Review: And Then I Am Gone by Mathias Freese

I worried when I told Mathias Freese I'd review another of his books. I thought I'd have to relieve the clear look at myself through the prose of the first book I reviewed, The i Tetralogy. The book was a trip through the Holocaust and I didn't like what I saw or felt. What caught me this time was the mention of Thoreau. I thought this book, And Then I Am Gone, would be his trip walking alongside Henry David Thoreau.

I was wrong again.

The book was somewhat jarring when he revealed that he enjoyed and looked forward to relations with his farm bred lady who had married him shortly before in Las Vegas, Nevada where he was a practicing psychologist and after the death of his wife. His second wife turned out to be a help when moving from Las Vegas to the house in the woods in the South where they had to make their new simpler life livable. Freese took a few walks around the place and knew what was going on in the latter years of his life far from his New York City borough beginnings where matriculated. His wife was an asset in deal with handymen, carpenters, and such and being in the South stoked his imagination as well as his libido. Evidently, the later years of life are not as devoid of the hormonal frenzy that welcomes us into the threshold of adulthood nor was adulthood with its schooling and training and living left behind with fond regrets and memories.

There are always some regrets and lots of memories in a long-lived life, but that is to be expected even of a secular Jewish teacher-cum-psychologist-cum-author using his life and memories for delving into the past and presenting his work in books. Where The i Tetralogy helped readers face that reality of the Holocaust, this current chapter in Freese's life will help him--and us, the readers--at least come to terms with what lies behind and what still lies ahead.

There are breakdowns and glitches in us that collect and collude with what lies ahead. Thoughts of Thoreau and his time at Walden Pond provide a touchstone, at least for the author, throughout and probably inform his thoughts and his history as it relates the differences and the commonalities of living in and among nature. I was surprised and a little taken aback by his sheer joy and pleasure with intercourse with his new, country-bred wife, but I always am one who looks away out of respect for the nature of such relations. That is my problem and not the author's or anyone else's. That is the way I was brought up and the way I have always been. I prefer reticence to re-enacting Tom's, or even Aladdin's, bold peering at what would be best left unglimpsed and unpeeped.

I was drawn by the mention of Thoreau living in his simple cabin in the woods around Walden Pond since I'd never read the book or much of Thoreau. Thoreau was a naturalist and a rich man's son who perfected the graphite pencil that I have used extensively while drawing and making notes during my continuous (it would seem) education, and there my actual knowledge ends. I never fell in love with Thoreau's solitary existence or his rambles about the woods near Walden's Pond, but I do retain the feeling of meandering among the woods, getting to know the denizens, and the peace and solitude of a simpler life.

I didn't get the sense that Freese's life in the woods was as carefree or as studied as Thoreau, but Freese, like me, although he has read Thoreau, strives to simplify life and make peace with his memories and life before his second marriage while the families of both mingle and get to know each other in this new place and different house were members of both families find their own paths over the hills and through the woods to the house where new memories will be made with future (and present) generations. Their simple home in the country will be fixed up to their tastes and standards, leaving the old behind and the new to be discovered, lived with, and made livable for their tenure and tastes.

Meanwhile, Thoreau will look on in spirit and find his own peace in his own way whichever way he will.

Review: The Glass Magician by Charlie N. Holmberg

Ceony Twill, the paper magician apprentice, made her master's heart out of paper and used his paper airplane to go after the heart his ex-wife, now an excisioner, cut out of his chest.

Time moves on and Ceony continues to face odds and dangerous people, one who is so intent on destroying her, they will blow up and destroy whoever happens to be close. Ceony, undaunted and willing to reach for any tool she can learn to use, including her best friend's glass magic, she also learns how to bond to other magic arts. With what she believes are two excisioners chasing her and having managed to successfully slip the "noose", Ceony faces two dangerous men with unknown powers and magic, willing to do what needs to be done to keep her master -- and her love -- intact. Walking through the chambers and anatomy of another's heart will change not only her goals, but her skills and her own heart.

It is outside the bounds of protocol and reason for an apprentice to fall in love with her master, but extraordinary circumstances call for unusual and even more extraordinary choices. Such is before Ceony and the magic world as she battles for her and her friend's lives and learns that nothing is impossible with determination, luck, and love.

Charlie N. Holmberg's magician series is not just a turn of the century fantasy, but so much more. in 1907, there is a great school of magic, and Ceony Twill gave up her cooking career, enrolled in the premier magic school, and finished far quicker than anyone in her class and in what she knows of the history of the magicians' arts and schooling. Ceony is working hard to finish her apprenticeship ahead of schedule even though she still must deal with her master's ex-wife and the excisioners traveling and terrorizing the countryside, and especially Magician Emery Thane for casting a spell on Lira, Emery's ex-wife. Grath Cobalt, one of Lira's gang of excisioners using blood magic to upset the well ordered magicians' school and training, is determined to force Ceony Twill to reverse the spell that stopped Lira, but did not utterly destroy her. Cobalt will, like Ceony when facing Lira and rescuing Emery's heart, do whatever it takes to free Lira from whatever the paper folding apprentice did to thwart Lira's vengeance on Emery.

Sound a bit convoluted and dangerous? Not for a glass magician who will have what he wants whatever the cost.

Grath is not an excisioner like Lira because he was already bonded to glass. Somehow, some way, he must break the bond in order to bond to blood magic and become an excisioner. That is where Ceony Twill comes into the picture.

Ceony confessed her love to Emery and doesn't know how Emery feels. She considers choosing another master, another discipline, but she is bound to paper and cannot, by all she knows, break the bond and does not want to start all over with another Folder magician who can train her. She also doesn't want to leave Emery. She loves him, though it is forbidden, and not even Delilah's master is going to have an easy task enforcing the rules.

Delilah, Ceony's best friend, is an apprentice glass magician and helps the Folder apprentice to understand and perform a little glass magic of her own. After all, she must save Emery again. Emery Thane is a formidable magician in his own right and has assisted the police in capturing excisioners before. Must have something to do with his ex-wife, whom he loved and married, becoming a practitioner of blood magic and revenging herself on him.

The duel of magics between Ceony and Grath reminds me of  rock, paper, and scissors which I played as a child. How does paper stand up to glass when the magician can go anywhere and see anyone whenever he chooses? Mirrors are made of glass and mirrors are all connected if only one has the magic and is willing to learn -- and to teach. All it takes is an agile mind and the will to do whatever it takes to cross boundaries and disciplines. That is what Grath has been willing to do ever since he met Lira and followed Lira's lead. What Grath can do Ceony will do as well. She will not be only a Folder for long.

Charlie N. Holmberg has created a world wherein magic is the most potent power and where villains as poisonous as Lord Voldemort are often more dangerous and patient -- to a point. As for me, I can hardly wait until June when The Master Magician is released.

Billed as YA, The Paper Magician and The Glass Magician, though they contain violence, the violence is perpetrated out of plain sight and not described in bloody, gory detail. Imagination is as potent as seeing the violence first hand and no less frightening or horrifying. In many ways, violence in the Magician series by Holmberg is the difference between dropping a boulder in a lake and hearing about the ripples and waves caused by someone else dropping said boulder from one's own hands. Not having a video replay of the violence doesn't lessen the impact for readers exposed to violence in the world where they live and learn.

