Wednesday, September 28, 2011

More on the Occupation

I don't have much to add to this that can't be found at Occupy Together. It's sad, not to mention very unsettling, that the mainstream media is doing their best to avoid covering Occupy Wall Street and Occupy Together. The sign that this comrade is holding says it all.

Sunday, September 25, 2011

Occupy Wall Street

Now this really pisses me off. Are we living in a police state? Two cops for every protester, with "fencing" and mace, to boot.

Thursday, September 22, 2011

Autonomous Seizures

Not much to say today, except that I've had numerous autonomic seizures since last night. Oddly, they started during sex. They can happen anytime. I really don't like these seizures, so I'm lying down and reading. These seizures are described as follows:


These cause changes in the part of the nervous system that automatically controls bodily functions. These common seizures may include strange or unpleasant sensations in the stomach, chest, or head; changes in the heart rate or breathing; sweating; aura or goose bumps.


Yeah, they need to go away.


Wednesday, September 21, 2011

Case Closed: How Mental Anguish is Reduced by Having a Dog


Racked by PTSD, a veteran finds calm in a pound pup named Cheyenne By Steve Hendrix

David Sharpe finally hit bottom on the bedroom floor of his apartment in Yorktown, Va. That’s where he sat, legs folded, ready to finish the fight with the demons that had followed him back from the war zone: the sudden rages; the punched walls; the profanities tossed at anyone who tried to help.

There was little in the room but dirty Air Force uniforms, some empty Jaegermeister bottles and a crushing despair. He took a deep breath. Shut his eyes. Closed his lips a little tighter around the cool steel.
And then something licked his ear. He looked around and locked gazes with a pair of brown eyes.
Cheyenne cocked her head to one side.

“It was just one of those looks dogs give you,” Sharpe recalls. “It was like, ‘What are you doing? Who’s going to take care of me? Who else is going to let me sleep in this bed?’ ”

For a long minute, Sharpe stared into the puzzled face of his 6-month-old pit bull. And then slowly, reluctantly, he backed the barrel of the .45 out of his mouth.

“There’s no doubt about it,” he says now. “I owe her my life.”

This is a different kind of tale of K-9 Corps bravery, distinct from those exploits of grenades sniffed out and warnings barked. Cheyenne’s heroics were in her unconditional devotion. Sharpe, whose series of harrowing encounters as an Air Force security guard in the Middle East led to post-traumatic stress disorder, says that just by being there day after dark day, his dog rescued him from a soldier’s death as surely as if she had dragged him bloody from the battlefield.

A decade later, it’s a much more stout pit bull lolling on the floor of Sharpe’s much neater apartment in Arlington County. But Cheyenne still loves to nuzzle her buddy’s hand whenever she gets the chance. And he still loves to tell the story of how a torn-eared refugee from a shabby animal shelter saved his bacon.
“She was the force that pulled me back into society,” says Sharpe, 32, who was married last month and is now a program analyst in the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.

But it’s also a story of action: Sharpe is trying to give other scruffy pound dogs a chance to save other emotionally wounded warriors. Even as he continues his own recovery from acute depression and PTSD, Sharpe has launched P2V.org (Pets to Vets), a nonprofit group that seeks to link service members and first responders with shelter animals and help them with related expenses and training.
“I couldn’t talk to anybody — not my father, not the counselors — but I could talk to that dog, and she never judged me,” Sharpe says. “We don’t want to hear, ‘Wow, that must have been horrible.’ We just want to talk.”
Sharpe got the idea for P2V after seeing a documentary on the role highly trained service animals can play in a veteran’s recovery. But those elite creatures can take thousands of dollars to prepare and years to deliver. Sharpe saw a more straightforward match to be made between suffering soldiers and animals from the pound.
“Most of the vets I’ve spoken to don’t want dogs to do tricks. We just want companionship,” he says. “Eighteen vets commit suicide every day in this country, and one animal is put to sleep every eight seconds. They can help save each other.”

