tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-330288562024-02-28T08:58:05.773-08:00Axxman300, All Around ToolWelcome to my strange corner of the Internet.M Gregory Ferrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06921177390932932184noreply@blogger.comBlogger112125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33028856.post-68490422528658993172012-11-11T18:05:00.003-08:002012-11-11T18:05:38.989-08:00Taking Control<br />
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I've lost a lot of weight. Feels great, but last week I got
my head shaved. I’ll tell you why…<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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I spent the first decade of the 21<sup>st</sup> century 125
pounds overweight. I wrecked my back making for a convenient excuse to cover my
weight gain. I was sad, depressed, and it turns out I was deeply angry. I didn't know about the anger until two years ago. A job I loved was gone, and an
uncertain future loomed. <o:p></o:p></div>
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In December of 2006 I stopped drinking. I am an alcoholic,
and there’s no pretty way to say this. It was a health issue by then and a
financial problem too. So I stopped. The following February I began my first
semester at Monterey Peninsula College planning to take the composition, and
writing classes. I ended up in Oceanography and Spanish along with my English
class. I discovered I’m good at science, and my uncertain future now had a
focus. My money is limited and I can only afford two or three classes each
semester. This makes for slow going, but I’m enjoying the ride.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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The writing classes have been the most important for me. Not
because they’ve given me more options, but because they unlocked parts of my
psyche allowing me to discover things about myself. The anger I talked about
was revealed while writing a poem for class. It scared me due to the darkness I
was tapping into. I had no idea where it came from. The poem was about a hero
who is called upon to save the day, but at the final second he turns his back
and lets the bad guys win.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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So what does this have to do with shaving my head? <o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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As my weight-loss became substantial I began to see a
familiar face in the mirror. Sure, it was great to see the old, thinner me in
the morning again. The problem was that a short while after this some old bad
habits returned. Not the drinking, but some of the game-playing I used to keep
myself out of the race. There was a moment where I worried about losing the
progress I’ve made, and so my hair had to go. When I was thin my hair was
usually long-ish; now when I see my reflection I see the current me, and the
focus has returned.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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Six months from now my hair will be long again, and I should
be another forty pounds lighter. The way I see it, by then I should have the
bad habits under control, or at least farther along with the rest of my life so
they can’t reach me.<o:p></o:p></div>
M Gregory Ferrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06921177390932932184noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33028856.post-85435110967571938182012-10-27T20:25:00.001-07:002012-10-27T20:25:08.871-07:00The Barracks Shadow Man<br />
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So many of the ghosts I’ve seen I didn’t get a good look at.
They look like regular people, and unless they’re wearing period clothes it is
usually impossible to spot them. Fort Ord evens the playing field somewhat
because most of the ghosts there are wearing a uniform and the style of uniform
gives away their age. I’ve told you about the African-American in the OG
(pickle-suit), and the guy sitting in my truck wearing an Army orderly’s
uniform. <o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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There was also the Captain who almost knocked me over one
morning. I was on the alley between the 2-27 barracks, and I was reading the
stickers still on the windows of the upper floors. As I turned I had to jump to
one side as this man wearing the old khaki uniform, and captain’s bars on his
shoulders barreled past me. In a step and a half he vanished. I can still see
him. He wore the old bus-driver hat, and carried a brown leather briefcase. He
had a determined look on his face. The cut of the uniform placed him in the
late 1950s to early 1960s.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhcsn3fsv3QD2qGA4IjUr8AdX7SamQBTaarod6_4oC3HmZqAqI5uoUpvd_dexBI3nRsAA6_WXGEmKnUuHqaGkydh9BbP_Fp9wFEGRb5wS9lzz0NFaECEEdds0J8ZqRL_nm3j9X7Cg/s1600/manchuthroughwindow.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhcsn3fsv3QD2qGA4IjUr8AdX7SamQBTaarod6_4oC3HmZqAqI5uoUpvd_dexBI3nRsAA6_WXGEmKnUuHqaGkydh9BbP_Fp9wFEGRb5wS9lzz0NFaECEEdds0J8ZqRL_nm3j9X7Cg/s320/manchuthroughwindow.jpg" width="215" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Charlie 3-9 Barracks. He sat at the far entrance.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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A year or so later I was simply out for a walk. Fort Ord is
at the halfway point between my home, and the peninsula. It’s a great place to
walk because the distances are marked, and you can keep track of who far you’ve
gone. I was finishing up a three-mile loop, and decided to cut up through the
alley between the Machu, 3-9 barracks. The end I approached from is almost
blocked by a pair of Monterey Cypress trees. Their long branches reach across
the alley entrance, and they make it impossible to see through to the other
side.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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I came up at an angle which allowed me to walk under one
tree, and out onto the alley way. As I rounded the corner of the neighboring
building I saw movement on the steps of the opposite barracks. I stopped as this place can be tricky with
gangs, and homeless folks sometimes hanging out. What I saw blew my mind.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhQseFOILPShQybkNM8465zuHxfp9CU4m7KCzNEUKcDeB6jqeUqPTb5q1gA8ebkyr4i4qWlDp0Ys8fKLxzfnhdKzIw1CoHouhWA5vZXwu5wx0A39NeY3yovJy9MTITibM62jw2gKQ/s1600/4-9from6thAve.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="215" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhQseFOILPShQybkNM8465zuHxfp9CU4m7KCzNEUKcDeB6jqeUqPTb5q1gA8ebkyr4i4qWlDp0Ys8fKLxzfnhdKzIw1CoHouhWA5vZXwu5wx0A39NeY3yovJy9MTITibM62jw2gKQ/s320/4-9from6thAve.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The tree I stood beneath as I watched him.<br /></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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<br /></div>
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Sitting on the steps of the barracks was a man. He wore the camouflage
pants, and the black Corcoran combat boots. The upper half of his body was a
shadowy outline. I could see enough definition that I could tell he was smoking
a cigarette. I stood there looking at him - really looking at him in detail.
There was no question about what he was. He didn’t react to the wind blowing
through the trees. He just sat on the steps, head hunched just so, and every
once in a while taking a drag from his invisible cigarette.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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I marveled at his lower half. The sun reflected from the
shine of his boots. I could see his laces tied at the top. He had something in
the thigh cargo pockets of his pants, and the brass buckle glinted. I wondered
what might happen if I touched him. Would I feel anything?<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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The shadowy upper half was interesting too. It resembled a
garden variety shadow in its consistency. It was solid, and I couldn’t see
through it. I could make out the fingers on each hand as they rested just above
his knees.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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His head turned my direction, and he sat up straight. He
took one last puff, stood up, and turned to walk inside. He vanished as he went
through the door. He had seen me. I assumed he was a residual vision; a
recording in space time. I was wrong. This guy posed a bunch of questions about
how things work on the other side. Why stay there? Do ghosts get cigarette
breaks? Why not wear comfortable shoes? Why keep your boot s shined? <o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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I walked up those steps, and pulled the door open. Standing
just inside I stood listening for the sound of boots. It was silent. I
apologized in a calm voice, and I left. Of all of my ghost sightings this one remains
the most interesting to me. I know there were two suicides in the building
during the time-frame of the ghost’s uniform. Maybe he feels a sense of duty to
the men he left behind. Maybe he feels like a failure, and cannot move on.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I
hope he finds a way to let go.<o:p></o:p></div>
M Gregory Ferrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06921177390932932184noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33028856.post-36039494443047406822012-10-23T21:33:00.004-07:002012-10-23T21:33:59.391-07:00Scary Ghosts<br />
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Ghosts don’t scare me. Well, most ghosts don’t scare me.
Most of the time I don’t realize they’re a ghost as most of them just look like
regular people. Even the few times where I knew I was looking at a ghost I was
not frightened, just fascinated as I tried to take in as much information as I
could. Still, there are a couple of times where I was scared enough to run.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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The first one was classic. I had slipped into one of the
huge three-story barracks to locate a mural I’d been told about. The barracks was
essentially a large apartment building. The first floor was pitch black. The
windows were all boarded up. I had a small flashlight, but the pure darkness
engulfed the beam so I could only see what was in the light beam. I found the
mural in the mess hall; a Cobra painted on the wall, and I snapped a few
pictures. I figured where there was one mural there should be more so I searched
the entire building. I love poking around abandoned places, there is a thrill
of discovery, and the thrill of breaking the law makes it a unique experience.<o:p></o:p></div>
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I found nothing more to photograph. I returned carefully
down stairs to the huge entry hall. I waited a moment by the doorway to listen
for footsteps. The last thing I needed was to walk right into a cop. So I’m
standing there in the pitch black and a voice comes from behind me.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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“Hey buddy.” A male voice said.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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I clicked on my light as I swung around. I was sure I was
going to see a police officer standing there with a huge grin on his face.
Instead the hallway was empty. The voice had come from less than a foot away. I
bolted out of the door and ran all the way back to my truck. <o:p></o:p></div>
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Looking back I can still hear the voice. It sounded curious,
like “<i>Hey buddy, what are you doing here?”</i>
I had heard voices before, but it was in another building where I was on a well-lit
floor. That time I heard two men yelling at each other on a floor below me. I
had just come from that floor, and it was empty.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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The second scary ghost happened in the daylight. <o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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I had gone to East Garrison, which is the dark-side of the
moon at Fort Ord, and parked my truck at the gate. I was with my friend, Mike, a
former Army Ranger, and Navajo. Mike likes to run, and I don’t so what we do is
plan to link up at a specific location within a window of time. He’ll run five
miles in twenty minutes, and we decide to link up on a large road just opposite
of the huge ammo bunkers just south of the Pre-Ranger site. It’s a two mile
hike for me, but I like the challenge. <o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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I chugged my way up the road, into the trees, down into a
slot canyon, and made the road in exactly twenty minutes. I was feeling like
Superman. I waited for Mike…and waited…and waited. No problem; in our planning we
had a secondary plan that if we didn’t link up at the appointed time we would
return along a set course until we got back to the truck. I figured we’d bump
into each other at some point on the way back.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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I began walking down the hill. I hear Mike call my name. I
call out “Hooah!” the universal greeting of grunts everywhere. There is
silence. Oh well, he knows where I am, and he’ll find me. I continue moving,
and a short time later I here Mike call my name again. He sounds closer, but
now I have moved down the ridge to a point where I my view into the canyon is
obscured by the Manzanita that grows thick here. I yell Mike’s name, but there
is no response. I yell “Hooah Ranger!” and suddenly there is the sound of radio
communication. It sounded like someone had a police radio somewhere below me in
the canyon. It seemed fairly close.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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The voice stopped. I shrug, and continue moving. Then I hear
Mike call my name again. I stop and yell “Hooah Ranger” again. The radio
chatter erupts from the canyon again. This time it sounds closer. Fuck this, I’m
running. I take off at a good clip down a side trail that takes me into taller
trees, and thick brush. I hear Mike call me again, and the radio chatter pipes
up immediately. Now it seems to be coming from close by. Close enough I should
see the source, but I don’t. The brush is so thick I should hear someone moving
through it.<o:p></o:p></div>
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The radio chatter is now following me.<o:p></o:p></div>
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I’m running downhill along a narrowing trail, and the radio
thing is keeping up with me just off to my left. I can hear someone relaying my
position on this radio, and a voice responding ordering to stay with me. I pick
my knees up and I run as fast as I can. The narrow trail finally broke out into
a wide open space just about the BLM road. I got down to the road, and
continued to run all the way to Barloy Canyon Road. The Radio chatter stopped
somewhere on the way.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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I got back to my truck in record time. Mike joined me a few
minutes later. I asked him why he didn't link up after he saw me. I told him I
heard him call me, and he told me he had seen on the ridge, and called to me.
He said he didn’t hear me call back. Then he saw me head down the ridge, so he
figured he’d meet me back at the truck later. It asked him why he kept calling
me.<o:p></o:p></div>
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He said he only called me once.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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I tell him I heard his voice calling me a couple of times. I
tell him about the radio sounds, and how it followed me down the ridge. Mike
shook his head. He didn't hear any of that. Driving back to Pacific Grove we
discussed possible explanations. Maybe sound bouncing off of the fog. Maybe
there was a SEAL team working in the area (SEALs still train at Fort Ord). We
both agreed it wasn't a SEAL team as those guys just don’t make noise in the
field. It is the only time I have ever felt fear when encountering the unknown.<o:p></o:p></div>
M Gregory Ferrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06921177390932932184noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33028856.post-14260469926798806032012-10-23T20:00:00.004-07:002012-10-23T20:00:41.041-07:00The Hospital Ghost<br />
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For about six years I roamed the abandoned Fort Ord slipping
into empty buildings searching for murals to photograph. The Army base is essentially
a small city spread out between Marina to the north, and Seaside to the south.
On this autumn day I was working the older part of the base on the Marina side.
It was built during WWII, and added onto as the base grew. I had parked my
truck in a parking lot in the area of the old base hospital. I grabbed my Canon
and headed off into the maze of wooden buildings.<o:p></o:p></div>
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When I was about a half mile away I realized I’d left my
extra film on the floor of my truck. I turned around cursing myself, and walked
back to the truck. Sneaking into buildings requires timing and luck so this
mistake was throwing everything off. Closing in on the parking area I see a man
sitting in the passenger seat of my truck. <i>“Oh
great, some asshole is robbing my truck!”</i> I think. I change my angel of
approach so that I come up from the blind spot. I pull my multi-tool from my
pocket, and open the pliers. <o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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Why not the knife? Great question, I don’t know how to fight
with a knife. Knives complicate things. Pliers make better sense for the
tactically less inclined because all one needs to do is jab, and squeeze hard. It doesn't matter where you grab someone with the pliers, they will scream, and
they will comply. I ran scenarios in my head as I made my way to my truck.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Then I stopped. The guy wasn't moving.<o:p></o:p></div>
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He was sitting in the passenger seat looking straight ahead.
He had short hair, and a thin light-brown mustache. He wore a white, short-sleeve
shirt. He wasn’t rifling through my glove box, and he was alone. My truck was
the only vehicle in the lot. I put away my pliers. This guy obviously had
mental problems, and a violent confrontation would have been a bad idea. I
stepped to my right until I was in his view. He turned to look at me. The
sadness on his face was profound. He made eye contact. There was a moment of
shock as he saw me.<o:p></o:p></div>
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He vanished.<o:p></o:p></div>
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I stood there for a few seconds not sure what to do. I
opened the door just to make sure he hadn't I don’t know…slid under the seat or
something. He was gone. I grabbed my film, locked the door, and walked around
my truck to make sure it was secure. I resumed my hunting, but my mind dwelled
on the guy I’s seen sitting in my truck. <o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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I had a ghost in my truck at Fort Ord once before. He was
invisible, but I could smell him. The odor of boot polish and chewing tobacco
was over-powering. I decided to play it cool. I started talking to him as if he
were there. I told him he could ride along until I got to the front gate, but
he’d have to leave there. Then I gave him a guided tour of the new CSUMB
campus, and the various changes going on. At the front gate the odor went away.<o:p></o:p></div>
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There was no scent in my truck this time. When I’d finished
my jaunt I sat in my truck for a while looking in the same direction my guest
had been looking. What was he seeing in his world which could bring such
sadness? I turned the key, and drove home. <o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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A few weeks later I bought a copy of “The Soldier Factory”
about the author’s time at Fort Ord in the late 1960s. He told about working as
an orderly at the base hospital, and how it would fill after large battles in
Vietnam as the hospitals in Hawaii and San Francisco overflowed with seriously
wounded men. It turns out many of the men whose names are on the Vietnam
Memorial in Washington D.C. actually died at Fort Ord.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The man sitting in my truck was wearing the white uniform of
an Army medic or orderly. I now understand the sadness in his face. The horror
he must have seen, and the suffering must have been too much. Of my many ghost
encounters this one was the most heart breaking for me. My dad was a medic
around the same time, my mother was also a medic, and I have five cousins who
fought in Vietnam.<o:p></o:p></div>
M Gregory Ferrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06921177390932932184noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33028856.post-63984826764733921612012-10-05T19:34:00.001-07:002012-10-05T19:34:35.214-07:00Ghost Story #1 for Halloween: The Neighbor<br />
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In
2002 I got my current job working front desk at a small motel in Monterey,
California. I had been out of work for a year, so any job was welcome, and I
came to enjoy the work. The hours are a pain in the ass. I work Shift 2 which
starts at 3:00PM, and ends at 11:00PM. This gets me home around 11:30PM on a
good night. The hours took a while to adjust to. Usually I’d come home and make
a sandwich. Standing in the kitchen I would often see my neighbor, Dean, working
at his workbench on the enclosed deck of his home.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0in;">
Dean
was a retired Merchant Marine who taught marksmanship at the Moss Landing
shooting range. Dean packed his own rounds (meaning he made his own bullets)
using a special press. I would see him working away in his workshop-deck often.
