I have spent this week enjoying Stephen King's latest opus, Under the Dome, and I am SO loving it!!! It's HUGE, too! 34+ hours of audiobook listening. But the vastness and complexity of the story is part of what makes it amazing!
It's crazy, I was in the middle of Furies of Calderon (audiobook) and about 1/4 into Seeking Spirits (hard copy), AND after this past Saturday's investigation Mike loaned me Collison Course by William Shatner and John loaned me the Starhunter box set. So it's not like I was looking for entertainment, lol. If anything, I was budgeting my time to get through this embarrassment of riches.
But then I'm in Walmart, shopping (essentials) and I see that King has a new blockbuster out, and it looked COOL! A small northeastern town finds itself TRAPPED UNDER AN INVISIBLE DOME!!! :D
I mean, in the hands of just about any author besides King, Koonts, Crichton or Adams I probably would have scoffed and forgotten about it. But I've read enough of King's work to know that he can make the silliest of notions work! (He somehow finds the reality of the most unreal situations, and forces you to invest your emotions into the characters trapped in that circumstance.)
And as I'm listening to this, I'm struck by what genius horror writers King and Koontz are!
If you study the horror genre long enough, you will find that one of the psychological tricks horror writers use is to have characters enjoy the Darkness... If you want to create a human monster, you have that character do horrible things, and enjoy doing it. For some reason, it's really, really creepy to watch a person enjoying doing something that you have difficulty imagining real people doing.
When this is done poorly, you get sexy vampires who always smile coyly when the kill their victims, or evil geniuses who laugh ominously when they reveal their evil plans.
But when this is done well, you get the creeps whenever that character is in the chapter or on the screen.
Then, if the horror writer is particularly ambitious, he/she might have one of the main characters enjoying doing some dark deed. There is a literary theory that horror stories are about breaking down people so that they are, themselves, almost monsters. (Some folks swear by this, but I believe it's merely one of several approaches to writing an effective horror storie.) So, maybe, in the climactic battle, you might have the hero not only dismantle the monster, but really get into it, like in a sick way. (Think about the ending of Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter when Corey Feldman's character hacks up Jason, killing him, then can't stop hacking. His sister pulls him away and hugs him to her, but the camera reveals his expression: His bloodlust is still up, and he may have been permanently altered by this experience.)
But what I've noticed King doing in this book (and Koontz in some of his work; and more besides these two, I'm sure, but I'm not really widely read (I like who I like and I generally stick with them)) is a bit more insidious -- and may be a contributing factor to why these novels are so effective: King makes you, the reader, enjoy the Darkness!
Here's what I mean: King creates characters who are so... inhuman that you really, really want to see them killed! You want to see them tortured and tormented in the most excrutiating ways possible!
I've never really noticed this before.
King makes me hate these characters. He makes me want to watch them die. (And, I suspect, I'm not the only one to react this way.)
Since I was a kid, I've always gotten of when the really, really bad man is stopped by the really, really good guy -- usually mortally. But because a staple of the horror genre is gore, when the bad guys die, they die bloody!
You expect it.
You're disappointed if you don't get it.
One of the best novels I've ever read is a Koontz novel (the name of which I won't reveal here for reasons that will be obvious in 2 seconds) and it contains one of the most frightening human monsters of all time (on par with Hannibal Lector, or Hitler) and his ultimate end... left me unfulfilled.
Which is sort of ironic (if I'm using the word correctly here) because the point of the novel is the power of people loving and looking out for one another. I hated any chapter that featured this character because the warped way he thought and acted made me feel like I needed a shower every time he took the page, whereas I adored every paragraph and sentence with any of the myriad other characters in the book! I loved these character because they were good people getting along the best they could in unfairly difficult circumstances, helping each other out along the way.
But then when the "monster" is removed from the picture (which is, basically, what you're waiting for from the start of the novel) in a fairly tidy manner, I feel a little cheated because he didn't die horribly enough.
How warped is that?!!
And earlier in life, I didn't find anything wrong with my emotional reactions -- wanting the bad guys to die horribly -- because these were fictitious characters, these were "people" who had never lived, except in imagination. And that was good enough for me.
But these past years my intention -- the desire behind my thoughts, feelings and actions -- has become important to me, and monitoring my intentions has become an ongoing practice of mine.
And it has been quite an interesting revelation to observe the intricacy of the craft behind a master writer's work! I didn't notice it in the last 2 King novels I read -- Duma Key (AWESOME!!!) and From a Buick 8 because the "bad guys" were supernatural. I don't actually feel a desire to seek out sick, twisted retribution against a vicious hurricane that ravages hundreds or thousands of victims, even though my deepest sympathy and empathy is with them.
So it was quite interesting, and not a little disturbing, to notice how quickly and thoroughly I desire the blood of an evil character. (And I tend to imagine myself to be so "enlightened"! Tisk, tisk!)
And I'm not certain, but I think the way I discovered King's skillful use of this "enjoying the Darkness" (that's not, like, an official term for this literary device, just one I'm calling it for now) tool is because he also used a simple, wide-spread literary tool when he finally killed off a couple of minor monsters in this book I'm reading now:
He made me empathize with the monsters.
Movies are a bit simplistic with the application of literary tools, because they're looking for the biggest bang for their buck, if you will. Finding out that the shark in Jaws II is the mother of the other shark (if I'm remembering this correctly, and not confusing it with another Jaws movie) gives the monster motivation, but you don't empathize with it. On the other hand, whatever version of Frankenstein you watch, you totally empathize with Frankenstein's creation, but you're not likely to be frightened of it.
Novels are a great deal more complex.
In this one (and this is just a teeny-tiny shard of the story, barely even a sub-plot, really, in the scope of this huge story) King creates these 2 human monsters, who are monsters for the duration of their literary lives... until they die. Then, with just a few words, you sort of feel bad for their fate, despite the inhuman things they have done to earn their end.
Shakespeare was right: "What a piece of work is man..."
I had no idea I was particularly complex! And yet, here I am lusting after a "person's" blood when I never would have imagined it possible! (Regardless of whether or not the "person" is real, it's my intention that interests me in this particular matter.)
Also -- and perhaps this is my original point in writing this entry -- HOW BADASS IS STEPHEN KING?!! :D
Thursday, November 19, 2009
Wednesday, November 11, 2009
9 on the "Narcissistic Personality Inventory"
Have you heard about this test?
Dr. Drew was on Conan O'Brien tonight, and he mentioned this test, and I immediately had to see if there was a copy of it online that I could take! I found it reprinted here...
The test says that the average score is 15.3, that celebrities generally average 17.8, and that Dr. drew himself scored a 16.
And I scored a 9.
Not sure what to make of that.
I mean, obviously, I don't want to score too high, because that means I'm really narcissistic.
But...
Surely scoring low means I have self-esteem issues or something, right?
But I don't think I have a poor self image. I mean, I quite fond of me. In fact, I'm a huge fan of me! (I wouldn't go so far as to suggest there should be more of me wandering around the planet, because then I would be slightly less special. I suspect a single me is probably the perfect amount of me in the world.)
But a 9?
The test further says it's important to consider which traits are dominant in my personality. Some traits, like authority and self-sufficiency, are more useful than others, like vanity and entitlement.
So I broke down my stats, and they are as follows:
• Authority: 4 (out of 8)
• Self-sufficiency: 0 (out of 6)
• Superiority: 3 (out of 5)
• Exhibitionism: 1 (out of 7)
• Exploitativeness: 1 (out of 5)
• Vanity: 0 (out of 3)
• Entitlement: 0 (out of 6)
So I seem to be right down the middle as far as my sense of authority (which makes sense if you've ever asked me "So what do you want to do tongiht?").
I, apparently, have no self-sufficiency. I don't know if that's fair...
I seem to feel fairly superior. Make of that what you will. I have been accused of being a pompous ass before, so perhaps this result confirms that assertion. ;)
1 out of 7 in Exhibitionism... Well, if you saw me without a shirt, I believe you would be grateful for my lack of exhibitionism.
I seem to be 1/5th exploitative. This seems like a fairly healthy number, right?
I appears to have NO vanity. :D I'm not sure how accurate this test is, but I'm fine with this result! ;P
And I appear to have no sense of entitlement. That's probably good, right? I mean, I've known some folks who seem to have a 5/6 or 6/6 Entitlement, and I'm happy to think I'm not like them.
But still... a 9? Aren't we naturally supposed to be a little more narcissistic than that? I mean, most folks score somewhere around a 15.
Hmm...
You think, maybe, it raises my score a little that the first thing I did after taking this test is blog about it?
Dr. Drew was on Conan O'Brien tonight, and he mentioned this test, and I immediately had to see if there was a copy of it online that I could take! I found it reprinted here...
The test says that the average score is 15.3, that celebrities generally average 17.8, and that Dr. drew himself scored a 16.
And I scored a 9.
Not sure what to make of that.
I mean, obviously, I don't want to score too high, because that means I'm really narcissistic.
But...
Surely scoring low means I have self-esteem issues or something, right?
But I don't think I have a poor self image. I mean, I quite fond of me. In fact, I'm a huge fan of me! (I wouldn't go so far as to suggest there should be more of me wandering around the planet, because then I would be slightly less special. I suspect a single me is probably the perfect amount of me in the world.)
But a 9?
The test further says it's important to consider which traits are dominant in my personality. Some traits, like authority and self-sufficiency, are more useful than others, like vanity and entitlement.
