beside the place where my friend's son's two kids were sleeping. My friend soon joined them in the fight and it moved from being between her son and her ex to being between her and her ex. Seeing where it was all going to go, I grabbed one kid and told her daughter to grab the other and I put them way down the other end of the house away from the violence which, fortunately, they slept right through.
By the time her daughter and I got back to the kitchen the fight was still going on in the lounge. The girl her ex had brought home was still sitting there just watching and so I told her to leave the room and to go and sit in the sunporch. I had to hurry her up a little, but she went in the end.
I went into the sunporch and I told her that if my friend headed in there yelling at her that she had better get out of the house, start running and keep on running. Within a few moments the inevitable happened and the fight spilled into the sunporch and so I told the girl to get out fast, but she simply sat there staring at me.
My friend then told her she had to the count of five to get out or she was going to beat her up and my friend started counting from 1-5...she was at four before the silly girl even got to her feet, but once she was on her feet I shoved her out of the door and screamed at her to run! She did and that was the last we saw of her, and an enormous thunder storm had just begun and all I could think about was that poor girl running out there in the dark in a thunder and lightning storm with nowhere to go. I was going to go after her and take her to my house for the night and deal with where she could go the next day, but I never got a chance to go after her.
My friend and her ex started their physical fight again and that was when I saw my friend reach down behind something and what she came out with chilled my blood to the point where I almost froze. She pulled out a seven inch hunting knife and lunged at her ex with it.
I grabbed her daughter (who is 20) by the arm and I screamed at her to get out. I shoved her through the door to the outside of the house with me and I took her down the side of it and we tripped over all kinds of things out there in the dark. Meanwhile I could still hear my friend screaming, her ex screaming and her son also screaming at them both.
Her ex was shrieking so badly that I thought she had stabbed him. I thought he was dying.
The next thing I knew my friend's son came outside and he started violently throwing stuff everywhere and some of it hit us. I grabbed my friend's daughter and by then we were both sobbing and shaking and I took her around to the front of the house... meantime all the shrieking from inside was still going on. When it went quiet in there, I thought my friend had killed her ex and we didn'nt know if the kids were safe and all I could think was that I had to go inside and get the kids out.
Just as I was about to risk going in the house past my knife wielding friend, her son, who had just smoked crack, started heading toward where my friend's daughter and I were. He was screaming and yelling and waving his arms and, being that it was dark and we could not clearly see him, we thought he had the knife and was coming for us.
I started to move my friend's daughter further around the house and he kept coming for us and all I could do was stare at his hands trying to see if he had the knife or not. I thought he had it and so all I could do was shield my friend's daughter and wait for him to stab me. I was so scared. I have not been so scared for such a long time.
Standing there shielding my friend's daughter and waiting for him to start sticking me with that horrible knife seemed to take an eternity. I kept waiting to feel the pain and all I kept thinking was that I couldn't let him get my friend's daughter, his sister.
Before too long he was standing right beside us screaming and yelling and then after a while I noitced that he didn't have the knife. As soon as I knew that he didn't have it and he moved away from us, I left my friend's daughter to go inside to see if my friend's ex was still alive. I was so scared going back in there...wow...I didn't want to go, but I knew that I had to and at that point I didn't know who had the knife.
When I got inside I saw my friend sitting at the table crying and her ex was nowhere to be seen and I couldn't see the knife anywhere nor any blood.
I walked into the lounge and there was her ex sitting there. She hadn't managed to get him because her son had grabbed her arm and wrestled the knife from her hand, so he did have it, but I didn't know where it was. Once I established that her ex was fine, she was fine and her son had put the knife down I went outside and started picking up all the stuff that her son had thrown everywhere...it was glass bottles which had hit us and smashed all over the driveway.
When I bent down and started scratching around on the ground in the dark in the pouring rain trying to pick the glass up I started to cry and I just silently called out to God, "I can't stand this. I can't stand this kind of thing and I can't do this. I can't be a friend in this kind of situation." I called to God that I just didn't have what it took to be a good friend to people who do this kind of thing to each other. Then I went on a rant to God about how I can't stand this world and the vile things that people do to each other. I asked God, "What if she had killed him? What if her son had killed me?" All these things I was speaking to God and I was sobbing so badly because I was so frightened.
Once I had picked up all the glass I went back inside. I checked the kids who had fortunately slept through the entire thing and then I went into the bathroom. I just leaned on the wall and slid down until I was sitting and I cried so much I felt like I couldn't breathe. My chest was aching, my head was spinning, I felt sick and scared and shocked and all I could do was sit there and quietly cry while whispering to God.
A lot of the violence I had experienced as a kid came to mind and I felt so sorry for the kids in the house because their life is just like mine was as a kid...full of violence. No one even noticed the kids when the fight started. They just walked over top of them and started it right where they were sleeping in the lounge. Their father...he was the main instigator and he started it where his kids were sleeping and vulnerable.
I didn't come home until I knew that everything was safe there for the kids. When I came home I crawled into bed exhausted and absolutely worn down and yet I couldn't sleep. Every time I shut my eyes all I could see was the darn knife and her son coming towards us and me thinking that people were dead and that I was going to join them.
I lay awake until five am and even then when I did fall asleep, I had nightmares...terrible nightmares. Didn't sleep any better last night either. And guess who now has the offending knife?
Me.
I put it in my car, brought it home and buried it in the garden where none of them can get a hold of it again.
It was all fuelled by hate over things that have never been settled and through drinking and one of them smoking crack. And no, this is not a usual occurance for them. Usually most of those people are not there and they are not there now so peace reigns again.
But I tell you something, that is not something I want to go through again in a hurry. Seriously, it frightened me more than anything else has in a long time, causing me to have more of those dreams where you're being chased and you get cornered with nowhere to go. Sunday night was just like that, I was cornered with my friend's daughter with nowhere to go but down.
Thank God that I have God. I firmly believe that He kept me as safe as He could under the given circumstances. I really do believe that. The only thing I am glad about is that my kids were at home and knew nothing of what had happened.
I am so glad that I don't drink or do drugs. Seriously, I am so glad that I don't live that way and I am glad that, aside from when I was married, I have never exposed my kids to that kind of thing. Even when I was married, it was my husband doing that stuff, not me. Doesn't make it right, but at least my kids don't know that kind of thing from their mother.
And then another thought occured to me. If I had died, aside from my kids, who would have really noticed? You know? Most of the friends I have don't even live in this country and I only know them by e-mail. They probably would have thought that I just stopped writing. I have no parents and no siblings, no cousins, aunts or uncles. It made me realise that there's actually no one looking out for me...no one to help me. You know, I help the people who are in my life. I am always there to do whatever needs to be done or simply to be there but there really isn't anyone there for me. I know that it is selfish to say this, but it made me realise just how transparent my life and whatever is "me" is in the big picture. I'm not really anything at all, beyond peripheral, to anyone, not really. It kind of freaked me out to think about that too, that I could live on this planet for fourty years and that if I were to be taken from it, I'd hardly be missed. Odd I think.
laterz
Jesus..."You're the lifeline that I cling to when I feel like giving in...when the dreams that I rely on start to wear a little thin."

Friday 25th July
It was my birthday today. Another year older and another year wiser...so they say. But wisdom does not necessarily come with age. I think it comes with experience and you can live to a great age and not necessarily garner any wisdom from those years at all. Alternatively, you can live a couple of decades and experience much and thus, if you allow yourself to learn from the various experiences that might be endured during that period of time, you could acually gain a great deal of wisdom...at least that is what I think.
And then of course there is the scenario where you know how to be wise but actually do not put that wisdom to practice. Alternatively a person could be in love with the idea of being wise but actually never really act upon it. I know it might sound silly, but I think it is possible for a person to be that way.
Just as with humility where there can be fake humility and genuine humility, I think that there can be fake wisdom and genuine wisdom, although where wisdom is concerned, the proof is really in the eating of the pudding, so to speak. If someone is feigning being humble, it can be very hard to distinguish whether it is genuine or not.
I have watched people debase others through asserting that their humility is fake. It is a pretty hard thing to watch because most times that I have seen it, the person concerned was genuinely humble and the people accusing them of being fake were actually rather haughty and caught up in their own importance, thus it was in that light that they asserted that the person's humility was fake in the first place.
It hurts people to be accused of such a thing though.
laterz

Saturday 26th July
The whole country got hit by a really bad storm. There was flooding, bridges washed away, powerlines downed, roofs ripped off and all kinds of things happening. Miraculously, our town was not touched. There is power in prayer if you ask me.
Laterz

Sunday 27th July
I got sent the following in an e-mail today. So impressed by it was I that I decided to replicate it in here. Enjoy.

Nasa & The Bible

For all the scientists out there, and for all the students who have a hard time convincing these people regarding the truth of the Bible, here's something that shows God's awesome creation, and that He is still in control.

Did you know that the space program is busy proving that a 'myth' in the Bible is true?

Mr. Harold Hill, President of the Curtis Engine Company in Baltimore, Maryland, and a consultant in the space program, relates the following development.

I think one of the most amazing things that God has done for us today happened recently to our astronauts and space scientists at Green Belt, Maryland .

They were checking out where the positions of the sun, moon, and planets would be 100 years and 1,000 years from now. We have to know this so we won't send up a satellite and have it bump into something later on in its orbits.

We have to lay out the orbits in terms of the life of the satellite and where the planets will be so the whole thing will not bog down. They ran the computer measurement back and forth over the centuries, and it came to a halt. The computer stopped and put up a red signal, which meant that there was something wrong with either the information fed into it or with the results as compared to the standards.

They called in the service department to check it out, and they said, 'What's wrong?' Well, they found there is a day missing in space in elapsed time.

They scratched their heads and tore their hair out. There was no answer.

Finally a Christian man on the team said, 'You know, one time I was in Sunday School, and they talked about the sun standing still.' While they didn't believe him, they didn't have an answer either, so they said, 'Show us.'

He got a Bible and went to the book of Joshua where they found a pretty ridiculous statement for any one with 'common sense.'

There they found the Lord saying to Joshua, 'Fear them not, I have delivered them into thy hand; there shall not a man of them stand before thee.'

Joshua was concerned because he was surrounded by the enemy!

And if darkness fell, they would overpower them. So Joshua asked the Lord to make the sun stand still! That's right . . . The sun stood still and the moon stayed and lasted not to go down about a whole day! (Joshua 10:12-13)

The astronauts and scientists said, 'There is the missing day!' They checked the computers going back into the time it was written and found it was close but not close enough. The elapsed time that was missing back in Joshua's day was 23 hours and 20 minutes, not a whole day.

They read the Bible, and there it was: about [approximately] a day. These little words in the Bible are important, but they were still in trouble because if you cannot account for 40 minutes, you'll still be in trouble 1000 years from now.

Forty minutes had to be found because it can be multiplied many times over in orbits. As the Christian employee thought about it, he remembered somewhere in the Bible where it said the sun went BACKWARDS.

The scientists told him he was out of his mind, but they got out the Book and read these words in 2 Kings that told of the following story: Hezekiah, on his death bed, was visited by the prophet Isaiah who told him that he was not going to die. Hezekiah asked for a sign as proof.

Isaiah said 'Do you want the sun to go ahead 10 degrees?'

Hezekiah said, 'It is nothing for the sun to go ahead 10 degrees, but let the shadow return backward 10 degrees.'

Isaiah spoke to the Lord, and the Lord brought the shadow ten degrees BACKWARD! Ten degrees is exactly 40 minutes!

Twenty-three hours and 20 minutes in Joshua, plus 40 minutes in Second Kings make the missing day in the universe! Isn't it amazing?

References: Joshua 10:8 and 12,13 and 2 Kings 20:9-11.

Hope you enjoyed this. I personally think that it is incredible how the Bible proves itself as authentic time and time again. How could any of those scholars way back when the bible was written have had any way of knowing that in many years some brilliant brains would be confounded by missing time only to find their solutions in the very last place that they ever considered seeking answers? This also witnesses to me that God was trying to tell those scientists something...I hope they were listening.

laterz

Always On My Mind

In every moment
I know You are there
Caring and sharing Your love
A constant companion
You're like no one else
That ever has entered my life

And I wanna tell You Lord
You're always
Always on my mind
I could never forget you
Always, always in my heart
And that's the place that I need You
Forever and ever
You will stay
Always on my mind

When I first met You
You made me a promise
That You would be with me 'til the end
Mountains and valleys
Stormy or sunshine
Truly I can say that I'm blessed

Life is a song
that's filled with Your love
And it stays with me
through all the day long
When the sun's going down
I know in the night
You'll be there if anything should go wrong

Huff Brothers

Saturday 2nd August
Started to feel like I was getting laringitus last weekend and thought I was going to lose my voice and all that, which sort of started happening, but then the sickness went weird and I ended up with tonsilitus and some kind of ear problem.
The pain was unbelievable!
Went to the doctors on Friday and he gave me a course of antibiotics and they have kicked in pretty fast. This morning I still have pain, but nowhere near as bad as it was even last night. So pleased to not be in that kind of pain anymore.
I hate being sick.
When I was a kid and still living with my birth mother, if I got sick she would shut me in my room and I wasn't allowed out again until I was well. One time I got chicken pox and she still sent me to school. The principal came to my class and took me out of class. I was taken to the principal's car and driven straight home. At that point my birth mother was rather enraged and once the principal left she put me in my room, shut the door and that was where I stayed pretty much on my own until I was better again. I was allowed out to go to the toilet, but that was it. That is probably why I hate being sick because when I get sick I feel shut off, you know? And I don't get sick that often.
When I was a kid I used to get tonsilitus all the time and the docs would always say that I needed to have my tonsils out, but I never stayed anywhere long enough for anyone to get around to it. This one time I lived in one place for just over three years but the entire time I was there I never got tonsilitus! I did get the mumps and other such things, but never tonsilitus. Weird eh!
I have not heard much on the Iran situation over the past few days. Sound was hurting my ears so I wasn't listening to anything much. But I do know that they are determined to go in there. It could be that there may be another Gulf of Tonkin incident. History has shown that Generals and leaders are quite willing to commit a pawn sacrifice. Meaning that if they have to sacrifice some of their own people to draw the enemy in then that is no issue to them.
Watching what goes on in this world, it is a sad, sad thing.
laterz

Saturday 16th August
I have made one measly post this month. That's slack, even by my standards. But I just haven't felt inspired and the further the month goes along, the less inspired I seem to be getting. Okay, now I do not know if that last statement qualifies as an oxymoron/contradiction in terms, yet there is some small part of me that feels that it simply must!
A couple of things have gone wrong this month.
Well, lots of things, the truth be known, and most of them are my doing, one could suppose.
First of all, well maybe not first, but it is the first to spring to mind, I got tonsilitus, which made me feel very sick and I was in a great deal of pain. Second of all, and not necessarily in this order, (cos I got it twice!) I got laringitus and found that, in my frustration at some of the other things that have gone wrong, I could not even yell. There is something so sublimely pathetic about someone who is trying to yell when they have been struck with laringitus...and I am probably even spelling that word wrongly, but I do not care!
Thirdly, well I cannot say what the third thing was, but it was just as inconvenient and nasty as its two predecessors.
Fourthly, well I probably should not mention that one either as it may make me seem pathetically feeble and stupid.
And fifth, well, you know, I cannot mention that one either.
Numero six, I got migraine headaches two or three days in a row and had to forfeit my cool Ockta Mondo celphone to my daughter and go back to pinky because the LCD screen on the Ockta was what was triggering my migraines.
Oh my goodness, it has just occured to me that I am writing this as if someone actually reads it....in all of August there has been one hit on this page, so what am I really worrying about? Why cannot I just be true to myself and be myself and say what exactly it is that is bothering me? Well, probably because despite talking it out, it makes absolutely no difference whether I write it or not, either way I am merely speaking to a wall. In fact, a wall would probably in the least pay attention.
I feel very unappreciated.
I know, that is selfish but nevertheless, I feel it. I am also acutely aware that way worse things happen at sea, but I have spent most of my life denying my own feelings and never indulging my reactions to them. Some say that this is a good thing and others say that it is not healthy. I am also painfully aware that there are people out there really suffering and, that in the big picture, I have it quite good. So I find myself stuck in a paradigm really...arguing with myself whether I have the right to moan about my problems when other people in the world actually have problems of consequence, whereas mine are quite Westernly trivial, as us Westerners tend to be. And, as a side issue, sort of...I believe the operative word should have been conundrum (sp) but I actually do not care. Well I do care because if I didn't then I would not have mentioned it, I simply do not care enough to bother checking which word is more appropriate. So why did I mention it? Because I do not want anyone to think me stupid! Serious problem, perhaps I actually AM stupid and therein lies the true problem?
You know what, I cannot even be bothered with this.
Why keep a daily log when you have only trivial things to say.
How sad a day is it when one feels compelled to lie to ones own diary? Even sadder?
Lying to ones own diary when no one else is even reading it anyway!
I feel almost obliged to break into a rendition of Five For Fighting's "Superman"...alas, I cannot sing well.
Why?
Because I still have laringitus, amongst other issues!
Laterz

