I don't like heat.
This might sound obvious, coming from a dire wolf therian, but heat does not agree with me. You get over about 75 degrees Fahrenheit and I start getting fairly uncomfortable.
Lately, the temperature around here has been rising into the 90s during the day. Needless to say, I've been a very uncomfortable puppy.
But while a wolf in the wild might only have the option of lying down in shade and panting in order to beat the heat, a human has quite a few more options. I can turn on the air, which finances have kind of dictated be kept to the minimum recently, so that option is out. I can turn a fan on me, but the nearest place to put one is across the room, and to get it to reach me I must turn it up on medium - and that gets loud. Loud is distracting in a work environment. Ok, so scratch the fan.
I could sit with an ice pack on the back of my neck or the small of my back! Except that it gets all goopy after a few minutes and ceases being cold, between the heat of the outside world and heat of my body... Ugh, that doesn't work either.
A cold shower! I could take a cold - the bathroom is sweltering. Ok, not a cold shower.
I could drink water with ice. Ahh, the perfect way to beat the heat. Gah! I just gave myself stomach cramps! Ok, too much cold plus hot body equals upset stomach. Scratch the ice water.
I could... ah... There's got to... I'm human! There must be a heat-beating benefit to possessing this physical form!
Then again, laying in the shade and panting is looking better and better all the time.
Things aren't as bad as I just portrayed, by the way. That was essentially playing up for humor's sake. I do have a fan turned on me, and I am drinking cold water. It's nice. But that doesn't change that it's still too hot. Could someone get the world's thermastat fixed? Maybe reset it about, oh... 10,000 years? Kthnxbai. :P
Ancient Trails - Follow Me On RSS
Monday, July 25, 2011
Friday, July 22, 2011
"Escape" Revisited
"If you like Pina Coladas,
And getting caught in the rain..."
Who doesn't know this song? I'm sure I've just gotten it stuck in quite a few people's heads. Certainly over a certain age, pretty much everyone knows this song. It's "Escape (The Pina Colada Song)", by Rupert Holmes, circa 1979 or so. And oddly enough, it is the topic of my blog today.
Bear with me through possibly one of the most random TAE blogs so far.
I ran out to do some errands this afternoon. One of the things I love about my 1994 Jeep Cherokee is the awesome stereo my parents had installed in it before my dad gave it to me about a year ago. And I love using it. I flip through stations, any time a station goes to commercial, I move on. I have preset buttons to all my favorites, and I jump around until I hear something I want to listen to. Today, on my way home from Walgreens, I happened to stop on Escape.
Now, I've been hearing this song since I was a little girl. I remember hearing it specifically when I was around 7 or 8, and asking my mom what a pina colada was. All I got was "it's a pineapple and coconut drink." That sounded tasty to me! I had no idea for many years later that it was alcoholic as well. :P Though you can make a virgin one.
Though, of the lyrics and the story of the song, that's really all I remembered consciously. I obviously remembered the REST of it, as today I was singing along with it without even thinking. And then I started listening to the lyrics.
This song is COMPLETELY unrealistic!
The premise is that there's a guy, unhappy in his marriage, who starts reading the personals part of the newspaper, looking for someone to... well, there's no delicate way to put this - he's looking for someone to cheat on his wife with. He encounters the personal ad that makes up the first chorus of the song.
He then justifies his interest in it by saying that he and his "old lady's" love life had grown stale. And so he takes out a personal ad in response, requesting a meeting with the Pina Colada person.
Upon going to meet this person (he actually went THROUGH with the meeting! the heel!), he recognizes her the moment she walks in the door... Not because of anything she said, but because it's no one other than his wife!!
Now, here is where everything gets unrealistic. Not only has he gone through with cheating on her, but she was actually doing it BEFORE him, as her ad was already in the paper for him to find. In the real world, this would be a HUGE fight - both people are in the wrong, but it would ultimately be her (most likely) who is proven to have had the intent to be unfaithful FIRST, since she took out the original ad. This whole misunderstanding would lead to divorce, most likely!
However, in the song? They see each other, laugh, admit that neither knew they were talking to the other... and then have an amicable conversation realizing that neither ever knew the other liked Pina Coladas, etc, ending up with a reignition of their relationship. Very sweet. Very nice.
Incredibly unrealistic.
I will never be able to listen to that song the same way again. And now, thanks to me, neither will you. :P Don't you love blogging and it's propensity to spread one person's opinions? But, then again... that's another blog topic entirely.
And getting caught in the rain..."
Who doesn't know this song? I'm sure I've just gotten it stuck in quite a few people's heads. Certainly over a certain age, pretty much everyone knows this song. It's "Escape (The Pina Colada Song)", by Rupert Holmes, circa 1979 or so. And oddly enough, it is the topic of my blog today.
Bear with me through possibly one of the most random TAE blogs so far.
I ran out to do some errands this afternoon. One of the things I love about my 1994 Jeep Cherokee is the awesome stereo my parents had installed in it before my dad gave it to me about a year ago. And I love using it. I flip through stations, any time a station goes to commercial, I move on. I have preset buttons to all my favorites, and I jump around until I hear something I want to listen to. Today, on my way home from Walgreens, I happened to stop on Escape.
Now, I've been hearing this song since I was a little girl. I remember hearing it specifically when I was around 7 or 8, and asking my mom what a pina colada was. All I got was "it's a pineapple and coconut drink." That sounded tasty to me! I had no idea for many years later that it was alcoholic as well. :P Though you can make a virgin one.
