Vinny is in . . . Van Nuys . . . .
I'm in Strawberry Fields Forerer. . . Oxnard.
This Morning, anyway.
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I'm in Strawberry Fields Forerer. . . Oxnard.
This Morning, anyway.
Duck Rodgers
Well-Known Member
Van Nuys is indeed a good hideout spot after somebody smokes out East San Diego.
Oxnard? Are you claiming that California doesn't end at Malibu? I don't believe you.
I went up the Angeles Crest yesterday to watch a part of stage 7 of the Amgen Tour and at one point my balls were numb. It was a long ride and it was ****ing hot. I wish I was Lord Varys at that point.
I do not live in Van Nuys. Never have. I'm currently in Los Feliz...in the city.
What is amazing is that you can drive right through it on the freeway and not even know it was there.
Oxnard has some subtle beauties. Strawberries by the mile growing on neatly tucked rows/rolls of plastic. Humidity enough to wet the fields every night. My wife's best friend. Free place to sleep and shower and go swimming. Fruit stands at every crossroads with avocados, strawberries, mangos, and even stuff shipped in from Chile or where-ever. Pretty good beach. ferry to the channel islands.
would be a good place to build a very large desalination plant.
But there is also a place called "Santa Barbara", which my wife says she reads about in tons of novels written by every writer who ever wanted to live by the sea in a neat little house next door to an antique store.
There is a fair little zoo as well.
Even more amazing is there is more out there, heading west into what all reason declares should just be the wide blue Pacific. A little town called Lompoc with an air field, an honest-to-goodness rural area where it is rumored there used to be something called "rain", which used to make the grass grow green and feed a lot of cows.
Consciousness: What is it?
So George Noury had a guest on last night who said nobody even knows what consciousness or self-awareness is. The topic, generally, was science "fiction" with practically no difference between state-of-the-art science and the stories than include it. The topic went on about micro-drone weaponry on the "insect" scale and the artificial intelligence exploits currently being applied to the problem of having a self-navigating ship sailing the methane seas on a moon of Jupiter, at -300 K or something like that.
https://www.coasttocoastam.com/show/2014/05/20
So George Noury had a guest on last night who said nobody even knows what consciousness or self-awareness is. The topic, generally, was science "fiction" with practically no difference between state-of-the-art science and the stories than include it. The topic went on about micro-drone weaponry on the "insect" scale and the artificial intelligence exploits currently being applied to the problem of having a self-navigating ship sailing the methane seas on a moon of Jupiter, at -300 K or something like that.
https://www.coasttocoastam.com/show/2014/05/20
OK, sounds like a challenge:
Self-awareness is the ability to cognitively perceive things in ones immediate environment, either physically, socially, economically, or in fact in any other specific category of perceptions, and to be able to form a theory of relatedness to it, such as might be used in making a decision for action or non-action, belief or disbelief, "belonging" or "alienation", or any other of all the possible cognitive categories imaginable.
sociopaths, for example, operate on a theory of non-inclusive reality where nothing matters except their own "interests". But they are generally expert at differentiating between the interests or intents of others while choosing to manipulate others for their own purposes. . . .
consciousness might simply be defined as having the ability to form some theory of context/environment whether valid or invalid, real or imaginary. We judge consciousness in others by observing a reaction to events in their context/situation, or an ability to form a plan, or make a decision in relation to things of immediate importance, however perceived.
I have known some unconscious women who could make a fool of any man. . . . .which is just a bad joke for pointing out how differently people can interpret a situation, and react to it. . . . to the extent it might appear to some of us that others are entirely unaware of what is going on or what should be done about it.
A fact that is possibly generally symmetrical from differing points of view. . . . Those "unconscious" women, generally, will find fools uttering uninteresting and so will completely ignore their stupid antics.
Self-awareness is the ability to cognitively perceive things in ones immediate environment, either physically, socially, economically, or in fact in any other specific category of perceptions, and to be able to form a theory of relatedness to it, such as might be used in making a decision for action or non-action, belief or disbelief, "belonging" or "alienation", or any other of all the possible cognitive categories imaginable.
sociopaths, for example, operate on a theory of non-inclusive reality where nothing matters except their own "interests". But they are generally expert at differentiating between the interests or intents of others while choosing to manipulate others for their own purposes. . . .
consciousness might simply be defined as having the ability to form some theory of context/environment whether valid or invalid, real or imaginary. We judge consciousness in others by observing a reaction to events in their context/situation, or an ability to form a plan, or make a decision in relation to things of immediate importance, however perceived.
I have known some unconscious women who could make a fool of any man. . . . .which is just a bad joke for pointing out how differently people can interpret a situation, and react to it. . . . to the extent it might appear to some of us that others are entirely unaware of what is going on or what should be done about it.
A fact that is possibly generally symmetrical from differing points of view. . . . Those "unconscious" women, generally, will find fools uttering uninteresting and so will completely ignore their stupid antics.
Game6Conley
Well-Known Member
saw this creepiness and figured id put it here! I was going to shorten the post by using a spoiler but since this is the longest thread i couldn't bring myself to do it.