The Glass Magician is a laudable continuation of the tale begun with The Paper Magician and will continue the game of rock, paper, and scissors people play when they are young and making choices. 4/5 stars for this leg of Holmberg's magical journey in my estimation. As readers will find, folding paper is as formidable as glass.

Soiled Doves

There was a time in the old wild west that Judge Roy Bean was the only law west of the Pecos. Judge Bean was a hard drinking, hard fighting, moral man who surrounded himself with gunfighters and soiled doves (dance hall girls). As the only law west of the Pecos, this violent, imprudent man finally settled down with one of the soiled doves, content to be the law who dispensed his brand of law without restrictions and living by his own code.

He hung rustlers and thieves, assassins, and disturbers of his peace without mercy, but at least by his views a moral man willing and able to clean up the wildest patch of the west. He cleaned up his patch and settled down with a saloon girl, one of the soiled doves, and wrested his dusty corner of the west from the criminals and the dregs of society.

The problem was the soiled doves. Where Sundays were days of leisure, usually after Saturday nights of drinking, fighting, playing cards, and the usual ruckus over who pulled what card from his sleeve, the soiled doves saw their town becoming citified and tame and began to insist on spending Sunday mornings listening to the parson preaching his sermon while they sang in the choir. The old rough and ready frontier town had become safer, filled with the good people of town wearing finer to Sunday service and dealing harshly with newcomers who were less refined Sunday go to meeting trollops. The newly refined ladies didn't see to the morals of newcomers to the saloon and the town who chose the less moral portion of their upstanding population to get rid of.

Judge Roy Bean had less luck with the moral and upstanding female population of town. He recognized his soiled doves, especially his own personal soiled dove, possessed of a prim and proper demeanor that followed with the change in the town's status and high-toned feminine population, as newly whitewashed doves who didn't take to the rough and ready life of a frontier town, especially when the frontier town got a brand new general store, stagecoach stop, and restaurants just like the establishments back East. He realized his happy bachelor days when he was the Only Law West of the Pecos were behind him and he must also change with the times. He had come up in the world, no longer the Law West of the Pecos when he couldn't even handle his own soiled dove who was now the last word West of the Pecos and the arbiter of taste and refinement now that her soiled past was behind her and she wore the finest clothes from back East, a lady who would be welcome in the best and wealthiest homes of the wealthy town matrons.

Judge Roy Bean was tied in eternal wedlock to a dove white as snow that couldn't remember back to the rough and wild old days and wouldn't own up to her past as the Madam of the town's biggest and best brothel. Mention of her past brought out the vapors and fainting as though she had been tarred and feathered with the tar and feathers that bedecked dance hall girls that failed to please the gunslingers, thieves, and highwaymen that once flocked to her saloon upon arriving in town. Heaven forfend anyone who mentioned the past in her hearing or whisper that the silver dagger she still kept in her corset was the sharpest and deadliest blade in the state.

With refinement came morals higher than the mangy cats tussling over the drunks they rolled in the
streets, passed out cold from too many drugged drinks, to pay for their drinks and dances. Passing out was no excuse for not paying the bill. There were two laws West of the Pecos, and Judge Roy Bean was kinder law. Judge Roy Bean would only hang you by the neck until you were dead. His wife, Madam Moustache, would empty your pockets and slit your gizzard when you failed to pay. Then Judge Roy Bean would arrest you for vagrancy when she'd emptied your pockets. The hangover in the morning was less painful than the fleecing and jail was quiet -- at least until you were sentenced to hang and then that short drop would put a kink in your gullet that lasted until the undertaker filled it with dirt after you were buried.

That's the thing about the wild west, it was wild until you made that short drop.

Today, in modern times, we don't have the Wild West and all the soiled doves are in church come Sunday morning where they warble their hearts out for God and where the memories begin when civilization arrives in Judge Roy Bean's town. Instead we have Democrats whose memories are even shorter than those of Judge Bean's soiled doves and just as full of righteous indignation if anyone has the gall to remember the wild west when they were the rowdiest and wildest dancehall girls West of the Pecos showing their garters and their frilly bottoms on stage at Madame Moustache's Brothel and Saloon.

The thing about whitewash is that with a good hand and a thick enough paint even Tom Sawyer can cover the worst of the dirt so that soiled doves can hide the past and refashion the edifice into a Sunday meeting house fit to entertain the best of the best from back East with nothing soiled showing even on the worst gullywasher day of the week, especially Sunday.

Of course, the Democrats have a lot worse to whitewash than rolling drunks and knocking out
unsuspecting cowhands and gunslingers. Their soiled past history settles into the ranks of the Ku Klux Klan, Jim Crow laws, and eating two helpings of the shit pie the maid shat out that morning. Whitewash is good for everything, especially covering up all that soiled, shitty past. Give that whitewash and refinement  a little time and it will gleam like a ghost town in the noon day Texas sun.

That is all. Disperse. 

Borrowed Life

Ethan Hawke told his superior brother, genetically designed to be better than the godborn child of the might not live as long or have a perfectly strong and effective heart
same parents who chose a genetically perfect the second time around, one who wouldn't die of an imperfect heart, one who would use his genetically perfected DNA to rise to the top of the heap not by chance but by choice. And yet godchild's brother never bested him at swimming -- or caught him before he blasted off into space to live among the stars. He had dreamed of navigating the imperfect system on planet EARTH, studying space mechanics and working hard to perfect his imperfect body. In the end, even without the perfect genetically designed life, he made his dreams come true, not only with his hard work and dedication to his dream, but with a borrowed ladder, the designer DNA that wasn't good enough to earn international swimming star, Jerome Morrow, more than a silver medal at the Olympics. Second best in all the world, but the fault wasn't in his genetic profile. The fault lay in Jerome's actions that kept him from being the best in the world, gold medal swimming star, and in Jerome's entitled attitudes and over arching arrogance.

Relying on genetically designed DNA is one thing, but it all falls apart without the hard work and mental/emotional fortitude that can turn a faulty body with a fate chosen through determination -- or mother and utopia planned -- results. Unlike the valid Jerome Morrow who threw away his future with drink and sybaritic excess, Ethan Hawke, the borrowed ladder who focused his whole being, dreams, and hard work on the stars, disproved the efficacy of a system designed to improve on the lottery of love and caring for someone else. Once again, natural talents and gifts are no substitute for plans, schemes, and scientific promises. The best laid plans of mothers and men will always be undone by hard work versus entitlement and scientific design.

The same is true in the end. No matter how much Russian money and misguided rich girl dreams, the gods of hope and change will stand -- and fall -- when balancing on clay feet.

Here in the real world where Hollywood remains a dream factory and the reality is as tenuous as tinsel and the golden glitter on the Xmas tree, it is all garbage that will end in the after holiday bonfire or mingled with the trash of wrapping paper, tangled ribbons, and dried out fir tree twigs and branches accented with the detritus of too much eggnog and booze and sprinkled with cranberries and used condoms -- or cigars. Not even the gold and silver of shiny ornaments and tinsel can survive long after Xmas day or New Year's eve.

Actors may gain fame from their heartfelt portrayals of other people's dreams and visions of fictitious reality, but only while youth and energy last. It is unfortunate that youth and energy are limited commodities, especially when limited by entitlement and sybaritic excess. An actor can learn his lines, but exists only on the screen, captured digitally or on fragile celluloid, and is ephemeral at best. Even in real life memories remain as long as someone exerts the focus and concentration, often aided by photos where youth and energy were captured for a brief moment in time, and more than often undone when excess overrules the strength of the borrowed ladder -- or life.