So I broke down my stats, and they are as follows:
• Authority: 4 (out of 8)
• Self-sufficiency: 0 (out of 6)
• Superiority: 3 (out of 5)
• Exhibitionism: 1 (out of 7)
• Exploitativeness: 1 (out of 5)
• Vanity: 0 (out of 3)
• Entitlement: 0 (out of 6)
So I seem to be right down the middle as far as my sense of authority (which makes sense if you've ever asked me "So what do you want to do tongiht?").
I, apparently, have no self-sufficiency. I don't know if that's fair...
I seem to feel fairly superior. Make of that what you will. I have been accused of being a pompous ass before, so perhaps this result confirms that assertion. ;)
1 out of 7 in Exhibitionism... Well, if you saw me without a shirt, I believe you would be grateful for my lack of exhibitionism.
I seem to be 1/5th exploitative. This seems like a fairly healthy number, right?
I appears to have NO vanity. :D I'm not sure how accurate this test is, but I'm fine with this result! ;P
And I appear to have no sense of entitlement. That's probably good, right? I mean, I've known some folks who seem to have a 5/6 or 6/6 Entitlement, and I'm happy to think I'm not like them.
But still... a 9? Aren't we naturally supposed to be a little more narcissistic than that? I mean, most folks score somewhere around a 15.
Hmm...
You think, maybe, it raises my score a little that the first thing I did after taking this test is blog about it?
Friday, November 06, 2009
The Men Who Stare At Goats... THE BOOK!
The movie looks like it's going to be awesome, but I just finished reading the book, WHICH I LOVED! :D
The difference, put simply, is that the book is completely non-fiction -- the information therein researched and verified as thoroughly as possible by the author -- and the film is a work of fiction.
I'm still going to see the movie! It looks like a hysterical flick, and if they can balance the duality of comedy and disturbing fact the way Jon Ronson does in his book, then the flick should be a great after-movie-coffeehouse-discussion topic! In fact, if the filmmakers get a larger audience discussing some of the things the book brings to light, then this could be an all-time favorite movie!
The book deals with Military Intelligence investigating paranormal abilities, with the intent of creating super-effective, super-inexpensive super soldiers .
It is not, however, a pro-paranormal book, lol. It's clear that Jon Ronson puts NO stock in claims of the paranormal abilities, and a lot of the humor comes from just how silly such people look to non-believers!
In fact, it gave me a new (much more amusing) vision of myself on Saturday nights, wandering around in the darkness looking for ghosts with equipment that was most decidely not designed for that purpose. :D
But that's really just the tip of the iceberg.
As Ronson tracks the effects of this stort-lived experiement in military human potential and observes how the ideas proposed in the 1970s have morphed into techniques for current PSYOPS, the book looses some of its wacky humor, but remains edge-of-your-seat riveting.
I had actually wanted to read the book before I found out there was a film version. It was mentioned (if memory serves) by a guest on one of the paranormal podcasts I listen to, which piqued my interest. (In particular, I believe the guest mentioned the military experiement in which a soldier stared at a numbered goat, attempting to burt its heart, until the goat next to it toppled over from a heart attack.) So when I saw the commercials for the flick, I figured I should read the book before the movie comes out because (a) the movie looks hysterical, and I suspect folks will be talking about it for a while, and (b) if I saw the movie first, I might be less inclinded to read the book. (I'm a lazy sort.)
Plus, it's always more fun to have the book in your mind when you see the movie. They have to cut a lot of information out of books to transform them into movies, and that extra information can sometimes make a poor adaptation a little more enjoyable. To illustrate: The Harry Potter films work just fine the way they are; Twilight was fine as a film, but the book is better (natch) and the movie is better when you know what's missing; the film version of Hannibal (if you even remember that flick) is really weak, so seeing the movie after having read the book makes you feel better by reminding you that you had previously enjoyed a different incarnation of this story.
But in the best of situations, it seems to me that a great adaptation of a great novel just create 2 great -- but different -- products. Like the Harry Potter films, Jurassic Park and other good Michael Crichton adaptations, the good Stephen King adaptations, as so on... No matter how good the movie is or how many times you watch it, you still get in the mood to go back and reread the original from time to time.
So, anyway, I wanted to have the book in my head before I saw the movie.
And I'm SO GLAD I did! :D GREAT READ!
Okay, just 1 hour 45 minutes left in my shift, so I'm going away now.
Hope you had a great Guy Fawkes Day yesterday!
:)
The difference, put simply, is that the book is completely non-fiction -- the information therein researched and verified as thoroughly as possible by the author -- and the film is a work of fiction.
I'm still going to see the movie! It looks like a hysterical flick, and if they can balance the duality of comedy and disturbing fact the way Jon Ronson does in his book, then the flick should be a great after-movie-coffeehouse-discussion topic! In fact, if the filmmakers get a larger audience discussing some of the things the book brings to light, then this could be an all-time favorite movie!
The book deals with Military Intelligence investigating paranormal abilities, with the intent of creating super-effective, super-inexpensive super soldiers .
It is not, however, a pro-paranormal book, lol. It's clear that Jon Ronson puts NO stock in claims of the paranormal abilities, and a lot of the humor comes from just how silly such people look to non-believers!
In fact, it gave me a new (much more amusing) vision of myself on Saturday nights, wandering around in the darkness looking for ghosts with equipment that was most decidely not designed for that purpose. :D
But that's really just the tip of the iceberg.
As Ronson tracks the effects of this stort-lived experiement in military human potential and observes how the ideas proposed in the 1970s have morphed into techniques for current PSYOPS, the book looses some of its wacky humor, but remains edge-of-your-seat riveting.
I had actually wanted to read the book before I found out there was a film version. It was mentioned (if memory serves) by a guest on one of the paranormal podcasts I listen to, which piqued my interest. (In particular, I believe the guest mentioned the military experiement in which a soldier stared at a numbered goat, attempting to burt its heart, until the goat next to it toppled over from a heart attack.) So when I saw the commercials for the flick, I figured I should read the book before the movie comes out because (a) the movie looks hysterical, and I suspect folks will be talking about it for a while, and (b) if I saw the movie first, I might be less inclinded to read the book. (I'm a lazy sort.)
Plus, it's always more fun to have the book in your mind when you see the movie. They have to cut a lot of information out of books to transform them into movies, and that extra information can sometimes make a poor adaptation a little more enjoyable. To illustrate: The Harry Potter films work just fine the way they are; Twilight was fine as a film, but the book is better (natch) and the movie is better when you know what's missing; the film version of Hannibal (if you even remember that flick) is really weak, so seeing the movie after having read the book makes you feel better by reminding you that you had previously enjoyed a different incarnation of this story.
But in the best of situations, it seems to me that a great adaptation of a great novel just create 2 great -- but different -- products. Like the Harry Potter films, Jurassic Park and other good Michael Crichton adaptations, the good Stephen King adaptations, as so on... No matter how good the movie is or how many times you watch it, you still get in the mood to go back and reread the original from time to time.
So, anyway, I wanted to have the book in my head before I saw the movie.
And I'm SO GLAD I did! :D GREAT READ!
Okay, just 1 hour 45 minutes left in my shift, so I'm going away now.
Hope you had a great Guy Fawkes Day yesterday!
:)
Tuesday, October 27, 2009
The Ghost Light of Bragg Road
Last weekend was an AWESOME weekend!!! :D
Texas Spirits hit the road last weekend for a field trip to see the ghost light of Bragg Road in Saratoga, TX!
Bragg Road is this straight, 8-mile stretch of dirt road lined with trees on both sides and swamp on the other side of the trees. The road is just barely wide enough for two vehicles to pass each other going opposite directions IF one of the cars is stopped and pulled over to the side as far as they can go.
The reports are a glowing ball -- maybe the size of a tennis ball or a volleyball -- that can change colors from pale blue to yellow to greenish white, that shoots down the road, sometimes darting in and out of the trees, and sometimes even passing into and through cars that happen to be on the road. The ghost light can be differentiated from passing car headlights (about which I will talk in more detail shortly) by the fact that it moves up and down and sideways, varying in speed. The ghost light might, according to reports, zoom down the road toward you, darting in and out of the treeline, then pause maybe 15 feet in front of you, hover there for a minute or so, then shoot off faster than lightening, disappearing up into the night sky.
The backstory is less interesting...
See, whenever an area -- anywhere in the United States, like, anywhere -- with a ghost light, the legend is always one of 3 stories:
1. A railroad engineer/conductor was beheaded, and now he travels the tracks, carrying a lantern, looking for his head.
2. Some young lover was meant to meet some other young lover at a specific place, often so they could run off together and elope or something. But the other young lover was killed, and thereby failed to make the rendezvous, and now the one young lover wanders the area still, searching for his/her soul mate. (I don't remember what the specific size/shape of the ghost light is attributed to... maybe it's the young lover's ghost carrying a lantern for the search.)
3. There is something called the Will-O-The-Whisp that has something to do with unbaptized babies or something like that.
(I'm at work, so I can't be bothered to do the research to refresh my memory, lol.)
But wherever you are in the U.S., if you go to a place with a ghost light, you will get one of the first two back stories as "historical fact" to explain the ghost light. (I don't think people really go in for the Will-O-The-Wisp theory anymore.)
Well, the Bragg Road Ghost Light just mashed-up the first 2 stories -- just to cover all their bases, I suppose. ;P
HOWEVER...
The fact that people employ an age-old, oft-duplicated urban legend or folk tale as back story to explain a phenomenon DOES NOT negate the existence of the phenomenon. It just means that human nature is that people feel a little safer with weird stuff when they have a recognizable story to explain it. (It's similar to our need to name things and categorize them, even if the categories are as random as "normal" and "paranormal". It's simply a Human Thang.)
