Druid Newscast

It was written in their genes from olden times of last month,

First would come the roar and the mighty sucking sounds,

The altars of their ancestors would be destroyed,

Ancient molted skeletons gone in an instant.

Next the babies wretched from their egg sacks,

Mothers skitter to save themselves,

It's

Arachnogedden

In other news, vials of pulverized spider webs, eggs and skeletons will be up for sale by the end of the week.

And this concludes your Druid Newscast where nothing is wasted.

Child of War

This is why I know most of them personally

Child of War

When you are a man upon the battle field,

You swear, you curse, you cry tears, you mourn,

And later you seek comfort in the arms of a lover.

When you are woman on the bloody field,

You cannot cry for it is of weakness born,

The black angel is your only allowed lover.

When you are a child upon the killing fields,

No tears, no fear, no sound for the torn,

You see, it might next be mother or father.....

Got the Modpodge Tacky Blues

Yikes.....I am not ModPodge happy.

The only ModPodge I had handy yesterday was outdoor. Normally I use a hard coat but hey, this would make my clipboard waterproof, right?????

Nope and in addition to that, my clipboard is sticky or tacky depending upon your definition of paper will stick to it and so will your hands.

Is it possible it takes more than the amount of time to dry than the label leads you to believe?

Was my bottle old and too thick?

Did I screw up?

Yup, I screwed up buying it because it turns out only the hard shell ModPodge actually dries without being infinitely tacky or sticky.

This from the Plaid (manufacturer) website:

“Hard Coat Mod Podge dries clear with a non-tacky surface. If using Gloss, Matte or Satin Mod Podge apply a clear acrylic sealer to the surface after it has cured 4 weeks. “

4 Fricken' WEEKS!!!!

That applies to outdoor Modpodge, too.

You really want to think twice about using this expensive stuff.

I placed a coat of paint over the areas without a design and that worked. Now I am going to spray the whole thing with a coat of quick drying clear something or the other and see if that fixes it. I do not have 4 weeks to wait to fix this.

As far as I can see, the only thing Modpodge is good for is sealing and gluing down prints that would run if you used lacquer directly on them and to build up decoupage instantly but then you have to seal your project and everything, including dust, it going to stick to it. Who has a zero humidity, dust free location to dry your project in for 4 weeks? That would not be me. By-the-way, the one coat of glittery Modpodge I put on a design on a box with 4 years ago is still tacky.

Now to the question of waterproof. Nope, it is water resistance and it is suggested you wipe your project immediately upon getting drops of water on it. So if you used this on outdoor flower pots, get your towel ready for a massive drying effort and if they are clay and unfinished inside the water will leech through and attack your Modpodge from the back of the project where you can't dry it and my guess is, the project will peal off.

Yup, you really want to rethink using this expensive stuff.....

Painting Crafts

Painting for Crafts

If you are new to crafts, this will be helpful. I am not endorsing any particular brand and there may be cheaper substitutes, so ask the stores.

Sooner or later you have a piece of wood that you want to paint. Sadly, a professional house painter will be correct when he tells you that preparation is 70% of the job. I say sadly because you want to paint that thing and get to the decorating and using and preparation is going to take a day or two. Yes, you read that right.

First off, some evil creature has glued the price tag to the piece. I am getting to the point that no matter how much I want something, if the price tag doesn't lift in the store, it isn't coming off when you get it home, but if you had to have it one person swears by mixing cooking oil and coarse salt and using a scrubbing sponge on it. Here is my warning, to paint something it must be oil free and you just put oil on it. Now you have to get the oil off and oil will penetrate fresh wood and then come back out at a later date. I think you see the problem. Thus, using acetone which is going to mess up your fingernails even without polish, it is very drying, will remove the label faster than alcohol but you are going to have to sand the piece to really get the label and glue off and that piece of sand paper will never be used again. Nothing gums up sandpaper like paper with glue.