Friday 22nd August

I have never really been completely honest with my friends. I keep a lot of things to myself and I rarely explain things in the way that they ought to be explained. I do not do this because I am dishonest, it is simply that I think that some things should not be shared. I once heard a saying, "Always keep a little salt on the bread." I do not think that this saying was intended to mean that you should keep things inside yourself. I think it actually means that you should not give everything away to everybody, that some things should be kept to yourself for use at a later date. Usually this saying is meant in the personal adventageous sense of the saying and is not supposed to be to the detriment of yourself, rather to the detriment of others when the salt is called upon. However, it always springs to mind when I think upon why I do not share everything with everyone. Truth is something I do not totally give away to everybody who becomes close to me. They may think that I am frightfully truthful with them about everything, but really, none of them really know the half of it. No, I do not mean that I have lied. I simply mean that I have never had occasion where I have shared absolutely everything with anyone.
For example, I have never told any of my friends, internet or otherwise that about four years ago I started to suffer the effects of PTSD.
I do not know whether you know what that is or not but, for those of you who do not, PTSD stands for Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Normally a person suffers this very soon, almost immediately, after some kind of traumatic event. But for a few people it does not work this way.
In my case, at the time that the traumatic events happened, there was never any time to deal with it by way of any kind of reaction. Rather, the traumatic events happened so often that I was more than likely walking around in a constant state of numbness, which is why I never reacted at the time. In other instances, the events that occurred were stored away in my subconscious and I often only remembered them by way of dreams or not remembered with any clarity at all. Others were remembered with much clarity yet with no emotional attachments to them at all. By this I mean that the memories did not stir any emotion at all beyond simple acknowledgement that they had occurred.
Probably due to the fact that I was always moving from place to place, I was so busy getting used to the new place that I never looked back to deal with the old, kind of like a vicious cycle that kept repeating itself and yet never being dealt with.
In adulthood, when I was a lot younger anyway, I never acknowledged, to any great degree, the things that had happened…the things that I could remember. I pretended them away and other times I simply turned the mountains into molehills in order to be able to keep moving forward. I constantly kept moving forward and any time that something threatened to rise up and block my forward motion, I shoved it way back down into the “didn’t happen” or “wasn’t that bad” box and kept moving.
Forward motion was important.
Eyes ahead, marching onward towards what is facing me, never really looking behind, but the trouble is that when you refuse to ever look behind, kind of like the game candlesticks, sooner or later something eventually catches up with you whether you want it to or not and then wammo, everything falls apart.
Suddenly you cannot see ahead any more and looking back is far too painful and, with all the things that have crept up on you and get right up in your face, you do not look back for fear of inviting even more trouble than you already have. Then the whole thing spirals out of control. It is like your mind becomes overloaded, like a bucket that has had a drop dripping into it for ages and then suddenly it can hold no more and the water can no longer be contained to the bucket. I think the mind is like that. It can hold so much, but once it is full it is full and that is that.
Well, my mind announced that enough was enough and decided to start putting stuff right in my face that I had to acknowledge. Acknowledging it is fine, that part is easy…it is the reconciling it that brings the trouble. It started out very strange, this PTSD thing. One day I was simply staring at something and I felt like I had the chills and then I started to feel as though I couldn’t breathe and not long after that, what I was looking at finally triggered the memory that my mind was trying to bring up into my face and then I had a real bad anxiety attack. That is how it goes now and sometimes it is the same memory trying to announce itself.
I have tried to work out why this is happening to me. You know, how come I didn’t, in my own way at least, deal with these things when they happened?
Well, at first I thought it was that I had never had time, but when I thought about it some more, it wasn’t even so much that I didn’t have the time. When I looked back, I saw at least two or three instances where I tried to deal with the issues head-on and each time I was severely reprimanded for my trouble. By severely reprimanded, I mean that I was physically punished, beatings, taunting, teasing and punishments that I can only describe as humiliating.
In some way, on the few occasions that I tried to address the issues head-on, I was taught that I had no right to feel as though I had been unjustifiably treated, degraded, beaten or whatever the issue might have been. I was taught that I just had to put up with it without complaint, without reproach, without redress. I was taught that it was okay for anyone to do whatever they wanted to me at any time and that it was wrong of me to view it as wrong or unfair.
I was no longer a person. In some kind of weird sense, I never really was.
Maybe I even got to the point where I thought it was okay for people to do those things. I know that it was a very long time before I viewed myself as a person, as a single entity who deserved respect like everyone else. I was well into my thirties before I began to understand how truly wrong some of the things done to me were. I had trouble acknowledging that I had actually been victimised.
What I mean by this is that I would hear stories about things that had happened to other people as kids and I would be horrified. My empathy for them was very deep and yet, when it came to acknowledging those things that happened to me, some of which were the same as happened to them, it was different. I always minimised what had happened to me. This clearly is not a good thing, as sooner or later your mind decides that it needs to unload and in my case it has decided to do this via PTSD, mostly because I left it no other choice.
So, there we have it.
Why have I not shared this with anyone thus far? I am not really sure. Actually, I am kind of sure why I have not shared it with anyone. Mostly it is because some of the recent friends that I have are Christians. It is not that I think that they would not understand, it is my fear that they will decide that I am under the influence of the enemy…you know, they will blame the devil or something.
Fact of the matter is that everything that we do to others or that is done to us has natural consequences. Consequences that cannot be avoided in some cases. God forgives all our sin, but He does not necessarily protect us from the consequences of that sin. Picture this: A man comes to the Lord and changes his life for the better, however, before he came to the Lord he was a burglar. He comes to the Lord and his sin is forgiven and forgotten, but the man decides that he must put right what he can right by doing the right thing. He has in his house a stolen TV. He decides to take that down to the Police station and hand it in, being very honest about the fact that he stole it. Although he is forgiven by God and his sin, the taking of the TV is forgiven, the Police still hold him accountable. The man must face the consequences of having taken the TV.
As is the case with me really. I might have forgiven the people who hurt me and God I am sure desires that I do this but, forgiving them has not freed me from the consequences of their actions toward me. For some reason or another, I have not been spared the ramifications of their actions. Why? I do not know. Perhaps there is something for me to learn through this that I cannot learn any other way. Perhaps it is a process that I must walk through as a natural course of events? Kind of like a man who stupidly decides to go hand gliding. God loves Him, but when that hand glider breaks, he will naturally fall to the ground at a fast rate of knots and to all intents and purposes probably break a few limbs. Natural consequences of undertaking such a risky sport.
Perhaps I am simplifying things somewhat, but some people are healed from things and others are not. Sometimes it is in the plan for our life that we are healed and spared from certain things. Sometimes it is not in the plan for our life. Look how many Christians have died from cancer even though they have believed to their dying day that they would be healed. Why did they die anyway and were not healed? I do not know.
Some Christians will say that they obviously did not have enough faith. Some Christians are like that. But God is our father, a parent if you like, and all parents sometimes have to say no. We do not always understand at the time why they say no. We simply have to accept it. I think that healing is like that. One day we will know why, but for now we simply have to accept our lot and trust in God because He knows what he is doing.
It is like the question of why bad people always seem to prosper.
You know, so many of the rich elite are just so prosperous that it is insane. This world rewards dishonesty richly and spares no such mercy upon the honest. I, like a lot of other people, always wondered why this is so. But one day a Christian brother gave me an explanation that kind of made sense. You may agree or disagree with him, I do not really care because agreeing with him or not, is not the issue. The issue is his explanation.
This is what he said.
“God knows that some people will never come to Him and that they will be forever lost to Him. Due to that, this world is as good as it will ever get for them. God loves all His creation. Every man and woman He knew before time itself and He loved them. He loves them. How grieved must the father’s heart be to know that this time on earth is the only time that He will ever be able to do anything for those children? So He allows them to be blessed now, knowing it is the only blessing that He will ever be able to allow them.”
I thought about that and at first it didn’t really gel with me. But as I thought about it some more, it sort of began to make a strange kind of sense.
As parents we often put off bad news for as long as we can. Or we allow our children to do things that we weren’t allowed to do and we justify it by saying, “Oh well you are only a child once.” We understand as parents and adults that childhood is fleeting and that we will not get the chance to do any particular moment again. We take opportunities to spoil our children once in a while, knowing that childhood is fleeting and that all too soon it will be over. Perhaps God does think that way about some of the children He knows are to be lost to Him forever once this life is over. I don’t know if that is so or not, but it is a thought.
I am not speaking of essentially wicked, evil people who do nothing but seek to destroy. I am not sure what kinds of people this applies to. All I know is that it was an explanation to me as to why some essentially good people seem to suffer greatly in this life and some essentially bad people seem to prosper. Not that prospering or not prospering is any indication of your relationship with God. It was not meant like that.

Saturday 23rd August

I am an analytical type of person. A deep thinker. I think things to the bitter extremes and I have always been this way. Even as a little child I used to think about things way beyond most other people. I often wondered how I came to be someone who thinks about things so much and it was only back in 2001/2002 that I worked out how I had come to be this way.
The first time a Social Worker ever came to our house to check on me I was ten months old. She found me lying in a bassinette that was way too small for me. When she looked into the bassinette she said it was as though I stared straight through her. The woman said that I simply lay there with absolutely no expression on my face. Her sudden presence did not startle me nor provoke any reaction at all. She said I was inanimate; that I lacked any kind of animation and that I was very still. The woman lifted me from the bassinette and I still made no sound and did not exhibit any kind of recognition that I had even been picked up. She said I remained deathly quiet and when taken from the house by her, I exhibited no concerns about being taken by a stranger. She also noted that I had been beaten up. My right cheek was so very badly bruised she and the doctors believed that it was broken. I was dehydrated and had one of the worse cases of nappy rash that they had ever seen.
I was given over to a foster mother for a time and the only time I made any indication that I was aware that I was anywhere was when she turned the light out at night leaving me in the dark. The foster mother said I screamed blue murder when the light was switched off and the room made dark.
I have always been scared of the dark.
I never knew that I had been scared of it from such a young age and one must ask the question why a ten month old baby would be frightened of the dark if she had always slept in the dark, which I always had.
Anyway, I suppose the dark thing is besides the point.
The point being the analytical thinker thing.
I was never interacted with as a small baby. That was very clear. It was clear by my reaction to the woman who was a stranger and appeared out of nowhere to whom I had absolutely no reaction whatsoever. What was I doing when I was staring past her. What was I thinking about? Clearly I was thinking about something because I was awake. Babies never think about nothing.
Their brains are always growing, changing, taking in new information, making new connections and somewhere cognitively storing information about their surroundings. Obviously I was doing those things too, or else why would I be afraid of the dark? Something or someone had given me enough information about the dark, obviously through actions, to teach me that it was not safe to be in the dark. Babies cry when they are hungry, thirsty, cold, scared, or simply want attention. Clearly attention was something I had never sought, if I had, then clearly I would have reacted to the stranger staring over the bassinette at me. That I reacted to the dark in such a vehement manner, for a baby anyway, tells me that I was crying because I was afraid.
I know that it may seem that I am going over a past that does not matter any more, but to me it is very important. You see, my entire life, ever since I can remember, which is around age 2 and a half to 3 years old, I have always felt like an adult. I know that that might sound strange, but every time I did something wrong or got into trouble I always found myself berating myself believing that I should have known better when, in fact, I should not have always known better. I always felt responsible for everything that happened to me. Even when Robert (aka Bobby) was beating me; as a small little child who had not even started school yet, I believed that I deserved what he was doing. I felt that I had done something to cause it.
When you do not know what your past is, you tend to fill in the gaps yourself and I had, unwittingly along the way, storied myself. By this I mean that I did not understand why I had been treated the way that I had by Bobby and Janet. I did not know their history and thus I did not know my own. Being that I had grown up always feeling very responsible for everything that had happened to me, I pretty much filled in the gaps, creating a story that fitted with what I believed to be true about myself and in keeping with what others said to me about myself. I created this story at around five years old.
I knew that I was different from my siblings. I did not know why, nor that it was abnormal to think this or for this to be a fact. I simply knew that I was different.
I knew that Janet didn’t like me. I knew that Robert didn’t like me either. I had always known that because neither had ever made it a secret. I was also aware that my siblings did not like me either but, when Janet wasn’t around, they might temporarily allow me to be a part of their games. However, I also knew that if anything went wrong, no matter who did it, that I would be blamed by the three of them. It was a calculated risk playing with them. Even before I started school I knew that it was a calculated risk. I knew that things might and actually could go very wrong and that I would get the blame, but I did not care. Being a part of their games was more important than any consequence due to something going wrong. It is at this point that I must draw your attention to the fact that later on in life I chose to take the same calculated risk. Even then, I lost every time, but the need to be a part of what they were was stronger than my fear of it all going wrong.
But again, I have wandered away from the topic I am trying to work out.
So I storied myself.
Even though I storied myself, I must admit that it was based upon the things that were said to me. I was always told that I was bad and would turn out “no good”. I was told that I had bad blood and was poison. Janet told me that I had no right to be alive and should have been born dead. I was also told that one day I was going to be sent away. I was called a liar and a thief, because that is apparently what my father was (even though Janet once claimed that he was a total stranger to her) and I was also told that I was a trouble maker, a wrecker and a mongrel. They were Janet’s favourite terms of endearment as far as I was concerned. I was a thief, liar, wrecker, bad blooded and a mongrel. I heard those things ever since I could remember her speaking to me, so it is probably no great surprise that when I storied myself those facets of her observations of me became part of “my story”.
Also part of the story was my belief that I had no right to life, should have been born dead and was poison. I always believed that I poisoned other people; by this I mean that they were bad because I made them be bad by poisoning them, which went a long ways later on to my condoning of their treatment of me in regard to abuse. It also took on life in the spiritual realm later on in my life once I came to an understanding that there even was a spiritual realm to this life.
So, taking all of the above into account as part of the story, the story of how I explained away Janet and Robert’s treatment of me and why I got sent away went something like this. Keep in mind that almost all of this story is completely incorrect as far as the reality of the situation went. In fact, the story and the reality are complete opposites, but I did not know this until around 2002.
My story.
I was born a grizzly, whinging baby who never stopped crying. I kept Robert and Janet up all day and all night. When I started to walk I got into every imaginable mischief and was into absolutely everything. I had bad blood and this in turn caused anyone who came into direct contact with me to also turn bad. I was a thief, a liar, a flea bag, a mongrel who had no right to life and should have been born dead. I drove Janet to the brink of insanity and was in fact such a bad child that she had to send me away before I ruined her other children. Every bad thing that ever happened to me I directly caused and was solely responsible for. I brought out the bad in other people and caused them to behave in ways that they normally would not. I was also retarded, quite retarded.
That was the story with which I storied myself.
I carried that story right up until 2002. I might try to tell you that I lost the story way before then, but deep down, I carried that story until I came to know different and I did not come to know different for absolute certain until 2002.
I had never felt like a child. I had never seen any pictures of myself as a baby, a toddler or as a little girl before the age of nine. People had taken photos along the way, but I had never seen them. As for any baby pictures or toddler pictures, Janet burned them all.
So this brings me to the analytical thinker part of my persona. I have always been a thinker. I could put things together pretty well from a fairly young age. I understood adult-speak way before any of my peers…well, kids my age. I knew myself to be retarded and as an adult I thought of myself as below average intelligence, even though there were many signs along the way that should have convinced me otherwise much sooner than I became convinced that I was actually really smart.
Even as a child, if I saw something that I wanted to do, I did it and I did it well. At the age of eight I built an entire doll house out of a cardboard box. I made it two levels and I made all the furniture out of cardboard as well. I made windows and doors and everything.
At age nine, I saw a carving in a book that I liked. It was a Maori carving. I got a piece of wood and a chisel and I replicated that carving. It was not completely exact, but it was a good replication. I played knucklebones both right handed and left handed and there was no one who could beat me at the game. Children who are below average intelligence not only struggle with academia, but they also struggle with eye hand co-ordination and knucklebones would be an immense challenge to be able to play at all, let alone to master with both hands. I could do that.
I could remember things in intricate detail too, often learning large parts of written work. I was reading books without pictures by the time I was eight. I could write the most amazing stories by the time I was eight. Most schoolwork bored me to tears. They treated me like I was retarded and aimed the work at my so-called retarded level. I didn’t do the work because it was stupid and it bored me, thus they continued to think me retarded. Combine that with my real McCoy inability to deal with numbers and well, you can see the big picture.
I also spent many, many hours in my formative years alone. Janet would shut me in my room for days and I would be alone with nothing left to me but to think and to imagine. Once I was taken away from her I also spent much time alone with nothing to do but think and imagine. By that time I had come to understand adult-doublespeak quite well and I used to think about that a lot too. So it is no wonder that I am a very deeply analytical thinker. Which brings me to what I am doing now.
You see, I know that it seems that I spend a lot of time thinking on the past and I admit it, I do. The reason I do that is because at the time, I was not permitted the luxury of having time to think it through. Through not thinking it through, I learned to ignore it and to excuse many things that I should never have excused. In excusing those things, they did damage to me that I also never had time to stop and deal with. Now I have PTSD as a result, delayed PTSD and I suppose I think that somehow analysing every nanosecond of every moment of every event might help me to deal with it, reconcile what I can and lay to rest other parts of things that happened. In this way, maybe I can make the PTSD go away or become a part of my past? I do not know, so I pare away every event in my mind and think about those things that I should have been able to think upon at the time but couldn’t.
Does it help?
I do not know, but I shall keep doing it until I know, one way or the other. No one can fix this but me and even though I came to understand that I was not responsible, it doesn’t lessen the impact of events not dealt with upon my life.

