The Earliest haunts of man....

Happy Halloween everybody! We haven't posted here in a while, we've been busy. We've needed 26 hour days, but had to make do with 24. So we've been forgoing sleep to get things done. Anyway, it's All Hallows Eve, the time when ghosts and goblins walk the earth. So we thought we'd do a little history lesson for you. Ghost stories it seems have been told since man began telling stories. One of the earliest is a story told by Pliny the Younger who was born in 61 A.D. He recounts the tale of a haunted house in Athens. It seems to have all the elements that are with us today when discussing ghosts, chains, beckoning spirits, and a surprisingly calm young philosopher.. You can read it HERE.  This is far from the first mention of ghosts in literature, but it's fascinating to we here at The Crazy. Over a thousand years before Pliny the Younger wrote this narrative, the ancient Egyptians long held that ghosts were pretty much everywhere. And when the Pharoah Akenhaten died he was cursed by the priests to wander the desert forever as a ghost. The reason for the curse? Erasing many of the Gods from ancient Egypt and assigning ONE god to rule above them. The God Aten (the sun god) and surprise... guess who the sun gods sole representatives on earth were to be, Ankenhaten and Nefertiti of course. Many Egyptians claim to have seen the Ghost of Ankenhaten wandering the deserts of that country. Europe has too many ghost stories to quantify. You can't throw a rock anywhere in many European countries without it passing through (not hitting obviously) a ghost. So what about here at home, what are some of the earliest ghost stories of the America's? How about a ghost of one of the founding fathers? The Ghost of Benjamin Franklin has been sighted many times near the library of the American Philosophical Society in Philadelphia (with some reports that his statue in front of the library comes to life and dances in the streets). How about pre american, The tale of Colonel Buck is one example. He condemned a supposed witch to death. On the gallows she was reported to have said. "Your lies have offended the almighty, He will help me take you life and leave my mark upon your grave." The story continues with the Colonel being frightened to death by her spirit that very afternoon. And her footprint is still seen on his grave. It looks sort of like a foot as seen in the photo at the top of this blog entry. (Ok, water stain maybe.)  And finally, there is one American ghost that has been seen and reported by First lady Grace Coolidge, Queen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands, Eleanor Roosevelt, and perhaps the strangest report comes from Sir Winston Churchill who upon returning naked from his bath found Abraham Lincoln sitting in front of the fireplace in his room. (We imagine President Lincoln was as surprised as Mr Churchill.)  And President Harry Truman wrote in a letter to his wife that the White house floors "popped and the drapes move back and forth."   Mary Todd Lincoln told friends that the ghost of Andrew Jackson stomps and swears up and down the halls of the White House. So Happy Halloween to all of you. And if you see Mr Lincoln, tell him thanks for us will you. Ciao for now.

The Goblins will getcha if you don't watch out!