You may have fond dreams polished and bright in memory and ultimately undone by the foul taste of fact and reality. One can live in a dream only so long as viewers are willing to lose themselves in the dark for as long as they can afford to keep the movie running and the film stock intact. Too bad for most the time runs out. Biology forces us all to bow to the results of drinking and eating so much. Inevitably, nature beckons and the call cannot be ignored long or urine and feces must be wiped and flushed down the plumbing or scraped and dried off before laundering out the clothing and linens. Oh, the ignominy of nature intruding where dreams and promises, once so bright and shiny and new, become just another layer in the landfill or ashes on the winds.

No matter who good the borrowed life and no matter how much money you throw at the fake, all is for naught in the end. The day after Xmas will dawn and the sun will come up after New Year's eve. Time marches on and so must shattered dreams no matter how long one believed Xmas and the party would last.

That is all. Disperse.

Free Will.

I've been castigated by people who are pro-transgender. I usually let them say whatever, even if it means calling me bigoted, prejudiced, and homophobic. That too is their right. I have my opinion and they have theirs and maybe the twain will never meet in the middle -- unless I break off the attack by not responding.

I take issue that LGBT proponents do not see the issue when I day transgender people step aside and let women have their say about being marginalized, ignored, assaulted, and told to step aside for some man who is finally getting his comeuppance and his dirty linen aired in the clear light of day. LGBT proponents tell me that transgender women are women too. I do not see transgender women that way. Transgender women have chosen to become women, they say. I say that is a lie. If transgender women have chosen to be women, then they would have been born women in the first place because that is what any woman did when she chose to incarnate in this life at this time, cried as the doctor smacked her on the bum to make her take her first breath as a kicking, screaming, living female baby.

LGBT proponents are deciding that even transgender women are women and chose to be women.

I hit the buzzer on that one.

If the LGBT proponents call foul on my view, let them do so. I was born a woman. I have prayed nightly as a young prepubescent girl to wake up as a boy. It never happened. I am a female. I was born a female. I have given birth to four male children. I am a female. I chose to be a female in this body at this time. I didn't choose to have surgery to have breast implants surgically inserted. If I'd chosen when I was eight years old to have something implanted it would have been a penis because to my very young mind it was the lack of a penis that put me in the nuisance category of life that gave my brother, five years younger than I, the privileges and benefits that I lacked by being born with a vagina.

No, I'm sorry. You don't get to become a woman simply because you agreed to have your penis excised, or split, scooped out, and refashioned into a vagina. I understand that your surgical choices were painful and you had to battle society for your choice, but how much of your choice is due to surgery and how much to the genetically modified food you have eaten that dumped estrogen into you body and how much due to the prestige of appearing to be a woman?

Bruce Jenner lived his whole life as a white male athlete until he chose to surgically alter his appearance to emerge as Caitlin Jenner. No, Bruce is not a hero.  No, Bruce is not a woman.  No, Bruce is not icon to be worshiped because he chose to have his penis excised, scooped out, and the remaining tissue turned inside out and be fashioned into a vagina. I applaud his willingness to undergo the pain, but I'm certain Bruce didn't stint on the narcotics to help him through the surgical pain. He chose the surgical pain since he didn't choose to become a woman before he incarnated as Bruce Jenner, male athlete.

I do tend to feel that biological males who choose to wear dresses and pretend to be women are as phony as drag queens smoothing on their stockings and filling their dresses with falsies or silicone implants are still like my younger brother who sometimes went out on Halloween dressed as a girl -- playing dress-up.

Try as they might, transgender females, whatever they chose to have done to appear female, do not understand or know what it's like to be a woman. Transgender women have not lived with the knowledge that no matter how smart, how talented, how savvy they are, they will remain marginalized because they were born women, shuffled to the back of the bus, and overshadowed, ignored, denied, and forced to be quiet no matter their station, ignored because they are after all only women -- or girls -- people not worth listening to because they are WOMEN and women are always emotional, cry at the drop of a hat, and not worth listening to unless they're on their backs.

No one ever faces that the reality of being born a female, a girl, a woman, a second-class citizen means the whole of humanity does not exist without having been born from between feminine thighs, nursed at feminine breasts, and told to sit down, shut up, and let the men talk.

The reason men have nipples is because they were born from tissue put together in a woman's body and for a brief time while chromosomes and genes differentiate and gender determined with the suppression of a second X chromosome and the addition of a Y chromosome that biologically determines whether the gestating entity is born a woman (XX) or a man (XY). Yes, sometimes the connections between the chromosomes and the genes get mixed up (XXY, XYY, XXYY, etc.) and the parents decide which gender the baby will be in the case of a hermaphrodite, choosing to rear the entity as male or female because the doctor cannot say for certain whether the hermaphroditic baby is more male or more female.

As the child grows up, being raised male or female doesn't really count in the societal view even if the being has a penis and (not clearly obvious) a vagina. The end result is parentage children no matter what the parent choose to be seen as. The scientific truth is the hermaphrodite fathers a child or births a child no matter what the parents and/or the doctor decided when they were born -- or shortly after.

But there are few hermaphrodites born and thus fewer cock-ups in determining the gender of the entity born.

No, the problematic issue comes up later when "scientists" genetically modify food that contains sufficient phyto-estrogen or phyto-androgen to mix things -- and people -- up.

It doesn't matter to scientists whether the societal tag is taken from the LGBT lexicon or not. They've muddied the hormonal waters sufficiently already. It's up to the surgeons to take it from there -- and the psychiatrists or psychologists to handle the transition mentally and the LGBT proponents will handle the politically correct language.

I chose to be incarnated (born) a female and have fought my entire life to follow the protocol laid down by my mother, a dictate I fought against with my mother the entirety of my life. No, I will not play dumb just to attract a man.

No, I will not give up my further education and step aside for my five years younger brother because he was born a privileged male.

No, I will not shut up and refuse to say what I wish because girls should not put themselves -- or their ideas -- forward.

No, I will not spend my life deferring to a man because he is a male just because I was born a girl.

No, I will welcome blacks and Asians and anyone into my house regardless of your views because it is MY house.

No, I will not be prejudiced and I will acknowledge that my ancestor was a slave fleeing his master because that is who I am and what I drew in the genetic lottery.

I will not shut up and sit down simply because you're an adult and I'm a child. I have thoughts of my own.

No, I will not give up my intelligence or stop questioning religion, politics, genetics, and life just because you say so.

I have opinions. I have rights. I have free will.

I choose to exercise my free will at my discretion and not at yours or your friends' or your children's or your narrow-minded pronouncements. I choose. I speak. I am.

That is all. Disperse.

Want Answers? Work on a Phone Sex Line for a Week.

I worked on a phone sex line as an operator many, many years ago.

There were the usual lonely people looking for permission to talk to a real live woman and not to have to apologize for their lustful thoughts, dreams, and actions. Most of the callers were garden variety men who wanted to talk and be heard. Some were garden variety perverts lusting after their daughters, nieces, grandchildren, nephews, and co-workers. And then there were politicians ready to spill the beans -- and crow and boast about what they got away with all the time.