Making the Bragg Road Ghost Light more intriguing is the fact that Paula, founder of Texas Spirits Paranormal Investigations, ACTUALLY SAW THE LIGHT! :D
So you KNOW I was excited about this investigation!
[Quick Note: Please don't think that I blow off research and background in general. If I were making an official report or writing a chapter in a book or something, I would be much more thorough. But since this is a blog entry, I'm being much less formal. I'm just trying to convey the experience of this weekend here.]
More intriguing, still, is the fact that John investigated Bragg Rood, too, at a different time, was not there for Paula's experience, and did not experience the ghost light.
So two of the people whom I look up to as investigators have opposing experiences with Bragg Road! And I get to investigate it for myself now!!! :D
Stephanie and Mike picked me up from my casa at 10am, which was a really nice start to my Saturday morning. Then we hooked up with Jesse, Paula and John, and I rode out to Kountze (where we had hotel rooms booked, though Bragg Road is in Saratoga) with Paula and John. This is where I got to hear their past experiences investigating there, and then I got to talk their ears off about different paranormal stuff I usually don't have an opportunity to ask their takes on.
When we got to Kountze, we checked-in and got to meet our cheerleaders for the evening: Paula's sister had brought some friends to investigate Bragg Road with us! I call them "cheerleaders" because, at first, they talked to us as though we were celebrities, lol. It was a nice ego-boost. ;) It was also cool that these non-investigators were going with us because I would get to gage the investigator response to anything that happened against the lay-person response (for lack of a better way of describing it). In other words, when a door slams by itself in an abandoned asylum, normal folks run away, and investigators run toward the slamming door. So it would be cool, investigating Bragg Road for my first time, to have 2 different perspectives through which to view whatever we all experienced out there. (It's like 2 different sets of data gathered from the same experiment, or a scene in a movie shot from two different cameras at two different angles to the action.)
As it turned out, I ended up getting 2 shots at Bragg Road.
Phase 1:
It turns out that Bragg Road -- or "Ghost Road", as it is locally known -- is something of a hang-out on Saturday night. We spent several hours watching head lights make their way slowly down either side of the road. There were times when the lights, on either side, were so distant that the stretch of road we were on was really, really dark (except for the moon, which shone extremely bright with no street lamps or buildings around).
It was really cool, too! I got a kick out of walking up and down the road in the darkness, hearing something on the other side of the trees from time to time, imagining that I was going to catch a glimpse of Bigfoot disappearing deeper into the woods. (There were no reports of Sasquatch sightings, but a guy can hope, right?)
The heavy traffic during Phase 1 turned out to be quite useful. Car headlights and swamp gas (literally, swamp gas!) are two of the go-to debunk theories for the Bragg Road ghost light. The road lies between stretches of swamp, and the road lies between 2 stretches of highway. So seeing what headlights on the road looked like -- particularly as they looked when they were at the ends of the road -- was really informative.
So Phase 1 lasted a few hours, and really wasn't the slightest bit spooky, but was fun. And it gave me a nice sense of the road. A "feel" for it, if you will.
Phase 1 ended after a few hours of nothing happening and our guest investigators, having learned of a near-by cemetery and an old local legend about a hotel that burned down, decided they wanted to go explore (possibly) more fertile paranormal territory.
Jesse and I, and two of our guest investigators, spent quite some time wandering around intersection of Bragg Road and Old Bragg Road, looking for signs of at least a foundation where a hotel could be, even if it burned down decades ago.
No luck there.
We also swung by Sutton Cemetery for a peak. (You can't investigate Texas cemeteries after dark unless you have permission -- Texas cemeteries are off-limits to the public after sundown -- and we didn't have permission.
I believe it was around 1:00 am when we all got back to the hotel.
When we got back to the hotel, I stepped outside for a smoke, and reflected on the night. The whole day had been a lot of fun! It was very cool!
When I got back inside, I found that Jesse had been looking for me. Was I interested in going back to Bragg Road?
My response was something akin to "Hells yeah!"
Mike had work stuff he needed to do, so he and Stephanie stayed at the hotel. And Paula and John had investigated the site before, so I suspect that had something to do with their choice not to go back out tonight.
So the party for Phase 2 was Jesse, 3 of our guest investigators and myself.
The guest investigators, it turns out, BROUGHT FOOD, which they shared! :D Tasty sandwiches and muffins, and even brownies! :) So we ate a bite before heading back out to Bragg Road.
Paula let me borrow her car for the return trip... poor, silly woman. It's a stick-shift, and it's been years since I owned a stick-shift, but I didn't grind her gears too badly. ;P (I'm inserting this part of the story just to torment Paula, should she read this entry, lol.)
Phase 2 was when things got interesting...
Along the 8-mile stretch of road are approximately 4 niches where you can pull over and park or turn around. The road gets really rough at the north end of the road, and Paula's car rides low, so for this second trip, we intended to stay on the south half of Bragg Road. So we pulled into the first niche and parked.
The moon had disappeared now. All the traffic had cleared out, taking their Saturday night adventures elsewhere, apparently. So, as far as we could tell, it was only the 5 of us on Bragg Road now. The road was almost pitch black, except for the stars directly above us.
We started off walking north down the road.
We were, maybe, a quarter of a mile away from where we had parked when we saw a tiny pale-blue light down at the south end of the road, where we had entered it. The tiny blue light quickly split into 2 lights: headlights. A car was coming down the road toward us.
Bragg Road creates a sort of optical illusion -- things seem closer than they are. I speculate it's because we -- American, 21st Century human beings -- are simply not accustomed to looking at a straight road a mile or more longer. We've grown up seeing straight roads, but they never expand 8 miles! And it's 8 miles of trees, so there are no buildings or street lights to tell your brain "That's about 2 blocks away". The visual references we usually have are not provided here.
So -- thanks to all the traffic traveling up and down Bragg Road during Phase 1 of our investigation -- we knew it would be a long time before the car that had just entered the road would reach us.
Maybe 3 seconds had passed before we turned back toward the south end of the road and saw that the headlights had disappeared.
Well, that was odd, we all agreed.
There was nowhere the car could have turned into because there were no turns on the road, except for those 4 niches. Had they been traveling faster than most, and pulled in where we had parked Paula's car?
Jesse said, "Paula's car is locked, right?"
"Um... no." We were, as far as I could tell, alone on the road. I hadn't thought we needed to lock Paula's car.
So Jesse and I head back for the niche, flashlights pointed ahead of us. We weren't running, but we weren't strolling, either. Most likely, no one visiting the road this late was looking for trouble, and they hadn't been there long enough to make a thorough search of Paula's car, even if they...
Paula's car sat alone in the dark niche, unmolested.
There were no other vehicles in sight.
We shone out flashlights back down south, looking for evidence of the vehicle we had seen (we thought) pull onto Bragg Road. Some of the cars, earlier that night, would drive down the road with only their parking lights on. Since they we forced (because of the uneven dirt road) to travel so slowly, there was very little chance of a mishap. Others traveled with their lights off completely. Again, as long as they didn't drive off the road into the trees, it was unlikely there would be any trouble. Also, the trees lining either side of the road were so dense that it was impossible for a car to stray far. (They would have to pay to have the dent knocked out of their bumper, but that was about the worst likely to happen. There was no chance they were going off-roading from Bragg Road.)
But our flashlights didn't catch the glimmer of any vehicles on their way up the road.
That wasn't surprising, though, as out flashlight beams, while impressive, were not likely to reach half a mile, much less a mile down the dark road. But another thing we had learned from Phase 1 of the night was that you could trust your ears on Bragg Road. Even when a car was creeping up on us without its lights earlier in the evening, we could still hear the low rumble of its engine. Even when you can't see it, you can hear that there is a car somewhere around you.
But Bragg Road was silent, as well.
We discussed it, and the consensus was that the only logical possibility for a car to disappear was by backing out, only it would have taken the car longer to back out than the time it took for it to disappear. In all honesty, the car really couldn't have reached the niche in which we were now standing in the time it took for the lights to disappear.
It was a genuine mystery.
It wasn't anything like the reports we had heard of the Bragg Road Ghost Light, and we all agreed that the light looked like headlights.
Let's call this "Experience #1".
So, we decided to drive Paula's car north, to the next niche, and park there. This way, we could explore the road further north than we had been able to thus far tonight, or would be able to if we simply kept walking north from the previous niche.
Once again, we set out wandering northward.
I still hadn't seen the Headless Horseman or Bigfoot, but the walk continued to be cool.
One of the guest investigators, Donna, slowly became convinced she was seeing something up ahead. It looked to her like the orange "cherry" of a cigarette. Like, maybe, someone way down the road, standing there and smoking.
Or something.
She and I found ourselves walking a bit faster, unconsciously sort of racing to find out what it was that she could see and the rest of us could not.
But then Jesse made a point: If this thing were the ghost light or anything paranormal, we wouldn't be able to catch up with it, most likely. It would probably continue to recede further and further away, like the end of a rainbow. And if it were just a guy smoking, perhaps we didn't really want to catch up to him. He might want his privacy. there were a (very) few homes off the road (much farther down), and if it turned out to be a resident of Bragg Road, they might not appreciate a bunch of strangers pestering them at what now must be 3:00am. And if it were an optical illusion, then -- again, like the rainbow example -- there was a strong chance we would never catch up to it.
One thing that seems to prove true again and again is that paranormal phenomena doesn't seem to be "catch-able". If you chase it, you loose it. Every time. It seems -- not just from my very limited experience, but according to those who have years, and even decades, of experience in the field -- that if the paranormal wants you to experience it, it will present itself to you.
