The more things Improve

Our society has a propensity for indulging itself in a constant crusade of improvement. From the way we look to the way we perform our jobs to how the world perceives us. But in our vigil for amelioration we tend to lose sight of something so important, that our very souls may depend on it. I'm talking about the need for the spiritual world to re tighten it's grasp on the esoteric sciences that have gone the way of the traditional rain dance, or fertility ceremony. In our society of science and facts, hard evidence is paramount to any foundation of belief. Is it so wrong to pursue alternate avenues of thought? Or is it considered taboo to dabble in the esoteric? Perhaps beyond the ranting of present day doomsayers such as Zachariah Sitchin, Alex Jones,and David Wilcocks, there are some authentic researchers who have stumbled upon a truth so profound that it will shake the very foundations of the modern paradigms.
In his book, Underworld, Graham Hancock speaks of the spiritual world that resides simultaneously with ours. This world is generally inaccessible to us except by shaman or the occasional savant that may stumble upon it by accident. The indigenous peoples of South America, Africa and the ancient seats of Syria, known as present day Iraq train their whole entire lives to attain the ability to perceive this world, albeit in a limited fashion. In all cultures this training inevitably requires great physical pain to the shaman in training, and a lifetime of strict self control and constraint in all things. But as a caveat they have developed what some have called ESP or a 7th sense. (with the 5 physical senses and intuition being the 6th) This 7th sense has been attained with such activities such as days of chanting or dancing, but more commonly by the shamans ingesting brews of plants containing Dimethyltryptamine, or DMT. This chemical is found common to many different cultural shamanic rituals and is found naturally is several species of plants naturally growing world wide. Criminalized by most countries, this hallucinogenic chemical has a unified experience that science cannot or will not explain. Unrelated people all over the world have experienced by what can only be described as the spiritual world. Claims have been made that the dead walk freely in this realm and are under the same constraints as we are in our world, unable to perceive or interact with our our physical world except by the rare instances that we are able to pop in this realm. DMT experiences are ALL very similar, and require no preconceived notions of what to expect. The typical user reports that the physical world quite quickly metamorphisizes into a spiritual world free of the constraints of our physical world. The ability to see beyond our world, to travel into what has been described as hyperspace or the realm of God. More controlled study needs to be done, and yes this studying goes against the scope of this article, but modern man will not accept anything that doesn't have hard firm evidence of being real. More information about the shamanic rituals and DMT can be found by following the work of Hancock or the late Terrence Mckenna.
Astrology has long been a dominate force in the lives of society, but the term should be modified to be Astrotheology. Simply put, astrotheolgy means the religion of the stars. All past societies have relied on the gnosis that "the gods" had descended from heaven to the earth, bringing together the celestial and the terestial spheres. As Michael Tsarion has said the reason most people have not lent credence to this ideology is because it uncovers the truth behind today's modern paradigm of religion and big business.What would the catholic church say when presented with text and stories of Eden, Noah's deluge,and even Christ that were THOUSANDS of years older than our biblical tales? These references point to a stellar religion that has been retold in a humanized way. Astrotheolgy has one unified theme:Worship of celestial bodies. One example is the (and I know i will piss off a lot of people) story of Christ. Ancient people in their observations, have noted that on December 21'st the sun seems to "die" for three days. It fails to attain its apex that is common throughout the rest of the year. This is caused by the tilt that the earth goes through like a spinning top called the ecliptic path or procession. And low and behold, on the third day the sun, the giver of life, the light of the world or the "son" rises from the seemingly dead and is reborn on the 25Th of December. This was common knowledge throughout all of history and, being a "pagan" idea, was adopted by the Romans who were seeking to save their failing empire by embracing this new idea of Christ and warping and perverting it to their own use. The birth of the figure Christ was moved from sometime in mid October as the Hebrew story goes, to a more acceptable date coinciding with the more popular (at the time) winter solstice. During this time, the sun rises in the constellation Virgo, hence we have born of a virgin. Add in the fact that for thousands of years the main symbol for the zodiac was the cross of the four archetypes of astrology and we have dying on the cross. Why has this knowledge been suppressed? Power and control of the masses. What would happen to a society that was allowed to run rampant without religious dogmas to guide us in a civilized manner? Without the threat of the loss of our very souls, life on earth could become chaotic to say the least. Religion is nothing more than the glue that holds the ill informed and uneducated in the position of the servant. For more on Astrotheology see the works of Jorden Maxwell or Michael Tsarion. You WILL be astonished by the parallels between modern religion and this age old divination tradition.