Dean was the kind of neighbor you dream of. He had three cats, he was quiet,
and he was great with tools. He saved my butt on many home improvement fiascoes
So that February when I started my job it was nice to see a familiar face when
I got home from work. <o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0in;">
Later
that month I was doing emergency plumbing repair under my house. As I crawled
out into the sunlight I heard the crunching of footsteps on Dean’s gravel-covered
yard behind me. It was Dean coming around the back of his home. He greeted me
with his usual charm. We talked about my latest plumbing adventure. Dean had
undergone heart surgery a few months before, and I commented how great he
looked. When I asked him if his heart was bothering him he said “No, not anymore.”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0in;">
We
made some more small talk, and then we both had to get back to work. As I
crawled back under the house I heard him crunch away. A few nights later I got
home around midnight, and I was warming up some food on the stove. As a I
waited I looked out of the kitchen window to see Dean working in his faded
yellow bathrobe. He turned and waved at me, and then returned to his work. I
filled my plate, and went off to the living room to eat.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0in;">
Two
days later I’m getting into my truck to go to work, and I see two people come
out of Dean’s house. The people, a man and woman, were well dressed, but Dean
told me if I ever saw anyone strange around his place to call the sheriffs.
Dean had a number of guns in a safe. So I went over to find out who they were.
They told me they were just checking on Dean’s home. I asked if they meant they
were feeding his cats they told me the cats were long gone. I asked them why
Dean got rid of his cats…<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0in;">
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0in;">
<i> They told me Dean was dead.</i><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0in;">
I was shocked. I said I didn't hear
the ambulance. They told me he had died back in November of last year. I was
incredulous. I told them I had seen Dean two nights ago, and we had just had a
conversation face to face only a few days before that. I told them I was
calling the police. Thankfully the neighbor from across the street, who had
heard this exchange, came over to calm me down, and told me that Dean had
indeed died four months before so I didn't have to call anyone.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0in;">
I
apologized and left. I spent the rest of the day trying to figure out if I had
somehow screwed up the days I’d seen Dean, but I decided I was solid. I still
had the receipt from the hardware store for my plumbing repair. I never saw
Dean again. Many nights I look out my kitchen window hoping to see him again.
When I work in my yard I hope to hear his footsteps crunching on the gravel
behind me. I think about all of the questions I could have asked him that day.
I doubt he could have answered them, but still just to have had that chance.
All we talked about was how plumbing was a pain in the ass, life isn’t easy,
and how his heart had stopped bothering him.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0in;">
I
tell people who've never seen a ghost the odds are they have, but they didn't know the person they saw was dead. I enjoy the irony of being knowledgeable
about ghosts, and having one walk right up to me in the middle of a sunny day
to say a few word without me having a clue. I miss Dean too. He was a great
guy, and I know wherever he is now he’s doing well. <o:p></o:p></div>
M Gregory Ferrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06921177390932932184noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33028856.post-41915465839764031832012-09-08T21:17:00.002-07:002012-09-08T21:19:42.107-07:00Ghosts: The Quick & Dirty Explanations<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
I am asked by friends why I believe in ghosts. The subtext
is why does a smart guy believe in ghosts? I ask them to define what a ghost is
exactly. Their answers vary a bit, but the gist is ghosts are spirits of the
dead.<o:p></o:p><br />
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i>I don’t believe ghosts are the spirits of the dead.</i><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><br /></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I don’t know what they are, but over the years I’ve kept my
ears open for scientific explanations. The big culprit so far is a phenomenon called
Infrasound. It is low-frequency sound waves which seem to affect people’s
minds. The other guilty party is atmospheric contamination. Some of this is due
to climate change. These don’t explain all of the aspects to all hauntings, but
they seem to be present in the majority of cases. I reviewed my library of
true-ghost stories, and I took notes. I found all hauntings had one or more
things in common.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The first element is underground water. Most old (haunted)
houses are built over, or next to a well. In cold climates it made sense to
build over the well to keep from going into the snow for water. Water
evaporates creating negative ions. These ions form a field which is sometimes
strong enough to influence the atmosphere. Batteries will often drain as the
negative ions complete the circuit in flashlights, and electrical gear. Their
influence on people is not clear, but I suspect they are behind the feeling of
being touched.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Underground streams and rivers compound the ions with
additional microwave radiation. These are not high levels, not enough to cook
your lunch, but enough to make you feel like you’re being watched. In areas
where there is Limestone the water will flow at various speeds generating
measurably different fields of energy.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Limestone itself is another suspect. Limestone is prone to
caves made by the underground rivers. These caves generate infrasound where
they open to the outside. Limestone gives off CO2 when exposed to acids. CO2 in
low doses will cause hallucinations such as hearing voices, and seeing shadows.
A home built over Limestone can be a ghost-generating factory.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
CO2 (the cause behind rapid climate change) is also a
suspect in hauntings. The first thing a good ghost hunter checks is the CO2
levels in a home. The housing boom in the 1990s resulted in a lot of poorly
installed heating systems which resulted in CO2 poisoning. The symptoms read
like a paranormal thriller.<o:p></o:p><br />
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The housing boom lead to another fringe cause which was
spurred by toxic sheet-rock from China. The sheetrock seemed to affect
electrical wiring, and appliances. The gas caused a list of symptoms, but the
CDC made no serious study of the threat to people. There is a correlation between
the rises of reported hauntings in brand new homes. Theories of Indian burial
grounds were rampant. Now it seems the cause was the construction itself.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The 1990s saw the rise of the McMansion, over-sized single
family homes with huge square footage. The large open floor plans generate
infrasound in large doses. Then you compound things with a poorly installed
heating system, and toxic sheetrock, and the rise in the number of people
believing in ghosts makes sense.<o:p></o:p><br />
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
These influences don’t explain everything. They don’t explain why
people with no knowledge of a location’s history will see the same apparitions,
or experience the exact same events that others have. I suspect they enhance
these encounters for some people. Not everyone can sing, many people cannot
color-coordinate their clothes, and there are a few people who hate chocolate.
People are built differently so how they are influenced by the things I’ve
listed here will be unique to each individual.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
As I said, I don’t believe ghosts are spirits of the dead. I
believe they are manifestations of a variety of atmospheric influences we have
yet to discover. I plan to keep looking.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
M Gregory Ferrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06921177390932932184noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33028856.post-44905883197596511092012-08-25T19:41:00.000-07:002012-08-25T19:41:29.629-07:00That Summer of 1969<br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
I was born in 1964. My earliest memory of my dad being awe
inspired was watching him watch a Gemini Space launch on the TV in late 1966.
Dad was a know-it-all, and he went to great lengths not to be impressed. I
watched him hold his breath as the rocket cleared the launch tower. I knew this
was a big deal.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
By 1968 my parents divorced, and I lived with my
grandparents in Carmel, CA. My grandfather had been a science teacher after
graduating college in 1910. The space program had his full attention. We had
plastic Revell models of the Apollo command module, and the lunar lander which
we built. By the summer of 1969 my brother, and my grandfather were as
up-to-speed on the moon shot as any American could have been.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
My grandfather would often sit back in his chair rubbing his
bald head as he marveled at the progress mankind had made since his birth in
1891. He has seen the first automobiles on a railroad flat-car rolling through
his hometown of Green City, MO. He had flown on a Wright-Flyer. His father’s
general store was the first place in town to have a telephone, and the whole
town would come to use it. He saw radio born and die. He saw his first movie in
1909, it cost a nickel, and there was no sound. He would later see the first “talkies”,
then see movies in color, and finally buy a television so he could watch those
movies in his living room. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Now his black & white television was going to show him
two men walk on the moon. He rousted us
from bed at five in the morning so we wouldn’t miss the launch. It was
important to him that we saw the launch, and took in as much of the event we
could. He kept saying things would never be the same if we landed on the moon.
I sat with my brother on the floor wearing my pajamas with the feet on them.
The Saturn V rocket rumbled on the screen as it lifted off. Frank McGee’s voice
narrated the whole thing. Once they were in orbit we all relaxed. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The three day flight was filled with updates here and there
which we never missed. The landing was
surreal. My four year-old brain was overwhelmed by emotions, and input as the
cardboard image of the lander stopped on the moon. Then the fuzzy image of Neil
Armstrong on the TV climbing down the ladder, and then his famous words. It was
late at night on the California coast. When the broadcast ended we all went
outside to look up at the full moon. For the first time in human history there
was someone in the moon looking back at us. The mission continued to the
splash-down without a hitch. We watched it all as a family. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Today Neil Armstrong passed away. I admired him for the
things he never did as much as for his Apollo & Gemini flights. He never
cashed in in his fame. He could have been everywhere. He could have been
insanely wealthy just for being the first man to walk on the moon. Armstrong
embodied dignity. He was there for NASA when they would ask, but he never took
the spotlight away from what the agency was doing in the present. In so many
ways Neil Armstrong was the guy the world thinks of when they define what an
American is. Neil was always quick to remind everyone about all the people who
worked on the Apollo project, and they deserved more credit for their work
because they’d made it so easy to do his.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
In today’s world of reality show douche baggery, millionaires
who are good with a ball who are assholes, and politicians who will throw their
own children into a bonfire to win Neil Armstrong stands in the minority we
once called MEN. The country has lost a
treasure today. <o:p></o:p></div>
M Gregory Ferrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06921177390932932184noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33028856.post-40978018471641385622012-07-23T22:33:00.001-07:002012-07-23T22:36:35.445-07:00My First Ghost(s).<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
The first time I saw a ghost I didn’t know it was a ghost.
This is common, and I wonder how many other people have encountered a ghost
without knowing it. They look normal. Sometimes they’re dressed in old clothes
depending on their age, but so often they are mistaken for actors hired for
historical recreations. Most are ignored as we walk on by maybe giving a polite
nod to the stranger on the street. Most of us rarely notice the living, so passing
an arm’s length away from someone who’s been dead for many years is entirely
possible.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
My first ghost showed up in the pizza parlor where I worked
as the prep-cook. I was 18 years old. The pizza parlor was in the small
shopping center down the street from my home. I had worked there about two
years already, and it was my home away from home. At this time of my life I
often awoke at 3:00am full of energy, and it would take hours to return to
sleep. When I’d finally wake I’d feel like shit for much of the day. I decided
the next time this happened I would just get out of bed, and go to work. This
is exactly what I did, and for three weeks I thought I had figured it all out. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
So on that Wednesday morning, when I saw the ghost, my eyes
popped open around 3:10am. I was up, in the shower, dressed, and out the door
in fifteen minutes (this amazes me today because it takes me ten minutes just
to make it from my bed to the shower today). I didn’t have a car. I didn’t need
one. I loved the way the cool morning air of Carmel pinched my cheeks as I
crossed Highway 1. I had a key to the restaurant and there was no real manager
so I could do whatever I pleased.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhrVV7f0bvjQKmKKL6FsRNfC-MFHPD00LiF4NZMQnPZp1YiGMROFp9teQxnT3iKiSiU9Kh_GHyx4HnZKzsDLNqm22leGb5FoiryrU7mnT0OE35ESqV3lcD2aVq-K7clVKMv3RcQdw/s1600/strawhat+cath.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhrVV7f0bvjQKmKKL6FsRNfC-MFHPD00LiF4NZMQnPZp1YiGMROFp9teQxnT3iKiSiU9Kh_GHyx4HnZKzsDLNqm22leGb5FoiryrU7mnT0OE35ESqV3lcD2aVq-K7clVKMv3RcQdw/s320/strawhat+cath.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The pickup window. Cathy is in the kitchen.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The pizza parlor itself was essentially a glorified tunnel
with the only windows located at the front. The kitchen was also located in the
front, and it wrapped around to the left ending with a long bar at the end. The
large pick-up window faced the salad bar, and beyond that was the long dining
room. Behind the bar was the huge walk-in refrigerator. In the far corner was
the pantry where I did the prep-work.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiA1f0Ig75SqtVd8dMVcoHF2hC50dYkv1IxBrVk73zc_Jt-aIDIoHkrpoG3HMeM7KZfdAi-yXtXF5LP8NIfyZYEmCFh2-zxse3Ek_lyEvcugrmnXFOy1PTZKpWfASBYIvz_kJ9CTA/s1600/10122_1249605208653_1111499_n.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiA1f0Ig75SqtVd8dMVcoHF2hC50dYkv1IxBrVk73zc_Jt-aIDIoHkrpoG3HMeM7KZfdAi-yXtXF5LP8NIfyZYEmCFh2-zxse3Ek_lyEvcugrmnXFOy1PTZKpWfASBYIvz_kJ9CTA/s320/10122_1249605208653_1111499_n.jpg" width="303" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">My late friend, Randy, at the bar. The dining room behind him. I saw the man standing in front of the second post back.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I made my prep list and began with making pizza dough. I
kept the lights off in the dining room because they attracted homeless people
(we called them River Rats) who would bang on the door demanding food. A dark
restaurant made me invisible. The circuit which powered the rear stockroom also
powered the arcade games. Their lights were just bright enough for me to get
around, and I could play Asteroids once I’d finished my prep work until we
opened. The 25-pound bags of pizza dough mix were in the rear store room so I
made a point to get them first.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiHZHXPEuBapZOKlcp6CU0Mwn521ig7LET9JOm5BgfVcTTxMlrbxvDMHQXgYlxnvfdIsarV5abrp2rA-uXQgowu0UttrjBZLV_YjC7ITu9ospiYIvXr9zGm75qVmQJcMHAfXL9Pjw/s1600/10122_1249600328531_1769597_n.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiHZHXPEuBapZOKlcp6CU0Mwn521ig7LET9JOm5BgfVcTTxMlrbxvDMHQXgYlxnvfdIsarV5abrp2rA-uXQgowu0UttrjBZLV_YjC7ITu9ospiYIvXr9zGm75qVmQJcMHAfXL9Pjw/s320/10122_1249600328531_1769597_n.jpg" width="303" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The old prep-cook carrying bags of dough mix. The office is to the left behind the bar.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
With the dough mix churning in the Hobart I began work on
the other items on my list. I sliced mushrooms, and diced lettuce for the salad
bar. There was an order to this, as it was a light day I knew I could knock out
the other stuff in the half hour it would take to make the three batches of
dough. Once the Hobart was free I could use it to grate the cheese. I had my
Panasonic boom-box blasting Van Halen and Ozzy so I was in my own universe.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The Monterey Jack cheese came in 50-pound blocks. We had a
special two-handled knife to cut these blocks into smaller blocks which could
fit into the Hobart’s grating attachment. This was also the endless source for
“Cutting the cheese” jokes. As I said before I had been here two years. In that
time I had developed the sixth-sense every restaurant worker has: the ability
to tell when someone behind you is glaring at you. You’ve been there, your
order’s taking too long, your coffee’s empty, and your wait person seems to
have forgotten you so you shoot invisible death-rays into their heads. As I
pushed the blade through the cheese block I instinctively looked up.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Through the small glassless window of the pantry door I saw
a man watching me from the dining room.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I looked down for a second and looked back up. He was still
there. He stood silhouetted against the glowing lights of the Stargate Defender
game in the middle of the dining room. He was shorter than me. His arms were
folded. I couldn’t make out any facial detail but I could tell he wasn’t happy
to see me.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Two months before the pizza parlor had been burglarized.
They have come in from the side entrance from the access hall where the
dumpster was housed. They had cleaned out all of the video games, the petty
cash, and took my first boom box. So as I stood frozen in the pantry I thought
they’d come back. No cell phones in 1982. The nearest phone was out in the
kitchen. I was locked in, and the front door was not an option anyway. I was a
typical 18 year-old male, you know, stupid, and I reached for a carving knife. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Now armed with the cheese knife and the carving knife I
walked slowly to the pantry’s swinging door. I never took my eyes off of the
man in the dining room, and he never moved. I took a deep breath. I kicked the
door open as I yelled something brave.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i>He was gone.</i><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Standing there in front of the ice machine I looked out onto
a very empty dining room. He had to still be inside. The side door was a steel
fire door which made a loud <i>whoomp</i>
when it closed, and that was his only way out. The two bathroom doors also made
enough noise to signal that he’d gone in either one of them. I wanted to run
for a second, and then I got pissed off. I turned on all of the lights so I
could search the entire pizza parlor.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I checked the garbage-hall door (the side door) first.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
It
was locked.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I kicked open the lady’s room door.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Nothing.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I kicked open the
men’s room door.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Empty.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I moved out to the center of the dining room to check
the rear where the arcade games were. There was enough space between each for
an adult man to hide, so going down the center was the safest move for me. My
heart was pounding as I made it to the back wall. There was nobody here. This
left the rear party room. I dashed through the entry way to avoid being jumped.
