he text me, in a right state, so i called him. We do that sometimes, that’s what friends are for, you should know who you can lean on, there are so few people out there. And he wanted to see me but it was impossible, although i would cross oceans for him, first you need to find a boat (i’m not a good enough swimmer but if the day came i needed to, i would). But i could see him the following day. We arranged to meet up, we looked forward to it.
I booked us a hotel, nothing fancy, we had nowehere else to go. i had split from my boyfriend but had made myself homeless so had to move back in with my ex. FB was living in shared lodgings, visitors weren’t permitted apparently. The night before, when he had text, he started takling about his erection, which was something we often did, but i didn’t feel right about it, he was in a bad way and i was living with my ex. He said, the next day when we met up, that i had made him feel bad, by cutting the conversation short, when he wanted to talk about sex.
So we met up, after work. And i looked and felt like shit, i had been working all day, every day, things were difficult for m, but i wanted to see my friend, i was scared for him, by the desperation i heard in his voice the night before. We went and had a drink, he spent most of the time on his phone. Then we went and had dinner, but i hadn’t got changed out of my work stuff and felt ill at ease, though dinner was nice. And we bought some alcohol and took it back to the hotel.
We thought we would sit in and havea few drinks then decide what to do.
But he spent an hour on his phone, to his girlfriend, who he had not told me about and it made me feel awful. So i wanted to leave, to go home, to be with people who wouldn’t make me feel shit. He answered his phone, having already spent a lot of the evening texting and left the room to talk. A whole hour, whilst i got slowly drunk and thought about leaving and asked myself what i was doing there and why had i left my beautiful and loving boyfriend and secure home for someone who cannot even devote one evening to me.
Then he came back and i was pissed off and he was getting high by visiting the bathroom every twenty minutes or so and then staying in there for a quarter of an hour at a time. And i seriously wondered what the fuck to do and felt homesick, which i hadn’t done in years, and guilty and so tired and slightly afraid.
I didn’t recognise this person. And he got in the bath and i got changed and we started to talk and started to play a game but i couldn’t get into it because the whole time i was thinking about him being on his phone to his girlfriend and that i didn’t recognise him but i still wanted to fuck him though i also did not want to at all.
He wasn’t my friend that evening, he was all over the place and dijointed, even our conversations weren’t making sense and i just got more drunk and spen a lot of time dancing about on my own because he was in the bathroom with his class A friend.
Then we went out, quite late i think for a drink and as we were walking up the road he said “I’m not shagging you tonight” and i don’t know why he said it. We hadn’t even mentioned shagging and after what happened the first time (I shall tell you about that in another post), i didn’t even want to. Then we went to a bar and he was so trashed and kept talking utter shite and made me angry, with his wallowing in self-pity bought about by his own destructive behaviour. It made me feel sick and at times i was both disgusted and turned off, i didn’t like him very much at all.
But looking the way he does, i don’t know, who can resist? Not me, not when i’m drunk and miserable, a terrible combination.
So we went back to the hotel. And he wanted a pen and paper so i got the porter to fetch us some. And he tried to write but that was boring because he didn’t want to share and i was still awake. Then he went back to the bathroom for half an hour. And after the half an hour he started demanding scissors, from inside the bathroom. So i went to find him a pair and the porter wouldn’t give me any and when i asked FB why he wanted them, he said it was to trim his pubs. And that confused me.
Eventually he came out of the bathroom and then he said he wanted some viagra or some such similar thing from the vending machine in the mens toilets downstairs. But it was getting ridiculous, all these bizarre demands and anyway, i was falling asleep now, through boredom.
So we went to bed, with the stereo playing and he couldn’t get it up. In fact, it appeared as though it was never going to ‘get up’ again. And i really couldn’t be bothered, it all seemed a bit sordid, seedy, not at all what either of us desrved i thought. So i started to go to sleep. The he went down on me. And let me tell you that it was total heaven. There was nothing, absolutely nothing i wouldn’t do for that boy right then. To call him an expert would be a shortfall of description for something so utterly erotic and beautiful and fulfilling. FB was a genius and i would marry him tomorrow if only for his tongue, it surpasses all else. he truly loves it and it shows, he drove me wild.
I can’t rememebr when it stopped or where time elapsed after that.
In the morning i woke up and felt awful. I didn’t ever want to wake up but we had to, had to because we had to leave the hotel and i had plans that day. I wanted us to stay together but he was a bit of a mess and to be honest, he looked like he wanted to be far away from me.
Then he fucked me. He made me come, i was in my own world. He turns me on like no one else. he fucked me nicely this time although he could not come inside me, i wouldn’t let him, that would have caused an issue i wasn’t capable of dealing with. He came on my shoulder and it trickled into my hair, which i loved.
And within the next hour we parted company and haven’t seen each other since, and never will. Two weeks later he told me to fuck off and also texted ‘fuck you’ to me for no apparent reason after avoiding my phone calls.
This actually happened back in October, but somehow I missed it. Me, missing an opportunity for a filthy, misleading headline! I musta been drunk!
That’s right, UK government advisor David Nutt has lost his job after making controversial remarks characterizing alcohol and tobacco as more dangerous drugs than E, pot or LSD (from which the government derives no taxes).
According to the Guardian:
Nutt had criticised politicians for “distorting” and “devaluing” the research evidence in the debate over illicit drugs.
Arguing that some “top” scientific journals had published “horrific examples” of poor quality research on the alleged harm caused by some illicit drugs, the Imperial College professor called for a new way of classifying the harm caused by both legal and illegal drugs.
“Alcohol ranks as the fifth most harmful drug after heroin, cocaine, barbiturates and methadone. Tobacco is ranked ninth,” he wrote in the paper from the centre for crime and justice studies at King’s College, London, published yesterday.
“Cannabis, LSD and ecstasy, while harmful, are ranked lower at 11, 14 and 18 respectively.”
While the impulse to speak truth to power is, as always, the single MOST dangerous intoxicating substance known.
On the upside, I bet it was a wicked going-away party at Jocelyn Elders‘ house!
You fear the worst,and hope to hear the telephone ring any moment. This has got to stop, you think carefully, I will not continue to live like this. Well, if your important other is near addiction, or already there, things are on the point of getting a lot worse. Addiction can occur fast, highly fast. Customarily, folks turn to drugs during times of crisis, grasping for something that may make their lives better or less complicated. Do not think that all the unexpected the person you like will just stop employing a dynamic substance. They will not.
It can be very hard to get rid of whatever problem caused an individual to use drugs in the 1st place. Most likely, removing the drug manufacturing barrier can prove to be virtually impossible. If it is someone’s job, there’s not too much they can do, they may totally need that job to survive and feed their family. So, they can repeatedly be driven to the drugs to relieve their stress. And after they start to use a drug, they’ll highly likely not be physically in a position to stop, it could be almost impossible. Particularly if they’re employing a harder substance like cocaine. The time to addiction varies from person to person, being contingent upon genes, psychological and physical health, and environment. Once an individual is at or near addiction, your life, and theirs, will speedily lose touch with all fact. Drugs cost money, and an addict will do anything to get their fix.
If a high-interest account is available, they are going to start siphoning cash off it right away. There’ll be fights about cash being wasted, and your other half will just use that as a reason to use more drugs.
If there isn’t really enough cash to support the addiction, your other half will do whatever is needed to get that cash.
This regularly involves taking or pawning possessions. If they nick, arrest is a truly real chance, and if they start pawning home goods, and it works, then your home will shortly have nothing in it. Using drugs is regularly a social activity, and if you are not participating, your significant other will find somebody else who will.
Word on the street is that actress Brittany Murphy was warned about her husband’s alleged fraudulent activities, but refused to listen. The late actress’ husband, Simon Monjack, vehemently denied his detractors’ numerous allegations, however, stating that he’s been a target ever since he met Murphy at a party three years ago before marrying her in May 2007. “My problem is that I do not look like Ashton Kutcher,” Monjack told the newspaper, referring to Murphy’s ex boyfriend. “Nor do they [the Hollywood elite] like the fact that she [Murphy] married someone who was not famous. Here, stars like stars to marry other stars.”
It is said that folks tried to pull her coat tail concerning Monjack, but she’d become extremely defensive. Lashing out on several occasions as well. That leads me to believe that in her heart of hearts, she knew some truth rang in those alarms. However, she ignored all & proceeded without caution.
-”The BklynBandette.” Mr. Hollywood’s Co-Defendant.
Everyone wanted to see this boxing match with Floyd Mayweather Jr. and Manny Pacquaio, but for some reason (I suspect cowardice), Pacquaio is trying to avoid the fight. Seriously. He’s threatening to sue, because his opponent wants him to take strict drug tests, to prove he isn’t taking illegal drugs. Pacquaio’s camp has even claimed a Manila Standard reporter was given statement’s that Pacquaio is taking performance-enhancing drugs (steroids). Of course, that reporter is probably lying, or Pacquaio’s people are lying and using the reporter’s name, because the Manila Standard didn’t report it. I mean, what reporter would get a juicy angry statement like that, and not put it in somewhere? It might add hype to their match. Probably because it never happened, and any investigation into it would prove it didn’t.
Hey, Manny. If they’re suggesting that you take drugs, and challenge you to take a test to prove you don’t, why not take the test, and prove to the entire world that you can pass it? Why do you, Manny Pacquaio, instead, avoid taking the test, and sue, instead? You know what will happen here. If they go to court, they’re probably going to produce some valid evidence that you DO take drugs. If only to defend themselves from your charges. What will you do if the judge orders a drug test? Sue him or her?
Either way, Pacquaio is probably accomplishing what he wanted to do in the first place. Poison the negotiations so he doesn’t have to face Mayweather Jr. in the ring. Otherwise he’d take the test and get it over. He’s obviously not interested in settling the matter in the ring like a man.
Man up, Manny. Take your lumps, and get in the ring. The longer you keep running away, the worse it’s going to look for you.
You are sitting in class and the teacher walks in. The banter of the weekend ceases and the purpose of school is initiated. As you watch the teacher write today’s lesson up on the board, you steal a glance at your friend in the row in front. They see you, and you snicker to yourselves about how he had earned his wages while on sick leave for his part time job, even though he had no proof of his illness, and was in fact with you at the beach.
Then you feel something on your leg. It feels like an insect, so you absently mindedly wipe it of. But it stay where it is. You have a look down, and see no insect. But the feeling remains. It is getting worse now, a whole colony of flies is using your leg as a landing platform, and they don’t want to leave.
So you start to jig your leg up and down, which bumps the desk repeatedly. You know people can hear you, and it is distracting you as well, since you can’t write while the desk is moving. But you still do it. Those flies will not make a nest in your leg, not while you have anything to say about it.
By now, the person sitting next to you turns to you in annoyance. “If you need to go, just go. Don’t need to shit your pants while there is a chance for escape.” you smile at them, and say you are fine. They look suspicious, but return to the work that they are doing.
Then another fly land on your hand. You whack it. Th sound reverberates around the class room, startling everyone. You are the centre of attention for a few seconds, but they feel like endless years under the gaze of everyone you know. It seems they are judging you, even though they already know you very well. You think to yourself how dare they judge me, and go to rise.