     Here it is, mid October and we still haven't discussed Halloween. We here at The Crazy love Halloween. (Or All Hallows eve, or Samhain,) This night (October 31st) was thought by the Ancient Celts to be the night when the spirits of the dead were released to roam the earth. The Celts would build bonfires, and dress in costumes (usually animal skins and antlers) they would burn food and animals in an attempt to placate these spirits, and also to predict the future. The holiday was mostly about the ending of summer and the beginning of the long dark winter. The Celts would extinguish their hearth fires early in the day. After the festival of Samhain (pronounced sow-in) was over, they would relight their hearth fires from the sacred bonfire to insure their protection in the coming winter. When the Romans conquered the Celts they also added parts to what has become our Halloween celebration. The Roman goddess Pomona (that's right Pomona, get over it.) the Roman god of fruits and trees, was incorporated into the Celtic Samhain tradition. (Perhaps where bobbing for apples came from?)
     On May 13, 609 A.D. Pope Boniface the IV, dedicated the Pantheon in Rome to all christian martyrs, and all Martyrs day was established, by the 700's A.D. the date was moved to November 1st. (Some say November 2nd)  and became All Saints day. The day before this event was designated All Hallows Eve.
     In some cultures the Night of All Hallows Eve was considered frightening, if not a dangerous time to walk abroad, as the spirits of the Dead may come and drag you away with them. Many cultures began wearing masks to walk about on this night so as to fool the spirits into thinking you were one of them. Somehow on the American continent the night also became about vandalism. And it wasn't until the 1950's that the traditional Halloween became a time for Family, celebration and trick or treating. It was thought that if you gave treats to the costumed folk who came to you door you could avoid the vandalism. In early America parades were organized and people began giving out food on the parade routes. Which over the years evolved into the current door to door sugar coma inducing event we now see.  Originally in early European cities food was placed in bowls on the doorsteps to placate the wandering spirits. (It's our guess here at The Crazy that many of these "wandering spirits" were starving folk who saw an opportunity for a meal.) Sadly for many of us, it seems that Halloween is slowly being eradicated. The traditions that started the holiday are steeped in superstition. And sadly many American cities are slowly shortening Trick or Treating to a few hours before dusk. How many of us remember going door to door till the wee hours of the morning trick or treating? If someone left their porch light on and their pumpkin lit they were fair game no matter what time of the night it was. 
     One interesting point about Halloween. It seems that the Jack-O-Lantern was originally carved out of a turnip. When many Irish immigrated to America in the 1800's they would carve out turnips in remembrance of Stingy Jack a man who trapped the devil in an apple tree. You can read the story HERE .They discovered the Pumpkin was much easier to carve and the current Jack-0-Lantern was born. So Happy Halloween to those of you who still love the oldest holiday still widely celebrated in America. Be sure to wear your mask when you go out. You never know if that shadow standing in the trees is a wandering spirit looking for someone to drag back to the land of the dead. That's about it, Ciao for now.

  

What to do... What to do...

It's been a a while since we posted here at The Crazy. We have been busy. Have you noticed how life sometimes comes up and bites you in the ass? Why is it that time (which supposedly keeps everything from happening at once.) sometimes seems to glitch, and suddenly everything is happening at once, it's as if some sort of problem imp suddenly sprang into existence and began creating problems for us. It's been a couple of weeks of putting out one (figurative) fire after another. The days have blurred into a miasma of gottado's, Gotta do this gotta do that. Usually when life overwhelms some of us here we find a way to slip away and spend a little quiet time reading, or driving. But lately it seems that life has decided that we are too busy to relax. Or are we? Didn't we spend four hours (probably more) watching television last night? Couldn't that time be spent doing something more constructive? Is watching television relaxing? Is it constructive? What did we get from it? Did we learn anything? Is simply being entertained a form of relaxation? It seems the things that we at The Crazy are entertained by are mostly fantasy worlds that have very little to do with reality. Do Olivia, Peter, Walter and Asterix (ha ha) have anything useful to teach us here in the real world.
We have watched every episode of Fringe since it's inception. 100 hours of television. 100 hours of our lives that we will never get back. The writers of the show are certainly imaginative. They have brought us to other universes and back. Made us wonder at the "Fringe" science the show often demonstrates. And certainly we have laughed at the acid induced thoughts of Walter as he brilliantly builds lasers out of CD players, or uses a pigs eye to defeat a retinal scanner.  If this was the only show we watched we'd probably not feel too bad, but unfortunately the glass teat does not let us suckle so leanly.  We have become enslaved to it's constant flow of inanity and charm. Sure with current DVR technology we can watch the shows when WE desire, but still our evenings are not our own. Grimm, Alphas, Warehouse 13 (which just went on hiatus until next year.) Are just a few of the creations that fill our nights with glossy eyed staring at the flickering screen that seems to have a life of it's own. And of course The Big Bang Theory (thankfully only a half hour long) fills us with laughter once a week. And then of course there are the movies, we are certainly movie freaks, we have watched hundreds of them (if not thousands) over the last couple of years. And no one would deny that watching Arsenic and Old Lace (a gem of a movie starring Cary Grant and Raymond Massey) is at least somewhat redeeming to the soul. (Do we have a soul? That question is for another blog.) But what if we stopped watching television entirely (deep inside of this writers psyche something just cried out in terror) what would we do. Play games perhaps, some of us here at The Crazy are board game fanatics. Does playing a board game have any redeeming qualities that television does not? Should we spend the time creatively? Perhaps building furniture, or painting?  Do we stop watching television entirely, or try to wean from the shows we currently find less than appealing. Could we finish watching Fringe (which is in it's last season) and be very careful not to fill that hour with another wildly entertaining, fun filled, thought provoking show. For those of you who watch reality television (the horror... the horror..) how does it feel to know that you are vicariously living THEIR lives and not your own?  These are all very meaningful questions, and we wish we had the time to answer them, but the Packer game is on soon, so it will have to wait for another time. Ciao for now.