It costs P2V about $650 for each adoption, including veterinary care, supplies, health insurance and the training consultants the groups make available. So far, P2V has matched 47 animals to vets, many of them former patients at Walter Reed Army Medical Center.

Sharpe has hired his first paid employee and put together an advisory board that features some local heavy hitters, including former White House press secretary Dana Perino and Rep. James P. Moran (D-Va.). They have started volunteer teams in New York and San Diego and hope to expand further.

Jimmy Childers, a Marine sergeant whose left left was lost and right foot injured when a roadside bomb in Afghanistan detonated, was looking for a dog to relieve the dreary monotony of his therapy routine. When a service-dog organization told him that it would be at least 18 months before could he get an animal, he turned to Sharpe. Two weeks later, he was walking, with two canes, through the pens of the Washington Animal Rescue League in the District.

“Tidus isn’t going to be fetching my [prosthetic] leg for me or anything,” Childers says of the beagle that now lives with him and his wife, Brandi, in Gaithersburg. “He’s here to bring joy into my life, and he does that every day.”

He finds himself less prone to outbursts over, in particular, people who illegally park in spaces for the handicapped. “He really calms me down,” he says.

Retired Senior Airman Sharpe says his own descent into the shadowy storms of PTSD stemmed from multiple deployments at bases in Saudi Arabia and Pakistan. One afternoon in a sweltering guard shack, he found himself staring down the rifle barrel of the Saudi soldier manning the post with him. After an intense standoff, Sharpe managed to overpower the man, who turned out to be an al-Qaeda sympathizer.
In Pakistan, he says, he detected and helped subdue two suicide bombers trying to enter a base filled with U.S. military personnel, avoiding the blast only when one of the attackers dropped his detonator.
“They were loaded and ready to rock,” he says. “They were going to blow up the chow hall.”

It was rough duty. There were suicides in his unit, he says. Sharpe was cracking. But he refused any attempt at counseling. He was a mess by the time he got home from his first tour, drinking himself stupid and picking fights in bars. Anything could set him off: snow falling on his arm, a casual word from a stranger.
His visits to family on St. Simons, Ga., were disastrous. When his father, a soft-spoken retired Army Ranger, would try to talk to him, he’d answer with a string of profanities.

“A few months after he left, I found a bunch of holes he’d punched in the walls,” recalls David Sharpe Sr. “He’d moved some picture frames to cover them up.”

One summer day in 2002, a friend asked Sharpe to go with him to an animal shelter in Hampton Roads, where they were stationed. A batch of pit bull puppies had been rescued from a fighting ring.
“I thought, ‘Hell, yeah, I want a fighting dog,’ ” Sharpe said. “I’m a fighter myself.”
There were seven puppies. Only one of them didn’t swarm over Sharpe’s feet, begging for attention. He picked the aloof one, its ears and face already scabbed from an earlier scrap, and named her Cheyenne.
But at his apartment in Yorktown, the hard-drinking fighter started to cuddle his little dog. He started talking to her about things that had happened. She licked his face.

“I felt like a 10,000-pound weight had been lifted off my chest,” Sharpe says.

One night, he awoke from a nightmare and went to the kitchen for a drink. The refrigerator door banged him on the knee and he went nuts, whaling on it, nearly ripping it off the hinges. He heard a little bark.
He snapped “Shut up!” at the dog, but then he scooped her up and took her back to bed.
“She lay on my chest, and I just started sobbing,” he says. “It felt good. She licked my tears, and I had to start laughing.”

It was up and down, and the worst would come a few months later, a stretch of pain and feelings of survivor guilt that would lead him to that dark bedroom with that heavy pistol.

He got better, slowly. When he finally sought professional help, the diagnosis of acute PTSD was nearly instantaneous. He left the Air Force Security Forces in 2005 and began therapy.

