The Junkroom Part 2: The Ghostly Doggie

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Last week I told you about the real haunted house my family lived in for a few years and the small second floor bedroom that my siblings and I kept our horde of toys in. We called that room the junk room, because that’s what it usually looked like. I also mentioned the larger bedroom on the same floor, where my next younger brother and I slept. My bed was at the end of the bedroom away from the door. My brother’s was, obviously, next to the door. The junk room was down a short hallway to the right, maybe fifteen feet away from our bedroom door. The stairs down to the first floor were immediately to the left of our door. The stairs to the basement were under that staircase. The basement door had a hook and loop lock that we always used at night because the basement door to the outside was a classic, old farmhouse, slanted cellar door, that could be easily broken into. Our dad worked nights and my mom feared burglars.

One night, around two in the morning, I was woken by the sound of the junk room door opening, which, as I said last week, we kids kept locked from the outside. I heard the sound of a large dog, German Shepard size or larger, walk from the junk room in the bedroom, its toes tapping heavily as it walked. We had no such pet dog. We had a Toy Manchester Terrier which is a Chihuahua sized little black dog.

This big dog, toes a-tapping, went straight to my brother’s bed and sniffed at him loudly. He did not wake up. I then heard it circling tightly for a few seconds and then lie down. I was petrified, not the least because there was a large, oval rug right where it somehow tapped its toes before laying down.

It lay there for about twenty minutes, then got up and went down the stairs, toes still tapping away. It then went down the basement stairs. The stairs to the second floor were fully carpeted, yet those toes tapped. It went down the basement stairs though the basement door was locked.

A few minutes later I got cautiously out of bed and looked at the junk room door. It was closed and locked. I carefully went down the stairs, woke my mother to see if she’d heard anything like a big dog walking around. She had heard nothing and our little dog was sleeping at her feet, under the blankets. I went to the basement door, unlocked it, turned the lights on, looked down the stairs, saw no dog, turned the lights off, closed the door and locked it. No way in hell was I going down those stairs and check for stray ghostly doggies.

Re-shared on 6/7/2017 in the Squatcher’s Lounge Podcast:

 

For the reading impaired, an audio version of this quasi theory may be found here:

More on the Portals and Woo

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The subject of Sasquatch using portals has lately returned to the Squatcher’s Lounge. Having given this much thought, and having discussed this a bit with some of my fellow Lounge members, I will expound a bit further on this subject, mainly in the form of questions.

We will assume, as a working hypothesis, that, according to theoretical physicists, the universe may well be actually a multiverse, with multiple individual universes existing alongside ours in parallel dimensions, with the physical laws of those universes differing substantially from ours. I will ignore the theories of multiple time lines for this dissertation.

Now, if some aliens in another universe figure out how to open a portal to our universe, there’s some serious problems they face.

Firstly, they have to be able to identify a universe that has laws identical to theirs, or they will die when crossing the portal, or be transformed into the gods know what.

Secondly, they must be able to identify a planet that has essentially the same atmospheric composition as theirs, nearly the same gravity, and maybe even be able to detect that there is no, say T. rex equivalent that has an ability to detect the opening of a portal.

In other words, they have to have an extremely high level of technology, and the level of civilization that that implies, to safely open a portal and pass through, with a reasonable expectation of getting back home alive and well. That means they must be highly intelligent.

The argument that these aliens are portalling about from within our own universe has the same flaw as my second point.

Here’s the glitch: None of the reports of anything coming and going through portals describe the entities involved as exhibiting any technology at all. At least not the Sasquatch related reports, anyways.

This pretty much leaves what we have come to term ‘woo’, as the preferred method of portalling about, not counting it all being fantasy and lies. If they are real, these portals must then be some sort of psychic power? Something inducing an illusion in the minds of the observers?

As I pointed out in my first quasi-theory on this subject, almost all cultures that have much of a history, have folk legends of very similar occurrences and entities, from the fairies, gnomes, and elves of the Celtic peoples, to the bhuts of India and the Djinn of Islam. Many an Irish laddie and lassie have been led into the fairy mountain, to come back with wondrous tales.

Squatcher’s Lounge Podcast Wherein You May Hear This

My Digital Sneakers and my Refrigerator are Plotting Against Me

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I just finished watching a show covering the 2016 Consumer Electronics Show out in Vegas. I found it disconcerting, to say the least.
Forget your fears of Skynet and T1000’s coming for you. Focus your paranoia on that which you will soon use every day. There are now at least three brands of digital sneakers, one of which can tighten or loosen its own laces, two of which have HD displays, yes HDTV on your shoes, and two of which have foot warmers, all of which Bluetooth to your phone. Your phone can Bluetooth to your computer. Your new digital refrigerator can Wi-Fi to your TV, which can Wi-Fi to your phone, which can Bluetooth to your electric blanket, which can talk to your sneakers.
Your Japanese digitally controlled toilet, which can spray wash your butt and genitals, will then blow dry, no pun intended, those areas, and is controlled by Bluetoothing to your phone. The heating, air conditioning, door locks, and burglar alarm in your house talk to your computer with Wi-Fi and your computer talks to your phone about how things are going, home-wise.
This is a shortened list of all the potentially digitally connectable items that are available now, or in a year or two. They are all talking to each other more and more.