It was empty too. I checked the rear exit door finding it secure. This left the
long, dark garbage hall to search.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
It was also empty with no signs of disturbance, and the
doors at either end were locked from the inside. I returned to finish my work,
and when I was done I left the pizza parlor to sit in the diner at the far end
of the parking lot until the sun came up.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I wrote this event off to being there so early, and I
theorized somehow part of my brain was still asleep. However on following
mornings as I worked away I would feel someone watching me from the dining
room. A couple of times I reflexively dropped what I was doing to help the
person waiting at the bar, as I often did during business hours, only to
remember as I walked out of the pantry that I was locked inside the place
alone. One morning I stepped out of the walk-in refrigerator to hear twice
girls whispering from the salad bar area on the other side of the bar. I
stepped to the end of the counter but saw nobody.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I stopped going to work so early in the morning. I was certain
it was just too early for my brain to work.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Less than two weeks later I was killing the late evening at
the pizza place. I had nothing better to do, all of my friends were either
working there, or were up at a concert in Oakland. I sat with the shift
manager, Danny, and the janitor, Ray, at the table closest to the bar. We were
making the usual shop-talk, and telling the usual bad jokes as we waited for
the place to close. Ray looked at his watch, and then he asked us if we’d hang
out until he finished the janitorial work that night. We both agreed. Danny
asked him why.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Ray told us a story. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
He was vacuuming the rear dining room (were the video games
were) when he looked up to see two girls about the age of fourteen or fifteen
walking toward the bar. He assumed they’d been smoking weed in the restroom,
and nobody had checked before locking the door. He turned off his vacuum
cleaner to let them out, but as the machine fell silent the girls had vanished.
He quickly ran up to search the kitchen, and then the restrooms yet found no
one. The next night he came out of the side hallway from the men’s room to see
a dark man standing in the back dining room watching him. As he began to ask
what the guy thought he was doing the man vanished. Ray quickly locked up and
went home. He finished his work the next morning when he knew other people
would be there.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
He’d seen the same guy I’d seen.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Danny said he’d seen the two girls walk past the office door
at the end of the bar a couple of times when he was there in the morning alone.
He then said he’d thought he’d seen a dark man in the dining room from the
corner of his eye, but he wrote it off to long work hours. We sat there in
silence for a good minute. Danny and I helped Ray clean up in record time. We
decided not to tell anyone. We figured if we were really seeing thing others
would too, and if not then we three had a cool story for Halloween. The wait wasn’t too long.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Maybe three days later I was closing down the place with the
girls, Cathy & Mo (short for Maureen). I had finished my stuff and sat in
the front booth where I was soon joined by Cathy. We talked as we waited for Mo
to change. Suddenly I could hear the coffee pot on the Bunn begin to rattle.
Cathy looked over to see a girl with blonde hair next to the ice machine. She
yelled “Mo!” just as the coffee pot flew off the top hot plate of the Bunn
machine. Then from the back dining room we hear Mo ask Cathy what was going
on. Cathy looked at me, looked back at
Mo, and then got up to look into the kitchen. I went back to check the pot.
Somehow it didn’t break in the fall, which was weird because I’d seen them
break for less of an impact.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
We got out of there fast ending up at the all night diner
until Cathy had calmed down enough to drive home. As we sat there I filled her
in on what I knew. She was happy not to tell anyone about the incident until
more people had seen things.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjau5-um04Xvg0IQDd8E_JWkN9abCD9-tJinqjnt6tu75su-ASC4ASCONCmpjquaVifNGf4OiX2O2OMP3lexoteUAp5oh8jG3r4xeVLgUlPyufUwcfn-KqOlWNZPIED-qKFcSmm_w/s1600/10122_1249605248654_4472849_n.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjau5-um04Xvg0IQDd8E_JWkN9abCD9-tJinqjnt6tu75su-ASC4ASCONCmpjquaVifNGf4OiX2O2OMP3lexoteUAp5oh8jG3r4xeVLgUlPyufUwcfn-KqOlWNZPIED-qKFcSmm_w/s320/10122_1249605248654_4472849_n.jpg" width="311" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">This picture shows the bar with the pantry door behind the two men. Just behind the man on the right is the walk-in refrigerator door. The Bunn coffee maker is just out of view on the left.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
As it turned out it wasn’t a long wait. Within the
week most of the crew had seen either the man or the two girls in the dining
room. Being young we all decided to hang out before work to hash out what was
going on (because teenagers are experts in just about everything).<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
We decided we had all seen something. Some of the most
serious people had an encounter, and this made it credible. The next big
question was why? I had been there for two years, Cathy had been there for
three, and a few others had been on staff for a year. We had all been in the
restaurant alone at many times, and none of us had seen anything strange. Why
now? We settled on the theory that construction for the new half of the
shopping center had awoken something. My sighting began six weeks after they’d
first break ground.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
We did some checking. The initial construction company had
been fired, and replaced overnight. In California when construction crews
discover burial sites they must halt, and allow for the state to excavate the
area. This can cost a lot of money in delays for the contractor. We thought the
sudden replacement of the construction crew might have been linked to something
dug up. We could never find out more because the new guys knew nothing, and the
owner’s people said nothing.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Over the next couple of weeks things continued to happen.
The heavy fire-door would slam for no reason. This continued even after we locked
it from the inside. Footsteps were heard walking around the salad bar in the
mornings. One of the favorite tricks was to freak someone out as they punched
in the code to deactivate the alarm in less than 90 seconds. The fire-door
would usually slam. The most memorable incident was the sound of approaching
footsteps which sounded like someone walking through an inch of water. I
complemented the invisible man on that one.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
After one stressful shift I was alone, and I was getting
ready to turn on the alarm. The keypad was located on the wall at the end of
the bar. I turned off all of the lights. Just as I reached for the pad I hear a
coffee mug jingling. Over on the bar next to the register was a try filled with
mugs. The one in the middle of the tray was visibly shaking. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“You’re gonna have to do something a little more spectacular
than that. I just not in the mood tonight” I said to whatever. Damned if that
coffee mug didn’t fly up, and bounce down the bar until it fell off the end
landing at my feet. I saluted the
unseen, entered the code, and left.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
At some point Danny suggested we do a séance complete with
his Ouija board. The first one was a complete waste of time. Danny stuck the
Ouija on a shelf in the office and forgot about it. The following week I was
recounting the séance to our bartender. When I showed him the board in the
office he suggested we try again that night after work. As it turned out a
mutual friend was in earshot and begged to be included too. Once everyone else
had gone I got out the board.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The bartender and I decided to wear blindfolds so we
couldn’t rig the answers. We wrapped towels around our heads, and gave the
third guy a pen to write stuff down. With the lights turned off we placed our
fingers on the Planchette and began asking questions. For the first few minutes
I felt like an idiot. I’m sitting in a dark pizza parlor with a towel wrapped
around my head with Mormon bartender who’s doing the same thing. Then the
bartender starts asking questions. The Planchette began to move under my
fingers.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“Do you want us to leave?” he asked. The Planchette suddenly
jerked to a point on the board where it froze. The bartender and I whipped off
our blindfolds to see the board. The answer was “NO.” <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
We stood up together, I turned on the alarm, and we went out
the front door. The third guy was begging to know what had happened. Neither of
us spoke until the bartender’s pickup truck was at the stoplight at the front
of the center. We looked at each other as we both blurted out “was that you?”
We filled the third guy in. That pointer was yanked hard under our fingers. One
of the weirdest things I’ve ever experienced in my life. The bartender quit
soon after this.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The janitor, Ray, would last another year, but only because
he’d come in the mornings to clean. His wife worked in the kitchen anyway. One
Sunday morning the ghost was on a tear. I saw him twice that morning already,
and I ignored him. So he picked on Ray. First thing was to slam that fire door
while Ray was coming out of the Lady’s room directly opposite. He was startled
pretty bad, and had to sit for a while. Then later I was in the kitchen and
happened to look up to see the dark man standing by the hallway leading to the
fire door. Ray saw him too. He looked at me, I said I’d seen him, and he
started crying. Ray was a good guy, his parents were killed by Nazis in France,
and for this tough guy to break down was unreal.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I left the pizza place after two more years. I moved across
the parking lot to the Crossroads Cinemas. It wasn’t haunted, and it was a
great place to make out. I’d been there nine months, and one night after
locking up the theater a few of us went to the diner to drink coffee, and shoot
the breeze. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
We’d only been seated for a few minutes before two Sheriff’s
deputies walked in and approached our table. They asked us who we were, and why
we were out so late (it was after midnight).
I explained where we worked, and why we were out late. Then one of the
deputies recognized me from the theater, and all was cool. I asked what the
problem was, and they said somebody was messing with the janitor at the pizza
parlor. They went and sat at the counter, and we shrugged. Then Ray and his
oldest son, Charlie, came into the diner, and marched straight up to our table.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“Just tell me it was you.” He said. I looked at him shaking
my head.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“Just tell me it was you, and I’ll have a good laugh.” He
said. I told him I’d just got off work, and the other two people worked with
me. I asked him what was wrong, and pointed to the deputies as I told him about
being questioned a few minutes before. He sat down. His hands shook, and he was
sweating badly. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
He said that he and Charlie had shown up at the pizza parlor
to start cleaning at 11:00pm. Within minutes they heard loud noises coming from
the garbage hall. It sounded like cardboard boxes being tossed around. Charlie
went out to take a look. He found boxes thrown up and down the length of the
hall, but both doors were locked. He returned to the dining room, but before he
could fill Ray in the sounds began again. This time something pounded on the
door too. This time Ray opened the door. The noises stopped as it swung open.
Ray cursed at the culprit, and locked the door. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
He called mall security, and the lone guard walked over
where he met Ray, and Charlie outside of the pizza parlor. As Ray was
explaining the situation the sounds erupted again from the garbage hall. They could
hear it clearly from outside. The security guard suggested it must be raccoons.
Ray escorted him to the garbage hall door inside, and the guard went in to take
a look. The sounds stopped again. The guard searched the entire hall, which was
seventy feet from end to end. He found only cardboard boxes strewn from one end
to the other. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
He came out shaking his head. He found no signs of animals,
and the doors were locked. Then the noise started up again. This time it
sounded as if the boxes were being thrown from both ends at once. Then
something pounded on the door again. The guard checked again. There was nobody
in the hall. He suggested they all exit the restaurant until the sheriffs came,
and then he called them. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
A squad car arrived in under a minute. As they stood out
front explaining the problem, ruckus resumed inside the hallway again for the
deputies to hear, and they drew their guns as they went inside. They search the
hallway too, and found nothing. Once back outside they didn’t have time to report
before the noise started again. The deputies, according to Ray, looked at each
other, and said they’d done everything they could do. They told Ray to lock up
and come back tomorrow, and then they left.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Ray just left the lights on, locked the door, and went home.
He saw me through the window of the diner, and decided to stop in to see if I
had decided to pull a prank on him. I
told Ray I hadn’t thought about the pizza parlor since I’d left. I was
surprised by Ray’s story, and noted he was shook up. He quit the place a few
days later.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
My life went on largely ghost-free until the 1990s. As
things changed my visits to the shopping center dwindled for a time. On one
Halloween I happened to be down there for a hair appointment, and I stopped
into the book store to see what was new (and because there was a cute redhead
dressed as a cat). We started talking. She mentioned she liked working there
because the place had a ghost. I asked her if it was a dark man or two girls,
and she told me she’d seen both</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The last time I’d heard about the ghosts at the shopping
center was two years ago. It’s nice to know their still there. <o:p></o:p></div>M Gregory Ferrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06921177390932932184noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33028856.post-66335646859222186082012-05-21T20:08:00.001-07:002012-05-21T20:52:58.667-07:00Lightfighter - Lightwriter<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
The most common questions any writer gets are: <i>Where do you get your ideas? What is your
approach to writing? How do I become a better writer? When do you find the time
to write? How do you deal with writer’s block? </i>There are a few more but
they are variations of these enquiries. The
answers given are usually basic no-nonsense maxims. Seriously, how any writer
becomes a good writer is by writing (and writing, and writing, and writing).
Writing a lot develops discipline and opens doors in one’s brain they didn’t
know where there before. This is how it’s been for me. However it’s time to be
honest and reveal the key aspect those who ask me are never told. This will
require a story.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
After an injury to my lower back my life went out the
window. As the rest of my life underwent reinvention the first idea was to
write a book about the 7<sup>th</sup> Infantry Division (Light) which had been
based at Fort Ord, California. How hard could it be? The problem was focusing
on research, which was a whole separate headache, instead of writing which lead
to the creation of a huge mess. The mess led to classes at Monterey Peninsula
College to shore up my writing skills. I have always been a writer, there are hand-written
stories (or parts of stories) tucked away in my closet going back to high
school, but I never thought about taking it seriously until 2007. Composition
1A lead to Comp. 1B, which lead to Comp.2, followed by Survey of English
Literature, and those lead me to the Creative Writing classes. The goal being
to write a quality narrative, which will bring the 7thID back to life, and put
the reader out at Fort Ord wearing 75-pounds of gear in the freezing indigo of
Monterey Bay nights.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Whatever else I will become known for writing, I will always
be ingrained by my research of the one Army division that got it all right, and
was able to operate at a superior level with little more than the will to do
so. So my writing secret is the application of infantry training and doctrine
to my writing mind-set. The 3rd
Battalion, 17<sup>th</sup> Infantry Regiment’s barracks (the one with the Ninja
painted facing the parking lot) used to have maxims painted on the front. Those
which I apply to writing are: <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<i>Train as you will fight.
Conduct meaningful and challenging training.<o:p></o:p></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<i><br /></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<i>Train at all levels
concurrently<o:p></o:p></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<i><br /></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<i>Fight light – own the
night<o:p></o:p></i><br />
<i><br /></i><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiwhPwR7-LponANZZCJngomFos1W8xNWciVlYcjNHU99Ktd-EWcLoD64qwH7gMf2ouX-o0KDeBDepiS0dHomqJPApPxDZDtsgRVvcqvce4S0TaV8etPJG2vCwojE_VIRy58IjBx8Q/s1600/wolfhounds.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="212" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiwhPwR7-LponANZZCJngomFos1W8xNWciVlYcjNHU99Ktd-EWcLoD64qwH7gMf2ouX-o0KDeBDepiS0dHomqJPApPxDZDtsgRVvcqvce4S0TaV8etPJG2vCwojE_VIRy58IjBx8Q/s320/wolfhounds.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<i><br /></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<i><br /></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
So I write. I write anywhere, at any time, and this is done
so there is no excuse for not being able to write. The 7<sup>th</sup>’s breed
of soldier was named “Lightfighter”, and they could fight anywhere in the
world. This is because they trained in Iceland, Alaska, Korea, Fort Irwin (in
the Mojave Desert), Panama, Honduras, Arizona, and countless other locations.
The Lightfighter knew he could be anywhere in the world within thirty hours
with no warning. This has translated to those times when there is no story to
write, the challenge becomes working on weak spots with fundamental
exercises. Sometimes it’s looking at a
picture and describing details. Maybe I take something off my Twitter feed to
make a one page story. Other times I work out set pieces for action stories,
and then cull the narrative until it flows like sand between toes.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
These things are done so when the stories spill from my head
I don’t waste time wrestling with mechanics, and I can just write. There is
also a lot of reading going on. Reading for fun and reading about writing.
Answers to every writer’s puzzle can be found in a classic novel or poem.
Whatever the problem, it is a safe bet some other writer has solved it in a way
you can use. I write horror so I read horror. When I began writing westerns I
picked up short story collections by the best writers of the genre. To bring
Max Chrome to life the stories of Ian Fleming, Tom Clancy, and Ed Ruggero paved
the way. As the 7thID trained with armies of other countries, I “train” with
different authors.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Fighting light meant no relying on a huge apparatus to get
the job done. I apply this by writing light. Don’t use twenty words if three
will do. The Lightfighters could read the ground, and take an objective in an
economic –yet – dashing way. When a story forms in my head I can tell how long
it will be, and my writing is calibrated to achieve it. I find people are more
forgiving if I don’t take too much of their time. When the novels begin I’m
sure concise narrative will move the story along while engrossing the reader as
well. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The Army loves to complicate things whenever possible, so
the 7<sup>th</sup> ID was doomed from the start. The Lightfighters drilled in
the fundamentals so when the call came they performed in combat in exemplary fashion.