Now that you have the label and glue removed, you are ready to paint. NOT. Now you check for uneven places that need sanding. You have to use your fingers because wood is sneaky. It puts the grain right where the bumps are so you can't see them. It is an expert at camouflage. It does not want to be painted. Do not think the paint is going to fill in imperfection. Paint is paint, not filler and you may wind up using wood filler if you bought a damaged piece and that really is something you don't want to do because I don't care what they say, it never works or blends in. Glue a jewel over it.

Now, you are ready to prime. Why prime? Your paint will glide over primer like it is supposed to but it will just unevenly sink into raw wood. You will have a smooth surface but....and no one ever tells you this....paint will sink into wood and if you make a mistake when painting and try to remove that mistake, it may be a quarter of an inch into the wood and that creates a hole. I had a friend strip a white piece down to black paint and was stuck there because the wood had not been primed. There were a dozen coats of white on it to cover the original black and he wanted to know what to do. I suggested he paint it black, blue or dark green or possibly red. White was not going to happen. Light colors are more likely to just streak than cover. What is a primer? I have no freakin' idea except I like to buy spray cans for crafts because a spray gets into every crevice and they work. What I buy is call Kilz but there is another brand because Lowes was out of spray Kilz and sold it to me. It worked just as well and was cheaper but it wasn't as white. I don't care. The trick on primer that I have learned the hard way is to follow the directions which you can't see without a magnifying glass for all the warnings which you can't see without a magnifying glass.

However, your piece must be clean and dry. That means it must have dried overnight after you loving washed every square inch of it. One cat hair and you have ruined your surface. One piece of dust and you get the same effect except that it is now speckled. Inspect before spraying. There is nothing like lovingly and artistically painting a piece only to watch pieces of your design lift up and fall off. This is why we prep the piece.

Shake the can well and this is work. This is not turning it a couple of times and spraying. This is doing the shake. I like some music with my shake. If the primer is not shaken enough, it will spritz and you get an nasty pattern. The objective is to get an even not running coat. Hold the can the proper distance or you get drips. Lightly spray at least twice. A heavy coat is not a good coat. Work on getting every tiny bit covered lightly. Then let dry and over night is a good idea. This is why your whole job may take 3 or four days to complete. The drier everything is before more paint is added, the better the end product. Now, before you pop that lid on the can of primer or paint, turn away to something you want to get paint on but not for use, turn the can upside down and spray until nothing but air comes out. That way your primer or paint won't dry and seal the tube and spray nozzle and you can use the can again. Don't try to put more primer on doing this. You will just make a mess. I am an expert at trying that and I get 100% messes.

Now you need a base paint. That is the color you are using for the background. You will need at least two coats of the color for the best painting surface as the paint is now evening out your surface. I always start with the back of the object because this shows me what the front is going to look like. My secret to getting an even coat is to brush a straight line of paint a half to whole inch from the bottom. Why? Because Murphy's Law of paint is no matter how much you put on the brush or how short the object you will always run out of paint before you reach the end of the stroke. So I just put extra paint there to pick up and get to the end with. It works for me.

Then, I always go around the edges with the left over paint on the brush that has slopped over not trying to cover them. By the end of the project, enough paint will have slopped over to nicely finish the edge without trying. Then between coats I do not stick my brush in a cup of water. I place it in a wet paper towel and that will save you a lot of paint and prevent for the most part a gummed up brush. This doesn't work for oil based paint, only for water based.

After the base coat is on and completely dry, again: over night, you are ready for your masterpiece. The really good news is if down the line you really hate your creation, you can strip it back to bare wood and start over because you primed the wood. Otherwise, like my friend, you will wind up with a piece of wood you love covered with paint you can't remove and truly hate.

Corporation vs Church, What's the Dif?

What is a Church and what is a corporation?

The difference is one word: Not.

A Church is a not for profit corporation. A company is a for profit corporation.

What is the difference in the structure of the two?

Nothing except the labels.