Laterz

Sunday 24th August

Back in 2002 I read things that I had never imagined could ever have been true. What I read debased me at my very foundations and I had to let go of all I had previously believed about certain things and I had to accept that everything that I had thought about my "story" was incorrect. I had been fed lies; hurtful untruths about almost everything. These hurtful untruths had gone a very long ways to explaining away to myself a lot of things.
You see, due to the "storying" of myself on my part, with help from people who told hurtful untruths, I had never viewed myself as a victim; ever. I had never believed that anything that had happened to me was completely out of my control and as a result, I carried the responsibility for everything, even those things that happened way before I could ever even remember, the things that I had imagined to be truth due, in part, to having been fed untruths at such a young age.
This had a good side, but mostly all it ended up having was a down side. The downside was that while I had been able to believe my "story" I had been able to believe myself responsible for everything that had ever happened, thus, I felt in control. I fooled myself into believing that nothing had ever been done against my will. I convinced myself, in a roundabout way that I had actually given permission to those people to hurt me that, if somehow I had mustered up enough courage to scream at them, "NO! YOU CANNOT DO THIS TO ME!" that it would never have happened at all. That had I have chosen to behave differently they would never have felt the need to hurt me or thought it permissible to do what it is that they did. Yes, I convinced myself that even as a little baby of three that I had been in total control.
And the truth is that at all times I felt very much convinced that I was in control of what happened to me. How could I walk through those things otherwise? Be it by behaviour or word, even by insinuation, in every situation, I somehow made bad things being done to me perfectly acceptable. Perhaps taking responsibility made it hurt less. Who knows?
I surely do not.
If you are responsible for what is happening to you then it stands to reason that you are in control, right? Every time I thought about something bad that happened to me I was able to justify it. I rarely, if ever, considered that other people's agendas or behaviours contributed in any way to my predicament, whatever that predicament might have been. I was totally responsible therefore I was totally in control. Perhaps that was the only way that I could cope with the memory of those things? There were times when even those who were hurting me were telling me that I had to learn to take responsibility but, upon reflection, I can tell you that that was all I ever did. Take responsibility. I took the responsibility, forgave the perpetrators, often going as far as to feeling sorry for them and in this I justified their behaviour and even vindicated them in my own mind. They were the victims and I was the perpetrator. I was the one in the wrong and they were the ones driven, by me, to doing unspeakable things.
But what happens when this turns out to be merely an illusion?
What happens when you are faced with a story that is in complete opposition to everything you convinced yourself was the true version of events?
You see, I did not know that I had been beaten as a baby. I did not know that I had been in foster care since I was a baby. I did not know that I had suffered malnutrition as a baby, as a toddler. I did not know that my step father had raped me as a baby, as a toddler. I knew none of it. Obviously I suspected that I had been grossly abused as a little girl, but I did not know who, why or when. No, I did not know those last three things until quite recently, although I always knew that I had been grossly hurt as a little girl. I had snippets of information that used to come to the surface, but just like what happened with our dog Tina, I thought most of it to be snippets of dreams. It took another two years after 2002 for it most of it to fall into place.
But when I read about the stuff that had happened to me as a baby; when I read that I had been a quiet almost abnormally quiet baby, I began to see my "story" quickly unravel.
At first it took me quite some time to imagine that I had ever even been a small innocent baby. I had never been able to imagine myself as that. Even that was difficult to wrap my head around, but then to find out that someone, namely Janet and Robert had hurt me as grievously as they had even as a baby, that shattered me. It really did.
Why?
Because for the first time I was faced with the fact that I had actually been the victim, not the perpetrator. In facing up to the fact that I was a victim, I felt all that security of being totally in control of all that had happened to me slipping away. And I mean that I really could feel it slipping away. I could literally feel myself coming undone inside. For the first time in my life I cried for me and that was totally scary.
I was numb for days.
As the days went on I became even more numb and the more I read, the more I realised that everything that I had ever believed from my very early years had been a total lie. Shortly after that the flashbacks started.
They were very subtle at first. They were not earth shattering and nor were they particularly disturbing and initially I even tried ignoring them, refusing absolutely to buy into them. The more I tried to ignore them the less subtle they became and yet, they were still not particularly disturbing.
They became so much more upsetting though when some of what I believed to be dreams turned out to be actual truths. Like Robert kicking our dog Tina almost to death, or to death; I never really knew whether she was dead at the end or not. It is hard to imagine how she could have lived through what he did to her but, then again, it is difficult to comprehend that my little body survived half the things he did to me, so Tina may well have lived through what happened to her.
My point being that I had always thought that Tina being savagely kicked and beaten by him to be a dream, however, my older sister about five years ago let me know for absolute sure that it wasn't a dream. I had been standing right there with her and Robert did that thing right in front of us. Funny thing is that as soon as she said it, the memory became a little more clear.
She said a whole lot of other things too, which I do not want to go into, point being, that she clarified a lot of things for me which I am not sure I really am actually any better off for having had clarified.
When the sexual abuse memories became much clearer, through flashback type of behaviour, she clarified that too. It was him. He was always going to do that to me and he even announced to Janet that he was going to do thosse things and she allowed him to.
If that had been me and my husband or boyfriend had put me on notice that he was going to rape my baby daughter, I would have gotten hold of a gun and blown his head off if that was the only way I could have stopped him from hurting my precious baby. But then again, I wasn't her precious baby, nor his. He decided he would do what he was going to do and she abided him that behaviour I assume, figuring it was a way to get even with me or whomever was responsible for making my life.
Knowing that he was the one was bad enough, but to find out that she knew and simply allowed him to do that to me made me feel physically ill. I am not even sure to this day that I have truly acknowledged that it was me he did those things to or that it was me she hated so much that she allowed him to do that terrible thing.
Perhaps I am scared to truly acknowledge it.
Perhaps I am afraid of what it might do to me to truly let that sink in.
You see, I believe that I am still very uncomfortable with the idea of acknowledging that I was a victim.
I have to anaylise every living breathing second that I can remember. I have to analyse it and I have to try to make sense of it. I have to do that in order to try and reconcile myself with it. But in some ways I think it is unable to be reconciled. I do not think that you can ever be at peace with something so horrible and it has absolutely nothing to do with forgiveness.
I do not think about him first or foremost. No, I think about that little girl and I am still trying to accept that that little girl was actually me; that that little baby was actually me, not someone else.
I know that this must sound so crazy and it is crazy to a point.
Some days it seems so huge and overwhelming that I do not want to think on it at all, but then something happens and it is brought to mind by force. I see something, an image or a colour and my body freezes, I can't breathe, feel sick and then boom, there's the memory!
It sucks.
It truly sucks.
But it does not suck in a "I want to jump off the nearest bridge" way. It sucks in that I know that I have to face it head on and, as I said, I do not like this process. I wish it could be completely bypassed but, it seems that it cannot.
laterz

Monday 25th August

Typical!
So typical that I hardly say a word for the entire first three quarters of the month and then in the last quarter get struck with verbal vomitting! I do not know why I go so quiet for so long and then suddenly cannot shut up.
I do not know why that is.
Somewhere back in the last three posts I was speaking about the fact that I spent so much time alone thinking and what have you. It is a truth that many of my happiest memories are memories of me enjoying things in total isolation.
I have this one memory of when I was about eleven or twelve.
We went down South for a holiday over the summer and we stayed near to Timaru. Somewhere down in the middle of nowhere, actually that's silly, there is no middle of nowhere in New Zealand, it is far too small, but on a New Zealand scale it was the middle of nowhere. Anyway we went to visit someone and on either side of their house and across the road were these enormous fields filled with peas. Yes, peas in their pods.
I remember lying down near to the fence staring up at the sky listening to Time Passages by Al Stewart on my tiny yellow radio while eating peas. I remember they made my mouth real itchy...my tongue, gums and lips were bruning itchy from the peas, but I didn't care. I was there by myself and happier than I normally ever got. It felt as though nothing else existed beyond that big blue sky, the field and outside of the song.
I know every instrument in that song.
I know exactly where the Rhodes kicks in. I know every line of the saxaphone, electric guitar, twelve stringed acoustic, bass, violins, drums and even the highhat. I know that song better than I know most people.
There is so much going on in that song. Instrumentally, it is one of the fullest orchestral arrangements that I have ever heard and if any one of those instruments were missing or didn't kick in exactly where they kick in, that song would fall over as dead as a dud.
I remember the pine trees on the farm. I would be riding my horse and thinking on the Osmond songs that I knew and nothing made those pine trees with the sun shining down upon them seem more majestic than in those moments.
I remember listening to Dream Weaver by Gary Wright while staring up at the billions of stars up in the sky.
The first time I ever heard Can't Smile Without You by Barry da Man...a low it was a raining dismal day and every time I hear that song I am reminded of walking up the path to the house in the rain in winter.
Name of The Game by Abba, I Go To Rio by Pablo Cruise and How Much I Feel by Ambrosia always remind me of the long ride on my bike that I took to school every day in the summer of standard four. I remember those songs from only sunny days.
Cool Change by Little River Band always reminds me of the time I was in my uncle David's bach trying to go to sleep and the song came onto my little radio...I had a white radio by then. That summer I went camping way in the outbacks with two friends and I remember us listening to Video Killed The Radio Star by the Buggles, Sara by Fleetwood Mac, Halfway Hotel by Voyager and Asian Paradise by Sharon O'Neill. All of those songs take me back to that camping trip.
I remember on third form camp siotting on a log staring down at the stream while listening to Sail On by Lionel Richie. Every time I hear that song now I can see in my mind the way that the sun glinted off the water and I can ever remember the smell of the bush.
I also remember when I used to swing on the swing listening to Wildfire by Michael Murphey while staring out at the mountains dreaming of escape. California always made me stop in my tracks and think of people left behind and that longing to belong somewhere or to something.
Interesting, I think, how songs can bring back memories with such great clarity.
I have many, many moments like that. Solitary moments where I was completely at peace and at ease, even though everything around me was crazy and totally out of control. I think on those moments often and have made many like that even in adulthood but somehow, those solitary moments from childhood just seem much more pristine.
Laterz

Tuesday 26th August

I had the longest and most surreal dream last night. I dreamed that I went to America and met JF's pastor who goes by the name of J. Fact of the matter is that I have never even met J nor have I seen any pictures of him, so how I saw him in my dream is a mystery.
In the dream I stayed at JF's house and we went to a function at the church. While at the church, J, the Pastor started to make a joke at an inappropriate time. He looked at me and asked, "Why aren't you laughing?"
I looked back at him and I replied, "I'd rather concentrate on God."
That sounds kind of an uppety thing to say to a Pastor, but in the dream it was the only response I could muster up to give him.
JF was staring at me but J's eyes went straight through me like an x-ray and I could sense that he was livid with me for saying what I said.
Anyway, I had been staying there a few weeks by this time and that night I went to bed and fell asleep. While I was asleep I was aware that I was crying in my sleep and when I awoke J's wife was sitting on the edge of my bed and she stared at me and then handed me a glass and three small orange pills. She told me to take them and I said no.
When I refused to take them, she became very angry and so I rose from the bed and started to dress myself while she sat on the bed staring at me.
JF then entered the room, but by that time she had become their daughter (dreams, who can know them). J's wife stood up from the side of the bed and I got the distinct impression that it was time for me to leave. I began to start to pack my stuff but I kept finding odd socks and odd shoes and I could not find any that matched at all. So I put on a pair of odd socks and shoes, put my backpack on my back and walked out into the lounge where J was waiting with a whole bunch of men who were from the church.
J looked at me and said, "Why did you say that you would rather concentrate on God?"
I was frightened and replied, "I was just kidding around with you. I didn't mean to offend you."
The entire time I was staring at him and giving him an answer I wanted to yell at him that he was wrong for making the joke and that there was nothing wrong with me saying what I had said, but I was too afraid to stand up to him because I thought he might send me away.
J looked at me and said, "You don't joke about God. You just don't do it!"
I looked at him in complete and utter disbelief. While I was staring at him, he handed me a blue sleeveless vest. It was brilliant blue and in the pockets I knew there to be a whole lot of money.
J stared at me and added, "You take this and you go!"
I stared back at him and pushed the blue vest back toward him while saying, "This is the kiss off, right? I am supposed to take the money and never come back here again? Please don't do this to me."
J pushed the vest toward me again and I simply turned from him and walked away.
All the time that this was going on I kept worrying about the fact that I couldn't find a matching pair of socks or shoes. As I walked away I decided to go and see David. While I was thinking that another thought occured to me too, what if they had already spoken to him and turned him against me too?
I suddenly found myself at a train station and there were telephones everywhere. People simply seemed to be dialling numbers without inserting a card or coins, so I walked over to a yellow telephone and went to dial directory to get David's number. I knew I had the number somewhere but, figuring I had been unable to even find a matching pair of socks or shoes, I fisured I would not be able to find his number amongst my things. Just as I went to ring directory I saw a lady putting coins into her phone to be able to use it and I wondered why I had not noticed her doing that when I had first seen her using the phone.
I stuck my hand into my pocket and pulled out all these coins. They were all bright copper like they had been polished and all of them were covered in different designs, mostly hyroglyphics. Because I could not tell if they were American coins or not, I asked the lady if they were and she said that they weren't.
So then I had to go and get them changed into American coins and I ended up in a very long line of people and all of them had huge amounts of coins to change and it was clearly going to take hours before it would be my turn to get my coins changed.
I stepped into line at the back and my heart was filled with despair because I knew that I was still alone.
Then I woke up.

Laterz

Friday 29th August

Few things are the way we perceive them to be. Not many things stay the same. By this I mean that I am about to speak in riddles because, although I want to speak of something, at the same time it would not be prudent of me or of any advantage to you to speak directly of what I mean.
I have a friend who has a friend, don't we all?
Anyway, but this friend has been a very good friend to this other friend. Always there when the chips are down, no matter day or night. This friend has seen some wicked things on account of the other person and directly because of the actions of this other friend still, this friend has remained true and faithful to this other person as a friend.
This friend of my friend has family but for a long while the family situation has been messy. While this family situation was quite messy, my friend stood beside the other friend all the way no matter what.
But here's the kicker.
The friend has made a tentative peace with her family and now that friend does not want my friend around. This friend cannot even go to the other friend's house because of one of the family members. The friend told this to my friend and now she is simply shut out in the cold although, the other friend has no qualms about borrowing things off the friend. Basically using the friend.
That is what it is; usery.
I think that it is horrible.
There is nothing worse than being shut out by people and being made to feel as though you count for nothing. As though your friendship was worthless. You know, easy come easy go.
How can people be that ignorant and hurtful?
Why do they do it?
I hate seeing people treated this way. Being isolated and left out. Being used isn't nice to have done to you. It is not fair either.
Anyway, that's my rant for now, if you could actually call this a rant.
laterz

"I Was Made For You"
by
"David And The Giants"

Friday 6th September
I have been a pretty forgiving person in my adult life in much the same way as I was when I was a child. Never have I been one who turns their back on someone else until it is at the bitter end and even then, I have always made it a priority to carry the responsibility. I have carried it through asking what it was that I did wrong.
But I have since learned that sometimes it has nothing to with having done anything wrong, nor does it have much to do with anything that you did right.
Sometimes it just is.
Some people just do things because they do them. Whether it be as a result of circumstances or simply inspired by habit, I do not know. What I do know is that sometimes we are powerless to have any authority over said circumstances and events.
Take for example events of the last two weeks.
Now she was not the sort of person that I would normally make a habit of befriending, well at least that is the way I saw it at the time, but there was something that drew me to her two years ago. To be honest, I did not know what made me incline to a friendship with her. Her whole life was lived in opposition to almost everything that I believe is true and right. Not that I am an angel who never does anything wrong. To the contrary, I am so flawed as a human being that I look pretty much like every other human being staggering around on this quickly deteriorating orb and there is essentially nothing any more special about me than there is about anyone else.
The comparison I am trying to draw between my former friend and I is that she was a drinker. I am not. She takes drugs. I do not. She makes the most crass jokes you ever did hear. So crass in fact that they'd probably make someone akin to the character of Tony Soprano or Al Swerengen blush.
Point being that when I met her she was sworn off the drugs and the booze, although her crass nature was not much softened in comparison to any other time in her life, but I let that slide because I thought she needed a friend as much as I did. Or perhaps the truth might be that I needed her more than she needed me?
Maybe I will never know.
Point is that even though I knew her life to be lived in opposition to almost everything I believe, I still let it slide and became friends with her.
I should not have done that.
But I did.
Hence the current story.
To begin with, in the friendship, she did not drink nor do recreational drugs. To the contrary, aside from the obvious crass nature to a lot of the things she said, she did not jump off the wagon, so to speak. Although, in all fairness to me, I did not know that the respite from booze and drugs actually involved a wagon.
No.
I found that out later.
Anyway, about three months into the friendship she went whack about something that had little to do with me. Point being, she called the friendship off in no uncertain terms.
It is at this point that I must remind you that there has only ever been the odd occasion in my life where female friendships have worked out successfully for me anyway. It is simply the nature of it.
So I walked away and left it at that. I didn't ask why. I didn't even want to know why. I just thought, "so be it."
Imagine my surprise when some months later she turned up on my doorstep crying and saying that she was sorry. I let her into the house.
I should have simply escorted her out of the house at that point with further instructions never to return. But not me.
No.
I accepted her apology and it was all on again.
For a few weeks and then she disappeared.
Months later she turned up again. She was very drunk that time. She was crying and saying she was sorry and that I was her only friend and thus, I felt sorry for her and fell for it all.
Truth of the matter might be that I actually enjoyed being wanted. I wanted a friend too.
So, the friendship resumed.
The way it was going I could foresee that there would be things along the way that I would hate. But I could never have imagined just how much I would come to detest and loathe the things that went on in her house.
I stayedfriends with her through all of it. And it is true to say that we did have some good times. Sometimes she could be genuinely funny in an uncrass manner. A few times she was there for me when it counted too, so it was not all bad, just the majority of it wasn't particularly healthy.
I did not agree with the things that she did and I was never there when the things happened (aside from the attempted stabbing) but I knew, after the fact, that those things had gone on.
After a while I was starting to really see a very ugly side to my friend. A selfish side that was out for all that she could get from people more vulnerable than herself. I knew that sooner or later the friendship was going to have to come to an end but, being the sort of person that I am, I was loathe to do it to her.
I was loathe to do it because I would have felt as though I had wounded her and I do not like to wound anyone. I do not like to hurt anyone, but as I have come to realise, I was hurting myself by being in that kind of friendship in the first place.
Anyway, as it turned out, she did it to me.
She simply just one day quit talking to me and dropped all the stuff she had borrowed off me into the letterbox.
Do not be mistaken, as much as it hurt to lose the friendship because, aside from the things that she did, I did genuinely care for her, I was mostly relieved that it was finally over. But yes, I shed some tears over it.
However, now that it has passed, I can see much more clearly the friendship for what it was and I know that I am way better off without her in my life.
You cannot actively be friends with someone who lives their life in total opposition to the way that you live yours. It simply does not work.
You cannot have a friendship with someone like that simply because you feel sorry for them. And I did feel sorry for her because she has had a terrible of a life.
But something else occured to me too.
I had a terrible childhood and teen years, but I do not take it out on everyone else nor hurt people to salve the hurt in me. That is what she does. She exerts her will onto those who are weaker than her to make herself feel better by being the one in control. That is not a good thing. Those whom she cannot control she manipulates.
She manipulated me.
Another thing that I know with absolute certainty is that she will some day, in the coming months, show up here again begging me to forgive her and feel sorry for her and to let her back into my life.
But hey guess what?
I am not going to let her back in. I have resolved to very firmly yet nicely show her the door with clear instructions never to return. You see, some people do not wish to change. Some people simply do not care for others. They have no capacity to really feel empathy for anyone else and that is what enables them to do very mean, ghastly things.
Some people like me wish to "save" everyone but the things is that in order for someone to change, they have to want to change. That former friend of mine never will change.
She will in all likelihood spend the rest of her life doing unto others what she would never want done unto her.
I cannot reconcile that to any degree that will ever allow me to be a friend to her again.
Some people may say that this resolve of mine is selfish. Others will say that it is wise.
At the end of the day, I can only do what is best for me now and what is best for me is to be left alone by her because I cannot condone nor be a part of anything that she does. Not that I was before. I was never a part of it, but when I found out about some of the things after the fact, I should have walked away then.
I regret that I did not.