Though, of the lyrics and the story of the song, that's really all I remembered consciously. I obviously remembered the REST of it, as today I was singing along with it without even thinking. And then I started listening to the lyrics.
This song is COMPLETELY unrealistic!
The premise is that there's a guy, unhappy in his marriage, who starts reading the personals part of the newspaper, looking for someone to... well, there's no delicate way to put this - he's looking for someone to cheat on his wife with. He encounters the personal ad that makes up the first chorus of the song.
He then justifies his interest in it by saying that he and his "old lady's" love life had grown stale. And so he takes out a personal ad in response, requesting a meeting with the Pina Colada person.
Upon going to meet this person (he actually went THROUGH with the meeting! the heel!), he recognizes her the moment she walks in the door... Not because of anything she said, but because it's no one other than his wife!!
Now, here is where everything gets unrealistic. Not only has he gone through with cheating on her, but she was actually doing it BEFORE him, as her ad was already in the paper for him to find. In the real world, this would be a HUGE fight - both people are in the wrong, but it would ultimately be her (most likely) who is proven to have had the intent to be unfaithful FIRST, since she took out the original ad. This whole misunderstanding would lead to divorce, most likely!
However, in the song? They see each other, laugh, admit that neither knew they were talking to the other... and then have an amicable conversation realizing that neither ever knew the other liked Pina Coladas, etc, ending up with a reignition of their relationship. Very sweet. Very nice.
Incredibly unrealistic.
I will never be able to listen to that song the same way again. And now, thanks to me, neither will you. :P Don't you love blogging and it's propensity to spread one person's opinions? But, then again... that's another blog topic entirely.
Monday, July 18, 2011
Wolf Power - Shift Happens 5
I don’t know a single therian who hasn’t dreamed of waking up one day in the body of their theriotype, myself included. This is with the knowledge that, in my personal case, I would be a creature out of time and out of place with my current surroundings, and yet the desire is still there. To be able to express on the outside that which we know ourselves to be on the inside is a drive that encourages strange practices among therians and otherkin – sometimes this expresses itself in the form of extreme tattooing and other body modification, but more often it’s just a secret longing. And again, I don’t know a single therian who hasn’t longed for that taboo phrase – P-shift.
P-shift has become the accepted therian term for that which we see in every classic werewolf movie and book, and in quite a few ancient stories… but never in real modern life. That is, the actual physical act of shifting into your theriotype, that your human body becomes that of an animal. The desire to be able to do this – especially to be able to do it at-will, is a huge part of therianthropy for most therians. Now, this is widely accepted in the therianthrope community as being impossible – but there are those who believe it not only possible, but claim to have done it. In the interest of political correctness, I’m going to treat this as if it were a viable possibility, though I admit that my own personal opinion is that it is simply impossible. As for what that says for those who believe they have done it, well… That is open to interpretation.
Generally, to claim to have successfully P-shifted is something that will get you ostracized from the therianthrope community. Yet people insist that it be believed without proof – these people usually prove to either be trolls, or delusional. Sometimes they simply drop off the face of the internet after making these claims, which always leads some people to believe that their claims were true – but perhaps the final transformation was one way. In general, though, even the term P-shift is looked down on in the communities – the unattainable mountaintop that all therians wish we could reach but know is impossible. So in general, unless the topic is more of a “what if” topic, you generally won’t see this kind of shift discussed.
So what if? What if I could become my theriotype – run as a dire wolf, or fly as a red-tailed hawk? Would I still retain my human mind? Or would the shift be a one way trip, and the decision have to be made before the shift was undertaken – do I want to never come back from this? I admit, there was a time in my life when the answer would have been yes. But I look around me now and… How many people could I help if I were fully wolf? How could I contribute to the world, be with the people I love, if I were no longer in this human form? The answer is that there’s almost no way – especially if the shift also involved me losing my human mind as well as my human shape. When I astral shift, I am aware that I am a physical and mental human that is allowing her more animalistic side to show through on the astral plane, and I’m still aware of time, and people, and everything – if I could speak, I would. And I always return to my body.
I’ve heard far too many therians scream in defiance that they would simply up and leave their human lives if only they could – and that worries me. What level of intolerance and misunderstanding must you be facing to be willing to turn your back on the body you were born into? No matter what we are on a spiritual level, one thing some therians don’t seem to give enough consideration to is that we are also human. It takes a human mind to even fathom the concept of therianthropy, or of a soul at all. It takes our intelligence, our very humanity, to conceive of being more than what we appear to be.
I used to be one of those therians who would wish to simply shift and fly away, or run away. But I’ve been through a lot in recent years and it’s changed my way of thinking. I realize now that I need more. I need my humanity, and my animal side to make me the complete person I am. I either chose to be this way in this life, or it was chosen for me by a higher power – for whatever reason, I believe there is a purpose to it. Perhaps the purpose is as simple as blogs such as this to help other people along in their discoveries of themselves. Or perhaps I haven’t even found my calling yet. All I know is that I don’t know – and that is a very human concept.
There are other, lesser known types of shifts as well, but in this series we have covered the most prevalent, and most of those lesser known types can be lumped in underneath these labels. For links to all previous articles in this section, please see the Essays portion of my site, or simply click the Shift Happens tag at the end of this post. Thank you all for reading my first blog series! Let’s hope for plenty more to come!