So Jesse, wisely, turned us all around to head back in the direction of the car.
We didn't talk much, so the profound darkness was joined by a creepy silence that you only experience when you're that far removed from the city.
As we walked, Donna, kept looking behind her. I did too for a bit. Since we were the only ones on the road, I could comfortably walk backward without worry of bumping into... well, anything, really.
We hadn't quite covered the (maybe) quarter mile to the car when we all saw a pale blue light, far in front of us, somewhere near the south entrance to Bragg Road.
We stopped and watched it.
It was a single light. This didn't look like car headlights.
The blue-white "ball" (for lack of a better description; we had no way of gauging how far in front of us it was) grew brighter, more intense, and turned yellow.
We murmured to each other that it was, indeed, a single light. This was not, as far as we could tell, the headlights from a car.
But still, we didn't have a clue how far away it was.
Then the bright yellow light became more intense, and green. It was sort of golden in the center, but the edges were clearly green. We all confirmed this to each other.
As the light grew more intense, I wondered it it was moving closer to us.
But it wasn't moving up or down, or sideways. It remained directly in the center of the road.
And then it was gone.
What the hell was that?
We ran to the car, hopped in, and drove as fast as we safely could toward the south entrance to the road. If it was a car, we wanted to be able to rule that possibility out.
It felt like it took us forever to get to the entrance!
The unfriendly road wouldn't allow us to move too fast, lest it vibrate Paula's poor car apart. Besides, if a car had decided to park in the middle of the road with its lights off, we could be right on top of it before we even saw it! (This had happened to Jesse and me during Phase 1, when we were on foot. A pickup truck, no less! Right there in front of us and we didn't see it until it turned on its lights and started up! Gave me quite a start.)
As we drove, I think I made a joke about who else was secretly hoping that the light appeared in front of us, passed into the car and just hung out with us for a few seconds. But that might have happened at some other time that night.
I was almost on the highway before I even realized we had exited Bragg Road. (Did I mention that there are no streetlights anywhere?)
I stopped, and we discussed what we had just witnessed.
The fact that we didn't pass -- or run into -- a car or truck meant that we had seen the ghost light, right? That was the reasoning of the guest investigators. It was reported to change colors and to simply disappear.
Jesse and I pointed out, though, that it was also reported to dart around the road (sometimes ducking into the trees), and be seen to disappear straight up into the air, or to the side. This light, as far as we could tell, remained perfectly still.
Besides this, I had a theory that might debunk what we had just seen...
The theory began as a way of explaining to myself how those headlights we had seen earlier might simply disappear the way they had.
If you look at a map of Bragg Road (like the one above (click on it to see the entire image)) you'll notice that Farm To Market Road 787 appears to head straight up into Bragg Road, then veers-off to form a sort of lower-case "y" shape. If it didn't veer off so swiftly, 787 would become Bragg Road.
Now, I know a little about the physicality of optics from my years making short films with my buddies -- as well as my study of special effects, my study of slight of hand and illusion, and my obsession with 3-D (even when you see 3-D naturally, with your naked eye, the perception of depth is still a sort of optical illusion, though a reliable one) -- and if my understanding is near accurate, here is what I believe we saw:
Experience #1 - Because of the darkness, the treeline and the distance from the south entrance to Bragg Road, we couldn't really know if the headlights we saw were on Bragg Road.
We might have seen a vehicle traveling up 787, but because it appeared to be between the treeline, it looked like it was on Bragg Road. Then when it veered west -- the way 787 does -- the trees blocked our view of the headlights and it, effectively, "disappeared" as far as we could tell.
Experience #2 - This is where my logic gets a little strained...
At first, the headlights in Experience #1 appeared to be a single light, either because the treeline blocked one of the headlights or because of the sheer distance from the entrance. Then the single pale-blue light seemed to split into two separate lights, revealing the source to be a vehicle.
For Experience #2, we were maybe a mile further from the entrance.
So is it possible that, at that distance, a pair of headlights might seem to our eyes as a single light? The light we perceive, at that point, is being forced through the treeline which, in effect, would be like forcing it through a cylinder of solid material.
Have you ever tried to shine a wide flashlight beam through a pinprick in a thick, black cloth? It looks like a star in the night sky. If you have a large enough light source and enough pinpricks, you can actually simulate a night sky. We did this back in theatre when I was a teenager. The effect isn't like you're getting a tiny sliver of the light radiating from the source, but as though all the radiance from the light source is forcing itself through that tiny hole.
The light seems to become brighter, rather than diminished. Focused.
So what about the color changes, though?
I can't explain this scientifically, but here's my theory: Assuming Experience #2 was a car, the headlights might have appeared blue-white when it was furthest away from us, and possibly traveling down a slight incline in the road. Then when the incline leveled out, the light became yellow and more intense. Then as the car got closer, that yellow light might have (and this is where my logic really strains) picked up the green from the leaves of the treeline that was focusing the beam of headlights into a single, intense ball of light for us.
That makes sense, right?
The explanation was really for Jesse's benefit, because our guest investigators weren't interested in debunking their cool experience.
After that, we headed back to the hotel because it was a little after 3:30am and we all had a long trip ahead of us in a few hours.
I rode back to Austin with Jesse in Stephanie and Mike's car (they live up north, closer to me, while Paula and John live WAY south). It was a fun trip! Even after a mere 4 or so hours of sleep, I didn't feel drowsy the whole way back!
So, just between you and me, here's my take on my Bragg Road experiences...
I don't really know how much water my "explaination" holds, scientifically. I don't know enough about optics to be able to even know where to start researching my theory to prove or disprove it.
Also, I don't know if the stretch of 787 just south of Bragg Road is long enough to allow a vehicle's headlights to do what I attempted to describe just now. I, stupidly and amateurishly, failed to note exactly how long Experience #2 lasted, and by now my memory is way-fuzzy.
I know that the light didn't move the way the light Paula saw moved. And the perfect stillness, centered-ness of the light we saw is more in line with my explanation. But I also have no idea how far ahead of us it was. If it were the Ghost Light and it were near the southern entrance to Bragg Road, might it not have been able to bob up and down, left and right and still appear, to us, to be standing still and centered? If it were that far away, might it not have been able to dart up into the sky, or sideways into the trees, without us seeing the tell-tale tracer of light that revealed which direction it went?
I'm not trying to make this paranormal, and I'm not trying to make it not-paranormal. I believe true skepticism questions both sides of an equation. I know zealot skeptics who will accept any explanation that points away from the paranormal, and I know zealot believers who will accept any explanation that points toward the paranormal. But as an investigator, I simply have to admit that I don't have enough data either way.
Still, I've got 2 interesting experiences under my belt! :D
Also, even though you're not supposed to enter cemeteries in Texas after dark, I might -- maybe -- have pulled out my digital audio recorder when we stopped by Sutton Cemetery and I might -- maybe -- have pressed Record, and so I might -- maybe -- have caught some voices that aren't supposed to be on the track I recorded. ;P
I still need to listen to it.
Tonight might be a good night to do that, huh?
HAPPY HALLOWEEN!!!
:D
Texas Spirits hit the road last weekend for a field trip to see the ghost light of Bragg Road in Saratoga, TX!
Bragg Road is this straight, 8-mile stretch of dirt road lined with trees on both sides and swamp on the other side of the trees. The road is just barely wide enough for two vehicles to pass each other going opposite directions IF one of the cars is stopped and pulled over to the side as far as they can go.
The reports are a glowing ball -- maybe the size of a tennis ball or a volleyball -- that can change colors from pale blue to yellow to greenish white, that shoots down the road, sometimes darting in and out of the trees, and sometimes even passing into and through cars that happen to be on the road. The ghost light can be differentiated from passing car headlights (about which I will talk in more detail shortly) by the fact that it moves up and down and sideways, varying in speed. The ghost light might, according to reports, zoom down the road toward you, darting in and out of the treeline, then pause maybe 15 feet in front of you, hover there for a minute or so, then shoot off faster than lightening, disappearing up into the night sky.
The backstory is less interesting...
See, whenever an area -- anywhere in the United States, like, anywhere -- with a ghost light, the legend is always one of 3 stories:
1. A railroad engineer/conductor was beheaded, and now he travels the tracks, carrying a lantern, looking for his head.
2. Some young lover was meant to meet some other young lover at a specific place, often so they could run off together and elope or something. But the other young lover was killed, and thereby failed to make the rendezvous, and now the one young lover wanders the area still, searching for his/her soul mate. (I don't remember what the specific size/shape of the ghost light is attributed to... maybe it's the young lover's ghost carrying a lantern for the search.)
3. There is something called the Will-O-The-Whisp that has something to do with unbaptized babies or something like that.
(I'm at work, so I can't be bothered to do the research to refresh my memory, lol.)
But wherever you are in the U.S., if you go to a place with a ghost light, you will get one of the first two back stories as "historical fact" to explain the ghost light. (I don't think people really go in for the Will-O-The-Wisp theory anymore.)
Well, the Bragg Road Ghost Light just mashed-up the first 2 stories -- just to cover all their bases, I suppose. ;P
HOWEVER...
The fact that people employ an age-old, oft-duplicated urban legend or folk tale as back story to explain a phenomenon DOES NOT negate the existence of the phenomenon. It just means that human nature is that people feel a little safer with weird stuff when they have a recognizable story to explain it. (It's similar to our need to name things and categorize them, even if the categories are as random as "normal" and "paranormal". It's simply a Human Thang.)
