Only 364 days left until Christmas!!
Wednesday, December 25, 2013
Bizarre media meltdown during NSA interview
Get ready to put your tin foil hat on tightly..Some very weird things started happening during an interview on WABC .. host Aaron Klein was interviewing controversial anti-NSA figure Larry Klayman.. the article explains it this way:
Audio clips saved on an independent system played at the wrong time.
Klein’s headphones had massive feedback that could be heard on the air.
At one point, the WABC call screener said, “We lost control of the software. It’s all going nuts.”
The technical difficulties started on the show about 10 minutes prior to the Klayman interview. They subsided following the two segments that featured Klayman.
“In my three years of broadcasting at WABC we never had such a technological meltdown as we are having today,” Klein told the audience.
He continued: “Calls are dropping. We cant get the guests on. Once the guests are on they are dropping. We’ve had several meltdowns. Feedback from the microphone. I can barely broadcast. … However we are going to land this airplane and we’re going to have fun doing it.”
And I know, the source is WORLD NET DAILY.. I took it with a grain of salt … and I have my tin foil cap secured comfortably.
So .. common sense would tell me that these technical glitches are perhaps a part of normal technical glitches or just purposeful chicanery behind the scenes. After all, if someone was being interviewed about gardening and this happened, no one would care..
Bizarre media meltdown during NSA interview
A great morning! Ninja Turtles pajamas with cereal as his Scooby Doo ‘bad guys’ and Darth Vader look on.. A great Christmas morning for a wonderful son. Merry Christmas to everyone.
With my son’s taste in pop culture icons, I swear he’s a reincarnated kid from the 1980s.. It’s like I am living my own childhood over and over again each day with this bright star in my life..
My wife and I were thoroughly overjoyed by seeing Ayden Morris enjoy the simplest of things this holiday. I was amazed at seeing the magic in his eyes at snow, bows, Santa, and even a music book at church.
It’s true, what other parents have said.. having a child changes everything. AS Ayden gets ready to turn 3 years old, it gets truer by the day.. and this Christmas, a whole new meaning of the season has emerged..
Now it’s time to go play! A Scooby Mystery awaits, and Darth Vader is lurking around.. Battles must be won.
Merry Christmas, everyone.
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=02dl5ySN0AM?feature=oembed&enablejsapi=1&origin=http://safe.txmblr.com&wmode=opaque&w=500&h=281]
MERRY CHRISTMAS TO ALL.. And to all a good day.
(Source: https://www.youtube.com/)
Tuesday, December 24, 2013
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VpimLgh3pJU?feature=oembed&enablejsapi=1&origin=http://safe.txmblr.com&wmode=opaque&w=500&h=374]
Darlene Love plays my favorite Christmas song every year on the LATE SHOW WITH DAVID LETTERMAN, ‘Please come Home.’
She performs the song each season on the Letterman show..
I have always loved the 1995 performance the best. Maybe it’s because I remember just being young, staying up late to watch this song and falling in love with it.. Her voice is strong—and it still is now. This may be the happiest and saddest song I have ever heard.. I love it, even though it empties my soul of joy at the same time..
I hope you have a baby that comes home this year.. I hope you have the experience of mistletoe and parties, good fun and food, joy and love, peace and magic.
I hope you are able to regain that Christmas spirit if it left.. and if you still have it, never lose it.
(Source: https://www.youtube.com/)
A proud pappa Christmas moment
Last night young Ayden had a little bit of a toddler meltdown in the grocery store—I could not explain that he did not need a toy since Santa was bringing him lots tonight.. Nonetheless it became a ‘moment’ …
We talked in the car about it.. Finally, we made an agreement: He can buy a Pez dispenser … That’s ok with me, and only a buck out of pocket..
Afterwards, we made a trip to May’s Drive In (a great diner if you ever find yourself in Northern Schuylkill County) .. Ayden wanted french fries and pizza and I wanted a coke and grilled cheese..
A little Christmas magic happened in the process.