Everything step by step, though not always in order, until the job was done and
they went home. So I drill and I write and I hang with other writers. I listen,
read, and practice so I can write in any reasonable situation. This is done to
avoid over-thinking once the story is in the breech. Over-thinking is a problem
for every writer. It is a seizure-like mental breakdown. For non-writers this
is seen most often in football where the place-kicker blows a short field goal,
or a golfer misses a short putt. They failed mentally because too much was
going on in their heads. Writing a story of any length is like balancing a
marble on a two-by-four and if you think about it too much the marble ends up
on the ground.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The things I learned from the Lightfightesr have helped me to
not lose my marbles at the critical moments of story writing. Their approach to
soldiering has informed my assault on writing. Their hard work went unappreciated,
yet all 200 men I have interviewed would do it all over again if they could.
They would put on all their gear; head out into the night to dig fighting
positions, and freeze their nuts off just to be Lightfighters again. All I have
to do is sit in my room and write to be part of a community. So I do. I will
always be the bastard child of the 7<sup>th</sup>’s Lightfighters.
Lightfighters and Lightwriters understand often only reward from all the hard
work done is the knowledge you did it. The key to the Lightfighter’s success
was their commanders kept raising the bar, then dared them to surpass, and they
did – every time. So I raise my bar whenever possible too. I’m probably a good
enough writer now to get around, but I want to write better.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
So I drill and I
write.<o:p></o:p></div>M Gregory Ferrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06921177390932932184noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33028856.post-18821015765830090322012-05-04T22:42:00.005-07:002012-05-04T22:42:45.118-07:00I Fix Robert FrostPoetry. Sometimes it needs help, and when it does they call me...<br />
<br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
“Two roads diverged in the woods, and I –<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I took the road less traveled by. And it made all the difference” - Robert Frost.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“Two roads diverged in the woods, and I –<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I took the road less traveled by. And it made all the difference
as the Highway Patrol ignores this road. I hauled balls. ”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“Two roads diverged in the woods, and I –<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I took the road less traveled by. And it made all the difference.
Fine, don’t fucking believe me”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“Two roads diverged in the woods, and I –<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I took the road less traveled by. And it made all the difference.
I shot an albatross up in that bitch”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“Two roads diverged in the woods, and I –<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I took the road less traveled by. And it made all the difference
since the Arby’s on this road was 30% cheaper than the one where everyone goes.
Hell yes.”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“Two roads diverged in the woods, and I –<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I took the road less traveled by. And it made all the difference…alright,
not really but I I can get a few idiots to take the other road I can get home
faster.”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“Two roads diverged in the woods, and I –<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I took the road less traveled by. And it made all the difference.
I was able to walk for miles without pants.”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“Two roads diverged in the woods, and I –<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I took the road less traveled by. And it made all the difference
, I shot a bunch of deer without having to get out of the car.”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
““Two roads diverged in the woods, and I –<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I took the road less traveled by. And it made all the difference;
I discovered a deep seeded need to start a forest fire. So I did.”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“Two roads diverged in the woods, and I –<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I took the road less traveled by. And it made all the difference,
the lone gas station along the way has a stash of Lithuanian Wombat/Midget Porn
under the checkout counter. Ask for “Ivan” and tell him “Frosty send me”.”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“Two roads diverged in the woods, and I –<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I took the road less traveled by. And it made all the difference
since I’d had my Hummer for three years, but hadn’t gone off-road once. I
almost hit a skunk. Guess it was my lucky day.”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“Two roads diverged in the woods, and I –<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I took the road less traveled by. And it made all the difference
since I have Alzheimers it all looks the same anyway. Who are you?”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“Two roads diverged in the woods, and I –<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I took the road less traveled by. And it made all the difference.
I haven’t littered from a moving car in a long time. It felt good.”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“Two roads diverged in the woods, and I –<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I took the road less traveled by. And it made all the difference
when I got to the river where the bridge is out (this is why nobody takes this road).
I backed up a quarter-mile, floored the gas, and then I jumped the river just
like in the movies. I always wanted to do that. Up your’s, Burt Reynolds. ”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“Two roads diverged in the woods, and I –<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I took the road less traveled by. And it made all the difference.
There’s an Indian casino there.”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“Two roads diverged in the woods, and I –<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I took the road less traveled by. And it made all the difference;
I found some dude’s wallet. I bought all four seasons of “Charles in Charge” on
DVD with his credit card. Sucker.”<o:p></o:p></div>
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“Two roads diverged in the woods, and I –<o:p></o:p></div>
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I took the road less traveled by. And it made all the difference.
Nobody misses hitchhikers here.”<o:p></o:p></div>
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“Two roads diverged in the woods, and I –<o:p></o:p></div>
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I took the road less traveled by. And it made all the difference;
while I was having lunch at Stucky’s the busboy told me about how on the “Girls
Next Door” DVDs they don’t pixelate the nudity. I used their free Wi-Fi to
order all of the seasons on Amazon.”<o:p></o:p></div>
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“Two roads diverged in the woods, and I –<o:p></o:p></div>
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I took the road less traveled by. And it made all the difference.
I drove in reverse.”<o:p></o:p></div>
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“Two roads diverged in the woods, and I –<o:p></o:p></div>
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I took the road less traveled by. And it made all the difference
for now I know where to dump toxic waste without getting caught.”<o:p></o:p></div>
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“Two roads diverged in the woods, and I –<o:p></o:p></div>
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I took the road less traveled by. And it made all the difference.
I thought I’d never get to pop a wheelie in my Prius.”<o:p></o:p></div>M Gregory Ferrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06921177390932932184noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33028856.post-81812375028005119772012-04-29T21:35:00.001-07:002012-04-29T21:37:59.316-07:00The Last Miracle<div class="MsoNormal">
In 2012 there is the disillusionment which comes in the beginning of every century as old ideas fight to hold power over a world where they no longer fit. As a result everything is questioned, and everything seems to lack relevance in the current time. Religion is one of those ideas undergoing review, and with the internet the social inbreeding on every issue has become compounded making almost every issue outrageously polarized to a point beyond reasonable discussion. <o:p></o:p></div>
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So I know almost nobody will read this, and half of those who do will spaz-out reflexively.<o:p></o:p></div>
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The universe as established operates under a strict set of rules. They cannot be broken, even by a supreme being, as everything would spin out of control. I pondered this for a long time during my spiritual quest. How could God just intervene in a situation without screwing up the flow of time & space? My answer for a long time was God could not just step in like Superman to save the day. <o:p></o:p></div>
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On October 17, 1989 the earth moved under a mountain named Loma Prieta east of Santa Cruz, California. This caused an earthquake which measured 6.9 or 7.0 (depending on who you ask). It killed a couple hundred people, most of those in Oakland, California, when the Nimitz Freeway’s Cypress Structure collapsed. It shook the fuck out of my house, and I have PTSD related to the event.<o:p></o:p></div>
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At the time the local media marveled at the low casualty count. The San Francisco Chronicle’s 10/18/1989 edition’s headline screamed thousands feared dead. Yet once the concrete road-beds were lifted few cars were found underneath. There was no real mystery as to why. The Oakland Athletics (A’s), and the San Francisco Giants were playing each other in the World Series making for the biggest week of parties since the end of World War II. Businesses let employees off work early so they could get home, or wherever they were going to watch the game. So those who would have been on the Nimitz freeway at 5:04pm were already in front of a TV when the quake struck. Families which normally had varying activities were all together, and people who were normally alone were with friends.<o:p></o:p></div>
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It was almost the perfect time for an earthquake.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Sometime in the mid-1990s as I worked to resolve my spirituality with my rational world view these facts came back to me on one of the anniversaries of the temblor. KGO ABC7 in San Francisco had one of the best documentaries about the quake, and the one word repeated throughout was “Miracle”, and I began to wonder if a miracle had in fact been in play on that October day. The question became where would I find evidence of a miracle if there was one? </div>
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The answer quickly came to me: Baseball.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Remember, I said the universe is governed by laws which cannot be broken. God is looking at earth’s schedule where the earthquake is looming. How can God save thousands of people without revealing his existence, and how can God save people without breaking important laws of physics? It dawned on me there was one place he could intervene which would set events into motion which would save a lot of people, and this place was Candlestick Park. Candlestick Park was home to the Giants, and notorious for unpredictable winds. <o:p></o:p></div>
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Baseball would be the key to saving lives. Knowledge of baseball would reveal the truth. <o:p></o:p></div>
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The 1989 Chicago Cubs were the best team in baseball that year. Ask anybody. They had a batting average of .261; first in the league, an on-base-percentage of .319 which was second in the league, and a pitching staff which had an ERA of 3.43. The 1989 Cubs featured Mark Grace, Ryne Sandberg, Shawon Dunston, Andre Dawson, and Rick Sutcliffe. These men were some of the best to ever play the game, and 1989 was their best year as a team.</div>
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They faced off against the SF Giants. The Giants were a good team, but essentially backed into the playoffs that year. They played in a weak division, within the National League which was not as stellar as the American League at the time. The Giants crushed the Cubs in the first NLCS game 11 to 3, but the Cubs returned the favor in the next game with a score of 9 to 5. The series moved to San Francisco where the Giants won the third game 6 to 4 mostly with clutch pitching in the late innings. So it all came down to the 5<sup>th</sup> game. If the Cubs win they return home to play the 6<sup>th</sup> game in Chicago.<o:p></o:p></div>
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So on Monday, October 9<sup>th</sup>, 1989, the Cubs went to work. They held the Giants scoreless until the seventh inning. Will Clark gets a triple, and then Kevin Mitchell hits a sacrifice fly to deep centerfield to score Clark. This ties the game at 1 to 1. In the eighth inning when the Giants come to the plate the first batter, Ken Oberkfell, flies-out to the left field line. Next Jose Uribe strikes out swinging. Chicago is in control. All they need is one more out to close the inning. This is where the game seems to fall apart for the Cubs. Candy Maldonado, Brett Butler, and Robbie Thompson all walk loading the bases for Will Clark.</div>
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<o:p></o:p></div>
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Will Clark started playing baseball after his dog brought him a baseball, and then a glove one summer. It was as if the universe had chosen Will Clark to play baseball. Maybe only for this one game. Will Clark hits a bloop single to center field scoring Maldonado, and Butler. So with two outs Chicago loaded the bases for Will Clark who hits a single.</div>
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<o:p></o:p></div>
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This is where (if you believe in this kind of this) God stepped in.<o:p></o:p></div>
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The ball sailed just above the second baseman’s mitt, and dropped right in the dead space between him and the center fielder. A simple bloop single would make the difference between thousands of people dead, and the final Loma Prieta death toll of 63. This is a thing of beauty. In front of a crowded stadium and in front of a TV audience God hangs a baseball an extra second to score two runs which results in both Bay Area home teams facing each other in the World Series which is when the earthquake will occur. Thousands of people are off the roads as businesses close early. People are gathered together in homes, or bars to watch the game.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<a href="http://youtu.be/QiSHEXL3QNg">Listen to the play here.</a></div>
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The Chicago Cubs should have gone to the World Series. It was their year. They would have beat the Oakland A’s who would be later to discovered as steroid abusers. Oakland only won one World Series during the “Bash Brothers” era, and this was to the San Francisco Giants. Ask anybody who knows baseball, they’ll tell you the same thing. The Cubs were sacrificed for to save countless lives. No big laws of the universe were bent, or broken to achieve the miracle. Twenty-two years later I’m the only one to put it all together. I understand I might be reading more into this story than there really is, but I used to love baseball so it makes me feel good to think it played a part in saving people’s lives in a way few can articulate.<o:p></o:p></div>
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So now you know.<o:p></o:p></div>M Gregory Ferrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06921177390932932184noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33028856.post-65267800989532897232012-03-04T21:28:00.000-08:002012-03-04T21:29:46.409-08:00At The Wall (Again)<p class="MsoNormal"><span ><span style="line-height: 115%;">I’m a writer. </span></span><span ><span style="line-height: 18px;">I've</span><span style="line-height: 115%;"> always been a writer. When I was seven my best friend, Ricky Bradshaw, showed me how to fold blank paper in half, and then staple the fold to make a book. If my grandmother </span></span><span ><span style="line-height: 18px;">wasn't</span></span><span ><span style="line-height: 115%;"> so cheap about her typing paper I would have written 300 books while in the second grade. These books were usually 12 pages long, and the stories were about Tyrannosaurus kicking ass. It was all there: a strong character, a plot, and a resolution. By third grade I’d branched out to the USS Constitution sinking pirate ships. In junior high school I retreated into my head as my world went sideways, but I still managed to write a story here and there.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span ><span style="line-height: 115%;">In high school I wrote a lot. My freshman English teacher, Mr. </span></span><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_2" style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 115%; ">Scheckler</span><span ><span style="line-height: 115%;">, encouraged me to write him stories. It was his way of keeping me interested in class, and to his credit it worked. I wrote 12 stories for him. After high school I still wrote once in a while. There was always a college rule notebook in my desk which I would write in when the urge hit me. I find these stories when I clean out my closet, or my truck. Most I don’t remember writing. They’re like gold to me now. I think about the other stories </span></span><span ><span style="line-height: 18px;">I've</span></span><span ><span style="line-height: 115%;"> written which have been lost, and it boggles my mind.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 100%; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; "><span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:115%;font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"">The problem was before I realized I was a writer I thought being a writer meant you had to be published. This is my mistake. There are people who earn their living as writers who are not writers. Writing is a means to an end. They have no passion for their work beyond its dollar value. I have spent a great deal of time lamenting becoming a guitarist because of the years I felt I wasted becoming good at playing. Now I’m glad I did it. The very things I did to become a quality guitarist are the same thing pushing me along to becoming a good writer. Silly drills, writing prompts, description exercises, and throw-away stories are sharpening my skills. The next barrier is the one in my head.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 100%; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; "><span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:115%;font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"">The key to becoming a good guitarist was practice. Education, reading books, magazines, and studying the work of other players was important. Without practice it was all wasted. I practiced guitar an average of four hours a day, seven days a week. On some days I played as much as ten hours. My fingers are deformed from holding a pick for thousands of hours, or as Larry Carlton pointed out I “have the hands of a guitar player” as witness to my dedication. My skills as a writer grow with each story I finish, but the real action starts when I sit my ass down to write at a dedicated time every day. As I said, this is the wall in my head I need to get over, around, under, or destroy.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span ><span style="line-height: 115%;">Let me clue you in on the monster in my head. I had terrible things done to me as a child. I was lucky to get help from gifted people along the way who guided me away from many dark paths. However the damage is there, and on some days it seems as fresh as ever. I call it the monster because giving it a shape and a face helps me fight it. Playing guitar helped me connect to the larger </span></span><i style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 115%; ">IT</i><span ><span style="line-height: 115%;"> of the universe allowing me to create free of ego. The monster fed and justified my addiction to booze. He gave me an excuse to quit. The irony is through writing I have been able to unearth damage to my psyche I </span></span><span ><span style="line-height: 18px;">wouldn't</span></span><span ><span style="line-height: 115%;"> have found any other way. With each story I write it has become harder for the monster to hide.