P-shift has become the accepted therian term for that which we see in every classic werewolf movie and book, and in quite a few ancient stories… but never in real modern life. That is, the actual physical act of shifting into your theriotype, that your human body becomes that of an animal. The desire to be able to do this – especially to be able to do it at-will, is a huge part of therianthropy for most therians. Now, this is widely accepted in the therianthrope community as being impossible – but there are those who believe it not only possible, but claim to have done it. In the interest of political correctness, I’m going to treat this as if it were a viable possibility, though I admit that my own personal opinion is that it is simply impossible. As for what that says for those who believe they have done it, well… That is open to interpretation.
Generally, to claim to have successfully P-shifted is something that will get you ostracized from the therianthrope community. Yet people insist that it be believed without proof – these people usually prove to either be trolls, or delusional. Sometimes they simply drop off the face of the internet after making these claims, which always leads some people to believe that their claims were true – but perhaps the final transformation was one way. In general, though, even the term P-shift is looked down on in the communities – the unattainable mountaintop that all therians wish we could reach but know is impossible. So in general, unless the topic is more of a “what if” topic, you generally won’t see this kind of shift discussed.
So what if? What if I could become my theriotype – run as a dire wolf, or fly as a red-tailed hawk? Would I still retain my human mind? Or would the shift be a one way trip, and the decision have to be made before the shift was undertaken – do I want to never come back from this? I admit, there was a time in my life when the answer would have been yes. But I look around me now and… How many people could I help if I were fully wolf? How could I contribute to the world, be with the people I love, if I were no longer in this human form? The answer is that there’s almost no way – especially if the shift also involved me losing my human mind as well as my human shape. When I astral shift, I am aware that I am a physical and mental human that is allowing her more animalistic side to show through on the astral plane, and I’m still aware of time, and people, and everything – if I could speak, I would. And I always return to my body.
I’ve heard far too many therians scream in defiance that they would simply up and leave their human lives if only they could – and that worries me. What level of intolerance and misunderstanding must you be facing to be willing to turn your back on the body you were born into? No matter what we are on a spiritual level, one thing some therians don’t seem to give enough consideration to is that we are also human. It takes a human mind to even fathom the concept of therianthropy, or of a soul at all. It takes our intelligence, our very humanity, to conceive of being more than what we appear to be.
I used to be one of those therians who would wish to simply shift and fly away, or run away. But I’ve been through a lot in recent years and it’s changed my way of thinking. I realize now that I need more. I need my humanity, and my animal side to make me the complete person I am. I either chose to be this way in this life, or it was chosen for me by a higher power – for whatever reason, I believe there is a purpose to it. Perhaps the purpose is as simple as blogs such as this to help other people along in their discoveries of themselves. Or perhaps I haven’t even found my calling yet. All I know is that I don’t know – and that is a very human concept.
There are other, lesser known types of shifts as well, but in this series we have covered the most prevalent, and most of those lesser known types can be lumped in underneath these labels. For links to all previous articles in this section, please see the Essays portion of my site, or simply click the Shift Happens tag at the end of this post. Thank you all for reading my first blog series! Let’s hope for plenty more to come!
Tuesday, July 12, 2011
A Morning Of Energy
I've tried a lot of different types of exercise over the years. I've tried aerobics, I've tried biking (which I love, but don't have the stamina... or the equipment for, at the moment), I've tried walking (I get so bored walking without actually GOING anywhere.. and when I go somewhere, I end up eating something that negates the walk), I've tried following work-out videos... But there's one thing that's always spoken strongly to me - and not just because I have a couple of bonds who are completely versed in the practice - and that's Tai Chi.
A little over a year ago, we tried as a family to do Tai Chi from a beginner's video every morning... and it kind of fell apart within a week. When I was done, I felt exhausted and very much.. NOT like it was how I expected it to be, knowing what Tai Chi is and what it's designed to do.
Recently, though, partially due to something I've been working on at work (can't be specific, sorry - in my line of work we sign a lot of non-disclosure agreements), my mind has been going more and more to the fact that I need SOME kind of exercise in my life.. And if I can't find the time, then I need to MAKE the time for it.
Last night, as I wrote in an earlier blog today, I had trouble sleeping. However, I still jumped up when the alarm went off at 7am this morning. Why? Because I knew I would be the only one up. I started out with my usual morning routine - a routine I'd been letting slip in recent months, only to have an epiphany that I felt so much better when I DID it, so I went back to doing it. I begin each day in prayer and meditation, even as I move around the house opening blinds, putting dishes away, cleaning counters, making coffee, sometimes feeding the cats and doing other things. Take that however you will, I'm deliberately being vague and nondenominational here.
My prayers are prayers of thanks - for the day, for the sunshine, for each precious piece of my life. My fiancee, my house, each room, each object and person I interact with, the cats... everything. I also give thanks for my body, my health, and the fact that I am a beautiful human being. And some of this is done aloud, but mostly it's a mental and energy thing.
Now, about half an hour has passed. I still have at least half an hour before I need to do anything specific. I usually sit down in a calm space and commune with the animal spirits around me - the skin spirits and other creatures that share this world and life with me thanks to my own spiritual works. However, today I realized that my mind does not need me to be sitting still in order to do this. So, I started stretching as I communed with the animal spirits... and something I never expected began to emerge.