Making the Bragg Road Ghost Light more intriguing is the fact that Paula, founder of Texas Spirits Paranormal Investigations, ACTUALLY SAW THE LIGHT! :D
So you KNOW I was excited about this investigation!
[Quick Note: Please don't think that I blow off research and background in general. If I were making an official report or writing a chapter in a book or something, I would be much more thorough. But since this is a blog entry, I'm being much less formal. I'm just trying to convey the experience of this weekend here.]
More intriguing, still, is the fact that John investigated Bragg Rood, too, at a different time, was not there for Paula's experience, and did not experience the ghost light.
So two of the people whom I look up to as investigators have opposing experiences with Bragg Road! And I get to investigate it for myself now!!! :D
Stephanie and Mike picked me up from my casa at 10am, which was a really nice start to my Saturday morning. Then we hooked up with Jesse, Paula and John, and I rode out to Kountze (where we had hotel rooms booked, though Bragg Road is in Saratoga) with Paula and John. This is where I got to hear their past experiences investigating there, and then I got to talk their ears off about different paranormal stuff I usually don't have an opportunity to ask their takes on.
When we got to Kountze, we checked-in and got to meet our cheerleaders for the evening: Paula's sister had brought some friends to investigate Bragg Road with us! I call them "cheerleaders" because, at first, they talked to us as though we were celebrities, lol. It was a nice ego-boost. ;) It was also cool that these non-investigators were going with us because I would get to gage the investigator response to anything that happened against the lay-person response (for lack of a better way of describing it). In other words, when a door slams by itself in an abandoned asylum, normal folks run away, and investigators run toward the slamming door. So it would be cool, investigating Bragg Road for my first time, to have 2 different perspectives through which to view whatever we all experienced out there. (It's like 2 different sets of data gathered from the same experiment, or a scene in a movie shot from two different cameras at two different angles to the action.)
As it turned out, I ended up getting 2 shots at Bragg Road.
Phase 1:
It turns out that Bragg Road -- or "Ghost Road", as it is locally known -- is something of a hang-out on Saturday night. We spent several hours watching head lights make their way slowly down either side of the road. There were times when the lights, on either side, were so distant that the stretch of road we were on was really, really dark (except for the moon, which shone extremely bright with no street lamps or buildings around).
It was really cool, too! I got a kick out of walking up and down the road in the darkness, hearing something on the other side of the trees from time to time, imagining that I was going to catch a glimpse of Bigfoot disappearing deeper into the woods. (There were no reports of Sasquatch sightings, but a guy can hope, right?)
The heavy traffic during Phase 1 turned out to be quite useful. Car headlights and swamp gas (literally, swamp gas!) are two of the go-to debunk theories for the Bragg Road ghost light. The road lies between stretches of swamp, and the road lies between 2 stretches of highway. So seeing what headlights on the road looked like -- particularly as they looked when they were at the ends of the road -- was really informative.
So Phase 1 lasted a few hours, and really wasn't the slightest bit spooky, but was fun. And it gave me a nice sense of the road. A "feel" for it, if you will.
Phase 1 ended after a few hours of nothing happening and our guest investigators, having learned of a near-by cemetery and an old local legend about a hotel that burned down, decided they wanted to go explore (possibly) more fertile paranormal territory.
Jesse and I, and two of our guest investigators, spent quite some time wandering around intersection of Bragg Road and Old Bragg Road, looking for signs of at least a foundation where a hotel could be, even if it burned down decades ago.
No luck there.
We also swung by Sutton Cemetery for a peak. (You can't investigate Texas cemeteries after dark unless you have permission -- Texas cemeteries are off-limits to the public after sundown -- and we didn't have permission.
I believe it was around 1:00 am when we all got back to the hotel.
When we got back to the hotel, I stepped outside for a smoke, and reflected on the night. The whole day had been a lot of fun! It was very cool!
When I got back inside, I found that Jesse had been looking for me. Was I interested in going back to Bragg Road?
My response was something akin to "Hells yeah!"
Mike had work stuff he needed to do, so he and Stephanie stayed at the hotel. And Paula and John had investigated the site before, so I suspect that had something to do with their choice not to go back out tonight.
So the party for Phase 2 was Jesse, 3 of our guest investigators and myself.
The guest investigators, it turns out, BROUGHT FOOD, which they shared! :D Tasty sandwiches and muffins, and even brownies! :) So we ate a bite before heading back out to Bragg Road.
Paula let me borrow her car for the return trip... poor, silly woman. It's a stick-shift, and it's been years since I owned a stick-shift, but I didn't grind her gears too badly. ;P (I'm inserting this part of the story just to torment Paula, should she read this entry, lol.)
Phase 2 was when things got interesting...
Along the 8-mile stretch of road are approximately 4 niches where you can pull over and park or turn around. The road gets really rough at the north end of the road, and Paula's car rides low, so for this second trip, we intended to stay on the south half of Bragg Road. So we pulled into the first niche and parked.
The moon had disappeared now. All the traffic had cleared out, taking their Saturday night adventures elsewhere, apparently. So, as far as we could tell, it was only the 5 of us on Bragg Road now. The road was almost pitch black, except for the stars directly above us.
We started off walking north down the road.
We were, maybe, a quarter of a mile away from where we had parked when we saw a tiny pale-blue light down at the south end of the road, where we had entered it. The tiny blue light quickly split into 2 lights: headlights. A car was coming down the road toward us.
Bragg Road creates a sort of optical illusion -- things seem closer than they are. I speculate it's because we -- American, 21st Century human beings -- are simply not accustomed to looking at a straight road a mile or more longer. We've grown up seeing straight roads, but they never expand 8 miles! And it's 8 miles of trees, so there are no buildings or street lights to tell your brain "That's about 2 blocks away". The visual references we usually have are not provided here.
So -- thanks to all the traffic traveling up and down Bragg Road during Phase 1 of our investigation -- we knew it would be a long time before the car that had just entered the road would reach us.
Maybe 3 seconds had passed before we turned back toward the south end of the road and saw that the headlights had disappeared.
Well, that was odd, we all agreed.
There was nowhere the car could have turned into because there were no turns on the road, except for those 4 niches. Had they been traveling faster than most, and pulled in where we had parked Paula's car?
Jesse said, "Paula's car is locked, right?"
"Um... no." We were, as far as I could tell, alone on the road. I hadn't thought we needed to lock Paula's car.
So Jesse and I head back for the niche, flashlights pointed ahead of us. We weren't running, but we weren't strolling, either. Most likely, no one visiting the road this late was looking for trouble, and they hadn't been there long enough to make a thorough search of Paula's car, even if they...
Paula's car sat alone in the dark niche, unmolested.
There were no other vehicles in sight.
We shone out flashlights back down south, looking for evidence of the vehicle we had seen (we thought) pull onto Bragg Road. Some of the cars, earlier that night, would drive down the road with only their parking lights on. Since they we forced (because of the uneven dirt road) to travel so slowly, there was very little chance of a mishap. Others traveled with their lights off completely. Again, as long as they didn't drive off the road into the trees, it was unlikely there would be any trouble. Also, the trees lining either side of the road were so dense that it was impossible for a car to stray far. (They would have to pay to have the dent knocked out of their bumper, but that was about the worst likely to happen. There was no chance they were going off-roading from Bragg Road.)
But our flashlights didn't catch the glimmer of any vehicles on their way up the road.
That wasn't surprising, though, as out flashlight beams, while impressive, were not likely to reach half a mile, much less a mile down the dark road. But another thing we had learned from Phase 1 of the night was that you could trust your ears on Bragg Road. Even when a car was creeping up on us without its lights earlier in the evening, we could still hear the low rumble of its engine. Even when you can't see it, you can hear that there is a car somewhere around you.
But Bragg Road was silent, as well.
We discussed it, and the consensus was that the only logical possibility for a car to disappear was by backing out, only it would have taken the car longer to back out than the time it took for it to disappear. In all honesty, the car really couldn't have reached the niche in which we were now standing in the time it took for the lights to disappear.
It was a genuine mystery.
It wasn't anything like the reports we had heard of the Bragg Road Ghost Light, and we all agreed that the light looked like headlights.
Let's call this "Experience #1".
So, we decided to drive Paula's car north, to the next niche, and park there. This way, we could explore the road further north than we had been able to thus far tonight, or would be able to if we simply kept walking north from the previous niche.
Once again, we set out wandering northward.
I still hadn't seen the Headless Horseman or Bigfoot, but the walk continued to be cool.
One of the guest investigators, Donna, slowly became convinced she was seeing something up ahead. It looked to her like the orange "cherry" of a cigarette. Like, maybe, someone way down the road, standing there and smoking.
Or something.
She and I found ourselves walking a bit faster, unconsciously sort of racing to find out what it was that she could see and the rest of us could not.
But then Jesse made a point: If this thing were the ghost light or anything paranormal, we wouldn't be able to catch up with it, most likely. It would probably continue to recede further and further away, like the end of a rainbow. And if it were just a guy smoking, perhaps we didn't really want to catch up to him. He might want his privacy. there were a (very) few homes off the road (much farther down), and if it turned out to be a resident of Bragg Road, they might not appreciate a bunch of strangers pestering them at what now must be 3:00am. And if it were an optical illusion, then -- again, like the rainbow example -- there was a strong chance we would never catch up to it.
One thing that seems to prove true again and again is that paranormal phenomena doesn't seem to be "catch-able". If you chase it, you loose it. Every time. It seems -- not just from my very limited experience, but according to those who have years, and even decades, of experience in the field -- that if the paranormal wants you to experience it, it will present itself to you.
