The Illuminati Card Game

In 1995, Steve Jackson and his game company came out with a card game entitled "Illuminati: World Domination." Whether or not this game depicts realistic events is up for debate, but some of the cards have actually come true, according to some conspiracy theorists.

Today we're going to look at some of the cards and see: was he on to something? If so, how did he know if there was a hidden agenda by various secret societies?

I will say, before we begin, however, that Steve Jackson's house and computer were raided by the FBI and he was involved in a protracted legal battle to even get the game to be published.  Did he know too much?  He did win an injunction and since I am writing about this, the game did get published along with several subsequent variations. Enjoy and think about it...even if you choose not to believe it.  I'm still up in the air.  Coincidence or not?  Let's look at a few cards...

 

Although I don't know how to play this game, and it was not a terrorist nuke that brought down the World Trade Center, don't these two cards look eerily like 9/11?  Coincidence, maybe...let's look at some more.

If you go back and look at the coverage of the BP oil spill in the gulf a couple of years ago, this was a very common image used in news coverage of the event.

History is written by the winners and, when the legend becomes fact, print the legend.  Never thought I'd be making a reference to "The Man who Shot Liberty Valence."

One of the stated goals of secret societies is to control media, religion, and education, to name a few.  We follow a subscribed curriculum in schools and are forced to memorize and regurgitate facts, definitions and formulas.  Research papers themselves (which I hate) use the conclusions of others to make a statement.  They're not really original, per se.

Even if this Steve Jackson guy was just writing about people's worst fears, weren't there two cases about flesh-eating bacteria in the news last week?  Could the game be predictive programming?

Big banks are buying smaller banks at a rapid rate.   Wilmington Trust is no more. M&T bought them out, and M&T is national.  Sovereign Bank?  A little publicized fact is the Banco Santender (Spain's second largest bank) bought them out.  

Didn't this occur in Fukushima recently?  Wasn't it caused by the earthquake and subsequent tsunami that occurred?  Which leads me to the next one...

   It's been a state goal of both the UN and the US Military to be able to influence "natural" events such as the weather and other disasters.

See Agenda 21 and other documents from the UN and look up HAARP (High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program).  Also, check out this youtube video of the Tampa Bay Rays game last year on August 22nd, the night before the East Coast's largest earthquake in a century.

Check out this other video taken the day of  the earthquake in Colorado which occurred when? August 22, 2011, the day before the East Coast earthquake.

Sure, weather manipulation sounds crazy.  Didn't we have a snowstorm in October, right before Halloween?  And how about Hurricane Irene reaching from Florida to Canada?  How about that earthquake felt from the Carolinas to Maine to Canada to Michigan?  And where's my warm summer? It's mid June and it was cool last night.


Regardless of what you believe, the card game is interesting to ponder and may make you wonder, who is Steve Jackson?  What's his deal?  I don't know.  But let's look to see if the card game has any future events in store...

Arab Spring?

Crash of 2008?  Another to come?

Is that Big Ben? London 2012 Olympics

And hopefully not...

Again, all of this is just food for thought...read at your own peril.  

Do for Yourself

[Calm down.  I've got it all under control.]



As I discussed in my last entry, the world throws a lot of stuff in our face.  Distractions.  White noise.  Worry.  Fear.  But you can't let it get you down.  There's not much you can do about a lot of things.  The above sign says it all.  Have that attitude.  The world we live in is tough.  The economy sucks.  The job market suck.  The stock market...well, you get the idea.

But learning to relax and realizing you have control over a great many more things than you think you do is important.  Your attitude matters.  You give what you get.  Sound trite?  Good.  Cuz it's true.

New ageists will tell you that in order to eliminate stress and have a happy day to day existence, you need to start out with a positive attitude.  Ask and it shall be given.  If you believe in yourself enough and believe positive things will happen to you, they will.  Sounds trite, but it does work.

But there are also other things you can do to help yourself relax and stay calm...

1) Greet the day with a smile.  You'd be amazed at what a positive start can do.

2) Everything is doable.  There exists a solution to every problem. It may not be easy or perfect, but it works.

