I mean, I studied martial arts theory for a reason. Fat guys need to think much faster than they can move

Gun Safety Tip: If you are carrying one right out in the open where I can see it, make sure it stays more than about 50 inches away from both of my hands if you want me to take it at all seriously. Cop school has GOT to teach weapons theory. This is just embarrassing. At about 50 inches or closer, having that gun holstered at your side is much MUCH worse than not having it at all. It provides me with an astonishing clarity of mind, and it focuses your mind securely on a weapon, instead of resolving the situation. You are no longer thinking, and I have just started. Whatever happens next, from this moment on, our encounter is governed by MY goals, and those largely have to do with having a pleasant day tomorrow.

Right from the start, I should have known it was not going to go well.

This afternoon a friend and I were going to run an errand, and we are walking toward her car when I saw my neighbor the Chainsaw Fetishist glaring at me with his hand on my mailbox walking forward. She had her back to him, and was opening her car-door. This is the neighbor who has already tried to run over Bastet with his car. I saw an object in his hand that he was bringing upward from the top of my mailbox. I assumed it was a cellphone. I placed myself rather quickly (I am large, about 250, and it takes some doing to get anywhere quickly so I imagine it was not a pretty sight.
I was relieved to see that my landlord friend neighbor and tall, capable person (all one guy, can't think of a good pseudonym right off) was standing there, so felt a bit less need to respond to immediate events. Captain Chainsaw aimed his camera first at my landlord, next at the car my friend (quick pseudonym, I'll call her Ermine) was getting into, then at me. I made nice solid eye contact and said "get off this property now" or words close to that, because I remembered that my friend could not say anything to Chainsaw per mutual instructions in Chainsaw's lovely restraining order. I have so far avoided the restrraining order war specifically because it means I can't talk, and I tend to not be willing to put my best weapons down on the floor when the monster in the basement starts to rattle chains. See, if I do that, monster movie rules apply from there on, and we all know how well THAT ends.
Whatever he wanted, he went away rather quickly, and we all disperse. So far, this is looking like it might just end, which would be a good thing, because I realized how much I was enjoying myself, and I was even chuckling a little.
Fast forward one completed errand, I am at home, hanging with the kid, scolding myself for enjoying 9t. (I had been having a bad day before that, and it had cheered me up a bit. Then I put Luke the Absolutely Viscous (when standing and not drooling) is barking up a storm, but it is a playful bark (this indicates it is another dog, so I am going to take my time, there is no bad with that.) I galumph slowly out the door (having used up all my energy allotment until about 2026 on the earlier, noble, Save Ermine masculine chest-beating stuff.) I am bending down to grab him when I hear "Put your dog in the house sir!"
Since I am already doing that, and my POLICEMAN WITH GUN alarms just went off, I am tempted to just turn around, ignore the fact that somebody just barked an order at me in my driveway about my dog and ask Bastet to deal with it (which is almost always the preferred course of action when I ALREADY know this isn't going to go well from here on) but Crowbear is there and, well, I am who I am. I put the dog in the house, and go back out.
This gentlemen chooses as his first words to me something along the lines of "Are you giving [chainsaw] a hard time again". It got rapidly worse. In the first few moments of a four-minute and-change conversation he had already accused me of lying to him about an earlier complaint, and accused me of being argumentative, which I make it a habit never to do with armed people. He left, but he made it very clear as he was leaving that he was pissed off.
This is a dynamic that I am not likely to allow to stand. The trick is to make it better, not worse.
The guy was short, he started off aggressive, no doubt following some REALLY badly thought-out training that makes him need to "take control of the conversation", and I am certainly never going to allow that to happen. My cold read on him is that he is really frustrated with Chainsaw, who is using him as an errand boy, he knows it, and it pisses him off. ALL of the officers emotions are completely understandable, but he is going to channel it by trying to take control of a conversation with an old fat guy, the old fat guy isn't going to let him, and it's going to piss him off even more, and he has a gun. The light from the garage was behind him, so I couldn't see any of his facial expressions, but his body language was VERY clear, very aggressive, and, in his mind, I think, very intimidating. I was also getting a 'scared short guy' vibe that I don't like at all. Now, my first instinct was to chuckle nastily, which I suppressed (thereby giving up a good measure of control of the situation.), because I have a rule about laughing at insecure armed people.

I have a complex relationship with anger, and one that seems difficult for others to comprehend: I see anger as a force for good, in myself and occasionally in others. Many people see anger as the force that makes them do stupid and occasionally evil shit. For me, anger is largely where courage comes from.

I am incredibly angry at my government for what it has done to this young man. At the precise time in his life that he is asking himself who he is, (and getting answers that likely scare him) our government makes him an accessory to murder.

unfuckingtitled

My first lucid memory is being told by a doctor that I probably wouldn't live to be 20.
He thought he was doing good, telling it to me straight (at the wise age of 8)
I have been waiting to die ever since.
It leads to much melodrama,
and sadness,
and acute not-giving-a-shit.

I don't know why I'm NOT dead,
but I'm not.
And I have no idea how I feel about that.
I have been convinced of my imminent death many times
four entubations, two respirators, a heart attack
and about a thousand asthma crises later
Still dying, never dead.

Have a nice christmas, world.

So he is dead.

Osama binLadin was killed in a firefight last night.

Before you rejoice, consider this: Early reports have him participating in the firefight, and that is one of the qualifications for Islamic Martyrdom. Did we kill a bad guy, or create a transcendent being? Our gloating, rejoicing and celebration further his cause. Almost nothing good ever comes from killing people. I am sure we tried to capture him, and I am sad that we failed. A public trial would probably have been better.

I am glad he is dead, but I hope we have not created and enshrined a new hero.

Djinn

My familiar is a cat,
an old black cat
sharpens her claws on the couch-arm

My old black cat,
the Cross-eyed cat
jumps on my chest and rumbles

The Cross-eyed Cat,
a Halloween cat
arches her back and blinks

Both paws up,
claws at the ready
she combs my beard when I hold her

Tokyo

I always wanted to go to Japan
It is the martial artist in me

The wind is blowing towards Tokyo
and it is carrying death with it.

Is it Godzilla?

Dust, dust, all is dust.
floating on the air
picked up in dust-devils
and thrown carelessly into the wind

The wind that is blowing towards Tokyo

Fukushima is the cost of technology
And it will happen again.
And we will let it.

Bastet's spell

Bastet cast the spell, the spell I can never learn
She took her rage and contained it
focused it
and in so doing gave the blame
the hurt
the fear
the worry
the helplessness
to a small magic-marker picture
of a cute little princess
She then ripped it into small squares
and as she did, she became calmer
and began to let it go.

is it on?

Yeah, unfortunately, it is on.

-=lizard looks at Bill, Bill looks at lizard=-

Go with the flow, or slay the dragon?

Screw This.

Red cool-aid or blue Kool-Aid, it's still fucking Kool-Aid. Does it matter if it was Ayn Rand or Karl Marx who stirred it last?

the letter

She is there,upstairs, probably asleep, crowded close to a chocolate retriever.
We are in the same house, yet I miss her terribly.
He is upstairs, with the dwarf hamsters. Damn, I wish he were awake
There is a happy black cat expressing it's joy by standing on my chest
And I am trying to write a letter. It is the most disturbing thing I have ever done
it shakes the pillars of my very existence
and I'd almost rather die than write it.

ethereal imp

There was an imp, a three-foot tall harbinger of things unusual, sitting on my chest on the hospital bed. He was heavy, and I couldn't breathe.

"I know something you don't know" the Imp said in a teasing, whiny way.
I couldn't get enough breath to ask what it was. That didn't stop the little bastard telling me. tho.

"This is how you are going to die, big guy. Flat on your back and gasping for breath, looking up at blank ceiling, or the faux-nice some nurses have. not now, not tonight, but unless you manage to get yourself shot while arguing, or run over by a bus, this is it, this pathetic fate awaits you. Have a nice day" it said, then fucked off to wherever hallucinations go when I am not around to notice them.

a bad case of the 'scareds'

I saw it, in the flash of the moment
Truth and fact melting together seamlessly
I saw it, as it really is, clearly.
I averted my eyes as quickly as I could
Then, I ran home and hid under the covers
and aggressively forgot it all

and woke up, clueless

and everything was all right again

-=foggy moments=-

I get lost in here, sometimes.
Drifting,
blissfully disconnected.

looney bin fun

So, I was sitting in my livingroom, talking to my son, about what, i do not remember. Suddenly, I was siezed by chest pain, wrist pain, sweating, and incoherent thinking. A few hours before, I had a moment when I could not figure out how to start the car, and I couldnt putt he steps together to sweep the living room floor.

I was convinced, absolutely convinced, that I was having another heart attack, or perhaps a stroke. Fairly quickly, my thought process cleared, but the pain remained quite severe, and I sent my son for help. Some very calm neighbors called an ambulance, and I went to the hospital.