“He’s like a different person now,” says his father. “All that stuff was taking over his life. That dog just listened to him for hours.”

In May, Sharpe married Jenny Fritcher, an Air Force staff sergeant stationed at Ramstein Air Base in Germany. She’s about to be discharged and will join her husband, and Cheyenne, in Arlington this fall.
On their afternoon walks along Clarendon Boulevard, Sharpe knows some people are wary of Cheyenne. They see a pit bull and steer clear. Just as some do with angry vets.

“We’re two of a kind,” Sharpe says. “We saved each other.”

Tuesday, September 20, 2011

Ayn Rand was a Hypocrite and John Galt is Sucking on the Welfare Teat!

A great article that I'm happy to post here. My only criticism is that Rand wasn't a, "schlock novelist." From an romantic point of view, Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead were successful, although the characters were one-dimensional, and the tone of each novel is oddly mean-spirited and maudlin at the same time. They are certainly not great books, not by a long shot, but they are interesting. Both books have certainly had a major influence on assholes and douche-bags throughout the world since they were published. Jerks could finally come out of the proverbial closet and embrace their jerkitude. Pricks of the world, unite!

Nothing she ever wrote should have been taken seriously. Many did, and do.

Jon Stewart once said that reading Atlas Shrugged turns the reader into an asshole for six months.

Enjoy the irony.

Ayn Rand Railed Against Government Benefits, But Grabbed Social Security and Medicare When She Needed Them

By Joshua Holland
Ayn Rand was not only a schlock novelist, she was also the progenitor of a sweeping “moral philosophy” that justifies the privilege of the wealthy and demonizes not only the slothful, undeserving poor but the lackluster middle-classes as well.
Her books provided wide-ranging parables of "parasites," "looters" and "moochers" using the levers of government to steal the fruits of her heroes' labor. In the real world, however, Rand herself received Social Security payments and Medicare benefits under the name of Ann O'Connor (her husband was Frank O'Connor).