A few years ago, I had to scrub a green film off the back of my parents' house.  I got most of it, but I could not reach some of the areas on the second story.  I couldn't fit out the window, but I had to get it done.  So I looked around.

In the garage, I found a rod with an extendable arm, but it had nothing attached to it.  However, extended, it was over 20 feet long.  So what did i do?  I found a scrub brush and duct taped it to the end.  It was very firm.  And when I held it up to the second floor walls, it was long enough to reach and it did not bend.  Thus I cleaned the entire side of the house.  Not a perfect solution, but it worked.

Now imagine that with a brush attached to the end and a bit longer.

3) Exercise.  As Elle Woods says of the woman she is defending in a murder trial, "Exercise gives you endorphins. Endorphins make you happy. Happy people just don't shoot their husbands."
You'll feel better and you have a place to channel that rage, anger, or stress.

4) Chug a glass of water when you wake up.  Don't drink, chug.  If you can, make it 24-32 oz.

Before eating anything or even brushing your teeth, you're putting something into your system and your body thinks you've eaten something, from what I remember in Men's Health.  Your body immediately starts burning fat.  In addition, you'll feel a little full.  It works.

5) Eat some spicy pepper with a meal if you can.  This also aids in fat burning.  I'm not talking a little black or white pepper.  You don't have to eat the hottest thing on the Scoville scale, but chili pepper or cayenne, even a little bit, helps your body work harder.  We all need to lose those extra pounds.

6) Realize that it is not possible to control all events.  The media wants you to worry about yourself in this economy.  They want you to worry about the US posturing with Iran.  But don't.  The media is biased, anyway, and you'll never hear the complete truth.

7) Think positively.  Think that things will go your way.  They probably will.  Plot out your life and set goals you want to accomplish, and then take them on head first.  You'll give yourself something to look forward to and you'll feel a great sense of accomplishment once you're done.

8) Get a pet.  I'm a cat man myself, but to each his or her own.  If you need a nice iguana to curl up with every night, by all means go for it.  But traditional pets include cats, dogs, rabbits, and the like.  Find a pet for you.  You'll live longer and be happier overall, according to many studies.

9) Buy something big and lavish for yourself once in a while.  Come on, you deserve it.

10) Try to make some extra money if you have time.  Selling things on the Internet or craigslist, getting Google AdSense, or taking surveys.  You take enough, you'll have some extra dough.  Don't want to wait that long?  Start a change jar.  The last time I did, and filled it over the course of a few months, I had almost $300.

11) Most importantly, stop worrying.  Everything happens for a reason.

What, Me Worry?

In season 3 of "Desperate Housewives," Lynette Scavo (Felicity Huffman) has a dream while in the hospital recovering from a chemotherapy session.  She dreams of the day her neighbor, Mary Alice Young, committed suicide.

In the first season, Lynette came home one day, saw her neighbor at her mailbox reading a troubling piece of mail, asked her how she was, the neighbor said "Fine," and like guys usually do, took it at face value and moved on.  She didn't know that later that night she would commit an unthinkable act. And yes, if you're being picky on plot details Lynette's groceries were leaking something which made her move it and get inside rather than take a few minutes to speak with her neighbor.

The dream in Season 3, however, was different. Please watch the following clip and think about the implications (if you feel like it, otherwise, watch it and move on I guess, or don't watch it at all if you don't feel like it) in your life.  What's troubling you?  What worries you?

If you didn't feel like watching, that's cool.  But the message is twofold, and both pieces dovetail well.  Mary Alice tells Lynette that "We can't prevent what we can't predict." In other words, stop worrying so much about everything, even though this is what the media and politicians try to get you to do.

They want you stressed so you'll worry about things beyond your control.  They want you to worry about your body image and think you're not good enough so you'll buy lots of products to help you lose weight through dieting, exercise, or both.

The media wants you to think that the world will end if you personally don't fit into it.  They want you to think that you need to keep up with all of the latest fashions so you'll feel like an outcast if you don't buy the best clothes and the best accessories.  They want you to think you need to have Gatorade or need to eat Subway because athletes do it and if you don't, there's something wrong with you.  It's all a grand distraction.

