Here's another strange book I purchased but have not yet read. The real author is Joseph K. Heydon, using the pen-name of Hal Trevarthen. Time has swallowed up all details related to Heydon and his book, leaving us only with the text itself.
Here's the description from the amazingly ugly dustjacket.
Here's the title page, followed by a sample of the actual bafflegab inside.
IF YOU CAN SAY YES TO JUST ONE THEN YOUR PLACE IS HAUNTED!
1. Flies appear from nowhere when doors and windows are closed, especially in the winter when they are not supposed to be there. 2. Hearing voices, someone calling your name. Children complain of hearing a man's, woman's or children's voices. 3. You can see something pass you at the corner of your eye. 4. A smell of roses, perfume, or any smell that doesn't belong in your home. 5. Apports or Exports - objects appearing or your belongings disappear. 6. Cold spots or winds in certain areas of the haunted places 7. Things fall when you leave a room, especially when you go to bed. 8. Television, radio, coffeemakers, lights turn on by themsleves and lights flicker making you think that you need to replace light bulps 9. You can feel someone watching you or feel someone follow you around the house. 10. Static on the phone especially when you talk about the spirits that are haunting your home, hotel or haunted place. 11. The room is rearranged. 12. Toliets flush by themselves. 13. The water is running when you arrive home and you know that you made sure it was off when you left the house. 14. Objects drift in the air by themselves. 15. You receive visions of what might have happened on the property. 16. You receive visions of people that have died. 17. You receive visions of future events. 18. Family members get hot and cold flashes, have pain, headaches, or bruises on their body. 19. Family members are in many accidents. 20. Family members change their attitude. (Don't blame them for this.) 21. Fighting and divorce. 22. You receive a very uncomfortable feeling when you start reading the King James Bible out loud and putting olive oil around the house. 23. Depression, cancer or death in the family where the haunting is taking place or has taken place with past residents. 24. When pictures are taken you can see orbs or streams of light. 25. Fog is in only one of the rooms. 26. You receive information in your head about something when nobody is there. You might think that you thought of the idea. You didn't. It's the demons. 27. You hear scratching noises. (If this happens, IMMEDIATELY say, "I bind you and command you to leave in the Name of Jesus Christ!")
Haunting doesn't seem like the most logical explanation for many of these phenomena. For instance, if you notice fog in one of your rooms, could it be that you're standing in the bathroom and someone's taking a shower? And if you get divorced it means your house is haunted? Give me a break. However, if you notice objects drifting in the air by themselves, I'd say, yeah, your house might be haunted.
I've always thought it kind of disturbing when people dress up toddlers in makeup or faux earrings. I get the same creepy vibe from these Baby High Heels now being marketed by a company called Heelarious. The heels are made of foam, so there's no risk of them impaling the kid. Still, they don't exactly look comfortable.
This must appeal to the same set of people who enter their six-year-old daughters in child beauty pageants. Yahoo! News has a video of a kid wearing these things. What about Baby Foot Binding next?
Heroic? How about "nuts"?
What were you doing on December 12, 2003? Quebec border services officer Yves Julien was working an overtime 11-hour shift, plus 3 extra hours, for which he received, respectively, time-and-a-half and double-time. During the three-hour stint, he spent $9 on a meal, and he put in for reimbursement. Gov't said no, no meal money on the job, and as to the fact that it's an extra shift, Julien was already getting generous pay. Following almost five years of meetings, paperwork, lawyers, rulings and counter-rulings, Julien finally won. Here's your damn $9. The Globe & Mail Comments 'yves_julien'
"Giant penis man needs re-chalking"
Well, that should be self-explanatory, so we'll move on to the next story.
. . .
