Possessed by a Ouija Board?

Ah yes, the Ouija board! I've heard so many entertaining stories about people using them, and some are even true. 

This article appeared recently in the UK's Daily Mail about three people who were possessed by a Ouija Board.

Did this really happen? Were these people really possessed by something otherworldly? That all depends on whether or not you believe in possession. But if you've read this blog at all, ever, you should know what I'm going to say next: That the kids were either truly faking it or they took drugs before they started using the board. To ask if they were possessed is just not the place to start. 

The Ouija Board (pronounced Wee-Gee) is a device known as a spirit board and can be used to connect with the spirit world.

Most people just shove their hands in the direction of the answers they want to receive using the planchette, a small piece of wood, or in Ouija, it's plastic. But if you're going to take it seriously, then you use it responsibly.

Keep in mind that using a spirit board is like lighting a bonfire in the middle of a clear field at night: Everything around will be attracted to it, and that can be dangerous.

To ensure an excellent experience with a board, please make sure to do the following:

1) Cast a protective circle, and in some form say aloud that you only want "positive" or "good" spirits to come communicate with you.

2) If anything negative comes across to have its say, don't sit there and banter with it. Tell it to leave. You are the most powerful person in the circle. 

3) Use the spirit board with people you know and trust. In other words, not your sister's asshole boyfriend or your skeptical grandmother. 

Fun Fact: When Monopoly was made by Parker Brothers, the Ouija board was a close second in sales to the popular property trading game. So while everyone can say they're creeped out or would never buy such a thing, I'm sure we have a lot of liars on our hands. And that's fine...I won't tell anyone you still have one stashed away! 

No matter how you feel about spirit communication, I hope you'll heed my advice if you choose to use a spirit board. 

A Look Back At the November That Was...

I promised you updates a while back and let it not be said that I'm a liar…at least about this. We have plenty to talk about, so we'd better get started.

I hope all of you had a fantastic Thanksgiving and that none of you were arrested in a fight at a big box store trying to buy presents. It seems like it defeats the spirit of the holidays…but hey, what do I know?

First of all, my absence can be easily explained. No, it wasn't because of my new computer…but we'll get back to that, I assure you. I was doing National Novel Writing Month in November. For those of you who don't know what that is, NaNoWriMo is a program through which you pledge to write 50,000 words on a brand new novel in a month. I successfully made my quota, which breaks down to 1666 words a day, and can declare myself a winner. My beloved also won. 

Congratulations to everyone who finished! It's a challenge but it's worth it. The point is to get you writing; you can't edit anything you've written, so you're just supposed to sit down and write without judging. Sure, some of it's going to be shit, but some will be great. 

I decided to try this a few years back to fight against my Saturn vs. Neptune opposition, and let me tell you that it really works. When no one is seeing it and you can just write without judgment, you can just let it flow. I encourage everyone to give it a try. 

OK, so that explains my absence. Now on to other matters. Mercury retrograde wasn't pleasant this time around for me, but it wasn't truly horrific. A number of my friends were not as lucky; one Gemini guy I know who didn't know about astrology decided he believes in it now. There was just too much Mercury fuckery for him. I hope you made it through OK. You've got another few months before we do it again; that's right, we're back at it on January 21. I know you can't wait…admit it. 

After getting the gift card via email and not regular mail from Apple, I ordered the new computer. It came in on November 12 and I took the chance of doing an installation of new software during the storm as it was getting back up to full speed. I was fortunate and everything is perfect. I'm typing on it now and IT IS AWESOME. I will never go back to a PC. 

I spent several hours today playing games that kept crashing on my old machine due to the graphics problems. One of my favorites, Civilization, had a new expansion pack and with my totally tricked out machine it handled the game easily. I even increased the graphics quite a bit and it's gorgeous. 

Civilization is a game that has been around since 1990 and Jen and I learned to play it going to college together. This version is AMAZING and is light years ahead of where it was, but it's still addictive. You start with a settler unit and build a city, and through it you build an entire empire. Is it as complex as it sounds? Absolutely. But for a guy like me, it's perfect. 

I spent this afternoon learning the new wrinkles. I played as King Kamehaha and the Polynesians, which was a new civilization for me to try out, and managed to play into the 1700s before I decided I wasn't winning. I tried too late to bring religion into my civilization, and while I did found Judaism, the Egyptians converted all my cities to Islam before I even tried it, so it was pretty much a lost cause. D'OH!