One of the more, in this writers opinion, sceptical divination arts, is the Tarot. Today's Gypsy fortune tellers and modern phycics use of this ancient science has been twisted and tuned into a giant financial opportunity. But in ancient times the tarot was used for everything from family planning to societical ideologies. The true art of reading has been lost for millennial and is only mentioned as an alternate form of divination.
I may have been a bit hasty in grouping Zachariah Sitchin with David Wilcocks and Alex Jones. While he did have some dark ideas of what we are about to face in the coming years, he was above all else, an educated man who graduated from the University of London with a degree in economics. He was among the few dozen people in the world who was trained in deciphering ancient Sumerian texts. While his rendition of the translations is accurate, it weaves a story that in many ways parallels the Torah, if not giving a "scientific" explanation of Genesis. As the deciphered texts read, an ancient space going race known as the Annunaki crash landed on the earth thousands of years before any written history. This group needed to rebuild their civilisation on earth to repair their craft. The needed raw materials such as gold and diamonds to replace/repair their ship. After several hundred years( these guys did live considerably longer than us) they grew tired of toiling in mines and doing the general physical work required to procure these things. So, being well versed in genetics as any such race with space exploration would be, they decided to change the highest form of indigenous life on earth, known today as cromagnon man to a more intelligent creature that could be controlled , but at the same time would be intelligent enough to make decisions themselves to do the work for them. "And the Elohim created man in their image, after their likeness" should read with a good translation " then the gods RE-created man after their likeness" This idea is supported by the very book that theologians cite. 1st Corinthians 15:45 speaks of the first Adam or original man and the second Adam, or post creation man. Could this be a reference to an even more ancient theme? The story of the serpent (the serpent race opens up a whole other idea that is beyond the scope of this article) helping man rebel against his creators is retold from Sumerian texts that describe one of the annunaki giving the slave race created by them knowledge, either genetically or via education that they were slaves.The Sumerian texts also speak of man rebelling against the annunaki, their creators and that the annunaki needed to befuddle their language. Genisis 11: 7 "come let us go down and confuse their language so they will not understand each other" This could be construed as evidence of further genetic manipulation and the reasoning to create a second race, or the second Adam. This man would not have the intelligence to rebel, being quite dumbed down from the original genetically tweaked cromagnon man. The texts also speak of these annunaki waring with themselves, possible because of the idea of what they were considering doing as being a morally rehensible act, and one sect breaking off and becoming Mose's Jehovah, this being the group that wanted mankind to be servants. The very first commandment alone speaks of Jehovah's fear of his servants learning the truth "though shall put no other god before me and shall love me with all your heart and all your soul and all your mind" it is written that "you shall worship the lord you god and him only will thou serve" This commandment was way more important, thus comes before the 6th commandment "thou shall not kill" Many more such similarities exist between these ancient texts and our modern bible and may be discussed in a further article.
All things being said, I urge all my readers to explore these alternate ideas and ways of thinking and not to take mainstream history and religion as the end all truth. To quote Graham Hancock I will end with this: "We are a race with amnesia" and we need to embrace the idea that we have forgotten our past and we need to explore these ideas and old ways of thinking to recapture our true history and perhaps move onto a future free from tyrannical world wide religions dictating their version or moral right and wrong and allow us to express ourselves as the intelligent creature that we are.