The first energetic greetings I received were from my coyotes, and I felt urged physically to bend over and touch my toes, slowly and evenly. I had to bend my knees slightly, but suddenly I found myself with, essentially, four on the floor. And the amazing part? I wasn't in pain. The next creature that reached out to me was my badger, Constance, and I felt "stand up slowly, relax and roll shoulders". I did as I felt lead to do. Over the course of the next twenty minutes or so, my mind lost in meditation all but for one moment when Claudia came in and commented that I was VERY close to actually touching my toes without bending my knees, and I thanked her, and my body going through the motions the spirits offered me.
It came out to a 20 minute, tai chi-esque workout that left me sweating, breathing a little bit hard, and the muscles in my back, thighs, arms, and calves burning a bit - but it was a plesant burn, not the pain of shin splints that accompanied my previous attempts at Tai Chi. Looking back on it, I felt my hands heating up with the same energy feelings I got from working with my pelts, and one phrase from the Tai Chi video from last year kept coming back to me - the one move I could do perfectly every time: "Sinking The Chi" - which was the one move that I felt the need to do at the end of every spirit inspired sequence. And now I felt more what I'd expected when trying the Tai Chi a year ago. I felt energized, I felt AWAKE... and I hadn't even had coffee yet. Not only that, but I was running on a fitful five hours or so of sleep. And I felt GREAT.
I sat down at my desk, even though I was an hour and a half early for work, and began work on my transcription, getting it more than halfway done and done WELL before I was even scheduled to start work.
Around the time work was about to start, though, my physical energy started waning, so I went over to the little trampoline we have in the living room and bounced for a couple of minutes. That got the burn going in my thighs and calves again, and woke me up. I was thrilled. I was even HUNGRY, and I can't remember the last time (even when getting up at six and seven in the morning) that I've been hungry before noon. I ate a bologna sandwich, drank some ice water, got myself a cup of coffee, and went back to work. I finished the transcription over an hour sooner than I'd anticipated that I would - which makes sense, since that's how long I worked on it before work officially STARTED.
I did end up napping through my lunch break instead of eating, but I made that decision consciously, as I knew I would have no time for the rest of the day to repeat my spiritual routine, and I needed enough energy to get me through to at least eleven tonight. Whereas I would have time to eat later, and I wasn't particularly hungry at lunch, either.
I can't wait for tomorrow, and seeing what I'm lead to do during my exercise then! This is what I've been searching for my entire life - exercise that gets me excited about doing it. And it's the one thing I've never been able to find.
Funny how, just like my positivity, what I need just seems to show up... but only when I've stopped actively looking for it.
Thank You, for that gift as well.
A little over a year ago, we tried as a family to do Tai Chi from a beginner's video every morning... and it kind of fell apart within a week. When I was done, I felt exhausted and very much.. NOT like it was how I expected it to be, knowing what Tai Chi is and what it's designed to do.
Recently, though, partially due to something I've been working on at work (can't be specific, sorry - in my line of work we sign a lot of non-disclosure agreements), my mind has been going more and more to the fact that I need SOME kind of exercise in my life.. And if I can't find the time, then I need to MAKE the time for it.
Last night, as I wrote in an earlier blog today, I had trouble sleeping. However, I still jumped up when the alarm went off at 7am this morning. Why? Because I knew I would be the only one up. I started out with my usual morning routine - a routine I'd been letting slip in recent months, only to have an epiphany that I felt so much better when I DID it, so I went back to doing it. I begin each day in prayer and meditation, even as I move around the house opening blinds, putting dishes away, cleaning counters, making coffee, sometimes feeding the cats and doing other things. Take that however you will, I'm deliberately being vague and nondenominational here.
My prayers are prayers of thanks - for the day, for the sunshine, for each precious piece of my life. My fiancee, my house, each room, each object and person I interact with, the cats... everything. I also give thanks for my body, my health, and the fact that I am a beautiful human being. And some of this is done aloud, but mostly it's a mental and energy thing.
Now, about half an hour has passed. I still have at least half an hour before I need to do anything specific. I usually sit down in a calm space and commune with the animal spirits around me - the skin spirits and other creatures that share this world and life with me thanks to my own spiritual works. However, today I realized that my mind does not need me to be sitting still in order to do this. So, I started stretching as I communed with the animal spirits... and something I never expected began to emerge.
The first energetic greetings I received were from my coyotes, and I felt urged physically to bend over and touch my toes, slowly and evenly. I had to bend my knees slightly, but suddenly I found myself with, essentially, four on the floor. And the amazing part? I wasn't in pain. The next creature that reached out to me was my badger, Constance, and I felt "stand up slowly, relax and roll shoulders". I did as I felt lead to do. Over the course of the next twenty minutes or so, my mind lost in meditation all but for one moment when Claudia came in and commented that I was VERY close to actually touching my toes without bending my knees, and I thanked her, and my body going through the motions the spirits offered me.
It came out to a 20 minute, tai chi-esque workout that left me sweating, breathing a little bit hard, and the muscles in my back, thighs, arms, and calves burning a bit - but it was a plesant burn, not the pain of shin splints that accompanied my previous attempts at Tai Chi. Looking back on it, I felt my hands heating up with the same energy feelings I got from working with my pelts, and one phrase from the Tai Chi video from last year kept coming back to me - the one move I could do perfectly every time: "Sinking The Chi" - which was the one move that I felt the need to do at the end of every spirit inspired sequence. And now I felt more what I'd expected when trying the Tai Chi a year ago. I felt energized, I felt AWAKE... and I hadn't even had coffee yet. Not only that, but I was running on a fitful five hours or so of sleep. And I felt GREAT.