A for profit corporation may be owned by one person if it doesn't publicly trade stock. If it publicly trades its stock any block of 51% of the corporate stockholders may take it over. Notice the word: MAY. If the articles of incorporation are worded such that any one person has final say, the block of 51% can just sell their stock if they don't like what is going on. Most corporations are configured with a CEO and a board of directors. Churches are configured with a head minister and Deacons (name may vary) but it is the same configuration. The board of directors can fire the CEO and the Deacons can fire the founding minister.

The Original Church issues “charters” to branch off into many churches. The original Corporation can sell “franchises” to branch off into many stores. Charters and Franchises are the same thing. For example: Frank may own a Substation but you have never seen Frank's Substation because his little Franchise has the same name, the same menu, the same ingredients, the same uniforms and the same signs as every other one. It is the same with every Methodist Church. To claim to be Methodist or Baptist they have to be chartered or franchised from the Mother Church and follow the same doctrine and rules.

The Southern Baptist Mother church forces every little Southern Baptist Church to be individually incorporated. If the Mother Company is smart, every franchise will be incorporated to limit the liability of the Mother Company. That is also why the Southern Baptist baby churches have to singularly incorporated. It limits the liability of the Mother Church but, it does not give the baby churches one degree more freedom because they are still controlled by the “Charter” or franchise.

Equally limited in liability are some churches that are Foreign Corporations registered to do business in the USA. You may want to really think about that one.

There is no IRS designation for a church. All churches are non-profit corporations, not churches and they are lumped with other charitable organizations. Religion does not get a special category. However, there is one privilege granted Ministers that is not available to other charitable organizations. It is called vows of poverty.

Just about every religious organization forces its ministers to take a vow of poverty. What this means is you legally agree to have X dollars of person property and nothing more. Everything else belongs to the Church or Ministry. A Minister may get a tiny or a huge salary, but he/she can only have X amount of possessions and the number is so low, you couldn't own a lousy used car. I am not joking. The Church owns the house, car, dishes, suit, shoes ….everything the minister uses in the performance of his duties. The minister only owns X dollar amount of tangible...real....you can hold it in your hands property. In addition to that there is usually a clause in the charter that the Mother church can reassign him/her to any congregation anywhere and can also “fire” him/her for no reason. So, if the minister does not agree with the doctrine, methods or choir robes, that person can be transferred to Podunk, State or they can be dismissed. If this person refuses to mouth sermons given to them on any topic or refuses to agree with any given interpretation of the doctrine or bible of the church, they can be dismissed and make no mistake about this, they will be kicked to the curb in their tidy whites because that is all they own. There is no severance package. This person will leave with the money in their pocket and the clothes on their back and that is all. The Church owns legal title to everything else. To disagree is be homeless, penniless, without transportation and jobless. The majority of ministers are qualified to do nothing else and no other religion is going to take in a trouble maker. Even the college degrees and licenses that the minister may operate under to counsel and marry people are owned by the church and will be retained by the church when he is sitting on curb. I think you can see the degree of hold any church organization has over its religious “employees” and make no mistake, they are wholly owned employees. In exchange for this slavery, the minister doesn't have to pay or file income tax.

Two things have happened in the last 40 years. First of all, the deacons are defined mostly as the largest contributors to the Church and specified professions like accountants, lawyers, etc. The church must have so many of each on the board of directors or deacons. This makes it easy for any corporation to take over a church without anyone in the congregation having any idea a take over has happened. Do you even know who the deacons are in the mother church? In some charters they are even granted anonymity. You can't find out who they are. The second thing for small churches at the local level is leases. Instead of giving the church a car, the dealership gives them a month by month lease which they then deduct from their taxes. Tax wise this actually gives the dealership a bigger deduction because they no longer have to deal with depreciation and all that. They are not giving a car, but a lease. It is worth the same amount of money every month for eternity. The same thing applies to property, houses, TV stations, broadcasting equipment, etc. What this means is if the Church doesn't tow the Corporate line, the corporation can pull the plug on them in a NY minute.