So Jesse, wisely, turned us all around to head back in the direction of the car.
We didn't talk much, so the profound darkness was joined by a creepy silence that you only experience when you're that far removed from the city.
As we walked, Donna, kept looking behind her. I did too for a bit. Since we were the only ones on the road, I could comfortably walk backward without worry of bumping into... well, anything, really.
We hadn't quite covered the (maybe) quarter mile to the car when we all saw a pale blue light, far in front of us, somewhere near the south entrance to Bragg Road.
We stopped and watched it.
It was a single light. This didn't look like car headlights.
The blue-white "ball" (for lack of a better description; we had no way of gauging how far in front of us it was) grew brighter, more intense, and turned yellow.
We murmured to each other that it was, indeed, a single light. This was not, as far as we could tell, the headlights from a car.
But still, we didn't have a clue how far away it was.
Then the bright yellow light became more intense, and green. It was sort of golden in the center, but the edges were clearly green. We all confirmed this to each other.
As the light grew more intense, I wondered it it was moving closer to us.
But it wasn't moving up or down, or sideways. It remained directly in the center of the road.
And then it was gone.
What the hell was that?
We ran to the car, hopped in, and drove as fast as we safely could toward the south entrance to the road. If it was a car, we wanted to be able to rule that possibility out.
It felt like it took us forever to get to the entrance!
The unfriendly road wouldn't allow us to move too fast, lest it vibrate Paula's poor car apart. Besides, if a car had decided to park in the middle of the road with its lights off, we could be right on top of it before we even saw it! (This had happened to Jesse and me during Phase 1, when we were on foot. A pickup truck, no less! Right there in front of us and we didn't see it until it turned on its lights and started up! Gave me quite a start.)
As we drove, I think I made a joke about who else was secretly hoping that the light appeared in front of us, passed into the car and just hung out with us for a few seconds. But that might have happened at some other time that night.
I was almost on the highway before I even realized we had exited Bragg Road. (Did I mention that there are no streetlights anywhere?)
I stopped, and we discussed what we had just witnessed.
The fact that we didn't pass -- or run into -- a car or truck meant that we had seen the ghost light, right? That was the reasoning of the guest investigators. It was reported to change colors and to simply disappear.
Jesse and I pointed out, though, that it was also reported to dart around the road (sometimes ducking into the trees), and be seen to disappear straight up into the air, or to the side. This light, as far as we could tell, remained perfectly still.
Besides this, I had a theory that might debunk what we had just seen...
The theory began as a way of explaining to myself how those headlights we had seen earlier might simply disappear the way they had.
If you look at a map of Bragg Road (like the one above (click on it to see the entire image)) you'll notice that Farm To Market Road 787 appears to head straight up into Bragg Road, then veers-off to form a sort of lower-case "y" shape. If it didn't veer off so swiftly, 787 would become Bragg Road.
Now, I know a little about the physicality of optics from my years making short films with my buddies -- as well as my study of special effects, my study of slight of hand and illusion, and my obsession with 3-D (even when you see 3-D naturally, with your naked eye, the perception of depth is still a sort of optical illusion, though a reliable one) -- and if my understanding is near accurate, here is what I believe we saw:
Experience #1 - Because of the darkness, the treeline and the distance from the south entrance to Bragg Road, we couldn't really know if the headlights we saw were on Bragg Road.
We might have seen a vehicle traveling up 787, but because it appeared to be between the treeline, it looked like it was on Bragg Road. Then when it veered west -- the way 787 does -- the trees blocked our view of the headlights and it, effectively, "disappeared" as far as we could tell.
Experience #2 - This is where my logic gets a little strained...
At first, the headlights in Experience #1 appeared to be a single light, either because the treeline blocked one of the headlights or because of the sheer distance from the entrance. Then the single pale-blue light seemed to split into two separate lights, revealing the source to be a vehicle.
For Experience #2, we were maybe a mile further from the entrance.
So is it possible that, at that distance, a pair of headlights might seem to our eyes as a single light? The light we perceive, at that point, is being forced through the treeline which, in effect, would be like forcing it through a cylinder of solid material.
Have you ever tried to shine a wide flashlight beam through a pinprick in a thick, black cloth? It looks like a star in the night sky. If you have a large enough light source and enough pinpricks, you can actually simulate a night sky. We did this back in theatre when I was a teenager. The effect isn't like you're getting a tiny sliver of the light radiating from the source, but as though all the radiance from the light source is forcing itself through that tiny hole.
The light seems to become brighter, rather than diminished. Focused.
So what about the color changes, though?
I can't explain this scientifically, but here's my theory: Assuming Experience #2 was a car, the headlights might have appeared blue-white when it was furthest away from us, and possibly traveling down a slight incline in the road. Then when the incline leveled out, the light became yellow and more intense. Then as the car got closer, that yellow light might have (and this is where my logic really strains) picked up the green from the leaves of the treeline that was focusing the beam of headlights into a single, intense ball of light for us.
That makes sense, right?
The explanation was really for Jesse's benefit, because our guest investigators weren't interested in debunking their cool experience.
After that, we headed back to the hotel because it was a little after 3:30am and we all had a long trip ahead of us in a few hours.
I rode back to Austin with Jesse in Stephanie and Mike's car (they live up north, closer to me, while Paula and John live WAY south). It was a fun trip! Even after a mere 4 or so hours of sleep, I didn't feel drowsy the whole way back!
So, just between you and me, here's my take on my Bragg Road experiences...
I don't really know how much water my "explaination" holds, scientifically. I don't know enough about optics to be able to even know where to start researching my theory to prove or disprove it.
Also, I don't know if the stretch of 787 just south of Bragg Road is long enough to allow a vehicle's headlights to do what I attempted to describe just now. I, stupidly and amateurishly, failed to note exactly how long Experience #2 lasted, and by now my memory is way-fuzzy.
I know that the light didn't move the way the light Paula saw moved. And the perfect stillness, centered-ness of the light we saw is more in line with my explanation. But I also have no idea how far ahead of us it was. If it were the Ghost Light and it were near the southern entrance to Bragg Road, might it not have been able to bob up and down, left and right and still appear, to us, to be standing still and centered? If it were that far away, might it not have been able to dart up into the sky, or sideways into the trees, without us seeing the tell-tale tracer of light that revealed which direction it went?
I'm not trying to make this paranormal, and I'm not trying to make it not-paranormal. I believe true skepticism questions both sides of an equation. I know zealot skeptics who will accept any explanation that points away from the paranormal, and I know zealot believers who will accept any explanation that points toward the paranormal. But as an investigator, I simply have to admit that I don't have enough data either way.
Still, I've got 2 interesting experiences under my belt! :D
Also, even though you're not supposed to enter cemeteries in Texas after dark, I might -- maybe -- have pulled out my digital audio recorder when we stopped by Sutton Cemetery and I might -- maybe -- have pressed Record, and so I might -- maybe -- have caught some voices that aren't supposed to be on the track I recorded. ;P
I still need to listen to it.
Tonight might be a good night to do that, huh?
HAPPY HALLOWEEN!!!
:D
Monday, October 19, 2009
AWESOME Birthday!!! :D
This has been a great weekend!!!
My weekend started with money in the bank -- a rare occasion for me, lol. I worked a couple extra days a couple weekends ago, which took care of ALL my bills (to date) and scored me a night of fine dining -- Pappa John's pizza for Brian & myself -- and scored me a couple of books!
First, I'm doing my shopping after work Friday morning, and I see that the new Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy book is out! When I first heard about And Another Thing... I wasn't certain whether or not I would be reading it, since it's not by Douglas Adams. But I picked it up in the store and read the introduction, and I laughed out loud twice!
So I'm 192 pages into it (just finished Chapter 9 (of 12)).
Eoin Colfer is quite clever and whimsical!
The other book I picked up was Jason & Grant's second book about their adventures in The Atlantic Paranormal Society, which Brian is currently reading. (He, too, has been cramming his head full of paranormal research, but he paused all his reading to dive into Seeking Spirits, as I probably would have done, were I not working on H2G2, Book 6 of 3).
We also watched some Castle (Season 1) and the first disc of Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip. And listened to some Spooky Southcoast and a few episodes of Paranormal Podcast.
AND...
I got past the place I was hung-up on in Level 6 of Tomb Raider: Underworld -- the second swinging roof-hammer in Valhalla -- and am now on Level 8!!! :D
I'm a bit stuck again, at the moment, though. I jump down the thing, kill the giant monster-guy, grab the gold brick, jump over to the little island thingy, climb the other thing, swing over to get the other gold brick, but then when I swing back to the one platform thingy I always overshoot and land in the toxic pool.
But that's okay!
I'm on the first part of the LAST LEVEL and I am not too terribly far from defeating Underworld!!! :D
Then, hopefully, the game will let me go back and re-play my favorite levels, like the previous games did.
Oh, and also, a lot of people posted some really sweet things to me on Facebook, which is cool!
Oh, and did I mention I'm really diggin' KISS's new album, Sonic Boom?!! They've got a couple of anthem-type songs that stand up to my all-time favorite KISS songs from any era! :D
So life is pretty groovy for Ray Jay!!! :D
OH! And check it out...
Last night/this morning, as I was winding down for bed, I did a tarot spread for the main character of one of the stories I'm working on, and it was FREAKY how informative it was!!! On the one hand, the reading provided me in-depth information about the character that was truly enlightening (which is what I expected), but on the other hand, the reading ACTUALLY CONFORMED to the fictitious fate I had already worked-out for my character! (Which I did not expect!) I'm talking about some specific aspects of the character's "life"! It was uncanny! I don't think even Carl Jung could explain what the hell's going on there, lol!