As Michael Ford of Xavier University's Center for the Study of the American Dream wrote, “In the end, Miss Rand was a hypocrite but she could never be faulted for failing to act in her own self-interest.”
Her ideas about government intervention in some idealized pristine marketplace serve as the basis for so much of the conservative rhetoric we see today. “The reason I got involved in public service, by and large, if I had to credit one thinker, one person, it would be Ayn Rand,” said Paul Ryan, the GOP's young budget star at a D.C. event honoring the author. On another occasion, he proclaimed, “Rand makes the best case for the morality of democratic capitalism.”
“Morally and economically,” wrote Rand in a 1972 newsletter, “the welfare state creates an ever accelerating downward pull.”
Journalist Patia Stephens wrote of Rand:
[She] called altruism a “basic evil” and referred to those who perpetuate the system of taxation and redistribution as “looters” and “moochers.” She wrote in her book “The Virtue of Selfishness” that accepting any government controls is “delivering oneself into gradual enslavement.”
Rand also believed that the scientific consensus on the dangers of tobacco was a hoax. By 1974, the two-pack-a-day smoker, then 69, required surgery for lung cancer. And it was at that moment of vulnerability that she succumbed to the lure of collectivism.
Evva Joan Pryor, who had been a social worker in New York in the 1970s, was interviewed in 1998 by Scott McConnell, who was then the director of communications for the Ayn Rand Institute. In his book, 100 Voices: An Oral History of Ayn Rand, McConnell basically portrays Rand as first standing on principle, but then being mugged by reality. Stephens points to this exchange between McConnell and Pryor.
“She was coming to a point in her life where she was going to receive the very thing she didn’t like, which was Medicare and Social Security,” Pryor told McConnell. “I remember telling her that this was going to be difficult. For me to do my job she had to recognize that there were exceptions to her theory. So that started our political discussions. From there on – with gusto – we argued all the time.
The initial argument was on greed,” Pryor continued. “She had to see that there was such a thing as greed in this world. Doctors could cost an awful lot more money than books earn, and she could be totally wiped out by medical bills if she didn’t watch it. Since she had worked her entire life, and had paid into Social Security, she had a right to it. She didn’t feel that an individual should take help.”
Rand had paid into the system, so why not take the benefits? It's true, but according to Stephens, some of Rand's fellow travelers remained true to their principles.
Rand is one of three women the Cato Institute calls founders of American libertarianism. The other two, Rose Wilder Lane and Isabel “Pat” Paterson, both rejected Social Security benefits on principle. Lane, with whom Rand corresponded for several years, once quit an editorial job in order to avoid paying Social Security taxes. The Cato Institute says Lane considered Social Security a “Ponzi fraud” and “told friends that it would be immoral of her to take part in a system that would predictably collapse so catastrophically.” Lane died in 1968.
Paterson would end up dying a pauper. Rand went a different way.
But at least she put up a fight before succumbing to the imperatives of the real world – one in which people get sick, and old, and many who are perfectly decent and hardworking don't end up being independently wealthy.
The degree to which Ayn Rand has become a touchstone for the modern conservative movement is striking. She was a sexual libertine, and,according to writer Mark Ames, she modeled her heroic characters on one of the most despicable sociopaths of her time. Ames’ conclusion is important for understanding today’s political economy. “Whenever you hear politicians or Tea Partiers dividing up the world between ‘producers’ and ‘collectivism,’” he wrote, “just know that those ideas and words more likely than not are derived from the deranged mind of a serial-killer groupie....And when you see them taking their razor blades to the last remaining programs protecting the middle class from total abject destitution—Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid—and bragging about how they are slashing these programs for ‘moral’ reasons, just remember Rand’s morality and who inspired her.”
Now we know that Rand was also just as hypocritical as the Tea Party freshman who railed against “government health care” to get elected and then whined that he had to wait a month before getting his own Cadillac plan courtesy of the taxpayers.
But, as I note in my book, The Fifteen Biggest Lies About the Economy, that's par for the course. A central rule of the U.S. political economy is that people are attracted to the idea of “limited government” in the abstract—and certainly don’t want the government intruding in their homes—but they really, really like living in a society with adequately funded public services.
That's just as true for an icon of modern conservatism as it is for a poor mother getting public health care for her kids.

Joshua Holland is an editor and senior writer at AlterNet. He is the author of The 15 Biggest Lies About the Economy (and Everything else the Right Doesn't Want You to Know About Taxes, Jobs and Corporate America)Drop him an email or follow him on Twitter.
© 2011 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.



Monday, September 19, 2011

Nancy, My Father, Cats, A Dog, and a Video Entry!

Have a look at the video entry for today, and by all means check out the pictures below. You'll see the Four Cats! You'll see my very old father! And Nancy lookin' fine! There's a witch tree in there, too, and a Socialist Party presidential candidate.





Here we have that woman I talk about quite a lot.
Her name is Nancy, and she is my wifey. She is
an amazing woman, and she is too good for me,
just don't tell her that.

This man was born in 1932...he's my father.
He just woke up...and he looks it.


J. Quinn Brisben back in 1992, during his
presidential run for the Socialist Party USA.
A great friend and comrade, as is his wife, Andrea.
He took me to see two plays in two nights, and
told stories into the wee hours of the morning.
Quite a fellow. 

Davis Square "T" stop on the Red Line.
This subway stop is down the street from us,
and we use it a lot.
The Witch Tree grows out of bare rock along the shore of
Lake Superior, the largest fresh water lake on Earth. The
tree is at least 300 years old, as a French explorer noted in
the year 1731. It's probably a lot older than that. The tree is
considered sacred by the Ojibwa, and if you want to get any
closer than this, you'll need a native guide.
The House of Four Cats is real. Here are the four cats! That is Impy on the
left, and in front of her is Panther. That's Fluffy on the right side of the
window. Finally, that's Ghost on the arm rest. You'll never meet cats with more
personality than these four. Panther is actually trying to kill my father.

Nancy and I chillin' in bed with our beloved pooch, Annie.
Nancy looks contented and happy...despite the complaints, life
can be good. Annie looks comfortable!

Sunday, September 18, 2011

We're Married!

One year after Nancy and I moved in together to start a new life, with pets, we were officially married on September 3rd, 2011. The cat is out of the bag, so to speak. We kept it simple and inexpensive, which I found terribly romantic. One day we'll have a ceremony, but for now we simply wanted to take our vows and no longer live in sin.

Love and devotion.

The cost of the license is a mere $15, and we applied on August 30th. There is a three day waiting list, and we went before the Justice of the Peace on Saturday, September 3rd. That auspicious date in history is the day we first met at the Duluth International Airport. We fell in love with each other quickly, as we knew quite a lot about each other from hundreds of hours of telephone conversation. I'll never forget when our eyes met in the terminal. She had been worried about me, as my plane was late. Her friend, Leigh, who drove her to the airport (and then drove us both back to her flat) had to go to work. It was a close call. I went from being smitten to being in love, as did she with me.

The time we spent in Duluth was wonderful. We were like old friends and lovers, finally reunited. After saying good-bye to her numerous friends (Merv, Kurt, Leigh, and Jess among them) we set about returning to Boston and start a new life together.

One year later, two weeks ago yesterday, we officially became man and wife. Marriage suits me, and I think it suits us. She means the world to me, and I could never imagine being with anyone else.

If anyone needs a recommendation for a Justice of the Peace in Boston, let us know. Our fellow was outstanding.

Wedding gifts will be happily accepted. If you're of a mind to send one, consider an Amazon.com gift certificate. It will help us continue to set up our apartment.

As the Celtic wedding blessings go:

Spare Us the Fall
May the roof above
never fall in,
May we below
never fall out.


And...


Lang may our lum reek. (Long may our chimney smoke.)


Some pictures!







Saturday, September 17, 2011

Our Private Health Care System is a Disaster, Time for Socialism

The private, for-profit health care system doesn't work in this country, not even close. We need what every other industrialized nation has, which is a national health care plan that covers everyone. The time to do this was years ago. Having failed, we need to do it now.


Grassroots is the only way!

Thursday, September 15, 2011

The Nancy & Darren Show, with 4 Cats and Annie as guests!

Enjoy the show!

Barack Obama and Scarlett Johansson's Ass in 2012

I've nothing against Joe Biden, but he hasn't exactly been an asset, so to speak, for Obama. After a few early gaffes (that's not ice cream, it's gelato!), Biden was sent to a wilderness retreat. The same one used for Billy Carter and Homer Simpson. So let's move on and find a more dynamic VP candidate, one that will energize the populace and get young voters out to the polls.

I nominate Scarlett Johansson's ass. A bum we can get behind. A fart-locker for the people.




Sunday, September 11, 2011

Of Shéhérazade and the "Polynesian Navy" Painting

The video explains an aesthetic concern that Nancy and I have regarding three rather bad paintings. You decide which one, two, or all three need to go. Or if you want one, we'll work something out. Also, the piece of music mentioned in the video blog can be found below. Happy Sunday, all.






The 4th movement of Shéhérazade by Rimsky-Korsakov.



Insomnia

Friday, September 09, 2011

Reich's Proposals Makes Sense

In February, former Secretary of Labor and Author of, "Aftershock: 'The Next Economy and America's Future'," wrote an article in The Huffington Post entitled, "Why We Should Raise Taxes on the Super-Rich and Lower Them on the Middle Class." A damn fine article that I've chosen to post here. 


