Just a wee note

We have a lady at my office from Scotland. She has just the lovilest lilt to her voice. I could listen to her read the phonebook and still be enraptured just by her accent.
A few months back her and I were out having a smoke and for one reason or another, I cant recall, I laid my Scottish accent on her.
"Oh that's definitely Glasgow ." was her reply. "If not Glasgow directly then one of the seaboard cities nearby."

This pleased me.
I was so happy to know that my accent is good.
I knew it was passable but maybe a bit cartoony at best.
 Then to be told that my accent is good enough that a native Scot can even tell me what part of Scotland my accent is from.

Well that just made my day.

Paco

My best buddy Paco.

He was my wife and I's first dog. A German Shepard/Irish Setter/Chow mix. Smart as a whip and a ferocious teddy bear. Anyone or thing that entered his backyard without prior written permission died. I regularly removed birds and squirrels and cats that did not have the proper documentation. Yet he would let my cousins crawl over him like a jungle gym. They could even touch his food while he was eating and he wouldn't mind. He'd just look up at them as if to say "Hey not done!"

One day he ran at the gate and the wind blew it open for him.
He stood straining on his leash just outside the fence, basking in his new found freedom I would suppose.

The gate rebounded and slammed shut on his leash.

Its been 20 years and I still miss that big lug.

Ghost Theories

I have a 30 minute commute each way each day. These are the kind of things that roll through my brain.
       I have a theory that I have been pondering for some time that I would like learned input on. It's been postulated that "ghosts" are known for regularly sucking the juice out of batteries from devices (i.e. cameras, recorders, etc.) and that this is a common occurrence. It has been noted before that such a power drain is common before an "experience" as if the presence were siphoning off the energy for its own use.
       With that in mind couldn’t a device be created that could oscillate through the common ranges of human bio-energy signatures and provide extra energy to an area to help force a stronger, if not physical, manifestation?
        I am thinking about 4 to 6 electrified steel rods as a device used to pump energy into an area, say a average 4'x6' room, which would match the general harmonic energies given off by the human body.
       In essence, this would be akin to force feeding a presence the energy that it would normally leech off. Where the end outcome would hopefully be a more substantial and significant encounter.
       I am sure such a device would be rather simplistic in nature to create but would it be a practical device to use within a known haunting or within an investigation? Would this be a device worth the time, effort and cost to design and create or am I off on the practice behind the theory?

theres a tear in my beer

Let me hear your Body Talk

Watched an interesting snippet as to why we cry


In this episode of SciShow, Hank Green explains our tears.
Here is the link in a nutshell
Basically there are 3 kinds of tears.
One is always there to keep your eyeballs moist, one is to flush out irritants and the 3^rd is emotional.
Now here is the cool part.
The first to are mostly plain water but the third is chock full of all kinds of proteins and hormones.
When you are sad you brain tells the body “hey I’m feeling sad”
This causes all kinds of stress and your body, doing as it is supposed to do, starts generating all these stress hormones and junk (junk is indeed the scientific term)
Then the body uses the tears to help flush these excess stress chemicals out of the body.
Cool, right but that’s not all
Being that we are social animals they also have the secondary purpose of nonverbal communication.
Meaning that tears flow and this singles other humans that you are in distress.
This is supposed to garner well wishes and comforting from your social network. Social network just means other humans and not Facebook.
Also there is no crying in baseball.


It truly is quite an amazing machine that we drive around in each day.

Better living through chemistry

Once when I was a younger lad and was working in retail I was super tired. I mean dog ass tired. I also was on a 12 day with no break ass busting schedule at work.
So, being super intelligent I decided that I needed a spark
I ate 2 Vivarin to give me said spark and headed to work
If you do not know what a Vivarin is it is a caffeine pill that is 200mg of caffeine or equal to 2 cups of coffee.
On the way to work I was still feeling tired so I took 2 more
Then half way there I took 2 more
Then once I arrived I took 2 more
Then just as I started my shift I, yup you guessed it, I took 2 more
So now I have 2000mg of caffeine surging through my system
2000 milligrams equals 2 grams
Luckily its takes on an average 100 grams to kill a man so I was safe there
But I felt awful
I was nauseous and I was in the physical state where it doesn’t matter what you do, you feel uncomfortable. I couldn’t sit, stand lay down or hop about on one foot
It all felt bad.
I went home after about 4 hours as I was not getting any better.
Finally after about 16 hours I started to unwind.
Did I learn my lesson?
Obviously not.
Back in 2000 I was working in Kansas City and was having back pain
To alleviate said pain I was taking a Tylenol and ibuprofen mix every morning
Started out with just 2 Tylenol and 2 ibuprofen every morning and it steadily grew
By the end of 3 weeks I was taking 10 Tylenol and 10 ibuprofen every morning
Yeah
I should have died from a toxic overdose
What I ended up doing was killing off all the beneficial bacteria in my gut.
I made myself lactose intolerant.
I finally realized what I was doing and cut it out and so far my liver is fine and I can enjoy drinking milk again
Ice Cream still affects me in a disastrous way, which is a high penalty for my stupidity.


Moral of the story is
Pay attention to what you ingest.

Smile you bastard

No I’m serious crank the corners of your mouth up
Go ahead
Don’t care how fake it is just smile
Hold it….
Hold it…
Almost there….
Phew ok and rest
You may run around in circles if you need to cool down.


You see your brain is pretty stupid when it comes to some of the basic emotions. Just like your brain tells your body what to do you can use that same communication pathways and send a message to your brain.
It works both ways.


So by smiling for just 30 seconds your brain goes “oh duh I must be happy” and your dark mood is lifted.
This will help you get a bit of an energy boost and make you feel better.
Just a bit lighter in the soul area.


I discovered that the body did this when I was just a kid.
I was in a happy grabass mood on the church bus on the way home from some event or another and there was this girl I wanted to impress sitting behind me.
I figured “hey chicks dig dark and moody guys”
And yes I was an idiot, thank you for asking. Male hormones are known for decreasing intelligence. It’s like a medical fact and stuff. The hormones get up into the brain stem and beat the crap out of the intelligence synapses and steal their lunch money.
With no lunch money your intelligence synapses grow hungry and go into a corner to weep and bemoan their fate.
Anyway
There I sat staring at my headphone jack forcing myself to act all sullen and pissy.
By the time the bus stopped I was indeed all sullen and pissy and boy isn’t that just a fun thing to be around.
That’s when I realized my outward face could influence my inward one.
Nowadays psychological science has caught up with sullen and pissy me 30 years ago and have confirmed that smiling makes you happier
Acting energetic makes you more energetic
And by extension acting like an idiot makes you into an idiot.


Ok maybe not that last one but you get the idea.

Deep side of the gene pool

A old high school chum of mine lost his father the other day.
I wrote him a consolation note and to be frank I was pretty impressed with my spur of the moment note.
Yup sometimes I even impress myself.

I'm sorry to hear about your dad. I lost mine about 10 years ago. We grow up looking at our dads as invincible supermen. As we get older we realize what mortality is but somewhere down deep we still see our dads as immortal superheroes and in some ways they are.

Dang. I'm like all kinds of deep and stuff.