Hypnotism crime

Apparently a common method used in crime in the second of my worlds is hypnotism. You know, the criminal hypnotises the victim so that they do not see the crime or cannot resist. In our town a guy was arrested by the police last year for stealing motorcycles. When he was released he walked through the police station in full view of a dozen police sitting at desks. He swiped one of the police helmets, in full view of them all, and none of them could lift a finger to stop him.

Recently a TV news station showed footage from a security camera at a convenience store where such a crime occurred. A group of 6 men and women came into the store and pretended to shop but in various ways they also tried to distract the cashier, asking where the bathroom was, asking for change, etc. While the cashier has the cash drawer open and her hands counting change right over it, you can see one of the guys reach over and take a large wad of bills right from under her nose, apparently without her seeing it.

Last year a city newspaper helpfully gave some police tips on how to protect yourself from hypnotism crime. Some of their suggestions included things such as:

- Believe fully that evil hypnotism cannot happen to people who reject it,
because all hypnotism is self-hypnotism where our fear is used by the
hypnotist.
- Beware of people who come up and befriend you because all hypnotism is a communication technique.
- Keep your thinking busy and don’t let your mind be empty when you are alone in a public place because when your mind is empty you are very susceptible to suggestion.
- Be careful when you feel sleepy, nauseated, dizzy, or have tightness in your chest especially when it comes suddenly for no reason because there may be someone using a telepathic forcing on you. Immediately decide to throw off that negative energy to the ground and pray according to the religion you believe.
- If you are suggestible, don’t go out alone or else get over your suggestibility.

I'll try to remember those suggestions the next time I'm out and about! :-)

My Dengue Journey

Everybody’s writing their Journey stories so here’s mine. This is the fourth time I’ve had dengue fever. According to what’s out there, there are 4 types of dengue. So I have apparently hit them all. Am I a world record or what? So unless they discover a fifth type that should mean that I am done with it and need never fear another mosquito!

Nobody writes much about what the dengue journey is like. You read about the symptoms of high fever, severe headache and backache but not much about the real, you know, experiential part of it all. Today is Day 6 of Round 4.

Headache. Oh yeah. All four times I had a headache. They say it’s often pain at the back of your eyes. Well this time it was the bones above my eyes, the bones below my eyes, the bones of my temples, the bones in front of my ears and my teeth. They hurt so bad I didn’t even notice the back of my eyes! Move your head and unnghhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Lower backache? Oh yeah. Not as bad as the time I had it in South America when I had to grit my teeth and stop breathing just turn to the other side. This time I could still breathe when turning but it kept me rolling back and forth ever searching for some comfortable position.

Fever? Of course, that’s why it’s called dengue fever. Highest recorded this time was only 39.8 and that’s cuz a friend persuaded me to take paracetamol whenever it got above 39 (almost 103F). The record was the second time when it hit 41 (105+F).

Stomach pain? It wasn’t so noticeable earlier, it was a vague cycling from extremely hungry to nauseous to slightly painful and back around again. Now that the fever has broken those sensations have intensified. I don’t usually vomit as long as I don’t drink too much at a time. And nothing sounds good so no danger of eating too much. Besides, you get a weird taste in your mouth and if you do eat anything with chemicals in it the flavor of the chemicals is super enhanced.

Rash? Today I do have a rash but frankly I couldn’t really have seen whether I had a faint rash before that or not because when my fever gets that high my vision gets dim. Yeah, literally like somebody dimmed all the lights, including the sun, moon and stars.

What I don’t see mentioned in the medical literature is the weird mental stuff. It’s kind of funny but when you’re in the midst of it, it is not boring. Most of the time you’re lucky and just sleep or lose consciousness but sometimes you see weird things. Like, the time when my fever was 41 (105+F) I would see lots of ugly stuff, like heaps of squirming guts, mounds of worms, disgusting nasty things. If I opened my eyes and looked at something real it helped. But in the dark of a moonless night in a remote village you don’t see anything at all even if you do open your eyes. The only thing that helped was praying and forcing yourself to think about beautiful things like flowers, butterflies, clouds, etc. This time there was none of that but my mind was like incessantly nattering away at nothing, like it was busy-busy working on some urgent problem until I finally had to forceably shut it off and think consciously about something else. Later I was reading a weird email so long I couldn’t scroll long enough to ever get to the bottom and I kept finding it embedded and looped upon itself. The person it was from would never in a million years have been so verbose about anything! Of course in reality there was no such email but hey, I was READING it! I could give you a synopsis of it! That’s the weird kind of mental stuff you don’t hear much about.

The next step is wait and see if you get any of the the hemorrhagic stuff with it. So far on this journey I have been blessed and have not had any bleeding that I ever noticed, no gum bleeding or nosebleed or even noticeable rash. May God grant that this (hopefully) last stage of this journey also be so
blessed.

Do not let your cat sleep on your back

It all started one night when I was peacefully minding my business, snoozing on my stomach. For some reason the cat decided to take a nap on my back. Maybe he was lonely or maybe he felt cold, I don’t know. But since he’s hot and heavy I didn’t really want him there so I wiggled a little to get him off. Instead of getting off he dug his claws in. I know at least one claw went all the way thru my t-shirt!

Now a few weeks later, I have a huge, nasty, painful boil on my back – just below the shoulder blade where it is difficult to reach and impossible to see. They say heat is good for bringing a boil to a head. So for five long days I put hot water in a plastic bag, and tied it shut. Then I tied the bag into a sarong and hung it over one shoulder and tied it like a sash so that the bag would be on top of the boil. But after 5 long days it still hadn’t come to a head and I couldn’t lay on my back at all cuz of pain and swelling. So a couple days ago I finally went to a doc. She took one look and ordered a huge dose of antibiotic. Said she since there wasn’t yet(!) a head she didn’t want to cut until I’d been on an antibiotic for three days.

So here I am 2 days and several doses later. The thing has started to drain a little but is still very painful and still huge and I still can’t lay on my back. I don’t think it is an ordinary staph infection cuz the drainage is gaggingly foul smelling! I guess I'll have to go back tomorrow and see if the doc can drain it all at once.

And so my friends, that is why you should never ever let your cat sleep on your back!

PS It was cultured and turned out to be something the doc had never seen - Morganella morganii. But very consistant with something a cat might drag in  - ughhh!!!

"Suicide" drugs

What is with all these suicidal drugs???!!

I am amazed at the countless TV commercials for various prescription drugs. The commercials spend maybe 5 seconds telling what the drug is for and then 25 seconds hurriedly reading a long list of horrendous side effects such as liver failure, edema, coma, death, mood swings, elevated blood pressure, weight gain, and suicide. And suicide is what they all have in common! There are various drugs- antidepressants, drugs for arthritis, bipolar disorder, anti-smoking and more. And suicide is a possible side effect of all. One's distinct impression is that the side effects far outweigh the benefits. Are they really hoping to boost their sales??? Or is there some other purpose for these “ads”??? Creepy!!