The New Laws Against Smoking

There is a deadly poison being given to millions of people every day in the United States. This poison, which is publicly available worldwide, highly addictive, and kills millions of people every year, is tobacco. Tobacco contains up to 6 percent of its dry weight as pure nicotine, and the Center for Disease Control, or CDC, suggests that nicotine may be just as addictive as heroin and cocaine. Add in the one hundred and fifty billion dollars spent annually by the United States on medical costs to treat tobacco related illness and the fact that one in every five deaths is a result of smoking and we should see the importance of changing the law to making tobacco a schedule A controlled substance. This would in effect criminalize the sale, manufacture, or possession of tobacco. This change is necessary.

Opium addiction ran rampant in the seventeenth and eighteenth century and nicotine addiction runs rampant today. Once the destructive properties of opium were widely known, it became criminalized in most of the world. Clearly these earlier leaders, who recognized that if the people are addicted to something that is killing them, they need to be protected from it, were far smarter than the ones who are allowing the big tobacco companies to become filthy rich at the public’s expense. Perhaps the large amount of revenue is more important than our nation’s health. Big tobacco has become the neighborhood pusher and our society has become addicted to their wares. This drug has such powerfully addictive properties that I personally have seen people rummage in public ashtrays outside the local supermarket for the little bit of tobacco that remains in an extinguished cigarette. I am a nicotine addict and I have tried unsuccessfully several times to quit. I panic at the thought of not having my cigarettes in my pocket at any given time. When I park my car and before I enter any building, I light up a cigarette because I may not have one for a while. After an hour or so I become real nervous and it becomes hard to concentrate or even be still and I have to sneak off and get another “hit”. This is a terrible way to live and should not happen to anybody.

The medical cost figures vary from one source to another but all agree that tobacco related medical expenses are the single biggest contributor to the high cost of insurance premiums. The medical costs incurred by treating these collective effects of smoking and chewing tobacco are estimated to be $150 billion (Parish pg2) annually for the United States alone. This expense drives up the cost of health insurance so fewer people can afford private insurance and the burden of the medical treatment falls on the state. The lost work and man hours due to tobacco related illnesses further strains our economy.

Smokers have become a pariah in our society and are often ostracized in designated areas if they are allowed at all. All 50 states have smoke free air provisions (“Fact Sheet” pg1) that have been enacted and most ban smoking in any public building. Even private clubs are more often prohibiting smoking on their premises. Public awareness has been increased through government and related health agencies in the last 50 years. Between 1965 and 1990 there was a national decrease in the number of smokers from 65% in 1965 to 23% in 1990. Some major companies will not even hire an otherwise fully competent prospective employee if they smoke. The financial effects of loss of productivity due to sickness and increased medical insurance costs are no secret to them. The bottom line is about money and if an employee costs more money to maintain, they are replaced as any aging inefficient machine would be. Some studies have been done on the behavioral effect that smoking has on us and the habit has even been labeled a gateway to harder drugs such as marijuana and cocaine. Smoking has even been linked to anti social behavioral patterns by altering the brains chemistry and our perceptions. The most likely reason for this is the way nicotine raises our blood pressure. That may cause an increase in long term anxiety that in turn is the root for a lot of most anti social behavioral patterns.

Nicotine attacks the membrane inside the blood vessels (Parish pg 1) by making little pits in the surface of the lining. This lining then begins to gather little bits of cholesterol and starts a chain reaction dam like effect that eventually leads to complete blockage. High blood pressure is the inevitable next step and this leads to heart attack and stroke. The most known effect on our bodies however, is the effect smoking tobacco products have on our respiratory system. The very act of burning the material heats up the organic matter to a state that turns it into a superheated gas (Brodish pg2) that scorches the delicate mucous membrane that our lungs and related organs are comprised of. Oddly enough, nicotine is more concentrated and thus more toxic in a colder state, but the way it is absorbed immediately into the blood via oxygen contaminated in the lungs its effect is compounded by its sudden rush into our systems. Tar is a byproduct of the process of smoking that has further respiratory damaging traits. Tar collects in our alveoli and reduces their oxygen retaining properties by clogging the path the oxygen enters. There are several compelling reasons to start to change the law and eventually outlaw tobacco. I see my children as a few of those reasons. I see a lower health care and general better health overall as another. I see a more productive society that isn’t hampered by the cost to treat the monkey that lives on the backs of a quarter of its population another. I see it happening soon.

Wanna carry 50,000 full length movies in your wallet?

Ever since the dawn of modern computing in 1945 or so when Eniac filled an entire room, we have been trying to make the computer smaller. The first revolution in shrinking came in the 1950’s when tubes were replaced by transistors made mainly of silicon. Then in the early 1960’s these transistors were replaced by MOS, and MOSFET , metal oxidizing semiconductors (field effect transformer) These where made of silicon and germanium) Other esoteric materials have been developed and used since, with no drastic reduction in size. Until now. Now we have begun to explore an even smaller material, the atom itself. What makes individual atoms or small clusters of several atoms useful to us in computing is all atoms have only two states, positive charged or negative charged, which fits in to our binary using systems. The problem we face today is reading and writing to these atoms. Currently, the only technology that can do this is a special tunneling microscope, which is impractical to use in personal computers or even business machines.
But another approach is to take silicon, and dope it with phosperous atoms. Data could then be encoded in the spins of the nucleus of the atom. Each electron around an atom can be manipulated like the needle on a compass. By applying an external magnetic force, the “compass needles” can be manipulated either in a “northern” (positive) direction, or “southern” (negative) direction. An Australian physicist named Bruce Kane, was able to read the net spin of 10,000 of these manipulated atoms together. This doesn’t seem like a big deal, because it takes 10k atoms to register. But by comparison, the previous efforts were only able to read 10 billion by a technique called magnetic resonance. This is a million fold improvement. I for one am excited at the possibility of 250 Terrabyte drives that are smaller than a credit card. Of course, our programs will get a lot more sophisticated and require a proportional amount of room, but the manipulation of this data will be astounding by our standards. The future in tech is always exciting, and I am very grateful to be alive during this time.