By now you have figured out that at some point I was a book keeper. This is why I always follow the money and I can add, subtract, multiply and divide in my head. The operating budget for a TV station is in the millions per month and that is just licenses, electricity, equipment, etc. These huge televangelic churches would have to be getting a huge sum of money from every person watching them every month to just meet the bottom line expenses. So where is the money coming from? The answer is leases again. The church doesn't own this stuff, they are being given a month to month lease on it. At first that must seem like money from heaven but very quickly it becomes a deal with the devil. Either you tow the corporate line or that nice car, house, suit, dinner and all those adoring fans are going to disappear in one instant and there is nothing you CAN do because without all those computers, phones, TV stations you can't even run up a flag and scream for help. Do you really think the big communications companies that control the Media, haven't envisioned that and used it?

Any for profit company ought to be able to figure out a plan to take over a church and use it as an advertising outlet in less than 5 minutes flat. Churches are, pardon the pun, lambs for the slaughter. When I saw that churches were actually rewriting, not reinterpreting, not re-translating, but rewriting the Bible, aside from the WTF, I wondered how they were getting away with it. I mean, this is their Holy Book. You might make notes in the margin but you don't rewrite what Peter said to profit Paul. This is something a corporation would do with an employee handbook to make sure the employees were more under your thumb......yes....it's exactly what your mega corporations would do to better control their employees and what a wonderful caveat 'God said you should do this' is...God said you should vote this way..You could say it is the ultimate tool particularly when the corporation, I mean God, becomes your conscience.

What are my qualifications? Forty (40) years ago I met a retired lawyer for a megacorporation who offered anyone in the “new age” community help forming their own not for profit corporation or as it is known: Church. I was the only person who took him up on the offer probably because I had both the initiative and the education to feel confident enough to do it. During the next six months, using an old typewriter, I hand typed, with a side order of a gallon of white out, an entire book including the articles of incorporation, corporate structure and religious doctrine. The IRS has the best explanation and rituals ever written for any Druid. I was ready to throw the towel in weekly and every week he would say one thing. “Janice, you are going to need to understand this in the future.” And every week my answer was, “I have no intention of becoming a lawyer.” He would smile and repeat what he said and I would get back to work. I think he knew what was coming down the pike because of who he had worked for and because he was an excellent observer and probably because he had a habit of listening at doors. Now I understand why I had to learn what I learned and now YOU have to learn it.

Churches are no longer religious organizations. They are political propaganda machines used to turn out the vote. Who does that benefit? It doesn't benefit the church whose focus should be on religion not politics. If your candidate looses the election, your congregation might conclude God has abandoned you and convert to another religion that is winning elections. So, who does politics benefit? It now benefits corporations. So why would churches be spending their time doing things that benefit only megacorporations and not their religion unless they are controlled by megacorporations? And then we rewrote the bible to produce nice, compliant workers that never complain about their working conditions or pay because God tells them to grateful they have a job unlike those lazy heathens the Liberal liars make them buy I-Phones for with their taxes.......sounds like a business plan to me. Sounds like a really good business plan to me. Sound like a great business plan to me! God wants you to work 60 hours a week for poverty wages so you can get your reward in Heaven. Now, let us start your work day holding hands in prayer and be thankful you have a job.......Amen. Praise the Company! I mean Lord.

What is real immortality like?

The Problem with Religion and History

In writing my books I have a rather unique problem: immortality. All three to four books are the stories of the individual people who wind up in a magical town with a bunch of inhabitants with a very dark secret. They were around when the human race was created. Some of them were created before the humans. Some of them were around when the creators arrived.

It is the creators that are the problem to write. Vampires are always the immortal device but at some point they were human and knew mortality. What would a truly from birth immortal race be like? Would time actually have any meaning if you never aged and died? What if you created a disposable race as workers and nothing more? Would they even have the meaning we attach to pets? Would they be nothing more than a corn crop? If time ceased to have meaning, would travel really have any import? Would it matter if you commuted 5 minutes or 10 years?