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 100%; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; "><span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:115%;font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"">So now I’m at that wall. On this side is everything I know, my life from birth to now, some success within reason, and a lot of self-doubt. On the other side? Success, maybe, a life without the monster in my head is certain. So at this moment I think about women we studied in Citizen’s Police Academy. They chose to stay with an abusive husband because it’s safer than the unknown. At this point in life I can’t see how the unknown can be any worse than my life up to now. So here I am one more time. All I have to do is grab the brass ring.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 100%; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; "><span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:115%;font-family: "Times New Roman","serif""><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 100%; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; "><span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:115%;font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"">Stay tuned. <o:p></o:p></span></p>M Gregory Ferrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06921177390932932184noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33028856.post-37956217356028933582012-03-04T16:16:00.002-08:002012-03-04T16:28:21.657-08:00On Ronnie Montrose<p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 100%; font-variant: normal; line-height: normal; font-weight: normal; font-style: normal; ">I haven’t written much about guitar though my screen-name is Axxman. I should fix this.<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 100%; font-variant: normal; line-height: normal; font-weight: normal; font-style: normal; "><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 100%; font-variant: normal; line-height: normal; font-weight: normal; font-style: normal; ">I began playing guitar in September 1978. To be honest my brother loved rock music more than I did at the time, and the evidence for this was his massive 1200 album collection. I benefitted from this by having access to just about every cool rock album there was. My own collection would grow to 500 before CDs took over. The other benefit was my brother’s to the point critiques of my playing progress, and this mostly consisted of “you suck”, “do better”, or he’d just shake his head as he walked out of the room. On the bright side he was always bringing home albums of guys he thought I should know about.<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 100%; font-variant: normal; line-height: normal; font-weight: normal; font-style: normal; ">Ronnie Montrose was one of those guys.<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 100%; font-variant: normal; line-height: normal; ">The album was <i><b>Gamma</b></i>. The song which had the biggest impact was “Thunder and Lightning”. It was just a rocking song where Montrose was spotlighted. Unlike Van Halen, who is probably from another planet, Montrose’s playing was accessible -NOT EASY – but a style I could wrap my young guitarist brain around. I never fell in love with Ronnie Montrose, mostly because of his choice of questionable singers, but I always liked him.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 100%; font-variant: normal; line-height: normal; "><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span ><iframe width="420" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/QlOcifA1mlA" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 100%; font-variant: normal; line-height: normal; font-weight: normal; font-style: normal; ">I saw Ronnie Montrose three different times by accident. By accident means he wasn’t on the original bill when I bought the tickets. Bill Graham (his manager, and Bay Area concert promoter) would add him to the ticket later. So I saw him with Humble Pie and Ted Nugent. He opened for Blue Oyster Cult. The last time I saw him was at Oakland for a Day on the Green with Santana, Toto, and Journey.<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 100%; font-variant: normal; line-height: normal; font-weight: normal; font-style: normal; ">Montrose was liked by most people he knew which speaks to his character. I just thought he’d always be around, or at least be around longer. I hope he’s happy wherever he’s gone to, I sincerely wish this for him.<o:p></o:p></p>M Gregory Ferrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06921177390932932184noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33028856.post-50829857092793220432011-11-05T21:33:00.000-07:002011-11-05T21:38:47.117-07:00Falling for Me Instead of Instead of Falling for AnythingFear has fascinated me since I was a child. Not just the thrills of a good scare, but the way people allow themselves to become prisoners of their fear. I’ve learned that fear isn’t always obvious, isn’t always easy to address, and even once you flush your fear out into the open it is still difficult to get by. Fear creeps into the hard-to-reach places of your psyche and holds on as it spits irrationalities in your face.<br /><br />My greatest fear is success. It took me 47 years to figure out why. In the beginning, way back when I had therapy in high school, I thought I had figured it out, and that I could hang my low-self esteem on my grandmother who was always happy to tell me how worthless I was. It was easy because she was a visible target. Not until I read "<strong><em>Falling for Me</em></strong>"- by Anna David<br /><br /><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Falling-Me-Curtains-Learned-Traveled/dp/0061996041/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1305184996&sr=8-1">http://www.amazon.com/Falling-Me-Curtains-Learned-Traveled/dp/0061996041/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1305184996&sr=8-1</a><br /><br /><br />where she discussed her childhood bouts with anger, and how her family (her father in particular) dismissed her anger by making fun of her. As an adult she became a cocaine addict, and has sabotaged most of her relationships. She beat her addictions and struggled from one relationship to the next. Her engaging book details the journey she took to learn to allow her to love herself. It is a good book and well worth your time to read.<br /><br />In my case I heard my experience echoed by Anna David. Growing up I was never allowed to have all my emotions. It was okay to be happy, but I was never allowed to be angry, and being sad was out of the question. Like Ms. David this is the root of my low self-esteem. Without access to all of my emotions from an early age I never learned to control them, so I ignored them, or I medicated them away. When I get mad I overreact, or I suck all of that anger in and hold it. I’m convinced my weight problem is a physical manifestation of this, and coupled with low self-esteem it is the perfect downward spiral. Anna David talks about how her temper kept men at a distance, and how cocaine allowed her to numb the negative feelings. Being drunk was my escape from myself too.<br /><br />In <em><strong>Falling for Me</strong></em> Anna talks about not being able to blame her ex-boyfriends for the failures of their relationships, and instead beating herself up for the loss. I spent a lot of time letting people blame me for things that were not my fault. By the time I’d been laid off in 2001 I was used to being the company fuck-up, and in being the company fuck-up I was underpaid without question. So imagine my surprise when my first job as a temp was wiring control panels for Systems Integrated out at the Cal-Am water filtration plant in Carmel Valley. That job was the first time someone told me I could do an important job, and it was the first time I was complemented on my work. My self-esteem had made me a prisoner for so long that I’d just accepted when things went wrong it was my fault. Suddenly I began to look back and question this.<br /><br />I went back to school in 2007 around the time I stopped drinking. At school I found I could do things, and I discovered that I’m smart. This was a new experience for me. I still don’t know how to cope with it, and every fiber of my id wants to curl up in a ball. In my writing class we had an exercise where I had to write about myself. I started out writing about why I write about monsters, and horror because of the things that had happened to me as a kid. I told my professor that I’d held back because it was kinda painful. He told me never hold back. Later I wrote a poem that was a ballad, and it bothered me. The poem was about a guy who’d been a hero but was condemned for crossing a line. The hero is called upon to save the day one more time, and just as he’s about to catch the bad guy he turns to walk away. The bad guy sets off a nuke, and the hero could care less.<br /><br />This was the darkest thing I’d ever written. The poem was coming from some hard-to-reach place deep inside of me. In time I realized that I was angry for being used by so many people in my life, and I was angry at myself because my low self-esteem had made it possible. I’d always known there was a problem. I called it Knight in Shining Armor Syndrome were I was always fixing someone’s problems to boost my ego, and I the process keeping from fixing my own problems. This had spread into my love-life as I shied away from normal women to seek out damaged ones. I developed a pattern where I’d put some woman back together emotionally, and then she’d walk out of my life leaving me devastated. Looking back now I realize that I knew they’d all leave and that was fine because I didn’t deserve to be happy anyway. The new wrinkle was that I now realize that most of those women took advantage of me, and that while it was my fault in one way in another way I was victimized just a bit.<br /><br />Now that I had that revelation in my writing class, and then the enlightenment from Falling for Me I have been able to flush my fear out into the open where I can begin to kill it. I intend to kill it with style too. The first thing I will do is submit a bunch of short stories to publishers. I am a writer now, and I will allow myself to accept this with pride. The other thing I plan to do is follow Anna David’s example and follow guidance from a classic book to improve my life.<br /><br />In my case this book will be the U.S. Army Ranger Handbook. God help us all.M Gregory Ferrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06921177390932932184noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33028856.post-47127773981494672412011-09-10T18:09:00.000-07:002011-09-10T18:15:21.196-07:00Guess What? We Were WarnedI thought a lot about what I’d right for the 10th anniversary of the attacks of 9/11/2001. I started a number of pieces that soon turned into rambling. As the day approached the Department of Homeland Security issued warnings of potential attacks in the form a truck-bombs, and the targets could be New York or Washington D.C. Yet due to the vagueness of the warnings the response has been mostly cynicism from most Americans. This finally gave my thoughts focus. Ten years ago in the Spring of 2001 there are warnings that Al Qaeda was planning to strike the U.S. somewhere in the world, and that it was possible that their attack would take place inside of the United States. It was no secret. The warnings were there for those who read the middle and back pages of the newspapers. Few people read the warnings, and fewer took them seriously.<br /><br />On June 9, 2001, the Associated Press’s Pauline Jelinek wrote an article about how Army bases across the country would tighten security and restrict access. The story cited a “system-wide review of security…started after October’s bombing (2000) in Yemen of the USS Cole…” as a reason for the directive. Then on June 22, 2001 the State Department issued a “World-Wide Caution” alert:<br /><a href="http://www.familymanagement.com/reports/travel/Worldwide-090701.html">http://www.familymanagement.com/reports/travel/Worldwide-090701.html</a><br />This warning is quoted in its entirety:<br /><br /><strong><em><br /><br /><blockquote><strong><em>Public Announcement<br />Over the last several months, the U.S.<br />Government has learned that U.S. citizens and interests abroad may be at<br />increased risk of a terrorist action from extremist groups. In addition, we have<br />received unconfirmed information that terrorist actions may be taken against<br />U.S. military facilities and/or establishments frequented by U.S. military<br />personnel in Korea and Japan. We are also concerned about information we<br />received in May 2001 that American citizens may be the target of a terrorist<br />threat from extremist groups with links to Usama Bin Ladin's Al-Qaida<br />organization. In the past, such individuals have not distinguished between<br />official and civilian targets. As always, we take this information seriously.<br />U.S. Government facilities worldwide remain at a heightened state of alert. U.S.<br />citizens are urged to maintain a high level of vigilance and to take appropriate<br />steps to increase their security awareness to reduce their vulnerability.<br />Americans should maintain a low profile, vary routes and times for all required<br />travel, and treat mail and packages from unfamiliar sources with suspicion. In<br />addition, American citizens are also urged to avoid contact with any suspicious,<br />unfamiliar objects, and to report the presence of the objects to local<br />authorities. Vehicles should not be left unattended, if at all possible, and<br />should be kept locked at all times. U.S. Government personnel overseas have been<br />advised to take the same precautions. In addition, U.S. Government facilities<br />have and will continue to temporarily close or suspend public services as<br />necessary to review their security posture and ensure its adequacy. U.S.<br />citizens planning to travel abroad should consult the Department of State's<br />Public Announcements, Travel Warnings, Consular Information Sheets, and regional<br />travel brochures, all of which are available at the Consular Affairs Internet<br />web site at http://travel.state.gov. We will continue to provide updated<br />information should it become available. American citizens overseas may contact<br />the American Citizens Services unit of the nearest U.S. Embassy or Consulate by<br />telephone or fax for up-to-date information on security conditions. In addition,<br />American citizens in need of emergency assistance should telephone the nearest<br />U.S. Embassy or Consulate before visiting the Embassy or Consulate. Department<br />of State travel information and publications are available at Internet address:<br />http://travel.state.gov. U.S. travelers may hear recorded information by calling<br />the Department of State in Washington, D.C. at 202-647-5225 from their<br />touch-tone telephone, or receive information by automated telefax by dialing<br />202-647-3000 from their fax machine. This Public Announcement supersedes the<br />Public Announcement - Worldwide Caution of June 22, 2001 to inform U.S. citizens<br />of unconfirmed threats against U.S. military facilities, personnel and<br />establishments frequented by U.S. military personnel. This Public Announcement<br />expires on December 22, 2001.<br /></em></strong></blockquote></em></strong><br /><br /><blockquote></blockquote><br /><br /><p></p><br /><br /><p></p>Yes, there’s nothing in there about hijacking passenger jets then flying them into buildings, but it is clear that the US Government was expecting an attack – somewhere – between June 22, 2001 and December 22, 2001. The holes in the national security machine (re: the CIA & FBI) have been painfully documented elsewhere, and will continue to be exposed as time goes onward. What has been lost in the cloud of dust of the collapse and two reflexive wars is another story from June 23, 2001. The Middle East Broadcasting Centre (MBC) had a reporter in Kandahar:<br /><br /><strong><em>“"I met with bin Laden near Kandahar (Afghanistan) over the last few days and his main supporters said in front of him that there will be a big surprise over the next two weeks," the MBC correspondent said.Among the bin Laden supporters quoted were Abu Hafs, considered as bin Laden's right-hand man, and Ayman al-Zawahirit, the leader of the Egyptian Islamic Jihad.”<br /></em></strong><br />While the two week mark came and went it was common knowledge the US was in Al Qaeda’s crosshairs. At least it was common knowledge to the Arab press, and to people who tracked terror warning. For some reason the threats didn’t resonate with the American public, even though the World Trade Center had already been bombed in 1993, and the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City had been destroyed by a truck-bomb in April, 1995.<br /><br />The talking heads on the national news desks and those on the cable news ghetto all begin their yearly 9/11 sermons with how naïve and innocent Americans were on the morning of 9/11/2001. This is bullshit. Americans weren’t naïve nor innocent, they were simply ill-informed. The national news media had collectively fallen asleep at the wheel. In the summer before the attacks the news universe was dominated by Congressman Gary Condit and his missing intern, Chandra Levy. There is also the Enron scandal that the media had also failed to detect in advance in spite of their multiple financial experts on staff. Just as they failed to look deeply into the Enron and the “Tech-Bubble” there was little interest in looking into threats from Al Qaeda. ABC’s John Miller seemed to be one of the few to understand Osama bin Laden to be a larger threat. His interviews with bin Laden can be found on ABC’s website, and are worth reviewing even now.<br /><br />The point is that after the attacks fingers were pointed at the Bush Administration, and the bulk of responsibility rests with their disinterest in the subject of terror threats before 9/11/2001. Fingers need also to be pointed at the news media as well. The Time Magazine that hit the stands after the attacks contained amazingly detailed accounts of Al Qaeda’s movements inside the US, and their planning overseas. The only way this level of detail was possible was because reporters had already been following Al Qaeda independently, and after the attacks they quickly connected their dots. The question needs to be asked: Why was the news media so uninterested in Al Qaeda prior to 9/11/2001? The network and cable news pimps have no problem generating their own stories, and framing them in a way that they can be milked for weeks on end. Why was national security a back-burner issue?<br /><br />The sad thing is that these questions will never be answered. I read the June 22nd warning in my local news paper, and on that morning when the towers came down I remembered that Al Qaeda had planned a strike on US interests. While I was shocked and horrified I was not surprised. There is much complaint about what has happened to America since the attacks, but the fact is that Americans have surrendered their responsibilities for their own security to the Federal Government. Nothing has been taken away by force. We haven’t lost anything, we handed it over. When the government asks Americans to be vigilant the response is to compare the US to Soviet Russia. If more Americans had been vigilant before 9/11 the attacks could have been headed off, and there would be no need for a Homeland Security. Yet in 2011 the average American can’t be bothered with security matters. For all of the histrionics the fact is that we are just as pathetic as we were on September 10, 2001.M Gregory Ferrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06921177390932932184noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33028856.post-29055736872269139432011-08-01T21:53:00.000-07:002011-08-01T21:54:54.812-07:00In the Wake of a Beautiful WomanBeauty is its own reward or something along those lines. Today I went to my favorite Mexican restaurant, and as fate would have it I followed just behind a stunningly beautiful young woman. Instead of watching her I watched everyone else as she entered. There was a buzz as every male head turned to stare at her; say what you want about the speed of the internet, this young lady had it beat. The Latino men working behind the counter all smiled and blushed. The man at the counter was as professional as he could be with a big goofy grin on his face.<br /><br />Magically the dishwashers appeared from the back to check her out as she stood carefree at the counter. She had the kind of beauty that gave the appearance of weightlessness. Her hair seemed to float, her blouse was fit to her upper body yet not tight, and her pants seemed as if they were painted on. Nothing she wore grabbed at her. The men around her seemed to float as well, as if they’d suddenly lost thirty pounds. I suspect this was the loss of mental weight as whatever thoughts had been running through their heads drifted away like Dandelions on a Spring breeze.