laterz

Saturday 13th September
I had the weirdest dream last night. It was not like some of the other dreams I have though. Like some dreams that I have, I was aware that there was something that I was supposed to garner from it as I was within the dream.
It was quite a horrible dream, but even so, I knew it to be figurative.
Okay, so here is the dream.
I was on a road in a strange town. Even though it was a town that I had never been to and did not know the name of, it was familiar. While on the road, I met a young boy who would have been all of ten years old. He told me that he was hiding in the ceiling of an abandoned house. When I asked him why, he pointed to a road and told me to walk up it and I would find the answer.
So I headed up the road that he pointed to and to begin with there was nothing. But after a while I came to a bridge and beneath the bridge another road was winding and I saw many children on that road walking in the same direction.
The children were aged from teenagers right down to toddlers.
I was mystified by it, but did not come to any conclusion as to what was going on. After a little while longer of walking on that road I caught up to some more children and they were walking calmly and quietly. As I made my way through the throng of them, none of them looked at me or spoke to me. It was as though they could not even see me.
I eventually found myself walking on the road that wound its way under the bridge and eventually I came to a river.
What I saw at the river frightened and upset me greatly.
Standing in the water in pairs were adults and somehow I knew them to be memebers of a church of some kind. I knew them to be Charismatic, spirit-filled Christians. And yet, even though I knew them to be as I previously stated, I knew the spirit within them to be a counterfeit. By this I mean that they thought it was the Holy Spirit. I knew it to be some other spirit, but they could not see that they were deceived.
Held at the arms between each pair of adults was a child. The same children that I had seen walking along the road. They were speaking to the children. They were speaking words of comfort. The adults were making the children understand that what they were about to do was of God. Some of these children belonged to the adults in the water, but it made no difference. The adults then held the child under the water until it drowned and most of the children did not struggle. It was as if the children had been convinced that it was the right thing to do. That it was indeed God's will.
I stood there watching.
I was stunned and yet I knew that there was nothing that I could do there in that river. I knew that things had gone to far to be stopped.
At one stage I looked away from the river to the riverbank that was up ahead. Stacked in formation for quite some distance were the dead bodies of the same children that I had seen walking beneath the bridge as I had walked across it and looked down.
I fled that place back to the town where my friends were awaiting my return.
We had hidden their young baby knowing it to be in danger.
In the dream my children were not there but I knew them to be safe.
All of a sudden a man ran into the house and he said that we needed to flee. That we needed to do it now.
I had organised all my things to leave immediately but my friends with the baby had not.
We attempted to ready everything but as I was helping them I got the distinct impression that they were deliberately slowing down and confusing the process. We did eventually get some things organised and just as we were about to leave, another man known to us arrived and blocked the driveway with his car. He waved our other friend over to him and he was telling him that it was too late to leave.
The first man came into the house with the man from the car. I had been standing on the porch watching them speaking and so walked into the house to find my friends with the baby to tell them what had happened. I initially could not find them but after looking around for a while I found them in the bathroom making their way up the wall and into the roof.
Somehow they had known that it was too late without having heard it from the man in the car. The man in the car looked at me and he told me that someone had told on us. He said that it was not someone from outside our small circle but someone within it.
I immediately knew the culprit to be my friends with the baby. One of my friends was a rather large lady and she was unable to climbed the wall to get into the roof. I looked at her and asked her if I could climb into the roof with them, even though I had no intentions of doing so and she looked back at me and said, "No."
I was not at all surprised to hear her say that. I expected it but had simply wanted her to confirm what I had suspected.
The man who had been there with me told me not to worry that I could stay at his place and that he would keep me hidden there. He assured me that harm would not come to me there and I knew him to be telling the truth.
As I left the house of my friends, I knew that harm was about to fall upon them. I could hear helicopters in the air and I could hear sirens wailing in the distance. I knew that they were soon to be found and that they would meet the same fate as those whom I had seen at the river, even though they were adults. As I thought upon their fate, I knew that they had stupidly forgotten to count the potential cost of betraying someone else. They had not understood that to betray me was to betray themselves. The had not understood that the people whom they had betrayed me to had no honour and would show them no favour for their treachery.
I pitied them in those precious few seconds that I thought upon what they had done and the ramifications of their having done so.
I left the house with the man knowing that I was safe and that I would remain so.
Then I woke up from the dream.

Laterz

"He'll Be There"
by
"David And The Giants"

Saturday 27th September

I dreamed last night that I found my father.
I do not know why I dreamed that, but it was a very calm and serene dream. In the dream I found him in America and he had blonde hair and blue eyes.
The whole time I was with him I felt more together than I ever had in my life. I remember thinking to myself in the dream, why can't I feel this way when I am awake.
The whole time I was with him I was unafraid and not worrying for anything. But then near the end of the dream I had to leave America and come home to New Zealand which meant leaving him.
In the dream I had been staying in his house and he had this radio that he had put beside my bed, knowing that I liked music. I fiddled with it and set the alarm to go off every day so that it would play my fave song to remind him of me because I was so afraid that he would forget me.
I do not know why I could not stay there with him in the dream. I only knew that I had to leave and I was heartbroken and yet contented all at the same time.
Odd.

Laterz

Sunday 28th September

My friends lost their eighteen month old son and grandson a week ago Friday.
He was put to bed on Thursday night and he had a very slight cold. When they went to get him up on Friday morning he had passed away sometime during the night.
I feel such a plethora of emotions about his death and the events of the past week that I hardly know where to begin. I do not know that I ever will.
I saw him in his coffin around five or six times over the four days that he was at home next door. I spent a lot of time with his family just being with them and helping out where I could.
It is just so shocking that he died so unexpectedly and suddenly. All death is shocking, yet not always unexpected, but you do not expect an eighteen month old baby to suddenly die. Not like that.

Laterz

My garden in September

beetroot & brocolli

My garden 5th October

cellery & brocolli

My garden 8th October

beetroot & onions

My Garden 12th October

strawberries & cucumber

Monday 13th October

I wrote the following a few nights ago.
I am handwriting this.

Well, by the time it appears in here I will have handwritten and typed it into here from the book.
Why am I writing it?
Well, my laptop had to be rushed to laptop hospital today in a city far away (Wellington) and so I am now using a PC that I swear has been around since Noah was on the ark...his e-mail addy is no longer current..I bought it from a friend and the keyboard makes a lot of noise, especially at night...and everyone's asleep already and if I thump on the keys someone is likely to get up and seriously bash me for waking them up.
No, they wouldn't really bash me, but they'd be slightly unamused to say the least.
So I thoughgt that I would handwrite it and then type it into Piczo in the daylight hours...although if that ever happens it might be nothing short of a miracle. I never get around to things such as that.
I have cramp already.
I used to be able to write for hours because I used to handwrite everything pre computer days.
Okay, so it wasn't that long ago.
I bought my first computer in 1997 and it was an old 386. I thought it was the most wonderful machine in the whole wide world once I figured out how to switch it on and access microsoft word.
Before my computer days I used to use a typewriter and I have top say that some days I actually miss my typewriter and I have often thought of buying an old one just for the sake of draging it out every now and then just to type something...for the fun of it, not for any other reason.
My hadnwriting used to be quite readable, but now it is nothing short of chicken scrawl. Terrible really.
I hope I can actually read this when I get back to it some day.
I was thinking about Hadlee earlier today, which kind of made me think about childhood.
An aside: I hate typing on a PC keyboard because the keys are so far apart compared to a laptop keyboard. it is almost as though you need to pack a lunch to get from one key to the next. And loud? Oh my gosh! The laptop is way quieter. And I keep hitting all the wrong keys and it is driving me bonkers!
Anyone so I was thinking about childhood...in general terms...no specifics.
You know, adults define childhood and adulthood is often define by childhood.
Interesting, don't you think?
Actually, I do not care one way or the other if you find it interesting or not, ha ha ha. But I found it interesting to think about that. Again, in general terms, not in regard to anything specific.
That is another good point about PCs, you can just hit the back button and mistakes dissapear forever...in my writing, I have crossed so many things out it hardly makes sense at all.
And speaking of back buttons that simply erase mistakes like they were never there, why did life not come with one of these groovy buttons?
I often think about Hadlee and the way that he died.
I thionk about how his mother tried to revive him before the ambulance got there. I think about a lot of the facets to do with his death.
Perhaps it is that it simply seems so strange that someone so young should die.
I am including some photos at the bottom of this post. Some closeups of the things in my garden. Some of them came out really good.
laterz

My garden October 17th

Friday 17th October

I was listening to a song today. Actually it was tonight. I suppose I should go back a few hours before this. Not that I have anything staggeringly important to say. Well, I think it is and it is my blog so I can say what I want, I guess.
Anyway, earlier in the day I had occasion to think about someone.
A male.
I was thinking about how he hardly really sees my existence as anything staggeringly important. Well, maybe he does. I am not certain. But anyway I was pulling some weeds from the garden and I was thinking about sending him this e-mail. Actually I was really thinking about how I had thought about sending him an e-mail earlier in the day. I was thinking of sending something along the lines of, "I could leave writing to you for six months and you'd hardly notice. In fact, if I never wrote back at all, would you even notice that?"
I felt really forgotten and I started to feel very sad.
I pretty much asked God if even He was aware that I actually exist. You know, "Hey God, remember me?"
I was really wondering whether my blueprints might have been misplaced somewhere. I sometimes imagine God as someone who has so much to do, so many to consider and someone who is pressed for time. Sometimes I imagine that the blueprints are tucked under a great pile of correspondence somewhere on His desk and He means to get around to looking at them and fixing the flaws except that He has so much to do that He has forgotten. Worse case scenario, the blueprints fell of a shelf in the filing room and slid under a very old cabinet and cannot at all be found.
I know, very silly.
I do not really think all of that, but sometimes I feel a bit like maybe He has kind of forgotten to remember, but then I know that it is not possible for God to forget anyone. I know this because I have never forgotten God and He has a way better memory than I can ever hope to possess so there's no way He'd ever forget anyone.
So I came inside and did some other stuff and then I finally got around to checking my e-mail and low and behold there was an e-mail from the very person I had been thinking about sending the e-mail to earlier. To make things even more interesting, he signed off his e-mail with the words, "We appreciate you."
I was stunned.
Anyway back to the song I was listening to because with me, inevitably one mood leads to another and each song tells a tale.
I was listening to Donny Osmond's song "Twelfth of Never" and as I listened to it I realised a couple of things.
First of all as a child that song brought me much joy. It brought me so much joy because I always consoled myself with the thought that even though childhood was crappy and all kinds of horrible things kept happening to me, one day I was going to grow up, meet a man and fall in love. He would love me just like the words in that song...until the bluebells forget to bloom, until the clover has lost its perfume and until the poets run out of rhyme.
I actually deluded myself enough that I believed that stuff would happen in adulthood, even though there had been nothing even remotely resembling true love in childhood from any one in this world. Of course I had God. I always had Him.
But why did I believe it so much?
You see by the time I got to seventeen I realised that relationships with males on a level playing field..i.e a boy the same age as me...did not really resemble Donny's "Twelfth of Never" and actually looked more like "Back on the Chain Gang" by The Pretenders.
By the time I was twenty romantic relationships appeared to take on something of a close comparison to "Two Tribes by Frankie Goes to Hollywood. And as for my eventual marriage, well that ended up pretty much akin to the song "Easy to Fall" by Journey. The divorce was much like...well I have yet to find a comparison.
My point being, what went wrong?
How did I start out with such silly notions about romantic love? I mean, where did all of that come from?
Nothing around me ever looked like what Donny sang in his songs, so why was it so easy for me to believe that romantic relationships would or even could be that way? How can a kid who has had no hope, no home, no stability and no trust ever established with anyone able to believe such hog wash in a song?
Tell you something else for nothing too, when I hear Twelfth of Never these days, it makes me feel very sad.
Why?
I am not sure.
I think it is a combination of things.
The first being that I have realised that it didn't turn out that way. Second being that I realise that it will never be that way because life just isn't like that. Third, it makes me sad to realise that I lost my hope; that I lost my innocence, if I ever had any to begin with. But most of all it makes me sad because I know that I never can or will ever believe in love the way that I did when I was a child.
Twelfth of Never makes me sad too because I know that no one on this earth can ever love anyone that way.
You know, lots of songs have an effect on people. California is one that really gets to me, but there are others.
But then I hear songs like "Reunion" by Cliff Richard and I remember that there is a love that exists that is just so powerful that we are loved eternally no matter what. God loves us. He loves me.
He will love me long after the bluebells forget to bloom, the clover loses its perfume and the poets run out of rhyme. That is how He loves. So maybe that is the love that I believed in all along, because that is the only place that you find a love like that. God is the only person who can ever give a love that is eternally long, eternally deep, eternally wide and eternally long suffering.
You know another thing that makes me really sad?
Knowing that there is no one on this earth who is waiting for me to come home. No one is waiting out there for me. I guess I mean parents. On my birthday, no parent is remembering me. No brother or sister is either. At Christmas I cannot look forward to going home and seeing everyone because there is no home to go to. I wish that there was. I wish that there was some place on this earth for me to go to when things get tough. I wish I had a shelter. A covering. Something. Anything.
I have been exceptionally lonely all my life. In human terms in the human aspect. I always thought that it wouldn't last, that this too shall pass, but it never has.
I do not know if you know what it is like to be unable to look at a person or even a photograph and say, "Yes, that is where I come from." I do not know if you know what that is like. If you have been able to do that all of your life or even for part of your life, I do not suppose that you could understand how important it is for people to be able to do. Everyone needs to be able to look at someone and say, "Yes, they are my people."
I have no people.
I find it scary and lonely.
The only thing that makes it something that I can cope with is the hope I have that one day I will go home to Heaven and it will not be that way there. I will no longer feel alone and lost. God won't let anyone feel that way when we go home. He is the light on my horizon. Actually I think that it is fair to say that He is my horizon line and let us face it, everyone needs one of those or else we'd all simply end up lost.
Some Christian people believe that if you feel lonely and lost it is because you have not found Jesus (didn't know He was missing). But it is possible to believe very deeply in Christ and to have a relationship with Him and to still feel very lost and alone inside this world in human terms. And we do have to accept that we are still human. Just because we have Christ it does not mean that we have suddenly got a teflon coating off of which all ails of the human spirit and form slide.
It doesn't work that way.
Lost love.
Love that was never found can leave the human form rather crippled for life without the added advantage of a great parking space.
That was meant to be a joke.
Okay so if love within humans is so imperfect then why does our stupid psyche and heart keep looking and longing for it all of our lives until we think we have found it? And how come we can convince ourselves, at times anyway, that we have found it even when the love we actually found looks nothing like it and how come we do not see this glaring fact until after the fact and why does it not become glaring until the point of almost no return?
Forget "almost".
I should have said "no return."
Know why?
Because after you discover that your perfect love wasn't so perfect after all, you are never the same again. The experience of imperfect love changes you. It changes you inside. You cannot help but be altered by such a harsh reality check. It does not necessarily make you better than you were before and neither does it necessarily make you worse. It doesn't even spit you out the other end a little wiser.
It simply makes you different than before.
And for the rest of your life, for a time anyway, depending on how harsh the reality check was, all other events are marked by "before" and "after". Not much seems to lurk between those two points for a time.
For some people they are injured for the rest of their living days and it ain't over for them until it is pine box pyjamas over.
I know of people like that.
Fortunately I am not one of them!
As I sit here typing away and sipping on coffee while listening to Donny Osmond and Twelfth of Never, because the playlist in my laptop has gone back to the first track again, I comfort myself with the thought that at least I never became bitter.
I accepted that life rarely imitates songs such as Donny's and I have reached the place where that's okay. I reached that place a long time ago, but I really wanted to talk about it. Had I not have added this song to my playlist tonight I might never have thought of any of this at all.
Yes, its all Donny's fault.
Still, all of that aside, my biggest heartache in life is still my father. Still wanting my father. Still wanting a father. What I wouldn't pay someone to relieve me of that sense of loss. What I wouldn't give to have that emptiness inside my heart erased.
Sometimes I want to scream at God that it wasn't fair. That it isn't fair. But I don't do that because I know that He didn't do it to me, so there's no point to screaming at Him about the unfairness of it all. And before you assume that I was blessed with a mother and so should at least feel blessed for that, no I did not have a mother. But I do not care about that; I do not care that all is not always fair in love and war when it comes to mothers. Never wanted her. Never longed for her. Never missed her. It always made total sense to me that I did not have a mother. In fact, God blessed me by allowing her to be lost to me. Life's conspiracies did me a favour in allowing me to live a life where I never ended up fretting for her, longing for her presence in my life or allowing her love to be a prerequisite for my survival as a human being. I am totally at peace with it. Always have been. Always will be.
But my father?
My heart misses him desperately which just goes to show that you can miss what you never had.
Sometimes I tell myself that I do not care.
But most of the time, it is a sad truth that I do care about that.
I care about it a lot.
laterz

Saturday 18th October

Reunion - (Cliff Richard)

I never thought there could be so much more
You picked me up when I was living
down in Egypt
Led me out and opened up the door
When You showed me just how much You
thought my heart meant
But I turned and walked away into
the wilderness
Now who would have guessed

I hear You calling my name for a reunion
I hear You calling my name for a reunion
I thought I'd wandered too far away
But now I've got a brand new start
Reunion, reunion of the heart

Now I'm standing on the edge of the land
I want to go out and take all that You gave me
But I'm frightened and You understand
I failed You last time and I don't want a repeat
Still when I'm quiet again
I shelter from the noise
I just hear Your voice
"Don't be afraid"

Calling my name for a reunion
I hear You calling my name for a reunion
I thought I'd wandered too far away
But now I've got a brand new start
Reunion
Reunion of the heart

Alone
Casm
Catacomb
Deep
Endlessly wide
Dark
Eternally night
Hope
Glowbug bright
Flickering
Losing light
Emotions
Rip tide
Heart
Beats in time
Gushing
River's side
Thoughts
Astir in mind
Losing light
Endless night
Catacomb
Alone