But your friend next to you stops you. “What’s wrong?” they ask. “You’ve gone whiter than normal.” Then they look down, and scream. They keep on screaming, and it echoes in your mind. You can’t handle this, so you punch them in the face. They fall of their chair, blood coming from the back of their head.
It is the that you see the reason for her screaming. In your effort to get the fly, you broke your finger. Not just broke it, snapped it clean in two. It dangles by a few nerves, which seem to not be working, since you cannot feel anything. You bring it up to your face and make it swing in a circle in front of you. You laugh at how strange it all is.
By now, the entire class is screaming, running for the door. The teacher is trying to keep everyone calm, but these efforts are in vain, as she is also trying to escape. You see this, and are abhorred by it. You have paid to be here. The least that the teacher can do is try to keep in control and not run away from you.
So you pick up a metal ruler. It feel good in your hand; cold, solid, certain. The flies on your legs must be what is scaring them. So you try to get rid of them by attacking them. Again and again, you hack at them. But it doesn’t stop. They just get worse and worse the more you poke them.
You hit something hard. You look down and see the ruler stuck in something white.
Then your friend that you punched hits you on the head with a table. The last thing you see is their face. It is covered in tears and blood, and is terrified of you.
When you wake up in hospital, you remember none of this. If it wasn’t for the fact you are in hospital, and the photo’s your friends have of it. You wouldn’t know about it. You are disgusted by yourself, and vow to force it from your memory the only way you know how to.
When Walt Emrys Staton stumbled upon a migrant mother, Concepcion, carrying her daughter Jessica, 9, along the U.S.-Mexico border in Arizona, they’d been lost for days and had no food or water.
“The daughter was crying, `I’m sorry, mom, this is my fault,”‘ Staton said. “It’s heartbreaking to see that.”
Passion to help those in need, regardless of their immigration status, has enticed the Claremont School of Theology student to drop off jugs of water along the trails used by border crossers to enter the United States illegally.
But when he got arrested for littering last year, that same passion has also prompted him to refuse to pay a $175 fine and fight his case in a federal court.
“I wish they were after people who are dumping toxic waste with as much effort as they’ve been after me,” he said, citing that government has spent more than $50,000 to prosecute him.
“We drop off water (jugs) and pick up empty ones. When they arrested us, I had empty jugs in my hands, but they wrote us all littering tickets.”
After a two-day trial, a federal jury in June convicted Staton of littering in the Buenos Aires National Wildlife Refuge in Arizona.
In a sentencing memorandum, Lawrence Lee, an assistant U.S. attorney, claimed that there is a tremendous negative environmental impact in leaving full plastic water jugs on the refuge, which is responsible for the preservation of several critically endangered species.
Refuge Officer James Casey said he has seen thousands of plastic water jugs on the refuge with markings which Staton’s organization uses – with dates that are over a year old.
The prosecutor also said Staton’s actions were not about humanitarian efforts, but about “protesting the immigration policies of the United States, and aiding those that enter illegally into the United States.”
Blake Baron, a U.S. Border Patrol agent, said not everyone who benefits from Staton’s actions are just trying to find a better life in the United States. Many of them are drug smugglers, and “approximately 16 percent of illegal aliens arrested have significant criminal histories, to include murder, assault, rape, and sexual offenses with minors,” he said.
But Staton sees things differently.
The master’s of divinity student at CST is also a member of the group No More Deaths, which supports humanitarian aid along the border. Upon getting his degree in geography from Arizona State University, he “wanted to do something good for the world.”
He learned that he didn’t have to go far from his home in Tucson, Ariz., to do it.
“It’s a crisis. Hundreds of people are dying 30 miles from where I lived,” Staton said.
All volunteers with the group are “medically trained wilderness first-responders.”
“If we find anyone in distress, we do whatever we need to help them out,” he said. “Leading cause of death is dehydration, so leaving water makes (the) most sense.”
Volunteers scour established routes, dropping off full water jugs at several locations and picking up empty ones. Besides medical aid and water, they also provide clean socks or help with reading maps.
“Our border policy is intentionally funneling people into the desert,” Staton said. “The government uses it as a deterrent. More than 5,000 people have died since they’ve built the border wall. You see moms with kids and babies in the middle of the desert. No way that families need to go through that experience.”
CST is standing behind Staton and respects his conviction that saving human life must sometimes trump following all the rules, said Jerry D. Campbell, the school’s president.
“The moral progress that civilization makes over time results, in part, from the ongoing clash of ideas,” he said. “Staton’s action, intended to save the lives of individuals entering the country through the desert, conflicts with the position of those who are more concerned with keeping people from entering the country if they have not taken the prescribed legal steps necessary to do so. As a culture, we clearly have not yet solved the problem of how to deal humanely and justly with immigration.”
Jose Zapata Calderon, a professor of sociology and Chicano studies at Pitzer College, agreed.
“With the building of the wall and placing more Border Patrol in places like Tijuana and El Paso, a lot of immigrants have turned to crossing the border through Arizona, and what has emerged is a very strong anti-immigrant sentiment, not only aimed at immigrants but also at individuals who support immigrants,” Calderon said.
“All he was doing is what a number of churches also do, working to save the lives of individuals who often get lost.”
At the sentencing hearing in August, Magistrate Jennifer C. Guerin ordered Staton to pick up trash for 300 hours. She also sentenced him to a year of unsupervised probation and banned him from the refuge for a year.
Staton filed a motion to suspend his sentence, but the judge denied it and threatened to give him 25 days in prison if he does not comply with the ruling.
“I had strong objections to doing community service because I felt my actions were humanitarian,” he said. “I hoped the court would reconsider punishing me. But she just gave me two weeks to think about it.”
During a probation violation hearing held in Tucson on Monday, Staton changed his mind and asked the judge to let him do the initial 300 hours of community service. She agreed and also allowed him to complete the hours in Claremont.
“I still hold firm that what I did was not wrong,” Staton said. “I don’t want other people to be deterred from this kind of work, but me sitting in prison is not useful either.”
“I’m tired of this Congress thinking it knows better than me and my family how to provide for our health-care now and in the future.”
Republican Party Chairman Michael S. Steele accused Democrats of “thumbing their nose and flipping the bird to the American people.” Conceding that the Senate bill is virtually unstoppable, Steele said in a conference call with reporters: “I intend to have my foot on the throats of the Democrats on this issue and hold them accountable.” Democrats seeking reelection in 2010, he warned, “can look for their pink slips.”
Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) told reporters he was “disappointed” by Steele’s remarks, calling them “crass and such a terrible example for the youth of this country.“
That’s some hubris Harry.
But Reid defended the long list of revisions to the bill, which were needed to secure the backing of moderate Democrats such as Sen. Ben Nelson (Neb.). Those changes contained additional Medicaid funding for specific states including Nebraska, exemptions for certain insurance companies and tighter restrictions on abortion coverage. “There are 100 senators here, and I don’t know that there’s a senator that doesn’t have something in this bill that isn’t important to them,” Reid told reporters. “If they don’t have something in it important to them, then it doesn’t speak well of them.”
There’s nothing like complete contempt and complete aethical and amorality and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is all of them.
Rasmussen: The latest Rasmussen Reports weekly tracking update shows that 41% of voters nationwide favor the bill and 55% are opposed. Those figures are essentially unchanged from a week ago. This the fifth straight week with support for the legislation between 38% and 41%.
Among senior citizens, the group most likely to use the health care system, just 33% are in favor while 60% are opposed. Most adults under 30 favor the plan, but majorities of every other age group take the opposite view.
So the cramdown continues.
They know what’s best for them, and thus by extension know what’s best for you.
You need a new drug to placate you. Whether you like it or not.
Nurse Ratchet in the Form of Health Care Reform is coming to see to it you are dealt with properly.
After a few years on this new drug you won’t want to give it up.
So let’s get you addicted to our control now.
Big Brother knows best, dearie.
“This is a real debate over whether or not health care is going to be a right or privilege in America,” said Senator Richard Durbin of Illinois, a member of the Democratic leadership. “If you believe it’s a privilege for the rich, then you’ll vote against this. If you believe it’s a right, then I hope you’ll vote with us.” Durbin spoke on the Senate floor before the vote. (Houston Chronicle)
“We have to keep our eyes on what we’re trying to do here. We’re trying to cross a demarcation line,” Harkin told “Early Show” co-anchor Maggie Rodriguez. “On one side is health care as a privilege, on the other side is health care as a right. With these votes, with the vote that we’ll take before Christmas, we will cross that line finally and say that health care is a right of all Americans.” (CBS)
Mind you, that “right” is MANDATORY.
That “right” has fines and potentially criminal charges and jail if you don’t participate actively.
So the American way, of listening to the Voice of The People is over.
The Constitution is so 20th Century…
It will done the Chicago Way.
If you don’t like it tough.
If you oppose it, Guido here will come and dissuade you.
Or if you can be bought off, we’ll just buy you off.
Either way, youse are going to do exactly what Big Brother wants or else! Youse capeche!
Sen. Harkin,“I am a strong supporter of a public option, I remain so, and I believe that sometime in the near future we will revisit that issue again and we will adopt a public option.”
After we have successfully hooked you on the drugs and made you dependent on them, then we up the dosage and go for the gold. And you won’t oppose us then.
So they are the pimp and you’re the user whether you wanted to be or not.
They use progressively more of your money to hook you on more drugs so they can feed their drug habit to spend even more money.
Mutually parasitic drug use.
Barack’s World! Barack’s World! Party time! Excellent!
A very cute and random moment in an otherwise uneventful day.
Additionally, my german class (back in High School days) had an obsession with yellow rubber ducks. If only I could remember Mr Macky’s story about the Kätzchen und Blümchen… I think the cat ended up smoking his friend, the rose, and then there was something about waterballoons as condoms. And that I actually learnt some german at least equally amazing.
A Politician that lies!!!!! That’s a Rarity!! Obama has gone back on a Few things he promised during his Campaign, and what he said he would do once he was President.
He is In Bed with the US Pharmaceutical Companies. He is NOW Against US Citizens buying prescription Drugs from other Countries such as Canada and Mexico. Pharma says that those drugs are not safe. The FDA says the prescription drugs manufactured in other countries are not tested by the FDA and therefore they say they are not safe,as they don’t meet the Safety Standards of the FDA. Obamas Administration agrees with this aka OBAMA and so does the Democratic Congress. PHARMA also promised Obama in a deal back in June that they would not fight the Health care Plan, and they would fund Advertisements to the tune of $$150 MillionDollars pushing for The Health Care Reform Bill, aka The Obama Bill. Pharma also said they would give back $80 billion Dollars over the next 10 Years in Subsidies? to the Citizens.
BUT OBAMA WOULD HAVE TO PROMISE NOT TO PUSH FOR THE NEW LAW MAKING IT LEGAL TO PURCHASE DRUGS FROM OTHER COUNTRIES AND FOR DRUG COMPANIES TO SELL THE DRUGS AT REDUCED PRICES HERE IN THE UNITED STATES. Obviously Obama Promised to not pass the Law, because the Senate struck down its passage the other day. The Obama Administration has been Pushing Very Hard since June to not Pass the Law. Obama has not come out and said such, but it is well-known to the Public and to Washington that Obama was the Juggernaut behind not getting this Bill Passed. This is just Politics As Usual. Distancing yourself from a Policy that you were the Author of.
