Monthly Archives: October 2010

Trick or Treat a Fool to Eat – final

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Continued from part one:

“I talk to them from the bushes. They can’t see me hiding. At first they think it is funny, someone they know, then they get scared and their voices start to shake. They always run away, sometimes whimpering! It is lots of fun, but it is over much too quickly. I can’t do it often, because they might catch me if I do it too much.”

Over too quickly? How long will it take before I am over too quickly? THINK I screamed inside my head. “How would you like to talk to someone, who no matter how scared they become will not let you stop talking to them?” After a short pause it said, “That never happens.” I noticed it’s breath did not smell good and my shoulder was hurting. “What if I show you how it can be done?”

“How?” I had only one chance to do this, or I was going to be dead. “With a cell phone”, I squeaked got out between waves of panic. “What is a cell phone?”, it asked. “This is a cell phone, you use it to talk to people. You can talk to them and scare them as much as you want.” I pulled out my cell phone and opened it. “See it works like this”, I said as I held it against my ear. “I have seen them on my food; they are no use to me”, It said.

“But they are useful, you see, you can talk to someone who won’t get away, no matter how scared they get.” Slowing down slightly and then stopping it said, “I don’t believe you.”

“Look, here, you press these places and the person answers who will keep talking no matter what you tell them.” With eyes that looked more interested in playing with a toy, than being hungry it said, “Let me see it work.”

I dialed a number and waited for the ring. When they started speaking I said, “Hurry please, wait, someone else wants to talk with you”, and I held out my cell phone. It took the phone and after a few seconds learned how to hold the phone so it could both talk and hear as it held on to me.

It started talking innocently enough, almost a friendly voice. After twenty seconds or so, its conversation started to change. Its voice undulated between silky and sinister. I did not like listening to it talk, and I was terrified of hearing what it was saying.

After what seemed to be forever it took its hand off my shoulder. It became fixated with the conversation it was having. I stood like a statue, too scared to move. Another moment or two went by. It was becoming excited by having someone listen to it for so long, hearing what it was going to do to the person it was speaking to. Another time space went by, and it was so engrossed in the conversation, it turned slightly away from me releasing its hold from my shoulder. It wasn’t interested in food at the moment.

I moved so slowly at first, it felt like I was not really moving. It felt like minutes were flying by and I had moved maybe a foot. I took a little step. It ears flicked but it did not turn to face me, focused on the conversation.

Another little step, and another, and before I knew it I was running like I had never ran before. I didn’t know it was possible to move that fast! I was running so hard, I was scared I was going to fall face first in the road!

I was running back towards the center of town into the light. I was too scared to look back. The mess in my pants was starting to chaff, but I didn’t care. I did not care that I stunk, I ran as fast as I could looking for a house with lights on.

I saw a car pulling into a driveway, and ran towards it, praying that Thing was not behind me ready to crush my skull with its paw. The Man and Woman in the car were scared, both from my story and my looks and smell. I begged them to let me in the house with them. Once inside I asked where their phone was because I wanted to call 911. As I was explaining to them I had an emergency, I heard a gun shot, then another.

I received a summons in the mail to appear in court back in that Little Town, or pay a hefty fine. My Cell Phone Company sent me a final bill and cut off my service on the grounds I was abused their service. The State Police and 911 Emergency Services sent me a certified letter containing a large bill for misuse of the 911 emergency system, and threatened severe legal action if I did not pay immediately. The letter never mentioned what had happened.

When I called the State Police and the 911 Systems Manager, they both agreed I was a public nuisance and I should go to jail. They finished stating the fines could become more serious if I did not pay them immediately, and legal action would follow, meaning jail time.

I know the 911 operator who took that call from my cell phone feels a shiver of fear every time their phone rings whether they are working or not. I know I am lucky to be alive. I sold some things as fast as I could, took out a loan, and quickly payed off my new bills all in the same day.

My cell phone and 911 saved my life! I never want to go within five-hundred miles of that Town again. I tried to get another cell phone from another company, but it seems I am banned from all area providers without any real explanation or recourse. I try hard not to think about that night.

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Trick or Treat a Fool to Eat

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If you have been hanging out here any length of time you know I enjoy walking, and I enjoy being out walking at night, going against some occasionally strongly worded advice about the dangers of walking at night. Except for this particular night, and maybe one or two other nights, I have never felt like I would rather in my house cruising the net.

After driving all day, I stopped for the night in a smallish midwest town. I had been driving for longer than I wanted to think about, and all I wanted was a bed and a pillow. Or so I thought. I stopped on the edge of what appeared to be the older (cheaper) part of an old town. The part of town where the homes and businesses were decayed a little more than the rest of the uneventful looking town. Did I mention it was Halloween Eve?