The second piece of Mary Alice's message is to "Enjoy this beautiful day.  We get so few of them."  Take the time to actually enjoy your life.  Have fun.  Relax.  Enjoy the sunshine.  Focus on the little things that make you happy. Be yourself.  When's the last time you took a moment to look up at the sky and watch birds fly, or airplanes shoot across?  It's probably been a while.

Life is short: enjoy it.  "We can't prevent what we can't predict." None of us knows how tomorrow will turn out.  As Americans right now we have so many things on our plate: war in Afghanistan (still?  oh yes), money troubles, how we look, how we fit in at work, school, and home, and many other things.  But we can't control a lot of it, so there's no need to worry.  In the next blog I'll have some tips on how you can help make yourself feel better and be happier.  At least they work for me most of the time, and I hope perhaps they can work for you.

Is There Something in the Air?

What is that streak across the sky?  In case you haven't noticed, there are many more planes in the sky than there used to be.  I wrote about it before.  We had a plane fly over the house the other night that was massive, meaning it was much closer to the ground and my neighborhood than it should have been.  I'm talking Twin Towers 9/11 close.  Like 1000-1500 feet above the ground.  That's it.

The above image was taken at 6 a.m. last week outside my house.  This trail extended all the way to the light at the top of the road a mile and a half away.  Again, I'm not one who usually buys into conspiracy theories, but I've read a lot about them recently.  There exists an alleged phenomenon known as chemtrails, not to be confused with contrails.

Contrails are what you see when a plane high in the sky speeds by.  It's the white trail from the plane, and it usually disappears. Chemtrails, on the other hand, linger and do not disappear.  Reasons for chemtrail spraying are unclear.  Some claim it is for ozone protection, while others claim that what is being sprayed is used to control the weather.  It's an interesting theory.

Snowstorm on October 30th?  Freezing weather now (we're almost in May)?

The following pictures were taken outside my school.  At first I thought they were contrails, but they lingered all day over the school, spreading out and eventually looking like clouds.  The line stretched from Center City Wilmington all the way across the Delaware Memorial Bridge into New Jersey, which is a few miles from where I work.

Say what you want.  But these trails, whatever they were, were done by three separate planes within ten minutes of each other.  And they lingered.  Observe...

First, notice the blocking off of the majority of our parking lot. This always happens when the planes are above.

As you can see, in the progression in the pictures, from three separate planes, we go from one line, to two, then to three, pretty close to one another.  The last picture was taken 30 minutes after I entered the building and went to my office on the fourth floor.  These clouds/contrails/chemtrails lingered all day and expanded.  Contrails would surely have been gone by then, right?  It's simply something to think about.  I don't know what's going on, but I also notice these trails near my house as well.

A plane flying lower than usual over my neighborhood.

A large plane, at night...over my house.

Speculation only leads one farther down the rabbit hole into things like biological/chemical warfare, the government's HAARP initiative (look it up--weather modification is one of the stated goals of the US military), and other interesting practices allegedly occurring.

Again, I'm not trying to make anyone nervous and I don't really know what I believe, but look up in the sky.  You'll see many more planes than you usually do.  Thanks for reading and speculate away!

For more information, do a google search.

It's a Mad Mad World

I don't think I've taken the time in this space to write about "Mad Men" before, but I feel I must.  The fifth season premiered two weeks ago after a too-long hiatus.  Does it really matter how long?  One year? Six months?

While some say that it is not quite up to its usual tightly constructed standards, it is still one of the best shows on television and it's something I look forward to every week. 

SPOILER ALERT
If you do not want to know what happens, stop reading.

Still there?  Good.  I'm sure we lost some people but if you've been watching "Mad Men" or have only casually seen it a few times, you know that it's a terrific show.

Season The Fifth

The year is 1966.  There are race riots in Chicago and New York.  Gillian Hills' "Zou Bisou Bisou" is still making its way around the airwaves, though released in 1961.  Women are demanding more respect in the workplace.  There is an airline strike.  The Vietnam War rages.



"Mad Men" is undergoing a cultural paradigm shift in toto, but I'm going to focus more on this past Sunday's episode.

"Mad Men" opened this past episode with Peggy's reporter colleague showing the copy writing staff pictures that "Time" magazine deemed inappropriate and too shocking to print. 

