First… a poem which I wrote at work the other night while reading Grendel. Very good book BTW, very deep and insightful to human nature. Basically, Gardner uses the story of Grendel (Beowulf) to imply that humanity defines itself by what it hates, what it considers monstrous. The subject would be heavy if not for the vivid and eloquent way the story is told. Ironically, this book was first released the year I was born.

So, to my poem… (this is a first draft, no rewrites)

to become
our own enemy
a snake chews on its tail
Oroboros, we eat ourselves
purging the worst
it rises up again
slick and angry as rot
our endless cycle of hunger
defined by what we hate
becoming what we hate

***********

Next… the return of the Ancient Whispers Newsletter. Is this post a little late? Yeah, a bit, but that’s what happens when you have to watch a hyperactive, constipated, teething eight month old all day. My mom finally came home this afternoon, and I went and caught myself a nap. heh I can’t wait for my sister to get here from Illinois. And she won’t be here until next Thursday! Agggggggggggggg!

So, anyway, the newsletter. I hope everyone had (is having) a great Midsummer celebration. Sorry for the past two weeks without a newsletter. This week’s Ancient Whispers newsletter is on the subject of Weather magic. Check out the article to see how ancient fascination with weather has grown into our modern attempts to divine the weather, then go to the Sites of Interest to learn how you can affect the weather yourself.

SkyWatch
Weather working
Seawitch.org
Weather Working With Clouds
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This Pagan Week : June
Humor : New Virus
Article : Weather Magic
Quote : Henri-Frederic Amiel
Craft of the Week : Flower Fairies
Humor : Some true “proverbs”
Who’s Who in World Mythology : Bachue
Quote : Buck Rogers
The Magi’s Garden : Chicory
Cartoon
Poem : Earth Mother, Star Mother
Quote : George E. Woodberry
The Power of Stones : Bustamite
Humor : Baby
A Dreamer’s Guide : Passage to Payment
Quote : Stanley Walker
Previous Newsletters

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It’s the great Smilie invasion of 2004!!!!

Weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee! Hehehe

Admittedly it’s a slow load, but well worth the wait. Some of the pictures are difficult to see (until you choose them), but I dare not make the squares any larger or the whole table will be larger than the window. heh

The pictures that I removed still exist in my photobucket. You can get there with this link, using the password “Iconophilia” to view the public page.

Since my scanner is finally working again, my comic finally updated for the first time in two weeks. Hurray! And it’s a good thing I have Thursday’s comic finished as well, because I’m baby-sitting my infant nephew all week… and he is irritable and teething. Arrrg. He’s driving me nutters.

As I mentioned yesterday… I’ve been collecting more smilies. Shocking, I know. Many of them are unique, but some are similar and I so I am thinking of retiring some. I’d like some votes if you please… Feel free to choose more than one of each group. I’ll take your word for it.

Of course, I’m not showing all the new smilies. Just the ones in question. The complete new list will be unveiled as soon as I get around to editing the code.

    Of these four, which do you like the most? Do I really need four sad smilies.

     Of these dragons, which do you prefer?

   Should I go with the new knights or keep both?

  These two I really can’t decide on. They’re both so darn cute.

   Hmmm, decisions, decisions… Can you just picture them chanting??? Salami salami, bologna bologna

      I know, the second is cuter, but I thought I’d give you the choice.

   Wee Willie Winkie runs through the town… heh

   here kitty kitty kitty

  Finally, the enigmatic smiling joker or the LMAO joker?

Do you want to know how many smilies I have now??? One hundred forty-five! Egads! That more than doubles my collection. Even if I get rid of the ones you guys vote against, I’ll still have over one hundred.

And I’ll probably keep adding too.

It’s a sickness. Someone enroll me in smilies Anonymous. Quick.

I dreamed I was on an oceanliner last night. It was overrun by zombies, but there were a small group of survivors holed up in the ships vault with food, hoping the zombies would rot before we ran out. Unfortunately, the captain was a nut case and kept cutting the power so the metal “jail” door kept sliding open and we had to run to lock it again before the zombies got in. But the last time, we failed. Most everyone got into another room which they could lock, but they had no food. I got stuck out in the main room with food, but no protection. So I piled a bunch of sofa cushions around myself because the zombies attacked on sight, not by smell (I guess since they smelled too ripe themselves to smell anything but themselves heh). But then one of the cushions fell and the zombies saw me. Eek.

I still can’t get my Word program to work. I’ve removed all Microsoft Works and Microsoft Word from my computer, and reloaded them twice. I’m going to try loading Corel WordPerfect which I have from an old computer and hope it’s compatible with my Windows ME. If it’s not, I guess I’ll have to reformat my C drive. Joy. Well, if you guys don’t hear from me for a few days, either the zombies got me or my computer died.

Sigh.

