Whats the harm?

People who are skeptical about stuff like ghosts and talking to the dead always hear "oh who cares. What is the harm if someone wants to believe that stuff."

So here is a website (www.whatstheharm.net) you can go to and see for your self. This guy has hunted down stories about people who have been harmed due to their belief in something. From people who died from their passionate belief in feng shui to people who have been injured due to their blind belief in their GPS. You can spend hours here. There are hundreds of stories about all kinds of stuff. These are not stories about people who were stupid. Just people who really believed in ghosts or some fad cure for something and how it caused some real harm.

Devin

A 1968 Electric Guitar Transformed

You may have gathered from recent postings that the latest Perez-Rankin serial obsession is the guitar. Devin is something of a pack rat and there are various treasures around the house from his life including some clothes he wore as a teenager, his original Fedmart badge and various mementos from his career as a public servant. So luckily Devin still has the electric guitar he got for Christmas when he was 12. He let Sierra call it hers now, but it was not very cool according to her since it was a light baby blue and sort of scuffed up.

Since Devin is such a patient and encouraging man, he set out to help Sierra make the guitar cool. Over the last 2 or three weeks they have been working on it requiring several trips to the hardware store and lots of work out on the hot back patio and my tolerance of a mess out there while they worked on it.

Step 1: Remove the stuff that makes it a guitar, like the strings, neck, other stuff

Step 2: Strip the old electric blue paint requiring gloves as you see

Step 3: Sand it down

Step 4: Apply a primer and Spray Paint it black ( One of Sierra's fav colors or colours for y'all in the UK). Luckily, Sierra's old play house was the perfect spot to hang it up to apply paint and not get spray paint all over everything we care about. (although I did notice some black spray paint on the pool deck the other day.... sigh)

Step 6: Make the sliver face plate all shiny while the black paint dries

Step 7: Stencil a music note on the front and her nickname on the back in RED ( her other fav color) SAPY ( Sierra Ashley Perez +Y)

Step 8: Mom complains about the mess on the porch and asks when this project is going to be done. Devin gets busy finishing up which involves a clear coat and then putting it all back together. Soldering was involved I think, some failure, some successes and Viola'! Sierra is all ready to rock the house!

De-Baptism

I was never baptised. At least, not that I remember. If I had been, this ceremony might have been fun. Recently at an Atheist " coming out party", they held a de-baptism for all those irreligious converts out there.

The ceremony begins with the following words:

"Do you agree that the magical potency of today’s ceremony is exactly equal to the magical efficacy of ceremonial baptism with dihydrogen monoxide, and do you agree that the power of all magical ceremonies is nonexistent?”

Then, instead of the Baptismal pool, sprinkle or jacuzzi. We have " The Hair Dryer of Reason"

Followed by shouts of AMEN and appropriate levels of pernicious emotionalism.

I am inspired and amused.

New Guitar

I can just barely play a guitar. I mean, I know a hand full of cords and stuff. I don’t really even know any songs. But I have these 2 guitars. One is an old electric guitar that I got for Christmas when I was 12. The other is an acoustic guitar that I bought in the 80’s.

Well, Shannon started taking guitar lessons and has taken over my acoustic. And Sierra wanted my electric. Sierra and I have been re-finishing the electric for the past few weeks so that it looks cool enough for her. Shannon has been taking photos, so that will all be documented here someday when that project is done.

But anyway, listening to Shannon and Sierra practicing has inspired me to work on my playing, But I didn’t have a guitar. They had all been taken over.

I have a safe full of guns that I have not shot in a long time and I started checking out some pawn shops, in the hopes of finding something that I liked that the owner would be willing to trade a gun for. So for the last few weeks I have been checking out pawn shops on my lunch break. But nothing there really caught my eye.

Wednesday I went to Guitar Center, a place that sells new guitars and just kind of looked around. Then I spotted a black Ovation sitting near the clearance area. I've always liked the way Ovation guitars look, but I never thought I would get one because they tend to be rather expensive. The tag claimed a retail price of $1100 and it was marked down to $449. Sitting just a few feet away was an identical guitar marked $789. Hummm.