When we were entering the building, Ayden, still weary from his tantrum, saw a man exiting with a cane. Ayden said “I don’t have a cane like you, I have a candy cane.” It was simple innocence and the man responded in kind, “I hope you never have a cane like me.” Then conversation went on.. Ayden explained all about his dog Mutley and how he wants Scooby Doo bad guys for Christmas… The man explained that he had cancer and was on life support, nearly died, but is paralyzed on one side of his body..
It was one of those moments in time that meant something. Ayden, just being kind and pure in thought, brought great joy to someone who, as he explained, had little family or friendship this time of year.
Finally, at the end of the chance encounter, and with a little parental prodding, Ayden said “ho ho Merry Christmas!” as he shook the man’s frail hand…
And with that, I had a teaching event. Something that prevented me from being angry anymore about a two minute temper event. It may not have been a ‘ghost of Christmas’ like Scrooge saw, but it was still something.
This has been a trying month. My father found himself in a medical crisis but he is alive for Christmas. And this man, frail and limping with a cane, hopefully smiled a little more seeing a kind hearted young child wishing him a Merry Christmas..
Monday, December 23, 2013
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1YLlRIIOnAs?feature=oembed&enablejsapi=1&origin=http://safe.txmblr.com&wmode=opaque&w=500&h=374]
This is a very special song for my wife. And it is too, for me. I think for very different reasons—but those reasons are somehow what also binds us together..
A song for a winter’s night.. Sarah McLachlan.
Good evening.
(Source: https://www.youtube.com/)
Ghost stories on Christmas: A tradition I'd like to bring back again
Christmas time is a modern occasion of joy..
Slurping eggnog spiked with rum and eating until you’re unable to move? That’s the American pasttime around the holiday season—and then the New Years guilt and resolutions to lose your new found weight is an annual tradition.
Kira Cochrane of the UK GUARDIAN writes this to describe humanity’s long love of telling ghost stories around this time of year:
Christmas has long been associated with ghosts, says Roger Clarke, author of A Natural History of Ghosts: 500 Years of Hunting for Proof. Just before Christmas 1642, for instance, shepherds were said to have seen ghostly civil war soldiers battling in the skies. This connection continued in the Victorian era through Dickens’s story, and through the ghost stories he later published at Christmas in his periodical All the Year Round, with contributors including Wilkie Collins and Elizabeth Gaskell. It would also continue in the tradition started by MR James, the provost of King’s College, Cambridge, who would invite a select few students and friends to his rooms each year on Christmas Eve, where he’d read one of the ghost stories he had written, which are still popular today. They include Canon Alberic’s Scrap-Book (1895), in which an ancient holy book brings forth a demonic presence, first announced by a hand covered in “coarse black hairs, longer than ever grew on a human hand; nails rising from the ends of the fingers and curving sharply down and forward, grey, horny and wrinkled”.
The popularity of ghost stories was strongly related to economic changes. The industrial revolution had led people to migrate from rural villages into towns and cities, and created a new middle class. They moved into houses that often had servants, says Clarke, many taken on around October or November, when the nights were drawing in early – and new staff found themselves “in a completely foreign house, seeing things everywhere, jumping at every creak”. Robbins says servants were “expected to be seen and not heard – actually, probably not even seen, to be honest. If you go to a stately home like Harewood House, you see the concealed doorways and servant’s corridors. You would actually have people popping in and out without you really knowing they were there, which could be quite a freaky experience. You’ve got these ghostly figures who actually inhabit the house.”
We have lost so much with the disappearance of this tradition! I call for a renaissance!
Telling ghost stories around this time of year appears to be a lost tradition. These days, we trample each other at malls and break glass doors for expensive Air Jordans that we cannot afford. But that aside, it would be sacrilegious in modern times to tell such haunting tales around the Christmas dinner table.. 50% of us celebrate the birth of Christ (though it probably would not have even happened this time of year) and the other 50% celebrate the modern rituals of present buying and giving. Ghost stories aren’t found within that celebration.. No time for the paranormal with those numbers.