23 Parents Describe Their Kids’ Creepy Imaginary Friends (That Are Probably Actually Demons)
DEC. 11, 2013 By CHRISSY STOCKTON
1. He doesn’t have a face
My son from the age of three always tells me about the “creeper man” who lives in my mom and dads bedroom. He brings it up after he visits them. I made the mistake once of asking what he looks like. My son said “Oh, he doesn’t have a face.”
2. “You’ll get used to killing”
A parent of one of my students told us in a meeting that she was concerned because her son (7 years old) talked about an invisible ghost who would talk to him and play with him in his room. He said the ghost was called The Captain and was an old white guy with a beard. The kid would tell his mom that The Captain told him when he grows up his job will be to kill people, and The Captain would tell him who needed to be killed. The kid would cry and say he doesn’t want to kill when he grows up, but The Captain tells him he doesn’t have a choice and he’ll get used to killing after a while.
3. Little girl ghost
When my daughter was three she had an imaginary friend named Kelly who lived in her closet. Kelly sat in a little rocking chair while she slept, played with her, etc. Typical imaginary friend sh*t. Anyway, fast forward two years later, the wife and I are watching the new Amityville (the one with Ryan Renolds) and our daughter walks out right when dead girl goes all black eyed. Far from being disturbed she said “That looks like Kelly.” “Kelly who?” we say “You know the dead girl that lived in my closet.”
4. Bad rabbit
my cousin, when she was 5, and I was 17, had a stuffed rabbit that she talked to and carried everywhere.
One day she was asleep on the couch while I was watching her, and she woke up and started yelling at her rabbit for no reason. One minute she was knocked out, the next, she’s awake, glaring at her rabbit, yelling, “No! You can’t do that! That’s bad! Don’t do it!” repeatedly. I asked her what was wrong, tried to get her to stop, but she wouldn’t listen. I finally just took the rabbit up to her room, and when I came back down she was asleep on the couch again. **** whatever that rabbit was planning on doing.
5. Roger won’t be around anymore…
My little brother’s imaginary friend, Roger, lived under our coffee table. Roger had a wife and 9 kids. Roger and his family lived peacefully alongside us for three years. One day, my little brother announced that Roger wouldn’t be around anymore, since he shot and killed him and his whole family. I don’t know if he remembers any of this, but his genuine lack of remorse was very disturbing.
6. A boy in the tree
My folks’ farm surrounds a cemetery, and my dad and my niece were walking down there. My niece (4) looks up and says “What’s that boy doing up in that tree?” There was no boy, but she insisted there was and could describe him.
7. The bunny man
When I was 16, I babysat twins who were in the third grade at the time. They always spoke of a man in an Easter Bunny costume, and they were terrified of him. One day I was babysitting, and one twin was in the shower. His brother and I were sitting downstairs watching television when all of the sudden, he said, “you need to go check on Matt.” Seconds later, Matt yelled, “He’s in here!!! He’s in here!!!” I ran upstairs, and I had to check every room before he would calm down. I’m not sure which part of the experience freaked me out the most.
8. Poor Shaggy
when my mom was younger she had an imaginary friend named Shaggy. When she was finished with Shaggy, she “chopped him up and put him in the fridge.”
9. “Smash Daddy’s head”
when my brother was just learning how to talk he grabbed one of those small toy hammers and crawled onto the sofa where my dad was sleeping. He then leant in close and whispered one of his first sentences… ‘smash daddy’s head’ right into his ear.
10. Dark angels
When my brother was little he acted like he had angels talking to him every second. One day my mom overheard him say,
“I can’t kill him! He’s my only dad!”
11. “That’s the man”
My daughter used to tell me about a man who came into her room every night and put the sign of the cross on her forehead. I thought it was just a dream. Then my mother-in-law sent over some family photos. My daughter looked right at the picture of my husband’s father (who has been dead for 16 years) and said ‘That’s the man who comes into my room at night!’ My husband later told me his father would always do the sign of the cross on his forehead when he was young
12. Message from beyond
My wife and i overheard my 2year daughter on the baby monitor wake up on Saturday morning and say “what? OK I’ll tell her” then get up and come into our bedroom and told my wife “Mary says you’re doing a good job.” Mary was her grandmother that she was extremely close too that passed away.
13. I called him Spooky guy
As a kid, I said that my imaginary friend was a ghost. I called him Spooky Guy and said he died in the garage of the house on the hill behind ours. I even came up with his death. He was a 16 year old who got in a car crash and walked to that house to ask to use their phone (died in the 70′s). The person lived there grabbed him and sexually abused him there and killed him. He was my imaginary friend as far back as I can remember. This scared my mom so much that she tried to look up records to see if that happened and got me a therapist.
14. Icy wants me to tell you it will be tonight
In high school one of my best friends had a little sister who was five or six years old. One day we stopped by his place, completely high, because he needed to get his Magic cards. While waiting for him to come downstairs his sister came up to me and said, “Icy told me to ask you if you know when you’re going to die.”