But it was very, very cool!
Okay, I really need to get back to work.
So PEACE!!! :D
My weekend started with money in the bank -- a rare occasion for me, lol. I worked a couple extra days a couple weekends ago, which took care of ALL my bills (to date) and scored me a night of fine dining -- Pappa John's pizza for Brian & myself -- and scored me a couple of books!
First, I'm doing my shopping after work Friday morning, and I see that the new Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy book is out! When I first heard about And Another Thing... I wasn't certain whether or not I would be reading it, since it's not by Douglas Adams. But I picked it up in the store and read the introduction, and I laughed out loud twice!
So I'm 192 pages into it (just finished Chapter 9 (of 12)).
Eoin Colfer is quite clever and whimsical!
The other book I picked up was Jason & Grant's second book about their adventures in The Atlantic Paranormal Society, which Brian is currently reading. (He, too, has been cramming his head full of paranormal research, but he paused all his reading to dive into Seeking Spirits, as I probably would have done, were I not working on H2G2, Book 6 of 3).
We also watched some Castle (Season 1) and the first disc of Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip. And listened to some Spooky Southcoast and a few episodes of Paranormal Podcast.
AND...
I got past the place I was hung-up on in Level 6 of Tomb Raider: Underworld -- the second swinging roof-hammer in Valhalla -- and am now on Level 8!!! :D
I'm a bit stuck again, at the moment, though. I jump down the thing, kill the giant monster-guy, grab the gold brick, jump over to the little island thingy, climb the other thing, swing over to get the other gold brick, but then when I swing back to the one platform thingy I always overshoot and land in the toxic pool.
But that's okay!
I'm on the first part of the LAST LEVEL and I am not too terribly far from defeating Underworld!!! :D
Then, hopefully, the game will let me go back and re-play my favorite levels, like the previous games did.
Oh, and also, a lot of people posted some really sweet things to me on Facebook, which is cool!
Oh, and did I mention I'm really diggin' KISS's new album, Sonic Boom?!! They've got a couple of anthem-type songs that stand up to my all-time favorite KISS songs from any era! :D
So life is pretty groovy for Ray Jay!!! :D
OH! And check it out...
Last night/this morning, as I was winding down for bed, I did a tarot spread for the main character of one of the stories I'm working on, and it was FREAKY how informative it was!!! On the one hand, the reading provided me in-depth information about the character that was truly enlightening (which is what I expected), but on the other hand, the reading ACTUALLY CONFORMED to the fictitious fate I had already worked-out for my character! (Which I did not expect!) I'm talking about some specific aspects of the character's "life"! It was uncanny! I don't think even Carl Jung could explain what the hell's going on there, lol!
But it was very, very cool!
Okay, I really need to get back to work.
So PEACE!!! :D
Thursday, October 15, 2009
Happy Birthday To Me...
Okay, technically it's no longer my birthday.
But since I'm off come 6:00am, I'm gonna celebrate another day. I've got some Castle Season 1 at home, and Netflix is supposed to be sending some Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip tomorrow, too. PLUS, my li'l bro scored us brewskies, so there we go! :)
My celebration today was as follows:
I got home to my friend Traci's b-day present: The Psychic Tarot Oracle Cards by John Holland. It's this GORGEOUS deck with a bit of a more positive bent than the well-known Rider-Waite deck. (If someone says "tarot cards", the images that immediately pop into your mind are, most likely, from the classic Rider-Waite deck.)
I'm a fan of divination tools, but I've never really explored tarot cards too deeply because the decks creep me out! I'm not kidding, I just get this very negative buzz off traditional tarot cards. I'm even talking about regular playing cards used as a tarot deck. I don't know why, it's just creepy to me.
But John Holland designed this deck that's completely not creepy! I knew there were different types of decks out there, and I've sort of browsed them from time to time online, but never really found a deck that I connected with.
But then my buddy Traci hooks me up! I think I can learn tarot from this deck.
Which is COOL!
Because, first of all, even Carl Jung recognized the value of using a divination tool in order to see a problem or situation from a new perspective. He specifically discussed tarot cards because they work with archetypal images and notions which connect with the subconscious. So whether you believe God (or one of His angels) manipulates the cards in order to speak to the person asking for advice (be it you or someone you're reading for), you can still see how the random images flipped over during a reading can give the mind something to free-associate upon, freeing up the querrant's creative problem-solving abilities and allowing them to, possibly, see a solution where they previously had seen an impassible problem.
But I'm not planning on setting up shop in the back of a New Age book store anytime soon. I'm excited about these cards because you can use them to help you create fiction! :D
This isn't an original idea. That is to say, it was original when whoever first thought of it thought of it, but I am not original in my usage of it.
You'll hear many writers talk about receiving stories, or characters or situations, as though they were a gift from somewhere. You'll hear writers talk about "the Muse". But whether you believe in an unseen force, or merely recognize the mind's own astounding and ineffable inner-workings, using tarot cards is an interesting -- and FUN -- way to battle Writer's Block! :D
But I'm not trying to be politically correct here, I TOTALLY believe in unseen intelligences helping us out in our physical journey! (I named my blog after the concept of wu wei, after all.) I'm a completely metaphysical cat. I have observed, over the last 2 or 3 years, that my intuition seems to be almost paranormal at times, and I'm hoping that learning my new tarot deck will hone these inexplicable insights that I sometimes get.
It happens, approximately, once in a blue moon now. So I'm hoping to increase that frequency to, maybe, once in a full moon, then maybe once every other weekend.
If I turn full-on psychic, I'll let you know. :)
Telepathically! :D
OOH! OOH!
I'm writing on something! It sort of combines EVERYTHING that I'm into, believe in, believe in the possibility of, or just read about!!! I don't know if it will grow into a short story, novella, a novel or anything at all, but it's fun writing it! If it grows into a novella or longer, I'm thinking of calling it 2012: The End of... some stuff...
Catchy, no? :)
Oh, right! I was telling you how I've celebrated my birthday so far...
Okay, so after I got to know my new tarot deck a bit, I watched Black Eyed Peas' new video "Meet Me Halfway" -- which was GORGEOUS! Then I went to sleep listening to a playlist made up of my favorite skits from (meaning, "the majority of") all -- seriously, ALL -- of Monty Python's albums!
Then I woke up and started listening to SModcast #95 -- which just happens to be EXCELLENT! Kevin Smith and Scott Mosier carried me through the processes of cooking breakfast and lunch, getting ready for work, and my drive to work. Once here, they kept me entertained as I got my night's coffee brewing, then I had to take a break. Then, after the heavy-lifting of my shift was complete and everyone left the station in mine and Pete's hands (on Thursday's I'm not the only one here overnight), Misters Smith and Mosier kept me laughing past midnight, carrying me through the end of my official 39th birthday.
By the way, "SModcats 95: RB07701" is worth listening to, if only for the "audiobook" version of Shootin' the Sh*t with Kevin Smith: The Best of the SModcast!!! I mean, I love the episode because I love SModcast, but the "audiobook" bit is brilliant!!! :D
So then, when SModcats wrapped up, I sat down and started typing this.
And now I'm off.
And I plan to be... well... incoherent from the time I get home from work until sometime late Friday night/early Saturday morning, so you won't be hearing from me too soon. (I try to stay away from the keyboard when I'm drinking. I get very, very happy, you see... And all these words from the farthest depths of my vocabulary surface and start hurling themselves at my fingertips... To say my prose becomes "whimsical" is sort of akin to saying that Grandma getting drunk and burtsing into a stip-tease is "sexy", ya know? I mean, Grandma may be in terrific shape for her age, but you still just don't wanna see that!)
But since I'm off come 6:00am, I'm gonna celebrate another day. I've got some Castle Season 1 at home, and Netflix is supposed to be sending some Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip tomorrow, too. PLUS, my li'l bro scored us brewskies, so there we go! :)
My celebration today was as follows:
I got home to my friend Traci's b-day present: The Psychic Tarot Oracle Cards by John Holland. It's this GORGEOUS deck with a bit of a more positive bent than the well-known Rider-Waite deck. (If someone says "tarot cards", the images that immediately pop into your mind are, most likely, from the classic Rider-Waite deck.)
I'm a fan of divination tools, but I've never really explored tarot cards too deeply because the decks creep me out! I'm not kidding, I just get this very negative buzz off traditional tarot cards. I'm even talking about regular playing cards used as a tarot deck. I don't know why, it's just creepy to me.
But John Holland designed this deck that's completely not creepy! I knew there were different types of decks out there, and I've sort of browsed them from time to time online, but never really found a deck that I connected with.
But then my buddy Traci hooks me up! I think I can learn tarot from this deck.
Which is COOL!
Because, first of all, even Carl Jung recognized the value of using a divination tool in order to see a problem or situation from a new perspective. He specifically discussed tarot cards because they work with archetypal images and notions which connect with the subconscious. So whether you believe God (or one of His angels) manipulates the cards in order to speak to the person asking for advice (be it you or someone you're reading for), you can still see how the random images flipped over during a reading can give the mind something to free-associate upon, freeing up the querrant's creative problem-solving abilities and allowing them to, possibly, see a solution where they previously had seen an impassible problem.
But I'm not planning on setting up shop in the back of a New Age book store anytime soon. I'm excited about these cards because you can use them to help you create fiction! :D
This isn't an original idea. That is to say, it was original when whoever first thought of it thought of it, but I am not original in my usage of it.
