Wednesday, July 29, 2009

How's This for a Facebook Warning

Warning
Warning! You are engaging in behavior that may be considered annoying or abusive by other users.
Sometimes people get these warnings for simply misusing one of our features.

Which of the following links describes what you were trying to do? Clicking on a link will take you to more information on how to use Facebook's features.

Using Applications
Planning an Event
Sharing your Facebook Group/Event link
Promoting a business, product or service
Chatting with friends

Further misuse of site features may result in a temporary block or your account being permanently disabled.

Yet Another Vague Threat From Facebook

Hi,

Our systems indicate that you've been misusing certain features on the site. This email serves as a warning. Misuse of Facebook's features or violating Facebook's terms of use may result in your account being disabled. Thanks in advance for your understanding and cooperation.

Please refer to http://www.facebook.com/help.php?page=421 for further information.

The Facebook Team

The Pearce Sisters

The Pearce Sisters

Shared via AddThis

Sunday, July 26, 2009

The Dreaded Facebook Warning

From: notification+zv6c61h1@facebookmail.com
Subject: Warning: Your Facebook Account
Date: July 26, 2009 6:52:49 PM CDT
To: stews9@cox.net
Reply-To: notification+zv6c61h1@facebookmail.com

Hi,

Our systems indicate that you've been misusing certain features on the site. This email serves as a warning. Misuse of Facebook's features or violating Facebook's terms of use may result in your account being disabled. Thanks in advance for your understanding and cooperation.

Please refer to http://www.facebook.com/help.php?page=421 for further information.

The Facebook Team

Friday, July 17, 2009

Incubus Dream

So last night I had a very disturbing and weird dream, as follows:

I lived in a neighborhood of 5 storey brick apartments. I was cutting through among the buildings on grass, en route from fetching my mail. Even that had been frustrating because I kept dropping the mail in the breezes and had a hard time getting it all out of the box. So, between the apartments, I was intercepted by a bully. He was bigger than I am, and tormented me mercilessly, forcing me to drop my mail, walking on it, then forcing me to drop my pens, and claiming to have wiped them on his penis, and so on. Typical bully stuff, and I remember wondering why I couldn't rise above this twerp; in real life his type wouldn't have dared bother me at all. It seemed odd to me.

Incidentally, the pens were real ones I own and cherish.

So next thing I knew I was looking up at an aluminum extension ladder propped against one of the buildings, going all the way to the top.

In a blink, of course, I was at the top, and afraid to try getting back down. I feared it would either fall backwards, the feet being set too close to the building, or that it would slide to the left and off the building's wall. I told myself, it's just a dream, slide down, be bold.

Before I could do this, the ladder was flat, as if stretched from roof to roof and I was supposed to back across it. Well, this was worse, and I told myself, it's just a dream, roll off, float down, it's not real height, you can do anything you want.

So I actually brought myself to roll off, a rarity even in a lucid dream for me.

Sure enough, I came down lightly, and thought, wow, I could just float, and fly around, that would be fun.

I thought upward and sure enough bounded up, like a balloon, and so I floated, going up and down, barely making it over trees, as I left the apartments behind and entered a really nice neighborhood of tree-shaded sidewalks and big, beautiful houses. (Somewhat akin to the neighborhoods HOME ALONE moves use in Oak Park or Chicago.)

Here's where it got dark and terrifying for me, as usual. As always.

I bounded over a tree like a balloon and saw a young woman walking along, like a college age girl perhaps. I fell in behind her as she turned into a gate and up a walk to a porch, and I followed to the door, which shut in my face. I recall it was painted pumpkin orange. I actually bonked my head against the door, then thought, no, I can do as I wish, I'm invisible, so I pushed hard and managed to push through the door. And as I came through there was a younger girl than the one I'd followed, and she turned, saw me apparently, and opened her mouth to scream.

Oh no you don't, I thought, and grabbed her head with both hands, and then I put my forehead against hers and pushed, hard, and ENTERED HER HEAD AND BODY.

It terrified her and she danced around stiffly like a puppet in panic, dashing down the hall into a kitchen where the older girl I'd followed sat with a couple other girls; sisters, I gathered, with a couple friends.

And I slid out of the girl I'd possessed long enough to realize her terror had infused me as well, only it also had me sexually aroused now.

And I zapped over to the older girl, entered her via the head, and stayed only an instant. I then flowed out of her and into the hall, where I saw the staircase and went upstairs.

There I found the parents, two older people, laying on a king sized bed naked, obviously having just had sex, the man on the bed normal, head on pillows, the woman sprawled with one leg up and the other wide with her head facing the foot of the bed.