Turns out, the pictures were of the recent (in this episode he was still on the lam) crime scene of Richard Speck.  Who is he?  I'd never heard of him either, but apparently he wheedled his way into a town house shared by 9 nurses in Chicago, where he brutally raped and murdered all but one, who was able to hide under the bed for 7 hours without detection.  Goosebumps inducing, right?

 This episode showed almost everyone afraid of something.  This fear, primarily from the horrific acts of one Richard Speck, permeated the country and spread to our cadre of characters. 

Don was very sick and had a nightmare that a former flame came over to his house and would not stop trying to sleep with him (even though he gave in once in this dream).  So, he unleashes some of his pent up rage and strangles her.  He dumps the body under the bed.  He tried to hide it from his wife, Meghan, who had serenaded him with the aforementioned "Zou Bisou Bisou" in the season opener.  Did you know that the Mad Men soundtrack just released it as a single and I heard it on Sirius 3 yesterday?


But it was all a dream. 

The fear, whatever the cause spread.  Sally was afraid.  She frightens Grandma Francis in the middle of the night because she cannot sleep due to the Chicago murders. We see Grandma Francis sitting there with a butcher knife, afraid as well. However, in true 1960s fashion, at Grandma's suggestion, they both split a sleeping pill and fall into a deep slumber. It was so comatose that even Betty and Henry couldn't rouse them when they arrived home at the end of the episode.  She was under the couch, by the way.

Peggy, on the other hand, embraced her fear of being a woman in a man's world in the office by getting $400 out of Roger Sterling.  Apparently, he needed copy writing done for Mohawk Airlines and was completely out of options.  He asks Peggy, who took him for everything that he had in a gender and character role reversal.  Is Peggy the new Don?

Peggy, however, had this money in her purse after she invited a co-worker to stay with her for the evening (the first African-American hire at SCDP).  "They won't take me past 96th Street," bemoans the lone African-American. 
At Peggy's house, though, the two share some beers and Peggy turns to go to bed.  In the look heard round the world, Peggy eyes her purse on the table in front of her co-worker.  She grabs the beer bottles they shared but you can tell, Peggy is ashamed for thinking her co-worker might steal it and her co-worker knows that Peggy thought she might take it.  It was a very racially charged moment and well-acted.  Fear once again came into play.

Finally, the lone person who was not afraid was Joan.  After her husband returned from Vietnam, the two got cozy for a few days and between themselves, the baby (who's not her husband's but rather Roger's), and Joan's mother (welcome back to TV, Mrs. Huber from "Desperate Housewives!"), it looks like they have the perfect, all-American family.

At a dinner with both sets of parents, Joan, the baby, and her husband, it is revealed that her husband volunteered to go back to Vietnam for a year.  This destroys Joan and the dinner, needless to say, does not go well. 

The next morning, Joan wakes up to her husband, child, and mother eating breakfast.   The two exchange words and her husband says "If I go out that door, that's it."

Joan ultimately has this to say about her husband, Greg: "You're not a good man. You never were. Even before we were married — and you know what I'm talking about."  Ka-Pow!  She referenced what we all think every time we see Joan.  Are they ever going to reference what he did to her in Don's office before they were married?

And just like that, they did.  Last night's episode felt more like Seasons 1 or 2 in terms of its impact.  It was the best episode since perhaps "The Suitcase" whenever it was it aired before.

Yes, Mad Men is back and it's great.  And oh yeah, Betty doesn't have cancer but she's fat. 

Dan for Mayor

I was thinking of writing an entry about a couple of different things, but the ideas made me extremely angry.  I won't go into what I was thinking of writing about that made me so upset my breathing became shallow, and my fists and teeth clenched. 

I guess I'll have to work out when I get home or find some way to get rid of that pent up anger I have towards certain people at the moment.  So, I decided to write about the following.

Since I finished "Corner Gas" a few weeks ago (all 108 episodes!), I was lacking something good to watch on my iPad before I went to bed.  With "Corner Gas," I probably watched two or three episodes per week before I went to bed.  It took me a while to get through, and after I finished the episodes time just seemed to vanish and I had none.



So the other night, I had some rare extra time before bed so I took full advantage and began to watch another TV show.  This one is called "Dan for Mayor."