We did borrow the Christmas tree and SO MUCH MORE from the pagans.. but for some reason, we ended the tales of horror in our newer centuries..
There are books and websites describing jut how popular ghostly tales were this time of year..
But that was then.
Now it’s all about fun, joy, peace, and harmony. Little thrown in of scary or weird….paranormal or other-worldly. And it seems we miss out on so much with the absence of the paranormal..
A website I follow, SPIRITDAILY.COM, had a small article on its site today concerning the ‘thin veil’ this time of year.. Of course the site had a religious bent on the argument, but it’s certainly worth considering nonetheless:
Fascinating it is that a number of mystics through the centuries have cited Christmas Day — not All Souls’ Day, or any other time — as when the greatest number of souls are released from purgatory. This was stated, we are informed, by the great doctor of the Church, Saint Teresa of Avila
While I do not contend my theories or ‘feelings’ are ever correct or a representation of anything but bizarre mental manifestations, I have long felt that two times of year were always filled with mystery: One being Halloween, and the other being Christmas. I recall nights when I was a child, especially Christmas Eve night, where I felt something mysterious in the air..something strange around me. Something like a presence—not necessarily a negative entity, but just another ‘element’ that I could not understand with my five senses. Did the pagans and others get it right.. does the veil thing? Those old ghost stories are not without purpose, they were just a way for people to express their fears of the darkness without shining light. You could argue that such ghost stories in the Victorian Age being popular was because they simply lived in scary times—gas lamps that lit the way for some with prestige and money, but darkness at night for the rest of the troubled lot.
Joy and love and peace could not be found on radio stations, and often so many younger children died from pestilence and disease, Santa Claus was not as busy as he is now.
But I still say there is something else to the story. I think there is a deeper and more profound reason that so many tall tales were expressed this time of year in centuries past. And maybe it’s because we, as humans, have a connection to a sixth sense.. maybe we have a deep affinity for the unexplained because we as humans are a PART of that unexplained. Why are we here? Ghost tales make sense of our existence in some way, because it gives credence to an afterlife. Yes, maybe spirits get trapped here, but at least we ‘go somewhere.’
Though we have an absence of the fireside chats during Victorian times, there are a few paranormal tales that withstood the test of time. Charles Dickens’ classic A CHRISTMAS CAROL is one of them, with a series of ghosts coming back to haunt a living man to scare him into being nice.. Some of the past film adaptations of CHRISTMAS CAROL were downright scary, and even the black and white versions of the story haunted me as a child, such as SCROOGE from 1935.
Some other stories from my lifetime that still keep the ‘creepy’ in Christmas: The GREMLINS was able to successfully utilize horror and holiday music, grounding up gremlins while DO YOU HEAR WHAT I HEAR played .. that scene shaped my childhood dreams.. There were also some other badly made seasonal horror flicks, like SILENT NIGHT DEADLY NIGHT, and CHRISTMAS EVIL. Even IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE has a paranormal theme. An angel coming to save a suicidal man before he ends it all..
Even the GRINCH THAT STOLE CHRISTMAS was scary.. and the idea that an ever-knowing Santa watches children when they sleep doesn’t really give me a deep down calm feeling either.
And who could forget, we still do have Krampus at Christmas..
And finally, there could be something else scary about this time of year. Besides the ‘veil thinning’ and the pagan acknowledgement of death during winter, it’s just a scary time altogether! .. New years is coming—one calender year over, of course calenders are man made but that doesn’t make them any less foreboding. Aging is scary.. not knowing what the next year will bring is also scary. We become victims to our paranoia and fear…and maybe that is why the Victorian Age was filled with so much of it..