President Obama's speech reiterated his insistence that the wealthiest Americans, and corporations in general, pay their fair share in taxes. Obama and the Democratic Party need to find their spine on this issue make it the cornerstone of their platform for change. The Republicans are unified behind a single message that threads through every single one of their domestic policy proposals, and that is cut taxes on the wealthy and corporations. Health care? Cut taxes on the wealthy and corporations. How do we create jobs? Same thing. Energy policy? You guessed it, cut taxes on the wealthy and corporations. And on and on. It's comical, but not funny. 


Here is the little fella's article, if you haven't read it. Enjoy. 


Why We Should Raise Taxes on the Super-Rich and Lower Them on the Middle Class by Robert Reich

My proposal to raise the marginal tax to 70 percent on incomes over $15 million, to 60 percent on incomes between $5 million and $15 million, and to 50 percent on incomes between $500,000 and $5 million, has generated considerable debate. Some progressives think it's pie-in-the-sky. Here, for example, is Andrew Leonard, a staff writer for Salon:
A 70 percent tax bracket for the richest Americans is pure fantasy -- even suggesting it represents such a fundamental disconnect with the world as it exists today that it is hard to see why it should be taken seriously. I would be deeply worried about the sanity of a Democratic president who proposed such a thing.
Fantasy? I don't know Mr. Leonard's age but perhaps he could be forgiven for not recalling that between the late 1940s and 1980 America's highest marginal rate averaged above 70 percent. Under Republican President Dwight Eisenhower it was 91 percent. Not until the 1980s did Ronald Reagan slash it to 28 percent. (Many considered Reagan's own proposal a "fantasy" before it was enacted.)
Incidentally, during these years the nation's pre-tax income was far less concentrated at the top than it is now. In the mid-1970s, for example, the top 1 percent got around 9 percent of total income. By 2007, they got 23.5 percent. So if anything, the argument for a higher marginal tax should be even more realistic now than it was during the days when it was taken for granted.
A disconnect with the world as it exists today? That's exactly the point of proposing it. For years progressives have whined that Democratic presidents (Clinton, followed by Obama) compromise with Republicans while Republican presidents (Reagan through W) stand their ground -- with the result that the center of political debate has moved steadily rightward. That's the reason the world exists the way it does today. Isn't it about time progressives had the courage of our conviction and got behind what we believe in, in the hope of moving the debate back to where it was?
Would a Democratic president be insane to propose such a thing? Not at all. In fact, polls show an increasing portion of the electorate angry with an insider "establishment" -- on Wall Street, in corporate suites, and in Washington -- that's been feathering its nest at the public's expense. The Tea Party is but one manifestation of a widening perception that the game is rigged in favor of the rich and powerful.
More importantly, it will soon become evident to most Americans that the only way to reduce the budget deficit, preserve programs deemed essential by the middle class, and not raise taxes on the middle, is to tax the top.
In fact, a Democratic president should propose a major permanent tax reduction on the middle class and working class. I suspect most of the public would find this attractive. But here again, the only way to accomplish this without busting the bank is to raise taxes on the rich.
Republicans have done a masterful job over the last thirty years convincing the public that any tax increase on the top is equivalent to a tax increase on everyone -- selling the snake oil of "trickle down economics" and the patent lie that most middle-class people will eventually become millionaires. A Democratic president would do well to rebut these falsehoods by proposing a truly progressive tax.
Will the rich avoid it? Other critics of my proposal say there's no way to have a truly progressive tax because the rich will always find ways to avoid it by means of clever accountants and tax attorneys. But this argument proves too much. Regardless of where the highest marginal tax rate is set, the rich will always manage to reduce what they owe. During the 1950s, when it was 91 percent, they exploited loopholes and deductions that as a practical matter reduced the effective top rate 50 to 60 percent. Yet that's still substantial by today's standards. The lesson is government should aim high, expecting that well-paid accountants will reduce whatever the rich owe.
Besides, the argument that the nation shouldn't impose an obligation on the rich because they can wiggle out of it is an odd one. Taken to its logical extreme it would suggest we allow them to do whatever antisocial act they wish -- grand larceny, homicide, or plunder -- because they can always manage to avoid responsibility for it.
Some critics worry that if the marginal tax is raised too high, the very rich will simply take their money to a more hospitable jurisdiction. That's surely possible. Some already do. But paying taxes is a central obligation of citizenship. Those who take their money abroad in an effort to avoid paying American taxes should lose their American citizenship.
Finally, there are some who say my proposal doesn't stand a chance because the rich have too much political power. It's true that as income and wealth have moved to the top, political clout has risen to the top as well.
But to succumb to cynicism about the possibility of progressive change because of the power of those at the top is to give up the battle before it's even started. Haven't we had enough of that?
Robert Reich is the author of Aftershock: The Next Economy and America's Future, now in bookstores. This post originally appeared at RobertReich.org.

Wednesday, September 07, 2011

If Only Josh Could Walk In My Shoes For Awhile

A middle aged man with a fixation on young people with Autism (mocking them is sort of a fetish) wrote this little barb on the Northeast Shooters website discussion about taxes and social programs designed to help the poor and disabled. His name is Josh Manjarrez, and he was a friend to my brother in High School. Josh's political inclinations put him somewhere to the right of Attila the Hun. 

That said, here is what he wrote about me:

Because there are a whole load of people who feel sorry for losers who sit at home and do nothing. They want to coddle them, and pay their bills, and let them know everything will be ok, the big bad world won't hurt them. They get to overextend themselves financially, eat for free, have a decent apartment, and get it without that silly idea of paying anything back.

They should be taking care of the people who are figuratively breaking their backs to take of their families and pay their bills on time.


Why can't we have debtor's prisons for those fine folk who don't and won't take care of their own obligations.

I reference: http://houseoffourcats.blogspot.com/
 

Try reading a couple entries if you can keep from throwing up a little.


It pleases me that Mr. Manjarrez throws up a little when he visits my blog. He seems to do it often. I wouldn't have it any other way. A little about myself before I go on.


Between the ages of 14 and 30, I worked. First, as a house-cleaner with my father, which lasted until I took a job as a short-order cook. Over the next couple of years, I worked in an art museum as a security guard, in a parking garage, and as an overnight dispatcher for hotel technicians who fixed PPV movie systems when they broke down. After that, I was a full-time student of the University of Massachusetts at Boston while working full-time on an overnight shift at a Boston hotel. After 2 years of doing that, I started working full-time at the Massachusetts' Banking Association while continuing to go to school.


During the admissions process to a Master's program, I attempted suicide. A diagnosis of clinical depression followed, and then hospitalizations in some psychiatric wards (therapy and medications). This led to my trying 15 sessions of electric-shock therapy, which erased the previous year or so worth of memories.


My diagnosis was changed, eventually, to a more complicated form of severe, crippling mental illness. This killed any hopes of working and/or continuing school. For that reason, I'm currently on Social Security Disability.


During the time in which I worked full-time, I was paying into the Social Security system in case I needed it one day. Either as an old man, or a disabled man. At the time, I had no idea that a form of schizophrenia was going to lay me low, as it were. Still, I gladly paid into the Social Security system.


Manjarrez makes a couple of points I'd like to address in two parts. He says, 


"...there are a whole load of people who feel sorry for losers who sit at home and do nothing. They want to coddle them, and pay their bills, and let them know everything will be ok, the big bad world won't hurt them. They get to overextend themselves financially, eat for free, have a decent apartment, and get it without that silly idea of paying anything back."


1. I'm not a, "loser." Anyone confronted with mental illness of this severity would be reduced to suicide, or get help from government social programs. I hope that Josh never knows what crippling mental illness is like, and that it never happens to his children or anyone else he cares about. Having defeated suicidal ideation, and given that I no longer attempt suicide, I've made myself a winner by doing this, regardless of my job situation. There are people out there who know what I'm talking about. Josh isn't one of them.