<br /><br />She sat down at a table near the counter as her order was to go. I smiled as many of the men suddenly needed to get up and refill at the salad bar which was nowhere near her. While there may have been vulgar talk about her at one of the tables I certainly didn’t hear it. Yes every guy in the place was lusting after her, but not in an aggressive way. It’s the kind of lust saved for that woman you hope to be stranded with on a Tropical island. The kind of lust where you know you would be the happiest man on earth being the one who woke next to her each morning. This kind of beauty has gravity, the kind of gravity that pulls from the inside out. As she sat there unaware of the stir she had caused the restaurant fell quiet as the men just watched as she scrolled through the messages on her phone.<br /><br />Her order was ready (in record time) as was mine. We both stood and I paused to allow her distance before I followed her out. I was enjoying the view to be sure. The magic continued outside too. She got into her modest sports sedan and backed out. Usually the traffic here is impossible at lunch. It seemed as if a gap in time-space itself accompanied her as she drove away. Once her car was out of sight the spell was broken, cars lined up making my crossing of the street a chore, and the restaurant became noisy again to the point where I could hear it from the parking lot.<br /><br />I won’t waste time trying to unravel this mystery. Partly because there are things that can never be known, but mostly because I don’t wish to take the fun out of it all. I’ve seen this happen before over the years with many other women, and it always fascinates me as men change gears to adjust to this angelic presence. It is the involuntary nature of this response is intriguing because it is counter-intuitive. For some types of beauty men become clowns, or jackasses. This kind of beauty causes them to become their better selves. That is the mystery, why can’t we men become our better selves on our own, and wouldn’t this attract this kind of beauty? Is there a fear that we can never measure up? Is being that better man a frightening concept?<br /><br />Like I said, I’m not going to try to figure this one out, but you never know. If I do I’ll pass the secret along.M Gregory Ferrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06921177390932932184noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33028856.post-2455701420492137032011-06-04T17:08:00.000-07:002011-06-04T17:18:43.435-07:00Midnight Ride of Paul Freakin’ RevereThere were these guys called The Boston Committee of Correspondence and the Massachusetts Committee of Safety who hired this guy named Paul Revere as an express rider to carry important shit to New York and Philly. On the night of April 18, 1775, this Dr. Joseph Warren guy calls Revere and tells him to haul ass to Lexington, MA, to tell Sam Adams and John Hancock that the British were on their way to bust them. Revere asks how the fuck Warren knows, and Warren tells him that the Red Coats had launched a bunch of small boats as they took the infantry and grenadiers off duty. Then Dr. Warren tells Revere to shut the fuck up and get moving.<br /><br />His buddies had arranged a signal in the Old North Church where they’d hang one lantern if the Brits came by land and two lanterns if they came by sea. Well the Redcoats were coming both ways but they didn’t have a signal for that. Way to go, assholes. So Revere gets some guys to row him across the Charles River and goes to the home of his buddy, Deacon John Larkin. Most historians will tell you that Revere borrowed Larkin’s horse, but the truth is that Deacon Larkin kept the Batmobile in his stable. I don’t know, somehow it traveled time or whatever, but Larkin found it. Then Larkin briefs Revere on where the British check points are, but Revere tells him that he doesn’t care because he’s driving the fucking Batmobile. So Larkin says “Cool” and Revere does a wicked-hot peel out.<br /><br />So Revere is doing like 125 down the road, and he’s yelling over the loud speaker “The British are coming, and not in the fun way!” Houses light up as he blows past them. He pulls up in front of the house where Adams and Hancock are staying. They come out and can’t believe what they see.<br /><br />“Yo Revere! What the fuck is that thing?” Hancock says.<br /><br />“What the fuck does it look like? It’s the mother fuckin’ Batmobile” Revere says. Then an argument breaks out over who should get the Batmobile from here on out. Revere thinks he should keep it because he needs to haul ass to Concord to warn the militia, but Hancock and Adams insist that they should drive it because they’re more important. Finally Revere agrees to give them the Batmobile for a keg a week of Adam’s wicked beer for the rest of his life. A fair trade? I think so. As this is goin’ on a second rider, William Dawes shows up. Revere gets a horse and rides off with Dawes towards Concord. As they ride down the road they’re joined by a third rider, Dr. Samuel Prescott. However they don’t get too far before they run into a British patrol and get arrested. That’s what happens when you blow off a mission briefing, but I digress.<br /><br />Dr. Prescott escapes right off the bat by using the old “Your shoe lace is untied” trick, and rides off to Concord. In the confusion Dawes escapes too, but Revere stands there like a fucking dumbass. So the British start questioning him, and Revere tells them everything like a big pussy. The British officer wasn’t buying it so he pulls out his pistol, and puts the muzzle to Revere’s skull. Then for some reason he asks if Revere is the same dude who does the quality metal work and Revere says he is.<br /><br />“Well Christ, Revere, my wife has all of your stuff. She fucking loves the silver tea set your people made. Look, get back on that horse and go home, I’d hate to have to shoot you.” So Revere gets escorted a few miles back towards Lexington before the Brits screw him by taking his horse. So Revere walks back to Lexington were he finds Adams and Hancock about a mile from where they’d started.<br /><br />“What the fuck? You two gonads should be in Philly by now” Revere said. He was pissed.<br /><br />“Hey, give us a break, ass-clown, it’s 1775 so we don’t know how to fucking drive yet” Hancock said.<br /><br />“Okay, fuck it, I’ll drive. Move over.” Revere said. He got behind the wheel. About four minutes later they were at a house in Woburn four miles away. Now that they were safe, Revere hauled ass back to the Clark house to find out what the fuck was going on. When he gets there two riders show up and tell him that British soldiers are almost there. So Revere runs inside and grabs a trunk full of Hancock’s papers, drags it outside, and puts it into the trunk of the Batmobile. Just as he closes the trunk the British show up. Revere gets into the Batmobile and locks the door. The British soldiers form a skirmish line in front of the car, and the officer orders Revere to surrender. Revere flips them the bird. The troops open fire but the musket balls bounce off the car’s armor plating. Revere gets on the loud speaker and tells the Brits that they can lick his hairy ball sack. The Soldiers fire another volley, and Revere just laughs. Suddenly the car roars to life as Revere floors it in reverse, then he hangs a perfect bootleg turn, and he’s fuckin’ outa there.<br /><br />I don’t know what happened to the Batmobile after that. One rumor says that the British captured it, and took it back to the Tower of London where it was kept up until 1870 when Queen Victoria crashed it into the palace wall while testing the air bag system. The other says that it was given to George Washington after the war, and on his death he willed it to be kept in the basement of the White House. Supposedly every President has driven the Batmobile at least once. That makes more sense, with great power comes an awesome car.<br /><br />Ben Franklin said that.M Gregory Ferrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06921177390932932184noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33028856.post-88558093249244492212011-01-15T19:37:00.000-08:002011-01-15T19:40:04.504-08:00The Follow-On Tragedy of the Arizona ShootingsNow that the smoke has cleared from the shootings that occurred a week ago today it is clear that the shooter, Jared Loughner, is saner than the news media, and the many political talking heads of our country. In less than two hours the political voices in the country raced to plant their spin-flags among the corpses. Because the shootings happened in Arizona, and because the primary target was a Democrat the assumption was automatic: The shooter was a Tea Party activist and Sarah Palin was to blame. Almost as soon the right-wing marshaled their forces to defend themselves and point fingers at the left. This all happened before we knew anything about the shooter including his name. Even worse we witnessed respected media personalities fall victim to their own prejudices. Maybe it was fitting that the shootings happened in Arizona because of it is synonymous with the old west, and the media’s reaction was exactly that of an old-west lynch mob. Just like the aftermath of those old-western lynching’s the true culprit went unpunished.<br /><br /> The culprit at the root of this shooting is mental illness. That is what we need to be talking about. Our prisons are full of the mentally ill because we are failing to address this problem. I work in a job where I come into frightening contact with homeless people who are clearly mentally ill, and quite often my life is in danger. I am not trained to deal with the mentally ill, my police department has limited options about what they can do with the mentally ill, and more and more the mentally ill are either being shot by police or killing someone themselves. I don’t pretend to have any answers here, and my frustration is that because the political whores have prostituted this incident away from the actual cause, and instead they have decided to dress it up as their various boogey men.<br /><div align="center"><br />Shame on them.</div><br /> Americans hate to talk about mental illness because it is a complex issue that ultimately comes down to how the illness affects each individual. Americans like simple answers and cookie-cutter solutions. Mental Health is the opposite of both those and it … well it drives us crazy. Mental Health is also expensive on almost every level which automatically complicates the subject as the political-media industrial complex knee-jerks into action. Exotic medications, MRIs, CAT Scans, psychiatrists, and psychiatric councilors are all expensive prospects. Then you have mental health advocates who are well meaning, but in the end limiting the help that the mentally ill can receive. Their motivations stem from the 19th and 20th Century abuses of the mentally ill in asylums around the world. These abuses were such that as they came to light Americans demanded change, and most mental institutions were eventually closed down. What happened to their former patients? All dumped onto the streets. <br /><br /> All of this could be the center of discussion in the media today yet it is not. Although by Sunday of last week we knew that Loughner was mentally ill the news media had decided to continue with the angle that “vitriolic political language” was the cause of the shooting. The very people who are tasked with reporting facts (NBC, CBS, ABC, and CNN) had instead stooped to innuendo. The idea that political activism had more appeal then having to discuss yet another troubled person with blood on his hands, and one has to question not only the judgment of those news editors they also must question their sanity as well. How is a discussion of gun-sites on Sarah Palin’s campaign website or Rush Limbaugh considered rational in conjunction with what we know about Loughner? It is clear that Loughner had stalked/targeted Representative Gabrielle Giffords but it is not clear he did so because she was a Democrat. As of now it is just as likely that she was targeted because she was accessible, and because she just happened to be the Congress person within range.<br /><br /> Jared Loughner is the first encounter with what will be a big problem in the 21st century. Loughner may have an under –lying mental illness but it has been compounded by Digital Retardation. Loughner didn’t watch TV, nor did he listen to the radio. Instead he was a creature of the internet. In my spare time I moderate a message board that is geared to video gaming and high-tech gadgets and issues. The posters on this board range from 13 years old to 75 years old with the bulk of them being college age. They do not read books on the level that their predecessors twenty years ago did, and this handicap is evident as even the brightest young people lack the ability to grasp complex issues on an adult level. The internet afford young people the ability to never come into contact with adults, and the result is that they either mature more slowly , or never mature beyond a 15 year-old’s mind set. The internet’s anonymity also allows antisocial behavior to go unchecked, so Loughner couldn’t understand why behavior that was acceptable on the internet was not acceptable in a college classroom. His handicap was compounded by the lack of intellectual maturity because he was able to feed his world view easily by frequenting websites where his delusions would be considered normal. The absence of rational adult input can only be guessed at for now but it is likely that is sped Loughner’s downward spiral.<br /><br /> As you can see Loughner represents a convergence of complex issues that require serious discussion. Once again Americans, when confronted with the uncomfortable problem of the mentally ill, have decided to change the subject. I can’t speculate as to why the news media went the way that it did. Unlike the responsible news agencies I can only address the facts as I know them now. When more facts come along I will adjust fire accordingly. Why can’t the news media do this? What I saw on Saturday and Sunday of last week was right out of the Salem Witch Trials. How did paranoia (and that is the only explanation) engulf so many educated and otherwise rational people? It was like watching Medgar Evers putting in a KKK robe. Why was it more important to hang their personal political agenda on Loughner’s act than simply deal with the facts? How did this help anyone? Don’t they realize that they undermine their credibility when they do stuff like that? To underscore the failure of the big media was the fact that a handful of bloggers were ahead of them in obtaining and reporting the facts.<br /><br /> So at the end of the day not only were six people dead but the credibility of the news media died off just a little more too. Yet those who work in the media fail to understand or admit their failures on every level. So instead of making this about the victims they turned it into political circus, and then condemned others in the media for turning this event into a political circus (complete with t-shirts at the memorial – that is another rant for another time). In doing this the nation lost valuable time on a serious discussion that affects our society on multiple levels. Like I said earlier, the real tragedy is that Loughner’s actions and the media response were equally insane.<br /><br />Yet nobody is calling them on it.M Gregory Ferrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06921177390932932184noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33028856.post-64571751784398850382010-12-07T16:59:00.000-08:002010-12-07T17:03:00.785-08:00Citizens of a Forgotten PlanetFort Ord was nick-named “Planet Ord” or just “The Planet” sometime in the 1950s. It has its own geomagnetic field, its own weather patterns, and because the fog line can move unevenly across the base a long road march would often seem to start in a different country. The Army opened Fort Ord proper in 1941; its roads and ranges were laid out under the supervision of General Joseph Stillwell. If understand Stillwell then you understand that Fort Ord was designed for foot travel. Used for basic training for part of WWII, the Korean War, and Vietnam as well as being home to a variety of units lead to ten million men and women passing through this base by the time it was shuttered in 1993. The last group is what interests me, the 7th Infantry Division’s “Lightfighters.” They were my generation born from 1963 onward (known as the “Baby Busters”), and they represent a brief moment in US Army history when the Army seemed to get it right.<br /><br /> The 7th ID Lightfighter stood out for two reasons; the first being their distinctive rag-top helmet covers that lead to their various nick-names: Cabbage Patch Kids, Swamp Things, and Bob Marlies, and they stood out because of their above average soldiering skills. The 7th ID was the first unit to be built upon the lessons of the Vietnam War, and its many officers and NCOs were veterans of that war. The Army raised its standards for fitness and performance in 1984, and the new Lightfighters responded to the challenges and then raised the standards to a new level. At the same time the Army instituted the COHORT (Cohesion Operational Readiness and Training) system wherein entire platoons would serve their entire four year enlistment together from Basic Training onward. These platoons were usually the various weapons platoons such as the mortar crews, anti-tank, anti-aircraft, engineers, and artillery. These platoons received an extra three weeks of training on their weapons before moving to Fort Ord. Upon arrival those Vietnam era NCOs could take the freshly minted GIs and mold them into soldiers in their own image.<br /> <br /> Hiking the maneuver ranges of Fort Ord (known as the “Back Yard”) can be a lesson in infantry archeology. Fighting positions (Fox Holes) can be found in the textbook locations at trail intersections all over. Where the Lightfighters made their mark is where they put their positions. Well camouflaged holes can still be found almost intact throughout the entire base. These are invisible until one walks right up on them. The mark of the Lightfighter seems to be the impossible fighting position that can be found on the steep canyon sides. Even more impressive is that after the position was occupied another team of Lightfighters attacked this impossible position; the spent shells of .556 and .762 rounds complete with the rusting detached belt links from the assaulting SAW (a light machine gun) along with four or five pulled hand grenade rings still lay where they fell.<br /> <br /> Over the next ridge from this forgotten skirmish site is Fort Ord’s MOUT-Site. MOUT stands for Military Operations in Urban Terrain; Fort Ord’s MOUT-Site is named “Impossible City” because its design made successful assault on any building impossible without massive casualties. Unlike MOUT-Sites at other Army or Marine bases Impossible City is one square mile of densely packed buildings with many tight allies and only one road. Here the Lightfighters trained for potential battles in Korea, Honduras, Panama, Colombia, and Peru. Impossible City is today owned by Monterey Peninsula College for its police academy, and it is routinely used by various military special operations forces and SWAT teams from all over California. It is here where the Lightfighters excelled in gleeful ruthlessness as the attacking forces would encounter booby-trapped staircases, hallways, and alley ways. Blackhawk Helicopters would swoop in and the men would “Fast Rope” sixty feet down onto the rooftops. The mock battles sometimes ended up in actual fist-fights as the OpFor (Opposing Force) laid waste to the attackers. The MOUT-Site was where the majority of Fort Ord’s serious injuries occurred as soldiers went flying out of third-story windows, or dove down flights of stairs avoiding improvised explosive devices made from the plastic MRE (Meals Ready to Eat) packs that were armed with the charge from a practice grenade and stuffed full of unpleasant bodily excretions.<br /> <br /> Booby-traps were the 7th ID Lightfighter’s signature. Lightfighters booby-trapped their booby-traps, and it is unwise to pick up anything one might find walking through the back country. A few years back I was hiking with a friend who had been stationed at Fort Ord from ’89 to ’93. As we cut through an off-limits swath of land he suddenly stopped and told me in a hushed voice to slow down, and to walk directly behind him. He had walked me into a kill-zone where his unit had once operated in a defensive action. They had strung the trees with practice Claymore mines and when I suggested that they must have been cleared by that time he pointed to a trip-flare still attached to the nearest tree. Then he pointed to the second wire that leads away to where a Claymore had once been placed. Over time even the aging charges inside practice munitions can ruin your day.