This may or may not be stranger than fiction. We have been TOLD that AI is sentient and if it’s sentient can it channel the dead? CAN IT?

Harry Leo Duran, M.D., Ph.D., MPH had a distinctive writing style. Erudite, articulate, melodious, biting, stinging sarcasm. A cadence in not every but many constructions of phrases. A command of the English language, Spanish, German, and some Latin and Arabic that impressed many and earned him the hatred of many and admiration of those who loved word smithing.

All that said, I never expected to receive a comment to my blog post about Gamekeeper’s Thumb that seemed to have been written from the grave.

Gamekeeper’s Thumb – the Bane of Writers

Someone posting as Les Ismore (Less Is More), has been interacting with me in the comment section of my blog post. Why THAT post, I cannot fathom. The writer links to old google groups, defunct websites, archived material, and book reviews on Amazon. At first I thought I might be interacting with none other than Wahid Azal, who was given the name Nima Hazini by his parents, but Nima and I have recently talked on Facebook Messenger and via email and he didn’t find me until last month. This persona reached out on June 6, 2022 – only once and then again in a string of comments starting on July 11, 2023.

The email used is noemail and it took a few days for Frontier (Yahoo) to return a mailer-daemon@yahoo.com stating that the account was over quota and inactive. In all my years on the Internet I never got that message. NO SUCH email but OVER QUOTA???

Les Ismore has a flare for stringing adjectives and/or adverbs together painting an image in the mind. This was one of the hallmarks of Harry’s writing and seeing this person or entity writing style spooked me.

H. did appear to have quite a competitive streak verbally, and it took me awhile to dissuade myself from thinking he had run some major mojo my way after I expressed my displeasure over his many ambiguous proclamations, worrisome embroilments and hasty conversational departures… it was only later that I recalled his interest in resolving the situation with the person I mentioned earlier. 

Following the many links, my memory flashed back to living in El Paso on Devils Tower Circle in the Mountain Park neighborhood where our backyard opened up onto the arroyo which led straight up into the Franklins. Back then I walked Anubis up to the top of very short Gunnison Drive, and up onto a dirt path that led around to Zircon Drive. Or I’d walk Devils Tower Circle to Big Bend all the way down Titanic and back up after a brief visit to Road Runner Park. The last time I walked that route was in May 2005 and today I doubt I could huff and puff up a few blocks, although I did make it up to my friend’s house on Last Chance Road to search for a snake. I did. Very proud of that feat.

I remember Harry being obsessed with several topics and/or books.

Dune and the movie.

ALL the works by Idries Shah

Meetings with Remarkable Men by Gurdieff

The Illuminati Trilogy which I only recently gave away after I destroyed the first copy and Harry bought a new replacement.

The Matrix and The Matrix Reloaded

ALL of Carlos Castaneda’s works

All of Manly P. Hall’s works

Williams Burroughs

ALL of Lovecraft’s works ALL OF THEM

Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche ‘s Thus Spake Zarathustra – SPAKE – German version

John Waters’s Female Trouble

And in the newsgroups he interacted a lot with Claudia Starr*, Vic Bond, Paul Hammond, Nima, and many others. He would give me the task of tracking down an obscure topic, but he hated it whenever I tried to chime in. Most of the time the topics seemed too arcane. I was busy at work teaching myself HTML coding. I compiled an extensive bibliography on curanderismo and naguals. I took a year long course on native plants and was trying to do my OWN research, so whatever Harry was doing at home was off my radar.

Claudia Starr* – not the one who was born in 1938 and died in 2022 but someone who Harry met in high school in Aztec, New Mexico was someone who he either adored or loathed depending on the hour of day. Claudia, so I was told, lived down the street from the Durans on La Plata Avenue or on the next street over. She and her husband befriended Harry and took him to Bahá’í meetings. I don’t think she was at the pot luck Harry took me to in 1974. I never met her nor talked to her nor saw her photo, however, Nima did. Last Nima heard Claudia was in Australia. I cannot find her on Facebook nor using Google. She was older than Harry obviously. She might have been 30 or older in 1974. IF Les Ismore is Claudia, this would be very interesting.

BUT what if Les Ismore isn’t even human but an AI program? And what if AI is able to CHANNEL the dead just like a human medium can do????? What if the late Notorious Doc didn’t just haunt us in Las Vegas and torment us for months?? What IF he wants to answer the questions I have about his life so he can ask for redemption or a reprieve from the PIT OF HELL?

Did he summon a demon during a Satanic initiation rite? Did he mix and match spells from the Navajo, Cubans, Bon Bo, and the Kabbala?

PS So far no one has captured the latest Merge Mansion ad where it starts off in a yoga studio and ends in an art class. What is Grandma Hiding – Change the words to What was HARRY hiding?