They found absolutely nothing physically wrong. So i asked for a referral to a psychologist or psychiatrist, thinking that it was a problem with my mind, or perhaps my penchant for self-medication was messing me up. (Just OTC stuff, no narcotics or street drugs) I was told that I could not have one, they could not refer me to a shrink of any discription, I had to go thru "Crisis", which is apparently the ONLY way to get an immediate referral to mental health professionals, and the only way to do that was to let them send me to a mental hospital for "observation". I was scared shitless, still fairly convinced that I was dying, so I agreed, under the condition that I was NOT agreeing to be committed, and that I could leave whenever I wanted. that assurance being given, I agreed, albeit with a slight bit of angst.

While there, I slowly lost my conviction that I was dying. I arrived at Acadia on thursday night, and did not see an actual doctor until Tuesday afternoon.

While there, we had "group meeting" every morning, at which we were asked probing, consistently pointless questions, and were told what to expect for that day. Monday morning, I was told I would be seeing a doctor that day. This was very relieving to hear, as it was the whole reason I had agreed to go.

A lesser reason was to cease taking my OTC meds under controlled circumstances. There were no negative effect from not taking them, except that the pain I was taking them to treat came back like a freight train. Oddly, this lack of significant effects from cessation has not reassured anybody that my taking them was essentially benign, proving their objections had no basis in reason or reality, just in fear of the unknown, I have chosen to respect their emotional hesitance and not restarted the OTC med regimen despite the nearly crippling pain. I have been told that I do not really respect the emotions of oters, so this is an experiment in that direction. No idea how long I can put up with it, but I am trying.

Anyway, on Monday morning I was told, by a creature named Wayne, that I would see a doctor that day.

Several hours later, Wayne informed me tht he had decided I didnt need to actually see a doctor, I could just see him, a Nurse Practitioner. I refused. I was not there to see a nurse, but to see a psychiatrist, and wasn't really willing to compromise on that point, as I had already come this far. When I told him i considered what he had told me that morning a lie, he changed his story. It wasn't really HIM that decided I could skip the doctor, it was both him and the Doctor together. When I told him that really didn't much matter to my conclusion that he had lied to me, and now he had lied twice, he changed his story yet again, saying that the DOCTOR had decided he was too busy and had asked Wayne to divide up the case load and had put me on Waynes list. With the lie count now up to three, I gave up on Wayne, told him I would wait as long as necessary, ande had a snack to calm down.

Are you out there, Wayne? I am searching for your e-mail address because I have not yet told you how I felt at your deception while I was at what I considered a vulnerable point,. I will find it.

The next morning, during "group", Wayne made the mistake of asking us all if we had any issues that needed to be dealt with. So I told him. He had lied to me, in front of everybody in the "group" and lost all credibility, and as I had been told by a mutual friend that he was a good guy who actually cared, I would give him the chance to regain it by admitting error and apologizing in the same forum he had lied to me in. He couldn't do it, or wouldn't do it, and told me that it was an inappropriate forum in which to address the issue, and that i should stop talking in front of the other patients about it.

He refused to speak to me for the remainder of the day, but I did get to see the doctor. With a referral in hand, I asked to be discharged, and since I was there voluntarily, they of course said yes, and i left.

In order to get a referral to a psychologist, I had to sign myself in to a nuthouse (Acadia hospital in Bangor), and now I have to put up with all the stares and worried looks and stigma that comes with it. I had to stay there for almost a week. All this just to get an appointment.

The actual appointment will not be for six weeks to three months.

Result of the stay: a somewhat plausible explanation of what happened to me: PTSD sufferers frequently suffer flashbacks, or are force3d to relive their traumatic experience3s, in real time, again and again. The Doc thinks i was reliving my first heart attack. As this is a mental disorder, there is no way to conclusively prove this.

At no time was I ever a danger to myself or anybody else. My son performed admirable in what he thought (as did I) was a major crisis, and my neighbors did me the great favor of comforting me while I was waiting for the ambulance, as well as calling the ambulance and looking after the Kid till Deb came home.

I cannot in good conscience tell anybody else who thinks they need psychological help trust Acadia hospital, seek other alternatives first. And under no circumstances believe what they tell you in a looney bin, they have no respect for your feelings and expectations at all, they think you are crazy, stupid, and must be calmed down, even if it means lying their asses off to you. maintain your goals, insist on being treated honestly and forthrightly and realize you are still human, regardless of how they treat you.

Penis Joke

I have a friend who wants to go to special forces training because it will turn him into a finely crafted weapon of survival and destruction. I informed him that a weapon is a tool. If he wants to have real power, the thing to be is the hand that wields the tool. He thought it was a penis joke and didn't listen. Now he is completely screwed. So i guess he was right, it WAS a penis joke.

