mrs-roboto's Diaryland Diary ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Strangeways, Here We Come I don't know if I've mentioned this before when speaking of my mother but my mom is an extremely interesting woman. Her mind works in very different ways from any other person I've ever met. For example, my mother is an extreme believer in conspiracy theories and not just the well known ones (J.F.K.'s assassination, Elvis being alive, Princess Diana faking her own death, crop circles, etc.) She gets into some real convoluted concepts about the war in Iraq, Bush as a leader, and new diseases like SARS (actually my dad also has some misgivings about SARS - he thinks it's low grade chemical warfare designed by our enemies to distract us from the bigger issues at hand). Now, I'm not na�ve. I know there are things that go on that I know nothing about nor will I ever know about them but I'm logical about these things. I don't think that everything has a deeper meaning or a darker purpose. If asked to identify a cause for the development of a newly identified disease I'd probably draw on the fact that the variety of antibiotics administered to the general population has forced illnesses to mutate into super viruses and that SARS is probably another illness that evolved from some already known illness. These are just my thoughts. I've done no research, but I highly doubt that SARS was purposefully developed in a lab as a weapon. Call me an optimist. Growing up, there were always copies of the World Weekly News lying around the house. I was led to believe that they were there as a meaningless diversion on par with the comics. Funny, mindless entertainment. As I grew older, I began to doubt that they were always taken as a joke. They were read cover to cover and showed serious wear and tear. Sometimes they were quoted from. And then there were the stories. I can remember my mother telling me a tale about a ghost sleeping next to her in our little bungalow in the Catskills. I was eight years old and the story scared the heck out of me. My mother assured me that the ghost was very gentle and didn't slam the door on the way out. Somehow this did nothing to alleviate my childhood fears of spooky, soul sucking, spirits. If you asked my mother if there was life on other planets she'd say "most definitely" and she wouldn't mean amoebae. She believes in the full deal - little green men with big oddly spaced eyes. So perhaps what I am getting at is that mom is a bit eccentric and has a hell of an imagination. I'm used to my mom - she's mine and I wouldn't have it any other way. But I forget that Pete has only had limited exposure to woman who gave birth to me. Over the weekend my mother brought up the phenomenon of "squirats." What are squirats, you ask? Well it's a fictional rodent that is half squirrel, half rat. Basically, a squirrel body with a rat's tail and in the true style of all tall tales, this thing is twice the size of its predecessor. About a decade ago, a rumor spread that all of Central Park was crawling with these squirats and that they were violent and would attack innocent people out for a stroll. I've done a bit of research and there is no scientific evidence that squirats ever existed. There are no reports of actual attacks. As a matter of fact, research shows that it is not possibly for such an interbreeding to occur. Despite that, my mom claims to have seen the suckers everywhere (special note: the last time my mother was in Central Park was probably before I was born for a Simon and Garfunkle concert). When Pete tried to dispute their existence, he got shut down. I mean how can you argue with "I've seen them and the Park's Department Special Divisions Unit (a whole posse of Molder and Scully types there to protect us from the unknown) was ordered to immediately kill them all off before the situation became a grave danger to the public." You can't and so you don't even try. 11:00 a.m. - 2003-05-29 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
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