A day in the park

 

The city park along Miller Street is alive with vibrant health and spectacular shows of

nature. Here is a place among the bustling daily grind of life in Bradford Pennsylvania where

many of the citizens find solace. To fully appreciate it, go with early in the morning, for that is

when life is wakening.

As one looks eastward, a visage of hardwoods proudly displaying their splendid autumn

colors encompass the horizon. The brilliant morning sun stages a dance of light on the leaf

covered ground, as chipmunks dart back and forth in some game of tag. Puffs of heated breath

escape from a talking elderly couple as they stroll towards one of the many benches that

provide a place to sit, and perhaps ponder for a while. The chipmunks quickly dart to the nearest trees and begin excitedly scolding the oblivious couple. One bold chipmunk, curiosity stronger than its fear of humans, follows the elderly couple, as they once again rise and begin their tour.

On the right side of the park, a babbling creek carries its chorus from the front of the park all the way through and out the far side. Its song: one of jubilation at the freedom it is promised at the end of its journey. A hungry fish can be seen occasionally flashing at the surface briefly before plunging back to the safety of the bottom. Inspired by the fish, the song seems to change somewhat. When the wind blows westward, spots of light from the rising sun shine upon the river like a mirror.

A short distance into the wooded area, playground equipment begins to appear. A high arched swing set stands stands poised to launch a gleeful child into the air like a pendulum. Strips of rubber are strung awaiting their next arrival. Nearby, a footworn trail leads to a serpentine sliding board that is kept at a mirrored shine by the friction of thousands of children it has ushered to its bottom. The breeze that seems prevalent this morning is throwing the leaves up into a cyclone at the foot of the the ladder making a rustle like dry cornhusks on the floor of a barn. A wooden merry-go-round sports the colors of Christmas, red and green. Its boards are carved with the initials of young lovers, hoping to forever immortalize their names together. Off to the left, almost eclipsed by the majestic trees that tower overhead, sprawls a net woven from used tires that are bolted together invisibly, waiting to test the agility of any who dare cross its obstacle course. The dark rubber lays in high contrast to the metallic poles of the swing set.

A group of energetic children, even in this early morning hour, arrives and makes full use of the idle merry-go-round. One unfortunate lad is elected to push the rest into a speedy frenzy, and begins the slow round trip around the worn path, breathlessly pushing at the edge of the heavy merry-go-round. A young giggling girl is thrown away and attempts to catch hold of another, but misses and instead lands at the feet of the boy who was pushing. He is now laboring to breathe and collapses beside the girl. To the dismay of the riders, the two wander off in search of more fun. One by one, the children dismount the slowing carousel and follow the pair off towards the swings. The leaves chase after the children as they make their passage though them, and begin create a hollow sound as they crash back the ground. They swing for a short time and once again dismount and disappear on the nest leg of their morning. Slowly the swings return to rest.

Almost immediately, a large furry red squirrel descends the rough trunk of a large maple tree and scampers over to where the children were playing. He is in search of food, and children often supply the park residents with sweet treats and bright colored paper candy wrappers that make nice treasures stored among the nuts in their wintering nests. Satisfied that nothing remains for him this morning, he quickly ascends the maple once again.

Further into the wooded grove, wooden horseshoe pits filled with clay are sunk beneath lights on stained wooden poles. Covered pavilions contain tables where large families gather at family events or celebrations to enjoy a meal that each contributes towards. A well-used grill stands nearby to offer the family chef a place to create his next masterpiece hamburger. Grey cement offers support for the spacious pavilion, and the tables are well anchored into it. Trash cans sit at both doorways, and chipmunks are competing with a large black bird for a tasty morsel that has fallen from it. Victory goes to the bird as he flies off with his prize. The losers scuttle away for a short distance, chattering to themselves, as if they are blaming each other for the loss.