They call this a touchdown?

Ok, most of you aren't going to care one whit about this but here goes. It seems that The Green Bay Packers (peace be with them) were robbed of a game last Monday night. The last play of the game involved a hail mary pass into the end zone by the Seattle Seahawks (Henceforth known as the Seahags.) The ball was clearly caught by a Packer player.  Packers cornerback M.D. Jennings came down with the ball. And is seen holding it to his chest on the ground in this photo.  It appears as if a touchdown in the NFL now consists of catching the guy who caught the ball.  Looking at this Photo we cannot for a second understand how the official signaled a touchdown. Nor can we figure out how the NFL after seeing the replay and studying it decided to let the ruling stand. We can only assume that we exist in a different reality than them. Perhaps a wormhole has opened up between our two universes and somehow the video from this other universe (The one where catching a player catching the football is considered a touchdown.) managed to slip through. It is our hope that scientists can somehow close this wormhole before a video showing the Detroit Lions as a good team manages to slip through. It appears as if the result of this other universe leaking into ours is that the NFL is going to give the professional referees most of what they have asked for and they might be returning soon. So at least things should be back to normal soon and The Green Bay Packers (peace be with them) will take their place among the elite of the NFL again. We can only hope. That's about it today, ciao for now.

For the last time...

Again we have been hearing and reading some really crazy stuff about the Mayans, and Dec 21st, 2012. So we are going to try and set this straight one more time. First let's set down what people are saying about the Mayan Calendar ending on the 21st of December and it's meaning for the apocalypse. It seems somebody somewhere has discovered that the Sun will be standing precisely on the equinox between the Earth and the Center of the Galaxy. At least that appears to be what some of the crazies (not to be confused with we here at The Crazy) are saying. So is it true? Well, sort of. Dec 21st is the Winter Solstice. The exact half way point between Autumn and Spring. It happens every year. It is the shortest day and the longest night of the year. Is the sun also lining up with the center of the galaxy? Well... No.. not at all. As a matter of fact the Earth, (and our solar system) are currently above the plane of the galaxy (note the italics). We are five count em.. five light years above the plane of the galaxy.  If you believe in astrology yes the sun will be centered in the galaxy as seen from earth. Last year for example the sun was .01 degree difference from where it will be this Dec 21st. Read that as "point zero one percent" difference. Will there be a huge difference in gravity when we have moved that .01 percent. Well.. again.. No.. As a matter of fact, if you are drinking a cup of coffee (or tea, or a beer, etc.) Then the gravity from that cup is having more effect on you than a .01 degree difference of the sun will have. Ok, so how about the Mayan calendar ending as being significant? Well, it would be if the Mayans intended the calendar to simply end. But there are hundreds of dates carved into the stone of the Mayan temples and pyramids deep in the jungles of South America. And many of them are far beyond the date listed by the calendar in question. (One of them actually dated out to the 4700's by our calendar.) Of course if you aren't sure about the source on this you could always ask a Mayan. What's that you say? The Mayans are extinct? Really? Maybe somebody should tell them that. There are many villages of Mayans still extent throughout the jungles. Many still speak the ancient languages. Sure the great civilization that built the cities and pyramids of Chichen Itza, Palenque, Tikal and Uxma no longer exist. But the people are still there. And they will tell you that the Mayan Prophecy of the end of times for Dec 21st, 2012 is a complete load of crock. Invented by some gringo up north to make a buck. (And many bucks have been made.) If all of this doesn't convince you that the current prediction of end times is a load of horse hockey, then my friends you are beyond help. That's about it. Ciao for now.