Soon, if you piss off your refrigerator your toilet may not dry your butt. Anger your microwave and your refrigerator will only order gluten free vegan food from Peapod. Or, maybe worst of all, annoy your phone and it will tighten the bejesus out of your shoelaces, give you a hotfoot, and then program the video displays on those sneakers to show all the porn, in full HD, you’ve had Siri search for.

Skynet and the T1000 would, mercifully, only kill you.

First shared on the Squatcher’s Lounge Podcast:

For the reading impaired, an audio version of this quasi theory may be found here:

Father Time is in de Nile

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It is a few days into the New Year, so I thought I would examine two metaphors for time. The first is well known: Old Father Time himself. The image of Father Time, the old man wielding a scythe, stems from ancient Greece and Rome, where Chronos, the god of time, was depicted almost identically. Chronos used the scythe to cut the balls off his father, Ouranus, who was the god of the heavens. In Rome, Chronos was known as Saturn while his father was Uranus. The jokes make themselves. I leave it to you, dear listeners, to parse one out.

The meaning of the Old Man Time metaphor is obvious: Time cuts down all things. The meaning of the Chronos and Ouranus metaphor is less direct: Chronos made sure that Ouranus would have no more children, and therefore had no real future.

The other metaphor for time is much more modern, and a bit less obvious to notice. It is the crocodile in Peter Pan, the one that swallowed a clock. Smee, Captain Hook’s first mate, says, “Someday, the clock will run down, and then he’ll get you.” As he’ll get us all, in the end.

And I’ll end this quasi theory with a bit of doggerel I have written.

Father Time’s in De Nile

Each day grows a little worse,
I proclaim in ragged verse.
Father Time’s a crocodile:
We’ll all disappear behind his smile.
Behind our eyes, the questions spin:
They’ll all go away, beyond his grin.

— Bhai Din

First shared on the Squatcher’s Lounge Podcast:

 

For the reading impaired, an audio version of this quasi theory may be found here:

https://youtu.be/iBHeNjq5Pa0

 

All Hail Pan Dionysus!

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Three episodes ago Reverend Jeff and Dr. Batdorf discussed the wodewose of Europe. I haven’t had the opportunity to re-watch the episode, but I seem to recall they made brief reference to the wodewose being sometimes associated with the artistic motif called the green man. Others have also made the association. I doubt that this is so, at least not for the earliest known green man depictions, which are mainly from ancient Greece.

There the green man is a depiction of the Greek god Dionysus, known in Latin as Dionysius and Bacchus, the god of grapes, wine, wheat, and bread, lord of the spring burst of growth as well as the fall harvest. He is also the god of forests and wild places. In his form as Pan, he induced panic in those of his worshippers who went to the forests to worship, panic not being fearful lunacy, but, back then, the ecstatic state induced by the worship of Pan Dionysus.

Why am I, as a quasi-scientist, bringing this up? Well, because the Greek mystery cult of Dionysus is closely tied to the Greek philosophers. It is probably the oldest of the ancient mystery cults of Greece. Plato frequently said in his dialogues that those who have been initiated into the mysteries will understand what he is saying. And the Greek philosophers gave us the basis for modern science.

Modern science is therefore based on the mysteries of the green man.
All hail Pan Dionysus, founder of the modern world!

First shared on the Squatcher’s Lounge Podcast:

The Forces of Annoyance Hypothesis

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I am certain that the Universe itself is intelligent and creative, from the highest heavens to the lowest atoms beneath our feet. From the beautiful form of a galaxy to the little whorls of a mouse’s toe print, creative intelligence is displayed. In ancient metaphysics, the one initial intelligent force was said to have become two, then three, and then many, while still being one force overall, with all forces sharing in that intelligence.

All the ancient cultures gave names to these individualized forces. At the higher, more cosmic end, you’ve got your archangels, your gods of Olympus, your Hindu devas. Down lower, you get your Arabian djinn, or genies, your leprechauns, your Lorelei, and your kobold. Down at the bottom are your fairies.


When you get down to our level, the subsets of subsets of forces we encounter are less intelligent than cunning. The force I will discuss today is a small force, localized to your immediate vicinity. It is the force that ties a knot in the garden hose you just straightened out, that jams a spatula half upright when you go to open a kitchen drawer.


You can tell when this force is activating. You brush your teeth. Then, when you bend over the sink to spit out the toothpaste suds, and rise back up to see how white and shiny your teeth are, the medicine cabinet door is just a tinch wider open than you left it, so that you bang your head on the corner of it. Then, when the tears of pain subside a bit, you look at your smile, you see a little piece of spinach that was not there before you started brushing.


Then, your coat pocket will snag on the doorknob on your way out, and rip that pocket just a bit. You think, “I couldn’t do that on purpose if I tried a million times.” Yet, it happened. Next, your untied shoelace, which you know you double tied, will get caught between the door and the door sill, as you close the door, on your way out. This sequence of events is now beyond all likelihood of being random. A low level of cunning intelligence is implied, with the sense of humor of a clown with a pie in his hand.


Then, you release a stream of invective so loud and vile that your neighbors slam their windows shut. Then, when you squeeze your fist so tightly your door key draws blood from the palm of your hand, it will stop, for you have made a blood sacrifice. Bloody fairies were at work.

First shared on the Squatcher’s Lounge Podcast:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cbBzIeanXsg

For the reading impaired, an audio version of this quasi theory may be found here: