Secret Laboratory
Music, News, & Global Affairs
Chronic pain can make your life completely miserable, sometimes even unbearable. I deal with moderate to severe pain on a daily basis and there have been times that I didn’t think I could live another day. I suffer from Fibromyalgia, Restless Leg Syndrome, and severe early onset osteoarthritis. Just imagine having the worst flu...
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Gut-wrenching fear struck me as I looked at the name that popped up on my phone, Deanna Deanna. The name was supposed to only say Deanna, but apparently I had a brain fart the day I entered my Aunt Deanna’s name into my contact list. Just seeing her name once was a enough to...
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Lab Rats. I hate to admit it, but the last couple weeks or so, I’ve been hit with the baby bug . . . I know, Tom. I know. Hwaat!? Don’t trip. I don’t understand it myself. I mean . . . I don’t even LIKE kids let alone want one . . . at least...
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Sometimes everyone needs a break from something they love. For me it’s been a break from writing – I haven’t touched my personal blog in months and have just reposted some older ones for Secret Laboratory. I even put my book on the back burner for a bit. Not that I am too busy...
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Traveling with my children when they were younger was never an enjoyable experience. Amber is two and one half years older than Ryan, so they never really got along until just a few years ago. Needless to say, there have been many bloody noses, mostly on Ryan’s part after getting popped by his sister. ...
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Muscle car posters and calendars with naked women on them. Not the images that I want to see all day while working in my office. Yet, this is the kind of “artwork” that my husband wants to hang on the wall since we now share the space. I have no problem if he wishes...
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My hands gripped the steering wheel so tightly my knuckles tingled with pain, sending a quiver of excitement down my spine. I needed this touch of exhilaration badly. My life had become so boring, so mundane, so monotonous, every humdrum word you can think of. How did I let it get so bad? To...
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Pent-up frustration can sometimes drive me over the edge causing a slew of very unlady-like words to spill out of my mouth. This usually consists of a few fucks, dammits, shits, and the little bit nicer screw you. It’s not always just frustration that causes me to curse like a sailor. Anger, fright, and...
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One of my favorite memories as a child was the fair. The sites, the smells, the animals…what more could a kid ask for? In my hometown of Abilene, Kansas, the Central Kansas Free Fair was and still is the place to be the beginning of every August. Abilene, Kansas, the boyhood home of Dwight...
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Family, what really makes a family? If you look at the traditional definition, it would consist of parents and children, otherwise known as a nuclear family. Parents and children, is that what really all that makes kin? The reason I am contemplating all of this is because of an incident that happened this weekend. ...
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My friend Igal Vainshtein has invited me into his home for a guided meditation group held semi-weekly for the last five months. If you’ve never heard of or experienced meditation, I highly recommend it for its calming qualities and the way which it can help connect one to his or her surroundings. Essentially, the goal during a...
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I used to work with a couple of chicks who were slightly crazier than I am, Cassidy and Lupe. Cassidy, was the main culprit, always doing something awful and causing mischief. Lupe, on the other hand, was the quiet one. The only problem with the quiet one is that they can cause even more...
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I did something the other day that completely pissed off my husband, I bought a rat. An adorable rat that I named Henri, who was doomed to become snake food. I can blame this on my addiction to garage saling because that is what started it all. I came across a cool, small animal...
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The Internet is abuzz today with headlines proclaiming that “Spanking Boosts Odds of Mental Illness.” I tried to poke around and find the source of all the new research, but all I’ve gathered from the multiple news sources I’ve checked into was that it was a Canadian-based study which looked at over 600 adult...
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It seems that the Miami Zombie, Rudy Eugene, isn’t the only one enjoying some human flesh these days, and not only in America. No, I’m not talking about the cannibals that looked like zombies and had it in for Tarzan back in the old black and white movies. They were pretty good, but not...
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The alarm clock began buzzing at six-thirty Saturday morning, and I was wrestling with the bed sheet to let me free. I dashed to the windows which overlooked my back yard – it was like some twisted version of Christmas morning, and I was the eager child wondering what Santa might have left for...
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It’s 2:30 am on a Tuesday morning, and here I sit at my computer, unable to sleep. All around me, my possessions are packed away into cardboard boxes, sealed shut with zebra striped masking tape to take some of the monotony out of the moving process, and yet all I see is the sad,...
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I had to run some errands today, nothing special, just a trip to the grocery store. We live on a pretty busy road, so as I waited at the top of the driveway several cars drove by. Actually they drove by and honked. It took me a few seconds to figure out they were...
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I’m not a sports fan, period. Considering that I live in one of the greatest (for the most part) countries in the world, that probably makes me abnormal, or at the very least Un-American. Really, who doesn’t like sports in the good ole USA? Probably just me and some random terrorist who wants to...
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As I sat in the waiting room waiting for my husband to have a cat scan done for his Crohn’s disease, I watched a middle-aged couple walk into the room. The man walked ahead of the woman who was at least five paces behind. He turned to her and said “stop and go sit”....
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The dog shit is finally gone. That green bag which I used to pick up the dozen or so little piles of dog shit from my neighbor’s Boston Terrier, ‘TK’, is no longer steaming in front of their garage door as it had been for the last three days. I had resorted to this...
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A few days ago, the hubby and I were at a drive-up restaurant getting a little ice cream. As I was enjoying the best banana split I’ve had in a while, I heard some commotion in the next car booth. A woman that reminded me of Jabba the Hutt from Star Wars was yelling...
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**A note to my more sensitive readers, this one actually gets a bit mushy. Deal with it. It wasn’t until ten thirty on Wednesday night, when I was already lying in my bed – restless in both the heat of the cotton sheets and from the constant stream of thoughts circling in my...
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Bacon and sausage are traditional foods to consume during breakfast for people who eat meat. But did you know that eating two slices of bacon, or one piece of sausage a day can increase your risk of developing pancreatic cancer by 19 percent? It’s true, a study out of the beautiful country of Sweden...
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Hey Lab Rats. I have a somewhat disconcerting fact to drop on you. Life isn’t fair. I know, right? DAMN IT! At some point in everyone’s life, we all come to this grim conclusion. Maybe you got laid off – so you lost your house, which strained your marriage, so you lost that too,...
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For those of us here in Minnesota, winter is not quite over. May is half gone and a few hours ago, it was 40 degrees outside. I had the fireplace on and the space heater going. Then the sun came out, the temperature jumped about 30 degrees, and I had to open the windows.
These days we hear a lot of talk about Global Warming. Whether or not there is any truth to it remains to be seen—and frankly, it doesn't make a damned bit of difference either way. Climate change is real—warmer, colder, whatever—but it has nothing to do with us and we're never going to prevent it. And since we got a foot of snow last week and it's going to be 90 on Tuesday ... well ... I'm not sold on Global Warming. The weatherman can't even predict rain, let alone tell us whether or not we're facing an inferno and/or an ice age.
This weekend is the fishing opener. This means very little to me, as I never bother with a license anyway. It's also Mother's Day. Recently I've been bombarded by emails from an online florist, suggesting that I send Ex-wife #2 a beautiful bouquet.
Never in hell. Maybe if they had an option to have the arrangement stuffed with angry bees; but barring that ... no.
To hell with holidays and bees and everything else. For the last 24 hours, Terencio and I have been plotting the future of this magazine. He even wrote his column and published a couple of articles. The next order of business is for me to write something.
And I might. I have plenty to say—none of it important, of course—but a meandering essay with no direction whatsoever is probably the best way to ease back into my routine. Politics? Not to start. Not today.
And ... meh.
—John T. Schmitz
Publisher & Editor-in-Chief
Founder, Maple Hills Press
editor@secretlaboratory.org
"I wanted my own column in the sidebar ... but now I don't know what to do with it."
"But sure you do! You write in it! That is what most people who claim the moniker of writer would likely do."
"But what do I write?"
"The resolution to that parable, my friend, lies upon the path that you must seek."
"Who are you?! And where did you come from?!"
"I am...the part of you that is, and will be, in all that we are..."
Hello Lab!
The voices are becoming louder and the cries ever more commanding. I hear them and I am working the best I can to whip myself into some kind of respectable shape and take back my claim to authorship.
So, I have been signaled to action from the Lab's headquarters. There has been much waking from many deep slumbers and now the drowsiness is fading and the challenges of the day are dutifully materializing before my conscience in their daily summons to contest.
No fear, Secret Laboratory! Power down the Bat Beacon, John.
John. John? Wherefore art thou? Come quickly and hear ye: The Lab is scheduled to receive a bright and refreshing burst of content! I have plans for at least one new category: Network Security
In the recent weeks I have become familiar with penetration testing software such as Backtrack and Kali Linux. These are Linux based Operating Systems that are used by network security professionals for white hat constructive hacking; and network exploiting operators for black hat destructive hacking. Writers of Secret Laboratory are free to show interest in this new category if you so choose. I will be producing content regarding how to crack WEP/WPA/WPA2 wireless encryption and how to protect yourself from such attacks, for starters. It only gets interesting from there.
For those of you interested in preparing yourself for this new world of fun and adventure, I recommend you go ahead and get the tools: Kali Linux
It can be downloaded at - http://www.kali.org/downloads/
The Secret Laboratory is in the grueling process of churning old gears and installing new ones to bring life into our world of journalistic comedy and tragedy. Sink or swim, this boat is headed out to sea.
I'm headed off to write a column now that the voices in my head have stopped...
But I can't seem to find John.
John?
Oh shit. Really? He's in the bathroom? Again? Geez, I'm glad I didn't have whatever he did. Must have been the pills. I'm glad I only had the purple ones...
"Hey John! Can you reach the mini fridge from in there? I think I need another beer!"
—Terencio Safford
Editor, Secret Laboratory
terencio@secretlaboratory.org