Tuesday 21st October

Love can be dangerous.
Relationships can be filled with deception.
People can be treacherous.
I once knew a girl who fell victim to all three of those things and she was indeed, just a girl.
The first coherent memory of where it went all wrong for her occured in a Pentecostal ex-Quaker church.
For the most part, most of the people in that church were good people.
The problem was that their Quaker roots saw them very closed off to the outside world and much of the people who lived out there.
They also preferred to remain in ignorant bliss in regard to what those "others" outside the church got up to.
They had no tolerance for sin in their midst and most certainly a zero threshold for the sin that lived outside their comfortable little gathering.
They considered themselves a family, of sorts.
Either you were of the family or you were not.
Much was expected of you if per-chance you were accepted into the fold, but one slip up and you were gone.
So, as you can imagine, it was a church where few faces changed and even less ever really graced it as newbies.
If Newbies did turn up, then generally they became lifers.
The little girl whom I once knew, she was not born of them or of that place.
She was not of them.
But.
Some of those who were of them brought the little girl into their midst and seeing as how it had happened that way, they had no choice but to accept her.
Her new daddy was one of the most respected elders. Which is a bit of a puzzle to me, in that I know things that you do not. But that will become obvious later on, I expect.
On her first day at that church almost everyone greeted her and told her how she was the most prayed for child in the church.
The child found that odd.
She had only just arrived in their midst that very day, so how could they have known to pray for her before she got there?
The answer was simple, as some well meaning person told her.
Her daddy had wanted a little girl for a very long time.
God had seen fit only to bless him with sons and thus the prayers had been prayed from near and far for a little girl to be gifted to them.
Sometimes God blesses a man only with sons for a reason.
He knows what He is doing.
It is not alway the case.
Sometimes a man gets only sons because he gets only sons.
But I believe this situation was an exception.
He was denied a daughter for a reason.
Yet prayed into their midst she was.
She was that little girl.
She was the miracle.
She was the most prayed for child in the entire church.
However, this did not serve to make her feel special.
To the contrary, it served to make her feel weird.
So, a few months went by.
The girl began to grow up just a little.
Her new daddy was quite fascinated by the changes occuring in his "miracle child".
He became intrigued by her.
He became overly intrigued.
But he was not the only one.
As time went on the miracle child began to notice the intrigue of her new daddy and she began to fear him.
Then she began to resent him.
Within six months of the intrigues she hated him.
By the time a year had passed the mere sound of his voice served to mostly make her feel very sick.
Within two years she began to fight back in the only way that she knew how.
In between all of this another two other people became rather intrigued by her.
Males of course.
The second.
The almost adult son of a trusted elder.
He managed to corner one day in a place where she was alone.
He made her do things with him that she had not imagined he would make her do.
Her new daddy found out.
He was very angry.
But he was not angry for the reasons you might think.
She did not know for sure what part of it made him the angriest, but what she did know was that he was not really angry that she had been hurt.
He was angry because he thought that she had caused it.
He was angry because she had let the other man touch her.
He was angry because somehow his manhood had been slighted by the other man.
His anger had little to do with what had actually happened to her.
From memory he had only one question to ask her.
"What did you do that made him think that it was okay to do that thing to you?"
He had only two things to say to her by way of comfort.
"Sometimes little girls do stuff to cause this type of thing to happen."
"If anyone ever does something like that to you again then you tell only me. Never anyone else."
As she stood there facing him she felt relief.
Relief that she never told anyone about the first.
Perhaps she had caused that too?
She should have known better than to trust him.
It was her fault that they left her alone.
With him.
The trusted elder of the church.
Whom she had to see every Sunday.
The man whom they forced her to let hug her.
Even though he had hurt her.
She hated him.
The predator.
She was ten that time.
The second time.
The girl had only just turned eleven.
As she stood there staring at her new daddy the only question that went through her mind was, "How could he have found out?"
You see earlier that day, just before the second male cornered her, she had been out walking with her friend. They had come to a stream and even though it was still winter, they had stripped down to nothing and decided to swim in the stream.
They had run around naked.
Being silly in the water.
Thinking that they were alone.
As the girl stared at her new daddy, she knew that he knew what she had done.
She knew that he was right.
She knew that she had caused the man to corner her.
"But how could he know that?" she stood there wondering.
The girl felt very guilty.
The story of what had happened somehow spread throughout the midst of those within their tightknit church.
They blamed her too.
She had seduced the poor man.
Somehow the devil had enabled the child to lead the man into sin.
She was a terrible child.
They made sure that she knew this.
Eventually she came to understand just how bad she was.
She felt guilty.
She felt sick.
She felt scared.
She felt embarrassed.
She felt humiliated.
She felt rejected.
But most of all.
She felt entirely responsible.
For a long time she tried to make it up to them.
She was, after all, the most prayed for child in the church.
She was the "miracle child".
Despite the odds of not getting away with doing what one ought not to be doing, her new daddy was not persuaded to stop being intrigued with the girl.
She got older.
She got bigger.
He became more and more intrigued.
By the time she was thirteen she could stand it no more and, reaching the point of breaking, she confided in someone that her daddy was very "intrigued" by her.
The person she confided in promised not to tell.
But he did tell.
He was in their "midst".
He was one of them.
He could do nothing else but tell.
Least he be discarded.
Least he lose his eldership potential.
Least he be cast from their midst.
In his infinite wisdom, he told her daddy all that she had said.
Her daddy was angry.
Extremely so.
He had a reputation to protect.
He had a position to uphold.
He had a pew to keep warm.
She would not be his undoing.
So.
One sunny day when she least expected it, her daddy sneaked up behind her and put his sheep killing knife to her throat.
Immediately she felt the cold hard steel, she knew.
She knew who it was.
She knew why it was.
She knew that he would kill her.
When she was a smaller girl, back when the intrigue within him in regard to her was as a small smouldering flame, he made her watch what he did.
He made her watch him kill.
He grabbed the sheep.
He dragged that blade across its throat.
He made her watch.
She was not to turn away.
The sheep collapsed onto the ground.
Very soon the ground was covered in red blood.
The air was filled with the grunting gurgling sounds of the sheep dying its agonising, cruel death.
She looked into its eyes.
The sheep looked terrified.
Beyond terror.
She felt terror.
Beyond terror.
Daddy told her not to fret because the sheep did not feel anything.
It did not hurt the sheep at all.
Like magic, the sheep did not have any sense of feeling as he dragged that knife across its throat.
Then he bent down and broke its neck.
But he let it bleed for some time before he did.
"It is finished."
She was terror filled.
She never wanted to see anything like that ever again.
She was ten years old.
He said that she would do what she was jolly well told.
He made her watch it again.
And again.
And again.
So when he had that knife to her throat, she wondered if he had done it?
He pushed the blade a little harder into her neck.
To get her attention.
To ensure she got the message.
"Keep your mouth shut."
Even once he was gone.
She still wondered.
Had he gone through with that terrible thing.
Perhaps she would magically feel nothing.
Maybe she was unable to feel pain in her neck too.
Perhaps he had cut her throat and she had not felt it.
For a long time she was too afraid to look down.
For a long while she was too scared to speak.
She was too scared to breathe.
She did not want to hear gurgling.
She did not want to see red.
But eventually she had to look down.
What else could she do?
So she looked down.
There was no red.
She spoke.
There was no gurgling.
Then she got to her feet.
She ran.
She ran.
She could not stop.
For hours she hid away in an abandoned house.
For hours she tried to find a lifeline.
Someone to run to.
Somewhere to escape.
As she watched the sun go down she realised.
She was trapped.
There was no one who would protect her.
There was no place to run to.
She had to go back.
She had to go back and face him.
The author or her torment.
The provider of her terror.
He was all that was left to her.
Within a few more months things became precarious for him.
Extremely so.
He had a reputation to protect.
He had a position to uphold.
He had a pew to keep warm.
She would not be his undoing.
So.
One cold winter afternoon.
He got rid of her.
He sent her away.
He went into the midst of them.
They felt sorry for him.
The miracle child had become his nightmare.
They prayed for him.
They comforted him.
His reputation was protected.
His position was upheld.
His pew never went cold.
Even though they knew.
Exactly what he was.
Love can be dangerous.
Relationships can be filled with deception.
People can be treacherous.
I have not seen that little girl in a long while.
I do not expect that I ever will.

Laterz

Thursday 23rd October

I have seen relationships at their worst, like many of us have. No one has the market cornered on seeing stuff like that.
You know, the haves and the have nots.
This subject is not about romantic love.
It is about emotional warmth, acceptance and being a part of people.
Those who have had it.
And those who don't.
It can be very hard to watch this sort of thing in action.
One human, a person, their heart the table at which they sit.
The other person sitting below it.
Like a dog.
Watching and waiting for the scraps that might be dropped.
The left overs their emotional scraps.
Every now and then given on purpose.
But most of the time simply dropped carelessly.
Accidentally.
Without too much thought.
Yet the dog below the table laps them up.
The dog does not worry for the motivation.
The dog is eternally thankful.
He is appreciative.
Beyond measure the person wins the loyalty of the dog.
Yet the person does not even know it.
The person does not even acknowledge it.
It just is.
Their life goes on whether the dog is there or not.
Talents visible.
Know what you can do.
They don't know 'you'.
For the dog.
Life depends upon the person dropping the scraps.
It is hard to be the dog.
Very aware when you're the dog.
Ever hopeful.
Eternally grateful.
Extremely thankful for anything cast your way.
Humiliation accepted as a part of the territory.
Yet the dog appreciates even that.
The dog cries.
Yet his tears are wasted.
Behaving and begging.
Never complaining.
Never actually heard.
Never really seen.
Life a montage of pieces.
From patched and broken dreams.
Appreciate the scraps when they are dropped.
Miss them when they are not.
Always the last one on.
Ever the first one off.
The unappreciated.
The unrecognised.
The dog could disappear from beneath the table tomorrow.
Never to return.
Hardly would he be noticed.
Some are born the haves.
Some are born the have nots.
The people.
The dogs.

So, my question is, in life, which one are you?
Are you the the person?
Or are you the dog?

laterz

Sunday 26th October

I have always thought that my education had allowed for me to grow up to be an independent thinking who could freely draw her own conclusions.
Today I realised, more than ever, that I have still been labouring under one big delusion. Admittedly it is not as big as it was to begin with, but I am still realising new things. Things that tip what I formerly believed about certain things and people right on their royal ear.
What makes me say this?
Well, as weird as this might sound, but what made me realise this is Fidel Castro.
Ooh that horrible commie sympathiser, da de da de da!
As recently as six years ago I thought Israel was a wonderful nation with a Government who cared for people because the country was founded on the ultimate biblical principles.
I thought Saddan Hussein was a monster who ate little children and burned the hearts of human beings on ritual pyres.
I thought Osama Bin Laden was the bogie who toppled the twin towers, the Russians were nuclear warhead freaks just waiting for a reason to blow us all to kingdom come, that Iran was a sadistic nation of woman beaters and oppressors who hate the rest of the world, that Palestine was a nation of fools and thieves, the American Government was essentially a bunch of good guys, Iraq was full of terrorists and that Fidel Castro was a Commie sympathiser.
Wow, I sure have done an about face since then.
My latest about face is in regard to Castro.
But, just so that you do not think I have gone totally stark raving bonkers, I shall just clarify the above statements.
Israel is a nation filled with many wonderful people, however, the Government of Israel is an American controlled bunch of puppets whose moral compasses are bent, and whose empathetic radar is broken on the ground. They have little regard for what the bible says at all and are seemingly motivated by greed as opposed to what is right for their people and neighbours.
Saddam wasn't a nice guy and yes he was pretty harsh when it came to those who opposed him and his regime. What leader of what country is not a hardliner against those who do not agree with them?
He tortured people and yes it was wrong, but you cannot judge him by the moral compass of American politics and the way that the American establishment deals with people who do not agree with them. With Habeas corpus being non existant in Guantanamo (because it is out of UN reach, thus not covered by the Geneva Convention) and the almost obliteration of Posse Comatatis, those who yelled the loudest about him should have been the ones who sit down and shut up because their human rights abuses list is almost as long!
Saddam wanted to keep his oil and he wanted to trade it in Euros. America couldn't let that happen or else it would have drowned them in an even bigger financial mess than they are in now. Thus, after having imposed ten years of vicious embargos, then invaded the country, seized the oil and had the new "leaders" judge Hussein which culminated in him fanning the breeze suspended at the neck by a rather nasty piece of rope.
Now, I am not a Hussein supporter, but you gotta admit that Iraq did not look like THAT when he was there. My point being if you are going to hang one man like that, then hang them all.
Osama Bin Laden was a CIA operative commonly known as a CIA asset. He did not engineer nor carry out the attcks on 9/11. It was an inside job and I have believed that ever since the day I saw the towers actually collapse in their controlled demolition style...coupled with the many substantiated reports of bombs inside the buildings.
Bin Laden, in my opinion, is not hiding away in a cave in Afghanistan. Rather, he is probably sitting on a beach in Dubai sipping on Pina Coladas living off his CIA retirement fund while his dialysis machine washes out his kidneys.
I am also quite certain that members of the Bush family visit him regularly as their families have been friends for literally decades.
Not years, DECADES!
I will get back to Russia.
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad never said that he wanted to destroy Israel nor did he say that they had no right to exist as a nation. Those things are misquotes and distortions. YouTube it to find the entire speech that those quotes were taken from. You'll be in for a surprise.
Iran may well in fact oppress women, but who is to say that ultimately it is the worse that they could be doing. I think Western life oppresses women too.
Look at Western woman with all their freedoms. They think they are too fat, too thin, no booby enough, not brown enough, not beautiful enough and many are on anti-depressants just trying to cope with a lifestyle that was never intended for them in the first place. At least not biblically.
A lot of them pop out babies and then farm them off to day care centres and pursue their careers. They cannot cook, sew and really would not know how to cope if the electrics went out for any given length of time. They do not marry, seldom stay married, abort their babies and emasculate their men to the point where they become blithering nancy boy idiots!
Men are supposed to be the head of the household.
That's biblical, amen!
So maybe Iran has better biblical principles than the Western world! Not that I would actually want to live there, I don't.
My point being that somewhere between Iran and the Western world, can a happy medium not be found? Also noteworthy is the fact that not many children in Iran are raised in sole parent homes either. Their societal rules allow them the luxury of the balance of a mum and a dad. Pretty uncommon in the Western World these days. And yes, there are idiots in Iran. There are idiots everywhere, but the majority of the Iranian society is far more wholesome than any Western society you might care to zero in on.
Palestine is not a nation filled with fools and thieves. What it is actually filled with is a dispossessed, fractured, injured, vulnerable, disjointed people who have been abused grossly by said American controlled greedy Israeli government puppets.
They deny them water, food, housing and education. They shoot at them in the streets for target practice, for fun. Now I am sorry, but if someone was doing those things to your family, would you not fight back? Would you not want to destroy those who are actively seeking to destroy you? They had a right to be in Israel. A God given right.
It is biblical.
If you read Deut correctly, you will see that God said that when the nation of Israel began to live by biblical principles and treat people according to those principles then they could have the land back. Until such time as they adhered to those conditions, God said all people from any place, ethnicity could dwell in that land, live off it and raise generations there.
Israel is not adhering to biblical principles, unless you consider how they are treating the Palestinians as biblical, and if you do then more fool you!
The same could be applied to the so called Iraqi terrorists or insurgents.
Flip the tables for a second.
What if Saddam Hussein had marched into America, placed an embargo on the country for ten years allowing little or nothing by way of exports in. What if he had taken all the assets, had George Bush hanged and then generally told his soldiers that it was perfectly alright to use the civilians for target practice, arrest them, take them from the country and throw them into Guantanamo where there is no such thing as the Geneva Convention?
Would you take that lying down and smile about it?
Of course you wouldn't.
You would fight back.
So would I.
Now to Fidel.
Fidel led a revolution that toppled Batista, an American protected and supported President. He tortured people. He sold out the sovereignty of Cuba to American interests to the point where Cuban people owned little or nothing. Not even ten percent of the people could even read.
America had huge investments in that country through Batista.
When Fidel toppled him one of the first things he did was take all the Cuban assets back and place them into the hands of the Cuban people. Also, there are absolutely no proven cases of any person being tortured in Cuban custody in 50 years. Oh yeah there are rumours, but there are no photographs to prove it, unlike Guantanmo and other such places.
They say he is a commie sympathiser, but hang on, when Fidel came into power, America placed a blockade on Cuba which allowed no one to trade with them at all. No food, no nothing.
The only country prepared to help them out was Communist Russia and it is probably the only helpful thing Communist Russia ever did in it's eighty or so years of existence.
But low and behold, when America managed to get Communism toppled in Russia, thus making Cuba lose virtually her only viable avenue for keeping going as a country, instead of dropping dead on the ground, over a period of time, Cuba became stronger.
Fidel says that he is an atheist, which is sad, but at the same time, you gotta hand it to the guy, someone has been watching over him for years. He took on Goliath (USA Goverment) and he was successful.
I watched a documentary, actually two and both were made by very different people. Neither was allowed to be shown in the United States (now who is demonstrating communist values) and you would do well to ask why.
Watch the docos and you will know why.
Are dictators a bad thing?'
Aren't kings who have autoicratic role actually fancy dictators themselves?
Define dictator?
Is being a dictator actually the evil of it all?
Or could it be what the dictator does that makes him good or evil?
George Bush is a dictator.
Fiedel Castro is also a dictator.
But Fidel has not erased habeas corpus and denied his people the right to question their incarceration. He does not abide torture of any one for any reason.
He does not violate the idea of Possee comitatis, not that that means anything in Cuba, for it is a military leadership that engaged in a successful coup.
Did you even know that he was instrumental in erradicating apartheid from South Africa? That he helped Angola fight for freedom from a really violent regime and he asked for nothing in return, his only motivation being that one should help to look after their neighbours.
He does not abduct people from other countries torture and kill them. He does not do many of the things that a lot of Western Governments do.
After watching those documentaries by two very different people I came to respect Fidel Castro a whole bunch more than I respect a lot of other world leaders.
You know what?
I have discovered over the years that I was originally terribly brainwashed via an education system developed by upper class white males.
An education system that was designed to spit me out the other end as a person who believed only in what the rich leaders told me was true whilst believing that I was free to think outside the square and actually could. And for a very long time it worked.
People need to open their eyes, shake off the mortal coil of public education and mind controlling patriotism and become true Patriots.
What does a Patriot do?
A Patriot fights for the freedom of his friends, his neighbours, his family his fellow countrymen.
If a dictator feeds everyone, educates everyone, helps to feed, clothe and free his neighbours whilst hides nothing, then what is so bad about that?
If a dictator changes the rules to please himself so that he can torture people, kill his subjects on a whim en masse, abducts people from foreign nations, tortures and kills them too, steals from his fellow countrymen and changes another law so that even when he is dictator no more he can never be charged under law with any crime whatsoever, is that a good dictator?
No!
People seriously need to wake up and smell the coffee. I know so many narrow minded people who think that they are just so much better educated than everyone else and such free thinkers that they are blinded by their own misguided loyal (to a flag) bombasity!
Is there such a word?
Oh well, there is now.
And if you disagree with them, my goodness, look out! I have been cussed out by one such person in the past all because I would not shove my brain in the same constricted box as his.
It is very easy to be brainwashed from the cradle to the grave and never ever even realise it.
That is one of my friends.
Brainwashed by his education designed by white upper class rich men and mainstream media.
It is sad.
More than that, for someone who is supposedly a free thinker who invites the attention of other free thinkers and then viciously attacks them, that's pathetic!
Fidel was okay.
He wasn't perfect, but he was okay.
Laters