Emerging from the back end of the park, a basketball court sits off to the left, adorned in a high fence meant to contain a stray ball. Leaves billow across it in a race to bunch up against the fence. Beside the contained court, is another cage, this one housing several sharp angled metal sculptures that bold skateboarders and bicyclists perform tricks to awe their friends. Cars can now be seen and heard as they speed on by. The little creatures are not brave enough to venture this far out of the safety of the woods. Here is where the city once again dominates the world. The stark difference is not strong enough to cancel out the feelings of peace that the journey through the park has left. A little of the park can stay with you all day if you let it.

 

The 64-bit question

I have recently decided to do another build. This time I went for a total 64 bit system. Even

the operating system is 64 bit, Windows XP professional 64 bit. An AMD4200+ dualcore 64 X2

fed by 2 gigs of Geil dual-channel RAM in full dual channel mode. I already have the order in for

2 more identical sticks. And to render my games I have a Gigabyte Geforce 8500 gt graphics

card with its own 512GB of GDDR2 in the PCIE-x16 bus. All of this is plugged into an ASRock

AliveNF6G main board. With the Geforce DirectX 10 compliant, I can hit frame rates that are

12 times my old rigs setup. And thus I begin the long Burn-in period for my CPU. When I finaly

get done installing all my programs and tweaking away, I may fool around with the multiplier

and do a little overclocking. I better order a spare CPU, knowing my foolishness.

Children as spy's

Ever since the Internet became popular, it's been common to hear that intimate details of our lives somehow end up on the web browsers of potential employers doing background checks. Now we have the over looming fear that our children, whose blogposts and instant messages may be a source of potentially incriminating information about our personal lives. Police have arrested a woman, using her son's cached record that is kept online about his mother buying him and his underage friends a keg of beer. Perhaps instead of blaming the ISP's for getting caught, perhaps these people should take a look at themselves first and foremost, since it was their own inappropriate behaviors that actually got them in trouble. Or perhaps you are in the camp that sees this kind of snooping as Totalitarian big brother type of a regiment. Do government officials really have the right to use any information gleaned form a child's work? Ethically , no. Legally, that is still up for debate. As long as the tax payers are content to just sit back and let theses things happen to them , then they will continue as long as we let them. Another solution is to not let your children anywhere near the Internet. Or encryption maybe the key. Anonymity can also help. Teach your children that we have to watch over our shoulder because the government is their enemy. You pick which side you want to be on. Remember, Uncle Sam is watching you.

The Old Milkhouse

The old milk house

 

Growing up on the farm, I had firsthand knowledge of the food chain and how we all had our place in it. Everything was grown or raised for a purpose, and that purpose was feeding us. From the stalls of their birth, to the end of their life in the old milk house that served as our butcher shed, all of the chickens, ducks, cows, and pigs would eventually end up on the table as a meal for us. That was the reality of life on the farm.

My grandfather was an enigma to me. He was a strong man, larger than life. He was a man of few words and even fewer compliments. Every fall, around the beginning of October, he would take the choice livestock to the old milk house where they would end their days and become our winter sustenance. Entering that building with my grandfather was a milestone for me. That would be the day that I would leave my childhood behind and take the first steps towards manhood. That day finally came in the fall of 1981.

At fourteen years old, I was in the crux of life that bordered on childhood and adolescence. Toys still littered the floor of my bedroom: matchbox cars, plastic army men, Star Wars action figures. In contrast, I also had Farah Fawcett, in two-dimensional life-size beauty, on the wall directly in front of my bed. It was her solemn duty to witness the transformation of Chucky into Charles. In silence, she watched as I crawled out of bed for the last time of my life as a child. Today was the day that I would be joining grandpa in the old milk house. Today would forever change my life.

In silence, we ate breakfast. My grandfather sat at the head of the table and ate his normal morning meal that my grandmother had prepared before I awoke. It was the same thing I had, three fried eggs with several pieces of crispy bacon. The only difference between our meals was the coffee in his cup and the milk in mine. Shoveling the last egg into his mouth, my grandfather rose from the table and gave me a look as if to say "Its time". He then went into the pantry and grabbed his stained baseball hat and with one motion set it on his head, opened the door, and exited the house. I had been hunting several times before and had shot my share of deer, rabbits, ducks, and squirrels. I was even a budding trapper, as the skins that adorned one wall of the cow barn could attest. I prided myself on the fact that I could make enough money selling fox and beaver skins to buy my own school clothes and I had even been able to purchase a Honda dirt bike, which I diligently took care of. Today I would not be killing a nameless wild animal; I would be killing a friend.