I sat down at my desk, even though I was an hour and a half early for work, and began work on my transcription, getting it more than halfway done and done WELL before I was even scheduled to start work.
Around the time work was about to start, though, my physical energy started waning, so I went over to the little trampoline we have in the living room and bounced for a couple of minutes. That got the burn going in my thighs and calves again, and woke me up. I was thrilled. I was even HUNGRY, and I can't remember the last time (even when getting up at six and seven in the morning) that I've been hungry before noon. I ate a bologna sandwich, drank some ice water, got myself a cup of coffee, and went back to work. I finished the transcription over an hour sooner than I'd anticipated that I would - which makes sense, since that's how long I worked on it before work officially STARTED.
I did end up napping through my lunch break instead of eating, but I made that decision consciously, as I knew I would have no time for the rest of the day to repeat my spiritual routine, and I needed enough energy to get me through to at least eleven tonight. Whereas I would have time to eat later, and I wasn't particularly hungry at lunch, either.
I can't wait for tomorrow, and seeing what I'm lead to do during my exercise then! This is what I've been searching for my entire life - exercise that gets me excited about doing it. And it's the one thing I've never been able to find.
Funny how, just like my positivity, what I need just seems to show up... but only when I've stopped actively looking for it.
Thank You, for that gift as well.
Quirky Sense Of Smell
Like most wolf therians, I'm very aware of my sense of smell (when my allergies allow me to feel like I HAVE one, that is), but there are certain times when I wish very much that I could be like my friend Nyx, who doesn't have a sense of smell at all.
For instance, everyone knows that scent is a strong trigger of memory. It's also tied to one's stomach in a lot of cases - smelling food can make you hungry, even if you weren't a moment earlier. Or, alternately, smelling something gross can make you nauseated, even if you aren't sick. However, what I'm taking issue with today is that my brain apparently combines scents and finds strange things horrifically repulsive.
Last night, broccoli and cheese was part of our dinner. I'm the designated dishwasher, so before I went to bed last night, I was finishing up the dishes. This included the pot that the broccoli and cheese was made in. I love the scent of broccoli and cheese. It's delicious.
Our current dish soap is green apple scented. I also love this scent. It reminds me of Jolly Ranchers, and makes me want candy.
Now, dinner had been about six hours earlier, but, silly me, I hadn't thought to come in and rinse the pot to make my washing of it easier when I got there. So, I decided to squirt some soap into it, fill it with hot water, and let it soak while I did the other dishes.
I don't know if it was the soap, the broccoli, the hot water, or some combination of them - but as I was washing the dishes, the scent drifted over to my for-once-unblocked nose... and it was possibly the most disgusting thing I have ever smelled. I reeled back from the sink and said "whoa," thankfully fairly quietly. The scent was so strange that I couldn't even PLACE it - it didn't smell like broccoli and cheese, or hot water, or even green apples. It smelled... I can't even compare it to anything, but imagine the worst scent you can - that's what it was like.
Now, as most canines, I'm intrigued by scents. So I began hunting for the source of the strange, disgusting smell. It didn't take me long to localize it to the pot... or to squick out the moment I got a better scent of it. Had I been a canine in the physical, I'd have been pawing at my nose as if I'd just been skunked. My eyes were watering, I kept shaking my head, and I had to take my glasses off because my face was heating up and they actually fogged.
I did the only thing I could do - I yanked the pot into the sink and dumped it, then started running water into it, scrubbing furiously. I breathed through my mouth, wished that my nose would choose that moment to stuff up (it didn't), and got that pot as clean as I could as quickly as possible. Soon, the only scent coming from it was the Jolly Rancher-esque scent of the soap.
However, the damage had already been done. My stomach had turned, and nothing could get that smell out of my nose. I sniffed several other things before leaving the kitchen - old coffee, cat food, a piece of bologna, which I also ate in an attempt to clear the scent. But ultimately it was ducking into the bathroom and brushing my teeth for the second time in less than an hour that managed to clear the scent and replace it with the Scope mint of my toothpaste.
I don't know if that weird scent is to blame for the fact that I couldn't get to sleep last night, and when I did, it was incredibly fitful, but I did learn one thing - soaking a cheesy broccoli pot in apple soap and hot water is NOT something I'm going to do again.
For instance, everyone knows that scent is a strong trigger of memory. It's also tied to one's stomach in a lot of cases - smelling food can make you hungry, even if you weren't a moment earlier. Or, alternately, smelling something gross can make you nauseated, even if you aren't sick. However, what I'm taking issue with today is that my brain apparently combines scents and finds strange things horrifically repulsive.
Last night, broccoli and cheese was part of our dinner. I'm the designated dishwasher, so before I went to bed last night, I was finishing up the dishes. This included the pot that the broccoli and cheese was made in. I love the scent of broccoli and cheese. It's delicious.
Our current dish soap is green apple scented. I also love this scent. It reminds me of Jolly Ranchers, and makes me want candy.
Now, dinner had been about six hours earlier, but, silly me, I hadn't thought to come in and rinse the pot to make my washing of it easier when I got there. So, I decided to squirt some soap into it, fill it with hot water, and let it soak while I did the other dishes.