I laughed nervously: morbid question, right? But I knew all about Icy, her imaginary friend. I even helped her draw a picture of him once. So I played along and said, “No, of course not! No one knows that. Hopefully when I’m very old.”
The girl shook her head sadly and said, “No, Icy wants me to tell you it’ll be tonight.” And with that, she just walked away.
15. It is the punishment
i was seventeen and babysitting a friend of the family’s six year old. he’d been in bed a couple of hours and i just peeked in to check on him. he wasn’t in the bed and when i opened the door wider, i saw he was standing in the corner, facing the wall. creepiest fu*king thing ever. i asked him what he was doing and all he did was turn around, smile, and put his finger to his lips as if to say “shhh”. i asked him again what he was doing and all he says is, “leave us. it is the punishment.”
16. Keep kicking
my grandfather had a camp on Lake Dering in NH when I was a kid. One day when I was 6 or so, I fell off of the dock and into the water. I couldn’t swim. While under, I distinctly remember seeing a little girl down there who told me to look up towards the sun and just keep kicking and I’d be fine. I swam to the surface just in time for my grandfather to swoop me up and pull me back on the dock.
17. Nope
When my boy was 4, his imaginary friend would sit in the corner of the room when you switched off the lights and light the room with red glowing eyes
18. They were both dead
Kid I used to babysit had imaginary friends. They were dead. One had no head. One was an old lady. They were both bloody. The one with no head had insides sticking out of his neck.
I didn’t ask him questions about them because **** that.
19. Tracy
When my niece was about 4 she had an imaginary friend, which I don’t remember the name of. She would blame things she did on this imaginary friend but also talked about how this friend would watch scooby doo with her. One day I thought, why don’t I find out more about this friend. So I asked her to tell me about her friend. And she said, “she’s a she and she’s dead.” And I said okay, “does she have a job?” And she said, “she does what my daddy does!” Which is that her imaginary friend was a cop. Okay. So then I said, “where is your imaginary friend a police woman at?” And she said, “right next I to where my daddy is a policeman.” And I said okay. But then she said, “I met her when I was in my mummy’s belly. She touched it when I was inside.”
A few months before my niece was born my cousin Tracy had died. She was hit by a train. She loved watching scooby doo and had a ton of memorabilia. She was also a cop. She was a cop in the town that is right next to the one my brother in law is a cop in, my nieces “daddy.” My niece’s imaginary friend was my dead cousin. There is no other way she could have known all that at the age of 4.
20. “That’s why I don’t like water now”
When my kid was 4, we were watching a docu on the Titanic. The scene was a picture of the schematics of the boiler room and the camera panned from left to right over the plans. He pointed at the tv and said, “That’s wrong. The boilers were on the Other side. And I was right here.” And he pointed to a small space in the boiler room. “That’s where I was. And that’s why I don’t like water now.”
21. Emily
when my sister was probably about 6 or 7, she had an imaginary friend named Emily. She told us Emily lived in her closet, wore an old black dress, and had long dark hair and she was the same age as my sister. My sister played with Emily constantly. My parents started noticing my sister acting weird. Just sitting in the middle of her room whispering to Emily quite a bit and acting a lot more distant towards them. I remember a very specific day, my brother was walking by her room and my sister was sitting in the middle of her room….but she turned around and hissed at him. He was scared sh*tless. He told me it didn’t even look like my sister. My parents ran up to her room and i could hear my sister just screaming and screaming as loud as she “get out”.
I have no idea what happened in that room but I ran to the bottom of my stairs and the screaming stopped, I saw my parents holding my sister crying their eyes out, she was sobbing as well. I’ve asked her about it today. She’s 24 now. She told me that Emily used to tell her to do horrible things to herself. She actually used to wake up on the roof and not remember how she got there. I’m not kidding. Apparently Emily absolutely hated my parents so she turned my sister against them. She hates talking about it so i never brought up that specific night. This all happened at my old house. When we moved into a different house, Emily was gone. I’m not making any of this up. My sisters little friend was a really big deal to my family and messed things up for a long time. I’m just relieved we left that house.
22. She floated above his bed at night
When my younger brother was around 4, he had an imaginary friend named Victoria Meadowbrooke. He told us that she was the prettiest girl ever and she floated above his bed a night.
23. “The Evil is coming”
When my older daughter was two or three, she used to have a couple of imaginary friends, Dodo and DeeDee. They were typical imaginary friends. She would talk to them and play with them, and tell me about their lives.
Then one day, when she was about three, she was talking on her play phone when I walked into the room. She “hung up” her phone and said to me (with a completely flat voice and deadpan expression): “The Evil is coming.”
23 Parents Describe Their Kids’ Creepy Imaginary Friends (That Are Probably Actually Demons)
DEC. 11, 2013 By CHRISSY STOCKTON
1. He doesn’t have a face
My son from the age of three always tells me about the “creeper man” who lives in my mom and dads bedroom. He brings it up after he visits them. I made the mistake once of asking what he looks like. My son said “Oh, he doesn’t have a face.”