So I called a sales guy over and he checks it out. He claims that they both are really $449, but one was just not marked down yet. I played it a while and ended up getting it. The sales guy made it out to be the deal of a life time. But that is his job.

I went on the Ovation Fan Club site and posted my story and it seems like I did get a good deal on it. It is USA made and only the upper few tiers of them are made here. The lower range ones are all made over seas now.

So here it is, my new guitar. I really like the way it looks and sounds. Maybe someday I will be able to play well enough to do it justice.

Watch Out For The Invasion! (Warning: Dr Who reference quickly ensues)

The company I work for who shall remain nameless (less some inadvertent googling gets me into trouble) has a very senior executive with quite the sense of humor. Every week, a new cartoon appears on his office door. They are usually political, but you can’t really tell what his politics are because he seems to be an equal opportunity “pundit”. It’s amazing because a lot of the cartoons really push the envelope of corporate correctness. The H.R department is only steps away which make one wonder.

This week, I was surprised to see this little gem. I can just hear John Stuart say “ Muaaaahhhhh, where IS my man sized safe?” But then I thought to myself.. perhaps there is some truth here?

Is Dick Cheney really human… or… a Slitheen from the planet Raxacoricofallapatorian.

OK, everyone say that with me:

Raxa-corico-fallapapa-torian

Nice try......

A Scary Cabin in the Woods?

Last week I took Sierra and two of her friends, Jena and Zayda, to the cool pines of Flagstaff. As you may have read in a previous post, Sierra was anxious to experience that scary cabin/slasher movie feeling. The cabin had a loft which served as the horror movie den (with the help of my lap top) and after the first night of scary movies, they were all ready to move downstairs to sleep next to mom. They seemed to have a great time scaring themselves silly... to a point.

Although for some people, it may not sound fun to hang out with three pre-teen girls, it was mostly enjoyable. To be sure, there was lots of screaming, laughing incessant giggling and dancing around punctuated by " We're hungry!!!!". However, I let go of my adult self occasionally to be goofy with them and when I didn't want to do that, I discovered the magic of ear plugs. So, I spent quite a bit of quiet time reading and doing easy cross word puzzles (because I'm not that smart). The earplugs worked so well that Sierra scared me a few times because I didn't hear her come into the bedroom. Perhaps it was the fascinating book I was reading about Jack the Ripper called " Portrait of a Killer; Jack the Ripper,Case Closed" . I also found time to listen to some of my favorite podcasts such as Skeptics Guide to the Universe and This Week in Science.

I took our new telescope up there, but only managed to use it once because it was so cloudy. I found Jupiter on my own without Devin's help! Yeah me! The girls were more interested in taking pictures of each other than looking at the stars.

The girls enjoyed wandering around the site, taking pictures of interesting things ( especially pictures of themselves)

Zayda, the most adventurous of the three, was the only one up for an extended hike of the area with me. Although I managed to let us get "lost" We were in the city of Flagstaff so we really weren't all that lost. I just headed for a road and found someone to ask where we were. It was a longer walk than we anticipated but it can be fun to be lost as long as you are sure you can be found again. For the record, it's always better to stick to trails rather than go wandering off in the forest. This picture shows my relief when we finally found our way back home.

We had a heavy thunderstorm almost every afternoon. Its fun to get wet in a climate where that isn't possible very often.

One day, we packed a lunch and went to Lake Mary. The girls swam for a little while, but it wasn't long before a HUGE thunder and lighting storm chased us away. The road visibility was so bad, we had to pull over and wait for things to calm down. Luckily this little lake is only about 10 minutes from the resort.

Word of the Day

Pareidolia

When I was a little girl in Trail British Columbia, my wood paneled bedroom wall had several shapes that looked like faces to me. I wonder if I had been raised Catholic would I have seen Jesus? Who hasn't looked up at the sky and noticed familiar shapes in the clouds? I love this Venn diagram by artist Jessica Hagy. I've been hearing about Pareidolia for the last year and I've finally been able to remember the word. I've even spelled it correctly ( after several attempts and double checking) Yeah for me.