Spontaneous Musings

[Note, I'm home sick or under the weather at the moment, so apologies for typos, etc - due to brain fog.]

As always, Good News is more often than not in the eyes of the beholder. So mileage may vary.

1. 13.14 Million or 4% of the population of the US came out and protested for "No Kings". "We’re honored to announce a final count of 13.14 million in attendance across 2,300+ No Kings protests nationwide. It took a little longer to finalize due to the sheer scale, but the turnout was historic!
So far, 71 MAGA agitators have been arrested, with 62 additional investigations still underway. We’re actively reviewing online threats and working on escalating where needed. If you see something, say something." - per Alt National Parks.

What does this mean: The 3.5% Rule or How a small minority can change the world
( excerpt )

2. 81% of U.S. adults say that if a federal court rules that an action is illegal, then Trump has to follow its ruling, per NBC poll. Among Trump supporters, 50% agree.

3. From limiting who can purchase most semiautomatic rifles on the market today to raising the minimum age to buy ammunition, Colorado Democrats in the Colorado legislature were busy this year imposing new gun regulations - specifically in the state of Colorado.

The 12 gun bills passed by the Colorado legislature this year and signed into law

4. Disgraced Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein has been found guilty of committing a sex crime by a jury in New York, more than a year after the state Supreme Court overturned his 2020 conviction on felony sex crime charges. ( Read more... )

https://www.msnbc.com/top-stories/latest/harvey-weinstein-guilty-retrial-sex-crime-new-york-rcna202460

5.The House approves four nominees to the governing board of the Office of Congressional Conduct, providing the board with enough members to operate and continue its role of investigating and uncovering misconduct by Congress members.

https://campaignlegal.org/update/win-ethics-clc-partners-succeed-preserving-office-congressional-conduct

6.Library of Congress employees uphold the Constitution’s separation of powers by not admitting two DOJ officials appointed by the president to lead the agency who have not been confirmed by the Senate.

https://www.cnn.com/2025/05/12/politics/library-of-congress-trump-justice-blanche?bt_ee=2QgjkqKxaHyuagkHOeb0m6RbI2h%2FZ9394%2B4e4zEovFoF9q%2BF2LTnhSUP%2BuXHEzeX&bt_ts=1747140898649

7.A federal court orders the administration to promptly facilitate contact between Widmer Josneyder Agelviz Sanguino and his lawyers after immigration enforcement illegally deported Sanguino to a notoriously abusive prison in El Salvador.

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/venezuelan-man-admitted-us-refugee-sent-salvadoran-prison-rcna207642

8.Six weeks after being seized off the streets and detained under a false claim by DHS, doctoral student Rümeysa Öztürk is released from ICE detention to resume her studies and live in the community while attorneys seek reinstatement of her visa.

https://www.cnn.com/2025/05/09/us/rumeysa-ozturk-tufts-bail-release

9. Attorneys general from 20 states file two lawsuits against the administration over its threats to illegally withhold billions of congressionally allocated funds from states if they don’t meet federal immigration enforcement demands.

https://thehill.com/homenews/5298257-20-states-sue-trump-administration-grants-immigration-enforcement/

10. Colorado becomes the ninth state to pass a state-level Voting Rights Act into law.

https://coloradonewsline.com/2025/05/12/polis-signs-voting-rights-act-colorado/

11.Florida: A bill that would have required proof of U.S. citizenship when registering to vote fails to advance in the legislature.

https://floridaphoenix.com/2025/05/08/the-failed-florida-election-bill-that-angered-voting-rights-and-voting-integrity-advocates-alike/

( the rest )

Okay, I found 98 items. And I'm tired.

[I feel at times that reading through the news is akin to watching a television serial with a really annoying villain, and I keep thinking, come on writers, kill it already. But alas no, they kill off the characters I like instead. I want new writers. That said, it's not all doom and gloom, there's spots of good news in there - actually more good than bad if you know where to look - and depending on your perspective. I've been watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer - and it's not only weirdly comforting for a horror series, but also made me a bit hopeful and optimistic.]

Good night and Good Luck all.

I'd cough you to sleep, but I think that would be a tad discomforting? So here's a photo of a flower instead:

[The title is actually a riff off of a Beatles song lyric, the song is entitled A Day in the Life written in 1967 by John Lennon during the Vietnam War. (Lennon didn't really write protest songs, he wrote riffs on what he observed around him.) A nasty war - and the last war that Americans were "drafted" to serve. A lot of folks fled to Canada during that WAR to avoid the draft. It lasted seemingly forever. They did away with the draft partly because of that War. My uncle was in it, and when I visited France in the 1980s, I stayed with a French family whose father had served in Vietnam, on the French side, when France was occupying it. We really don't learn from each other, do we? I also got to visit a bunch of WWII bunkers when I was visiting France in the 1980s. I was staying in Bretagne, and the bunkers were Nazi bunkers along the beaches, while the Nazi's occupied France back in the early 1940s.It's actually an interesting song.. and it starts with the following lyrics:

"I read the news today oh boy
About a lucky man who made the grade
And though the news was rather sad..." ]

I came back to work today and felt bombarded with information. I went on my personal email - and felt bombarded with information. I went on my Firefox Browser (which has various articles) and felt bombarded with information.
Most of it anxiety inducing, or just confusing.

I looked at the national news? And thought...ACKKKK! Then looked at the global news? And thought... ACKKK! Local news isn't quite as bad? But still...ack? ( A Mexican Navy Ship crashed into the Brooklyn Bridge over the weekend, it was a lovely sailing ship, destroyed the sails and injured and killed a few crew members and passengers. And that wasn't the worst news (I won't tell you what that is - mainly because I managed to forget about it completely and do not feel like hunting it down). It was all over the local news (the Mexican Navy Ship accident - they are still trying to figure out why it crashed and why it lost control of its navigation, apparently). That and the NJ Transit Strike - which appears to have reached a tentative agreement, resolving the strike.) I just wanted the weather. The weather in NYC isn't that bad, it's 70F/21C at the moment. And it was 55F/12C this morning. With a breeze. A crisp spring day. I wore a sweater and a jacket. On the way home? Just the jacket.

It's also very pretty in NYC, especially in Brooklyn, which is heavily wooded and residential (or the area I reside in, is, not all areas are created equal). NYC has a policy - for every tree removed, you plant about twenty. It used to be two, now, it's twenty. So as a result, we have a lot of trees. Also flowers - due to the climate, which is relatively mild in comparison to 85% of the rest of the country, we have all sorts of flowers and they last for a long time.

See?

Some bearded irises of the purple variety...




Some of the orange variety - at least I think they are orange. I personally prefer purple, but your mileage may vary.



And...whatever this is...



Also, kind of sore today -( Read more... )

Anyhow.. I'm trying to avoid the news at the moment for my mental health (aren't we all? I'm sure you can all relate?). (Also it's not like I can do anything about it? Everyone wants money - I don't have enough to go around and still survive. Also, it feels a bit like I'm throwing it down a well. Conflict and protesting make me physically ill. So I guess I'll just keep muddling through and doing what I am doing? Also the news for the most part has been following a specific pattern, or so I've noticed? At the start of the week it is horrible, and then sometime around the weekend, it becomes rather optimistic. So avoid the news until well, the weekend?)

Makes me think of this Beatles album I linked you to? It ends with...George Harrison's Here Comes the Sun. (George was more optimistic than Lennon, who wrote Day in a Life.) Someone on social media stated George Harrison was banning the Republicans from using his music, and I felt the need to advise them that Harrison was dead. Long dead. Kind of impossible, unless it's his estate or he's doing it from the grave?

Anyhow, here's another iris..

I dealt with my rage (see previous post) by donating to National Parks Conservation Organization. A little history for those who don't know what the US National Parks are? First of all there are currently sixty-three national parks across fifty states, and here's a complete list of them.
( go here )

Quote for today:

"Words are singularly the most powerful force available to humanity. We can choose to use this force constructively with words of encouragement, or destructively using words of despair. Words have energy and power with the ability to help, to heal, to hinder, to hurt, to harm, to humiliate and to humble.
Yehuda Berg"

I fear that I am not always careful or mindful of my words, particularly when I'm angry, cranky, or not feeling well, aka my best self. The difficulty with writing on a blog or on social media platforms or texting or emails, is often words get sent without much thought. And are often reactive or just random thoughts? And I've been cranky lately, combination of sleep deprivation and well other things. I have a doctor's appointment tomorrow and of course it will rain tomorrow - it usually rains when I have a doctor's appointment. And the doctor has been irritating me - they've texted me twenty times informing me of the appointment (I've confirmed five times already), sent a message to their portal, called, and acted like it is my first appointment (it's a follow-up), and want me to enroll in Amazon One, I do not want to enroll in Amazon One for quicker and more secure check in.

It was a lovely day, in the 60s F. Sunny. Nice breeze. Crisp blue sky. So I took a walk at lunch to Battery City Park, which has been rehabilitated. Fresh green grass. An urban garden - which was put in at the prompting of a bunch of high school students who requested a plot of land in the park to plant vegetables.



( more photos )

I sat in one of the little blue plastic chairs in the park (which you can see in one of the photos above, I think), for a bit, basking in the sunshine and grounding myself in nature (such that it is). Watched the high school students tour and learn how to volunteer and work in the urban garden. Then, got up, reluctantly, to leave - and as I was leaving, ran into a mad rush of gift vendors dashing across the park with their stuff - somewhat illegally, I think. Because the police stopped them and pulled them out of the fenced off portion of the park and made them go back out onto the street.

A bit of advice, if you ever decide to visit this portion of New York City and want to go to the Statue of Liberty? Get tickets at Castle Clinton, which is an old ruined historic site towards the West End of the Park or online. You can't get tickets from the people trying to sell them to you at the entrance to the park. They driven me nuts - the ticket vendors. I keep shaking my head at them, whenever they block my path - "no, no, I don't want to go to the Statue of Liberty". Today? The guy in front of me told one of them: "Local". That's all he said, and the vendor jumped back, instantly leaving him alone. I followed his lead and it worked like a charm.

Okay off to bed...leaving you all with a picture of some flowers that I saw in the park.

Everyone talks about their POD. My POD is basically me, and the wildlife out my window. Although I'm not sure that counts - since it is outside my window. So in reality, my POD is me and the aerogarden lettuce that I'm growing in my kitchen. Also the occasional delivery person or super or neighbor - but they are all wearing masks. Well that is except for this guy....

( maskless wonder spotting )

If you can't see the picture - which you won't in about a month or so, it's a Hasidim Orthodox Jew in full gear without the mask.

Other than that it's a cat's life outside my window. I much prefer the backyard view to the front - it has birds, feral cats, and squirrels. There's the occasional human - but I can't see them all that well.



I've nicknamed the cat "Patches", there's also Ghost, and Spunky Kitty.
But mainly it's just Patches and Ghost.

Less birds about. There was however a couple of squirrels...



You can sort of see them - one camouflaged with the tree. I should buy binoculars with a camera attachment - but I'm not exactly techie, and my hands shake - so it may not work. But I've been debating. By the time I get them - I'll probably be in the office again.

Speaking of which...our tele-work from home agreement to the surprise of no one - has been extended to March 5. Like with everything else? I got four emails - just in case I missed it. (I suppose this is progress - considering from February to roughly November of 2020, getting any information was akin to pulling teeth. Now they've gone for overkill.) Personally, I think they should just make it indefinite until further notice. But what do I know?

Staff Meeting From Doom!

Well, informed boss of three project change orders that had potential issues. Boss proceeded to tell me that I need to keep them in the loop. (Kind of am, it's not my fault they don't read my status reports and work from home logs. Although admittedly one just happened. Maybe they want four emails too?]
( Read more... )

Family

Mother was in a better mood today. She'd talked to a lot of folks. Also my father was pleasant and lucid. And her POD people (the home health care aids who she calls her POD persons) - have been very helpful.
( Read more... )

On FB, pesky family members (my father's family - mother's family is better behaved) are giving unasked for pseudo-expert advice on Face Masks. ( Read more... )

Meanwhile - I restrained myself from ranting about the annoying social media habit of calling White Women who act like entitled/privileged brats - "Karen" and White Men who act like entitled/privileged brats "Kevin". [It's admittedly not everyone - just the folks who hang out too much on Twitter - so I'm thinking this was another Twitter trend? It's recent - it happened in 2020 right around the Black Lives Matter march - it may have existed before then, but I didn't hear it until then.] ( Read more... )

Other news..

* Hee Hee Hee... Fox News is Sued By Election Techonology Company for over 2.7 Billion

Ah karma is a beautiful thing.

And Smartmatic, an election technology company, filed a $2.7 billion defamation lawsuit against Fox and three of its anchors, as well as Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell, over their representations of election fraud.

See this is how you shut down Murdoch and company, take a page out of the handbook of the folks who kept suing the National Enquirer and won. Sue the bastards for defamation and libel.

* Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen met with officials from financial market regulators including the Securities and Exchange Commission to discuss the market volatility created by retail traders after the remarkable rise in prices of GameStop and other “meme stocks” (or “stonks”) — some of which are now taking precipitous falls.

A timely reminder from our economics correspondent Neil Irwin: The best way to make money through investing is extremely boring. Just take a simple approach and have patience.

This reminds me of the advice my father gave me in regards to the stock market - "Don't try to predict or outguess the stock market - you'll lose. Be patient, and don't trade when it's too high or too low."( Read more... )

New York vs. the Corona Virus

New York still has the most deaths in the US, although California is working its darnedest to catch up. ( Read more... )

( from the Governor's email )


Ah well, that's it for tonight. I didn't do a long walk because...well, there's snow. I'm tired. And while it was pretty - the human obstacle course to get to the cemetery quickly - is difficult with snow. The snow is melting though. Depending on what the weather looks like on Sat - I may take a walk then. I won't have such a small window. It is staying lighter longer at least. Sunset was closer to 5:30 tonight, and sunrise was closer to 6:45 this morning.

1. Apparently if you walk through a Cemetery long enough, you will eventually stumble across a tombstone/statue with your last name across the bottom of it.



No, I'm not going to show the bottom of the statue. Oh, I don't know if this is an omen or what, but apparently there's a Bear Statue right behind it.



The statue looked old (the angel statue not the bear), circa 1800s. So, make of that what you will.

Anyhow on the highlight of my wandering through Greenwood - a walk that I treated myself with after a long week cooped up in my one bedroom apartment working - was the rare sighting of not one, but two white-tailed hawks. Lovely big birds. I'd been walking down a path, looked straight ahead and then he was. I was trying to avoid people and there was a couple walking up the road I was about to enter, and another stopped on it. Then after taking a photo of it, I turned and looked up and another one was sitting on top of the statue that I was standing next too. So close. Yet so far away. (Far away in that it is VERY hard to take pictures of wildlife on the cell phone - there's not telescopic lense and it has a way of distancing things, I have to reformat, crop, and enlarge to get it to work. Also you can't get up in the bird's face - it will either fly away or attack you. It's not a flower or a statue. And for some reason what seems up close with the naked eye the cell phone camera or a camera in general likes to make seem far away. Unless of course you have a telescopic lense, which I do not. My brother was a photography major at one point - hence the reason I know all this. He likes to lecture me on it. Lecturing folks on a wide variety of topics is a family trait apparently - I think it may be genetic.)



( more white tail hawk or attempts at pics of them )

2. New York vs. Coronavirus, Racism and Police Brutality - mostly just Police Brutality and the Coronavirus...

New York has been busy,busy,busy. It really went to bat after getting caught with its pants down the first week of March. It did not take that sitting down, oh no, it got up, put on its boxing gloves and jumped into the ring. And not just the Coronavirus, but pretty much everything the Universe is sending its way. The latest? The Black Lives Matter Protests - which have about thirty to forty thousand people protesting across the State daily since George Floyd's death.

And our Governor, has a been a busy little Governor. I'm considering calling him "super-governor". Between fighting to restructure the hospital system, getting everyone in the state tested, building airports, restructuring crazy workplace, cleaning all the buses, trains and subways, and fighting the Federal Government...he's also found time to find a way to get the local communities around the state to restructure their police force. Plus, he hold press briefings every day.

What did he do today? He passed into law four bills and signed an executive order. What did it entail...ah...
( an all-encompassing series of police reforms )

They are however still protesting in my neighborhood. The picture was taken from across the street - because I am social distancing and still afraid of the virus. Even though it currently has a 1-2 % infection rate in New York according to their testing. And they have gone nuts with the testing.
( a really bad pic of protestors because I was too chicken of the corona virus to get much closer )
On the Coronavirus front? New York has really gone nuts with testing. ( Read more... )

3. My hair is growing out or rather long enough to pull back into a short pony tail, which I'm rather happy about. It's finally out of my face. The haircut I got in March was cute, but it was always flopping into my face. Now, not so much.

I see no reason to go back to the hair salon, and do not understand the people who feel the need to. Why? I can wait until 2021, no problem. ( Read more... )

4. Crazy Workplace

Spoke with Chidi today. He likes to call me with questions, he's fun to talk to. I asked him if he was protesting - he's not and has no inclination to do so.
( Read more... )

In other news - regarding Crazy Workplace, I spent most of the day fighting my work place's technology. I had to find work-arounds for a lot of things. For the remote - had to go to Windows Virtual Drive, as opposed to Citrix which crashed, yet again. For awhile I thought I was the only one it crashed on - but the Admin came out with an email about using WVD if you can't use Citirix and how much easier it was to use. Which in turn resulted in two emails - one stating that they couldn't get into WVD if their wife was alread logged into it in their computer and they were sharing, and two, that it didn't work for people with citrix boxes. (So apparently getting the tower and getting rid of the citrix box prior to being sent home - was a good thing? Note Citrix crashed at the office too - hence the reason I got the tower finally. IT got tired of all of my service requests - my citrix system crashed five times a day. Poor thing, it just wasn't designed to be used in this fashion.)

I was going to say technology won, but I guess I did?

5. All in all not a bad day. I finally got the Amazon order that I was fretting over. ( Read more... )

I did have a fun moment in the Cemetery. ( Read more... )

6. I'm going to leave you with...a view of my poor embattled city from the highest peak in Brooklyn, Battle Hill. Battle Hill is the site of major battle in the Revolutionary War - the Battle of Brooklyn.

Meditative evening walk through Greenwood Cemetery where I commune with nature and manage to take photos of a photo-shy robin.

1. Photos of a reluctant Robin - birds would be easier to take pictures of, if they would sit still. Also the Iphone requires a telescopic lense. Pictures shouldn't look further away than the image does with the naked eye. I had to keep cropping and enlarging.










2. Flowers and Trees..
( flowers in trees )

A pathway of old oaks..
( a pathway of old oaks )

Purple flowers
( purple flowers )
A ragged rose who has seen better days..
( a ragged rose who has seen better days )

( a spread of snow white flowers )

( sheltering branches of a tree )

( a tree with carvings..old and battered )

3. Mausoleums, statues and gravely markings..or where there is the joy of nature, there is also the architecture of humanity housing its dead or commenting on its own mortality..

( an unique mausoleum that doesn't quite look like one )

( a flurry of trees and greenery amid the graves )

( dwindling sun among trees and monument and sky.. )

4. Miscellaneous..
( Read more... )

To go along with the essay written in the previous post.

During pandemics. Maybe I should change my name to "she-who-walks-through-cemeteries"? No, too long, and I have troubles spelling cemetery. I keep wanting to spell it with an "a" for some reason.

I took two walks through the cemetery this week. The first? I got lost.
My mother found this amusing. As did I in retrospect. In my defense it is relatively easy to get lost in Greenwood Cemetery...it's basically endless rolling hills, trees, graves, flowering bushes, and pounds. You can, if you go deep enough into it - forget the outside world entirely. Prospect Park is similar - but far more crowded and much harder to avoid pesky people who insist on putting my life in danger. Greenwood - has gates and tends to restrict who enters. Prospect Park lets anyone inside -- so as a result, there are encampments, and people doing whatever they dang well please. For example? I couldn't take a walk in the woods without running into : bicyclists, an oil painter, a professional photography club, several joggers, people doing exercise routines, a couple making out, and a bunch of people smoking pot. I'd recommend avoiding it at all costs...at least for the time being. You can also get lost in Prospect Park, by the way.

The second? I got a map. Both were very long walks, with lots of cool vistas.

Anyhow, take a walk through Greenwood Cemetery with me...and watch me have fun with photography in the process. I never really enjoyed taking photos until I got the Iphone.

( It's safe, don't worry, see no people on the streets in...and look a sign )

Now on to the good stuff...

( path into the graves )

( tree I fell in love with )

( lady death weeps or bows her head )

( another shot I fell in love with near Dell Pond )

( Dell Pond - one of two turtle ponds )

( tree and sunlight )

( interesting graves... )

( the walk to the lake and the view from above.. )

The trick is to pick off times, and to steer clear of the popular paths. For example? I just walked up to the pond and left. Also I didn't go down to the lake - which is very popular. I tended to meander on the less walked paths at all possible. I saw people - but it was about ten, maybe fifteen if that, and not together. And not close. I was as if not more far apart from them - than I am when I leave my apartment building at times.

These walks are helping me stay sane. They clear my head. And they are perfectly safe - far safer than getting food deliveries or doing laundry, or taking out the trash - which are kind of essential activities.

And how weird is it that I feel the need to defend walking in the evening around a cemetery? Greenwood extended their hours at all their gates during the crisis - to help people and provide them with a place to stroll, and a means to visit their dead. The previous hours were 10-4PM on weekdays, and 10-3pm on Sunday. It's why I rarely went - you'd have to go on Saturday.
Now? They are open weekdays from 11 am - 7pm, and 8am to 7pm on weekends.
Although the gates at Fort Hamilton and Park Slope entrances are close to cars during the weekdays. And in the evening hours.

( photos of the Jewish Temple, sign thanking essential workers, an open laundromat, and a sign welcoming everyone into the Jewish Temple )
And one of a very fussy robin, who would not let me take his photo. So I took it from a distance and tried to enlarge.

Bored. Beyond bored at work. Then I came home to well a virtual waterfall outside my kitchen window - it was so bad, water leaked in my window and all the windows underneath it - apparently the water overflowed the gutters. What happened? The sky opened up and dumped buckets of water on us in the space of an hour - 4.5 inches to be exact. Never seen anything quite like it. Was drenched to the bone running, with an umbrella, under trees, the two blocks from my bodega to my house - a scant five minute walk. Yikes.

Ugh. Can't think of a dang thing to write about. You ever feel as if all your words have been pulled out of your skull? OR rather all the nice words, leaving only the angsty bitchy ones? What can I say, it's been one of those...weeks? days? The future feels grim. And I really wouldn't have minded all that much if the bus hurtling down the street in the drenching rain had hit me and knocked me out of me misery (and hopefully not to one of the 20 hells - according to a guy at work - the Chinese believe there are 20 different hells, hmmm maybe this is one of them? That would explain a lot come to think of it...or just one of the purgatories?) - but no such luck - best it did was throw a bunch of dirty water at me.

I'd do a meme but meme's rarely get responses they just breed new memes on others journals.
Not that this will get a response. People, I've discovered, respond to the oddest things. I can't predict it. I've given up. Okay not true. My analytical brain analyzes human behavior whether I want it to or not. It can't help itself. Even if it is wrong 80% of the time.

Anywho...I'll just ask questions....about stuff I've been pondering and would like to hear a voice outside of my own internal one contemplate for a while.

1. Nature or nuture? I love this debate - mostly because I think it's both not one or the other. You can make a valid argument both ways. ie. That human personality is based on DNA and biology. Or that human personality is developed by experience and environment.
This brings up another question, I've been pondering - why do people think it has to be one or the other? Why not both? Come to think of it, why do we, not all of us, but a lot of us, tend to well...drift to extremes? Or broad generalizations? Categorizing stuff constantly.
Is it a desire to understand? OR rather to make sense out of something?

2. Do you believe in souls? That humans have them? If so, why. If not, why. (Actually, I should ask how do you define souls - because not everyone defines it in the same way and that does make a huge difference. You can after all be an athesist and still believe in souls - you just may not define them in a religious context. Semantics give me headache sometimes.)

And more to the point - how do you handle literature, television shows, and films in which the writer clearly does believe in souls and it is a main ingredient of the story? Do you ignore it? Accept it as part of that universe? Question it? Or go find something else?

What if the writer's or artist's definition of a soul is different than yours?

This is a huge thing in fantasy stories that involve vampires and creatures who are separated from humans based on whether or not they have a soul. The book I'm currently reading (Kim Harrison's Rachel Morgan novels) really uses souls as an ingredient. But it is not necessarily defined in a religious context. The soul is defined as the energy that holds the mind and body together, keeps the mind sane. Without it, the mind doesn't care and tries to convince the body to kill itself. In fact the mind doesn't care about much of anything - it just craves it's lost soul - and undead vampires who are soulless take a bit of someone else's aura/soul when they take blood in order to stay sane. To keep the intergrity of their mind. It's an illusion but it keeps them together. In this book, people give a portion of their soul to another person when they make love or share a part of themselve, whether in a kiss, a hug, an act of compassion, or exchange of blood. It's not a big deal. You get it back. It regrows. The only religious bit is that you can't find your way into the afterlife without your soul - the mind requires it to hold it together and show it the way. If your mind doesn't go with your soul, the soul dissolves and is gone.

In Whedon's fantasy series - soul was more or less another word for conscience. That voice inside that told people the difference between right and wrong - or more to the point made them care about the difference. It's a dicey question. People think a sociopathic personality is someone who doesn't know the difference between right and wrong. Not true.
They know the difference. They just don't care. The television series Dexter actually did a marvelous job of examining that. It's a story about a serial killer who kills serial killers to avoid killing nice people because he's been taught it was wrong. (Dexter really examines the degree in which nurture can effect human behavior. Can change it. In the series - it's indicated that Dexter's environment as a small child caused him to become a sociopathic personality (something happened to him), but his foster father was able to train him to harness those impulses and use them in another way.)

At any rate - in Buffy and Angel - a creature without a soul - knew the difference between right and wrong but did not care. It did not matter to them. Spike was an anamoly of sorts because he did show remorse for attempting to rape the heroine. Something a soulless creature shouldn't have felt. The reason he did - was well - the writers take on a psychological and philosophical debate - which the tv series Dexter is examining and the novel A ClockWork Orange examined - which is - can we teach a sociopathic personality who does not care about the difference between right and wrong to care? Can we change the sociopath? Is it possible? OR should we just kill them for the betterment of society because they are a lost cause? It is biologically impossible for them to change?

In A Clockwork Orange - Anthony Burgess believed it is possible for someone to change, that while state behavioral conditioning was inherently wrong, the sociopathic tendencies of the street punk would change once he learned there was more to life - or that life itself had meaning. Stanely Kubrick disagreed and stated that the punk could not change and would revert back to form once the conditioning was removed.

Whedon takes the middle ground. Stating that the sociopathic personality can be taught to feel remorse, but, that will not mean that they won't do the act. Won't hurt someone.
But once they feel the emotional pain of doing the act - it may motivate them to seek change in themselves. Or not as the case may be. He explores two characters in this regard.
Spike and Angel. But does not really answer the question - leaving fans somewhat frustrated. But I'm not sure the question can be answered. I'm not sure we know. Psychologists have done studies, sure, but nothing that conclusive. People tend to be pretty complex and had to categorize.

But if you don't buy that souls exist - I wonder if the metaphor may have given you difficulty??

Which actually brings up a much broader issues or question, how do you handle a work of art in which you do not believe or support certain parts of the premise or world?

3. Memory loss - to what degree does memory loss or the loss of memory affect personality?
This fascinates me to no end and is a personal kink, I guess. I'm a sucker for a *good* amensia story. But it has to be one that shows how the character has changed and explores this question.

Does the person who lost their memory become someone else? Or are they just forgetful?
Does their entire life change?

If I for example forgot what happened between 2000 and 2007, how would that change me?

There's apparently a new drug out that can erase a victim's memories of an assualt or bad experiences - saw it talked about in the news and on Boston Legal of all places. So if a child is molested/sexually abused by a parent and takes this ruthie like drug - what does that mean - does it mean it never happened?

And can you erase just one memory without erasing all of them? There's an Alfred Bester novel called Demolished Man - where they erase certain aspects of criminals in order to rehabilitate them. Reminds me of lobotomies - which were quite the rage back when Bester wrote the novel. Along with shock therapy.

In the flick Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind - bits of a guy's memories are removed - or rather just all traces of this girl he loved. After the flick, a friend and I had a lengthy discussion on whether this was possible. He stated it wasn't - you can't remove one memory without affecting all the others - it would be like pulling a thread out of a tapestry, the memories would unravel.

Emotions are based on memory. How we feel. How we love. How we relate. Our defenses. If I didn't remember people throwing spiders at me, would I still be afraid of spiders or would I be afraid and just not know why? Does the body retain memory as well as the mind? Can our body remember something, our nerves, that our mind forgets? Like walking. When I think about walking - I can't walk. It's the oddest thing. Like when I think about writing I can't write, have to focus on something else...And when I focus on a memory like the name of a song, a person, or a lyric - it often does not come.

What do you think?