So the People of the US will continue to pay Astronomical Drug Prices, and Many Citizens will continue to DIE because they are not able to Afford the Prescription Drugs that would keep them Alive. It is a Shame and Travesty that Obama decided to Sleep with the Pharmaceutical Companies. And all because he wants to get His Health Plan Reform Bill Passed, and he didn’t want the Drug Companies to stand in the way. And he wanted them to Fight FOR the Bill also, which they agreed to.
JUST POLITICS AS USUAL. THE SAME OLD LIES AND BULLSHIT. I WONDER WHAT THE SHEEPLE HAVE TO SAY NOW. I’M SAD TO SAY I THINK I KNOW!!!!
I’m attracted to unconventional types, and by that I don’t mean conventionally unconventional people. Anyone who rigidly ascribes to a system or set of beliefs (politically or spiritually) can’t be trusted to think independently. It’s trite, but Socrates’ profession that the only thing he truly knows is that he knows nothing is truly the template for real knowledge.
If there were any absolutes, consensus wouldn’t be as hard to achieve as it is now. A lot of smart people have a lot of valid points,
I started writing this after taking a few (read: a lot) hits from my bong, and now I don’t really remember what I was going to write about. So instead, I’ll pontificate reflexively about drugs.
I’m trying to ignore the fact that my entire room is vibrating. I think taking drugs is important, and not for the usual cliche, sanctimonious hippie reasons. In and of itself, it offers no self-insight, and most people turn the richness of the experience into seeing a lot of really cool shit. Ridding yourself of an escapist incentive, first and foremost, is important. Drugs have the potential to be very valuable tools into knowing yourself better, having a lucid examination of your subconscious. Many hallucinations are merely manifestations of our most hidden fears and desires, and mostly simultaneously both.
I’ve never seen the machine elves, but what are machine elves if not some deep alien self-referential subjectivity? It’s such an entangled thing that really reminds us how little we know ourselves. What if being able to encounter this being really heralds the beginning of a new and open level of self-realization? If drugs can reduce our resistance to psychosis, then it follows that it gives us deep access to a hyper-insular reality.
Of course, not all drugs are created equal. Things I’ve tried, in order of experimentation date: weed, DMT, Salvia and E. These are all drugs I think offers greater benefits than just manufactured euphoria. Also, only corporate douchebags do coke, which I think reveals something about coke itself being a hollow and superficial experience.
One drug not on that list that I think can be very meaningful is LSD. Though, to be honest, I’m scared of this one considering it’s led to psychosis in a few people I know. Granted, that followed after years of abuse. LSD is more likely to lead to mental instability than other drugs, but that might also allude to a sort of elevation of consciousness.
There’s a fine line between being an elevated, realized individual and being crazy. Being crazy is a sort of ultimate realization in a way, though there are a lot of complicated sub-issues and considerations that are impossible to fully taken into account.
Drugs are like very meaningful dreams. Oftentimes it feels like the symbolism is painfully obvious but elusive. Breaking down whatever constructed rigidity and paradigms can be mimicked in the drug experience, and on the distant note I started this entry on, it’s so important that we recognize we don’t have a clue about anything, least of all this reality.
That’s right. I bought the book and gave it to my Dad, because Thomas Sowell endorsed it. My Dad read this book and he loved it. I read the book and I loved it. And now my co-workers are borrowing it from me.
What’s it about? Well the author is a psychologist in a hospital that deals with a lot of criminals. So he gets to see the worldview of the “underclass” up close, and to understand how the policies of the compassionate secular left are really working at the street level. The theme of the book is that the left advances policies in order to feel good about themselves, even though the policies actually hurt the poor and vulnerable far more than they help them. And the solution of the elites is more of the same.
The whole book is available ONLINE for free! From City Journal!
Table of Contents
The Knife Went In 5 Goodbye, Cruel World 15 Reader, She Married Him–Alas 26 Tough Love 36 It Hurts, Therefore I Am 48 Festivity, and Menace 58 We Don’t Want No Education 68 Uncouth Chic 78 The Heart of a Heartless World 89 There’s No Damned Merit in It 102 Choosing to Fail 114 Free to Choose 124 What Is Poverty? 134 Do Sties Make Pigs? 144 Lost in the Ghetto 155 And Dying Thus Around Us Every Day 167 The Rush from Judgment 181 What Causes Crime? 195 How Criminologists Foster Crime 208 Policemen in Wonderland 221 Zero Intolerance 233 Seeing Is Not Believing 244
Lots more essays are here, all from City Journal.
My favorite passage
The only bad thing about reading it online is that you miss one of the best quotes from the introduction. But I’ll type it out for you.
The disastrous pattern of human relationships that exists in the underclass is also becoming common higher up the social scale. With increasing frequency I am consulted by nurses, who for the most part come from and were themselves traditionally members of (at least after Florence Nightingale) the respectable lower middle class, who have illegitimate children by men who first abuse and then abandon them. This abuse and later abandonment is usually all too predictable from the man’s previous history and character; but the nurses who have been treated in this way say they refrained from making a judgment about him because it is wrong to make judgments. But if they do not make a judgment about the man with whom they are going to live and by whom they are going to have a child, about what are they ever going to make a judgment?
“It just didn’t work out,” they say, the “it” in question being the relationship that they conceive of having an existence independent of the two people who form it, and that exerts an influence on their on their lives rather like an astral projection. Life is fate.
What I’ve found is that this is the general rule nowadays, and that women really resent having their intuitions about men questioned on moral or spiritual grounds. They are definitely not choosing men for moral character, their service to God, or their demonstrated ability to handle the typical challenges of marriage and parenting. In fact, it’s just the opposite. It is precisely the man who has a sense of morality and duty to God who is avoided, because women believe that men with scruples may reject them for failing to meet expectations that they don’t want to have to meet. So they choose men with no morality or concern for God, hoping to avoid being held accountable by any standard of behavior. And then later they are surprised when the amoral man they themselves chose for his amorality acts… amorally!
An excerpt
Here’s one of my favorite passages from “Tough Love”, in which he describes how easily he can detect whether a particular man has violent tendencies on sight, whereas female victims of domestic violence – and even the hospital nurses – cannot or will not recognize the signs.
All the more surprising is it to me, therefore, that the nurses perceive things differently. They do not see a man’s violence in his face, his gestures, his deportment, and his bodily adornments, even though they have the same experience of the patients as I. They hear the same stories, they see the same signs, but they do not make the same judgments. What’s more, they seem never to learn; for experience—like chance, in the famous dictum of Louis Pasteur—favors only the mind prepared. And when I guess at a glance that a man is an inveterate wife beater (I use the term “wife” loosely), they are appalled at the harshness of my judgment, even when it proves right once more.
This is not a matter of merely theoretical interest to the nurses, for many of them in their private lives have themselves been the compliant victims of violent men. For example, the lover of one of the senior nurses, an attractive and lively young woman, recently held her at gunpoint and threatened her with death, after having repeatedly blacked her eye during the previous months. I met him once when he came looking for her in the hospital: he was just the kind of ferocious young egotist to whom I would give a wide berth in the broadest daylight.
Why are the nurses so reluctant to come to the most inescapable of conclusions? Their training tells them, quite rightly, that it is their duty to care for everyone without regard for personal merit or deserts; but for them, there is no difference between suspending judgment for certain restricted purposes and making no judgment at all in any circumstances whatsoever. It is as if they were more afraid of passing an adverse verdict on someone than of getting a punch in the face—a likely enough consequence, incidentally, of their failure of discernment. Since it is scarcely possible to recognize a wife beater without inwardly condemning him, it is safer not to recognize him as one in the first place.
This failure of recognition is almost universal among my violently abused women patients, but its function for them is somewhat different from what it is for the nurses. The nurses need to retain a certain positive regard for their patients in order to do their job. But for the abused women, the failure to perceive in advance the violence of their chosen men serves to absolve them of all responsibility for whatever happens thereafter, allowing them to think of themselves as victims alone rather than the victims and accomplices they are. Moreover, it licenses them to obey their impulses and whims, allowing them to suppose that sexual attractiveness is the measure of all things and that prudence in the selection of a male companion is neither possible nor desirable.
Often, their imprudence would be laughable, were it not tragic: many times in my ward I’ve watched liaisons form between an abused female patient and an abusing male patient within half an hour of their striking up an acquaintance. By now, I can often predict the formation of such a liaison—and predict that it will as certainly end in violence as that the sun will rise tomorrow.
At first, of course, my female patients deny that the violence of their men was foreseeable. But when I ask them whether they think I would have recognized it in advance, the great majority—nine out of ten—reply, yes, of course. And when asked how they think I would have done so, they enumerate precisely the factors that would have led me to that conclusion. So their blindness is willful.
Go read the rest! This is pure wisdom. And by wisdom I mean an awareness and familiarity with the objective moral that binds human action.
SOUNDTRACK: The Believer June/July 2007 Music Issue Compilation CD: Cue the Bugle Turbulent (2007).
The 2007 Believer disc smashes the mold of folkie songs that they have established with the previous discs in the series. The theme for this disc is that there’s no theme, although the liner notes give this amusing story:
one decaffeinated copy editor (“the new guy”) made a suggestion: “The Believer CD should be composed of eight a.m. music/breakfast-substitute jams, like that commercial from a while back with the guy who gets out of bed over and over again while ELO plays over his morning routine. You should tell all of the bands to write/contribute songs worth listening to within three minutes of waking up.”
So, without a theme, they just asked artists for some great songs. There’s one or two tracks written especially for the disc (Sufjan Stevens, Lightning Bolt). There’s a couple B-sides. There are some wildly noisy raucous songs: and three of them come from duos! No Age offers a very noisy blast of feedback. Magik Markers play a super-fast distortion-fueled rocker, and Lightning Bolt play 5 minutes of noise noise noise. Oh, and there’s even a rap (Aesop Rock)!
Tracks 3-7 are just about the 5 best songs in a row on any compilation. Oxford Collapse plays a catchy and wonderfully angular song with “Please Visit Your National Parks.” It’s followed by a song from Sufjan Stevens that sounds NOTHING like Sufjan Stevens, it’s a noisy distorted guitar blast of indie punk. I’m from Barcelona follows with a supremely catchy horn driven song that would be huge on any college campus. Aesop Rock comes next with a fantastic song. I’d heard a lot about Aesop Rock but had never heard him before, and he raps the kind of rap that I like: cerebral and bouncy. This is followed by Reykjavik! with a crazy, noisy surf-guitar type of song. It reminds me of some great college rock from the early 90s.
Of Montreal, a band I’ve been hearing about a lot but who I’ve never heard (and didn’t think sounded like this) plays a wonderfully catchy two minute love song that sounds ironic, but which likely isn’t. The melody is straight out of the Moody Blues’ “Wildest Dreams,” and yet it is still fun and quirky.
There’s a couple instrumentals as well: The Clogs do a cool, mellow instrumental and Explosions in the Sky do one of their typically fantastic emotional tracks. Also on the disc, The Blow contribute a delightfully witty song and Bill Fox, a singer I’d never heard of (but who has a great article about him in the magazine), really impressed me with his Bob Dylan meets Nico delivery. The disc ends with an alternate version of a song by Grizzly Bear.