OK, OK. It's a huge, centuries-old carved-green-growth plot in Dorset (England), on a hillside and featuring a very large man with a very large endowment (the "Cerne Abbas giant"), and the summer rains have caused vegetation to grow over some of the chalk lines so that ya can't make out everything from a distance (which is the whole point). So, this weekend and next, volunteers will clear away the brush and re-chalk the carving. Metro.co.uk//Cerne Abbas giant Comments 'giant_penisman'
Your Daily Jury Duty [no fair examining the evidence; verdict must be based on mugshot only]
Marc Allen Sauter, 26, seen here from the front and side, might have been the precipitator of a street brawl (along with his dad, Kevin Allen Sauter) that started when a neighbor dog allegedly menaced a kid. Billings Gazette Comments 'marc_sauter'
More Things to Worry About on Thursday
A female soldier is more likely to be raped by a fellow soldier than killed in combat, said a House subcommittee chair, and a retired colonel would like to see warnings to that effect on recruiting office doors . . . . . The federal appeals court has granted Roy Pearson his one free appeal (of the dismissal of his famous $54m dry-cleaned-pants lawsuit) . . . . . The F State is finally, finally, cracking down on elderly drivers by, um, allowing 80-and-older drivers to renew their licenses for just six years instead of eight! . . . . . "A culture of ethical failure" at the U.S. Dept. of the Interior is all over the news this morning, featuring direct kickbacks, contracts by favoritism, cocaine sales in one office, and several episodes of contractor-contractee sex (which is always bad, or, as the inspector general put it, "Sexual relationships with prohibited sources cannot by definition be arms-length [relationships]" . . . . . The people in rural Pennsylvania around the Flight 93 crash site are trying, with discretion and dignity this September 11th, to set up a sorta "disaster memorial loop" tourist strip, so that visitors can knock off the crash site, the nearby 2002 mine rescue site, and the nearby 1889 Johnstown flood site, all in one holiday trip! Today's Newsrangers: Karl Olson, Perry Levin, Larry Ellis Reed, Candy Clouston, Bob Pert Comments 'worry_080911'
When you want to move your body, your brain sends out an electric signal that is received by your muscles, which then contract, thus producing motion. This electric signal travels to the muscles via the body's nerves, generating a slight voltage of electricity on the surface of the skin. This is known as a bioelectric signal, and Robot Suit HAL detects them using the sensors placed around the wearer's body. Depending on the voltage running the surface of the skin, the computer inside Robot Suit HAL analyzes the signal and sets the appropriate motors in motion.
This unique method of operation means that a person can control Robot Suit HAL by his or her own will, even if he or she is unable to actually move. And as the suit detects the signal sent from the brain even before it gets to the muscle, it can move an instant before the muscle does.
a) They chose to name it Robot Suit HAL (as in HAL, from 2001: A Space Odyssey).
b) They chose to name their company Cyberdyne, Inc. (as in Cyberdyne from the Terminator movies.)
So I'm going to need a little more evidence before I'm convinced this isn't a joke.
My high-school pal Sherry Mowbray, who grew up to be a top-flight biologist, points me with glee to this video illustrating how powerful is the slime secreted by the awesome hagfish.
A few years ago, visiting the island of Martha's Vineyard off the Massachusetts coast, I learned of Nancy Luce (1814-1890). An eccentric loner artist who self-published her own poetry--mainly devoted to her beloved pet chickens--and buried the birds with fully engraved headstones, she is the subject of a biography still available on the island at various gift shops: Consider Poor I by Walter Magnes Teller. You can read what The New York Times had to say about the book here. You might even be so moved as to purchase a lovely woodcut print of Luce here.
Perhaps we should commemorate Luce with a sample of her poetry:
POOR LITTLE HEARTS
Poor little Ada Queetie has departed this life,
Never to be here no more,
No more to love, no more to speak,
No more to be my friend.
O how I long to see her with me alive and well,
Her heart and mine was united,
Love and feelings deeply rooted for each other,
She and I could never part,
I am left broken hearted....