2. “You’ll get used to killing”
A parent of one of my students told us in a meeting that she was concerned because her son (7 years old) talked about an invisible ghost who would talk to him and play with him in his room. He said the ghost was called The Captain and was an old white guy with a beard. The kid would tell his mom that The Captain told him when he grows up his job will be to kill people, and The Captain would tell him who needed to be killed. The kid would cry and say he doesn’t want to kill when he grows up, but The Captain tells him he doesn’t have a choice and he’ll get used to killing after a while.
3. Little girl ghost
When my daughter was three she had an imaginary friend named Kelly who lived in her closet. Kelly sat in a little rocking chair while she slept, played with her, etc. Typical imaginary friend sh*t. Anyway, fast forward two years later, the wife and I are watching the new Amityville (the one with Ryan Renolds) and our daughter walks out right when dead girl goes all black eyed. Far from being disturbed she said “That looks like Kelly.” “Kelly who?” we say “You know the dead girl that lived in my closet.”
4. Bad rabbit
my cousin, when she was 5, and I was 17, had a stuffed rabbit that she talked to and carried everywhere.
One day she was asleep on the couch while I was watching her, and she woke up and started yelling at her rabbit for no reason. One minute she was knocked out, the next, she’s awake, glaring at her rabbit, yelling, “No! You can’t do that! That’s bad! Don’t do it!” repeatedly. I asked her what was wrong, tried to get her to stop, but she wouldn’t listen. I finally just took the rabbit up to her room, and when I came back down she was asleep on the couch again. **** whatever that rabbit was planning on doing.
5. Roger won’t be around anymore…
My little brother’s imaginary friend, Roger, lived under our coffee table. Roger had a wife and 9 kids. Roger and his family lived peacefully alongside us for three years. One day, my little brother announced that Roger wouldn’t be around anymore, since he shot and killed him and his whole family. I don’t know if he remembers any of this, but his genuine lack of remorse was very disturbing.
6. A boy in the tree
My folks’ farm surrounds a cemetery, and my dad and my niece were walking down there. My niece (4) looks up and says “What’s that boy doing up in that tree?” There was no boy, but she insisted there was and could describe him.
7. The bunny man
When I was 16, I babysat twins who were in the third grade at the time. They always spoke of a man in an Easter Bunny costume, and they were terrified of him. One day I was babysitting, and one twin was in the shower. His brother and I were sitting downstairs watching television when all of the sudden, he said, “you need to go check on Matt.” Seconds later, Matt yelled, “He’s in here!!! He’s in here!!!” I ran upstairs, and I had to check every room before he would calm down. I’m not sure which part of the experience freaked me out the most.
8. Poor Shaggy
when my mom was younger she had an imaginary friend named Shaggy. When she was finished with Shaggy, she “chopped him up and put him in the fridge.”
9. “Smash Daddy’s head”
when my brother was just learning how to talk he grabbed one of those small toy hammers and crawled onto the sofa where my dad was sleeping. He then leant in close and whispered one of his first sentences… ‘smash daddy’s head’ right into his ear.
10. Dark angels
When my brother was little he acted like he had angels talking to him every second. One day my mom overheard him say,
“I can’t kill him! He’s my only dad!”
11. “That’s the man”
My daughter used to tell me about a man who came into her room every night and put the sign of the cross on her forehead. I thought it was just a dream. Then my mother-in-law sent over some family photos. My daughter looked right at the picture of my husband’s father (who has been dead for 16 years) and said ‘That’s the man who comes into my room at night!’ My husband later told me his father would always do the sign of the cross on his forehead when he was young
12. Message from beyond
My wife and i overheard my 2year daughter on the baby monitor wake up on Saturday morning and say “what? OK I’ll tell her” then get up and come into our bedroom and told my wife “Mary says you’re doing a good job.” Mary was her grandmother that she was extremely close too that passed away.
13. I called him Spooky guy
As a kid, I said that my imaginary friend was a ghost. I called him Spooky Guy and said he died in the garage of the house on the hill behind ours. I even came up with his death. He was a 16 year old who got in a car crash and walked to that house to ask to use their phone (died in the 70′s). The person lived there grabbed him and sexually abused him there and killed him. He was my imaginary friend as far back as I can remember. This scared my mom so much that she tried to look up records to see if that happened and got me a therapist.
14. Icy wants me to tell you it will be tonight
In high school one of my best friends had a little sister who was five or six years old. One day we stopped by his place, completely high, because he needed to get his Magic cards. While waiting for him to come downstairs his sister came up to me and said, “Icy told me to ask you if you know when you’re going to die.”
I laughed nervously: morbid question, right? But I knew all about Icy, her imaginary friend. I even helped her draw a picture of him once. So I played along and said, “No, of course not! No one knows that. Hopefully when I’m very old.”
The girl shook her head sadly and said, “No, Icy wants me to tell you it’ll be tonight.” And with that, she just walked away.