Just a quick dream before I have to run to work. Really, it goes without saying that it was an odd dream, doesn’t it? All my dreams are odd. This was something like “Dawn of the Dead” combined with “The Stand” and maybe a few other horror movies I’ve seen but forgotten over the years. Perhaps a bit of “Night of the Comet” and “I am Legend” was thrown in for good measure.

It must have been the future because the people had built “sky scrapers” and then built up a platform around them supported by the buildings themselves. So the area below the platform was the “Underdark” where poor people lived and rich people lived in the light. Someone was knocking old buildings down, and it was bringing down the platform in places. Of course, this may have been a different dream entirely which just sort of glammed onto the beginning of the creepiness.

Some famous politician or religious leader had had a vision that there was going to be an epidemic of “West Nile Virus” in five years in the Ohio region. So five years later, when nothing immediately happened, people were very relieved. Then people started getting sick, but this was no West Nile (unless I am mistaken about the symptoms!). People who got sick would shrivel up until they were light as paper mache. By the end of the dream, since there was no one to take care of the sick, they were shambling through the streets like zombies and attacking people because everyone was too afraid of contagion to help them.

A bunch of survivors were holed up in an apartment building. Supposedly, any indication of sickness and a person would be thrown out into the streets. However, there was one guy who was making trouble.

Everyone heard a gun shot was were soon gathered in the apartment where they had heard the shot, but the guy was no where to be found. There was a black mark on the ceiling which hadn’t been there before, so they started poking along the ceiling when a body wrapped in plastic fell through onto the floor. Someone got the bright idea to poke their head up through the hole and there were dozens of bodies wrapped in plastic.

Instead of ousting people who were sick, the leaders of the survivors had been killing them and experimenting on them. Don’t ask my why they didn’t get rid of the bodies when they were done. It seemed they had discovered that Glycemic acid (Blood Sugar?) was the cure and it could only be harvested from the brain, and to a lesser extent from the rest of the body, of someone who was died while sick with the so-called “West Nile Virus.”

So everyone was forced at gun point to go out and pick up the dessicated dead. Somehow, many of the bodies had been dismembered, so it was easier collecting heads than you’d think. Everyone walked along behind a cart and threw in parts as they found them.

Then I was watching a child vampire as old as the Earth with his “servant” in a penthouse. The vampire had the sickness, but instead of dessicating, he was turning to dust. His servant was all for killing him before the other vampires found out he was sick, but the vampire said, “Kill me, kill the cure,” while drinking from a glass of water with someone’s dentures floating in them.

So he walked out on the balcony and complete turned to dust. The servant started crying and gathering up the skeleton when another vampire appeared and was very pi$$ed that the servant had kept the older vampire’s illness to himself. While they were arguing, the “dead” vampire suddenly was rejuvenated, but then he started devolving through various animals until he was a snail and then *plink* gone. Then he’d appear again, go through the devolution again, and *plink* again.

Well, good news and bad news. It seems I can open any file provided it is not a Word file. Everytime I try to open a Word file, my computer first freezes up, then control+Alt+Delete gets me a “low on resources” message which, followed to its conclusion (after several more low resource messages), also inevitably freezes up my computer. Funny I try not to upload much of anything to my computer and am scrupulous about defragmenting and killing accumulated cookies and temporary internet files in an effort to keep my computer running as quickly as is possible for my “limited resources.” Of the 37+ GBs my computer has available, I’ve used all of 3.18. So how can I not have available memory?? I defrag, I kill cookies, I run my virus scan, nada. Stupid thing. And of course the bad news, all my stories and works in progress are in Word files.

Despite the fact that I did not get home from work till 3 AM, (Wednesday night a group of us stay late and straighten up the store.) I had another odd dream. This time I went with the family to a grocery store just before they were ready to close. I paid for everything, and had two coupons for Butterfinger candy bars (something I’m allergic to, but which I’d eat all the time if I could). For some reason, my family decided that we should try to get out of the store without paying for the candy, so we all ate them before we got to the cash register. We packed everything up and I paid, and they headed out the door for the empty lot.

I told them I wanted to get a soda and as soon as they left, I went back to the register and told the security guard (who was also apparently the cashier) that I had to pay for the four candy bars and a coke. He said he’d been wondering if I was going to pay for the candy. When I looked for the coupons though, I only found one in a discarded shoe on the floor. Oh well, the soda was the best I’d ever had. Then as I was leaving, there were two rotting chicken carcasses lying on the sidewalk next to the door. Icky. They smelled vile.

I wonder what my dream was telling me… that at this moment in time, my life is two rotting chicken carcasses? That my family is inherently dishonest? That I can save money by seeking coupons in strange places…

I’d move out if I could, but I only make $6.50 an hour at the borders and that’s barely enough to pay my bills. Anywhere I moved would likely be more than I’m paying now (once you add in utilities), and I am not going to move out just to “borrow” money from my mom every month like the other two do.