I got what seemed to be a very good price for the night, a little under $25.00, and they promised a soft bed with clean sheets and towels, hot water, and  a continental breakfast in the morning, if I were up no later than nine o’clock. I was happy with the soft bed, clean sheets and towels, and hot water. They could keep their watered down coffee and stale donut.

I carried in my small bag and backpack which holds my laptop and a few books in it. I locked the door behind me, opened my bag took out my tooth brush and tooth paste and went to try out the shower. The water was hot, the shampoo was okay, and the towels worked as advertised.

Now I was hungry. I dressed and headed out the door to see what was open. I walked heading to where the newer part of town was, or where I thought it should be from the lights and sounds of cars in the distance. I figured there had to be a little coffee shop, or diner in the town, as it was still almost light out, they should be open for at least another hour.

Dinner was uneventful, roast chicken, potatoes, corn, coffee, and water. Too much coffee it turned out. By the time I was ready to leave, I was feeling the caffeine kicking in. So much for a long days drive. I decided to walk around and see what the town offered.

It was pretty much like any small town, a few streets, and small open city center turned into a day park. I walked around the outside of the little park, looking in the windows of the closed stores, seeing what they may have in the windows that was unique. Turns out there was not much I could see that I wanted. Most of the stores had displays of items people use on a regular basis. There was no undiscovered bevy of interesting trinkets in any of the windows.

I decided it was time to head back to the hotel, so I turned down the street towards the edge of town. As I walked I noticed the town did not spend a lot of money on street lights. That was okay as the walk over was level and uneventful. About the time I thought I was almost to the hotel, the town ended and turned into a county road heading somewhere.

I realized I turned the wrong way when I left the diner. I decided I could hook a left and come out around the street where the hotel was. There was tired tarred street with abandoned houses on the left side, and woods on the right, but no street lights. The good thing was there was no traffic either. I headed down the road, liberally taking up my fair share of the pavement as I walked.

About fifty yards down the road, I thought I heard walking behind me. I slowed down and it slowed down. I sped up and it did too. I was about to turn and see who was following behind me when what looked and felt like a large furry paw came to rest on my left shoulder.  “Keep walking”, a voice said. Adrenaline kicked in almost immediately and I started to walk faster in spite of myself.

The paw like hand had claws at the end. “A little slower if you please”, it said. I almost filled my pants as I made myself slow down and partially turned to see who ever thought they were being funny. What I saw in the darkness was not funny at all. It looked like a large dark cat walking on two legs. Only it was in the shape of a very strong person.

As I tried to comprehend what I was looking at, it said in that voice it had, “Trick or Treat,  a Fool to eat!” That was it, whatever muscle I had used a few seconds earlier holding back my pants from being filled gave way, and I was a soggy mess from my waste down. “They always do that”, it said in that same disquieting voice.

I didn’t know what to do as the hand-paw grip tightened ever so slightly. Think, think, I told myself. Yah, think when I could hardly keep from collapsing in a quivering stinky, soggy mess on the ground. Think I commanded myself!

“Trick or Treat”, ha, ho, how do you know about “Trick or Treat”? It was the best I could do in the middle of a panicked terror. “I have been doing this a long, long time”, the voice echoed. Oh no! I thought to myself, it has been doing this a long time. I am dead! Any second will be my last.

“What do you like to do when you are not doing this”, I asked? “Scaring people”, came the reply, “I like to scare people”. Think! I shouted inside my head. “How do you scare them”, I asked?

“I talk to them from the bushes. They can’t see me hiding. At first they think it is funny, someone they know, then they get scared and their voices start to shake. They always run away, sometimes whimpering! It is lots of fun, but it is over much too quickly. I don’t do it often, because they might catch me if I do it too much.”

To be continued….

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Control Your Online and Mobile Email Inbox

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I spent a small part of the last week trading email with someone who’s online email was being overrun by spam. Their email inbox was out of control and they did not know how to fix their problem.

By referring them to the links below, they cut their spam problem from over eighty Spam Mails a day to less than three.

They now feel they empowered using their Email rather than overwhelmed by it. They are now in control of their inbox, and do not have to sift through tons of spam to find  the emails they wish to read.

I wrote this up to provide you with a resource you can use too to help you gain control over your Yahoo or Windows-Live-Hotmail email account.

Below are links, and information about the links to Yahoo and Windows-Live-Hotmail.

Following the links will help you with organizing and accessing your email, address book help, sending files, help with assorted problems and errors, and of course simple chatting.