You can pick which religion you'd like to find. While Wicca was not among them, you'll be happy to know that there were 20 religions to pick from, many more than the five in the last version. 

NOTE TO SELF: If you're going to found a new religion, do it early in the game and use it to your advantage. 

And before I start getting hate mail asking about Pele, my little girl is fine. She's been out of her cone for about two weeks, and the spay operation went just fine. The scar is even gone now. The world doesn't need more kittens, but she'd have made some beautiful ones. Just sayin'. She's even faster than before and purrs like crazy pretty much constantly. I'm so lucky to have her. Jen did a great job with her; she got up at night to take care of Pele and let me sleep. That woman is amazing, let me tell you. :)

Anyway, I promise to blog more again soon with more information. Things just keep happening, folks, and we've got another Venus retrograde coming on Yule. Stay tuned for that one; nothing like Venus fuckery over the holidaze! 

X is for Xbox

I couldn't resist this one, folks. SERIOUSLY. :)

I'm a huge video game fan. My "G" post from last year should give you some idea of how much I enjoy games in general, but video games are a real passion of mine.

Picture it: It's February 2003, and I'm living in Staten Island, NY. My beloved Jennifer Wells, whose title as MOST AMAZING WIFE ON THE PLANET was already very much in hand, decided to get me my first Xbox. To say I was thrilled is a total understatement. It ranked only behind one other Valentine's Day gift at that time: My cat, Josephine.

I had a Playstation 2 at that time, and had played Xbox at a friend's house. This was my first experience with online consoles. As much as I loved the PS2, either they didn't have a network at that time or it was just in its infancy. Xbox Live, however, was already going strong.

I'll admit that I was a HUGE fan of the PS2. I didn't think there was a better system out there, and at that time Microsoft was new to the game console market and I don't know that I wanted them to be successful, either. Turns out I was wrong on both counts. The first Xbox and its subsequent iterations are just plan awesome.

I spent hours on that thing, playing Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six online with the friend who originally introduced me to it originally and his group of friends. I had a blast.

Later, one aspect of this connectivity that I hadn't even realized was the possibility of playing with people from other nations. Xbox Live is worldwide and you never really know who you'll end up playing with. I met lots of British folks, but I kept up my French skills as well. Most French people were stunned to find out I was American, but once they did they enjoyed playing with me. Lots of good conversations happened over the course of those games, too. I learned many, many terms that they don't normally teach you in school--like about 100 ways to say "to kill" and various military terms, like "grenade" and "sniper".

I play a lot less online these days. Sadly, after being called every name in the book by teenagers who do nothing but sit and play Xbox all day, the online aspect has definitely waned for me. But that doesn't take away the enjoyment of playing on my own.

Currently, I'm into Borderlands 2, and I've started playing Skyrim...but I'm afraid I'll be sucked into it so far that I don't play it that much. Perhaps I will play more once the blogging challenge is over. :)

Thanks for tuning in! Come back Monday for my "Y" post, which will be as much of a surprise to me as to you since I don't know what to write about yet. :)

G is for Games!

I have always loved games of all kinds. From when I was very young, I wanted to play games; the more complicated they were, the better I liked them! It was difficult sometimes to find people to play with me, because Candy Land and Chutes and Ladders were boring for me probably about the time I was five.

One of the earliest ones I remember was “Enemy Agent”, a board game about spying that was just perfect for my Scorpio-ness. I also loved going to game events at my elementary school; just the sight of all of those games filling tables as far as the eye could see was a thrill for me.

After all these years, I’m still a huge fan of games. Today, I’m here to tell you about some of my favorites.

Let’s start with board games. My favorite board game hands down is Monopoly. It was practically a spiritual experience in my house. My siblings and I would sit down to play, and after a while it became clear that we had to start using tournament rules because inevitably someone would want to change the rules mid-stream. “House rules” in Monopoly are very popular—money for landing on free parking, loaning money to other players, etc.—but they contribute to one of the biggest complaints about the game: That it takes too long to play. Bullshit! Play with the rules included with the set—and no others—and it will take 45-60 minutes to play with four people. And I mean come on…who doesn’t like financially crushing those around you?