Thursday 30th October

When I was a kid I could not keep a secret. I mean when I was ten years old and I think that this facet of my nature may have contributed to some of the difficulties I experienced with one of my foster mothers.
Our relationship got off on the wrong foot right from day one.
The first wrong foot was that she wanted a baby.
I was ten years old and did not qualify as a baby.
Though she gracefully conceded to having me in her house probably thinking one of two things.
First of all it was a way to get a daughter and I was better than nothing.
Second of all it wouldn't be forever and just might see them favoured in the world of adoption which, to that point, had not viewed them kindly as potential parents of a little girl.
I do not know why that was.
All I know is that they got turned down every time and opting to foster was kind of like opting for the mini when you really wanted a Rolls but the finances simply would not stretch that far.
You know, you take the mini home and put on a face of happiness and tell everyone how much you love it and how everyone should get a mini. But deep down, you are very disappointed that you couldn't get the Rolls, but you console yourself with the idea that one day, one day you will get that prized rolls.
The very first day I was there, I knew that I had to be on my best behaviour. I knew that I had to be the best little ten year old girl that I could be. I knew what was riding on the situation.
If I made a good impression, then I would get to stay.
If I made a bad impression, then I would be out the door.
I knew that my future depended on how I performed over that one or two week period and I was absolutely determined that I would be perfect.
I would be so perfect that they would love me and never dream of sending me back to the place that I had just left.
So, the second wrong foot occurred just after lunch. I thought it would be the polite thing to do to offer to help to do the dishes for my new foster mother.
Well, rather than saying how much she thought that it was nice idea, she sort of snarkily said to me that she didn't need me to, thanks, because she had a dish washer.
I do not know that she was deliberately snarky or whether I just had my radar up because mothers were never really my cup of tea anyway, but she made me feel stupid the way that she said it.
Stupid and supurfluous.
Later that day the third wrong foot happened.
We went out on the farm and she took me walking through the bog (sinking muddy part).
She knew that I was wearing shoes and had no gumboots, but she took me out there in my shoes anyway. Then she laughed at me because my shoes were so silly.
I felt so embarrassed and again, stupid.
They decided to keep me but the wrong feet between my foster mother and I continued to accumulate at a very fast rate.
One of the wrong feet happened when she asked me to think about what I wanted for Christmas. I did not want to be embarrassed by saying the wrong thing, so I whispered it into her ear. There were other people in the room and I also did not want to be embarrassed if she said no.
I asked her if I could get my ears pierced.
Instead of whipsering back to me that it probably wasn't something that I would be allowed to have, she kind of shrieked and then burst out laughing at me really loudly. She also informed me, really loudly in front of everyone, about what would happen to me if I ever got my ears pierced in their house.
Her sudden shriek gave me a fright.
Her laughter made me embarrassed and I remember my face glowing so bright that it felt like it was burning.
Everyone in the room could see that I was embarrassed and I left the room and cried.
The next wrong foot happened not long after the ear piercing one when I asked if I could do ballet.
She laugh again, not loudly, but she did turn the volume up a little when she told me that I was nothing but a baby elephant and how impossible it was for baby elephants to do ballet.
I felt crushed and embarrassed...again.
That was topped off early the next year when I started to take piano lessons and the whole ugly piano teadcher thing happened.
I did not trust her or him by then and so did not tell THAT secret to anyone instead opting to scream at her that I did not want to go to piano lessons any more.
She finished it by screaming at me that I would finish out the year whether I liked it or not, thus she repeatedly took me back to the house of my attacker so that he continued to have free and easy access to me if he was so inclined. Which I blamed her for. And I hated her for.
My list of underachieving from then on pretty much continued to keep growing.
I made friends with the wrong kids at school.
I talked too loudly.
I talked too much.
I acted like a boy.
And my biggest crime to that point?
I told a secret and got her into trouble with everyone at church.
I publicly embarrassed her by telling that secret too.
She told me that a lady at church was having a baby. She was not supposed to tell me, and what possessed her to tell a ten year old girl that kind of secret is beyond me to this day.
The woman who was having the baby was known to everyone at church. Her daughter went to the same school as me.
We were out on the jungle gym and she was there. She said something to me and I do not remember what it was, but I responded by telling her that her mother was having a baby.
She told me that no her mother wasn't having a baby.
I told her that yes she was having a baby. There was no way that I was going to be made out to be a liar in front of my friends and the other kids from the church who were hanging around with her.
Anyway, later that night my foster mother came into the kitchen and yelled at me, asking me why I had told the girl that her mother was having a baby.
I didn't really know why I told her. It seemed a very silly secret to keep to my ten year old mind and besides, I wasn't good with secrets anyway.
She yelled at me again and my foster father, to his credit, yelled at her and said, "Well you should know better than to tell secrets to a child! You should not have told her to begin with."
It was about this time that I kind of parted company with her for keeps. About eight months into it really.
I felt as though nothing I said was right and nothing that I did was right and for the most part, it wasn't.
She tried to teach me to cook in those first eight months. Every time I screwed a recipe up, which was nearly every time, she yelled at me and told me that I was never allowed to make THAT again. Eight months was pretty much all the time it took to scream her way through the entire Edmonds Cook Book 1976/77 Ed.
When I got my period for the first time she did not explain things properly to me at all. She left out many pieces of crucial information including the next two facts:
a) people still bleed in the dark
b) being vertical is not a prerequisite for bleeding to occur
I know. Why I thought that lying down in the dark would ensure that I did not bleed is beyond me too, but that is what I thought when I was eleven.
The next morning I was as horrified as her to discover that my hypothesis was flawed.
I was embarrassed and very upset and I felt incredibly stupid.
She screamed at me that I had done it deliberately to annoy her, which, as God is my witness, was not the truth of the matter.
My foster father, her husband was doing his weird sick little thing to me, but every now and then he would do something really shocking and behind her back, simply to piss her off (excuse the French)
One of those things was that when we went to the city one night to watch a movie (I believe it was The Hiding Place) he leaned down and whsipered in my ear, "Would you like to get your ears pierced?"
I about died right there and then.
No girl in our church was even allowed her ears pierced and he was normally the biggest stick in the mud of all.
Of course the ear piercing incident was well timed to salve another nasty incident that had happened, but I did not connect the dots at the time.
I looked at him and I said, "Yes please."
I mean it wasn't even my birthday or anything.
So my foster father walked me out of the picture theater and into a chemist just a few shops along. And true to his word, I got to pick the studs for my ears and he paid for me to have them pierced.
I was so excited and could not wait to show everyone, as you do when you have waited and waited to get something thinking it probably might never happen at all and someone springs it on you quite unexpectedly and suddenly you have it. You just want to share it with everyone.
We went back to the picture theater and I lifted my hair so that my foster mother could see the earrings. I was going to thank her for letting me get them done because there was no way my foster father would get them done for me without asking her or at least telling her, right?
WRONG!
To this day I do not believe that she knew until it was done because her jaw literally dropped in horror and I swear I saw the look of shock and betrayal creep across her face. But she did not take it out on him.
She looked at me and barked at me, "You just couldn't wait to tell me could you? You just couldn't wait!"
All the way home from the city, they did not speak to each other at all.
Believe it or not, things only got worse from there. They got much, much worse and actually degenrated to the point where she would talk badly about me on the phone in front of me or speak of her children then refer to her boys but never me.
She also made a point of pointing out to people that I was a foster child, not her child, such was her embarrassment/dislike.
She did not like me at all and really put little effort into hiding that fact.
By that time, I did not like her either and I did little to hide it too.
By that time, church was a war zone, home was a war zone and for the most part, so was school. Most of the girls who knew me at school and at church were not allowed their ears pierced. Not even the girls from non-Christian homes. They took the good news the worst and actually gave me a little fisty cuff for my trouble.
Some of the church mothers made the comment that their daughters weren't getting their ears pierced because they did not believe in following the sheep. But the overall impression was that good girls don't get their ears pierced. Ah well, it was ex-Quaker terrirtory, so really that was kind of a normal reaction I guess.
But they are just a few of the things that I did wrong or that went wrong. I was there for three years and six months and as you know, you can pack a lot of mistakes into that length of time.

Don't know why I brought that up. Just felt like talking about it I suppose. But I guess the moral of the story is that if you want a Rolls then get a Rolls. Don't settle for the mini because in the long run, you'll never really be happy with it.

Laterz

My Garden 25th October

My Garden 31st October

Friday 7th November

Wow, where has the year gone? November already.
I had a dream last night that I was that a man whom I had known as a child turned up at my house where I was living and he looked at me and he lifted me up into his arms.
He looked at me and asked me if I knew what it meant. He went on to tell me that it meant that he was embracing me as his daughter.
I had felt very fractured inside in the dream before he arrived, but when he spoke to me, I felt whole. It was an emotional feeling that I have never felt in my life before, but I could not settle into it. I was too afraid to trust it.
Weird dream.
Well, Obama won the elections in the States and is now the President Elect. Not bad for a Kenyan born man who was not even allowed to run for President as he did not fit the criteria as written in the Constitution. He still has not fronted up with the birth certificate he was asked for. In his acceptance speech he mentioned that he had come a long way from his Presidential bid being bandied about in his backyard, but anyone who knows about the players behind him knows that Barak Obama's run for the White House has been a well oiled machine right from its inception.
It would have made no difference, McCain or Obama, they are both the same thing, just one was packaged better.
Obama is slick. He is Kennedy slick with much less sincerety. I watch the mania surrounding Obama and I just get this gut feeling that he is a puppet for something. They have created a great carni-sideshow atmosphere around him by making him the first elected black President-elect. It is historical and unprecedented.
What if he were to be assassinated?
No, I am not being silly here. The machine around Obama has spoken of potential assassination of him by "white supremist groups".
Think about that for a little while.
What if he were to be assassinated very publicly just as Kennedy was.
Imagine if that happened.
The shock of the nation would soon turn to anger.
What happened after Rodney King was beaten would look like a Sunday school picnic.
Blacks would rise up against white. The civil unrest would be spread across the country...perhaps in pockets here and therre, but it would happen nonetheless.
Police would not be able to quell that kind of unrest.
They would need the army.
They would probably have to implement curfews and bring in the military to help police that too. Check points would be established and possibly even firearms confiscated.
Think about what the assassination of Barak Obama by a white supremist would potentially cause. And then think about the way that the machine around Obama keeps bringing it up.
I wonder, is Obama to be the machine's sacrificial lamb?
I mean, I do not know.
Maybe there is nothing to it at all?
Obama is a slick machine though. Perhaps he is merely there to make the people so adoring of him that they will follow him like sheep to the slaughter?
I don't know, but I have a funny sneaking suspicion that something terrible is to happen as a result of Barak Obama winning these elections.

Laterz

Saturday 15th November

Sometimes I imagine that the world is a bubble and I float around outside of it.
I do not mean this as an actual vision I get, rather it is a feeling.
I can speak my heart and it is as though I am standing before a brick wall and the sound bounces back as empty and as meaningless as I feel inside sometimes.
All my life I have been waiting.
Waiting for what?
Things that can never happen and even though I know this to be the truth, still I wait.
All my life I have been hanging on.
Sometimes just by my fingernails.
Hanging on for what?
I do not know and yet hang on I do.
Where is all of this waiting around and hanging on leading to?
I am not sure sometimes.
The heart grows sad.
The spirit grows weary.
The disappointments huge.
The blessings small (yet always appreciated).
The dreams that come true?
Zero.
How is the human condition supposed to survive intact through that year after year after sorry year?
What are you supposedto do when sometimes the seconds drag on as though they are weeks and you cannot see anything ahead in the distance that is any different to what you are seeing now?
It is easy to be brave and keep hanging on when you are happy and you know that you never know what's around the corner.
But what about when you are sad and you know exactly what is around the corner?
Everyone has hope in some form, at least I suppose that they do, but what if you know that in some things there is no hope?
What are you supposed to do then?
Sometimes I wish that I had been brave enough to drink or take drugs. I really wish I was brave enough just to say "stuff it, I'm going to oblivion for a while."
But I can't because I know that it's wrong and my psyche and my heart and my conscience absolutely will not allow me to travel to those terribly dark places, even though sometimes they seem so inviting.
I care more about what God thinks is right and wrong than I do about what I think is right and wrong.
My need to please Him is so much stronger than my will to destroy myself and I hate it sometimes. But He made me this way because maybe He knew exactly what was going to be going on with me.
Well, of course He does.
He knows everything.
I wonder if you get any Brownie points for feeling this way all of your life and not succumbing to it?
Maybe not.
Maybe you get to judgement day and He stares at you and tells you you failed your exam anyway bye bye.
Maybe it all counts for nothing after all?
Then again maybe not giving in counts for everything?
I don't know anymore.
I do not understand why I have to be so unhappy.
I do not understand why I feel so disappointed when other humans do not hear what I am trying to say. Especially since I always knew that that was a risk that it would go unheard.
Why is everything so silent?
Is existence really that supurfluous?
Are some people like the tree that falls in the forest when no one is around.
No one knows if it makes a sound or not because no one is there.
So what are you supposed to do?
Just give up and remain silent?
That is what fascinates me about us humans you know.
I remember when Pricilla died.
All of us kept saying, "Why didn't she say something? If she had said something then we could have helped."
Yet I understand why she said nothing because there are times where even when you do say something, no one hears you anyway.
They're only ready to listen when it's too late to hear them any more.

Laterz

Sunday 16th November

You know, a lot of people who do not believe in God think that those who do are taking the easy way out.
They think that those who believe in God are fatalistic and blame the devil for every wrong thing that thye do. They think that they take no responsibility for anything except to tell others how they should live.
To a point, there is a slight bit of fakery that goes on in some Christian circles and there are some things that are said and done that simply should not be said and done.
Sometimes doctrine is twisted to make people do things that normally they would not do and for others, they exert a insidious type of guilt upon others that makes them take on the burden of things that simply were never theirs to take on in the first place.
But all of that slight tiny element of negativity aside, opting to follow God and live by His principles is not the easy way out.
To the contrary, it is very difficult. You are ruled by what you know is right or wrong and a lot of the time everything you choose to do is made on the basis of conscience.
You see, the flesh is very weak and easily led if one does not keep an eye on it.
It would be far easier to give a middle finger back to those who extend one to us every now and then, but we should not do it and a lot of us won't. Then again, depending on the day and what has happened up to that point, some of us might respond in kind, but then we struggle with conscience after.
I know that I do.
It would be far easier, I think anyway, not to be ruled by conscience, but that is not a luxury I have because I cannot live that way. If I hurt someone, accidentally or otherwise, I feel terrible. When I do things wrong I feel terrible and I do do things wrong.
We all do.
Those of us who claim some kind of corner on the market of never doing anything wrong are most probably fibbers!
In some aspects, because my life is ruled by what is right in the eyes of God. But in a humanity sense of the word, one could assert that it is ruled by the flesh.
Actually, if the truth be known, it is both.
The seriously scary thing is that it is an option that I can exercise; to allow my flesh total rule because I have free will. But by the same token, conscience tells me that it is very wrong by the standards set by God, which are the standards that rule my conscience, so in fact, do I really have a choice at all as to what I am ruled by?
I guess it depends upon what is more important to me personally.
Personally, God is more important that anything that I might or might not feel in regard to this life.
Not that I always listen to conscience. I mean I always mean to but in the heat of some moments, I ignore conscience and react in a way that isn't good. I am not saying that I am a horrible person who goes around doing nasty and wrong things, but I am not perfect and so I make mistakes.
Just because I choose to love God and accept that Jesus Christ is who He said He is, it does not make me immune to humanity. To the things that ground us in humanity and the things that try to rule us in humanity.
I have a choice.
The problem that started all of this thinking yesterday?
Trying to confront ghosts. Trying to rationalise why one area of my life is the way that it is.
When I had just turned fourteen, I knew then that I would never see my father. I do not know how I knew, but I just did. It was the one thing I held onto when there was nothing else and when I was fourteen, there was nothing else left to hold onto any more.
When I began to acknowledge the truth of the situation I just wondered what the point of it all was.
I was thinking about it for a couple of days before I actually did anything. I just thought about it and thought about it and finally I got to be at peace with the idea that it was okay to leave this world. I actually managed to convince myself that God would understand.
Insane.
Deep down in my heart I had come to understand that the man who I thought was my father was never going to materialise and where I was living was just the pits. The people who I was living with got into major trouble a few years later when it was discovered what they had been doing to some of us kids, but when I was fourteen, no one had cottoned onto what it was that they were doing, so I was pretty much stuck in the sinking sand, so to speak.
My best and only friend had disappeared and to this day I never heard from her again. That was Jeannie.
I had no one to talk to and nowhere to go to that was safe.
I have been through three foster homes that year and I just couldn't take any more pressure. I couldn't even tell the people I was living with that I felt like I did because I knew what they would do. They would pack hunt me like they did to some of the other kids and torment me with that knowledge and make it the latest subject of their jokes and derision.
How bad is that?
Knowing that you cannot even tell anyone.
But that is sort of what I was talking about yesterday you know, about Priscilla.
Had she told someone, "Oh hey I feel like hanging myself in the garage," everyone would have thought she was seeking attention because that is what people think. So Priscilla said nothing and hung herself and then we all sat around scratching our heads.
Come on, already!
People who feel like committing suicide cannot speak it because it is only taken seriously once it is done.
Talk about damned if you do and damned if you don't.
When I was fourteen I understood that concept already to an extent I think. So I got hold of pills and other bits and pieces and I went to the girls bathroom at school, locked myself in a cubicle and took the pills there. I was thinking that I could just lay down and go to sleep and everything would be over. I wouldn't have caused a fuss at the place I lived at so they couldn't possibly get mad at me and it would be all over.
But I lived.
I got discovered and taken straight to hospital and I survived.
When I got out of the hospital I was in a great deal of trouble with the people I lived with.
The retribution was swift yet not harsh at first.
To begin with my attempt at suicide was a joke that they bandied about. It became the topic of their attempts at nasty humour. The mother would say things like, "Hide the pills, Sarah's in the room."
Everyone would laugh.
At the weeks went on it becamse more sinister in nature. The mother screamed and yelled at me for publicly embarrassing her. Apparently everyone knew that I had tried to commit suicide and it reflected badly on them as foster parents and how dare I?
It culminated in me being hit and threatened with a large stick by my foster father when I reacted to their teasing when it just got too much.
He actually chased me down a hill with the stick and he had every intention of beating me with it. I ended up sitting in the sun all day on the side of this hill because he forbid me to move from the spot where I cowered down because he had caught up with me.
So I sat there all day and it was the middle of summer and I got so sunburned and so thirsty, yet still he made me stay there and I didn't dare move.The message was that they could do and say whatever they wanted to me and I had absolutely no right to say anything back to them nor to do anything about it.
I cannot even begin to articulate how I felt during that time of my life. I should have been loved through it, but I wasn't. I was punished beyond all that was reasonable and all that is sane!
So I really do understand why Priscilla never said anything.
There isn't any point to saying anything. I simply battle through it on my own and if not for God, I probably would not come through the emotions of it at all.
The point being, that there are some things that I have to simply turn and walk away from. I cannot deal with them. I cannot face them head on because they are just so dangerous to me. To face them head on is to risk sinking down some big dark hole and never being able to crawl out again.
It is not obligatory in life for anyone to actually care what anyone else feels and I understand that perfectly, which is why I do not feel bad about it.
It is not a sad fact.
It is simply an unemotional fact of life.
So you see, living a life where you choose to follow God and all that He stands for is not the easy road to take.
It is a hard road and sometimes it feels so hopeless. Sometimes I feel so hopeless and sometimes I think that I am never going to measure up to anything that is anywhere near worthy of Him.
But I try.
In everything I do I always try or at least I mean to try. I mean well. I try to be a blessing to others because it is important not to make others feel any worse than they might be feeling and let's face it, there is no way to know how someone else is really feeling, is there.
I learned very young that people do not care for other people's feelings too often. It is just the way that it is. We are a fickle lot as humans. All of our best intentions come to light once it is far too late for those intentions to be put into action and cause change for the good or to avert disaster.
I just wish...
Never mind.
Wishing is about as good as chasing the wind.