15. It is the punishment
i was seventeen and babysitting a friend of the family’s six year old. he’d been in bed a couple of hours and i just peeked in to check on him. he wasn’t in the bed and when i opened the door wider, i saw he was standing in the corner, facing the wall. creepiest fu*king thing ever. i asked him what he was doing and all he did was turn around, smile, and put his finger to his lips as if to say “shhh”. i asked him again what he was doing and all he says is, “leave us. it is the punishment.”
16. Keep kicking
my grandfather had a camp on Lake Dering in NH when I was a kid. One day when I was 6 or so, I fell off of the dock and into the water. I couldn’t swim. While under, I distinctly remember seeing a little girl down there who told me to look up towards the sun and just keep kicking and I’d be fine. I swam to the surface just in time for my grandfather to swoop me up and pull me back on the dock.
17. Nope
When my boy was 4, his imaginary friend would sit in the corner of the room when you switched off the lights and light the room with red glowing eyes
18. They were both dead
Kid I used to babysit had imaginary friends. They were dead. One had no head. One was an old lady. They were both bloody. The one with no head had insides sticking out of his neck.
I didn’t ask him questions about them because **** that.
19. Tracy
When my niece was about 4 she had an imaginary friend, which I don’t remember the name of. She would blame things she did on this imaginary friend but also talked about how this friend would watch scooby doo with her. One day I thought, why don’t I find out more about this friend. So I asked her to tell me about her friend. And she said, “she’s a she and she’s dead.” And I said okay, “does she have a job?” And she said, “she does what my daddy does!” Which is that her imaginary friend was a cop. Okay. So then I said, “where is your imaginary friend a police woman at?” And she said, “right next I to where my daddy is a policeman.” And I said okay. But then she said, “I met her when I was in my mummy’s belly. She touched it when I was inside.”
A few months before my niece was born my cousin Tracy had died. She was hit by a train. She loved watching scooby doo and had a ton of memorabilia. She was also a cop. She was a cop in the town that is right next to the one my brother in law is a cop in, my nieces “daddy.” My niece’s imaginary friend was my dead cousin. There is no other way she could have known all that at the age of 4.
20. “That’s why I don’t like water now”
When my kid was 4, we were watching a docu on the Titanic. The scene was a picture of the schematics of the boiler room and the camera panned from left to right over the plans. He pointed at the tv and said, “That’s wrong. The boilers were on the Other side. And I was right here.” And he pointed to a small space in the boiler room. “That’s where I was. And that’s why I don’t like water now.”
21. Emily
when my sister was probably about 6 or 7, she had an imaginary friend named Emily. She told us Emily lived in her closet, wore an old black dress, and had long dark hair and she was the same age as my sister. My sister played with Emily constantly. My parents started noticing my sister acting weird. Just sitting in the middle of her room whispering to Emily quite a bit and acting a lot more distant towards them. I remember a very specific day, my brother was walking by her room and my sister was sitting in the middle of her room….but she turned around and hissed at him. He was scared sh*tless. He told me it didn’t even look like my sister. My parents ran up to her room and i could hear my sister just screaming and screaming as loud as she “get out”.
I have no idea what happened in that room but I ran to the bottom of my stairs and the screaming stopped, I saw my parents holding my sister crying their eyes out, she was sobbing as well. I’ve asked her about it today. She’s 24 now. She told me that Emily used to tell her to do horrible things to herself. She actually used to wake up on the roof and not remember how she got there. I’m not kidding. Apparently Emily absolutely hated my parents so she turned my sister against them. She hates talking about it so i never brought up that specific night. This all happened at my old house. When we moved into a different house, Emily was gone. I’m not making any of this up. My sisters little friend was a really big deal to my family and messed things up for a long time. I’m just relieved we left that house.
22. She floated above his bed at night
When my younger brother was around 4, he had an imaginary friend named Victoria Meadowbrooke. He told us that she was the prettiest girl ever and she floated above his bed a night.
23. “The Evil is coming”
When my older daughter was two or three, she used to have a couple of imaginary friends, Dodo and DeeDee. They were typical imaginary friends. She would talk to them and play with them, and tell me about their lives.
Then one day, when she was about three, she was talking on her play phone when I walked into the room. She “hung up” her phone and said to me (with a completely flat voice and deadpan expression): “The Evil is coming.”
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Game6Conley
Well-Known Member
a few of those are pretty crazy.
when i was a kid i was actually pretty good at drawing/doodling and i used always draw this character without a face, id change up all sorts of stuff; id draw it as the grim reaper, a ninja, in battle armor or floating in space, i even drew it dressed as santa claus next to a christmas tree and gave it to my mom... she ended up making copies for family members, no idea why, it was definitely creepy looking.
anyway when i first saw this And1 logo way back i had to take a double and triple take, it looked just like the thing i was drawing, that first story kind of reminded me of it too
when i was a kid i was actually pretty good at drawing/doodling and i used always draw this character without a face, id change up all sorts of stuff; id draw it as the grim reaper, a ninja, in battle armor or floating in space, i even drew it dressed as santa claus next to a christmas tree and gave it to my mom... she ended up making copies for family members, no idea why, it was definitely creepy looking.
anyway when i first saw this And1 logo way back i had to take a double and triple take, it looked just like the thing i was drawing, that first story kind of reminded me of it too
I got to about #20.
commonplace, imo, both good and bad.
people try not to recognize them, and willfully forget them. . . .