I don't know if it was the soap, the broccoli, the hot water, or some combination of them - but as I was washing the dishes, the scent drifted over to my for-once-unblocked nose... and it was possibly the most disgusting thing I have ever smelled. I reeled back from the sink and said "whoa," thankfully fairly quietly. The scent was so strange that I couldn't even PLACE it - it didn't smell like broccoli and cheese, or hot water, or even green apples. It smelled... I can't even compare it to anything, but imagine the worst scent you can - that's what it was like.
Now, as most canines, I'm intrigued by scents. So I began hunting for the source of the strange, disgusting smell. It didn't take me long to localize it to the pot... or to squick out the moment I got a better scent of it. Had I been a canine in the physical, I'd have been pawing at my nose as if I'd just been skunked. My eyes were watering, I kept shaking my head, and I had to take my glasses off because my face was heating up and they actually fogged.
I did the only thing I could do - I yanked the pot into the sink and dumped it, then started running water into it, scrubbing furiously. I breathed through my mouth, wished that my nose would choose that moment to stuff up (it didn't), and got that pot as clean as I could as quickly as possible. Soon, the only scent coming from it was the Jolly Rancher-esque scent of the soap.
However, the damage had already been done. My stomach had turned, and nothing could get that smell out of my nose. I sniffed several other things before leaving the kitchen - old coffee, cat food, a piece of bologna, which I also ate in an attempt to clear the scent. But ultimately it was ducking into the bathroom and brushing my teeth for the second time in less than an hour that managed to clear the scent and replace it with the Scope mint of my toothpaste.
I don't know if that weird scent is to blame for the fact that I couldn't get to sleep last night, and when I did, it was incredibly fitful, but I did learn one thing - soaking a cheesy broccoli pot in apple soap and hot water is NOT something I'm going to do again.
Wednesday, July 6, 2011
Spammy Whammy
My blog dashboard informs me that I have a very popular site. In addition to my five subscribers (of which I'm fairly sure only two are in this house), I have over seven hundred comments spread across all of my blog posts! Now, that sounds really awesome, right? And! To make matters better, I know for a fact that only one of those comments is mine.
As of right now, my blog has 752 comments! However, if you read my blog regularly, you might have only noticed, oh... 3. Because of those 752 lovely comments, 749 of them... were spam. Now, spam is getting tricky. Sometimes it's VERY obviously not about the topic of the blog, such as the "this is getting very subjective, but I prefer the Zune Marketplace...." in response to a post about someone's death. Other times, though, it's just things like, "This was a very informative article! Thank you for writing!", which, I admit, I might have been tricked by - if the name of the "person" leaving the comment wasn't "free sex videos" with a dubious link as their website.
I've been meaning to write this particular blog for awhile, as it's my biggest grievance with Wordpress - it's just so easily trolled and comment spammed. Now, you might be reading this on my Blogger or my LJ blog, in which case - no, I don't have these issues. However, the whole point of changing Tyger's Den over to a wordpress site was so I could integrate my blog with the rest of my concise internet presence, with links to other places I appear because... Well, a few years ago, there was someone else out there who was pretending to be me, and it got me into a bit of trouble with friends I don't talk to regularly. That person's since been caught and hasn't been at it again, but I'm careful to monitor everywhere I exist upon the web in order to stop that from happening again in the future.
Back to the topic, however - the spam comments range from the ridiculous to the inappropriate, to the "normal," except for their attached username or link. And I get, on average, five or six of them, spread across all blogs, every day. The blogs they choose seem to be random, but they do favor specific ones. The Tooth & Arrows in which I discussed Mario Kart DS is popular, as is my tribute to Elizabeth Sladen just after her death. Other posts, such as posts in which I'm giving actual advice, like the Shift Happens series, don't get any at all. Whereas a blog in which I comment that the reason my creativity tanked was that I hadn't been dreaming regularly draws comments such as "a useful idea! I shall have to attempt this in the future!". Pray tell how you will "attempt" to dream, you creepy little spam bot? Leave me alone!
Perhaps the funniest spam I receive, though, are the spams that are "advertising" a way to post comments across multiple wordpresses to "get your ideas out there". IE, Spambots that are ADVERTISING themselves. I love those. Which is good, because I get about five of them a week.
Just a request for those who will actually comment on this blog, you non-spambot people. But never say "this article" or "this topic" when talking about what the article is about... Please, be specific. Because I don't want to be marking comments as spam when they aren't. It doesn't take much - a few trigger words will do it, or even one. But vague comments and names and sites I don't recognize are likely to be marked as spam.
However, I can say this - I personally read every comment I receive. So even if I wrongly mark a comment as spam, rest assured that I have read every word of it.
Now, if someone could invent a mallet that smacked spambots off the internet, I would be thrilled. Can we do that? Please?
Now, let's see how many spam comments THIS entry gets.
As of right now, my blog has 752 comments! However, if you read my blog regularly, you might have only noticed, oh... 3. Because of those 752 lovely comments, 749 of them... were spam. Now, spam is getting tricky. Sometimes it's VERY obviously not about the topic of the blog, such as the "this is getting very subjective, but I prefer the Zune Marketplace...." in response to a post about someone's death. Other times, though, it's just things like, "This was a very informative article! Thank you for writing!", which, I admit, I might have been tricked by - if the name of the "person" leaving the comment wasn't "free sex videos" with a dubious link as their website.