I’ve got Monopoly sets from all over the world but one of my most prized possessions is my Franklin Mint Monopoly that I received from my beloved bride as a wedding present. It’s incredibly cool, and it’s not an heirloom: I play on it! It has some wear and tear but a game is to be PLAYED.

Other board games I enjoy include Risk—I have a notebook that I write my blogs in made from an upcycled Risk game board!—Trivial Pursuit, chess, backgammon (thanks to Mr. Connors, my high school chem teacher!), Titan, Axis and Allies, and more recently, the Settlers of Catan.

I also play role-playing games. I’ve been playing Dungeons and Dragons since about 1980 or so, and I’ve played most of the versions of it. Right now, I run a 4^th Edition campaign of intrepid adventurers, one of whom is my wife. (Gentlemen, please take note: There are very few things more attractive than a girl gamer! Just saying.) I’ve played a few other RPGs, like Boot Hill and Top Secret, but D&D is the tops in my book.

Once gaming entered the electronic age, I was in heaven. For home systems, I had the Intellivision, Atari 5200, and the Nintendo NES, and just before I left home they bought a Sega. (As I recall, people around my house would say ‘SAY-GAH’ mimicking the announcer’s voice that said it as you turned it on.) I’ve played most of the different consoles available since the mid-1980’s.

I’ve continued on my own enjoying the console gaming experience. I’m an avid Xbox 360 player, but one of the best memories I have is coming home from my honeymoon and Jen and I deciding to buy the Playstation as one of our first joint purchases as a married couple. At least we had our priorities straight. (Jen’s also asked me to mention Skyrim, a swords and spells RPG that was so incredible that I was content to just watch her play for two straight months. Buy that one and kiss your social life goodbye, folks.)

Arcades were and are some of my favorite places. Now they exist in the form of Dave & Busters and DisneyQuest, but I still enjoy them immensely. Some of my old arcade favorites still exist today; I purchase the games on my Xbox and cringe as I see that 100 of them can fit on a normal CD that we have today. We’ve come a long way, because I can even play many of them on my iPad. The Midway Arcade app is a fantastic one; a ton of arcade games from the 1980s in an arcade setting. I mean, who doesn’t want to play Joust and Gauntlet all day long?

Some of my other arcade favorites were Burger Time, Berzerk, Gorf, Tron Deadly Discs, Gauntlet, Frogger, Bagman, Dig Dug, and Front Line.

One other arcade game deserves a mention here, a weird little Atari game called Food Fight. I only found it one arcade ever, the Dream Machine arcade on Nantasket Beach in Hull, MA. Anyway, you’re a kid and you’re pitted against these evil chefs. You take them down my hurling food at them, which can be found all over the board. Your goal is to get to the other side to eat the steadily dripping ice cream cone; each level was a different flavor. I never got past level 3, but this is a game that likely you missed. Maybe I’ll be able to find a version of it someday, but likely it’s gone the way of the 5 ¼ inch floppy disks.

Table top games? You bet. Ping pong. Air hockey. Foozball. A British friend introduced me to Subbuteo, a soccer game in which you flicked plastic players with rounded feet to propel a plastic soccer ball the length of a tabletop field. That game that took some skill, especially playing the goalkeeper, which was on a plastic stick.

And let’s not forget other games you can play on a table: card games. Mille Bornes. Uno. Poker. Rummy. Cribbage. Scat. I even taught myself to play bridge. Sound odd? Bridge is amazingly complicated; I hadn’t actually played it with a real person before my last cruise…I partnered up with a wily 70-something woman who was thrilled to show me the game. She’d come looking for me at the same time each day, and somehow, Jen wasn’t concerned about that at all. :)

Someday I’d love to have a game room with arcade-style machines and a large table space for D&D games. You’ve gotta dream, right?

As you can see by the sheer length of this blog, games were and are a huge part of my life. I often can remember what games I was playing when particular life events occurred. Honestly, I’ll play pretty much any game once.

What are some of your favorites? Leave a comment and let me know. And look on my Pinterest for images of many of the games I've mentioned in this blog! :)

Stay tuned for Monday’s “H” post!

PS: A huge shout out to Maggie, who I met today at 13 Magickal Moons and who’s a fan of the blog. It was great to meet you! :)