. . . . or try to imagine them, and willfully make them up.
I don't doubt the proximity of people with some "connection" to us, nor do I doubt the opportune "connections" of even people with no proper business with us. I call them "people". I don't think dead cows do this, or birds. . . . . just. . . people. people not born yet, people now dead, whose spirits are with us.
Not every deceased persons' spirit, just those who haven't moved on.. . . to a better place. . . . or who have been sent back as "angels".
commonplace, imo, both good and bad.
people try not to recognize them, and willfully forget them. . . .
. . . . or try to imagine them, and willfully make them up.
I don't doubt the proximity of people with some "connection" to us, nor do I doubt the opportune "connections" of even people with no proper business with us. I call them "people". I don't think dead cows do this, or birds. . . . . just. . . people. people not born yet, people now dead, whose spirits are with us.
Not every deceased persons' spirit, just those who haven't moved on.. . . to a better place. . . . or who have been sent back as "angels".
LogGrad98
Well-Known Member
Contributor
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I may have posted this story here, but I'm not sure so I will repost.
I was adopted at 5 days old into my current family. My father got married at 18, had 4 kids, 1 every 2 years, and then he got a divorce, and custody of all off the kids. His first wife had decided she lost her childhood marrying so young, so she cheated and then bailed. My dad on the other hand decided to be a dad, and is right up there among the best of them I have ever met. Anyway, my dad remarried a couple of years later and his 2nd wife (my mother) couldn't have children, so they looked into adoption.
At the time it was a pretty big deal, and they hired a lawyer and everything. I suppose it is still a big deal but after a couple of my friends have adopted fairly recently it was a lot easier for them than for my parents. They were on a couple of waiting lists and they kept hearing that a child was coming available, only to have it fall through for one reason or another. For my mother it was a real emotional roller-coaster, and with I think it was 4 or 5 that fell through she was getting ready to quit, and that thought to her was devastating, but the thought of dragging it out indefinitely was worse.
She told me they prayed about it and decided to stop looking. She just couldn't take it anymore after well over a year of waiting and false hope and everything. She said my dad called the lawyer and left a message with his secretary. The lawyer called back and told them he had one lined up and they were going to be able to adopt. My mom even got a picture of the baby, a little girl. Then it fell through again. My mom was defeated, and they decided it was time to really stop looking and spare her any more heartache. My dad called the lawyer that day but he was already out off the office, so he planned on talking to him first thing in the morning.
That night, which would have been June 8th, iirc, as my mother said it was 2 weeks to the day before my birthday, my mom had a dream, although she is convinced it was not a dream. She said she was having a hard time sleeping and got up to get a drink or something then came back to bed. She was crying because she really wanted a baby of her own, even though she happily fell into the role of mom for my dad's other kids.
She said she was lying there looking at the ceiling when she thought a car had just passed outside because it got brighter in the room. But it kept getting brighter so she sat up a little and noticed a light in the air at the foot of her bed. She said it got brighter and bigger until there was someone standing there, floating in the air. She said it was a man and she couldn't tell much else about him, although she said she could see his face very clearly it was no one she recognized. She said he called her by name, and told her not to give up hope. He said that in 2 weeks a baby boy would be born who was supposed to come to her. The man told her to call the lawyer in the morning and let him know they still wanted to keep looking. She said that as soon as he was done talking, he was just gone.
She woke up my dad and told him and they called the lawyer the next day and let him know they wanted to keep looking. He said it was good they called because he had gotten their message and had just received word that morning of a possible option within a few weeks, a baby boy.
2 weeks later I was born and 5 days after that my parents came to get me. This is the only family I have ever known, but at the same time I have known as long as I can remember that I was adopted. My parents made it feel like something special, and I never had any of the stigma of adoption you hear about.
So fast forward 21 years. I am waiting at the airport for my family when I got home from my mission because my plane was early. This was well before 9/11 so you could still go straight to the gate to meet people or see them off. I was a good 45 minutes early so I just sat by the gate and waited. I wanted to see if anyone recognized me, as I had changed quite a bit on my mission (I got taller, filled out to where I had to buy new suits - my shoulders got broader and my waist much smaller as I dropped 65 pounds, etc.). As my family walked to the gate it was all I could do to contain myself. A few looked at me and looked immediately away. I was wearing my trenchcoat and so my nametag was not visible so it wasn't immediately apparent I was an RM, especially since I just sat there reading a newspaper I had found nearby.
But my mom looked at me, then again. They checked at the gate and all were confused but I was having a lot of fun with it. However I did notice my mom kept looking at me, almost like she recognized me but couldn't place the face, as it were. Finally my sister turned around, looked directly at me, and yelled "there he is" and they all came over. My mom was in tears. We did the standard meet and greet thing, then left the airport. A few days later my mom said she had to tell me something. She said when she saw me at the airport she knew she had seen my face before, but couldn't figure out where. She felt like it looked like me, but that wasn't where she remembered me from. She said after thinking about it for a while she figured it out.