Yahoo Email Yahoo’s help is mostly on one page making it easier to navigate.

This is a help page for Yahoo Classic email if you use the Classic version.

This is a help page for All-New Yahoo email for those on the bleeding edge.

Yahoo for Android, and Iphone if you want mobile mail too.

Windows Live Hotmail

High level overview for Windows-Live-Hotmail issues and help to include other Microsoft products.

Spam control help screen for Windows Live Hotmail created to help you take charge of your Windows Live Hotmail.

For keeping track of your email conversations. This page will help you arrange your Hotmail or Windows Live email accounts into conversations arranged by subject so you can  all emails on the same subject grouped together.

This is a link to help you access and manage your Windows Live Hotmail account through Outlook.

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Make your Mark – 2000s version

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When it is time to ‘Make Your Mark’, the first thing to decide is what your Mark is. Marks are highly personal. We generally do not mix our Mark with another persons Mark, except in the short term, when it is a group action such as building a bridge.

People are often sidetracked and disenchanted by the first step of Making their Mark. They pick lofty and important goals, planning to write their name in history books. After a small amount of time they give up in frustration. Making their Mark is relegated to the realm of dreams. Don’t let this happen to you. Make your Mark as lofty as you dream!

Once you pick your Mark, always work towards it. If your Mark in life is to be a company president, or great scientist you can not immediately start working on your resume for the positions. Smaller tasks come first to get you prepared for the big goal, What working towards your Mark means is ensuring that what ever you are doing or are going to do helps you move towards Making your Mark, and not away from it.

Not one person of the literal billions who have lived and died, started out famous. Each of the long time famous people earned their Mark in the world. Rosa Parks , Sitting Bull, Juan Cortina, and others, did not start out with their Mark already made. It took most of their life to Make their Mark. They all started as mere mortals, and over their lifetime they achieved enough successes, to have made individual Marks that will carry on through the ages.

Making your Mark is not easy, it was never meant to be easy. Making your Mark is not a Western movie, spending a few months on a dusty plain fighting a range war over barbed wire, or water rights. Making your Mark is living a lifetime of holding a vision of who you want to be somewhere down the road, and doing your best not to become distracted or give up.

Making your Mark, is a life long endeavor. Making your Mark is filled with challenges, setbacks, and occasional defeats. Making your Mark means reflecting on your character. When it seems that you will never achieve what you have determined to do, you have to look deep down inside of yourself, and find what you are made of and use it.

Making your Mark means identifying strengths you never new you had in the face of adversity. Making your Mark means walking your own path when everyone else is taking a different route. Making your Mark can mean making tough choices.

Making your Mark means not quitting just because you can or you want to. Making your Mark means one day you sit down and realize you made a difference, and though it may have taken you a lifetime, you accomplished a goal that few people in the world will ever reach. Making your Mark means that no matter what happens, you have done what you set out to do, and the world is a better place for it.

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Make Your Mark – 1800s version

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Being lucky enough to go to the movies as a kid meant going to see a Western. Westerns always took place sometime in the 1800′s. The 1800s were recent enough to be remembered in stories passed down by family members, and Westerns were filled with action and suspense.

Old Westerns always had characters that were easily defined. Good Guys wore white hats, and the Bad Guys always wore dark hats. It made it easy to know immediately who were the good guys and who were the bad guys.

One unique part in Westerns that stuck with me all these years was a ritual called, “Make your Mark”. The Good Guys whether signing on for a cattle drive, a posse, or taking on some other job, were always asked to Make their Mark on a sheet of paper.

Sometimes, after they made their mark with a simple X, and someone wrote in their name next to their X. Other times, the Good Guy wrote out his name in some flowery script. However they made their mark, it was clear that they were pledging to something, and they would see it through to the end or die in the process.

In a few Westerns a different type of Mark was made. A young Cowboy would be told to go out and Make his Mark. This was confusing to me, because generally cowboys made their Marks on paper. As a kid I did not understand how a Cowboy could Make his Mark if he did not sign anything.

In these odd Westerns where a young Cowboy went out and made his mark without writing his name on anything, there was more to the story line. Generally he would meet some Cowgirl and they would get mushy and then have a falling out. The Cowboy would leave angry, pack up some things, ride into the arid lands, do battle with bad guys, and finally return to fall madly in love with the Gal he left behind. I always missed where or how he Made his Mark though. How or where did he Make his Mark, as he never signed anything?