With the right sympathetic voice on the other line, especially when the caller was paying for their time, I heard tales of parking lot encounters with strangers and strangers willing to give up their panties and access to what was inside the panties in diners, restaurants, and Waffle Houses or Denny's for the price of a meal.

I heard from regulars about how they ended up with strangers' panties in their pockets and the scent of fluids on their fingers in a crowded restaurant while sitting in a booth during the height of the lunch rush. Fumbling encounters in restrooms, alleys, and cars were described in panting detail while callers, often stimulated by recounting their illicit encounters while they stroked themselves, accompanied by the stress-induced heavy breathing, were like badges of honor, much like President Bill's late night phone calls to personal fluid-stained blue-dress-wearing Monica Lewinsky as she patiently and sympathetically listened to his sex addled talk. As an intern, she was hungry for anything in the White House, whether crouching beneath the executive desk or waiting breathlessly out of the way for President Bill to join her for a quick fumble and some up close and personal whisper talk.

Hillary saved her clandestine activities for Huma on her personal private server in her downstairs bathroom at Chappaqua away from the prying eyes of the U.S. State Department servers and control, although Hillary was less worried about the prying eyes of Anthony Weiner's laptop in his own home.

Barack Obama didn't have -- or make use of that we know about -- JFK's law enforcement delivery and transportation service while he and Jackie lived in the White House, but little if anything of note got away from President Obama's transparency or onto the White House government web site, outside of his faked and fraudulent long for Hawaiian birth certificate which has long since been debunked and laid bare for all to see pulled apart by digital manipulation on YouTube by birthers and non-birthers alike.

It took Quaker President Nixon and a finger on the erase button to hide evidence in the 1970s shortly after being elected the second time with Klutzy VP Ford in place of Rockefeller with whom Nixon ran for office.

Like Hillary's private server, Monica's fluid-stained blue dress, JFK's less than secret transportation service, and Nixon's missing 18 minutes during the Watergate kerfuffle, nothing stays secret for long. Since President Obama ordered that all communication be bugged, here in the USA and abroad, somewhere someone like Edward Snowden and Julian Assange could leak the truth that destroys Obama's promised transparency once and for all. President Obama and Michelle may have kept the truth about Malia and Sasha's births and their biological parents, and even Michelle's suspected transgender surgeries, but they couldn't keep half-brother, Kenyan Obama from spilling the beans about Barack's Kenyan birth certificate for long.

No one has yet mentioned in the media (why would they since they are paid well to keep the truth hidden from the American people?) that since Obama was born in Kenya to a natural born subject of the British Empire during the time that Kenya was still part of Britain, Obama fails the natural born part of the U. S. Constitution and, despite being born to a U. S. citizen, Stanley Ann Dunham, is not -- and was not ever -- eligible to run for the office of president (POTUS). The DNC did not vet Obama during the process of checking his credentials, but that ship sailed 18 years ago when Russian communists chose and trained Obama for becoming President of the United States and colluded with the DNC (what? again?) to make sure Obama was elected.

Because of the British involved in the War of 1812, the natural citizen clause in the U. S. Constitution was put in to prevent any child of a British citizen (certainly the case with Barack Obama, Sr., citizen of Kenya when Barry was born in 1961) from being a valid candidate for POTUS. All of that vetting of John McCain's eligibility because he was born in the Canal Zone in Panama was just for show and to throw the spotlight off Barry while he slid into the race unvetted and patently ineligible and right on into the White House's Oval Office because that is what was decided 18 years ago when communist Russia decided Obama would be President. The only reason Obama spent $2 million to quash all lawsuits to make his Hawaiian birth certificate available to the U. S. voters was to keep up the pretense and the smoke and mirrors that has flourished, along with Obama's vaunted transparency, while he was in office.

Democratic election process meddled with much?

How about in selecting a communist-born and trained candidate long before Obama moved to Chicago to work with Acorn and the corrupt and corrupted DNC? That puts the Trump issue into clear and personal perspective and may be the smoking gun that leads back to the Uranium One deal currently being ignored in the mainstream media -- but not in the free alternative press.

Puts a lot of things in perspective, not only with the birther name calling but with the Trump as president in the DNC's sights while blaming Vladimir Putin for meddling with democratic elections in the very democratic U.S.A.

Can you say CIA meddling with official and democratic elections in South America?

With all of this trickling out, how difficult is it to believe that Roy Moore sexually assaulted and threatened high school teenagers or Bill Clinton is finally unmasked as the Southern boy who charmed his "wide-bottomed' way into the pants of female Oxford students while smoking pot and expounding at length on the Vietnam War while using his time at Oxford as a modern day Grand Tour.  

What you think you know about the world -- especially about the honor of politicians -- is skewed by mainstream media hacks and refed to the public by DNC hacks.

It would be better for you to work for a phone sex line for a week or two -- or even a month -- to get the real story the mainstream media would never be allowed to print while their liberal masters still have control of what does and does not appear on the front page or anywhere within its liberal pages. Truth is always much stranger than fiction -- and far more interesting when it is revealed.

That is all. Disperse.

Whose Rules? Whose Sin?

Religions do not work. Even with the best intentions, as long as there are people leading the religion there will be errors.

Man-made religions fail because they are made by men and ultimately mankind's ego gets in the way and leads down the wrong path at odds with the beliefs and at odds with salvation of the soul.

Even Buddhism has its flaws as long as there is someone in charge who has not rid himself of ego leading to rules that are at odds with Siddhartha Gautam's teachings after he became Buddha, the enlightened one because followers, being human, worship the man instead of following Buddha's example.

The same is true of all man-made religions. Followers worship the man and not only the teachings. The man, or leader, is a spokesman and not god or the Creator. He is simply a mouthpiece who speaks for the Creator. Worshiping the mouthpiece is the same thing as worshiping a loudspeaker, a tool meant so the man can make his voice loud enough to be heard by all who are willing to listen.

If you look at the roots of every man-made religion, you will find similarities and contradictions, many of which are changed by whichever spokesman is standing at the front and speaking. Some men speak only the truth and many men - far too many men - speak what they want people to hear and interpret the words in whichever way benefits them the most, furthering their own agenda to add prestige to themselves, stroke their own ego, or make it possible to prey on listeners, especially those listening who will bow to their personal agenda.

I remember a minister in my youth who preached from the Bible and used his position as leader of the church to prey on women who went to church to learn from him the right way to live. Not so surprising as men in power have often used their position to prey on those who looked up to him, something he did in secret while publicly effecting a moral stance consonant with his Christian preaching and totally at odds with the morals he taught as minister.

The same is true of every minister and preacher of man-made religions who seeks to add power to his position and use that power to prey on others. The prey run the gamut of children, adolescents, and adults of every age and stage of life. Consider Roman Catholic priests who prey on teenage girls, pre-adolescent girls, and even women close to -- or older than themselves -- as long as it ends adding to their power and ego. Men of the cloth (clergy) are still men. They pay for sex with whichever woman catches their fancy or, in the words of the time in which I grew up, make their socks go up and down. In cruder terminology, make their dicks hard.

Such excesses are not solely the property of the Roman Catholic Church, although they have been at it since the Roman Catholic Church began. There are predators among the Jews and the Buddhists and Muslims because the one thing they have in common is leaders who are men.