My grandfather always discouraged the naming of the livestock. He said it humanized them, made them pet's instead of food. However, I secretly had names for most of cows, and all of the pigs. Bumpy was more than a pig though. He was always following me around. When he was a piglet, he would nuzzle me and fall asleep in my arms. He would even come out to the bus stop and meet me after school. The thought that I would be eating him one morning never really dawned on me. Today it was Bumpy's turn to go into the old milk house, and today was the day I followed grandpa.

Grandpa met me outside and motioned for me to go in the milk house. He was going to get Bumpy from the barn, which was a short distance from the house, and meet me inside. The inside was typical to any other building on the farm, plain boarded with rough-cut hemlock. Various cutting and sawing tools adorned the wall. A waist high table, about eight feet in length and solid as a tree, was the centerpiece of the only room. And in the far corner was the hammer. The hammer was longer than my arm, and at the business end was a 16-pound piece of solid iron that would crush anything it impacted. Its job today was to crush Bumpy's skull. Tentatively I grabbed the worn handle and grunted from the unexpected effort it took just to lift it. At 14, my muscles were quite developed from the rigorous work of farm life, but this was a heavier burden than just physical weight. The very thought of what I was about to do exhausted me. The familiar snorting of Bumpy preceded the opening of the shed door as my grandfather stepped inside and was followed by the noisy pig. The morning light illuminated the spartan room as my grandfather took a pair of iron shackles off the wall and fastened them around Bumpy's rear legs. He then attached one end of a small chain to the shackles and the other to a waiting hook suspended from a pulley high above our heads from the rafters. Oblivious to his fate, Bumpy stood still and sniffed at the air, as my grandfather motioned for me to get the hammer. "Make sure you hit him hard enough to knock him out." My grandfather said softly to me. I conjured up an image in my head, one of me outside with an axe and a stubborn piece of firewood, and lifted the heavy hammer as high above me as I could. I found myself standing on my tiptoes as I stretched upwards. Down came the crushing blow, as I grunted from the effort, and made a resounding thud as the 16 pounds of iron met the thick dense bone that comprised a pig's skull. The pig immediately crumpled and sank to the floor. I felt the beginnings of tears as I looked down at my friend laying in that unnatural pose

Surprisingly, there was no blood. The only indication that something was amiss was the pigs tongue was hanging out of his mouth. Grandpa bent to examine Bumpy, and satisfied that he was completely out cold, rose and hoisted the unconscious pig up by the rope that hung down from the pulley. After a few tugs the pig's head was at waist, heighth and grandpa tied the rope to another hook that protruded from the wall. Now was the hard part. I had to cut the main artery in the pig's neck. This was done so that most of the blood would drain out of the muscle tissue, making the meat fit to eat. Choking back tears, I picked up the 8-inch machete and swallowed hard as I pressed the sharp edge against the tough skin of the pig's throat.

What happened next has replayed in my mind over and over again and has awakened me several times from a sound sleep over the course of my life. Bumpy regained consciousness mid cut and screamed. The sound of a pig in distress has many times and by many people been described as a woman's scream. That day in the milk house, I heard Bumpy scream. The scream was followed by the death throes of the pig, as he trashed about, suspended from the rafters. Blood sprayed out in a crimson rain, and soaked me from head to foot. A hoof had somehow found my head and knocked me onto the floor. It was as if Bumpy was getting even for the betrayal. Dazed, I sat there on the blood soaked floor of the old milk house as grandpa skillfully took over the job and mercifully finished Bumpy off. I felt the need to throw up, but I held it back as much as I held back the tears that inevitably came to my eyes. Without so much as a word grandpa let bumpy down onto the table, his lifeless body no longer an animal that I had fed and played with, but a pile of meat that needed to be cut into hams, bacon, and steaks . My job was done. I did not have the skill required to process the pig into the various pieces of meat, so I left my grandfather there alone and went into the house to clean myself up. My grandma looked up briefly from the breakfast dishes that she was washing and gave me a knowing look.

That day my innocence was gone. That day I had murdered my friend. In the following weeks, my matchbox cars and army men slowly vanished and were replaced by tools and clothes meant for work not play. Only Farah remained, silent in her smile. She would never again look down and see a child.