Later, I started to understand the idea of Cowboy’s Making his Mark was an abstract concept. The Cowboy had to get out there, where ever there was, and do something important. The mark the Cowboy made were his larger than life accomplishments. Bigger than driving cattle to market – which would have been his job. Big accomplishments were saving a Town, protecting Ranchers from rustlers, or rescuing the Cowgirl from bad guys.

I was confused how I was supposed to, ‘Get out there and make my mark’. Though no one ever said anything like it, it seemed to be an expectation as I grew up. There were no rustlers, no one was in distress, or needed saving, and there was a lake or stream every few miles so water was never an issue. I never met a young woman I had a serious argument with. What exactly was I expected to do to, Make My Mark?

Eventually I started to have an inkling of what, ‘Making your Mark’ was all about. For us mere mortals, ‘Making Your Mark’ is a sequence of events happening over a lifetime. Making Your Mark is not completing a single task and riding off into the sunset, or marrying the Cowgirl who suddenly has become so desirable.

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Please Wait For Dawn

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An old television series “Mash” still rolls across the airwaves on some channel or other, at some time of day or night. Mash was a series about a front line medical unit in the Korean War. The characters all did an outstanding job which made the show believable no matter how crazy the episode became.

The theme song for “Mash” is a song I rarely heard anywhere until after the Cast and Crew retired and all that was left were reruns. The song never caught on, but it still received some air time. The Mash theme song was named, Suicide is Painless. Unless you are paying attention you will not really notice the lyrics to the song. Some songs are like that. Songs like this one flow so smoothly, they float through us, and we never hear the words.

I want to get to the point of this post now, and there seems to be no easy way to do it. This is a post about suicide. I don’t know if because there are so many more people, suicide gets more publicity, or nothing has changed; but suicide comes and goes like the flu. It is especially prevalent among Teens these days.

I understand the reasons why Teens are especially vulnerable to the idea of Suicide. Peer pressure, feelings of not belonging, feeling distant, pressure to get good grades, and pressure to always be a winner, and other forms of pressure are constant when you are a Teen.

While these are serious matters, and very painful at the time, none of them are so serious that suicide is a good fix for them. We all have felt the pressure of surviving our teen years, and we all know how bad they can be.

The problem with suicide is the thought process. It is akin to Plato’s Cave. If you are not familiar with Plato’s Cave, here is a short explanation. A number of people are seated in a dark cave watching a play in front of them. The cave is so dark that you can not see the people seated behind you. Nor can you really make out the people in front of you other than there are people sitting in front of you.

The play is unfolding in front of you. You watch the actors and follow the story line. The story line is the story line of pain. When the pain becomes too much thoughts of suicide enter into the play. We get so involved in our pain, we forget there is a whole world outside of the cave. We become so fixated on our pain we forget about the rest of our life.

Our pain is intensified by external sources. People create or contribute to our pain. They may not intend to cause pain. They may want to be rid of their pain, or make someone else hurt like they do.

Somehow the idea creeps in to our thoughts that the only control we have over the drama on the stage is to stop the pain by stopping us. If we no longer exist the pain can no longer hurt. If we cease to exist, everything will be better.

Few people, especially Teens ever admit to feeling this way. I believe it is a lot more prevalent than we would like to think it is. I am of the opinion some of us try to pass our pain to others in the hope one day we will start to feel the pain going away.

We become so focused on stopping our pain, we do not see it will be the end end for us. The pain of life will go away, period. It is vital to understand the pain we feel is something in a state of passing. It will go away if we only move slowly and wait for it to move on.

This pain which hits many Teens, like everything else in life is only short term, even though it may feel like it will go on forever. Your Parents, Aunts, and Uncles, any adult you know has either gone through the same pain and feelings, or knows someone who did.

It is hard to think about before or after this all started, but you need to think about both before and after. Never before in your life has anything affected you like what you are feeling now. Don’t give up, you will be happy again. Wait for happier times to return.

There is an old saying, “It is always the darkest before the Dawn”.

If you can not see a way out of your pain or see a future, it is a sure sign the worst is over and Dawn is just around the corner. Dawn is worth waiting for, because with the Dawn is a reawakening of all that is good about life, and why life is worth living.

I promise you, if you can wait a day, week, month, even a year, the pain will go away and life will become what it is meant to be for you. All you have to do is know that life can not get any worse, you have hit the bottom, it will only get better. Dawn will be here soon, if you will only believe it will. If you can not allow yourself to believe the worst is over, take a minute or two to think about this:

There are an untold number of people waiting for you in your future who need you in their life. The reasons why they will need you in their lives will all be different.  If you never enter their lives they will never receive the gifts you have to give them. They will never be able to do for themselves what you are going to do for them. Please do not let these people down, they are counting on you being there for them.

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