I am working on wrapping my head around this and as I do I start to see the problem with history. One thing we are finding out is we might as well scrap ancient history. The time line is completely wrong and if the time line is wrong, then the major three religions are wrong. What if their holy book is a patchwork quilt taken from a bunch of times and civilizations that existed at least 15,000 years before the book was assembled? What if the gods are immortals that truly did create man as nothing more than disposable slave labor and then failed to clean up their little experiment with a series of global catastrophes? What happens if they return to find their mining planet has fleas and those fleas are us? Those that worship them are as disposable as those who don't if they have a better model in the test tube. To them it would be yesterday. To us it is a time so far shrouded in memory we have forgotten they are the enemy. What if a couple of their kids remained behind to keep the mines in tact and in the process got a little bored and started playing games using the creatures they made as pawns?

I say mines because I awoke with a vision of the platform at Giza, which are so huge no human can climb them, were stacked with huge block of gold and I mean blocks the size of the pyramid stones. The Annunaki had backpack that allowed them to float up to the platforms but the humans were kept on the ground to make certain they didn't steal any gold. Everything was covered in gold dust from the mining and refining. Even the people were covered in fine powder of gold dust and had to keep wiping their eyes to see. The Annunaki wore goggles. Huge ships would hover and load the gold into them and take off constantly, day and night, as others brought the gold bricks and stacked them on the platform. They ran over humans like they were insects. The humans collected as much dust as they could to be formed into bricks. They didn't want a speck wasted. This grinding work never ended. There were no breaks, nothing. You worked until you died and then they swept the bodies out of the way. It was disgusting.

I am certain that in some realities I see, the split in the dimensional time line was when the Annunaki did not leave this planet. The earth is torn and very rough everywhere. It is perpetual dusk in these worlds. The sun never shines brightly and clouds cover the planet 24/7. Rivers and marshes are everywhere. There are only small patches of truly dry land. There are also very few people, little technology and most every one bikes or walks. There is no oil in that world. Then I look at Chemtrails and don't ask what they are spraying but why are they spraying. It doesn't make sense. No experiment lasts that long, unless you are immortal.

Psychic and Pagans: Don't be Conned

Dear Psychic Friends and Pagans,

Please Read This:

I was contacted by a friend who copied and pasted a “HELP!” request from another “Wiccan”. The first red flag on this request was that a National and very liberal about what gets posted page had refused her request to post her plea for help. I can't imagine what tipped them off.

The fact that this plea of persecution arrived for this very ill person just days into one of our elders losing her fight with illness was suspect and I am sure the karma is going to crash on this person.

The hallmark of a con is that it is vague enough to allow you to draw conclusions without directly accusing or stating the party making them a target. In this case, the target was an institution I know well as I have been in their facilities several times. Any complaint immediately was addressed by the management and rectified when I made it.

There was no way to help this person as they were carefully allowing you to conclude where they were without saying where they were. The object here is to engage you in further communications so they can determine whether you have what they want. This is separating the easily duped from the smart ones who know a con when they see one. This is the one free question psychics trying to determine how desperate you are and then the next move is sympathy and then into your wallet.

A quick check of local pagan organizations revealed no one know this person. She was picking targets out of a national group via the target's general location.

Now you might say, aren't you a little hard on someone who might need help?

Really? I checked this person out and discovered except for a private Facebook page, she doesn't exist and I even recognize the location of the photo on her page as being a senior citizen condo and she looks about 30! Yup, I smell something really fishy.

It gets better.

Today I get a friend request from this person.

Okay, now let's do the logic thing. Can you view who viewed your page? I bet 90% of you will say no. Now here we have someone being persecuted, in a facility trying to regain their health who apparently has lot's of access to a computer and external programs to track visitors to their page and even manages to access the locations of members of groups with thousands of members......how rotten is that barrel of fish right now???

So, before you fall for the help me message from anyone, start by asking how they got your number, Email or Facebook account information? That should immediately alert you to a scam. Then just google the name. Everyone leaves a foot print and if this person has none, red lights should start flashing. Then always stop and think how this person is getting information if you couldn't do it. If that starts pointing to someone who is computer savy, you probably have an experienced scam artist.