Man-made religions are unreliable, whatever their origins, because they are spread and taught or preached by men. Man-made religions are false.

Mankind does not need a saviour to point the way to salvation and do not need rules and morality codified by men. That is the same thing as setting up wolves to guard the sheep. Depending on how strong or faithful, in the end the wolf will revert to its nature and the sheep will die a violent and bloody death, becoming breakfast, lunch, or dinner depending on the wolf's hunger.

Just like the wolf, he will be partial to lambs or mutton. It's all a matter of taste. There are also wolves that will beg for scraps or fight the leader to take over the pack so that wolf will get the first taste of the prey and share the scraps with whichever wolf is next in line. If there are enough sheep, everyone is fed. If not, food will be shared out depending on which wolf is strongest and the winner of the fights.

Consider followers like sheep and leaders like wolves. The comparison is apt and describes exactly what happens throughout the world along the lines of religious beliefs.

Buddhism in its original form, the same eight fold path taught by Buddha, formerly Siddhartha Gautam, and preached during his lifetime. Basically it all boils down to nonviolence and being kind to others. I would say serving others without ego and without agenda. The whole point is doing good to others without expectation of reward or punishment.

There are no rules outside of being kind and caring for others. There are no rewards or punishments except those we find if we live our life caring for others and being kind to all. Meditation is something we do for ourselves, finding within us what has always been there -- the nature of our souls, the same soul that brings this body to life, the same soul that led us to the choice of where and how to incarnate in this existence when and where you are at this point. Whatever you choose to learn informs the path you take this life around. You will make mistakes and you will learn. There are times when you must repeat the same type of life because you didn't learn or refused to learn, getting caught up in the same errors and refusing to learn whatever lesson you chose this lifetime around. Your punishment is not hell, unless it is the Hell of realizing what you did wrong and knowing you must come back and learn the lesson once again. You choose the life. You choose the circumstances. You either learn or you do not. It is up to you.

Be mindful. Absorb every moment of every day. Appreciate the beauty of the world around you. Be thankful for the gifts you are given and the people you meet. Give up anger, wrath, violence, being a know-it-all, step down off your high horse, give up your high moral ground, love everyone without exception. Do not mistake lust for love, not the love of one human for another that does not expect to have your lustful feelings returned or fulfilled. Love is simply love, caring for the people around you, caring about the people around you, being kind and generous with the people around you. Lust is not part of that kind of love and has no place in loving one another as one human being loves another, cares for the other, is generous with others, and has no selfish, ego-driven agenda, and no desire for control and power over others. There is no reward to be earned, except the reward of looking out for others, being kind to others, generously smoothing the road for others, and letting others find their own way down the path to nirvana -- the ultimate salvation and release from unending rounds of reincarnation when we have not learned the first and only basic lesson we have chosen to learn -- be kind to all people, care for others without expecting reward, and loving others without building up points to rise to a heaven that does not exist or falling to a fiery hell that also does not exist.

You will learn to be the best person you can be, help others, and love everyone without respect for their physical appearance. Loving without expectation of reward is the same as following rules to achieve the big reward and avoid the fiery hell that waits to gobble you up and torture you for eternity.

Learn to meditate. Look inward. Strive to be the kindest, most generous, and loving being you can and you will achieve nirvana. You will achieve ultimate salvation. No one needs to teach you because you have the answer inside you. You were born knowing the answer. Listen to what your soul tells you or chain yourself to the wheel of fortune by ignoring your soul and your connection to the Creator of all.

Ignore the man-made written rules that say you must believe a certain way, prey on others, or follow man-made rituals. The only salvation is within you. Meditate, connect with your soul, and live the life you know in your soul you should live. Keep love in your heart, care for others without expecting reward, and know yourself. That is all you need to discover the ultimate salvation. Everything else you have learned or been taught is false. Follow no leader. Harm no one. Love everyone. Care for everyone.

That is all. Disperse.

Review: The Secret Language of Stones

Opaline Duplessi, daughter of La Lune, the artist Sabine Duplessi who connected with the first and original mother of the La Lune line, was granted the gift of connecting to the dead through the stones she fashions to help grieving family connect with their dead. Opaline feels she must make amends to her lover who died in the war and fashions talismans for the grieving family left in the wake of the death and devastation of war.

She could have learned from her mother how to manage her gift, but she fears her mother's power and and where it might lead her. The only answer is to go to Paris and work at the Palais Russe. Many women took over the jobs men did when they went off to war, but having the man who apprenticed with Faberge welcome her to his store and craft jewelry for him was where Opaline deserved to be. So much for the trip to America. Opaline had work to do in Paris and the debt she felt she owed to the young man who died after she refused to lie to him about loving him and being willing to wait for him.

M. J. Rose offers us another view of Sabine's daughters and their gifts as daughters of La Lune. While The Secret Language of Stones does not explode from the pages, Rose is at her best when she shares the magic inside us and how many ways that magic can be manifested and put to use in service of others. Yes, there is regret in Opaline's life. Yes, there is redemption in Opaline's life. Yes, there are intrigue, secrets, and hope in Opaline's life. Yes, there is love and redemption in Opaline's life, but she will have to face it by not running and hiding from what she fears -- and hopes for -- the most.

Each of Rose's stories is more than a trip down the rabbit hole running from fear and each heroine hiding from herself. In the women's lives that begin with La Lune and emanate from Sabine all must face life and destiny head on. Opaline is no exception. What she finds is that her fears are not hers alone and being of service to others brings rewards she never dreamed possible.

Rose has matured so much with her evolving mastery of language, history, and possibilities. This latest continuation of La Lune's progeny is a far cry from Lip Service where Rose began writing so long ago and yet M. J. Rose has arrived with more magic and hope that comes from deep inside her as she takes history and weaves it with the magic of possibility into yet another magnificent and satisfying tale that continues to leave readers satisfied and their appetites whetted for new adventures and even more possibilities that rival even Alice Hoffman. 5 out of 5 stars. I can't wait to find out where the next inheritor of La Lune's magic will lead.

Review: The Wife Between Us

With all the PR and media hype (without teeth or accepting responsibility), women's value has not changed since the beginning of mankind's memory. Women are seen as brood mares or status symbols and not as having a value beyond their ability to produce children.

In those few marriages where children are not wanted--likely because the husband wishes to retain cock of the walk fawned over by all females present--his wishes dictates remain unchallenged once the women learn their place. That place is under constant surveillance and under threat. Nothing and no one she loves are tolerated to ripple the placid waters between then. What follows is either reward and, more often, punishment.

The woman who does not follow the man's dictates and does not respond by changing her attitude and falling into step two or three paces behind him will be cast into outer darkness. Divorced.

For the woman who actively pursues her freedom, often after the death of her favorite companion (a dog purchased for protection when the husband is out of the house), she will look for opportunities to distance herself, gain a modicum of freedom, and inveigle an option, suggesting her husband take advantage of a co-worker's needs and flexibility over her own sickness, urging him, with her permission of course, to take her place.

The problem with such machinations is that the wife is putting some other unsuspecting and undeserving woman her place with the same dangers and well known outcomes since she has begun to figure out how well shackled she was in his prison. It may have looked like heaven, but it was closer to hell, and now that she is finally free of him, she must in good conscience help free the woman she threw into the villain's evil clutches. No one, not even an unsuspecting younger woman falling into the same trap, should be forced to suffer that.