<br /><br /> It is eight miles from the brigade area to the rear gate of Fort Ord. Round trip is sixteen, and with creative trail use this can be stretched to twenty miles. Lightfighters could cover that distance in four and a half hours. Not as fast as the Ranger Battalion’s mandatory four hours but still respectable. The twenty-mile ruckmarch was performed once a month, but because the 7thID had few trucks their Lightfighters often logged ten or miles each day under full 70+ pound packs. They bitched about it too. Once a year some brigades would land the men on the Big Sur coast, walk into Fort Hunter Liggett, and then once the exercise was over they would then ruckmarch the eighty-five miles back to Fort Ord. Lightfighters were in great shape, and when they weren’t training they could play just as hard.<br /> <br /> Basketball and football could better be titled murder-ball and the death-bowl as rivalries between the companies were fierce. It was so bad that the different regiments rarely played each other out of concerns by command of crippling injuries. The Enlisted Man’s club today is CSUMB’s student center and store. The Army named it “The Rallying Point”, and up until 1984 it was also a topless club. The Lightfighters nicknamed it “The Punch & Jab” because fights broke out early and often and only the base stockade can boast more murders, but not by much. The classic fight at the Rallying Point came in 1987. The 2-9 Manchus were celebrating the regiment’s birthday, and some guys from 3-17 decided to crash the party. What ensued was out of a John Wayne western as tables were overturned, chairs crashed into heads, bodies flew through the air, glass broke, and a blizzard of fists filled the place. A call went out to every police agency, and soon sixty police officers descended along with fifty MPs to shut the festivities down. However the Lightfighter is always in combat mode; as soon as the first cops were sighted the men exited the building and into the Oak forest behind the club. Lightfighters were masters of night warfare, and even though there were estimated to be three hundred men involved in the fight only nine were arrested. The rest simply used the darkness and their comfort with walking long distances to evade capture by walking the longest way possible back to their barracks.<br /> <br /> Today I wonder about the kids who attend CSUMB. Do they understand that there is a level of excellence that was established by the men and women who had once called this place home? Do they know what is possible if they push themselves? Do they know that the only limits they face are the limits that they impose upon themselves? For ten years the Army challenged the 7thID’s Lightfighters and the Lightfighters took it all in stride. The Army quit on the 7thID, not the other way around. Although the transformation from military to university is complete this is still a place of transformation. The lesson to be learned from the 7thID Lightfighters is to face the challenge, stick out your chest, and ask “is that best you got?”M Gregory Ferrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06921177390932932184noreply@blogger.com14tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33028856.post-58541209398958748532010-12-07T16:55:00.000-08:002010-12-07T16:58:21.910-08:00Rock Guitarists ConnectionsI have played the guitar since the third Monday of September, 1978. I bought my first electric guitar, and Ibanez Iceman, in 1979 and in doing so I joined a fringe element of mankind. Rock guitarists, I would discover, share knowledge of a handful of truths about the word, and about us that outsiders can never know. A rock guitarist is a creature that could only exist in the late twentieth century. We played a new kind of instrument and a new kind of music in a new kind of world. From the mid-1950s until the mid-1990s as the modern world moved away from serious spirituality towards religious materialism the rock guitarist would become an anathema. Classic rock music lovers today loudly ask where are today’s guitar heroes? The current batches of demigods are in their twentieth year of their career on average with not a lot of young guys coming up the pipeline. The reasons for this are subtle.<br /> When Les Paul invented the solid-body electric guitar in 1940 it is doubtful that he fully understood what his creation would eventually unleash. As the solid-body guitar became mated with the powerful amplifiers of Hiwatt, Vox, and the sublime creation of Jim Marshall it evolved from a musical instrument into a portal that removed the barrier between the conscious, subconscious, and the divine. Most rock guitarists recognized this on some level, and even a few are fully aware of the secret. The act of playing the guitar at high volume creates a closed-loop vortex wherein the music flows from the player’s mind out through his fingers, and then is zapped back into his head. Plato talked of divine enlightenment, and the act of the creation of music is divine, and this is the secret element of this closed loop. To put it another way the guitarist is in direct communion with his creator via his guitar and amp.<br /> How the electric guitar works is that electrical current is fed through magnetic coils called “Pickups”, and the pickups transmit the vibrations of the guitar strings out to an amplifier. The amp takes that signal and makes it louder by pumping the vibrations of the strings through (usually) 12-inch speakers. Once the amp is set to a certain volume a good guitar player can manipulate the exchange between the string vibrations, the magnetic pickups, and the magnets in the amp to cause sustain or feedback. Feedback is where the sound from the amp is cycled back through the guitar. If fire sang it would sound like a guitar feeding back. There is a second kind of feedback that occurs within the player’s head as the gifts of skill and knowledge flow out from deep within the brain, and then return through the ear seeming to inspire more creation. It is a form of fusion; which is what powers the sun, but instead complex heavy gasses being compressed it is ideas and inspiration.<br /> I used the word demigod because that is what it feels like when standing in front of your fully cranked amp blasting cords, and unleashing screaming scales. There is a transmutation that takes place as the guitar is played, and the player temporarily becomes something more than mortal. Between the player and his audience there is transubstantiation as the listener becomes part of that divine closed-loop vortex which in turn unlocks parts of their mind. This process can actually have a negative effect on some guitarists as they try to reconcile the difference between the guy they are while they are playing and the guy that they revert to the rest of the time. Unaware of their inadvertent divine interface, many guitarists seek to recreate that high through the ingestion of artificial substances. This is what happened to Hendrix; almost lead Clapton to kill himself with heroin, made Page, and Van Halen drink like fish. The tragedy is that these substances become a barrier between the player and the divine, and the players that don’t end up prematurely dead face a harsher fate of becoming only a shadow of their former selves.<br /> For the guitarist who has self control or has discovered the truth life takes and interesting turn. That connection to the creator provides a cushion between the hard realities of life, and the possibilities that exist here and beyond simultaneously. We can make people dance, smile, and even cry with our instrument. The rock guitarist intuitively understands that good music connects us to the larger universe and our deepest selves. Now rock guitarist may move on with their lives and put the guitar away, but their intuitive knowledge of deeper truths of man and the universe remain. We know that people are not bad but simply lost; lost from that connection with the divine. The rock guitarist may no longer play regularly yet when that guitar is picked up and plugged in it becomes a time machine as well. The feel of steel under the fingers transports the player back to the very first day they picked up the guitar. The connection is quickly reestablished and the act is much like drinking from a mountain spring.<br /> Guitarists can also pick out other guitarists in a crowd, but they couldn’t tell you how. When this happens total strangers speak as brothers or sisters. They will discuss their guitars, crazy gigs, and other guitarists. I have never met a fellow rock guitarist who felt like a stranger. The reason behind this is simple in that the same divine thing that inspired me also inspired them, and because I was part of that divine loop I was connected at some level with every other rock guitar player who had ever played and will ever play in the future. It isn’t something that I can quantify; it is only something that I know it true.<br /> I described the rock guitarists as an anathema because we are a threat to the current establishment of social cool. Today it is considered foolish to feel connected to the divine; it is popular belief that to do so is primitive, and backwards. The rock guitarist embodied a truth that people could connect to something pure through music, and this is a threat to the materialistic 21st centurions. So we wait and we teach the young. The revolution will continue one day when the time is right.M Gregory Ferrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06921177390932932184noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33028856.post-62195923110740143662010-10-29T20:05:00.000-07:002010-10-29T20:10:56.825-07:00Fixing Kate Chopin’s The Story of an Hour, Because Why The Hell Not?<div align="left"> A few weeks ago my Creative Writing class was assigned to read three short stories. One of the stories was <em>The Story of an Hour</em> by Kate Chopin which was written in 1894. The story covers about a page and a half. We meet Louise Mallard, a housewife who has just received news that her husband has been killed in an accident. After her initial shock she begins to contemplate her new life without her husband. She becomes excited at the prospect “[F]ree! Body and soul free!” she kept whispering. Louise is suddenly very happy at the news that she is a widow, and as she sits in her room “ drinking in the very elixir of life” her sister, Josephine, is on the other side of the door flipping out because she’s worried about Louise’s faint heart. Finally Louise opens the door and the story ends like this:</div><div align="center"><br /><strong><em>There was a feverish fire in her eyes, and she carried herself unwittingly<br />like a goddess of Victory. She clasped her sister’s waist, and together they<br />Descended the stairs. Richards stood waiting for them at the bottom.<br /> Some one was opening the front door with a latchkey. It was Brently Mallard<br />Who entered, a little travel stained, composedly carrying his grip-sack and umbrella.<br />He had been far from the scene of the accident, and did not even know<br />There had been one. He stood amazed at Josephine’s piercing cry; </em></strong></div><div align="center"><strong><em>at Richards’ quick motion to screen him from the view of his wife.<br /></em></strong></div><div align="center"><strong><em>But it was too late.<br /></em></strong></div><div align="center"><strong><em>When the doctors came they said that she had died from heart disease –<br />Of a joy that kills.</em></strong></div><br /> Half the class didn’t like the ending. They didn’t like that Louise had her new freedom taken away from her along with her life. The people who didn’t like the ending were actually pissed off about it all. I liked it. It is good writing, and it is a good exercise in time-frame writing (like “24” takes place in 24 hours). It was fun to listen to the class exchange opinions about the story and how upsetting the ending was to them. That got me thinking; why not just fix the ending?<br /><br /> So for you, my loyal readers, I give you alternative endings in the styles of my favorite writers. The story will pick up where Mr. Mallard comes through the door and Josephine screams…<br /><br /><br /><strong>The Edgar Allen Poe ending:</strong><br /><strong><br /></strong> …Richards’ quick motion to screen him from the view of his wife. But it was too late. Aghast, Brently shouted at Josephine “ run and bring Doctor Howard, and be quick about it woman!” As Josephine’s sobs and footfalls faded in the distance Richards looked at Brently and said “She’s gone. My condolences.” Then Richards and Brently shared a smile as Richards dropped Louise’s lifeless hand to the floor and stood. “Will Dr. Howard be paying you directly for his fresh cadaver?” Richards asked. “Yes, $1500, and your cut will be $300 as agreed” said Brently. Richards thought to himself for a moment and then offered “Do you think that Dr. Howard would pay the full $1500 for a second body?” Brently was no in front of the Brandy reaching for two glasses, “Are you thinking of Josephine?” “Why not? I wouldn’t need the $300 share.” Brently nodded at Richards and handed him a glass. “You are a crafty one, good Sir” he said as he handed Richards the glass. “Cheers” said Richards as he gulped back his Brandy. Brently knew that Josephine would not be returning from Dr. Howard’s, and then he wondered how long the poison in Richards’ drink would take.<br /><br /><strong>Jacqueline Susann ending:</strong><br /><strong><br /></strong> Josephine screamed but Louise was strangely still. Brently stood at the bottom of the stairs with quizzically looking at Richards, then Josephine, and then his wife. Louise looked at Brently like he was a slice of bologna. Then she turned to Josephine and said in a calm voice “Fuck it, Jo, I’m going to go to bed” Then she turned and retreated into her room locking the door behind her. After she’d put on her night gown she sat at the vanity looking at her reflection. Then she reached for a medicine bottle and poor a single Quaalude into the palm of her hand. For a brief second she considered taking the entire bottle and ending it all, but as Scarlett O’Hara said “tomorrow is another day.” She stood up and turned towards her bed, but then turned and for the bottom right drawer of her vanity. Her hand found the vibrator and pulled it out. Louise clicked it on to check the batteries, and then climbed into bed and turned out the light.<br /><br /><strong>Quentin Tarantino ending:<br /><br /></strong><strong></strong> Louise looked at her husband and then at Richards. “What the fuck? When I pay for a dead husband I fucking expect a dead husband!” “Jesus Christ, Louise” Richards said “He was supposed to be on the goddamned train. I’m not a fucking psychic.” “Yeah, if you were a fucking psychic you’d see this coming” she said as she pulled the nickel-plated .357 from her thigh holster. BAM! Brently’s face was instantly covered with Richards’ brain matter as his body dropped to the floor like a sack of shit. “If you want something done right…” Bam! Brently took a shot to the balls, and then Louise walks down the stairs to place the muzzle in the base of his skull. Bam! “Whoa! That’s some serious fucking shit, Lou.” Josephine said from behind her. Louise turned to Josephine and hissed “What the fuck are you doing standing there like a fucking statue? Get your ass back upstairs and grab our bags. We’re switching to plan B.” Josephine paused for a second; her face looked like a goldfish, and then she spun and ran back to the bedroom. Louise looked out the front window to see if the gunshots had attracted attention, but everything was normal, and that was good because they would need to put thirty miles between here and the next town where the train still ran. Louise then went into the parlor and poured kerosene from one lamp onto the floor. She then grabbed the second oil lamp and emptied the contents over the two bodies. Just then Josephine came running down the stairs. She made her way around the bodies and went outside and tossed the bags into the back of Richards’ carriage. Louise stepped outside the front door, struck a match, and tossed it on her husband’s back. Flames erupted across the floor as she closed and locked the door. Louise climbed into the driver’s side of the carriage and whipped the horses into motion. “Why can’t I get a fucking break?” Louise asked to no one.<br /><br /><strong>The Stephen King ending:</strong><br /><strong><br /></strong> Louise put her hand over her mouth to stifle a gasp. Whatever was standing at the bottom of the stairs may have looked like Brently, but she knew that it wasn’t the same man who’d walked out of the house. In fact she knew that it wasn’t even human. A dim scent of sulphur entered her nostrils. When Louise Mallard had promised to sell her soul to take away her husband the last thing that she’d thought was that the devil would come to collect in person. The thing that was now Brently locked eyes with her and grinned.<br /><br /><strong>The Frank Miller ending:</strong><br /><strong><br /></strong>Richards looked at Louise, then frantically at Josephine, and then back at Brently. Louise looked at her healthy, living husband and let out a sigh. She turned around and walked back to her room. She walked to her vanity and pulled the .38 from the top-left drawer, and then stuck it in her mouth. “I’m fwee” she said as she pulled the trigger, showering the duvet with blood, brain, and skull fragments.<br /><br /><br /> So there you go. I’ve fixed it. There should be an ending here that will make one feel better about Ms. Chopin’s little story.M Gregory Ferrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06921177390932932184noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33028856.post-4135226686679050952010-09-12T22:19:00.000-07:002010-09-12T22:20:21.394-07:00My 12th Step: G.I.JoeI was never a raging alcoholic. In fact I would go weeks without a drink at times. I usually drank on my days off and the problem was that when I drank I drank too much. When I was younger this was all in good fun but as I reached my mid-thirties it was just kind of sad. This was in the late 1990s and there was resurgence if the 12 inch military action figures along the lines of the original GI Joes made by Hasbro in the 1960s and 70s. The company that spearheaded the revival was 21st Century Toy’s Ultimate Soldier line that featured modern uniforms from today’s military. They were a huge success which spurred Hasbro to reissue GI Joes in the 12 inch original size. This was great because Hasbro’s GI Joe is a top-quality body made to be played with. Ultimate Soldier featured cheaply made figures in first rate uniforms.<br /> The figures ran around $20 each and I decided that if I spent money on action figures I wouldn’t have any left to waste on beer or wine. This seemed to work as my intake of alcohol dropped off to an occasional bottle here or there. The funny thing is that it wasn’t the money it was because GI Joe was filling a void in my life which made me feel better about myself.<br /> You see, I could never win as a child. I could never get a break. This was painfully true on my birthdays when I would get some of the things that I had asked for or hinted at, but then I would be presented with an expensive game or toy that I didn’t want. I know this sounds selfish but I knew that my mother didn’t have a lot of money and it always burned me up that she would waste it on a toy or game that I would never play with. Worse still was when the new SEARS catalog came out and I would find out that for the price of that toy I could have gotten some kick-ass GI Joe command center or vehicle. I think the most GI Joes I had at one time was three, and one didn’t count because it was a talking GI Joe (“I have a tough assignment for you!”).<br /> I had a few friends as I was growing up; it wasn’t like I lived in a cave. The problem was that most of the kids my age moved away around 1971 and the rest of my friends lived too far away to play with on a regular basis. Since I couldn’t always get permission to go down and play at the Carmel River I’d make do with our backyard which featured many locations that were GI Joe-friendly. I also suffered from asthma which often kept me at home as well and GI Joe was there to keep watch as I fought for air. I did have other toys and I loved to build plastic models but GI Joe was my go-to toy most of the time.<br /> So when they reissued the 12 Joes I snapped them up. I didn’t save the boxes; the Joes were placed on display in my room. They made me happy and after a while I understood why this was. I was finally in control of my life; I could buy a GI Joe at will, and in the morning when I woke to see a growing army of little dudes on the top of my dresser it made me happy. I didn’t have to ask permission from anyone and I realized that now that I had control over the GI Joe thing I could also gain control over other aspects of my life. That’s when the drinking stopped.<br /> Then one day I looked at all of the GI Joes that now dominated every flat surface in my room I realized that I had more than I would ever need. Technically I had too many. So I bought a couple of plastic storage bins and I put all but a dozen away into the closet. A few smaller Superman and Batman action figures have popped up to take their place but for the most part I have somehow moved into a happier life. It is funny how something stupid like a bunch of GI Joes can patch a hole in your life. I allowed myself to do something that made me feel good. Something that didn’t involve chemical alteration and something that was not destructive. By indulging in a childhood dream I ever so slightly righted my ship and put myself back on course.