I probably wouldn’t be so grumpy right now if not for a headache. I got as much sleep as my brain is going to allow. I’m not even tired, but I have a sleep-deprived headache. I even took the dog for a walk all around the canal, before it got too hot, to maybe tucker myself out more, but no such luck. I’m full of energy. I may have to rearrange furniture. heh Least I don’t do that at 3 AM any more. (The family complained I was keeping them up.)

Frustration…. grrr

Something is wrong with my computer. It will not let me open any files from disk, so there will be no new comics and no new newsletter until the matter resolves itself… I’m hoping it resolves itself (once the Venus transit is past) because I can’t really afford to get my computer fixed and the mind boggles at the amount of email I might come back to if I had to send it out. No, I’m not popular, I just get mountains of spam.

And my car is make some kind of weird knock when I go around a curve. Aside from that I need an oil change (three months ago according to the little sticker), and though I got new tires in January, the back right needs to be replaced. I suspected a leak after I got them, but the car shop said there wasn’t one. Now if there’s no leak, then why have I had to refill that tire and only that tire every month for the past five months?

And it’s heading into that time of year when my allergies have me so completely exhausted that I have no patience to deal with any of my problems, let alone anyone else’s.

Speaking of other people’s problems… My sister is sending her baby to stay with us for a week while she makes enough money to move back home. She’s a little leech, I swear. I half expect taking care of her baby will stretch into a month before she follows. She’s constantly going on about how supportive our family is (in contrast to her boyfriend’s), and yes we are, we’ve sent her money when she’s needed it despite the fact that we are basically “working poor.” And then she has to add that she’s given us money when we’ve asked… and I always refrain from asking when that was because honestly I have never asked her for a penny. My mother spent thousands of dollars to keep her out of jail for assaulting a police officer for goodness sake, and that’s thousands my mother doesn’t have. Luckily she cleans house for someone who agreed to give her the money in exchange for a year’s free housecleaning. My sister lives in a complete fantasy world. I just hope my nephew will grow up with a bit more awareness of reality.

And then there’s my brother, who will also be coming home, early, from Jobcorp where he has been in training to be an electrician. From past experience, I know what will happen. Nothing. He won’t find something immediately, and so he’ll become frustrated, start vegging out on the sofa, and then give up. Play video games till 3 AM and sleep till 3 PM on the foldout sofa-bed in the living room and eat everything in the house.

I want a new family. The only one I respect is my mother. Anyone want a little brother and sister? Fixer-uppers. Cheap. Or perhaps you’d rather adopt me? I’ve got issues, but nothing a loving and supportive home won’t fix. I’ve had all my shots! heh

I’m so depressed. I should mention the dream I had about joining a circus… They were trying to sign me up at the same time everyone else was trying to get out. Symbolic, yes?

Edit next day….

The Venus transit is done. I woke up this morning feeling refreshed. That’s something that hasn’t happened in a while. Was it a result of Venus finally finishing its passage across the sun? Who knows…

I deleted and reloaded Windows ME and Microsoft Word to my computer. Hopefully that will fix the problems I’ve been having. Of course I haven’t tried to see if it worked yet because it freezes up my whole system and I have to reboot and wait while it tells me I shut down improperly, blah blah blah. Evil thing.

I really don’t want to go into work frustrated because my computer decided to be stubborn, so I guess I’ll let my attempt at fixing the problem “settle” for a day before trying it out. Heh, I’m so superstitious… as if a computer needs to “settle.” But tomorrow I have off from work. I can afford to be frustrated tomorrow without worrying that I’ll carry a pi$$y attitude with me to work.

I had a barely remembered dream about time travel last night. The only detail I can really recall is that I was back in feudal England and suffering from amnesia.

My comic book store is closing as of this Saturday. What am I to do? It’s a good thing I work with two people at the book store who also work there, else I would not have known. As it stands, everything is 50% off until they finally close this Saturday night at nine. Dare I splurge and stop in on Saturday? Some would say I already did on Wednesday when I spent $30 (which would have been $60 if not for the sale). What will I do without a comic store where I can buy more comics to add to my weighty collection (otherwise known as my retirement fund)? Wahhhh! I need my comics.

In other news… anyone know any good books/sources of information on Julian the Blessed (the last Pagan Caesar)? I know something of him historically just from general reading, but I can’t find anything specific, like a biography. I read an excerpt of a letter he wrote to a priest in a book, and it’s peaked my interest. I tried doing a search online, but it got me nowhere.

This week’s Ancient Whispers newsletter is on the subject of Thought-forms. We all use them, whether we’re aware of it or not. This week’s Sites of Interest, Article, and Craft will give you more information on the conscious creation and control of Thought-forms. Also, check out this week’s jokes for some horrid puns and a jab at Bush’s “Faith Initiative” program.