This is definitely my favorite Believer disc thus far. See the full track listing here.
[READ: Throughout 2009] Schott’s Miscellany 2008
This year’s edition of Schott’s Miscellany is very much like last year’s edition (see that review here). I mean, it is an almanac after all. However, it is a wondrous testament to Schott that even though I read every word of the 2008 edition, I was able to read every word of the 2009 edition and not feel like I was duplicating myself very much.
Obviously the news, facts and events of 2008-09 are different from last year. And since Schott’s writing style is breezy and fun with a hint of sarcasm and amusement thrown in, you don’t get just a list of facts, you get sentences with subtle commentary on the facts. And it’s a fun way to re-live the past year. Plus, the Sci, Tech, Net section discusses science stories that sounded really impressive and important which I can’t believe I didn’t hear about at the time.
Obviously, there are some duplications with last year. The States & Presidents section provide the same basic information (statistics about states and deceased presidents haven’t changed). But it is an almanac after all, so he can’t leave the stuff out! Plus, with updated news and events, it casts a new light on these same stats.
But what I was delighted with was that so many of the sections that could have had duplications were not. The Money section has different information about currencies. The Form & Faith section had different statistics and categories. So, while the categories are the same, the bits and pieces are different.
So, yes, check out the previous year’s post for the general information about the almanacs.
I am concerned, though, that there is no mention on Amazon of a 2010 edition! His website lists the 2010 Almanac, but it appears to be only the UK edition (gasp!).
Reggae recording artist Buju Banton has reportedly been arrested on drug charges. Buju has been detained in a Federal Miami prison since last thursday- Dec. 10- when the arrest took place. Buju, -aka- Mark Anthony Myrie, was booked with an unidentified accomplice after surveillance cameras recorded them in the process of a drug transaction. Ouch! Found with 5 kilos of cocaine, Buju was charged with conspiracy to posess with intent to distribute. DOUBLE OUCH!
-”The BklynBandette”. Mr. Hollywood’s Co-Defendant.
According to new developments, drug traffickers employing high-tech drills have successfully stolen more than $1 billion worth of oil from Mexico’s pipelines over the past two years. Using sophisticated methods the oil smugglers have transported a portion of the petroleum to the U.S., and sold it to U.S. companies – some of which knew that it was stolen.
This is quite a blow to President Calderon’s war against the drug cartels. The drug cartels have successfully stolen Mexico’s most vital national resource. This shows how the traffickers are rapidly evolving from traditional narcotics smuggling to activities as diverse as oil theft, transport, and sales. Now, let’s take a look at what is happening across the border in the U.S. This year alone, executives of four Texas companies pleaded guilty to felony charges of conspiring to receive and sell millions of dollars worth of stolen petroleum condensate. The companies include Y Gas & Oil and Trammo Petroleum.
Obviously something must be done about this. Stealing oil is not just a regular crime. It’s a crime against the Mexican society! The theft is both a symbolic and financial blow to the Mexican government. The cartels have successfully stolen Mexico’s peace, safety, and are now threating its economic stability more than ever before. Taxes paid by Pemex ([Mexican Petroleums] is Mexico’s state-owned petroleum company) account for 40 percent of the federal budged.
Mexico has launched an all-out campaign to defend the oil pipelines, drawing the army, the attorney general’s office, the Interior Ministry and the customs service. Unfortunately, Pemex will have to spend hundreds of millions of dollars over the next three years defending its pipelines. Mexicans officials have already made arrangements with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to investigate U.S. companies conspiring with Mexican firms planning to export oil across the border.
For more information view the Washington Post article – http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/12/12/AR2009121202888_3.html?hpid=topnews
In recent posts, I have been describing how “classism” (the stratification of society according to wealth) has become a new kind of racism. However, I feel obligated to describe how classism, in turn, creates and perpetuates racism.
It all starts with immigration. Immigration is, most often, a result of people attempting to seek a better life economically. Having come from a country usually ravaged by poverty or war or disease, immigrants tend to be poor themselves, and therefore are filtered into the working class/poor class of the country they’ve moved to. This situation, while comparatively better than the lives the immigrant’s have left behind, is still less than ideal. Crime rates and drug and alcohol abuse are still highest among the poor, no matter what the nation.
The issue with this (besides the rates of crime, drugs, and alcoholism) is that upper classes confuse the issues of crime and race. If the majority of crimes are committed by immigrants and minorities, then some will doubtlessly assume that immigrants and minorities are naturally indolent and/or criminally minded. Of course the reality of the situation is that crime rates are high among immigrants because immigrants generally live in abject poverty. With the evils of racial profiling and generalization, it becomes assumed that all immigrants and minorities are thieves and drug dealers, and therefore should be treated with suspicion or even open hostility. Inversely, this ill-treatment creates among immigrants and minorities feelings of animosity to the native majority. Racism, after all, works both ways.
So begins a cycle of abuse and distrust that only perpetuates racism. An innocent person (from a minority) locks himself out of his own car and is forced to break into it, only to be shot by the police who assume he’s a thief. In retaliation, a police officer (who had nothing to do with the shooting) is stabbed by an angry minority group. In response to this, a pair of children from a minority are beat up in school by their classmates- and so on and so forth in a long, tragic, and utterly pointless spiral.
In short, anywhere that there’s Capitalism, there’s classism, anywhere there’s classism, there’s poverty, anywhere there’s poverty, there’s crime which in turn leads inevitably to racism and bigotry. The only way to abolish racism is to abolish both poverty and the class system. Granted, some might argue that all that is needed is understanding and respect, but the fact remains that no matter how many murals are painted of people of all races holding hands around a globe, the poor are poor, the wealthy are wealthy, and the social divide spawns fear, crime, and racism.
I’ve done my fair share of clubbing and dabbling in recreational drugs, I have realised that dabbling is not for me, I’m upset by the way people turn on you …just …like…that! If you’re not in it the doors get slammed in your face, nice!!
If so called friends choose to take drugs thats up to them, I don’t change my opinion of them I still thought they were cool, just a shame they don’t feel the same way about me. ‘You’ve changed’ ‘yes I’m not kite high!’ that’s the difference and it’s really nice. Besides from all my research its clearly not good for you, people really don’t realise what chemicals do to your insides or what they continue to do, it’s quite hard to get to that point when you’re out and say no and change your clubbing experience. My boyfriends pressure has finally worked and I’m so grateful, I do see things and people differenntly but I would never shut the door on them, a so called friend who has always been high maintenance you know, one of those people who changes the plans for everyone and everyone goes with it otherwise that friend get’s into a bratty mood anyway she now speaks for a group of people!! What is that about? this group of friends have a spokes person quite funny but a shame it’s better known as ring leading!!!!
I’ve known this particular friend for 3 years and never expected her to be like this but I don’t suppose she thought I would say no in the end so thats made a huge mark on my personality, I’m no longer fun! She has the nerve to say I’m strange when I’m out, when she’s so off it she constantly has to check behind her every two minutes then again she does this when she is straight now, that will be the paranoia settling in well. I spent two weeks having to reassure her she slept in her shorts when she shared a bed with a boy, so annoying getting calls, texts and being acosted on facebook without fail about something so ridiculus, instead of ignoring it I spent alot of time reassuring her, what a waste of my time, I don’t know if she had her f-ing shorts on I couldn’t f-ing care less!!! And the time she thought she lost a plug up her…. yes you know, what’s that about!! She didn’t know where it had gone and some how presumed it was up there!! if these aren’t examples of paranoia and side effects then god help her when they come. She wants children when she’s older I just hope it doesn’t effect her in that way, I mean this girl takes alot of stuff it’s scary how immune people can get to substances. Anyway I guess now I’m out I sound like some preacher!! Sod it maybe I will become one slightly!!
I used to goto stinkys on a Sunday religously and get pretty wrecked, as reality was dawning on me I would look around and see the people around me, there were 47 year olds out, out with 18 year olds getting off their heads, I couldn’t help but think this place is not for me, what am I doing? Why are these people who have children out on a Sunday night, why is a youth worker off her face every Sunday available? It doesn’t matter how old you are but surely this is backward? I went to an after party ages ago and had to leave as I realised the house was the 47 year old youth workers and she had a 16 year old asleep upstairs, I was listening to a story about her son ‘nicking pills’ from her bag, I was shocked at what I’d heard and it was these moments that shocked me into thinking about what I was doing. I talk as though I had some huge problem, I didn’t it was like a once a week thing, instead of being pissed I would get high instead, it wasn’t a problem but things could easily turned into a problem. These Sunday gatherings are for people who want to get messy, it’s so easy to be part of a circle and so hard when you leave but if anyone reads this, just please think about what you are doing, I know it can be fun but it can suck you in and going by the seniors that are out on Sundays well its enough to put you off, do you want to end up like that? Single mother or father with a crystal meth looking face and with whispers flying about the place…no it’s not cool and your true friends will be there afterwards, if you find you havent got any…thats pants!! You’ll have some you’ll be surprised, they’ll be the ones that didn’t enjoy ‘the circle’.
Drugs have been fun, I’ve go some amazing memories from festivals, nights out and Ibiza but now I can see they are so false, I’m stating the obvious but you really cannot understand whilst you use them, they’re not your friend, they’re not worth it. Those times when everyone in the circle loves you are the times you’ve been most wrecked and thats what they like you for, not the real you, as soon as your yourself, they change.
These new drug going around are so similar to crytal meth its scary and people really don’t realise. Drugs have always been bad but they are getting dirtier and worse by the day, ruining more and more lives.
Anyway enough of my new irritating preachy ways, muchos lovos. xx
just say no just say no just say no just say no just say no just say no just say no just say no just say no just say no just say no just say no
On Friday, November 20, as a guest of Humanities Computing colloquia, Sandra Gabriele (professor of Design, York University) presented “Visualization Differentiation in Look-alike Medication Names: Evaluating Design in Context”.
The problem that inspired Gabriele’s study is a troubling one: 7.5 % of patients admitted for acute care experience one or more adverse events; 24% of these are drug-related. Meaning that, all too often, the wrong medication is administered to patients. Why?
Gabriele identified two sources for design errors in hospital drug-selection:
orthographic similarities of drug names
phonetic similarities of drug names
Drug names come in two varieties: the generic name (or type), and the brand name (or unique name). Gabriele showed us examples of how medication is stored in hospital pharmacies, presenting pictures of uniform bins of drugs organized alphabetically by name, usually regardless of its intended purpose. One bin contained similarly named blood pressure medications, one for high blood pressure, one for low blood pressure, their names orthographically similar and the labels uniform as well; as a layperson, certainly, I would have been unable to tell the difference at a glance.
Gabriele’s project was to find better ways of designing drug labels for hospital pharmacies. What was most interesting to me was the framework she chose in approaching this problem, asking what was required in effective drug-labelling:
1. Attention: that is, what makes the label distinctive. Some of the designs she used in user tests were changing the colour and weight of the text, or using white text on solid black. User tests showed drug names that were printed as white text on solid black made for the most attention-getting label.
2. Perception: or, legibility issues (cutting down the possibility of confusing orthographically similar drug names), establishing a visible hierarchy of data included on the label, and visual cueing (“chunking”, typographic styles, spatial cues, and mark cues). Gabriele proposed to change the font, so that there was a clearer distinction between upper and lowercase letters, and cleaner font weight. Interestingly enough, users in her test group responded negatively to this change; most drug labels use a Tallman font (which does pose legibility issues like those mentioned), and it seemed that the users (all hospital nurses) were conditioned to using it, when a layperson would have had more difficulty determining minor differences in names. There seems to be some debate over the use of Tallman; a 2006 study in Glasgow showed indicated that Tallman was actually more effective in reducing name-related errors when selecting drugs (Filik et al.).
3. Understanding: Making sure a user can identify and understand all the data available on the label at the glance. Gabriele’s presentation did not delve too deeply into this part of her study, but I would have found this probably the most interesting step in her research. How do users make sense of the labels? Does the reorganization and stratification of data (in the “perception” stage) make a positive difference for comprehension with the trained professional? It seems like, while errors do sometimes occur, changing labels that would avoid errors for a layperson might in fact cause more errors for someone trained to use the current labels in place.
Works cited
Filik, R., Purdy, K., Gale, A., and Gerrett, D. (2006). “Labeling of Medicines and Patient Safety: Evaluating Methods of Reducing Drug Name Confusion.” Human Factors: The Journal of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society, 48. pp. 39-47.
Sutter Keely is a high school senior who insists on living in the moment; “embracing the weird.” He says, “Let everyone else go marching off into their great shining futures if they want. Me, I’ve always been more than content to tip my whiskey bottle and take a ride straight into the heart of the spectacular now.” Sutter has been drinking regularly since the seventh grade, and is known as the class party guy. His beautiful girlfriend, Cassidy, dumps him because he can’t even do the one thing she begged him to do in their latest heart-to-heart talk. Frankly, he doesn’t even remember what it is she wanted…
I found myself charmed by Sutter one minute, and angry at him the next. When he takes up with a socially inept girl named Aimee, I wanted to hurt him, since there seems no way out but hurt for her, especially after she starts drinking vodka and cranberry juice to keep up with him.
Over all, this was a good book. I appreciated that the ending was realistic, although not the fairy tale ending we sometimes prefer.
It feels silly to discuss the death of another human being and constantly refer to them as “Umaga,” a fictional and, if we’re all being honest, racist and stereotypical name for a Samoan wrestler who fell back on the tried and true “wild man” gimmicks of his predecessors. As a performer, I was shocked to find that I enjoyed the matches that Eki “Eddie” Fatu put on in this new character, my most favorite being the war he had with John Cena where the babyface champ had to strangle his vicious juggernaut of an opponent with a busted ring rope after the turnbuckle broke clean off. Good times.
To make matters more tragic, Mr. Fatu leaves behind not only his enormous extended family, but a wife and children who will have to go through the rest of their lives without father there. There will never be another wedding anniversary for the Fatus, and his children will never get to play-wrestle with their big, burly father ever again. There’s no real bright side to such a loss, and there’s certainly nothing funny about it.
That being said, Eddie Fatu was an idiot.
It’s not right to speak ill of the dead, and while I find solace in the knowledge that his family will likely never read anything I write, it still almost hurts to type out that phrase on my laptop. So then why do it, eh?
Because Mr. Fatu stands as an example of someone who was given an opportunity to avoid being yet another dead young wrestler and, out of ignorance, pride, or stubborness, he rejected it.
Nearly every wrestling fan with an internet connection knows how Mr. Fatu was released by the WWE when he tested positively for drugs, how he was asked to go to rehab, on the dime of the company, no less, and politely told them that they could shove it. As Scott Keith pointed out recently, it may have been rather heartless of WWE to mention how he refused treatment while simultaneously extending sympathies to his family, but its a shrewd enough move for a business where fans and critics have a major, major problem with the list of dead wrestlers under 50. I don’t really have a problem with it, but if Keith wants to send some hate toward their way, I suppose its his prerogative.
However, the greatest crime here is not how Fatu was taken from the wrestling world so early, but just how easily this could have been prevented, and how ultimately selfish he was in his decision to refuse treatment and thus be fired from the company that had turned him from a joke into a huge star. We internet wrestling fans are notoriously fickle, but I don’t know how much we can complain about his elevation and treatment in the earlier days of his career as Umaga. Brought in as an unstoppable monster, Fatu actually managed to take a fairly racist and idiotic gimmick and turn it into something that nearly all fans eventually gravitated to. His hits were hard, his speed as surprising for a man of his size, and he came off as legitimately dangerous to the point where, if he was used as a threat the way that Kane often is, people bought him as a serious punishment by whatever villain was tugging his line that week. Sure, we all shook our heads in confusion when he suddenly spoke perfect English in the latter days of the gimmick, but no one can ever say that he was never given a chance.
But I digress, when ultimately I wanted to speak about the selfishness of his decision. Fatu’s rejection of WWE-sanctioned rehab was not only a blow to his career, essentially telling the largest and most financially successful wrestling company on the planet where they could stick it, but also an incredibly short-sighted and horrific decision based on his role as a father and family man. He rejects financial security, as well as his own health, putting him on a path that ignores what is best for his family and instead what he wants for reasons that, to this day, I cannot comprehend.
I am unhappy that we’re talking about the death of Eddie Fatu today, but when a man has a heart attack at 36, it can be a fair assumption that there is something unnatural about one’s physiology. It’s horrifically regrettable, but the warnings were there, both literally and abstractly, and he chose to reject and ignore them for whatever reason.
His death, as have many others, leads to discussion about the lives of wrestlers, and what they go through for the purpose of entertaining us, and while I love a knockdown, dragout battle with crazy head-drops and blood as much as the next fan, I think I’m done with it.
A few months ago, weren’t we all up in arms that there was no blood in any of the Hell in the Cell matches? What a bunch of wusses they are, and how despicable of Vince to deny us this in the name of getting his wife elected to the senate! Boo, I say.
Ever get a paper cut? Hurts a bunch, right? Throw some Neosporin and a band-aid on that sucker, otherwise it could get infected. Bad stuff.
Getting cut hurts. A lot. Now go take a look at Devon Dudley’s head, or for a more insane experience, read about how Abdullah the Butcher could fit poker chips in between his insane forehead scars. As far as I’m concerned, if someone gets busted open hardway, that’s fine. It’s an improvisation, and adds to the drama, but blood is also a crutch. There are other ways to show hate or fury or damage, and I don’t need the next generation slicing themselves up for the purpose of the art. No other job on the planet requests that its employees cut themselves, and I’m okay with wrestling joining that particular club.
Of course, we also like those awesome, Foley-style hardcore matches, right? Well, too bad Foley can’t remember a bunch of them anymore due to the ton of chairshots he took over the course of his career. Last I heard, Chris Nowinski had something to say on the subject as well.
But don’t take away our awesome, Japanese wrestling moves, those fantastic puro-style moves that the Brisco Brothers bust out and receive while forgetting to sell anything more than a gunshot wound. The next time you complain about how a finisher doesn’t seem awesome or painful enough, I want you to think of Mitsuharu Misawa, and how he and Kenta Kobashi have given us a blessing and a curse in their outstanding, and potentially crippling, styles of offense. You should think of Misawa for plenty of other reasons, as well, and I’ll leave those to you to figure out.
So that’s my message to the wrestlers of the world: block those chairshots, pull those punches, and don’t take crazy bumps “for the glory.” A lot of this has toned down from the “hardcore” rush of the 90’s, thank God, but I’m really tired of reading about these guys killing themselves for my amusement and then dealing with the pain with pills and their sagging pectoral muscles with needles. In a country where health insurance costs actual money, and a wrestler pays four times the costs of an average citizen due to the dangerous nature of their job, I don’t need my pretend fighting to have such a high mortality rate, because frankly, if the wrestlers of the world don’t change their styles and mindsets about what is acceptable and what is worth risking, then “bulldozers” aren’t only the people we’ll be mourning and eulogizing, but what will be needed to move the stacks of the dead.
Written by Administrator
Wednesday, 02 December 2009 12:14
The active Burmese Army’ Battalions that operate in Larng Khur township, southern Shan State have forced local villagers to pay the opium plantation taxes otherwise they would be punished, said a local source.
On November 19, 2009 at 8 pm Capt. Kyaw Win Myint led 20 soldiers from IB 525 and IB 99 ordered the villagers from Hway Nein tract and Nam Mai Kai tract, Larng Khur township to pay the opium plantation taxes and 1,400,000 kyat was given by the villagers.
550,000 kyat was given by Wan Hway Nein village, Wan Pone Lao village and Wan Lao Yao from Hway Nein tract while 850,000 kyat was given by Wan Pan Soon village, Wan Nam Tae village, Wan Pan Zan village and Wan Nam Mai Kai village from Nam Mai Kai tract.
Burmese Army also ordered villagers that they had to pay all the taxes within that night.
So I know I’ve been a little out of the loop because of the pig virus and everything but I have to get something off my chest about this whole Tiger Wood’s scandal.
Like.. who really cares?
He may have cheated on his wife with one or more skanks.. may have taken drugs to have sex with one or more skanks.. may have sent suggestive or down right dirty text messages…
Ok.. and SO? Unless your his WIFE :: and really, as freakin’ hot as she is I would suspect that you’d be worried about his mental state instead of his fidelity :: is it really any of our business?
When the “accident” first happened and there were second by second updates on whether or not the he would talk to police and what REALLY happened, I said to Chief that as long as he didn’t kill anyone and had more then enough money to replace the freakin’ fire hydrant this wasn’t “news”.
And when the whole sorid tale was being told, I refused to partake. I just feel like whatever is going on between him and his wife and their relationship isn’t anyone’s business.
And yet, everyone wants to make it there business because people may like to build you up but they just LOVE to tear you down. And that isn’t fair.
No one knows what goes on behind closed doors or what evolves in people’s relationships. Who knows why people make the decisions that they do… as long as it doesn’t have a direct impact on you, you shouldn’t care about it.
I think if more people minded their OWN business instead of other’s then we’d all be in a better spot.
And about this whole “.. well, he’s a public figure” argument. So what. So he’s a highly paid, multi-endorsed golf player. That means he has to live a spotless life?
Did you ever think that having the pressure to live a spotless life will drive someone to make poor decisions?
I just think it’s unfair.. and I certainly would love to see something actually NEWS WORTHY on the news.
This is a must watch. Environmental Graffiti has a post up on the decades of experiments western armies undertook in an attempt to develop chemical warfare to render their enemies incapacitated: In short, armies gave their own soldiers LSD, and other psychedelic drugs, and studied the effects. The Nazis did it first, then Britain, and the U.S. and other countries followed suit.
The video below is from 1963 and shows British soldiers under the influence of LSD.
Hello? Personality? Where did you go? Is there anybody in there? You can run, but you can’t hide..
Or can it?
This last week I have zero motivation to do anything but read and take snaps, even snaps are half arsed. This is highly irritating and a little disturbing for someone who is usually doing 10 things at once and cannot sit still, but I don’t have the battery power to fire myself up and fix up. I feel suffocated. Something is smothering me, choking me, holding my arms behind my back and not letting go.
Whispering dirty nothings, putting thoughts into my mind that I do not wish to be there. What does it want? It has taken my personalty hostage and replaced it with nothing. Unoccupied space, a vacant head and heart. I am but a skeleton.
Once i’m out with people, i’m all good, IF you can get me out. Last month was pretty heavy, pretty intense, hilarious, chaotic, hurtful and awesome in many ways. I feel drained. So I thought, i’ll put it down to that. It’s more than that though, much more. Live, learn and move on. I’m getting better at this. I don’t have the energy to think about what it is. My personality will soon creep up behind me, give me a fright and possess me once again, right?
I thought maybe venting would help.
My energy and sense of humour have been zapped. My sense of humour never gets zapped. The passion I generally have for many things I either do not stop talking about, look up or read about – almost entirely void. I’ve got zero. Wherefore art thou Tahlie?
Strange, because yet I crave some kind of ‘kick your ass to the curb’ downer to make me switch off. Maybe that’s what it is. I’ve fried myself by overloading. I’m trying my hardest not to think about the billion things I need to think about, because I don’t know how to take one thing on at a time. Life is a complicated thing, sometimes.
Tension is rising. Does it make sense that one may go into some kind of mental hibernation from themselves? Taking also what is enjoyable and storing it away, too?
Well that’s not really fair, is it. I don’t like being a shell, a shell with many knots.
I miss you inspiration, passion, motivation, desire, drive.
It’s just stress, right? Stop kicking your own ass. I know this will pass quite swiftly but right now, it’s driving me mad.
When we send our teenagers to school, we hope they follow the rules and play fair. If they do, we tend not to hear about it. If they don’t, the school administrators take over. My house, my rules, their house, their rules. Makes sense.
What happens when athletes are required to sign a commitment policy in order to play on a high school team? The commitment is around healthy behaviors and decisions outside of the practices and games. How could a Varsity Parent NOT embrace this positive message?
Very black & white – you do “x” and we will …suspend you from sports for 2 weeks, 4 weeks, whatever the “y” is for your school. Well, parents generally do embrace it, until it hits home. Right?
Your highly recruited volleyball player found herself in the middle of a party where alcohol was being served. She was not drinking. Many commitment policies require the athlete to leave a gathering if alcohol or drugs are present. She was not drinking or doing drugs. Her parents said she did not know there was alcohol at the party, but the police stated it was out in the open. This is a tough situation.
How about the freshmen hockey boys, drinking away on a town playing field? The reason they got “caught “ was because one boy drank so much the others thought he might die. The other boys did the right thing and called for help.
Sadly, exposure to alcohol and drugs are a reality. Whether it’s through peers, films, music, advertising, or home life, teens process the “exposure” and then make choices.
Commitment Policies can help YOU start a discussion with your athlete about drugs and alcohol.
Time to Talk.org can help YOU find the right words to discuss drugs and alcohol with your teen. Check it out; you are not alone.
Guruphiliac – The Truth About The Guru-Bashing Blog Guruphiliac
Jody Radzik is the webmaster for the guruphiliac blog, whose purpose is stated as:
While we understand that gurus are held sacred by many, they are also public figures deserving of scrutiny. Our primary aim is to inject a little humor into what can be an excessively self-righteous enterprise, and to illustrate the primary truth that no matter how divine their devotees believe them to be, gurus poop on the same pot we do…Any self-respecting guru would understand this and make every effort to show his students that s/he poops on the same pot as they do…This site is dedicated to the truth. The truth that gurus are merely plain, old ordinary people just like us. They complain like us, shit on the toilet like us and most imagine they have special powers, just like a lot of the least mentally stable among us.
Jody Radzik also believes that followers essentially project “enlightenment”, “powers”, “holiness”, “purity”, etc. onto their “Gurus”, “Religious Figures” and/or “Religious Objects”. Fair enough.
Information About Jody Radzik, The Guruphiliac Webmaster
Jody Radzik is not an easy person to understand. One might easily assume that Jody Radzik is a free-thinker, a skeptic, a rationalist, a disillusioned ex-follower, a grumpy guy or a mixture of all of the above. However, the truth about Jody is rather surprising and is going to be disillusioning to Jody’s coterie of guruphiliac-ites. Jody is the webmaster to Atman.net, which provides links to an online book by Bruce Morgan, an article by Jeffrey J. Kripal about Kali’s Child, the NonDualLogicality Blog (where you can listen to Jody garble on non-duality) and a site dedicated to the Hindu Goddess, Kalika. Jody believes in tantric Shaktism and Advaita Vedanta (although Jody’s interpretation of these two are non-orthodox). Jody is also a devotee of the Hindu Goddess Kali Ma, whose picture he links to from his guruphiliac site. Whenever Jody refers to “Ma”, he is actually referring to Kali Ma. Jody is openly into Raves and psychedelic drugs (more on this later). After reading many of Jody Radzik’s postings on Google Groups (using the name “Jodyrrr”), it is abundantly clear that he has a compulsive need to be “right” and to trash and bash anyone who dissents with him: Reference. Jody often accuses others of “projecting” and that they have “uninformed opinions”. He often rants about realization (claiming he is realized), but then will break down into shrieking hissy fits, labelling (or is it “projecting”?) others as being “stupid and crass”! Apparently, those who have the greatest of self-realization, like Jody, tend to act just like ordinary human beings, with the same reactions and emotional outbursts. Jody endlessly preaches on “self-realization”, just as other Gurus do. Jody can rightly be called an “Anti-Guru Guru-Wannabee”. As if this isn’t enough, Jody also professes to having a Guru whose name he keeps secret (more on this later)!
Guruphiliac Blog Webmaster Claims Self-Realization:
On Google Groups (using the name “Jodyrrr”) Jody Radzik (the Gurphiliac Blog webmaster) claimed that he is self-realized, joining the ranks of Saints, Siddhas, Sages and Mahatmas. Jody said:
Guruphiliac Jody Radzik: “But the lesson of the evening for me was that people who call themselves spiritual will never believe that I’m realized. I’m just way too out there for them. Ma has made me the counter example to all they’ve come to expect about spirituality and about realized folk.” (Reference)
After reading through Jody Radzik’s posts on Google Groups (under his name “Jodyrrr”), it became apparent to me that he has a compulsive need to be “right”. Jody trashed and bashed anyone who dissented with him and accused them of “projecting” and having “uninformed opinions”. Although Jody ranted about realization (claiming he is self-realized), he broke down into shrieking hissy fits, labeling (or is it “projecting”) others as being “stupid and crass”. Sri Sri Jodyrrr (the self-professed Saint and Mahatma) exhibited (and continues to exhibit) the behaviors of ordinary, over-emotional and non-realized humans. As if this is not embarrassing enough, Jody Radzik (the guru-basher-extraordinaire) admitted that he has a Guru whose name he keeps secret (in fear that others will “criminally libel” his Guru, as he does with other’s Gurus).
Believe It Or Not: Jody Radzik Has A Guru:
Some very amusing excerpts from a conversation between Jody Radzik and Greg Goode:
Guruphiliac Jody Radzik: “The difference between them and myself is that I’ve always lived in and enjoyed the world, and that Mother has made it exceedingly clear to me that She will bestow realization on whomever She wants, despite their disposition as ascetic wannabes. Unfortunately, no one believes I know what I’m talking about, except my guru. In the interest of maintaining the status quo, he doesn’t enter the debate, even though he confirms my assertions as I’m making them. This isn’t to say that I don’t get along with them. I do for the most part. However, I’ve found myself in raging debates, the whole bunch of them vs. me. I find this situation quite enjoyable, but it seems to shatter their quaint ideas about what the center exists for, and so in deference to my guru I usually keep a lid on it…I’ve been blessed to have taken initiation from a monk of the Ramakrishna Order, and I’m quite convinced he’s a bona-fide, yet successfully hidden saint.” (Reference)
Apparently, Jody Radzik converses with Mother Kali on a regular basis and hears her voice in his head. Sounds rather spooky, if you ask me. Imagine that, the Supreme Goddess of the Universe conversing with you? Some Gurus (and schizophrenics) claim they do the same thing. Jody also said he has a Guru (*gasp*) and that he took initiation from a monk of the Ramakrishna Order that he regarded as a saint (*another gasp*). I guess Jody never witnessed this monk pooping.
Jody Radzik has a Guru and sees nothing wrong with it. When it comes to others and their Gurus, however, Jody Radzik subjects them to ridicule, defamation, bitter sarcasm and bold-faced lies on his Guruphiliac Blog and Guruphiliac Yahoo Group. In Jody Radzik’s illumined world, the realized are indistinguishable from liars, deceivers and potty-mouthed extremists. Weird? Eh?
Guruphiliac Jody Radzik: “My guru basically left me to my own devices with the mantra he gave. His advice is always the same. Pay your bills. Don’t party too much. Restrain yourself some. Meditate. Pray to the Lord and come every Sunday. He offers his time generously but keeps the personal relationship to a minimum. He always gives the same, somewhat boring lectures along with his gentle advice and admonishments. I’m convinced he’s a great bhakta saint, but to many he’s just a cute little village man from West Bengal presently living in California. His satsang is small because he doesn’t allow projection, and he doesn’t perform psychotherapy. That filters out everyone except the sincere who already have or develop a liking for the teachings of Ramakrishna and his disciples. He leaves the therapy to the therapists while he gently points you in the direction of understanding. In my book that makes him an ideal guru.” (Reference)
Guruphiliac Jody Radzik: “My guru, a Ramakrishna Math swami, is about the most low-key and unassuming person I’ve ever met. His teaching is the same teaching his guru gave, which is the same teaching Ramakrishna and Vivekananda gave. I have many problems with some aspects of this teaching, and I expressed my opinions about them often in the context of my weekly discussions with him and his satsang. Not once, ever, did he have any problem with it at all. I’ve found some agreement with a few other members of the group, but the bottom line is that it doesn’t perturb my guru in any way at all.” (Reference)
Jody Radzik’s comments amount to nothing more than face-saving deceit and self-serving hypocrisy. Jody seems to live in an egocentric universe where his experiences, opinions and beliefs are tantamount and superior to everyone else’s. What about other’s convictions about the genuineness of their experiences with their own chosen Guru? What about other’s beliefs and ideas about an “ideal guru”? Apparently, no one else’s opinions or experiences matter except Jody Radzik’s.
Jody thinks he is perfectly entitled to criminally libel other’s Gurus (under the direction of voices he hears in head, which he attributes to Kali Ma), all the while ferventy protecting his own chosen Guru, sniveling that others are “criminally libeling my guru” (whom appears to be Swami Chetanananda from the Kali Mandir). Jody is essentially trying to argue that his Guru is better than all other Gurus. Consequently, all of Jody’s opinions, arguments and judgments about Gurus are deflated, irrelevant, superficial and just plain weird.
