The White Sedan and the Lizards

My neighbor is a shape-shifter and he drinks human blood. His ancestors, who came to this planet a couple of hundred years, ago created the Illuminati which eventually became the Trilateral Commission. Don't ask me for proof. He'll deny it and his fellow shape-shifters have control of the media and most government offices.

It all makes sense to me.

Of course, that's why conspiracies exist in the minds of the paranoid because it does make sense to them.

Unfortunately the world, for all its complexity, is basic cause and effect. What appears to be random still has a cause (we just don't see it or currently understand it). The universe had an ultimate cause, we don't really understand it. We use religion and science and any number of far-out mystical theories to comprehend that cause. The effect of the cause is the world you see around you. It's that simply.

Humans always look for patterns. They constantly fill in the blanks. In the world of mathematics, and hopefully science, 2 plus 2 is always 4. In the human mind sometimes 2 plus 2 is 5 or 10 or maybe even an orange.

When confronted by competing explanations, we should always choose the simplest explanation. A rose, is a rose, is a rose. A wonderful book to read is Umberto Eco's "The Name of the Rose". It is full of facts that are misinterpreted and lead to false conclusions.

Dangerous Liasons, an 18th century novel written in the form of letters, is full of "dangerous" beliefs that lead to Valmont's death. It's all based on multiple romantic conspiracies.

Perhaps there are conspiracies, some quite sinister, but my guess is they are hidden and involve power, sex, money, and greed. These are actually criminal conspiracies or romantic trysts between married people and their lovers, that may or may not be revealed. Good examples are Enron, Watergate, and whatever passes through the minds of Bin Laden and his cronies. Pretty mundane stuff in the final analysis. No doubt some conspiracies are very sophisticated and we may never know about them.

When I've spoke to my neighbor about various conspiracies, he usually smiles and changes the subject. Shape-shifters do that.

To: LaDonna,

Top of the mornin' to you my Lady. The Kenyan coffee and croissants with French blackberry jam (I buy at a small import shop) will be a tasty way to start my Friday. I'll watch the Fox Business Channel, read the business section of the L.A. times, and catch the latest interest rate news on line, and start calling investors and clients. It's not as dull as it sounds........I enjoy waking up in the morning and can't wait to begin.

How about you? As an artist, you must start everyday with a passion, a hunger to create, with a sense of a journey well taken.

Good morning, chicory and homemade fruit bread here.

The problem is, Diana can't die because she's no longer a human. She's the magic fairy tale princess who lives happily ever after, and nobody wants to let go of that.

OH, and ExPat, I owe you a response the other day about "envy." Yes I am a folkie songwriter (my luxury is time, and inheritance somewhat metaphorical). Oddly enough, I do think I have the potential to become one of the best at my craft. I used to think I couldn't write songs... then one day, I woke up and started writing melodic hooks and memorable lyrics. On hearing my songs for the first time, people say, "yes, I know this song." I like that.

As I was saying, envy is exciting, fun and leads to new challenges! Maybe this has something to do with Diana and her magic after all... ? You tell me...

To; ExPat,
Good morning to you my Gentleman. My morning is beginning with a cup of Paul Newman's organic breakfast coffee, and a blueberry muffin (the Kenyan coffee and croissants with French blackberry jam would be my first choice). Then, off to the dog park with my two red Golden Retrievers, Max who is three years old, and Abby who just turned one. Next, a few miles of jogging in, before it gets hot.

I have just purchased a home, and will close on it on the 30th, so starting my "lists of things to do". I will be moving into the house the first week of June (the only down side, is that I will be without my computer for a few days....and I will truly miss your "Good Mornings", and this wonderful group at J. Peterman's). The good news is...I will have time to plant a few tomatoes in the back yard! I will be in this home for two more years, then I was thinking it would fun to take a long holiday and visit my artist cousin in San Francisco, then head down the coast, to visit old and new friends!

I am working on an oil painting, of a french court yard, that I do believe will be a wonderful addition to my new patio!