While the show is not as funny as "Corner Gas," it still is an interesting story revolving around the character of Dan Phillips (Fred Ewanuick).  Upon hearing news from his former flame, Clare (Mary Ashton), that she is engaged, Dan feels the spastic need to top her news.  He blurts out that he is running for mayor of the town of Wessex, where they live.

When asked by his best friend Jeff (Paul Bates) later why he made such an avowal, Dan replied that he wanted Clare to see him as serious rather than a slacker 30-something working as a bartender at Fern's. 

While everyone around Dan thinks his campaign is a joke, he tries to prove them wrong.  At the end of the pilot episode, he is finally able to scratch together the candidate's fee to get his name on the ballot.

As the pilot closes, the current mayor gloats to his aide upon walking out of city hall after Dan pays the candidate's fee.  As he steps down from the sidewalk to cross the street, thinking he's won another easy mayor's race, BOOM! 

Long story short, Dan is the lone candidate for mayor.  What'll he do?  Although this show is certainly not along the level of "Friends" or even "Scrubs" in terms of plots or laughs, the story is simple, the people are quirky, and it's fun to watch Dan's journey.  The writing is decent enough that you get a few chuckles in each episode.

If you're interested in watching this show, you can find, just like Corner Gas, all episodes of Dan for Mayor on YouTube.

 

Airplanes over Deacon's Walk

It's been said that movies try to prepare us subconsciously through subliminal suggestion to accept future events before they occur.  This way, the events will not seem as much of  a shock to us. 

Take 9/11.  Conspiracy theorists claim that some of the perpetrators had Illuminati ties and had foreknowledge of the event.  It was even allegedly referenced in movies, particularly with analog clocks, dates, and other appearances of the digits.  Again, pure speculation. I've no idea if it's true. Below is a screen capture of the episode "The City of New York Versus Homer Simpson" from 1997.

Similarly, people argue that the prevalence of alien invasions/contact made in science fiction movies is trying to subliminally tell us that this type of event will occur some day.  Again, whether this is true, I have no idea, but it certainly is interesting to ponder every once in a while.

That brings me to the title of this post, airplanes over Deacon's Walk.  For those of you who do not know, Deacon's Walk is the name of the neighborhood in which I live.  I have a great house that overlooks the Pike Creek Valley and I can see a long way from my deck.  The sky is open, and it's a great place to relax especially now that it's getting warmer. 

However, for the past six months, something odd has been going on in my neighborhood. Something strange. Something no one talks about. But the question is: do people notice? I think they must, given the in-your-face nature of what happens. People are for the most part home at 8 pm or 9 pm each night. So what gives? (This is what it looks like)

I have a legitimate question about what the hell these things are flying over my house every now and again towards the end of each month.  My brother has seen them.  My neighbors have seen them.  And when I researched them, other people have seen them too.  But no one knows what they are.

They fly low.  They are triangular.  They have four lights on them and if they were exact triangles, they would have one in each vertex, along with one in the middle of the interior. Unless you are standing directly below them, they are silent.  They can rise, however, very quickly.

These planes (I think they might be military, as Dover Air Force Base isn't too far away, nor is New Castle County Airport) fly extremely low and the first few times I saw them I felt like they were going to crash into one of the houses or my own.  I would say that they fly about 500-600 feet off the ground, which from a deck or an upstairs bedroom is slightly scarier. 

The pattern for the past six months is that they fly low and circle the neighborhood (not just the city of Newark, say) three or four times before they vanish.  I've seen them completely disappear on a cloudless night once.  I don't know if it's ever the same plane.  Sometimes the lights look a little different. 

I don't know what they are but it's very creepy.  After the once per month that we see them, they are gone and I forget about them.  But I do know for a fact that in January, February, and last night the same type of thing occurred.  Low flying.  Circling.  Gone.

In fact last night my brother asked if I saw a huge plane on my way home.  Truth is I did, and I slowed down my car to get a better look at it.  It was dark but I saw the distinct triangle and light pattern I'm familiar with from other times. Then I saw it once more after that from inside the house.

What are these things?  Why do they fly so low?  Does anyone know what I'm talking about?  If so, let me know your insights.