There is, after all, lots to be actually scared of. Yes, then it was sickness and darkness, but what really has changed? The news media informs us almost daily that a big accident may soon happen to our entire grid, leaving parts of the United States dark for ‘years.’ We are equally warned about diseases that are not being killed off anymore by antibiotics. While we don’t dress with Victorian attire, we can attest that our fears are often the same as they were during our past. That’s the common bond in the human race. We surely don’t all get happy about the same things but that’s not true about fear. Deep down, we all fear the same things.. and ghosts represent the mystery and high strangeness that humans cannot explain.
So I say we bring back ghost stories! Let’s get the fire warm, open some gifts..drink up some spirits, and tell some tales about weird creatures and sounds bumping in the night.
Keep the Christ in Christmas. And keep the creepy, too.
If not, Santa may not stop by this year, but instead give us the ghost of CHRISTMAS FUTURE—and if you recall that was the scariest spirit of them all..
Ghost stories on Christmas: A tradition I'd like to bring back again
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sfLmpKTqugM?feature=oembed&enablejsapi=1&origin=http://safe.txmblr.com&wmode=opaque&w=500&h=374]
Truly amazing… that spirit of Christmas..
(Source: https://www.youtube.com/)
Sunday, December 22, 2013
The man from Taured..
I have been mingling with some other creatures of the planet who ponder what ‘time’ is and whether there is a multiverse around us.. My own sister gave me the knowledge of the weird story of the ‘Man from Taured’ today and I have had my mind steadfastly reading about it ever since.. Here is a link to GHOSTHEORY.COM and the background..
The story took place around 1954.. Here is how GHOST THEORY summed it up:
Eight hours after landing, the mysterious man from Taured sat tired and frustrated in the cramped interrogation room. He kept insisting that he was from the country of Taured and was in Japan on a business trip. The man told the officials that he had been traveling to Japan from Taured for the last five years without problems. He pointed to the past stamps that were issued on his passport to prove that he’d been traveling back and forth from Taured to Japan without any problems in the past.
Airport officials then placed a phone call to the company the man claimed to work for and found that it did not exist. Tired and getting nowhere, they decided to send the man to a guarded hotel room so that he could rest while the proper authorities were contacted and a follow-up investigation was planned. The mystery man left the Tokyo airport escorted by police and Customs officials.
And as mysteries go, they only are prone to getting more mysterious. The man from Taured was placed in a hotel room. He vanished, never to be seen again, despite a search for him..
Though the story has been around since about 1981, it seems that it has been gaining more traction and commentary online.. I located multiple threads on message boards across the Internets about the Taured mystery. One theme of the Taured story appears to be the man’s shock when he is shown a map and the country he said he is from was not on it..
At this point, this appears to be a creepy story with little to back it up or substantiate it. But I have learned from my own weird experiences in recent weeks that there are a million possibilities when it comes to this planet—and perhaps an infinite number of possibilities if you truly consider the multiverse and 10th dimension theories to be true.
The man was Taured may not be real.. or as real as our dreams. Maybe we visit Taured when we sleep..
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vmEfFlbqbbY?feature=oembed&enablejsapi=1&origin=http://safe.txmblr.com&wmode=opaque&w=500&h=281]
Perhaps the worst Christmas song ever re-re-remade. Twisted Sister sings O COME ALL YE FAITHFUL.
I post this only because as I was parusing the YouTubes, Mutley the Dog (with cone on head in his post testicle eliminating surgery) went nuts. He couldn’t the smooth voice of Dee Snider. I agree with Mutley the Dog.
Also funny, if you really really listen closely, this song sounds a LOT like We’re not Gonna Take It. Just with a Christmas ring.
Happy Sunday, December 22, 2013.
(Source: https://www.youtube.com/)
In the United States, we shop like mad during the last weekend before Christmas. In Britain, things are a little different. As a matter of fact, the Friday before Christmas is the biggest party night of the year in throughout the country.. The woman featured here is one of the party animals. You can see her image and a lot more from the night on the UK DAILY MAIL. Some aren’t pretty. Some are downright dirty..
I guess the BRITS are giving us a lesson on how to party like it’s 1999. Every Christmas.
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