A younger girl yet, about 8 or 9, had been peeking into the room as I'd come up the stairs and was stepping back from the door's edge as I entered the room. I flowed over the bed and hovered for an instant, then lay down on the mother. Very distinct tactile sensations entered the dream here, and I essentially raped her the way an incubus might, remembering that as I did so I saw her both as she was and as the old woman she would become. Even the sensations followed this pattern; her skin was at once middle-aged and loosely old, tight yet velvety soft. Very creepy.

She lay unresisting, almost unaware but looking directly at me with a slight challenge in her eyes.

I left her, floated up, then flowed like smoke after the youngest girl, who by now had padded down the hall and had taken refuge in her room. She was standing by a low bookshelf in front of a bay window with a window seat in it when I entered through her closed door, and she turned, saw me, and made a move, but I pounced, and we both went dark in a very intense burst of sexuality.

Immediately after the blackness, like a blink, I was in the kitchen, and the girl I'd first possessed, perhaps 12, was lying on the kitchen floor, semi- or un-conscious, her sisters dithering around her. She lay ON her nightgown, even though she'd been in pants and shirt earlier. And she was naked, and I solidified, and the others backed off. I knelt and scooped her up, saying, "Well, little princess, we'll just see," and pressed her to me, face and body, in a harsh passionate kiss-and-grind. I entered her sexually and then awoke feeling horrified.

It was as if I'd become a rapist ghost or an incubus on a rampage.

It was vividly real, as if I were watching something really happen. And yes, part of me worries it might have been a psychic glimpse of a real crime or something. It was surreal, yet made some odd kind of sense.

It is the dark spot from which this otherwise bright day began.

Any ideas?






Liber Al II:3 "In the sphere I am
everywhere the centre, as she, the circumference, is nowhere found."
--Alistair Crowley

Monday, July 6, 2009

SF outsider beats big names to £5,000 award


Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2009/jul/06/sf-outsider-edge-hill-award

Chris Beckett sees off Ali Smith and Anne Enright to take the Edge Hill short story prize with The Turing Test

Alison Flood
guardian.co.uk, Monday 6 July 2009 11.24 BST

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Edge Hill short story prize winner Chris Beckett. Photograph: Colin McPherson

A social work lecturer with a sideline in science fiction writing has triumphed over some of the country's best known literary authors, including Booker winner Anne Enright and Whitbread winner Ali Smith, to take the Edge Hill short story prize.

Chris Beckett, who lectures at Anglia Ruskin university, was named winner of the £5,000 award on Saturday night for his collection The Turing Test, 14 stories featuring, among other things, alien planets, genetic manipulation and robots. Beckett said this morning that he was "still pinching [him]self" at the win.

"It was a very big surprise," he said. "Anne Enright won the Booker – two of the other authors [Shena Mackay and Smith] were shortlisted – so I thought I was very small fish compared to them ... I also thought that being a science fiction writer could count against me: a lot of people don't like it, or look at it in some way as less than literary fiction. It's a little blow for the genre, as well as for me – it might persuade a few people that maybe it's worth looking at."

Judge James Walton, chair of Radio 4's The Write Stuff, said that Beckett's win was "a bit of a surprise to the judges, none of whom knew they were science fiction fans beforehand". But once the judging process started, pitting Enright's Yesterday's Weather, Mackay's The Atmospheric Railway, Smith's The First Person and Other Stories and Gerard Donovan's Country of the Grand against The Turing Test, it soon became clear that Beckett's entry had been the most enjoyable – and impressive – read.

"One by one we admitted it," said Walton. "It was Beckett who seemed to us to have written the most imaginative and endlessly inventive stories, fizzing with ideas and complete with strong characters and big contemporary themes. We also appreciated the sheer zest of his storytelling and the obvious pleasure he had taken in creating his fiction."

The win is especially poignant for Beckett, as his publisher, the tiny Elastic Press, is in the process of winding up. He's hoping the win will mean a larger publisher might be interested in his writing. "At the moment you have to be in the know to hear about my books, and I'm hoping that will change," he said. His agent, he added, was "already on the case".

Beckett joins a list of previous winners for the Edge Hill prize – the only UK award for a short story collection by a single author – including Colm Toibin and Claire Keegan. He said the win would give him the time to concentrate more on his writing – the author of two novels, he's currently in the middle of a new story collection. "Recently I thought I should perhaps sit down and write non-science fiction, but actually I don't want to. I like the robots and the bits and pieces – they make it more fun," he said. "It strikes me that most kinds of fiction is about making up characters and plots, so why not make up the world as well – go the whole hog?"

Beckett won £5,000 and a specially commissioned painting by Liverpool artist Pete Clarke, also taking the £1,000 readers' prize. Enright won the second prize of £1,000 for Yesterday's Weather.