Jody Radzik’s Drug-Induced Experience Of Kali Ma:
Douglas Rushkoff: “Jody Radzik, for example, believes he once encountered the spirit of Kali directly. To him, there was nothing dark about it, he tells me as he makes a graffiti picture of the goddess onto a billboard at a construction site in downtown Oakland: ‘I can positively describe that experience as making love with God. I know that’s what it was. Nobody can tell me different. I will argue until the day I die that that’s what my experience was. It was a wonderful experience and it’s led me to greater opening. Every now and then I do Ecstasy again because it brings me back to that incredible experience that I can’t even begin to describe. It’s there. It’s there that I learned how to make love with God. It’s how I offered myself as a sex slave to God, through MDMA, and it’s brought me to really a wonderful experience of life.’ Several TOPYs who are walking by stop to watch Radzik paint. ‘Whoah!’ exclaims one girl. They stare in astonishment. ‘Better be careful, man!’ warns the largest of the guys, whose nose has at least three rings in it. ‘Kali is dangerous. She’ll get you really hard. She’s the Destroyer.’ The TOPYs shake their heads and walk on in horror and disdain. Radzik looks up from his work and shouts after them with a wide smile: ‘Kali has her fist up my ass up to her elbow and she loves every minute of it!’ (Reference)
When devotees attribute extraordinary experiences or visions to their Gurus (without the aid of drugs), it’s all “projection” according to Jody Radzik. But when Jody Radzik had a drug-induced experience (and re-induced the experience by using illegal psychedelic drugs), he claimed his sex-slave hallucinations were real experiences. This is the type of Anti-Guru weirdo who attempts to invalidate others spiritual experiences.
Jody’s Gospel of “Who” & Blurbs About “Brahman”
It is perplexing, amusing and highly entertaining to note that the Guru-Bashing addict, Jody Radzik, actually talks and preaches exactly like Gurus do! No kidding! Let us look at Jody’s cultish introduction of the concept of “who”. What? Yes, the concept of “who”. Haven’t you heard of it before? Before you start sounding like a Ferruginous Pygmy Owl, let us allow Jody to explain (taken from his nonduallogicality archive, emphasis on “who” added: References: 01 – 02):
Jody Radzik: “It occurred to me that thinking of who as a quantity is a measure of realization’s effect on a life.
Before awakening, we are our who exclusively. When we decide to embark on a spiritual journey to find ourselves, we start out by adding to this who, sometimes greatly adding to it, with the materials we come across while being spiritual people.
As far as I can tell, much of spirituality seems to only add to who levels. Sure, it may turn you into a bliss bunny, and that’s certainly good consolation for some. But being a bliss bunny is only a different color of who. Many, many people get stuck right here. If they can feel bliss around their guru, they think they’re getting “it”. These folk spend their lives chasing experience, never really seeing the truth that lay just beyond, in plain view, the whole time they were looking for it.
There was just too much spiritual who in the way.
In order to reduce your who, you’ve got to turn your mind back on itself, and attempt to learn as much about your process as possible, and do so fearlessly. You’ve got to become an eater of who, processing the landscape of emotional complexes through your awareness of them. You’ve got to dive into your most fearsome nightmares. That is the only way to truly know yourself and get access to your deepest who.
And perhaps after a few decades or so, you’ll suddenly see that you are not this who at all. You’ll understand in a very clear and very real way, that you are ‘this’.
But, that doesn’t suddenly drain the who out of the mind. The who which was still there sticks around, and changes gradually in the awareness of ‘this’. This is what I mean about levels of who indicating the effect that realization has had on a life.
So start eating your who, slowly at first. A therapist can be really helpful here, but you should probably make an effort to find a good one. I’d recommend one trained at a transpersonal psych college. That’s no guarantee of quality, but at least they’ll be able to get their heads around your spiritual trip.”
Say what? Who is Jody trying to fool with this Guru Talk? Not only did the above comments make no sense, Jody is talking about realization as if he is realized! Oh yeah, Jody claimed he is realized! After eating through all his “who”, the end result is Jody’s disgust that Guru’s poo! Now that sounds like a realization worth striving for.
Jody Radzik: “Brahman is indivisible, and Atman is Brahman. Atman is not separated from Brahman to become a “drop,” it is the whole Brahman known to an individual life.
There was never any separation. There is only apparent separation. It’s a mirage, not a difference in location.
Seeing ourselves as these “drops” puts a layer of symbolic thinking between personal and impersonal awareness, keeping personal from opening up to see what’s always been present, the impersonal truth.
Breaking the bonds and opening awareness would be the trick. I guess that’s what spiritual practice is about. However, even with those bonds we think need breaking, we are always right here, in front of our noses, as Brahman.”
The BIG questions are: Is Jody self-realized? Is he enlightened? Why would Jody speak about Brahman if he has not realized Brahman? Why would Jody tell us that “breaking the bonds and opening awareness” is “the trick”, if he has not broke the bonds and opened his awareness? Essentially, Jody is setting himself up as some sort of Guru figure who lays claim to special wisdom about Brahman, Realization, the Atman and the Truth (claims that Gurus happen to make, by the way). Perhaps the reason why Jody makes special claims about realization is because he claims he is realized: Reference. Jody said, “But the lesson of the evening for me was that people who call themselves spiritual will never believe that I’m realized. I’m just way too out there for them. Ma has made me the counter example to all they’ve come to expect about spirituality and about realized folk.”
It is laughable when “non-dualists” attempt to express their non-dual “truths” by utilizing the vehicle of duality. As soon as non-duality is preached, five main things blossom into existence: 1) The speaker; 2) The spoken, 3) The means by which the spoke is spoken; 4) That to which the spoke is spoken and 5) The means by which the spoken is heard, understood, assimiliated, etc. As soon as Jody opens his mouth to talk about non-duality, he is affirming and preaching duality by utilizing the vehicle of duality. To whom exactly is the explanation of “oneness” for, if there is only the “self” and none other? Why is it that duality is easily perceived and validated in our everyday life, yet non-duality is unseen, difficult to grasp and is mummified in spiritual terms and philosophy? One would think that an easily validated “truth” is more meritorious than one not so easily validated. In Advaita Vedanta, the opposite holds true. I’m sure Jody has a good explanation for those who are gullible (some would say “brainwashed”) enough to believe him. Maybe I fail to understand these things because I haven’t eaten enough of my “who”? Then again, maybe non-dualists are “projecting” (Jody’s term) their inner emptiness, inner void, self-negation and denial onto the Universe? There’s a thought!
There is another perfectly good reason why we shouldn’t believe Jody. He poops! No matter how deep his insights, how vast his realizations, how profound his experiences, Jody (like other Gurus) is no better than anyone else because he poops in the pot just like everyone else! Jody should change his Gospel of “Who” to the Gospel of “Poo”. The only problem with Jody’s blurbs about “truth” the spiritual path and nonduality is that he poops. He is unbelievable for this reason alone. Enough said! After all, this is the logic that Jody generally uses against Gurus.
The Two-Sides Of Projection
Jody is no dummy. He knows how to weave thoughts and concepts that superficially appeal to those who are rational and logical. Jody rightly points out that followers (devotees) essentially project “enlightenment”, “powers”, “holiness”, “purity”, etc. onto their “Gurus”, “Religious Figures” and/or “Religious Objects”. I agree. However, I also believe that non-followers (ex/non-devotees) essentially project their negativity, hate, anger, fear, un-holiness, impurity, etc. onto “Gurus”, “Religious Figures” and/or “Religious Objects”. That’s right, this is a two way street. Jody bashes positive projections from followers but doesn’t say one word about his negative projections or the negative projections from non-followers!
Kali Ma & Solving The Pooping Issue
Jody has a big problem with pooping Gurus. The thought that Guru’s poop disgusts Jody so much he cannot fathom being devoted or eulogizing anyone that poops. Enter Kali Ma! Stone idols and paper pictures of Kali Ma don’t poop. Pooping problem solved!
Jody Radzik Dumps Nirvana For Ecstasy & Glorifies Drugs Reference: E-volution
“You touch the darkness–the feminine, the gross, whatever you see as dark,” Jody Radzik explains to Diana as they hand out flyers in the street for a new house club. “When you’re on Ecstasy, the drug forces you to become who you really are. You don’t get any positive experience from a drug like cocaine; it’s a lie. But with Ecstasy, it can have a positive effect on the rest of your life!”
Jody and Diana are on their way to a club called Osmosis, a house event which occurs every Thursday night at DV8, a downtown San Francisco venue, for which Radzik serves as promotional director. Promoting house, though, is almost like promoting Ecstasy. The drug and subculture have defined and fostered each other. Osmosis is proud of the fact that it mixes gay, straight, glam, and house culture, and Radzik–a gamine, extremely young thirty-year-old with a modified Hamlet haircut and a mile-a-minute mouth–credits E with their success.
“There’s a sexual element to house. E is an aphrodisiac and promiscuity is big. In everyday life men usually repress their ‘anima.’ Ecstasy forces you to experience what’s really going on inside.” Diana (who runs her own house club down the block) is amused by Jody’s inclination to talk about taboo subjects. Jody goes on proudly, exuberantly, and loud enough for everyone else in the street to hear. Being publicly outrageous is a valued personality trait in E culture adapted from Kesey’s Merry Pranksters.
“E has a threshold. It puts you in that aahh experience, and you stay there. It might get more intense with the number of hits you take, but it’s not like acid, which, with the more hits you take, the farther you’re walking from consensus culture. With E, your ability to operate within the confines of culture remain. You can take a lot of E and still know that that’s a red light, or that there’s a cop here and you don’t want to fuck up too much. On acid, you can be completely out of your head, and walking in a completely different reality.”
“So E is not simply watered-down LSD. While acid was a ‘test’, Ecstasy is a ‘becoming’. Acid involved a heroic journey, while E is an extended moment. The traditional bell curve of the acid trip and its sometimes brutal examination and stripping of ego is replaced with a similar vision but without the paranoia and catharsis. By presenting insight as a moment of timelessness, E allows for a much more cyberian set of conclusions than the more traditional, visionquest psychedelics.”
“Rather than squashing personal taste and creating legions of Birkenstock clones, E tends to stimulate the user’s own inner nature. Hidden aspects of one’s personality–be it homosexuality, transvestitism, or just love and creativity–demand free expression. All this is allowed to happen, right away, in the E-nvironment of the house club. Reintegration on E is unnecessary because the E-xperience itself has an immediately social context. If anything, the E trip is more socially integrated than baseline reality. E turns a room of normal, paranoid nightclubbers into a teaming mass of ecstatic Global Villagers.”
To Radzik, the club lights, music, and Ecstasy are inseparable elements of a designer ritual, just like the campfire, drumbeats, and peace pipe of a Native American tribal dance. Arriving at the club in time for the sound check, Jody and Diana dance a while under the work lights. Jody’s diatribe continues as he demonstrates the new hip-hop steps he picked up in Los Angeles last week.
“The Ecstasy comes through the house music. The different polyrhythmic elements and the bass … this is current North American shamanism. It’s technoshamanism. E has a lot to do with it. It really does. I get a little nervous but I’ve got to tell the truth about things. But the system is probably going to react against the E element.”
Diana cuts in: “And then they’ll just shut you down like they closed our party last week.” She takes a cigarette from behind her ear and lights it. Jody still dances while Diana stands and smokes. Neither he nor the E culture will be taken down that easily. “E is an enzyme that’s splicing the system. E is like a cultural neurotransmitter that’s creating synaptic connections between different people. We’re all cells in the organism. E is helping us to link up and form more dendrites. And our culture is finally starting to acknowledge the ability of an individual to create his own reality. What you end up with, what we all have in common, is common human sense.”