May your day be wonderful!

Happy homecoming, La Donna!

I live on a courtyard; are you painting my house?

ExPat, you haven't returned my sacred blood chalice, and I really need it back. And have you got my exsanguination pump? I can't find the damned thing, and we just got some new neighbors (a family of seven! They must be Mormons... that's like 54 pints!!!).

To La Donna and ExPat: Seriously, this is how rumors start. Would you two get a (chat) room or Twitter accounts please? :-)

Getting back to the topic at hand, a local sports talk show host is always throwing out "grassy knolls" to the public to stir up the pot. I never give much credence to conspiracy theories but they are fun to talk about. I love David Icke's explanation about Diana's death. If Scientology can claim frozen aliens in volcanoes, why not shape-shifting lizards from another galaxy?

Good Morning ~ Columbian Roast Coffee & a Citrus Currant Scone for Breakfast here today ~ Would rather have the Blackberry Jam also though.

I find it interesting that the poll reflects 50% thinking that JFK was a conspiracy.... I never thought so many people agreed with me about the Grassy Knoll, Just goes to show I'm as CRAZY as people think...... Actually I wonder if its a by product of my generation (in my 30's) to believe that what is one of the biggest American Conspiracies is the assiantion of a president that was killed when my parents were still in grade school.

I've heard my parents discuss since I can remember where they were when the news was told to them & how they had watched Ruby shoot Oswald on TV. I was in High School when my father told me what he thought the facts behind the Conspiracy consisted of.

Of course my father could be a shape-shifter & I never have realized it, maybe he has learned to survive on Animal blood though becuase I don't remember ever finding any children's bones buried at the house, but he does hunt......

Congratulations La Donna on your new house ~ I know your Goldens will Love their new yard as much as you do. I love that fact tha tyou have Red Goldens my sister is lucky enough to also have that coloring in hers, my 2 are blonde & more of the carmel colored varieties. Love them to death though even when they have trampled on my tulips.....

Good morning everyone! Today it's a couple of bone-dry, low-fat, double-shot cappuccinos, plain toast and a good book. I'm laying low today 'cos all this conspiracy talk has me a bit paranoid (chortle, chortle).

To: LaDonna,

Congratulations on your new home. Enjoy your patio, I'll bet it's a great place to have that morning coffee.

Seeing old and new friends sounds like the perfect way to spend some time in California. I usually run or ride my bike in the evenings. There's a recreational dam area close by and the Verdugo Mountains' trails so I have plenty of places to choose. I have a treadmill so a "run" in the mornings is also on the agenda. a couple of times a week.

We will miss you for the few days you don't have your computer. Hurry back!

To: Heiress,

Thanks for your input on "envy"....my thoughts exactly. I suspect that this site is visited by many creative and artistic people. Does any one else think this is so? When I was first in college, before the military, I was an art major. Today, I like to restore and refininsh old and antique furniture as a hobby. That might count as being artistic.......

To: Agent666,

What's a "Twitter" account? I've finally arrived in the 21st century with a cell phone and a laptop (or notebook) and I have to learn a whole new language for cyberspace. My oldest son says I'm hopeless. I check the grammar on my emails and on my text messages. And write them in complete sentences. I'm trying! Should I be "twittering"...let me know.

To: Jonathan Eells,

I like the chalice. I'd like to keep it for a while longer. It looks good over my fireplace. But it occasssionally shape-shifts into a very big coffee mug. Occassional the chalice shouts out phrases like "There will be blood!" Is that a sign of bad things to come?

LaDonna,
Twitter is place where people, for some inexplicable reason, enter what they're doing at that moment. For example, what they had for breakfast, that they're going to grocery store, or that they're in a movie theater and saw a great trailer. I'm sure there are beneficial uses, but as somebody not under the age of 25, I don't have much use for social networking sites. I like to socially network with real people. And those on Peterman's Eye, of course. All the references to what people had for breakfast made me think of that and the suggestion was made if fun. Check it out at www.twitter.com.