laterz

Saturday 29th November

I really wonder about the world and this life sometimes.
Having not slept for the past twentyfour hours it is a wonder I can think straight at all. I am probably not thinking straight and that is half the problem.
There's bound to be heaps of spelling mistakes and/or typoes in this post and to make it worse, Piczo will play up and it will be days before I will be able to get back in here to edit anything. As a result it will appear that I am a blithering moron, even though, for the majority of the time anyway, I am not.
Life just has some really sad and twisted ironies sometimes.
Take the situation with Hadlee. One week after he died his great grandmother died, on her own birthday, so they buried the birthday cake that they had made for her with her.
A friend's daughter was knocked off her scooter last night by a car and she is in hospital on life support and it is her mother's birthday today. If she doesn't make it, as they suspect she won;t, then my prayer is, "Please don't let her die on her mother's birthday."
When I think about this life I often deem it a wonder that any of us actually makes it for too many years at all. The accidents that can happen, the illnesses that can get you and the odd idiot that every now pops his head up as a murderer or something.
I think about all the weird and nasty illnesses that can rear their ugly heads up too. Our births to this world might sure be something majestic to behold, but I somehow suspect that the leaving at the other end may not be so crash hot for many of us.
You know, odds in this life are not like the lottery. It is not like someone is going to get lucky somewhere and never die. It is all going to end in tears for everyone and I find that appalling if I think on it for too long.
I think about all the religions in the world and I think about how Christianity was warped into something to control people just the way many other things have had the same function. You know, it is supposed to be liberating and yet ends up with your hands and feet in chains, figuratively speaking.
And what if some of us are wrong?
What if the Catholics are right?
What if the Presbetarians are right?
Maybe the Quakers were right?
What if the Amish are right?
Goodness me, what if it's the Baptists who are right?
I don't know.
This life seems such half assed chance and the other good luck. Good management seldom seems to play a role in anyone's life at the end of the day.
Think about it.
From the moment that that car set out this morning and my friend's daughter got up and started her day, they had both been on a collision course. One random decision or act could have changed the course that they took and its outcome, but nothing jumped up to stop it or got in the way to send them on a course away from each other.
Was it ordained? Maybe from the beginning of time.
Was it a lack of belief or prayer?
Or is it just "is"?
I am so tired and so kind of blown away by all that has happened that I do not quite know what to think or say, so I'll stop.
Laterz

Monday 1st December

Surely I must get some Brownie points for making a post on the first of the month. I am quite certain that it has been a while since I did that.

Today is one of those day where I am ever reminded of the fickle nature of human beings.

It was cloudy today. Overcast and dismal...Dismal Day, as Bread would say.
Anyway, it reminded me of a day when I was riding my horse Kodi for the very last time. I Had not slept at all the previous night. To the contrary, I had stayed up all night staring up at the sky listening to Dream Weaver by Gary Wright trying to examine all the wheres and whyfors of my life to that point.
I was thirteen.
But even by then I think I was beginning to understand the blase, fickle nature of human beings. I was beginning to appreciate the fact that a lot of what is said to us by people who are not our flesh is very shallow, temporary and at the end of the day, quite meaningless really.
I was beginning to grasp a very basic understanding of that when I was thirteen and riding my horse in the rain for the very last time.

I had my radio with me and Refugee by Tom Petty was belting out. Not a sad song, granted, but I realised that that was what I was in a weird kind of way.
Refugees are unable to be where home usually is and tend to keep drifting or existing in a land that is foreign to them. Homeless.
That is what a refugee is.

I remember hearing a freight train thundering down the tracks by the main road. Being that I lived in the country and there was little other noise around, aside from the wind in the trees, the birds singing and odd farm noises, the sound of freight trains carried over the paddocks quite well.
It added to the sense of loss I was feeling at the time.
Not sure why.
It just did.

That day was the first time that I really began to appreciate the sadness, mixed with an odd kind of terror, of knowing that you might be seeing things for the very last time. That you are leaving and may never see any of those things ever again so long as you live.

I loved some of those things.

Some of those things were the building blocks upon which my last few years of childhood had been built. They were things that I depended upon without even knowing that I did. That they would always be there. That I would always be there was something I had come to truly believe.

It was very weird to discover that I had been completely wrong. I had put my faith in things which pass away and I knew that on that day.
As Bread would say...
London Bridge is finally fallin' down
They packed it up and shipped it out of town

For the first time in what seemed like almost forever, everything that made up my life; everything that defined life for me was about to end and I was very scared.
I was very sad too.
I know that that might sound odd, because most people would assume that I would be chomping at the bit to be freed from that situation, but there was really only three people I desired to be free from. One lived in the same house as me and the other two went to the same church, but other than that, there were a lot of things I was not ready to say goodbye to.
Fortunately, most of them I did not get to say goodbye to anyway. You see, if they let me say goodbye then that would involve explanations. They wanted a quick, clean cutting off or cutting out the cancer from within their lives.
They did not want it bleeding out everywhere or causing any unnecessary grief, so it was better for them for me to leave without saying goodbye to anyone.

Maybe no one wanted to say goodbye to me.
Now there's a thought.
I never thought about it from that angle before.

Nevertheless, it would have been good for me to have been able to say goodbye.

As I rode my horse that day I felt incredibly lost. Even if I think on those moments now, I can remember what it felt like to feel that lost. I had no idea why my life as I knew it was ending. I did not understand how all of those God-fearing people around me could let that happen. I did not understand why not a one of them stood up and said, "NO!"

But that was the day that I started to come to the place of beginning to understand it.

People are fickle.
People change their minds.

I learned that you should never fully place your trust in any human being because invariably it all comes to grief. Sometimes when it comes to grief it leaves your spirit bleeding, it really does. You stand there bleeding to death right before their very eyes and no one can even see it.
I know one thing, I will never stand before another human being bleeding like that again.
Ever.

It is funny how even with Christian people it can happen this way. Most situations with Christians, when they go wrong at least, end up being concluded with the biblical phrases "Pearls before swines," and "Shake the dust from your feet."
Invariably and unfortunately I have almost always been the swine and the dust in both of those scenarios. Didn't really seem to matter what I did or didn't do. I just seemed to always end up either one or both of those characters.

You see human beings are almost all and always completely incapable of loving someone persistently and/or consistently.
I have had Christian people say to me, "We love you with Jesus love and that love is perfect so you can trust it," and even that did not pass the test of time.
Because I was not their blood, the second I fell into disfavour it was see you later alligator.
Why?
Because its easy!
That's why.
It is easy for some people to write someone else off. It is easier for them to walk away. You know, if its broke try to get a refund or throw it out. Apparently I was the kind of broken artefact/purchase that is more easily discarded.
I suppose if it is possible for you to do it, erasing someone from your life and trying to pretend they were never there to begin with is the easier path.
I cannot operate like that and have never easily walked away from anyone. But then maybe I am a broken human being who cares too much.
Supurfluous and peripheral my life might be to most people around me, but that's okay.
To be very honest, I do not mind any more.
I have come to understand the fickle nature of human beings.
I have come to understand that there are a few of us out there who are supurfluous to the rest of you. That there are a few of us who exist in the peripheral in regard to the rest of you, and that's okay.
I am totally at peace with that.

My point of this post I suppose is actually pinpointing the day that I finally started to actually understand this concept.

Laterz

London Bridge
by
Bread

"Restless"
by
"David And The Giants"

Tuesday 2nd December

It just dawned on me that this is the last month of the year and yet again I have submitted not one piece of writing to a publisher. But you know what?
It doesn't matter any more and I am not going to bother.

The video above this post, the one with Barak Obama on the front, I made that over a period of weeks.
Normally the videos come together pretty quickly, but this one didn't.

When I first started it I knew that the song was special, that it had a significance of some sort, but I did not know what it was. So I started to make this really kind of gentle video that obviously had a message but it was nothing over the top, you know?

Anyway, every time I went to work on the darn thing nothing would fit togther right and nothing would flow and one image seemed completely disconnected from the other. Many times I found myself sitting here asking myself, "What's going on?"
But, being that I am who I am, I plugged away anyway.

Then one day a few days back I was flicking through YouTube as I tend to do from time to time and this video that I had seen before was in a list, so I took a look at it.
It was a video of a minister claiming that Barak Obama (apparently the spelling is actually Barack...anyway) is the Messiah. This minister went on to claim that when Barak speaks, God himself is speaking.

I had heard all the claims and read about them. You know, people claiming Barak to be the Messiah etc and giving to him all the titles normally reserved only for our Lord Jesus, but I had not put too much stock into what I read, you know?

So I went further into this in YouTube just to see if I could see the people saying it for myself and as sure as the sun will rise again, there they were.
I am not talking one or two videos, not even ten or twenty. There were way more than that.
So, I decided to google what I was seeing in YouTube and by just putting in the words Barak Obama the Messiah, I got 35'000 hits. That is absolutely incredible.
And so I went into quite a few of the sites to see if it wasn't just some kind of publicity stunt and boy did I get a shock when I saw that it wasn't at all. I was stunned to discover that many people are extremely serious about Barak being the Messiah.

So then I decided to take a closer look at Barak.

I wanted to see what he had to say about things because even though I had heard things before, I had not really taken much notice.

I found so many videos out there, but the most shocking ones were where Barak claimed to be a Christian and then went on to say that America was no longer a Christian nation and that he supported abortion. He used the example that if his daughters ever made a mistake that he would not want them punished with a baby. Further to this he said that he supported civil unions, which is pretty much a vote for same sex marriage. I know this because our country passed the Civil Union Bill about two years ago and what it enables is for gay couples to be married, just can't happen in a church but it is recognised by the law.

But the things that disturbed me the most was that Barak was making no outward request that people stop calling him the Messiah. To the contrary, he is deliberately envoking the name of Jesus in his attempts to appeal to everyone. In his attempts to justify his stance on civil unions he said, "if you think this is controversial then I simplyt refer you to the Sermon on the Mount."

God says in Titus that if a man acknowledges Him with his lips but then denies Him in his actions then we should turn away from such a man.
I am deeply concerned that Barak Obama could be a catalyst for the delusion to be set upon this world in the last days.
He most certainly has the charisma to pull it off. And there is something very unworldly even about the man, or perhaps that is my imagination.
He has arisen to the highest office in the world even though he has descended from that which the current government has waged war with for the past seven years; the Muslim world.
And now he is speaking of war with Pakistan...although he has not come out and said it verbatim.

Something is definitely awry here, although I could not tell you with any certainty what it is and it probably actually does not matter too much. There can be no room for suspicion or inunendo. All that can and should be dealt with is fact.

And the facts speak for themselves.

Regardless of whether Obama is the fulfilment of the last great blindess/delusion or he is not, I felt very led to making the video a warning. Once I realised this, the video came together very quickly and smoothly.
So, the video was to be a warning that we must not be deceived by any man who claims to be the Christ or by other men who claim him to be the Christ and the subject of the claims does not refute it. We must not follow such a man.
We must not even seek him out.

We must turn and walk away from such a blasphemy, least we become a part of it or cause other brothers and sisters or even pre believers to be swayed by such a man.

There is only one Christ and there is only one Messiah. There is only one who shall return to take us unto the Father and that is Jesus.

This video is a reminder of that. A stark warning in the days within which we live.

If people hate me for it, then that is fine.
I don't mind being hated and/or unpopular because really, how is that any different to any other time in my life anyway?

I was not born to be popular.

In some ways I look at my life and I can almost hear God saying, "If you're going to follow Me then you will never be popular. The world will never love you, so get used to it. Alternatively, if you want the world to love you then by all means go and take another path. Your choice."

My choice because He would never force me to do anything that I didn't want to do.

I know the risks. I know the consequences and I am fine with them.

Don't know about David though. Haven't heard from him and I am a bit concerned that he might just be sitting there in his studio rubbing his forehead asking God, "What the heck has she gone and done?"

Maybe not.
Maybe he has just been busy again.

I am laughing as I write this because I know that, at the end of the day, God has it all in hand and, in one way or the other, everything will be just fine.

Laterz

Wednesday 3rd December

Hope springs eternal.
I know I heard that somewhere or perhaps it is that I read it? Maybe it was in a movie or even the title of a movie, I don't know.
Anyway, it is besides the point I suppose and does not really have a lot to do with what I am writing today. Well, maybe it does.

Hope's a funny thing.
Hope's a weird thing.

Hope encompasses so many weird emotions during the different phases of hope, as such.

Different phases of hope?

Yes, there are different phases of hope, just as there are different phases of a smile.

When hope first starts it is liberating. It fills you with joy and sometimes the anticipation that is birthed through hope can make you feel as though you could fly. Oftentimes hope can even make you feel extremely content.
That's the first phase.

But what about when hope starts to back up a little?
What about the emotions associated with hope that is ebbing away? They can be just as strong as those emotions associated with hope building.
When hope starts to ebb away you begin to feel the discontent and sometimes that discontent can lead you right back to where you were before hope ever put in an appearance.
Despair.

Why is she talking about this?

Oh, for lots of reasons really, and yet for no one particular reason.

We learn many lessons through gaining hope, but we learn so many more through losing it, I think.

I used to give in to the temptation of hope a lot when I was younger. As a kid and even as a teenager. I was in my thirties when I realised that hope makes a very strange and sometimes untrustworthy bedfellow. When I was in my thirties was when I did a large majority of my growing up, I think.
In my twenties I was still hopeful and dreamy. Despite the odds, I could always hope. Not for anything in particular. I am speaking generally.

We all dream dreams that we know will never come true and most often those are the most harmless dreams of all. You do not begin to hope. Hope plays no part in fanciful dreams. We all know that and so we don't really take it that seriously.

I wish that could be said for hope that is integral to the things that do matter.

Through bitter experience I have learned not to get too hopeful in regard to issues such as those. The serious ones, I mean. As soon as you begin to hope you know it is bound to fall apart and invariably does.

It is a universal truth that just when one facet of your life comes together another falls spectacularly apart. Oh my! I suspect that I just stole that line from a movie...Bridget Jones I believe. Oh well, it is true no matter where it came from.

All my life I have had a secret dream and no, I am not going to tell you what it is. That it is "secret" should have been the very first clue that I would never reveal it.
But it isn't a dreamy dream. It isn't fanciful.
Despite the fact that it is not dreamy and not fanciful, I know that it will never come true. The fact that this dream has always been terribly important to me is also a telling clue that it will never come true and even though I know this, I still hope.

My hope often travels through the two phases.
One minute flying the next minute despair. It really is quite horrible, which is what has led me to say that I think that in some situations hope is a terrible, terrible thing.
It is bittersweet.
Sweet because the hope exists.
Bitter because you know that it is probably futile.

Like this song that I heard says, "no matter how long I have to wait for you...patiently holding on for forever". It says other things too, but the song is truly hopeful because the hope contained within the song, or the object of the hope, is quite real and worthy of being hoped for.

My dream isn't, yet it seems so unfair.
And I am not one to yell and scream about things not being fair. Who said the world was ever going to be fair? It is not and I know this. The world has a curious way of dealing with our hopes and dreams and sometimes it is nothing short of cruel...I say this laughing, even though the seriousness of it does not escape me.

I find myself sighing blissfully and yet with a touch of discontent because why do my dreams have to be the ones that never come true? I do not ask a lot of this life.
I never have.

Some people became so jaded as far as having hope goes that they confine their hope only to those things that they know will never happen, that way they get to bypass the disappointment altogether. And I suppose in regard to that scenario one has to ask whether hope really figured into it in the first place? If you know that it is never going to happen then you do not really have hope, do you? Unless you are an expert at fooling yourself which, if you are, then you are bound to feel the disappoiuntment at the end, which obviously begs the question as to whether it was even worth the bother.
Bottom line, I have learned not to invest too much hope into anything other than God. People say things all the time, but it is easy to say things and it is a whole lot harder to attend to the doing. I know this too.

And totally off topic. I have still not heard from David.

Sometimes I wonder what he makes of me. His little friend who lives on a small island at the bottom of the globe somewhere. Yeah, someone should change my name to Gilligan, but without the very bad hat.
And speaking of Gilligan, that professor left a lot to be desired didn't he? How is it that he could make all those amazing inventions on the island and yet he could not fix a small hole in the boat?

I don't know.
Laterz

Sunday 7th December

Been thinking about life today.
Been thinking about how easily and quickly it can be taken or altered In just a flash, one slip, one split second bad decision and it can be all over.

Some friends of mine, their daughter got onto her scooter to go to the super market to buy some chippy dip. Being that it was not far from her house, she put her helmet on but did not do it up. As she rode down the road a cat ran out on the road and she swerved to miss it. Unfortunately she smashed into the back of a parked car. She went flying over the car and as she did so, her helmet came off.
Her head hit the car twice and connected with the road at least three times.