She was convinced I had been the one to come tell her not to give up hope, to keep looking and that a baby boy would be delivered to her. That, in essence, I had stood at the foot of her bed and told her not to stop looking for me, that I was on my way.
I was adopted at 5 days old into my current family. My father got married at 18, had 4 kids, 1 every 2 years, and then he got a divorce, and custody of all off the kids. His first wife had decided she lost her childhood marrying so young, so she cheated and then bailed. My dad on the other hand decided to be a dad, and is right up there among the best of them I have ever met. Anyway, my dad remarried a couple of years later and his 2nd wife (my mother) couldn't have children, so they looked into adoption.
At the time it was a pretty big deal, and they hired a lawyer and everything. I suppose it is still a big deal but after a couple of my friends have adopted fairly recently it was a lot easier for them than for my parents. They were on a couple of waiting lists and they kept hearing that a child was coming available, only to have it fall through for one reason or another. For my mother it was a real emotional roller-coaster, and with I think it was 4 or 5 that fell through she was getting ready to quit, and that thought to her was devastating, but the thought of dragging it out indefinitely was worse.
She told me they prayed about it and decided to stop looking. She just couldn't take it anymore after well over a year of waiting and false hope and everything. She said my dad called the lawyer and left a message with his secretary. The lawyer called back and told them he had one lined up and they were going to be able to adopt. My mom even got a picture of the baby, a little girl. Then it fell through again. My mom was defeated, and they decided it was time to really stop looking and spare her any more heartache. My dad called the lawyer that day but he was already out off the office, so he planned on talking to him first thing in the morning.
That night, which would have been June 8th, iirc, as my mother said it was 2 weeks to the day before my birthday, my mom had a dream, although she is convinced it was not a dream. She said she was having a hard time sleeping and got up to get a drink or something then came back to bed. She was crying because she really wanted a baby of her own, even though she happily fell into the role of mom for my dad's other kids.
She said she was lying there looking at the ceiling when she thought a car had just passed outside because it got brighter in the room. But it kept getting brighter so she sat up a little and noticed a light in the air at the foot of her bed. She said it got brighter and bigger until there was someone standing there, floating in the air. She said it was a man and she couldn't tell much else about him, although she said she could see his face very clearly it was no one she recognized. She said he called her by name, and told her not to give up hope. He said that in 2 weeks a baby boy would be born who was supposed to come to her. The man told her to call the lawyer in the morning and let him know they still wanted to keep looking. She said that as soon as he was done talking, he was just gone.
She woke up my dad and told him and they called the lawyer the next day and let him know they wanted to keep looking. He said it was good they called because he had gotten their message and had just received word that morning of a possible option within a few weeks, a baby boy.
2 weeks later I was born and 5 days after that my parents came to get me. This is the only family I have ever known, but at the same time I have known as long as I can remember that I was adopted. My parents made it feel like something special, and I never had any of the stigma of adoption you hear about.
So fast forward 21 years. I am waiting at the airport for my family when I got home from my mission because my plane was early. This was well before 9/11 so you could still go straight to the gate to meet people or see them off. I was a good 45 minutes early so I just sat by the gate and waited. I wanted to see if anyone recognized me, as I had changed quite a bit on my mission (I got taller, filled out to where I had to buy new suits - my shoulders got broader and my waist much smaller as I dropped 65 pounds, etc.). As my family walked to the gate it was all I could do to contain myself. A few looked at me and looked immediately away. I was wearing my trenchcoat and so my nametag was not visible so it wasn't immediately apparent I was an RM, especially since I just sat there reading a newspaper I had found nearby.
But my mom looked at me, then again. They checked at the gate and all were confused but I was having a lot of fun with it. However I did notice my mom kept looking at me, almost like she recognized me but couldn't place the face, as it were. Finally my sister turned around, looked directly at me, and yelled "there he is" and they all came over. My mom was in tears. We did the standard meet and greet thing, then left the airport. A few days later my mom said she had to tell me something. She said when she saw me at the airport she knew she had seen my face before, but couldn't figure out where. She felt like it looked like me, but that wasn't where she remembered me from. She said after thinking about it for a while she figured it out.
She was convinced I had been the one to come tell her not to give up hope, to keep looking and that a baby boy would be delivered to her. That, in essence, I had stood at the foot of her bed and told her not to stop looking for me, that I was on my way.
PearlWatson
Well-Known Member
PearlWatson
Well-Known Member
kinda funny. . . . .
the whole "God is Dead" assertion without any proven definition of "God".
You said it.
addictionary
Well-Known Member
Is it coincidence that Karl Marx died the year Friedrich Nietzsche killed God (haşa)?
On the other hand, God might have got rid of Friedrich, but his notion stayed and grew within generations of thinkers for the years to come. And it's a common occurrence that philosophers usually are valued at a much higher level than their life times, when they are dead.
Is it coincidence that Karl Marx died the year Friedrich Nietzsche killed God (haşa)?