Whoops. My last response was meant for ExPat. D'OH!!!

Hasn't anyone seen the movie "Men In Black"? Lady Di isn't dead, she just went home. The greys from Zeta Reticuli (who are clones themselves) cloned a human look-alike of Lady Di, and placed it in the car before it was wrecked. Then they used a spacecraft in the tunnel (which was cleverly disguised as an Earth car) to whisk her away as the "getaway" vehicle.

The thing about conspiracies is that they do explain everything quite neatly. Once you make the leap of logic required (and with Icke in particular, it's a doozy), everything is neatly tied up. It would explain a lot about the last eight years, for example, if one accepted that the Bush dynasty was part of the Illuminati/lizard elite.

What?!! No, mention of our supposed trip to the moon.

What about the image on the posting mysteriously changing? I smell something fishy!

Well here I go dipping into the now eternal mind of Douglas Adams again (and yes, I really have read many other authors besides him but he's just so darn quotable) and say "DON'T PANIC" and always "keep your towel close at hand".

p.s.,I must apologize for the use of the word "chortle" at the end of my first quote.

To: Heiress,
Thank you for the happy homecoming! Your home must be beautiful, as I imagine the court yard filled with your music drifting through the flowers! Inviting!

To: rings90, Thank you also for the congratulations on my new home! That was very kind of you. Yes, I love Golden's! I had a wonderful Carmel colored Golden, by the name of Jake for 13 years, and he just loved fireworks!

To: Agent666, I know your having fun, as only fun people visit J. Peterman's! I will check out twister, as I'm reading it is a really cool way to be connected with friends and family (I sounded like a commercial)!

To: Bobross, I noticed the image mysteriously changing, also. For a moment I thought someone had dimmed the lights!

To: ExPat, Anyone who can work with furniture, is an artist, especially when working with antiques (which I love)!

To follow the meandering tract here, but we do seem to do that, I had a round a year or so ago with the "artist vs craftsman" thing. As you have probably surmised, I do fiber work. I spin everything from wool and alpaca to cotton and even hemp and some other things they are developing that I don't need to write a dissertation on now. Anyway, I have always been blown over by several in my "spinning group" that create the most gorgeous things with astounding color combinations. I definitely considered them to be "fiber artists". While I can create some rather attractive things; sweaters, shawls, purses, parkas, felted items and the like, I felt that I was just a craftsman because I needed a calculator and/or a piece of graph paper to work out my designs. I couldn't do much with spur-of-the-moment impulsive creativity. I figured it was my scientific educational background that made me feel I needed to work out the pattern on paper. Anyway, when we moved here to Louisville, I decided to make a cotton sweater with fleur-dis-lis around the bottom to celebrate. They are the symbol of the city since it was named after Louis XV. So I got out my graph paper and figured out a design that would fit around, having figured out how many stitches it would take to get the right measurement. Anyway, to shorten this epistle, those very same women that I so envied, got it to the attention of Spin-Off, the national magazine for us spinners and it was written up with a story about me. I was truly embarrassed about it because I didn't feel it was worthy, but I learned that there are artists, and there are artists Some can do wonderfully with impulsive ideas and others need a piece of graph paper. So, ExPat, you definitely are an "artist" by my definition. Western culture invented that term and has always had a problem defining it. The Greeks didn't have that concept. Neither did African cultures until we came along. All in all, I think the whole "art" thing is a conspiracy.

All this talk about conspiracies presses my brain! I can't take it anymore! Okay, I admit it at last....... I KILLED KENNEDY!!! There, I've said it.

But there's no evidence I was even in Dallas at the time? That just shows how well I've covered my tracks.

To: Spinner,

Thank you. I would agree. You certainly are an artist by definition, also. I'm reminded of a story I read about Vermeer. He sometimes used a camera obscura to project an image onto canvass. When he painted the image, was he merely a craftsman or an artist. I opt for artist. Many artists have outlined their paintings before applying paint. Scientific studies of Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel paintings show outlines beneath the paint. Even the Mona Lisa has faint outlines beneath the paint.....would we call Da Vinci a craftsman?