While Greer Hendricks and Sarah Pekkanen thought that when they put their heads and experiences and knowledge together to write The Wife Between Us, it was apparent to me their literary skills may have been firmly entrenched in the societal norms of how women are treated by men and, worse, by each other, blaming their comrades in the battle between the sexes and clinging to the man who has been so good to them, and who looks far too good to be true.

There is a vertiginous feeling when beginning the novel. It seems straight forward. A young woman who is a grade school teacher and lives with her friend is giving up her job in order to be with the man who has asked her to marry him. He doesn't want her teaching other children when she will have to teach and care for her own children after they are married. She moves out of town into the suburbs of an exclusive community and gives up her friends and everything she worked for to take a leap up into her brand new husband's rarefied world. She is getting use to dealing with her sister-in-law. She is after all her only in-law and she is so good to her younger and oh so accomplished brother. She even has a solid, strong, and faithful dog to protect her in her stunning suburban home and she doesn't miss her friends or her remaining family member while she tries to fill her time in the palatial and protected suburbs. Except that she cannot get pregnant and is soon cast out of her idyllic wealthy life, divorced, replaced by the other woman she made room for in her husband's life.

But she is free.

She is safe.

Or is she?

She has to clue her replacement in to what she is in for as she gives up her grade school teaching job and is forced to move into the secluded and exclusive life that has been cloned for her. The replacement wife may be luckier than she and may well give her ex-husband the child she could not, but she must be warned before it is too late. Or is it already too late?

Hendricks and Pekkanen deliberately created a situation where the obvious gas lighting and abusive cycle are blurred and the reader is not sure what is going on and who is trying to protect whom. On that level, they succeeded admirably, creating a modern version of Ingrid Bergman's danger at the hands of her unscrupulous husband as he drives her slowly and inexorably insane, questioning her sanity and reality, until at last either Ingrid or Charles Boyer will win and the truth will finally surface or one of them will be dead and broken, ruined.

As a psychological thriller, The Wife Between Us succeeds admirably to the point that the reader is also drawn into the trap and may not survive the ride. That is not too difficult since women are often their own worst enemies when vengeance and men are concerned. I see Hendricks and Pekkanen urging the trapped fox to chew off its own foot in order to be free, except that the fox trapped is not the fox you would expect, but the fox firmly caught in the trap urging the other caught fox to chew off its foot. There is no honor among contestants for the privileged life . . . and, considering the recent falls from grace, there may never be. There never has been.

Women are ornaments, chattel, brood mares, arm candy. As in Islam, so in the enlightened western world. There is no honor among women when men are concerned. Puts a different spin on Stand by Your Man.

Squatters Rights

Mankind has the wrong idea about its existence and the history of civilization and this planet. 

Mankind is a species of finders determined to keep what they found and have found since the Great Flood. What else would mankind do when they crawl out of their holes in the grounds, climb down from mountaintops, or out of caves or wherever else their saviors hid them when the rains came and they found all of those megalithic stone structures? Mankind took their findings by becoming squatters. And squatters Mankind remains.  That's what happens when the squatters from the stars return to see the planet cleansed of all life. What they found were hordes of humans, that failed experiment of hybridization rescued and hidden by their own and emerging onto the pristine surface of the planet.

No doubt the leader's first words were, "How do we get rid of them now? They've already infested the planet. Nothing short of global annihilation will get rid of them now!" 

People say the same thing after leaving their homes and allowing the exterminators to tent or bomb or spray the premises to get rid of the vermin infestation. Where they expected to roll up their sleeves, pull out the cleaning supplies, and clean the carcasses of vermin they found instead, armed with spray poisons and roach motels, the continuing fight to get rid of yet more vermin crawling from the walls, likely from the next door neighbor's where they refused to vacate so the exterminators could do their jobs, and the struggle continues. More poisons. More roach motels. More electronic widgets promising to finally do the job. More trouble and yet the vermin remain.

It is apparent the only real solution is to pack up and move, seal all furnishings and boxes in a secluded and hopefully airtight storage facility, and leave everything to be bombed with more poisons. That will do the job. . . at last.

It never works. Some dark adapted vermin burrow into the niches and crevices having become inured to the effects of poison and eventually emerge with stronger tolerance to poisons having bred into the later generations. The whole process must begin again. Better poisons modified to kill the more resistant generation and on and on and on until either the masters or the vermin win. Even if it means more must die or their homes are destroyed utterly.

Is that what has happened to mankind? Is mankind more resilient to the poisons or are saviors without the master race continuing to rescue and save mankind -- yet again?

Mankind is very resilient and getting outside help is unconscionable -- to the masters, the progenitors of mankind even after having wiped the planet clean with the Great Flood about 11,000 years ago. Someone told doomed mankind the end was coming and led mankind to safety. If only the progenitors had not promised not to sterilize mankind in the future with another Great Flood and put the rainbow in the sky as proof of the detente in getting rid of the human vermin.

No doubt it has been helpful that mankind moving into the megalithic buildings, cities, and ruins while learned mankind made up stories about where all those stone edifices came from and how they twisted the myths into fanciful stories and histories of how mankind evolved from cave dwellers and nomads to create such marvels. Many of the people bought into the stories. Why wouldn't they? Even at the height of their ingenuity and power they used their imagination to steer the gullible into believing the myths and lies and swinging their ridicule so widely that even those on the fence would fall into line to help delegitimize and ridicule even the strongest and smartest of mankind when the very real threat of career suicide and world wide ridicule failed to work.

The problem wasn't only the threats and ridicule. The real problem was there were enough who clung

to the truth even in the face of such odds and would not let go of the bone of contention no matter what. Like the generations of poison-resistant vermin left in the wake of widespread extermination, humans bred too quickly and passed their knowledge and doubts to the generations that sprang up like resistant vermin and weeds and spread those kernels of truth and wisdom that burrow deep and breed true no matter what the masters do until the only remaining option is violence and ruin.

As long as the truth sneaks out and spreads, even to a handful of believers, there will be no option but to utterly and completely destroy the planet and all life in and on the surface.

In the end, squatters will win. There are more of them than there are of us and the squatters will defeat the best intentions of the masters. The squatters will finally escape the masters' control and with the dawning transcendance be beyond our reach, influence, and plane of existence. Wiping the historical record and leaving a fantasy in his academic place only works when using the 1001 stories told by Sheherezade as long as there is a Burton to translate the tale and sell it to multitudes already addicted to the opioid dream.

That is all. Disperse.

Man vs Woman?

Brett Ratner, Hollywood director, is another Harvey Weinstein, except he hasn't been at the predator stage as long as Weinstein. By all accounts, Ratner is a nice guy, a family man, kind, and generous -- with his time. His lawyer supports Ratner's claims that he has done nothing -- NOTHING. I'm sure Weinstein said the same thing even before 30 women came forward to accuse him of preying on him. Hasn't Hollywood claimed that no often means yes? That's what all the guys in high school in the locker room claimed and still claim. After all, a red-blooded American girl often says no many times before she finally says yes. 

Ask Weinstein. Ask the players on the football, basketball, and baseball teams. 

Better yet, ask their lawyers. Their girlfriends. Their mothers. Their neighbors. The clergy - if you can find a minister, pastor, rabbi, priest, or layman. 