The F State's rappin' granny
Angela Pusateri, 79, of the east coast's Hallandale Beach, has a CD out (Who's Your Granny?) and makes a few personal appearances in the area (wearing hockey jersey, bling, sunglasses, and baseball cap): I can bring the noise better than P-Diddy/I am older and wiser, I ain't a disguiser/I am condo commando in a high-riser, Who's your granny? Or, how about, Move over, Trick-Daddy, 'cause this is my town/I gotta shuffleboard posse and we're known to get down "Sometimes it's embarrassing," said granddaughter Jenna, 13, in New York, "but she really is a cool grandmother." South Florida Sun-Sentinel[Link Corrected] Comments 'rappin_granny'
How three naive Chinese men brought uranium into the country
The scrap merchants were on a trip to Kyrgyzstan and found this neat, 600-lb. rock with a little glitter in it, suggesting gold in there somewhere, and brought it home to Xinjiang, in the boonies. They're noticing that, when the lights are off at night, the rock . . well . . stays on. So one guy chipped a piece off and took it all the way to Beijing for an assessment, and, yeah, it's "depleted uranium." Initial reaction: Huh? WTF? Bonus: It's illegal, and you're under arrest for smuggling it in, but finally the prosecutor dropped the charge. "To date, the three [men] had shown no 'physical abnormalities'." The Times (London) Comments 'uranium_smugglers'
People who really, really want gov't benefits
"Swedish prostitutes want to pay taxes," read the headline on Stockholm's TheLocal.se, because of course the key to the kingdom of generous pensions, sick leave, etc., is filing a tax return. (On the other hand, umm, they're gonna have to give receipts for services, and charge value-added tax.) In North Port, Fla., which is actually nowhere near the north of Florida but does have a port), John Lynn, 52, shot himself in the chest just so he could claim disability benefits (telling cops he had been shot in a robbery). TheLocal.se//Tampa Tribune(with mug shot; might be innocent!) Comments 'government_benefits'
Various gov't crises for Wednesday
In Thailand, the prime minister got kicked out because, let's see, he had sex with an intern in his office (no), or maybe, he orchestrated a crime cover-up from his office (no)? Actually, he';s out because he kept appearing on his TV cooking show even after taking office, which, according to the constitution, is a disqualifying conflict of interest, whether or not he was merely reimbursed expenses for his appearances. In Iran, Interior Minister Ali Kordan is being investigated for résumé fraud, after Oxford Univ. said they never heard of him and his supposed degree. Associated Press via Los Angeles Times//Washington Post Comments 'cooking_resume'
Update: Charles Hood's execution postponed, after his trial judge and his prosecutor finally admit they had a secret affair
The now-retired judge still denied that she was actually hooking up during the Hood trial, though. Furthermore, Texas's highest court for criminal cases, which until now almost couldn't dismiss Hood's challenges fast enough, coincidentally . . yeah, that's it, coincidentally yesterday managed to locate an independent reason to postpone the execution, concluding that, let's see, maybe the jury instructions might have been flawed. New York Times Comments 'hood_update'
Your Daily Jury Duty [no fair examining the evidence; verdict must be based on mugshot only]
Christine Semeraro, 37, Bossier City, La., might have been illegally topless in public on the Red River that afternoon (and possibly she's someone who would permit kids to have sex at her house). Hard to tell. Presumption of innocence.. KTBS-TV (Shreveport) Comments 'christine_semeraro'
More Things to Worry About on Wednesday Jews Needed in Alabama: They're down to about 50 Jewish families in Dothan, Ala., so the Blumberg Family Relocation Fund offers forgivable loans (up to $50k) to Jews who'll move there and get active in the temple . . . . . A baggage-handling screwup at American Airlines (and by "baggage" I mean Miguel Olaya's late wife's corpse) caused by a clerk's mistyping the destination (GUA for GYE) (Bonus: New York Daily News twice misspelled the airline) . . . . . Tropical Storm Fay's aftermath along the F State's central Atlantic coast: tree frogs in your toilet! . . . . . In Britain, a Botox substitute is available for the injection-squeamish: a cream made with Malaysian viper venom, to puff out your skin sorta like you've just been bitten . . . . . Britain's Ministry of Defense disclosed that since 2004, it has lost (or had stolen) 120 working portable-memory devices.Today's Newsrangers: Joe Littrell, Candy Clouston, Sandy Pearlman, Paul Blumstein Comments 'worry_080910'
Paul Di Filippo
Paul has been paid to put weird ideas into fictional form for over thirty years, in his career as a noted science fiction writer. He has recently begun blogging on many curious topics with three fellow writers at The Inferior 4+1.
Chuck Shepherd
Chuck is the purveyor of News of the Weird, the syndicated column which for decades has set the gold-standard for reporting on oddities and the bizarre.
Our banner was drawn by the legendary underground cartoonist Rick Altergott.
Posted By: Paul | Date: Thu Sep 11, 2008 |
Comments (11) 
Category: