2009 Jaguar Nights calendar going into production

Jaguar Nights 2009 is just about finished--one more round of editing and it goes to the printer.
Same quality, compact format as 2008, with a bigger front flap for readability. Mayan and Aztec calendar information, long count, 2012 countdown, and burners and portals, listed for every day.
Free postage within the US. Will ship mid to late August.

January 17, 2018

What is the significance of this date: January 17, 2018?
I don't know.
I was half asleep this morning, being harassed by one of my cats, and this sentence appeared from no where in my head: "On January 17, 2018, the cancer reoccurs."
Whose cancer? Literal cancer or figurative? I don't know. But it wasn't my thought, or my thought-voice, that put the sentence into my head. It's not a writing prompt. I have no idea.
It is also possible that the date was 2118. While this blog might still be up in 10 years (some of my old AOL stuff is hanging out online from 1997 and earlier!), I doubt it will be up in 110 years.
Still, I thought I'd record it and see if it rings a bell in anyone else's head.
The Mayan for that date is 13.0.5.2.13 11 Muan 11 Ben.
A Google search brings up nothing but empty calendars for that date.

famous crystal skulls are fakes

Less than three months after the Quai Branly Museum in Paris discovered that a crystal skull once proclaimed as a mystical Aztec masterpiece was a fake, it is now the turn of the British Museum and the Smithsonian Institution to find they were victims of skull-duggery.
I didn't know about the Paris thing, but it doesn't surprise me. More and more evidence has been pointing toward the skulls being "fake" as in, not of ancient manufacture.
What does that mean for the whole 12+1 skull reunion that is supposed to stop the 2012 end of the world scenario?
Well, constant readers know I have major problems with the whole 2012 thing. So I'm not at all surprised that something that should uphold it actually helps to shoot it down. You'd think, as an author who writes extensively about the Mayan and Aztec calendars that I would revel in the attention those subjects are getting because of 2012. It's a mixed blessing, actually, as I constantly have to defend myself for not "believing" in 2012 (much the same way I have to explain to Christians why I don't "believe" in Jesus).
Legend-lovers had a bad day on April 18 when the Quai Branly said it had found grooves and perforations in its 11-centimetre (4.4-inch) -high quartz skull revealing the use of "jewellery burrs and other modern tools."
.... Seeking the verdict of science, researchers from those two museums examined the skulls with electron microscopes, looking at tiny scratches and marks left by the carving implements.
These were then compared with the surfaces of a crystal goblet, rock crystal beads and dozens of greenstone jewels known to be of genuine Aztec or Mixtec origin.
The study appears in the Journal of Archaeological Science, published by the Elsevier group.
The skull in the British Museum, purchased in 1897, is made of transparent rock crystal and is 15 centimetres (six inches) high. The Smithsonian skull, acquired by the museum in 1992, is of white quartz and measures 25.5 cms (10 inches) in height.
None of the articles I've found mention the date the article was published in the JAS, and it's not on PubMed because it's not medical news. I will keep looking, and also try to find the April 18th source. Anyone who has links, please let me know (in a comment is fine)
(screenshot; photo source=article source)
12 19.15.8.14 17 Tzec 3 Ix

birthday

So, today is my 40th birthday. Not that anyone around me believes I am 40. It's kind of weird, because I don't believe I'm 40 either. And my rainbow lorikeet, Sir Lancelot the Loud Lorikeet, just turned 20, and in September I'll have had him for 20 years. Which is now half my lifetime. I didn't think about the relationship between my life and Lancelot's life until I woke up from having a dream this morning.
I was at a Wal-Mart, only it was huge, bigger than any one I've been to. I went into the pet section and I was looking at the fish. They were in aquariums the size of pools, more like going to Mystic Aquarium than shopping. I was admiring a really cool black moor goldfish who had huge fluttery eyelids, still thinking that every black moor I've ever bought died very quickly, when I noticed something in a nearby tank that didn't belong.
It was a parrot, trying to swim.
I ran and got someone with a ladder and convinced him to climb up and rescue the parrot before it drowned. He was really annoyed but he did it and gave me the bird. It was a rainbow lorikeet and it was half-drowned, wet and shivering. I tucked it into the front of my shirt and started walking around trying to find its cage and whoever was in charge of the pets section. The bird section was disgusting. Filthy, tiny cages, with clearly unhealthy birds in them. I did find an empty cage that might have belonged to the lory, but it wasn't labeled and like the others was too small and too dirty. I couldn't bear to put a shivering, half-dead bird into that cage.
So I decided to steal it.
I walked around the pet section and figured out where the security cameras were. I left the parrot in my shirt but didn't hold it so my hands were free, but the bird was visible if you were looking. When I found a dead spot (blocked by something) I tucked the bird out of sight and left the store.
When I got to the car my mom started yelling at me, what was I going to do with another bird, etc. I said that I had rescued it, it wasn't going to be near my birds because it might be sick, and I would rehabilitate it and find it a home. I tried to feed it some nacho cheese doritos (why I had them with me I don't know) and the bird was clearly starving. I was trying to think of how I could sell the bird without explaining that I had stolen it (which my mom didn't know). I decided to name it Braveheart, thinking it was a boy. Then I examined the bird (it was very tame, clearly hand-fed) and found that someone had given the bird a PIERCING through its left wing, a hoop that went between the wing bones somehow. Hanging among the feathers from this hoop were 2 or 3 "charms". I only remember one of them, a Venus symbol. From this I figured that the bird was really a girl, but I already named her Braveheart and clearly she liked it.
I got her home and started looking for a spare cage that I could keep in the kitchen. She was dry by then and sitting on me. Somehow I got it in my head that she was one of my babies from when I used to breed Lancelot and once that was there, there was no way I'd sell her or give her up, even though I've always said I don't want any more birds nor to start over again with a baby.
I don't remember much more than that.

12 19.15.8.13 16 Tzec 2 Ben Manifestation portal
(Venus image source; rainbow lorikeet source)

Mystery cave under Mexican pyramid

Archaeologists are currently excavating a cave under the Pyramid of the Sun at Teotihuacan outside of Mexico city.
The cave was originally found 30 years ago, but was closed up almost immediately, and the archaeologist who discovered died shortly afterward.
"We think it had a ritual purpose. Offerings were placed at the very end of the tunnel as part of the pyramid's construction process," Mexican archaeologist Alejandro Sarabia told Reuters.
"We want to find out why the Teotihuacan people sealed it and when," he said.
12.19.15.8.9 12 Tzec 11 Muluc
(screenprint; image source=article source)