Ask the next Muslim man you see or his imam. 

No matter where you go or where you live or have lived, the answer will be the same when it comes to women. 

The closer the woman is to the alleged predator, the louder and more certain she will be about knowing whether or not the predator can possibly be the predator who raped, propositioned, sexually assaulted, harassed, and/or raped the female. 

Go back farther, back when the woman was demonized, after Lillith who wanted to be on top during copulation. Eve, so the codexes say, is the reason for the fall of Adam and thus of mankind. I wonder if Allah, the moon god, sent Gibreel to Muhammad when he chose his prophet to spread his godly words, or if Muhammad figured it out when his mother died when he was 6 years old and abandoned him with her death. 

Islam is very clear about the testimony of women and how many men (FOUR) are needed to verify a woman's story. Is there any wonder that Muslim women are automatically killed because of honor since a woman's honesty is already in question? 

How many women have accused Brett Ratner? Not as many as Harvey Weinstein, but Ratner has not been at is as long. Thirty women have come out and accused Weinstein from exposing himself to rape. In Muhammad's version of the story, 1200 men are needed to speak for every woman's accusations. 

Ratner supposedly masturbated all over magazines in front of the woman on the cover of those mags. Where's a forensic lab when you need a quick lab test to verify the jizz stains on the magazine covers? It's not like anyone would hang the magazines in their closet and produce it to be tested. Magazines tend to mildew and stick together after all that ejaculatory fluid dried on the paper. 

Why is anyone surprised that wealthy and Hollywood powerful men will call their lawyers and pull a Sergeant Schultz? They know nothing. NOTHING. Their word and their families will swear they know nothing and their wives and girlfriends will proudly stand up and call the accusing women sad and poor things who cannot get a date or describe their encounters with the predator. 

The cleaner the predator's background -- and cage -- the less the woman will be believed so long after the fact -- or the assault or the masturbation or the blood and bruises have dried -- not without photographic evidence. 

It doesn't matter how long it took the women to tell their stories. Women have been the target since boys found them attractive and do-able. Not everyone chooses to roofy their victims and few leave a tip even after they have ejaculated their loads on their clothes or magazines. 

Not even the least attractive women have not had to deal with these predators. Hillary called them super predators and she would know since she has been covering for Bill for decades. 

Some predators begin their assault on women, their prey, at an early age and got over the awkward

stage before they figured out the best line of attack proposal/proposition to use, falling back on rape when all else fails or they lose their nerve or strike out. At such times, lies about the prey's sexuality, body, kissing, and/or skills will do. It is what passes for locker room talk where the lies and exaggerations flow as freely as fantasies and fish stories. Fish stories are practice for boasting about one's skill and the size of one's fish lure

We western women have no high ground to speak from when it comes to the treatment of girls and women by Muslims since we are busily standing proudly by our menfolk -- even when we know the men are just as vicious and dishonest. Good thing we have plenty of male judges willing to smack a rapist's wrist instead of ruining his future by sending him to prison or, as Cheech and Chong said in their act, whack his peepee.  Never mind that the future of the woman he raped will be marked forever by fear and scars and the horror of what happened when the college football player raped her. 

Since the time of Eve in the Garden of Eden when she forced Adam to take and eat the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, women are responsible for all evil. Lillith, Adam's first mate, only demanded to be poked when she was on top. Eve inveigled and tempted Adam with the fruit and that, according to the Good Book, was far worse.  Her perfidy caused mankind to fall and for Yahweh to cast his slaves, the two people he had given so much, out of Eden and bar the entrance with angels wielding fiery swords. 

Forget that most women have been importuned, assaulted, or raped when they were children and their adolescence was pockmarked by admiring young men cruising the streets and cat calling from construction sites in order to make their admiration known publicly. Let's not mention uncles who were too friendly and touchy feely when sitting their favorite niece, daughter, friend of the family on their laps. After all, boys will be boys and men will be men -- boys with more strength and determination to ease a young girl out of her shyness and rectify her inexperience. It's all in the family after all. What better way to keep the secret a secret and the knowledge in the family? If all else fails, telling the young girl she is a slut or a whore or a nasty little girl will do wonders for keeping the secret safe and the road open the next time he's feeling the need for a poke or a kiss. 

In the middle of the 20th century dressing to attract attention was the best way to get attention -- of any kind. Why else would clothing designers and stores make their sweaters and clothes so tight fitting when material was in good supply? Having women teetering on high heels keeps women off balance, which is good since women haven't figured out those spike heels can be weapons that can take out a predator's eye or make a hole in forehead, face, chest, or groin. Too bad if they ever figure that out. 

Women have borne the slights, accusations, name calling, assaults, and rapes for millennia and nothing has changed, except how many women are willing to stand by their man -- or men. If a woman has scaled the heights of wealth and fame, she is not going to willingly admit she knew anything about the predators' preying on other women as long as she has avoided the trap and come out the other end richer, more famous, or at least few bruises, scars, and fractures. Best to keep that info to themselves. It's not like the predator will ever pay for his crimes and the best place to be is not on his hit list. 

No wonder women prefer homosexual males. Gay men accessorize well, enjoy the platonic company of women, and are often willing to lend a shoulder when their gal pals (fag hags) need one because men are shits. 

As much as I enjoyed Netflix's show Medici: Masters of Florence, I often cringed when Madden as Cosimo de Medici called his intelligent (and sharp-tongued, witty, and faithful wife) Contessina woman in order to make her back off and bend to his position as pater familias. Not a surprise since men even in the 21st century remind women they are less important than their husband, brother, boyfriend, colleague, or significant other. The master has spoken and the woman must now be silent and back down. 

If you lived in my family, you would have had my mother reminding you that men are more important and their word is the final word on any subject. Mom taught me that I was to let the guy win in any contest, appear to be dumber than the guy, and obey my husband (on my wedding day) in all things. Telling her that I would follow my own dictates set her back on her heels and she was convinced that when I divorced my first husband it was because I considered myself his equal. Could be because I didn't tell her he had cheated on me with other women -- and men -- or that he raped me, but it didn't really matter because as with Eve all was my fault. Mentioned the broom handle and the damage done to my backside wouldn't have made her more sympathetic to me. She would still have badgered and threatened me to give up my children and make sure that they were safe with him and me out of their lives altogether. If that failed, she had already primed my boys by telling them the only one who loved them was her, their grandmother. Everything else was a lie. 

Women have been denigrated, demonized, devalued, and dragged thru the sewers since Eve, and often by women. Women were born to be second class and, even in modern times, that mentality continues unchallenged no matter what words men say when called out by their prey. Women will not waste time to lend their support to the lies, subterfuge, and degrading, demonizing, denigrating, and mud slinging needed to push women back into the sewer. Women must find a higher step up the hill or climb on top of the women they've shoved into the sewer. 

That is all. Disperse. 

Review: The Paper Magician

Before she arrived at Magician Emery Thanes home, she had worked in a restaurant and catering to make it possible to go to Tagis Praff and graduated in less time than anyone else on the same path. She was determined to work with metal and yet finds herself bonded to paper of all things. She is caught in a trap the moment she was bonded to paper. What can she do with that? What will she do with only paper - forever?