2. Nobody coddles me, or tells me that the big, bad world won't hurt me. I've experienced pain and loss that is unspeakably difficult to relate. Few know more than I just how big and bad be the world. 


If Josh were to walk in my shoes, he would know what I'm talking about. He is of a mind to mock the misfortune of others. To mock those with crippling mental illness as, "free-loaders." If it were up to him, I'd be living on the street, or more likely dead. 


Happily, his Fascist politics and laissez-fair economic outlook keep him pissing and moaning in the political margins. Go ahead...cry it out and face the fact that most people don't want disabled people to starve on the streets or commit suicide or whatever other horror you'll meet with apathy. 


Enjoy yourself! But never think for a second that you and others of your social Darwinist ilk will ever get their way. 


Onward!

The Early Morning Knows All Your Secrets

Rapid thoughts rage in and flow out the other side, taking bridges, boats and cars with them. Like Vermont, except it is just with me my memories. Some more drugs and I'll bid adieu to this early morning wrestling match for control of my mind. 

Monday, September 05, 2011

What is Labor Day?

The meaning and history of Labor Day has been forgotten by most Americans. Clearly. Allow me to post this brief article about Labor Day, lifted from the Department of Labor website:

The form that the observance and celebration of Labor Day should take were outlined in the first proposal of the holiday — a street parade to exhibit to the public "the strength and esprit de corps of the trade and labor organizations" of the community, followed by a festival for the recreation and amusement of the workers and their families. This became the pattern for the celebrations of Labor Day. Speeches by prominent men and women were introduced later, as more emphasis was placed upon the economic and civic significance of the holiday. Still later, by a resolution of the American Federation of Labor convention of 1909, the Sunday preceding Labor Day was adopted as Labor Sunday and dedicated to the spiritual and educational aspects of the labor movement.

More can be found here.


Hard to believe, but Labor Day really is about celebrating the accomplishments of organized labor and unions.  Absolutely no one in the mainstream media, nor any politician I know of, has spoken about how this day is set aside to celebrate a hell of a lot more than the, "unofficial end of summer."


'nuf said.

Friday, September 02, 2011

For My Darling

I'm a sentimental sucker, and am keen on Walter Benton's poetry.


In Pain? Try Drugs and Pets!

Today I went to a clinic that specializes in reducing or eliminating chronic pain. There is some sort of nerve damage in my leg that can be quite painful at times. Yada, yada, yada. The amount of pain that people endure is absolutely incredible. And I'm not even talking about emotional pain, which can be as bad or even worse than physical pain. But I don't have to tell you that.

Pain has no purpose. People who find nobility in enduring pain without drugs are the victims of a cosmic gag. I'm all for drugs, let's throw pain in the trash bin. In evolutionary terms, physical pain tells an organism that it needs to engage in the act of self-preservation. To bolt, or fight. The other day, I saw a cat kill a bird in the courtyard just outside my bedroom window. This happens. This is nature. But that bird took a long time to die. And so many humans are in the jaws of a cat of one sort or another, ever fighting. Burn victims, cancer patients, children in Somalia so starved that they start to digest their own stomach. Fuck.

Death is part of life, that makes sense to me. But all this pain is useless...it's just too fucking much. If there is a god, he or she or it is a total asshole for not intervening to stop so much agony. But there is no god, and life exists as it has evolved. Our screams and moans and groans and appeals for mercy go unheard, and just travel ever outward into the universe without so much as an echo. 

All this useless pain. It's a bummer. But here's a video of one of the Four Cats and my dog, Annie!


Thursday, September 01, 2011

Michigan Rag

I present to you the famous Michigan J. Frog cartoon, "One Froggy Evening." Michael Maltese came up with the story. It absolutely kills me every time I see it. A man driven insane by a frog with a magnificent singing voice. Take 6 minutes out of your day.

One Froggy Evening