That was Friday the 28th November. Since then she has been in hospital on life support with severe head injuries. I was talking to her dad by phone yesterday and he was saying that they will do another scan on Monday and if nothing has changed then they will most likely turn the machines off. On the day that he rang me he said that they had been talking about organ donation and her funeral, if it comes to that, which, being that they were discussing it, seemd a very real possibility.

All the relatives have come in from overseas to be with them while she is in the hospital, probably because they believe it is a real possibility that they may lose her.

See what I mean?
That split decision not to do up her helmet has drastically altered everything about life for them. I have known the girl since she was about seven years old, she is twenty now. Sheh as a three year old daughter who obviiously does not really understand what is happening around her.

To make matters worse, the little girl has lived in her house with her mother and grandmother ever since she was born and now it seems that the father's family might try to take her away from them, so not only would they have lost their daughter, but also theri grand daughter. I can understand why they want to keep her with them because it is all she has ever known but, the father ahs every legal right to her, so they may not have a leg to stand on legally.

A split second decision is all it takes to alter everything.

I wonder why we do the things that we do sometimes. I wonder why we make the decisions that we make. We know the risks and yet we always seem to think that bad things won't happen to us. We'll get away with it where other people do not.

I don't have an issue with them turning off the machines. If machines are all that is supporting her life, then that is not an issue to me. It will obviously be a different story if she ends up being able to live without the machines.

I think about Terry Shrivo and what happened with her. They starved her to death to kill her and I do not agree with that. But if my friends daughter's life cannot be at all sustained without the machines then one must stop playing God I guess. It would be hard to lose a child at all, especially due to a needless accident.

Life is precious and more than that it is precarious. Every decision we make contributes to where we go and what we end up doing.

I kept having these weird thoughts about the cat, the car and the girl, how for the entire day they were on a collision course. Daft I know, but I just can't stop thinking about that. Had the cat not run out at that very moment. Had the girl done her helmet up and has the caqr not been parked there at that precise time.

Strange, I know, but I justcannot stop thinking about it.

The girl doesn't really know God nor believe in Jesus Christ. I keep praying that during this time while she is in a coma that God will make Himself known to her and that she will accept Him. I mean, who knows what goes on between a person and God when they are in a coma that they are never to come out of. Everything has a purpose and maybe the purpose of her hanging on like she has is that she is spending time with God.

At least that is what I tell myself otherwise it makes her whole life and this lingering pointless. And I do not believe that anything is really actually pointless, as such.

Laterz

Monday 8th December

I wathed an old movie today. Gosh, listen to me, "old movie". It isn't that old really.
The movie was Planes, Trains and Automobiles and it is a fave of mine. I found it on TradeMe so bought it because I really liked it the first time I saw it. I still like it now. It is so funny.
Basically it is about this guy Neil Paige who is trying to get home for Thanks Giving. He runs into a guy called Del, who is also supposedly trying to get home for Thanks Giving.
Anyway, Del inadvertently causes a whole bunch of woes for Neil along the way and it is so hilariously funny. The ending is sort of sad and yet happy, but if you have never seen it then I would highly suggest you watch this one.
There is only one part in the movie that there is really anything that one would not want to view in front of kids and that's where Neil, played by Steve Martin finally loses his rag and says the "f" word about seven times in half a minute.
But in the context that it happens, it is kind of funny. I found myself laughing anyway.

Other than that there's not a lot doing around here. Oh unless you count neighbours partying from 4.00pm Saturday through to 3.30am Sunday and then starting the whole process all over again at 2.00pm Sunday. They have a seriously kick butt stereo system and a whamming boom box so the whole neighbourhood gets to enjoy their sounds right along with them. As you can imagine, after about half an hour of a boom box blasting away at what feels like front and center of your forehead, you've really quite had enough.
I found myself wishing I had a gun so I could go shoot that stereo!
I mean, what kind of ignorant do you have to be to play music that loud in a residental area for almost twelve hours straight? I am usually fairly tolerant, but I had trouble staying nice about that let me tell you. I was so tired and every time I just about fell asleep that darn boom box kicked right back into gear and the music was awful. Most of it was gangster rap...which I loathe at the best of times!

Haven't heard anything more on the girl in the hospital yet. Might get a phone call tonight.

Got this other DVD called Pierrepoint. It is based on a true story and is about one of the men who was a hangman in England. He was so good at what he did that they took him to the jail where they kept the Nuremburg trial offenders (Nazis) and had him hanging them. He was hanging up to thirteen a day.
It was really quite grotesque how he took such pride in his work. He was just an ordinary man who seemed to be living an ordinary life like everyone else, except he kept the secret that he was a hangman. Obviously he was "outed" after the Nuremburg hangings because they were made very public. For a start everyone hailed him a hero, but by the 1950s there was a turn of the tide within the English population in regard to the death penalty so then Pierrepoint became somewhat of a paraiah. It is most likely why he quit in the end.
One of the last scenes showed him begging his wife to tell him that he was a good man. She couldn't say that to him and refused to even comfort him, even though she had been quite happy to live off the money he earned as a hangman.
Was very weird and strange.

Christmas soon.

I am dreading it.

I really find this time of the year a bit of a drag. It is not like Jesus was even born in December, He wasn't. Christmas itself sprouted out of some pagan rite called the Saturnalia and was corporated into the Christian church to appease God fearing priests, or whatever they called them back then, and so that they got to keep their Pgan rites along with still being able to go to a church.
If you really go into the origins of Christmas, it really is quite horrid and no one in their right mind would celebrate it or have the audacity to incorporate it with the life of Jesus Christ. But we do and there you have it. It is probably why I do not enjoy it any more because I know where it really came from.
If people truly want to celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ then they would be better to do it in July/August, for that is the time of year that He was really born.
To boot, if we did that, we would actually have a nice cold celebration instead of roasting in Summer. Don't know how the Americans would cope though, celebrating the birth of Christ in summer like that.
Anyway it is not that way and the norm remains.

Laterz

Sunday 14th December
I read a story once, well it was a series of books that I read.
I read them again over the weekend, mostly because I was tired of doing the things I usually do.
In the story one of the characters name was Troy Tatterton and he was an artisan who made figurines like knights and horses and dragons and all were made for the castle he also crafted. The point is not that he crafted anything at all. What the real point was is that it became his life.
Troy lived in a cottage behind a very big maze and on the other side of the maze was the mansion occupied by his older brother Tony Tatterton and Tony's wife Jillian who was as self absorbed as a lot of the other female figures the author of the story wrote over the years.
Troy was very introverted. But he was not introverted because he was born that way, rather he was introverted in regard to life. By this I mean that life sort of scared him because every time he glimpsed happiness; every time he almost held the ultimate happiness in his hand, it slipped through his fingers like so many grains of sand and as quickly.
It didn't all slip through his fingers because of anything he did. He was not a cruel man, rather he was kind and generous, but the pain of being constantly robbed of his happiness made him become introverted as far as life went.
Nevertheless he accepted the tragedies and seldom tried to fight them. And all the while he was accepting them and getting on with his life, there was an aching well of loneliness and despair that engulfed his heart and made his spirit weary.
So he sat in his little stone cottage for years and made toys. He was incredibly wealthy, but he understood that money was just paper and copper. He understood what money really meant and that it was nothing if a man could not be truly happy. He understood that money was not a path to happiness, nor the avenue to travel in the pursuit of peace and real dreams that matter.
Inside his cottage he would spend every day of every single year creating little towns or castles and he would create each figurine in complete difference to the one that came before or the one to follow. By this I mean that none were ever the same. No two were identical. And for every character he created with his artisan tools, as he fashioned them, their hair colour, eye colour, height, clothing and facial expression, he also created their lives. In his mind he created a complex life for each character.
The lives of the characters he created were full. Sometimes they were touched with tragedy, I am sure, but they were full, real and more vibrant that anything he ever experienced in real life. Although they did not breathe, feel or think an independent thought ever, to Troy they were people with lives to live and things to do and they meant something to other characters whom he also fashioned.
In his little cottage alone for years he lived a full life vicariously through inanimate objects, separate from the real world and yet, in that cottage behind that maze, he didn't miss the world. He didn't miss the world at all.
Troy was sane. Totally sane. He simply understood the tragic nature of the world and chose to have as little to do with it as possible. But then one day the world came to him. The real world came to him in the form of an eighteen year old girl named Heaven.
Despite himself and his initial refusal to have anything to do with her, he eventually fell in love with her. He decided to marry her but, as fate had a tendency to do in his life, it reached out its ugly hand and destroyed that too when he discovered, from Tony's wife Jillian, that the girl was his niece.
He could not marry her.
She, in turn, ran from Tony's house.
Troy was a decent man and he would never do anything untoward or improper. So Troy disappeared for a while and the girl ended up marrying someone else.
Years later after Troy had faked his own death, his brother Tony realised that he was still alive and living again in his cottage. Tony agreed to keep his secret and let him remain dead. But Troy, who was normally kind and caring decided to get even with Jillian for telling him the truth in her own cruel way. Jillian was jealous because Troy used to take a lot of Tony's time when he was small and her daughter Leigh used to indulge most of her time with Troy too, so when she had told him about Heaven being his niece, she had done it to be cruel before she did it to be truthful.
Troy knew that Tony never told Jillian that he was really alive and so he began to stalk Jillian around the mansion and she fully believe that she was being haunted by the ghost of Troy and it helped her already creeping madness to deepen. But even after Jillian died, Troy regretted that he had done that to her, despite all she had done to him over the years.
A few years later, about eighteen, another young girl turned up to live in the mansion on the other side of the maze.
The young girl had lost her parents in a car accident and so she had been taken in by her grandfather, Tony Tatterton.
The young girl's mother Heaven had lived in the mansion and her mother before her, Leigh, had also lived there, but she had run after Tony had forced himself upon her and impregnated her.
Leigh had told her mother Jillian what Tony had done, but Jillian was too self absorbed to care. So Leigh had run off. She eventually met a man named Luke Casteel who worked in the circus. He took Leigh in and decided to be the father to her unborn child. He took Leigh to live in the Willies where his entire family came from, with his mama Annie and his papa Toby Casteel. Leigh had not been strong enough to be able to live there and when she gave birth to her baby, Heaven, the Willies took her life.
She was fourteen.
Luke remarried very quickly to a new woman called Sarah whom he did not love. He had children with her, Tom, Fanny, Keith and Jane, but he spent the next many years pining after his one true love, Leigh, and Sarah paid the price for Luke's inability to forget her.

After a few weeks of Annie living in Tony's house, it turned out the Tony was quite mad and he was becoming confused between Jillian, Leigh, Heaven and Annie, all of whom by then were dead, save for Annie. Annie was taken back home by her aunt Fanny, but Troy discovered that the girl was in fact his daughter. His daughter by his niece, Heaven, who had fled Tony's house already pregnant with Troy's baby.

Heaven married a guy called Logan and he never knew that Annie wasn't his baby, but just before they had gotten married, he had had an affair of sorts with Heaven's sister Fanny, which would later come back to haunt them all.
Anyway at the end of the story Troy had been trying to decide what gift he could best give his daughter to best shield her from the madness that had been her grandfather and the best gift he could ever give her, he decided, was the truth. You see, Annie had a half brother by her Aunt Fanny named Luke. She and Luke were supposedly cousins and half brother and sister. Cousins by their mothers, Fanny and Heaven and brother and sister by their father Logan.
But Luke and Annie naturally gravitated toward each other from the cradle and believed that they were to spend their lives trying to ignore a love that was taboo for the rest of their lives.
When Troy sat them down and gave them the gift of truth, it was that they were not even related.
Fanny and Heaven were not even half sisters. Both had different mothers and different fathers, therefore Luke and Annie were no relatives to each other at all.

I guess that that is neither here nor there, the point being that Troy saw the importance of telling the truth, even though it might hurt himself in the long run to do it. He had come to know Annie and to love her very much, having known right from the first time he ever saw her that she was his. He knew that she might be very angry that he had done that thing with his niece, even though he had not known that Heaven was his niece. He did not know because Tony had lied because he did not want anyone to know that he had raped Leigh, his wife's daughter.

Troy said. " If there truly is a curse on the Tattertons, it is born out of our refusal to be honest with our hearts, and I will not allow that to happen to you."

That made me cry because it is so true. Even the last time I read these books the truth of Troy's words did not strike me as harshly as it did this time.

Part of me greatly understood Troy. I understood his melancholy heart. I understood his fear of the happiness that was always cruelly stolen away. In picturing him in my mind sitting in his cottage behind the maze making his little figurines and living his life vicariously through them, I understood that too.

Troy Tatterton stayed in that cottage for the rest of his life making Tatterton toys. The only times he ever ventured away was when Annie gave birth to her and Luke's children. They buried Troy some years later in the cemetery on the Estate beside Troy's beloved Heaven.

I can understand how the world of the figurines was more tolerable to Troy than the world outside his cottage door. I understand it because I think that, to a point, it is what writers do. They create these worlds where tragedy and happiness can be controlled. It is not bought and sold in the market place of life like it is outside our doors in the real world.

I found myself wishing dearly that there was a Troy Tatterton somewhere who really did exist. In some ways I wished that Troy Tatterton mirrored life more than Tony Tatterton who could only keep his life together by grasping at terrible lies, but the sad fact of the matter is that Tony Tatterton is more akin to this life than Troy Tatterton ever could be.

I guess I found myself really wishing that my father had been a Troy Tatterton. Someone who loves others so selflessly that the truth is the most important thing despite the consequences to himself. Sadness is that people like that really only do exist in books.

That is the other good thing about being a writer, you can write people how you want to see them or think you really see them. You can make them possess the best of human qualities and sometimes you can make them possess the worst of human qualities.

But at the end of the day, the Troy Tattertons of books do not live forever any more than we do, for once you close the book they cease to exist. And that is the same for us. Eventually we will all cease to exist too. Like a leaf on the breeze our life floats away like it was never lived and as though we were never here and before you know it, time itself forgets the imprint of our life upon this earth.

Laterz

Dream Weaver
by
Gary Wright

one of the first videos I ever made

Monday 22nd December
I remember sitting there on the bed just staring out the window up at the night sky. Some stars were visible and so was a part of the moon.
It was May and it was cold. May is always so cold there, but that year it seemed a little colder than normal.
It was 1980.
As I sat there staring up at the night sky I heard Dream Weaver playing on the radio. It played many times that night and as I listened to the words of the song and stared up at the sky, I thought about what life was at that time. The many things that mystified me, scared me, haunted me, gave me reason to hope and the things that were only of dreams.
I wondered why everything was turning out as it was and I didn't really want the stable things in my life to change and move from the familiar into the unfamiliar.
The stable things.
The way the sun would shine on the pines first thing in the morning and last thing in the late afternoon just before the evening shrouded the land in her dark cloak. The way the sun glistened on the river during the slow afternoons that sometimes seemed as though they might actually last forever. The smell of the cut grass at our little country school, the squeaking of the maypole when it slowly turned around on windy dismal days. Even on bright windy sunny days.
The sound of the ferns scratching the tin fence in the night. The sound of the creaking old wind vane and the cry of the night birds as well as the ones that sung at dawn.
I thought about the things that haunted me. My birth mother's insane love of Elvis Presley that left her unable to give of herself to anyone else. The way it left me paralysed emotionally. The way it made me hate him because he could make her love him without doing a thing and no matter what I did she wouldn't even be nice. I thought about the way she used to make me sit so very still and quiet on hot afternoons while she watched his movies.
I thought about how much I liked Electric Light Orchestra. How I loved their music but how I had managed to like them without making them my life. Jeff Lynne looked friendly. He had kind eyes. I thought about him while I thought about Elvis and her.
After a while I thought about church.
Many images cascaded through my mind, some strange, some fascinating and some just plain frightening.
I remembered how the Elders would get in a circle, their arms wrapped around each other and they'd bow their heads and pray. I used to wonder whether God heard them, knowing what some of them had done. I wondered that then, in those moments, staring up at the sky listening to Gary.
In those moments I felt lost, hopeless and scared. I wanted to die but didn't know how to do that, not really.
I thought about the people at church. I pictured in my mind the many times I had seen the adults walk up to the front of the church and stand there. The Elders would touch their hand to their forehead and at the mere touch, the person would fall down onto the floor. Some did it slowly and gracefully. Other fell as though touched by fire. Some began to laugh. Others began to chant in weird noises using words that did not exist.
They frightened me.
They frightened me and yet fascinated me.
I felt drawn to it and at the same time repelled.
I want to be a part of it and at the same time I wanted to run from it.
I thought about how I knew way too much and I also thought about the fact that I clearly knew too little.
I felt so adult and yet I wanted so desperately to feel like I was a child. To be carefree. To have no concerns. To not have to worry about the things that caused me worry. Wanting to change things but knowing I was powerless to. Wanting to fight back and yet knowing I was too weak.
And then there was him.
I had forgotten his face by then.
Any kind face I saw was his.
I didn't even remember his name. How odd that his name eluded my memory as it did.
How interesting that the truth of him did exactly the same.
From time to time somewhere in my memory I would catch a fleeting image of him, always in slow motion but then he would turn away before I could ever really get a good look at him. I suppose that was why his face was always remembered as kind. I thought that then in those hours as I listened to Gary.
Truth.
Truth was the ghost that haunted me always. Endlessly always the truth stalked me...just below my memory, just above my head, watching me, hovering over me, waiting to wake me up and make me remember things as they really were. Somewhere something told me that I had buried a truth so deeply that it might never be rediscovered and somehow I had always known that I never really wanted to know.
I needed the lies.
I needed the empty pitiful dreams. Dreams of playing the piano. Dreams of writing beautiful music. Dreams of being just like everyone else. Dreams of being ordinary and subject to the same rules of life. But oddly enough, all of those dreams, every tiny facet of the imaginings and hope ran amok. They played out of tune in regard to reality showing me just how futile and vain hope was.
And yet I dreamed anyway.
I was just a kid. What did I know then?
More than I would have liked and I knew that then as well.
Betrayal was the biggest emotion I felt at the time. Dreaded, dark, deceitful betrayal and I knew it. I knew that I had been lied to, played with, hurt and that the people who were held up as the most righteous were the worst of them all.
Men of God reading the bible, judging others, espousing virtues of love and God and doing exactly the opposite with their evil hands, their gnarled words, their black hearts and their dreadful secrets.
My secrets.
And despite knowing all of this, I did not want my life to change. I didn't want to lose familiarity because somehow I knew, as I sat there that night watching the stars in the sky and listening to Gary, that it was not going to get better. I knew that leaving would only make things worse. Much worse.
I was right.

Laterz