I've been meaning to write this particular blog for awhile, as it's my biggest grievance with Wordpress - it's just so easily trolled and comment spammed. Now, you might be reading this on my Blogger or my LJ blog, in which case - no, I don't have these issues. However, the whole point of changing Tyger's Den over to a wordpress site was so I could integrate my blog with the rest of my concise internet presence, with links to other places I appear because... Well, a few years ago, there was someone else out there who was pretending to be me, and it got me into a bit of trouble with friends I don't talk to regularly. That person's since been caught and hasn't been at it again, but I'm careful to monitor everywhere I exist upon the web in order to stop that from happening again in the future.
Back to the topic, however - the spam comments range from the ridiculous to the inappropriate, to the "normal," except for their attached username or link. And I get, on average, five or six of them, spread across all blogs, every day. The blogs they choose seem to be random, but they do favor specific ones. The Tooth & Arrows in which I discussed Mario Kart DS is popular, as is my tribute to Elizabeth Sladen just after her death. Other posts, such as posts in which I'm giving actual advice, like the Shift Happens series, don't get any at all. Whereas a blog in which I comment that the reason my creativity tanked was that I hadn't been dreaming regularly draws comments such as "a useful idea! I shall have to attempt this in the future!". Pray tell how you will "attempt" to dream, you creepy little spam bot? Leave me alone!
Perhaps the funniest spam I receive, though, are the spams that are "advertising" a way to post comments across multiple wordpresses to "get your ideas out there". IE, Spambots that are ADVERTISING themselves. I love those. Which is good, because I get about five of them a week.
Just a request for those who will actually comment on this blog, you non-spambot people. But never say "this article" or "this topic" when talking about what the article is about... Please, be specific. Because I don't want to be marking comments as spam when they aren't. It doesn't take much - a few trigger words will do it, or even one. But vague comments and names and sites I don't recognize are likely to be marked as spam.
However, I can say this - I personally read every comment I receive. So even if I wrongly mark a comment as spam, rest assured that I have read every word of it.
Now, if someone could invent a mallet that smacked spambots off the internet, I would be thrilled. Can we do that? Please?
Now, let's see how many spam comments THIS entry gets.
Sunday, July 3, 2011
Werewolf
When I was writing the Shift Happens blog about Phantom Shifts, I neglected to mention one of the possible triggers of them. One reason for this is that I was focused on how to deliberately cause one and this method is (for me, at least) fairly unreliable. However, the trigger I'm discussing is music.
I'm not talking about a drumming trance, or even instrumental music to listen to while you meditate and try to trigger a phantom shift (Dan Gibson's Soundscapes series is awesome for this - wolf howls set to classical music, and other animal sounds), but when a song speaks to you in such a powerful way that it sets your "fur" on edge and you find yourself wanting to howl, or roar, or whatever your theriotype's sound would be, along with it. When you find yourself skin dancing* without the skin, but with a different covering over your human body.
Now, this can progress into a true Phantom Overlay, but as you could be any number of places while listening to music, it is a good idea to arrest the progress of this (if you can - sometimes the spirit is a little TOO willing :P ) at the simple phantom shift, and just keep enjoying the music.
Why am I posting about this now? Why is it not under the Shift Happens label? And WHY is the title of this post, "Werewolf"? All questions I'm going to answer. Kind of now.
See, the reason I'm posting about this is that I had an awesome experience yesterday. Something that hasn't happened in over a year, and something I absolutely love when it does. I was "seen," and not by just one person... but two.
I went to Wal-Mart to pick up a sprinkler for our front lawn. I took a sort of long drive to get there, because I wanted to time the 2 routes I knew of and see which one was faster (hence one way going, the other way coming back). On the way, a 30 Seconds To Mars song I'd never heard before came on the radio. It was called Night Of The Hunter. Now, my initial thoughts were actually of an epic save that myself and Nyx and Midnite had pulled off in Stonecore in WoW a few weeks ago, in which our Tank and Healer both died, and the three of us (all L85 Hunters) managed to down both Slabhide and the final boss of the dungeon on our own from about 1/3 health. It was fairly awesome, and as I listened to the song, I found myself lamenting that none of us had been using a recording software at the time - we could've made a video of the fights to that song.
However, something else was happening. I don't know what it was about the song, or whether it was the "background visuals" in my head, because every song I listen to has at least 2 ways I "see" it, and I arbitrarily pick which visual goes with it every time I listen to it, and this one tended to bring with it the visuals of a wolf pack hunting at night. Perhaps even the werewolf Pack from Kelley Armstrong's Otherworld series, because I think I recognized a certain large, golden, blue-eyed wolf in the mix. But whatever it was, a phantom shift overtook me in the car, brought with it a lovely energy boost, and was still going strong when I got to Wal-Mart
Wal-mart is huge, (and this was a Super Wal-Mart, so even bigger than normal), and because of my knees, hip, and back, I make a point of riding the electric carts around stores like that, while I walk in Albertson's and other grocery stores. As I was heading back toward the gardening department, phantom shift still in place - an astral werewolf driving an electric shopping cart - I noticed a woman leading a young man gently by the hand. From the formation of his features and the look on his face, I could tell he was differently abled, mentally. Down Syndrome, perhaps, but maybe something more or worse. I looked away, never wanting to stare at someone for any misfortune, let alone one they had no control over, but my head snapped back around when he suddenly started screaming.