From an old coot...

Recently read a short blog called the Rant, and the author posted a few ageist remarks denigrating old people. You can read it HERE. Most of us here at The Crazy are what you might call old. It's true, this blog is mostly written by a few crotchety old farts who soon might be seen sitting around the nursing home waiting for the grim reaper to come calling. Getting older is hard to describe to someone who hasn't yet had the advantage of our years of listening to young folks whine about how the world is treating them unfairly. But for all of us at some point in our lives, the future is going to become shorter than the past. Unfortunately for this writer that point has probably long passed. And not to put too fine a point on it, we think it's a good thing. We have seen many of this countries young cutting down the oldsters (we refuse to use the word elderly) as if the young had some sort of magic potion to stem the onslaught of time. And honestly there have been some amazing strides in scientific research on the aging process. But inevitably, time will circle these young folks like a pack of ravening wolves. And one by one, injury by injury they will be brought down. Will they remember the folly of their own youth, when they felt themselves to be immortal? Will they stop for one moment while viewing the Dorian Gray like dissolution of themselves in the mirror and remember when one of we ancient heralds trumpeted "where we are now, you soon will be!"? Probably not, Youth is wasted on the young. Just a short note to make a point, or maybe just to write this down before the Alzheimers takes us. Ciao for now.

Time to throw away your watch!

Let's talk a little bit about time shall we? Not the time that we all perceive because of the clock on the wall. (Which is entirely subjective by the way, we'll get to that later.) But the time that exists while you are reading this, the time we will call the NOW. Oops, there it went. You can look back at the page and read the word NOW again. But that moment is gone. You will never get it back. But the question is, where did it go? Some people believe that time is just an illusion created by we humans to help us better understand ourselves, and our place in the universe. But others theorize that every moment exists just as it does NOW. Think of the universe as a series of snapshots, (extremely rich and detailed snapshots, that contain everything in the universe.) each snapshot exists NOW but also still exists despite the fact that we can no longer perceive it. Strangely enough this idea has a very old start. The Greek Philosopher Parmenides postulated in the 5th century BC, (Or BCE if you don't believe in the divinity of Christ) that all motion was impossible. Let's say you shoot an arrow at a target. Parmenides said that the arrow could never reach the target. Why? Because it would be mathematically impossible for it to do so. It would first have to go half the distance to the target, than half that distance, than half that distance, and so on through infinity (or eternity, we are discussing time after all.). Some physicists believe that time works that way. That each moment is an eternity. (We at The Crazy have felt that way sometimes when being forced to watch reality television.) Of course when looking at time that way some questions come up. Does the future exist before we get to it? Is all of time here and NOW, also NOW and forever? (We here at The Crazy are not responsible for any brains that may have been broken by this thought idea.) Ok, lets talk a little about that clock on the wall. If you look at it right now. (The Clock on your computer will work just as well.) It will tell you the time as decided by the International Meridian Conference in 1884, when British Mariners decided that Greenwich Britain would be the the starting point or the "0" point on the Meridian by which all Mariners would set their clocks so as to locate themselves longitudinally. Entirely subjective as we said. But does time move at the same speed everywhere. Not according to scientists and atomic clocks. Two extremely accurate atomic clocks were placed side by side, and fully synchronized to the exact nano second. Then one clock was raised twelve inches above the other. And the higher clock began to move faster. Physicists agree that this was due to gravity having an effect on time. Astronauts have said the same thing after spending time in space, they discuss how time seemed to move faster while orbiting the earth. But does this prove that times exists outside of human experience, or simply that human perception is tied deeply into the flow of time?  We don't know. And neither do physicists, or philosophers, or watchmakers. But we at The Crazy are very interested in current experiments to discover the properties of time. (Or the lack of properties if that is what experiments reveal.) It is important to point out one thing when discussing time however. It seems to be tied almost directly into entropy. (the rule that shows that matter moves from order to chaos.) Nobody has ever seen the pool balls on the table automatically jump from their pockets and reform the triangle of balls at the end of the table. And probably never will. Well there are things we have to do here at The Crazy, and we need to get them done NOW. Shoot, too late. Ciao for now.