You'll hear many writers talk about receiving stories, or characters or situations, as though they were a gift from somewhere. You'll hear writers talk about "the Muse". But whether you believe in an unseen force, or merely recognize the mind's own astounding and ineffable inner-workings, using tarot cards is an interesting -- and FUN -- way to battle Writer's Block! :D
But I'm not trying to be politically correct here, I TOTALLY believe in unseen intelligences helping us out in our physical journey! (I named my blog after the concept of wu wei, after all.) I'm a completely metaphysical cat. I have observed, over the last 2 or 3 years, that my intuition seems to be almost paranormal at times, and I'm hoping that learning my new tarot deck will hone these inexplicable insights that I sometimes get.
It happens, approximately, once in a blue moon now. So I'm hoping to increase that frequency to, maybe, once in a full moon, then maybe once every other weekend.
If I turn full-on psychic, I'll let you know. :)
Telepathically! :D
OOH! OOH!
I'm writing on something! It sort of combines EVERYTHING that I'm into, believe in, believe in the possibility of, or just read about!!! I don't know if it will grow into a short story, novella, a novel or anything at all, but it's fun writing it! If it grows into a novella or longer, I'm thinking of calling it 2012: The End of... some stuff...
Catchy, no? :)
Oh, right! I was telling you how I've celebrated my birthday so far...
Okay, so after I got to know my new tarot deck a bit, I watched Black Eyed Peas' new video "Meet Me Halfway" -- which was GORGEOUS! Then I went to sleep listening to a playlist made up of my favorite skits from (meaning, "the majority of") all -- seriously, ALL -- of Monty Python's albums!
Then I woke up and started listening to SModcast #95 -- which just happens to be EXCELLENT! Kevin Smith and Scott Mosier carried me through the processes of cooking breakfast and lunch, getting ready for work, and my drive to work. Once here, they kept me entertained as I got my night's coffee brewing, then I had to take a break. Then, after the heavy-lifting of my shift was complete and everyone left the station in mine and Pete's hands (on Thursday's I'm not the only one here overnight), Misters Smith and Mosier kept me laughing past midnight, carrying me through the end of my official 39th birthday.
By the way, "SModcats 95: RB07701" is worth listening to, if only for the "audiobook" version of Shootin' the Sh*t with Kevin Smith: The Best of the SModcast!!! I mean, I love the episode because I love SModcast, but the "audiobook" bit is brilliant!!! :D
So then, when SModcats wrapped up, I sat down and started typing this.
And now I'm off.
And I plan to be... well... incoherent from the time I get home from work until sometime late Friday night/early Saturday morning, so you won't be hearing from me too soon. (I try to stay away from the keyboard when I'm drinking. I get very, very happy, you see... And all these words from the farthest depths of my vocabulary surface and start hurling themselves at my fingertips... To say my prose becomes "whimsical" is sort of akin to saying that Grandma getting drunk and burtsing into a stip-tease is "sexy", ya know? I mean, Grandma may be in terrific shape for her age, but you still just don't wanna see that!)
Wednesday, October 14, 2009
International Ray Jay Day!!! :D
As I type this sentence, I will turn 39 in 41 minutes!!!
YAY ME!
My birthday plans, you ask? WORKIN', BABY!!! :D
Dat's right! Ray Jay is a workin' fool, baby!
I got an early b-day present... Last week TSPI took some group pics for our NEW WEBSITE... And I sent the once of me to my Gnomey-Goddess AND SHE SAID SHE THOUGHT I LOOK CUTE!!! :D hee-hee I mean, I know she's just being a sweetheart, but I don't care. She didn't break up with me after seeing them, so everything's cool.
How do I know she's just being a sweety? Well, you decide...
(Click on the pic to see the whole thing. The pics looked smaller when I previewed this entry. Sry.)
I love the pics, though! I've only seen Paula's pics so far, but they're great! (I just can't help lookin' like a bit of a dork because... well... I AM a dork, lol. But I'm a (soon-to-be) 39-year-old dork who looks 30, lol! So there! I got carded for smokes before work tonight, actually!)
Plus, we're a handsome bunch, aren't we?
PLUS... We're good at figurin' out perplexin' stuff, too!
OOH! And Paranormal Activity last Saturday was a blast! I had a lot of fun! :D
Wait, wait! I gotta show you one more pic...
I'm the pasty one.
What's the sexy-sounding phrase for "pasty"? Is there one? Like, if you're filling out a resume to be a model, what's a more appealing way to say "trout-belly white"?
I think we should have a Texas Spirits calendar. Right? Like, we could sell it as a fundraiser?
No one else in the group is with me on this, though. :P
Okay, so guess what...
I think the Universe wanted to give me a birthday present, because one of the shows I air during my shift is late Night with Jimmy Fallon and you know who the guests are tonight?
MONTY-FRICKIN'-PYTHON!!!
I kid you not! As I type this, the remaining members of Monty Python are all together on the Jimmy Fallon show!!!
Like, how often does that happen?!!
And what are the ODDS that would happen just as the clock ticks over to the day of my birth?!
I'm tellin' ya... Someone Upstairs kinda likes me. ;)
(I mean, have you SEEN my girlfriend?! That's not MY doing, lol! That's Divine Intervention.)
So, officially, my first birthday present was from Brian. Back in August he gave me a MEL 8704 -- otherwise known as a mel-meter!!! That was just super-sweet of him 'case those thangs ain't cheap.
Then my 2nd present was from God. That's the Monty Python episode of Jimmy Fallon.
Then #3 is waiting for me at home, lol! I was talking to my friend Traci last week and she said she had gotten me something for my birthday. I started to do that knee-jerk response that we all do, "Aw, that's sweet, but you shou--"" when she cut me off with "NO, it's AWESOME!" Whatever she's giving me, she doesn't have one, yet, and she's jealous, lol. So I'm looking forward to whatever it is!!! She gave it to Brian, so it's waiting for me at home when I get off work.
No, wait, that's the 4th present, and God gave me the 3rd, because yesterday my sweety said she liked my ghost-hunter pics, so THAT ONE was b-day present #2. :D
Oh... Huh...
Just noticed, Michael Palin isn't on the Jimmy Fallon show. It's 4 of the 5 remaining Pythons.
Wait, what am I doing still writing this? I'm going to watch the Pythons.
PEACE!!!
:D
YAY ME!
My birthday plans, you ask? WORKIN', BABY!!! :D
Dat's right! Ray Jay is a workin' fool, baby!
I got an early b-day present... Last week TSPI took some group pics for our NEW WEBSITE... And I sent the once of me to my Gnomey-Goddess AND SHE SAID SHE THOUGHT I LOOK CUTE!!! :D hee-hee I mean, I know she's just being a sweetheart, but I don't care. She didn't break up with me after seeing them, so everything's cool.
How do I know she's just being a sweety? Well, you decide...
(Click on the pic to see the whole thing. The pics looked smaller when I previewed this entry. Sry.)
I love the pics, though! I've only seen Paula's pics so far, but they're great! (I just can't help lookin' like a bit of a dork because... well... I AM a dork, lol. But I'm a (soon-to-be) 39-year-old dork who looks 30, lol! So there! I got carded for smokes before work tonight, actually!)
Plus, we're a handsome bunch, aren't we?
PLUS... We're good at figurin' out perplexin' stuff, too!
OOH! And Paranormal Activity last Saturday was a blast! I had a lot of fun! :D
Wait, wait! I gotta show you one more pic...
The Boys of Texas Spirits
I'm the pasty one.
What's the sexy-sounding phrase for "pasty"? Is there one? Like, if you're filling out a resume to be a model, what's a more appealing way to say "trout-belly white"?
I think we should have a Texas Spirits calendar. Right? Like, we could sell it as a fundraiser?
No one else in the group is with me on this, though. :P
Okay, so guess what...
I think the Universe wanted to give me a birthday present, because one of the shows I air during my shift is late Night with Jimmy Fallon and you know who the guests are tonight?
MONTY-FRICKIN'-PYTHON!!!
I kid you not! As I type this, the remaining members of Monty Python are all together on the Jimmy Fallon show!!!
Like, how often does that happen?!!
And what are the ODDS that would happen just as the clock ticks over to the day of my birth?!
I'm tellin' ya... Someone Upstairs kinda likes me. ;)
(I mean, have you SEEN my girlfriend?! That's not MY doing, lol! That's Divine Intervention.)
So, officially, my first birthday present was from Brian. Back in August he gave me a MEL 8704 -- otherwise known as a mel-meter!!! That was just super-sweet of him 'case those thangs ain't cheap.
Then my 2nd present was from God. That's the Monty Python episode of Jimmy Fallon.
Then #3 is waiting for me at home, lol! I was talking to my friend Traci last week and she said she had gotten me something for my birthday. I started to do that knee-jerk response that we all do, "Aw, that's sweet, but you shou--"" when she cut me off with "NO, it's AWESOME!" Whatever she's giving me, she doesn't have one, yet, and she's jealous, lol. So I'm looking forward to whatever it is!!! She gave it to Brian, so it's waiting for me at home when I get off work.
No, wait, that's the 4th present, and God gave me the 3rd, because yesterday my sweety said she liked my ghost-hunter pics, so THAT ONE was b-day present #2. :D
Oh... Huh...
Just noticed, Michael Palin isn't on the Jimmy Fallon show. It's 4 of the 5 remaining Pythons.
Wait, what am I doing still writing this? I'm going to watch the Pythons.
PEACE!!!
:D
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