He was pointing at me, screaming, and trying to run away. The woman that was with him kept a firm grip on his hand and apologized to me profusely, saying that the electric cart must have frightened him, and trying to get him to calm down. I smiled and said that I'd move away, and that *I* was sorry I'd upset him. Which I was. And I was willing to accept her explanation as well - until I saw another electric cart pass by him a little while later and he didn't react at all. The only thing I can figure is, like the very young and the very old, the mentally handicapped sometimes can see that which the rest of the world can't. And what he saw was a human-sized wolf, driving an electric cart through a store. What else to call that but a werewolf? I can't blame him for screaming.
My shift didn't go away, though, and as I was coming back from grabbing the sprinkler, and heading for the checkout, I had another experience.
A young boy, maybe... 3 years old, at most, was sitting in his father's shopping cart while the dad rooted around in the freezer section for something. The kid had been completely silent, from what I could tell. Then he looked at me, grinned in a huge and adorable way... and started barking. "Woof! Woof woof!" he said excitedly, continuing to grin at me. The way kids who like dogs do when they see a dog. This is the second time a small child has thought of me as a dog, the last one being a couple of years ago at the Irvine Spectrum. However, this occurrence, coupled with the earlier one, made this one even more memorable than the last.
Perhaps I should deliberately trigger phantom shifts while I'm out and see who notices the "werewolf" in their midst. :)
I'm not talking about a drumming trance, or even instrumental music to listen to while you meditate and try to trigger a phantom shift (Dan Gibson's Soundscapes series is awesome for this - wolf howls set to classical music, and other animal sounds), but when a song speaks to you in such a powerful way that it sets your "fur" on edge and you find yourself wanting to howl, or roar, or whatever your theriotype's sound would be, along with it. When you find yourself skin dancing* without the skin, but with a different covering over your human body.
Now, this can progress into a true Phantom Overlay, but as you could be any number of places while listening to music, it is a good idea to arrest the progress of this (if you can - sometimes the spirit is a little TOO willing :P ) at the simple phantom shift, and just keep enjoying the music.
Why am I posting about this now? Why is it not under the Shift Happens label? And WHY is the title of this post, "Werewolf"? All questions I'm going to answer. Kind of now.
See, the reason I'm posting about this is that I had an awesome experience yesterday. Something that hasn't happened in over a year, and something I absolutely love when it does. I was "seen," and not by just one person... but two.
I went to Wal-Mart to pick up a sprinkler for our front lawn. I took a sort of long drive to get there, because I wanted to time the 2 routes I knew of and see which one was faster (hence one way going, the other way coming back). On the way, a 30 Seconds To Mars song I'd never heard before came on the radio. It was called Night Of The Hunter. Now, my initial thoughts were actually of an epic save that myself and Nyx and Midnite had pulled off in Stonecore in WoW a few weeks ago, in which our Tank and Healer both died, and the three of us (all L85 Hunters) managed to down both Slabhide and the final boss of the dungeon on our own from about 1/3 health. It was fairly awesome, and as I listened to the song, I found myself lamenting that none of us had been using a recording software at the time - we could've made a video of the fights to that song.
However, something else was happening. I don't know what it was about the song, or whether it was the "background visuals" in my head, because every song I listen to has at least 2 ways I "see" it, and I arbitrarily pick which visual goes with it every time I listen to it, and this one tended to bring with it the visuals of a wolf pack hunting at night. Perhaps even the werewolf Pack from Kelley Armstrong's Otherworld series, because I think I recognized a certain large, golden, blue-eyed wolf in the mix. But whatever it was, a phantom shift overtook me in the car, brought with it a lovely energy boost, and was still going strong when I got to Wal-Mart
Wal-mart is huge, (and this was a Super Wal-Mart, so even bigger than normal), and because of my knees, hip, and back, I make a point of riding the electric carts around stores like that, while I walk in Albertson's and other grocery stores. As I was heading back toward the gardening department, phantom shift still in place - an astral werewolf driving an electric shopping cart - I noticed a woman leading a young man gently by the hand. From the formation of his features and the look on his face, I could tell he was differently abled, mentally. Down Syndrome, perhaps, but maybe something more or worse. I looked away, never wanting to stare at someone for any misfortune, let alone one they had no control over, but my head snapped back around when he suddenly started screaming.
He was pointing at me, screaming, and trying to run away. The woman that was with him kept a firm grip on his hand and apologized to me profusely, saying that the electric cart must have frightened him, and trying to get him to calm down. I smiled and said that I'd move away, and that *I* was sorry I'd upset him. Which I was. And I was willing to accept her explanation as well - until I saw another electric cart pass by him a little while later and he didn't react at all. The only thing I can figure is, like the very young and the very old, the mentally handicapped sometimes can see that which the rest of the world can't. And what he saw was a human-sized wolf, driving an electric cart through a store. What else to call that but a werewolf? I can't blame him for screaming.
My shift didn't go away, though, and as I was coming back from grabbing the sprinkler, and heading for the checkout, I had another experience.
A young boy, maybe... 3 years old, at most, was sitting in his father's shopping cart while the dad rooted around in the freezer section for something. The kid had been completely silent, from what I could tell. Then he looked at me, grinned in a huge and adorable way... and started barking. "Woof! Woof woof!" he said excitedly, continuing to grin at me. The way kids who like dogs do when they see a dog. This is the second time a small child has thought of me as a dog, the last one being a couple of years ago at the Irvine Spectrum. However, this occurrence, coupled with the earlier one, made this one even more memorable than the last.
Perhaps I should deliberately trigger phantom shifts while I'm out and see who notices the "werewolf" in their midst. :)
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)