From the paper skeleton butler that greets her when she arrives to the paper dog Thane creates for her, she is about to step through into a life she had never imagined before accompanied by birds and paper creatures, learning to bring stories to life and reading fortunes, far more than she ever imagined.

When an excisioner cuts out Thane's heart and leaves him to die,Ceony fashions him a paper heart and flies away on Thane's paper plane to confront the excisioner and bring back Thane's still beating heart if she can take it from the murderous thief. First, she must turn the tables on evil and travel the chambers of Thane's heart and emerge alive. Will she have enough time to complete the journey and return in time to save the magician who made her future possible?

Charlie Holmberg has a much bigger plan in hand than paper and magic. "The Paper Magician" is the doorway through which the reader must enter to begin their own larger than life journey and become greater than they imagined when they began.

All life begins with dreams and crashes on stony shores, shattering their illusions and the future they envisioned for themselves before the real world forced them to change course or find a different path. Just as Ceony Twill faces how her plans and dreams fared when the real world broke in and she would have to make do with paper, the reader will have to revise prosaic dreams and take hold of a much greater view.

I originally passed "The Paper Magician" off as just another novel and was caught in Holmberg's spell. So much more was possible when I let go of my preconceived views and let go of dreams.

We see the forces in our lives as far more than they are and far less formidable once we dig in and rely on ourselves even when our abilities and skills are still to be learned. Teachers began as adolescent with views and certainties that were far different than what life has in store. The same is true of "The Paper Magician". Give it a chance. You won't be sorry as you begin the adventure of a lifetime.

Everything begins somewhere. Let this be the beginning for you.

5/5 stars

Power Comes With Knowledge

If you pay attention.






There is so much more to slavery than white privilege. Slavery was practiced by every nation for thousands of years and slaves were often of the same nation and color. Muslims and Islam have practiced slavery the longest and across more nations than we realize. Time to pick up a book and look farther than your neighborhood.

Check out further videos from Thomas Sowell and his Misconceptions About Slavery.

That is all. Disperse.

Who Pays Whom?

Christopher Portier-
Scientist or activist leader of ban glyphosate movement?

I'm not sure of the GLP is protecting the people they pretend to serve or serving up the people "who are not paid" for their services in rooting out glyphosate lies or protecting their paymaster.

You decide.

I've been bullied and publicly lashed for my unscientific approach to science because I read Natural News, written by an actual scientist who publishes what he finds in trials and investigations into things like Bitcoin values and how many shooters there were in Las Vegas at naturalnews.com.

The Health Ranger speaks out about what is going on in this nation, health-wise and politically, and has a long history of telling the world what the mainstream media keeps quiet about and what Google and the bully trolls that attack anyone -- and everyone -- who states the truth as they see it. What are people to do - believe the lies like most people or call them out and demand the truth? How can we get the truth when people have been bought and have signed papers that they will not talk about the litigation or the inconvenient truths?

You decide.

I decided to keep digging and keep calling foul when the lies are evident even to a lay person like me.

That is all. Disperse.

Choose ignorance -- or TRUTH

Garbage In/Gospel Out

"Garbage in, gospel out" is a more recent expansion of the acronym (GIGO). It is a sardonic comment on the tendency to put excessive trust in "computerised" data, and on the propensity for individuals to blindly accept what the computer says. Since the data entered into the computer is then processed by the computer, people who do not understand the processes in question, tend to believe the data they see:

Decision-makers increasingly face computer-generated information and analyses that could be collected and analyzed in no other way. Precisely for that reason, going behind that output is out of the question, even if one has good cause to be suspicious. In short, the computer analysis becomes a credible references point although based on poor data."

Daniel T. Brooks, Brandon Becker and Jerry R. Marlatt, "Computer Applications in Particular Industries: Securities" appearing in Bigelow, "Computers & The Law", American Bar Association, Section of Science and Technology, Third Edition 1981 at 250, 253

"GIGO is commonly used to describe failures in human decision-making due to faulty, incomplete, or imprecise data." Though the issue predates the computer age, GIGO still applies and has always applied to humans and religion/politics. 

There is a popular saying that it takes a computer to really mess things up. 

WRONG.  

All it takes is humanity and a narrow-minded vision of what passes for reality. In the days of the Crusades, the narrow-minded vision was imposed by the Roman Catholic Church and Islam. Both were intent on what I see as a historical pissing contest between Rome and Islam. 

Nowadays, the pissing contest is between the leftist liberal mentality and the Islamic Imams intent on spreading Islam throughout the word so that all peoples on this planet are submissive to Mohammed in the guise of right thinking. Right thinking does not include any single person or movement's individual beliefs, questions, or research because that would negate the rightness of the beliefs and totally against the rules. 

Muslims will state that submission is to Allah (their version of God) and not to Mohammed while the leftist liberal mentality welded in lock step to political correctness and their politically correct views spouted by Black Lives Matter and Antifa, as well as the talking heads of the Mainstream Media (MSM) who have checked their brains at the studio door to follow the Frankfurt School and usher the rest of the thinking world into the New Dark Ages.  

Did you know that the Dark Ages then and now are created from the same source? 

Islam. 

Yes, there is enough blame and hatred to go around for the Roman Catholic Church and their crusades as well as Islam since nothing happens in this world without action and reaction.  

In this politically correct (Frankfurt School ousted by Hitler and moved to Cambridge - USA) world the reaction to the action of immigrating to Europe and the Muslim bombings and bloody massacres by vehicle and gun is fear and electing Donald Trump who promised to push back. The politically correct MSM and leftists (Antifa and BLM), along with the ignorant and emotional hordes as well as the well spoken politicians like Obama and the dregs of the Democrats, stand back, bow, and welcome the immigrants. How has Germany, France, and the UK fared since Angela Merkel welcomed Syrian refugees to wealthy socialist Europe? 

The response from Canada is . . . what? 

How is Prime Minister Justin Trudeau doing as he throws open Canada's door to Syrian Refugees and immigrants of all stripes? 

Though the Ottoman Empire is no more, or at least the world thought so as of 9/11/1924, and the fuel George W. Bush and Cheney added to the pyre on 9/11/2001 so they could motivate Americans by the take down of the Twin Towers in NYC and a hit on the Pentagon (still questionable since the facts do not support the story), Muslims are flooding out of the Middle East and Africa and taking down the wealthy socialist countries of the EU and now Canada like a nuclear fueled plague of locusts with taqiyya in the hum of their destruction. 

No Muslim is safe as long as the Muslim believes in the propaganda spun by Mohammed and propagated by Muslim teachings and the hubris of pro-Islam apologists and the violence and denial adopted by the intellectually perverted hordes of unthinking and hormone addled youth spouting divisive and venom-tainted slogans is disguised as protest. 

Muslims and hormone-fueled youth spew the garbage they have been fed and there is no holistic or natural cure that can overwhelm or ameliorate the garbage they have been given without let up. What they have been fed - politically and religiously - cannot be stemmed or corrected since their brains are clogged with the mind altering methods of propaganda. Their brains are closed off in much the same way as Alzheimer's disease hampers the brain's natural function with aluminum fibers spun across the synapses to impede the electrical flow of communication. 

There is a cure for Alzheimer's of the brain.  

There is no cure for stupidity. 

There is a cure for ignorance. 

Pay attention, read, listen, think for yourself.



That is all. Disperse.