The E-inspired philosophy borrows heavily from the scientific and mathematics theories of the past couple of decades. House kids talk about fractals, chaos, and morphogenetic fields in the same sentence as Deee-Lite’s latest CD. Jody’s cultural neurotransmitter” image refers back to James Lovelock’s Gaia hypothesis, which is the now well-supported notion that planet Earth is itself a giant, biological organism. The planet is thought to maintain conditions for sustaining life through a complex series of feedbacks and iterations. A population of ocean microorganisms, for example, may regulate the weather by controlling how much moisture is released into the atmosphere. The more feedback loops Gaia has (in the form of living plants and animals), the more precisely “she” can maintain the ecosystem. Evolution is seen more as a groping toward than a random series of natural selections. Gaia is becoming conscious. Radzik and others have inferred that human beings serve as Gaia’s brain cells. Each human being is an individual neuron, but unaware of his connection to the global organism as a whole. Evolution, then, depends on humanity’s ability to link up to one another and become a global consciousness.
These revelations all occur to house kids like Jody under the influence of E. This is why they call the drug a “cultural enzyme” The Ecstasy helps them see how they’re all connected. They accept themselves and one another at face value, delighted to make their acquaintance. Everyone exposed to E instantly links up to the Gaian neural net. As more people become connected, more feedback and iteration can occur, and the Gaian mind can become more fully conscious. Jody and Diana both believe that house culture and the Gaian mindset literally “infect” newcomers to the club like a virus. As Osmosis opens, Jody watches a crowd of uninitiated clubbers step out onto the dance floor, who, despite their extremely “straight” dress, are having a pretty Ex-uberant time.
“This looks like a group of people that might be experimenting with Ecstasy for the first time. They’re going to remember this night for the rest of their lives. This is going to change them. They are going to be better people now. They’re infected. It’s like an information virus. They take it with them into their lives. Look at them. They’re dancing with each other as a group. Not so much with their own partners. They’re all smiling. They are going to change as a result of their participation in house. Their worldview is going to change.”
Indeed, the growing crowd does seem uncharacteristically gleeful for a Thursday-night dance club. Gone are the pickup lines, drunken businessmen, cokeheads, and cokewhores. The purposeful social machinations–getting laid, scoring drugs, or gaining status–seem to be overrun by the sheer drive toward bliss. Boys don’t need to dance with their dates because there’s no need for possessiveness or control. Everyone feels secure–even secure enough to dance without a partner in a group of strangers.
Whether that carries into their daily life is another story. Certainly, a number of new “cyberian converts” are made each evening. But the conversions are made passively, as the name of the club implies, through Osmosis. “Unlike acid, which forces users to find ways to integrate their vision into working society, E leads them to believe that integration occurs in the same moment as the bliss. The transformation is a natural byproduct–a side effect of the cultural virus.
As club regulars arrive, they wink knowingly at one another.” Jody winks and nods at few, who gesture back coyly. The only information communicated, really, is “I am, are you?” The winkers are not so much the “in” crowd as the fraternity of the converted. They’re all part of what one T-shirt calls “The E Conspiracy”. These are the carriers of the cultural virus. No need to say anything at all. The E and the music will take care of everything (wink, wink).
“The sixties went awry because they wanted a sweeping cultural change to go on overtly,” explains Radzik, nodding to two girls he’s sure he has seen before. They wink back. “And that didn’t happen. What’s different about house is that no one’s trying to ‘spread the message.’ It’s more like, we’re into it because we love it, but we’re not out to convert people. ‘Groove is in the heart’ [a Deee-Lite lyric]. We just want to expose people to it. People decide that they’re into it because they respond to it on a heart level. I think the bullshit’s going to come apart of its own accord.”
“So is this a dance floor filled with socially aware, fully realized designer beings? Certainly not. It’s a dance floor filled with smart kids, sexy kids, not-so smart kids, and not-so sexy kids, but they do seem to share an understanding, in the body, of the timeless quality of bliss and how to achieve it through a combination of dance and E. Even the music, playing at precisely 120 beats per minute, the rate of the fetal heartbeat, draws one into a sense of timeless connection to the greater womb–Gaia. The lyrics all emphasize the sound eee.” “Evereeebodeee’s freee,” drones one vocal, in pleeesing gleeeful breeezes, winding their way onto the extreeemely wide smiles of dancing boys and girls. It’s just the E! Likewise, the way in which E infiltrates society is much less time-based and confrontational than was the case with acid. E infiltrates through the experience of bliss, so there’s nothing to say or do about it. The meta” agenda here is to create a society with no agenda.”
As Jody screams over the din of the house music, “Fuck the agendas. We just have to manifest our culture. You have to trust your heart. That’s what Jesus really said. And that’s what E does. It shows people they have their own common sense. They realize, I don’t need this!”
Bruce Eisner shows up at about midnight, exploring the house scene and its relationship to Ecstasy for the second edition of his book Ecstasy: The MDMA Story. A veteran of the sixties and just a bit too old to fit in with this crowd, he almost sighs as he explains to E-nthusiastic clubbers how E’s preservation of social skills and ego make it a much better social transformer than the psychedelics of his day.
“In the sixties, we were sure we were going to have this revolution that would change everything overnight. And it never came. We got the seventies instead.” A few girls laugh. They were born in the seventies. Bruce smiles slowly. He’s got a dozen stoned kids hanging on his every word, when in fact he’s trying to understand them.
“With E, you don’t get so far out, like on acid, where you lose touch with the physical world. It allows you an easier time to bring the insights back in. Huxley talked a lot about the importance of integrating the mystical experience with the worldly experience. He had that one trip where he decided, ‘The clear light is an ice cube. What’s important is love and work in the world.’ And love and work in the world is what Ecstasy shows you. It’s a model for enlightenment, and the challenge is bringing that into the real world.”
So maybe revolution has become evolution as house culture awakens to the fact that there is method behind Gaia’a madness, and that Darwin wasn’t completely right. Life naturally evolves toward greater self-awareness, and we don’t need to push it anywhere. The universe is not a cold sea of indifference but the warm, living waters of an oversoul composed of waves of love–Gaia’s morphogenetic fields. The mock self-assuredness of the “me” generation gives way to the inner wink-wink-say-no-more knowing of the E generation, as the sixties bell curve finally touches down, and ego fully reintegrates into a postpsychedelic culture.
Interesting Links & Stuff About Jody Radzik
Ape Man Exposes Godmen
Guruphiliac Jody Radzik Blog
Jody Radzik’s Pictures Of A Rave In Sante Fe
Jody’s Yahoo Profile
Jody’s Wikipedia Profile
Some Of Jody’s Postings On The “Ammachi Free Zone” Yahoo Group
Some of Jody’s Postings On The “Nonduality Salon” Yahoo Group
Some of Jody’s Postings On The “Meditation Society Of America” Yahoo Group
1,600 posts for “JodyR” on Google Groups
Guruphiliac Can’t Find A Date
View A Poem That Jody Posted In Praise Of Kali Ma
Douglas Rushkoff stated:
Rushkoff: “My good friend Jody Radzik – the guy who first introduced me to raves, actually – started up a blog this year. Jody is about the most loving and optimistic person I’ve ever known. That’s why I was surprised that instead of touting a new spiritual or cultural phenomenon, Radzik had decided to bash one.”
Click Here to read one of Jody Radzik’s posts on Google Groups defending the use of marijuana.
Click Here to read how Jody said:
Guruphiliac Jody Radzik: “If Adi Da is a regular user of marijuana he’s just gone up 50 points in my book!”
Four months after this page was published (exposing Jody Radzik’s shameless use and promotion of illegal drugs) he posted the following comment on a blog:
Guruphiliac Jody Radzik: “Yeah. I need to be stoned ALL the time.” (Reference)
Click Here to read the following post:
“Jody Radzik, identified in a Rolling Stone feature on smart drugs and rave culture as ‘one of the [rave] crowd’s resident gurus,’ believes that ‘[t]he planet is waking up…Humans are the brain cells. The axons of the nerve cells are the telephone lines.’”
Click Here to view the archive to HarshaSatsangh and where Jody said:
Guruphliac Jody Radzik: “Fortunately, we have the shelter of the Great Saints and Sages to take refuge with. When we come to be blessed with sincere aspiration their grace will manifest in a myriad of ways, assuring us an appropriate course of action in our spiritual practice no matter what role we are playing in the world.”
I didn’t know there were Great Saints and Sages who didn’t poop. Is it possible that Jody changed his views? Don’t you just hate when people flip-flop, willy-nilly, from one extreme to the other?
Click Here to read an amusing thread where Radzik, Jody goes all out of his way to defend his systematic bashing of Gurus, all the while praising and defending his belief in the Hindu Goddess, Kali Ma. Jody doesn’t realize that he is projecting power, holiness and divinity onto his concept of Kali Ma (ironically, a behavior he bashes with devotees of Gurus). Jody acts exactly like devotees, constantly referring to “Ma” and whatever she wills for him. Jody acts (or tries to act) like a realized person who knows “The Truth”. The big question is: Are you willing to let your son or daughter get addicted to Ecstasy and Psychedelics to find “The Truth” that Jody is pushing through drug-induced hallucinations?
In Conclusion
In a nutshell, the guruphiliac blog bashes Gurus because they poop and their followers project stuff on them. Period. That’s really what this blog is all about. Jody also attempts to inject some humor into his posts (which he does with some success) but at the cost of truth (Jody mixes truths with untruths; or more bluntly, truths with bold-faced lies). Jody is doing all this stuff because he believes he is realized (Reference) and is being guided by the Spirit of the Hindu Goddess Kali Ma! Those who dissent with Jody are usually retaliated against using five primary tactics:
Name-calling.
Accusing the other person of “projecting” (although Jody doesn’t “project” at all).
Bringing up the “E” word (“ego”, not “ecstasy”).
Publicly divulging other’s emails and then encouraging his entourage of anonymous and potty-mouthed “followers” to e-mail them with complaints.
Accusing others of being funded or being “paid shills” (let’s not bring up the issue of who supplied him with club drugs, funded his purchase of club drugs and is funding his Anti-Guru campaign : Ouch). I also surmise, in private, Jody might also accuse others of not eating enough of their “who”.
Hopefully, now that you understand Jody Radzik and his guruphiliac blog better, enjoy, laugh and take everything you read with a grain of salt. It doesn’t get much weirder than this folks!
Click Here For Pictures Of Guruphiliac Jody Radzik
SOUNDTRACK: The Believer June/July 2007 Music Issue Compilation CD: Cue the Bugle Turbulent (2007).
The 2007 Believer disc smashes the mold of folkie songs that they have established with the previous discs in the series. The theme for this disc is that there’s no theme, although the liner notes give this amusing story:
So I know I’ve been a little out of the loop because of the pig virus and everything but I have to get something off my chest about this whole Tiger Wood’s scandal.
This is a must watch. Environmental Graffiti has a post up on the decades of experiments western armies undertook in an attempt to develop chemical warfare to render their enemies incapacitated: In short, armies gave their own soldiers LSD, and other psychedelic drugs, and studied the effects. The Nazis did it first, then Britain, and the U.S. and other countries followed suit.