To: LaDonna,

Thanks for your vote that I'm an artist. You and Spinner are artists, so your votes have meaning to me. Do you have a favorite era or century for antiques?
In L.A. we used to have a saying - "Lets do lunch" - now I guess we have to say "Let's Twitter".

I don't know. All this twittering, coffee drinking and blackberry jam must be some sort of code being used to communicate about some sort of a secret plan. 666, what do you think? Sounds innocent enough, but I think there is more behind it. Probably the Secret Service is involved as well.

And DPR, I think you are simply being the fall guy for this Peterman conspiracy. You too are involved. Fess up! What are you all planning?

That's it boys, the secret is out! We'll have to do away with Spinner. Too bad; I would have preferred that she had lived.

By the way, why didn't EVERYONE vote for Thomas a Becket? All the other theories are just theories that may or may not be refuted. But no one has ever denied that Becket's murder was the work of four conspirators, none of whom denied their involvement, all of whom literally had a hand in it, and they probably expected to be thanked.

Isn't this common knowledge or am I just being a history geek again?

To: DreadPirateRoberts,

I voted for Thomas a Beckett. How about the conspiracy to murder Julius Ceasar? There was also a conspiracy to murder the Medici brothers by the Pazzi family in Italy during the Renaissance.

As to secrets, George Washington said only two people should have a secret, and one of them should be dead. Maybe that's why conspiracies are doomed to failure.

To: Spinner,

If I'm in the twitter room does that mean I'm "all a twitter"? or just being a "twit"? Don't answer that! I happen to enjoy my morning coffee with LaDonna.....today, I picked up a fantastic blueberry muffin for tomorrow morning. I can't wait. Now the gossip will start again. I love it!

I've had no luck with all these elegant breakfasts lately. But I can definitely join the ranks of the artists. I have a background as an actor, director, singer, pianist, and magician. The photo on my profile page is my theatrical headshot. I also write verse.

Apparently, I'm also a trumpeter with all this tooting of my own horn.

But I think ExPat is absolutely right in his suspicions that those who frequent this site (Peterman's People!) are likely to have an artistic bent. The inclination toward artistry and the taste in dashing clothes tend to go together.

I'm sure Diana is also living on a secluded island in the Pacific with Elvis by now.

And a package just came this afternoon with more Peterman clothing!

I really don't understand all these fancy carb breakfasts! ExPat, you said that you workout early. How can you survive the hours after without having some protein to level your blood sugar before you go? I am in the pool doing laps by 6:30am and have found that I survive until lunch best with a low-fat peanut butter sandwich on multi-grain flax seed bread. I have that every morning I work out and it sustains me through my own workout and the water classes I teach afterward. I can't imagine going through the sugar surge followed by the sugar low and still maintain a steady energy level. And the blackberry jam would really do me in!

I know it is late, but if anybody is still checking in, my husband want to know something. I was telling him that we seem to have added another atribute to our profile, that of being interested in artistic endeavors. He wants to know which one of us is into pole dancing... okay, fess up here, who is it?

To: Spinner,
You received a J. Peterman package today....I am envious. I received my J. Peterman Co. Owner's manual # 60 today, so this weekend I'm reading it like a novel.

To: ExPat,
When your eating your blueberry muffin in the morning, I'll stop by and say hi!

To: Spinner,

My sweet-tooth breakfasts are an occassional treat.....I keep to a diet designed for endurance sports. My Muffins on those rare occassions, are low fat. High grain, low fat food,, good quality proteins and fruit are my usual choices. I eat more high quality carbs for long runs and race days. My blood pressure is low, my heart rate is 48, good cholesterol is high, bad is low..

I notice that we are all not only creative but fit, too. LaDonna jogs, you swim.
But who is the pole dancer? -- that's artistic and fitness joined together.

To: LaDonna,

Stop by anytime.........