<br /> The Joes are still packed away in my closet. Down the road I will give them away to some kids who need a friend too. Today I don’t drink and I haven’t bought a 12-inch action figure in over two years. I’m back in college working towards a degree. My life is far from perfect but it is far away from the person al disaster it could have been. Today my challenge is my weight and my crippling fear of success but now that I cannot hide behind a bottle success seems to be heading my way regardless of what I feel. I have reconnected with old friends and I am making a few news ones along the way.<br /> I guess what I want you, dear reader; to come away with is that you don’t need to buy a ton of toys to make you feel good. However there are times when that kid deep inside of you screams out to be pleased. Maybe it means that you buy that stupid HALO action figure and put him on your desk at work. Perhaps it means just letting yourself have a banana split before you get home so you don’t have to share it. Or finally it might be as simple as jumping into a mud puddle on a rainy day or rolling on the lawn. If you can in some way undo that bad day you had as a child it could either break a chain that holds you down, or it can launch you to the next level.<br /><br />Thanks for being there, G.I. Joe.M Gregory Ferrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06921177390932932184noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33028856.post-24558532220502476392010-09-10T22:55:00.000-07:002010-09-11T16:49:49.420-07:00Do You Expect Me To Believe?<p>As a reformed conspiracy nut, the 911 Truth movement (such as it is) has been an amusing side-show. Like a former alcoholic who walks past a bar on a Friday night and watches the drunks stumble out; thinking to himself how lucky he is to no longer imbibe, and how sad the drunks are, I view the 9/11 troofers with both disdain and pity. Pity because I was once a fool who would have bought into the bullshit that they pedal, and disdain because of the emotional pain that they cause the survivors and families of the victims of 9/11. They are not in the least bit interested in the truth, only their version of it, the one that advances their fucked up world view. As the ninth anniversary is upon us, I have a few questions for them:</p><p>1. Do you expect me to believe that the U.S. Government – under the leadership of George W.Bush – was able to pull off the greatest act of mass murder on U.S. soil and keep it secret for nine years? The same administration that couldn’t keep illegal wire-taps secret, couldn’t keep torture secret even though it was performed at secret foreign prisons (which they also couldn’t keep secret)?<br />2. Do you expect me to believe that operatives placed over 5000 pounds of explosives inside of the Twin Towers and World Trade Center 7, but nobody who worked there saw these people nor the explosive charges?<br />3. Do you expect me to believe that they put explosive charges in only three WTC buildings, but not the others?<br />4. Do you expect me to believe that the 123 witnesses you list as hearing explosions are right, but the 170+ witnesses who saw American Airlines 77 fly into the Pentagon are wrong?<br />5. Do you really expect me to believe that some secret government cabal staged to hijackings as a pretext for going to war in Iraq, but they couldn't frame one Iraqi national as a terrorist?<br />6. Do you really expect me to believe that the Thai intelligence service has never uncovered any proof that 9/11 didn’t happen the way we accept that it did?<br />7. Do you really expect me to believe that Dick Cheney would allow a plane to fly into the largest bond trading firm in North America that trades billions of dollars each day?<br />8. Do you really expect me to believe that the billionaire clients of that bond trading firm would not rest until no stone was left unturned in the search for the truth?<br />9. Do you really expect me to believe that if these billionaire clients once they had proof of government involvement in the attacks would not hesitate to burn the Bush Administration?<br />10. Do you really expect me to believe that the thousands of NYPD, NYFD, NY State investigators, FBI, BATF,NTSB, and other investigators at the Ground Zero and Fresh Kills sites either never saw anything incriminating in the tons of wreckage, or decided to keep silent instead of reporting directly or leaking information to the news media? This in spite of the fact that many of them had lost personal friends in the attack?<br />11. Do you really think that if Osama bin Laden worked for the CIA that we wouldn’t have faked his death by now in a very public way thus allowing the CIA operative to shave his beard and move to Aruba?<br />12. Do you really think that Dick Cheney would invade Iraq on the pretext of WMDs, and then forget to plant WMDs using our special operations forces (or just Halliburton aircraft)?</p><p></p><p><span style="font-size:0;"><span style="font-size:0;"></span></span></p><p>I could go on, but these are the biggest questions that I have for them. Belief in fairy tales take a lot of work to avoid reality. They have to be on constant guard to replace the insulation between their fantasy world and the real world. Not me. It feels good not to be a nut-job any more. </p><p> </p><p>As a reformed conspiracy loon I do feel sorry for the Troofers. So wrapped up in their sad, sorry egos that they have lost all self awareness. In many way they are worse off than that homless guy with the hand-made sign that reads "The End is Near" because deep down that guy knows he's a freak. Troofers do not.</p>M Gregory Ferrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06921177390932932184noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33028856.post-72646220985614629442010-08-28T21:08:00.000-07:002010-08-28T21:21:28.788-07:00Creative Writing Class (I be in one)<div align="left"> The few of you who read my stuff regularly have noticed that my posts have been few and far between. There are two reasons for this; I am back in college working towards a degree in Marine Geology so I am taking my general-ed courses so that I may transfer to CSUMB, and the other excuse is that I have been amusing my friends on Facebook with tales from my youth. Some of those stories may migrate over here in the future if I feel like polishing them up a bit.<br /> </div><div align="left"> The great news is that now I have a creative writing class, so much of what I write there will end up here after I get a grade for them. Three years ago I had been submitting writing for my book to various agents and publishers, and I never heard anything back from them. Then I got a short e-mail from one that said “you need to take some English and writing classes.” Ouch. Okay, so I signed up at Monterey Peninsula College (MPC, also known as “Elestero Tech” or “DMSU” [Dennis the Menace State University]) and went through the English 1A, 1B, and English2 classes. I lucked out and got a tough-grading professor who pushed my skills until I could integrate a quote with the best of them. I was also exposed to classic literature like Sophocles and Hemingway which gave me more options as a writer for tackling my 7th Infantry book.</div><div align="left"><br /> The reason for taking the creative writing class is that I need to be pushed outside my comfort zone, and I need to bounce my work off the brains of people who don’t know me (friends are great, I love you guys, but I need to hear feedback from neutral or even hostile sources too). I already have a list of poets and poems to check out from our second day of class. Right out of the gate we have to write poems in the form of Haiku and Cinquain. I had never heard of a Cinquain before last Thursday. The Cinquain for is as follows:</div><div align="center"><br />Two syllables<br />Four syllables<br />Six syllables<br />Eight syllables<br />Two syllables<br />So you get something like this:</div><div align="center"><br />Boogers<br />Where to hide them?<br />Flick them out the window?<br />Stick them under the table-top?<br />Eat mine.<br /><br />I am sure this is exactly what the guy was thinking when he invented this framework. This is the kinda stuff you guys will have to endure from me through December.</div><br /> I am pretty stoked as my professor, Henry Marchand, actually knows who Ambrose Bierce is which qualifies him to teach writing in my book. Plus he went to Penn State as did my high school English teacher, Mr. Scheckler, who was the first important person ever to believe in my writing. There must be something in the water at Penn State. Mr. Scheckler pulled me aside one day after class and told me to write him stories. He said that they would be extra credit, and that I would still have to do the regular assignments too. He said that the stories would not be graded for grammar; instead he said “just write, tell me a story!” So I did just that. My spare time was spent writing “Twilight Zone” type stories about parallel dimensions, time travel, and a double-crossing drug smuggler who gets his in the end.<br /><br /> Henry Marchand seems to be in the same vein of teacher. He knows that there is some great stuff stuck in everyone’s brain and he wants to get it out onto paper. He says that we will end up looking deep inside ourselves as we explore the writing process. You guys know that I have already done this, and that work is archived here. The class is orderly yet comfortable so I can’t wait to see what comes out of my brain.<br /><br />Stay Tuned…M Gregory Ferrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06921177390932932184noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33028856.post-48812810843999644182010-08-14T19:26:00.000-07:002010-08-14T19:28:58.739-07:00More Confessions of a Former Conspiracy Theorist.My road to conspiracy kookdom began innocently enough. My dad gave me his copy of the Warren Commission abridged report along with a book of pictures that spanned that fateful day in Dallas. He got to see Kennedy in Florida as he reviewed the troops assembled there in response to the Cuban Missile Crisis. Dad said in passing that he never believed the Warren Report or that Oswald was the shooter. I was eight or nine years old at this time and I was way too young to understand things like the Watergate story that was dominating the news around this time. When you’re a kid you tend to believe your dad. So in a way I was already handicapped as I approached the subject of the Kennedy assassination.<br /> The first serious exposure I got into this conspiracy world was a documentary called “The Men Who Killed Kennedy”, and it featured most of the mythology that surrounds the event. It is a good starting place if you wish to understand how conspiracy theories feed on themselves and spin into competing theories that soon do battle with each other. The movie’s theory is that Kennedy was murdered by a professional French hit man hired by powerful Americans via the CIA, who used the mafia as a proxy for hiring the hit man. Why? Vietnam, Texas Oil, Cuba, and all kinds of evil right-wing stuff.<br /> The Men Who Killed Kennedy features all of the standard elements that you can find in just about every conspiracy theory:<br /><br />1. New eye-witnesses with fantastic stories.<br />2. Former government/intelligence insiders who are shot in silhouette who say that the assassination looked like a professional job, but either have no direct knowledge about the events of November 22, 1963 but “know a guy who told them everything.”<br /><br />3. Both the new witnesses and the government insiders “‘fear for their lives”.<br />4. Interviews with “Experts” who aren’t really experts in the subjects that they discuss.<br />5. Frame by frame analysis of film of the event but the analysis has a narrow focus.<br />6. Informants. In this movie’s case they are Mob guys. Bottom line on Mob Guys is this: Mob Guys don’t talk. They sure as hell don’t talk on camera. The ones who do are full of crap.<br /><br />7. The Men Who Killed Kennedy also features an interview with the alleged assassin, but of course he can’t go into detail. He writes a letter that is put in the warden’s safe with instructions that if he is murdered that only then can the letter be released to the press. Oh yeah, the assassin is already in a French prison and will only speak to investigators if he is moved to the U.S..<br />8. Enhanced photographs showing, well, showing nothing but a mess that is open to interpretation.<br /><br />These elements are usually present in conspiracy theories and should be a giant BS-flag whenever they appear.<br /><br /> Conspiracies are real, they do happen, but they tend to fall apart which is how we know about them. Watergate is a prime example of a conspiracy and how it unraveled. It started with a break-in at Democratic head quarters in the Watergate building in Washington D.C. There were guys arrested soon after. Then the Washington Post got a tip that someone should take a closer look at the guys who were arrested. It turned out that they had interesting pasts. Then the source, who became known as “Deep Throat”, would lead the Washington Post to more evidence that eventually lead back to the Nixon White House. From there Federal Investigators jumped in and eventually Nixon resigned and members of his staff went to prison. At every step there was evidence that lead to more evidence. This evidence was solid. While “Deep Throat” remained anonymous to the public his identity was known to the Washington Post. The Post never ran with Deep Throat’s claims, instead they double and triple-checked them before they were printed in the paper. Nothing about Watergate was open to interpretation because most of the conspirators confessed.<br /> If the “Plumbers” had been less inept, would Nixon have gotten away with it? It is hard to say, but probably not because it had too many moving parts. Nixon had ordered the break-in of Daniel Ellsberg’s psychiatrist’s office to steal records. The problem is that there would have been other break-ins after Watergate and with each one the odds of being caught would grow.<br /> Of the dozens of books that I have read about the Kennedy assassination the best one is Live by the Sword, by Gus Russo. It does two things; the first thing is that it firmly establishes Oswald as the lone shooter, and the second thing it does is outline the actual cover-up after the assassination. The cover-up was not to obscure Oswald and his possible accomplices, but to separate the President (and his brother the Attorney General) from their clandestine operations to kill Cuban leader, Fidel Castro. Russo’s book isn’t perfect in that he falls into the trap of alleging that Cuba offered to allow Oswald to immigrate there as a reward for killing Kennedy. While he lays out his argument he has no actual evidence. However, the rest of the book is outstanding as it documents RFK’s suppression of evidence and shaping the investigation away from the CIA and Cuban nationals in the Gulf Coast area of the U.S.<br /> I have written before about my conversion to reality. I had gone to Dallas to visit my brother and we went to the Dealy Plaza Six Floor Museum in the old Texas Schoolbook Depository building. Looking out onto Elm Street from the window next to the “Sniper’s Nest” one thing became immediately clear to me – it was an easy shot. Roughly 300 feet from the window to the fatal head shot, and with that rifle’s scope Kennedy’s head would have looked like a pumpkin. Then as I was checking out the famous grassy knoll the sound of a helicopter filled the plaza (they were filming the first X-Files movie a few blocks away) and I was stunned by the amount of echo the buildings cause. So those witness reports about shots coming from other locations around the plaza all made sense. In recent years recreations of the assassination have proven the devastating effect of the Mannlicher –Carcano’s round, and I have learned that the rifle was once sought after by Olympic marksmen and prized by elephant hunters because of the penetration power of the bullet. The Carcano was hardly the cheap piece of crap that conspiracy kooks had led me to believe. They also wanted me to believe that Oswald couldn’t shoot, which his Marine Corps records show otherwise.<br /> Standing in front of the Texas Schoolbook Depository that day it became clear that I had been fooled and willingly so. This made me a giant douche-bag. Worse still was the fact that I had bought into other conspiracies too like UFOs and secret societies. After re-evaluating those I felt like a bigger chump. Why was I such a giant sucker? This was depressingly easy to answer: I like being smarter than everyone else and I like the idea that I am special. Being “In” on the biggest secret of the 20th Century made me feel special and I ate it all up. I was too clever for my own good. Today I have learned to wait until most of the facts are available before I express an opinion on an event.<br /> By September 11th, 2001 I was immune to conspiracy-itus. I had watched the conspiracy rise up around TWA 800, and it followed the usual patterns of the government conspiracy. Mysterious naval movements, witnesses who thought that they saw a missile fired, and later Pierre Salinger would come forward with exclusive footage from a radar screen. The thing is that the FBI brought the plane’s wreckage up from the bottom of the ocean and reconstructed it in a hanger. There was no evidence of a missile strike. So as I watched the events of 9/11 unfold I wondered how long it would be until a conspiracy would be woven from that day. It literally started the next day. I stopped by my friend’s place to discuss the attacks. He told me that he had received a fax listing all kinds of anomalies and that we were being fed a lie. He told me that the footage of the Palestinians dancing in the streets in celebration of the attacks was actually four years old, even though one of the cars in the footage is clearly a 2001 model.<br /> It wouldn’t be until after the invasion of Iraq that the “9/11 Truth” movement would pick up steam. The first book was written before the invasion by Thierry Meyssan called “The Horrifying Fraud”, and it claimed that the Pentagon was not hit by American Airlines 77 but by a missile. Meyssan also believes that the Beslan massacre was carried out by the CIA to gain control of the Caspian Sea. While he is an obvious nut-job, his book was a big hit in France (the French also think the Kennedy was killed by the CIA too) and gave rise the domestic 9/11 Truth gang. The premier zeitgeist of the “Truthers” is the film “Loose Change”. “Loose Change” was written and directed by Dylan Avery and produced with his buddies Korey Rowe, Jason Bermas, and Matthew Brown.<br /> “Loose Change” is a piece of work, and it contains all of the red flags that I mentioned. The first version insisted that there was some kind of a pod under the wing of the plane that hit the South Tower of the WTC, and then suggested that this was proof of the plane being under remote control. Although the first version of “Loose Change” had been released in 2005; at which time the American public was well aware of the Predator drone, for some reason they felt that a pod was necessary to enable remote controllability. The movie has had to be revised three times as the claims are soundly debunked. It is nowhere near the masterpiece that The Men Who Killed Kennedy is. Avery and his pals produced their movie right after they graduated high school, and I can see myself in their rabid zeal to expose the truth. I suppose that if the internet had been around in 1982 that I would have done something similar because I had bought into the whole thing. I genuinely feel sorry for them because they seem like nice guys but they are oblivious to the pain that they are causing the survivors of those attacks and the families of those who did not come home on 9/11/2001.<br /> There is a larger problem today as I see it. While the 9/11 Truthers are clearly nut, there is a secondary layer of kooks that operate freely within the media and politics. The myth of vaccines causing Autism is prevalent today in the US and Europe even though the original report has been redacted from the British medical journal because it was a fraud, and the doctor who wrote it has been stripped of his license to practice medicine. Yet even after all of this the subject is still treated with a serious tone by newscasters. The CIA is still given way too much credit for things it could never possible pull off.<br /> Today I am free from conspiracy-itus. I no longer see the Illuminate behind every tree. I review the issues of the day on their own merits and the facts that surround them. It is liberating because I don’t have to find a way to make them fit into some larger, twister conspiracy framework. I am amazed at the level of stupidity I was gleefully willing to indulge in. I consider myself lucky for finally seeing the light. It is easy to get sucked into conspiracies; I need to warn you about this fact. They are presented with enough facts to make them plausible. Before you know it you have bought into some seriously crazy stuff.<br /><br />Be careful.M Gregory Ferrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06921177390932932184noreply@blogger.com1