I don't care what the request is or how benign, you don't want to engage. They want to get access to your accounts and the only way they can go that is if you open an electronic door for them. The next thing you will know is your Facebook account is hacked and from there, your email account to your computer to your bank accounts...to your phone.

If you are planning on making friends on these social sites and giving out your phone number, for the love of the Goddess, buy a cheap limited number refillable minutes phone that is untraceable. Just think about how much information is on your phone that is open to hackers that know how to get into it! Do you pay bills on it? Is your paypal account linked to it? How many in your address book? Oh, everyone on Facebook is your answer there.....

Be Wary. Be Safe.

As I have said before, there are real people in real jobs who take care of these things. It is their profession. Let them do their jobs and you stay safe.

This person carefully did not give enough information for any of us to call anyone to help her. There was a reason for that. It is a con.

When I worked in psychiatry I guarantee you anyone in that position is calling EVERYONE for help that they think they know. They are NOT calling STRANGERS. That is just human nature.

A Message on a Bottle

At first I thought it was just me. As a hypnotherapist, I am sensitive to subliminal messages and they tend to pop out at me. Subliminal messages are, after all, my stock and trade. Learning to construct a suggestion so it bypasses the conscious and enters the subconscious like a gooey dessert that will stick to your mind is not easy, but a lot of people make their living doing just that and some of those people are in advertising.

When I worked in advertising the goal was to make the product attractive to the consumer. That evolved to the “must have” doctrine and finally to outright lying about the product. The product became to hook, all we needed to do was convince you to try it or that everyone else was going to have one. That was when it got hard to look in the mirror every morning. I was selling junk drugs as gold and no one needed it.

It seems to have taken a second evolution now that you are hooked on needing it. I mean what kind of a person doesn't trek down to the card store, or at least the rack in the grocery, and pick out a nice paper card to hand the people we interact with and care about? Someone who doesn't care, that's who! Have you ever read the message carefully. In the January issue of Woman's Day, there are some little blurbs about live changing moments. One woman is buying one of those cards for her daughter when she rereads the message in the card. “Reach for the Stars.” Well, that's a good idea for your daughter. “Be all you can be,” sort of sounds like the recruitment for the Marines. “Keep on trying.” This is going downhill. “And one day you'll achieve success.” Whaaaatttt??? Oh, and by-the-way, “Happy Birthday!” That is what we used to call a backhanded compliment. It sounds good but it is a put down. That card didn't make it out of the store and I say good for her. She is on the track to finding all the subtle messages women meet with every day.

Oh, we are all familiar with the screaming “DIET!”, you must be a size 0 and if you don't look like this you aren't desirable. The not at all subtle if you aren't under 40, you really should slit your wrists because if you aren't juggling a poorly paid job so you can buy, buy, buy for your children you are useless slime taking up space younger people should have.

But there are even more subtle ones I noticed as I was looking at the new shades of makeup. It seems we have 2 color combinations now, down from the 4 of when I modeled: cool and warm. That's wrong but I'll explain later. Cool is for fair skinned to light medium skinned women and the colors are named Rapture and a whole host of Biblical references. Warm is for dark medium to dark skinned women and has such names as Lust, Hot and a host of sinful references. Are you getting the message yet?

First let me break down something in color for you. There is the color and then there is the base of the color. Cool colors can have a cool or a warm base just as “warm” colors can have a cool or warm base. There are really 4 basic skin colors and a lot more variations. Cool bases are blues, lavenders and purples. Warm bases are peach, orange and yellow. From there you overlay the primary colors and create the shades and blends.

But now, you have fair skinned 'going to Heaven', chaste women and their darker, I mean warmer because we can't say what is well implied: darker, counterparts that are hot, sexy sinners headed straight to Hell. Oh yes, some of the colors are direct references to Hell in warm category like Sinful Coral. What is sinful about coral?

Is this a coincidence? Oh yes, just like the message in the card for little girls is a coincidence. Mothers, as your day approaches be very, very careful of the double meaning in the gifts, cards and even the nail polish you buy.