Answers to questions I have recently been asked,

1) are you insane

Probably. What you have to understand is that from INSIDE insane, things look pretty much normal.

Technically, the answer has to be "yes". I suffer from PTSD, i suspect i suffer from a lot of other things, too, but because of the way I am, objective answers are quite difficult to obtain. In a pinch, go with "yes", treat my words as coming from a crazy person and dismiss their significance. I dare you.

2) does the answer to the previous question automatically make everything you say dismissable and valueless?

Only when I am wearing a clown nose.

Are you out there, reading this? Because if you are, know this: I am willing to talk about it. I am also willing to promise that as far as it is in my power to do so, I will prevent harm from happening to you as a result of simply talking about it, whatever it is. a different perspective might help.

bottle of pills

There is a prescription bottle
on the shelf
Untouched for years
that represents freedom.

It's contents remain untouched,
for to use it is to lose it
and it is my silent support
and the greatest comfort I have.

It is insurance in pill form.

I have watched slow-motion death
crush families into despair and ruin,
anihiliate hard-won futures
as if they were tissue-thin dreams,
burned by the bedsides of the dying.

While there may be no good way to go
there is certainly a bad way,
slowly consuming every resource
as death is staved off,
minute by minute
while the handholding relations
wish the end would just come, and free them all,
and then hate themselves for wanting it.

There is no dignity in rotting,
no nobility in feebleness,
and little success in hope.

There is no peace in desperation,
just denial.

I will stand proudly and walk through the door
rather than cringe away in fear.

-----------------
No, I am not suicidal and no intervention is necessary.
it's just a poem

Honest Opinion

So there I was, just sort of hanging out, engaging in some minor substance abuse, writing some nice purple invective against some internet stupidity or other, when a person I respect (and love, but the respect is more important in this case) asks me for......an Honest Opinion.

I have lost friends this way. Frequently. When, many years ago, a friend asked me for an Honest Opinion about his new girlfriend, and after receiving it went immediately to fetch his assault rifle (I shit you not, this actually happened), I instituted a new policy: If you ask me for an Honest Opinion that I think you may not like when you hear it, I will say "ask me again, and I'll answer, but you should be warned, I am actually going to give you what you asked for."

People, as a rule, don't want your opinion, and when they ask for an honest opinion specifically, they are actually saying "I think you might disagree with me, here, so I am warning you I am sensitive on this topic". They are telling you to be honest because they really want you to AGREE with them. They are telling you how important it is to them. They are telling you, basically, "I want you to give me an honest opinion if you agree with me, and if you don't, I want you to lie"

Screw that. You ask me for an honest opinion, you will get exactly that.

On to the opinion.

"Do you think I am stupid because I am a Christian"?

Fuck.

The honest answer is "yup". It isn't "Yes", because "Yes" is a correct term, carrying none of the derision I want to pack into the affirmation. What I want to say is "Of course I think your Christianity is stupid. You stopped believing in the tooth fairy and Santa Clause, right? Well, if I was a 30-year-old who still believed in the literal existence of a fairy that rewarded you for losing teeth by putting currency under your pillow, you would think THAT was stupid, right? You think the Scientologists are morons because they believed in Xenu the Cosmic Overlord who stashes souls in Volcanoes, right?" but I actually respect this person, so even tho it would be the honest thing to do, I DON'T say any of that. I say "Yup" because "Yes" is a respectful answer to a stupid question.

And i still feel like a liar, because I didn't manage to convey what I actually felt, my Honest Opinion.

I believe in reason, and it is a sad fact that if you START from reason, you can't get to any of the major religions. You can get to a nebulous spirituality, but probably not much further. If you start from religion, you can still accept Reason, but you have to hold reason subordinate to your religion, because any application of reason to religious doctrine or dogma will end with said dogma or doctrine decimated. In other words, reason kills faith. As it should.

To hold as truth or fact things that reason dictates are neither is to willfully place reason in a subordinate position. And that is, almost by definition, stupid. So, yeah, I think Christians (and Jews, Muslims, Etc) are stupid, in that they are holding to beliefs that cannot be. And believing in Christ just as hard as you can (which is the suggested antidote to this terrible 'reason' stuff) isn't going to help at all. It didn't work with Santa, after all, did it?

So my Honest Opinion insults the intelligence of somebody i respect. It is what it is.

If I didn't respect this person, I'd probably just shrug and say "Nah, to each his own" or some other equivocation.

I find it distinctly odd that my respect for this person is going to make me tell him I think he is stupid.

living an intellectually honest existence blows sometimes.