On the other hand, God might have got rid of Friedrich, but his notion stayed and grew within generations of thinkers for the years to come. And it's a common occurrence that philosophers usually are valued at a much higher level than their life times, when they are dead.
You'd do better to apply such logic to the death of Jesus, all things considered.
Consciousness Revisited
So here is a new idea I think I have come up, not to say nobody ever thought it before, but I haven't seen it in print.
Why would we suppose we are "conscious"? What is it that we mean by this? What is the inverse or negative of it?
I go to sleep usually sometime during most days, for maybe five or six hours. Usually that's enough. It's never solid though, well, not anymore. Nobody calls that "unconcious" exactly, it's just "sleep". I've been put under anesthesia a few times for relatively minor surgery, many years ago. Now they just use plenty of local anesthetics maybe for those things. That is achieved by relatively small lipid-like molecules that disrupt membrane/synapse functions. That would be something like "nerve death", but not "unconscious"
Cognition is probably synonymous with "conscious" in some people's ideas of it all. Awareness, yes, but it has to be more than passive awareness. A camera can be "conscious" if awareness it all it takes. A computer with a camera, and a program directing specific responses to specific optical events belies a definition that includes awareness and response. Such a response, imo, would be "unintelligent", lacking actual cognition. You can have a camera detect an intruder and detonate something. . . . a hydrogen bomb, for example. . . . you could even program facial recognition so it would only go off on the "right" person. Still not intelligence or cognition like humans routinely do, even the dullards amongst us. With perhaps only a few exceptions like SRI or SSRI-hyped parolees programmed to shoot cops in pizza parlors by darkside operatives of our "intelligence" folks, for all I know.
The essentially "human" thing about human beings is self-will. The ability to call the shot based on what we choose within ourselves. We see the world around us, and we choose an action from many possible actions present in our imagination, because we actually do have our own "will".
consciousness involves not just awareness, not just the capacity to act, but the presence of cognition totally within ourselves which processes some arbitrary but generally rich set of imagined responses, and chooses one as our own. "Will".
"Will" is not just chemistry, it involves something beyond that. If it were chemistry, we would have no choice.
The part of "us" that makes choices is something that transcends our physical nature, our chemical and physical structure.
If we have "will" now, what reason can there be for supposing we haven't had it before "life" or won't have it after "life". This is the core fact presented by most near-death accounts. Every story I have heard attributes to the human essence something that maintains "will" even in the "near-death" state. Consciousness independent of the human coil. . . .
So here is a new idea I think I have come up, not to say nobody ever thought it before, but I haven't seen it in print.
Why would we suppose we are "conscious"? What is it that we mean by this? What is the inverse or negative of it?
I go to sleep usually sometime during most days, for maybe five or six hours. Usually that's enough. It's never solid though, well, not anymore. Nobody calls that "unconcious" exactly, it's just "sleep". I've been put under anesthesia a few times for relatively minor surgery, many years ago. Now they just use plenty of local anesthetics maybe for those things. That is achieved by relatively small lipid-like molecules that disrupt membrane/synapse functions. That would be something like "nerve death", but not "unconscious"
Cognition is probably synonymous with "conscious" in some people's ideas of it all. Awareness, yes, but it has to be more than passive awareness. A camera can be "conscious" if awareness it all it takes. A computer with a camera, and a program directing specific responses to specific optical events belies a definition that includes awareness and response. Such a response, imo, would be "unintelligent", lacking actual cognition. You can have a camera detect an intruder and detonate something. . . . a hydrogen bomb, for example. . . . you could even program facial recognition so it would only go off on the "right" person. Still not intelligence or cognition like humans routinely do, even the dullards amongst us. With perhaps only a few exceptions like SRI or SSRI-hyped parolees programmed to shoot cops in pizza parlors by darkside operatives of our "intelligence" folks, for all I know.
The essentially "human" thing about human beings is self-will. The ability to call the shot based on what we choose within ourselves. We see the world around us, and we choose an action from many possible actions present in our imagination, because we actually do have our own "will".
consciousness involves not just awareness, not just the capacity to act, but the presence of cognition totally within ourselves which processes some arbitrary but generally rich set of imagined responses, and chooses one as our own. "Will".
"Will" is not just chemistry, it involves something beyond that. If it were chemistry, we would have no choice.
The part of "us" that makes choices is something that transcends our physical nature, our chemical and physical structure.
If we have "will" now, what reason can there be for supposing we haven't had it before "life" or won't have it after "life". This is the core fact presented by most near-death accounts. Every story I have heard attributes to the human essence something that maintains "will" even in the "near-death" state. Consciousness independent of the human coil. . . .
PearlWatson
Well-Known Member
Part of being conscious ain't just awareness it is self awareness.
If you put a mirror in front of a cat it thinks there is another cat there.
The same is true of toddlers until they do a little testing...look behind the mirror...see that the being in the mirror does everything they do.
If you put a mirror in front of a cat it thinks there is another cat there.
The same is true of toddlers until they do a little testing...look behind the mirror...see that the being in the mirror does everything they do.