Blogaholics Anonymous Group Blog

Friutcakes in a School System

2012-01-26T23:04:00.000-08:00

as recounted in radical sapphoq blog:

Brandon Wegner wrote an opinion piece for his public school's newspaper which was against same gender couples adopting children. He was asked to write it and he did. Brandon Wegner is a Christian. He used scripture to explain his viewpoint. If references to scripture were not wanted, that should have been made clear when he was initially asked to write the piece. A member of the faculty serves as advisor to the school newspaper. The faculty member could have forbidden the piece to be published, or at the very least consulted with his or her supervisor if there was any question.

A same gender couple with a child who attends the school called the principal to complain. They were given an apology. The apology referenced the words "bullying" and "disrespect."

Superintendent Carlson then confronted Brandon Wegner directly. The superintendent threatened to expel him.

These are some of the facts of the case as reported by Fox News-- and only by Fox News.

radical sapphoq says:
Brandon Wegner was asked to write an argument against same gendered couples adopting kids. He did so. That I or anyone else agrees or disagrees with his stance is not the issue.

His opinion was published in the school newspaper. There is no mention of the faculty advisor trying to censor or otherwise change the words that Brandon Wegner wrote.

A same gendered couple whose child attends the school was offended. That is the risk that one takes when freedom of speech is allowed to take place, albeit even the limited freedom of speech that is permitted to high school students in the interest of maintaining order in a public school setting. An apology was issued. I don't know the reasoning behind the decision to give the couple an apology.
The apology referenced "bullying" and "disrespect." I read nothing in Brandon Wegner's article that hinted at either. Brandon Wegner did not write "All same gendered couples should be shot/ forced to live in gay ghettos/ denied all freedoms..." or anything like that. He also did not write "Same gendered couples are ignorant and stupid/ smell badly/ suck..." or anything like that.

The Superintendent was wrong in his actions in my opinion. There is no indication in the report that Brandon Wegner had been asked to keep his beliefs out of his writing. There is also no evidence of Brandon Wegner making a ruckus or otherwise acting in a way that indicated that he hated the child of the same gendered couple or intending to do anything like firebomb the child's parents' car or litter his school's football field with Chick Tracts referencing homosexuality as against the beliefs of Christians who take the Bible literally. If Brandon Wegner had threatened violence or acted in a violent manner, then suspension or expulsion would have been warranted.

All reports I found on the internet listed their source as being Fox News. This sort of thing should have been reported by many other news teams who could have sent out their own reporters to cover the story.

This story is about one student who wrote an opinion that he was asked to write. The school newspaper published the opinion. Sorry, but I don't see how Brandon Wegner could be judged as being wrong for doing as he was asked to do.

I don't know what the beliefs of the principal, faculty advisor, or superintendent are in respect to same gender partners adopting a child and I don't care. What happened to Brandon Wegner was wrong. The superintendent, based on the reports that I read, had no reason to threaten Brandon Wegner with suspension.

Disclosure: I have been involved with g.l.b.t.i.q. issues for a number of years.

http://radio.foxnews.com/toddstarnes/top-stories/atty-says-school-threatened-punished-boy-who-opposed-gay-adoption.html
http://www.greenbaypressgazette.com/assets/pdf/U0183892114.PDF

The First Frost

2012-01-24T16:20:00.000-08:00

The background is a small sample of what I've been creating lately. It is taken from a photograph that I took with my cheap digital camera while out walking with the dog. I altered it. The maudlin verses stuck themselves on there as I was reviewing my day. I was unable to get out of the house today. So I worked on textures and wrote bad verses instead.

It has not been easy, this waiting for death. My dad's Lewey Body Dementia continues its' wayward course. Some days are clearer than others. Physically he is weaker now. My own tears lay just beneath the surface.

Meanwhile, life continues to pass us by. His ex-wife, financially destitute from condo living, is considering a move to a warmer climate. My half-sister is traveling around the country with her new job. Time stands still as Death courts my dad. Together, we squeeze what joy we can out of whatever time we have left.

spike

So Fair Use is Dead

2012-01-19T18:50:00.000-08:00

Hey DMCA and SOPA and PIPA -- up yours.
I think not going to movies for a very long time sounds pretty good to me.

https://www.google.com/landing/takeaction/

This is what I've been doing...

2011-12-23T19:33:00.000-08:00

for fun.

I've been taking pictures of scenery and of the dog and two cats. Most of the time, I use part of the photos I take in creating textures which are like backgrounds that I used to create for e-stats.

This texture is part of a set or fatpack that I made. Each fatpack has a name that I give it. Each texture within a fatpack also has a number related to when I took the photograph and some other information. This texture used to be part of a photo.
I work on things like this almost every day. Creating textures from my photographs makes me happy. What I do is that I select part of a photograph in my collection of photos that I've taken and cut it. Then I modify it, either stretching it to fill a 512 x 512 space or possibly adding an alpha texture if I want some transparency. Once I get it looking the way I want it to, then I continue to play with settings until I get some different colors and effects that I like.

[As usual, all rights reserved on these two samples of my work. Please play nice and don't claim them as yours. Originals are stored safely on my hard drive and a few other places. And of course no hot-linking.
Blah blah blah].

I have a ton of photos that I've taken with my simple point-and-shoot digital camera over the past six years or so. And even more textures that I've created from pieces of my photos.

So now you know a bit of what I've been doing.

A few pics have been posted on my blogspot blogs and more will be posted there soon.

Love yas, mean it,
Spike aka SAP or sapphoq

Taking the "Fun" Out of Dysfunctional

2011-05-15T10:03:00.001-07:00

To my first half-sister, I remember you when you were a baby. You had a little sky blue dress and a head full of brown hair. You were cute. And I loved you. When you were seven and I was seventeen, I was torn from the life I knew with you and our mother and your dad/my step-dad. It was the second beating and far worse than the first one. Our mother and your dad/my step-dad had shown up at the church I'd been attending drunk. Our mother dragged me out of the church on my knees, flung me down the steps. The people in the church began praying, loudly storming the gates of their heaven on my behalf. I could hear the church people as I was being forced into the car. The beating began in the car. Our mother sure could pack a punch. At home the beating continued. I can still hear our mother saying to your dad/my step-dad, "Hit her, T. Hit her." as she handed him the umbrella she had retrieved from the hallway. She was exhausted and needed him to continue the beating for her. The lights went on in the neighbors' house and just as quickly extinguished. My screams were that loud. The next morning, an elder of the church took the only meaningful action that anyone there that night had. He called my father.

My dad called me the next morning. It was a Monday. My dad begged me to come live with him. I said yes. The second beating had been much worse than the first. (I had the scars on my knees for years after). After the first beating, I comforted myself with the mistaken belief that this wouldn't happen again. But it did happen again. And so, right after our mother left for work I began to pack in secret. Over the course of the next three days, I took as much of my stuff out of the house as I could.

During that time, I lost track of you in my memory. In my memory, I cannot bring forth any accounting of your whereabouts. I'm pretty sure that you were left sleeping at home when our mother and my step-dad left the house in a drunken rage. Your grandparents lived upstairs so you would have been safe enough. Were you sleeping downstairs or upstairs? My guess is that you were sleeping downstairs. I was sleeping upstairs in your uncle's bedroom while he was in prison. Did you wake up during any of the commotion? Did you sleep right through it, or pretend to sleep right through it afraid that you would be next? Did you tell yourself that I was bad, that I deserved it?

You told me once-- many years later-- that you have no memories of your own childhood until senior year in high school. You remember being thrown down the cellar steps because you were refusing to practice the piano. You told me that you had thought that was "normal." I don't know what you went through after I left the household. I had to leave for my own safety. Did you become the target that I had been? I had a fantasy about rescuing you for several years after I had to leave. During my visits through the end of your high school years, you didn't seem to want rescuing. You did write me once about going to a concert and taking your first acid trip. I don't remember what I wrote back to you. I do know your letter shook me to the core and that I did write back. I had found recovery from my own addiction at that time. Your letter scared me. You were only fourteen. I was twenty-four.

There was your first wedding. I decided not to attend. I didn't feel that I would be safe there. Years later, there was my wedding. You and my other half-sister met for the first time. You are ten years younger than I am. She is twenty-five years younger-- my dad and his third wife's child. You don't know each other. You aren't related to each other. I don't know what happened at my wedding. Both of you were bridesmaids. You hated each other. Both our mother and my father indicated to me separately that neither of you wanted a copy of the picture that the photographer took of the three of us.

Your dad/my step-dad got older. He had a heart attack. I went to see him at the hospital. He thought he was going to die. In that hospital bed, he made amends to me. He didn't die then but the amends stuck. (Our mother to this day will not admit to our history). Years passed. Your dad/my step-dad had Addison's, developed Parkinson's. Began failing. He died. Our mother called me on the telephone two weeks after he was buried to tell me. (I found out later that she had "allegedly" called my aunt directly after he had died and told my aunt that she had told me). I was left out of the obituary that the on-line volunteers found for me later. I signed the on-line guest-book. I live, dammit. Your dad/my step-dad was important to me and I miss him. He wasn't my dad and can never be my dad. But he was my step-dad. And you are still one of my half-sisters.

You got married again, had a couple of kids, moved far away. Made something of yourself in your community. The last time I saw you was at Gramma's funeral, holding your little boy in your arms. You shunned me, ignored me. I needed my dad, demanded that he come to the funeral. After all, he had known Gramma and had loved her too. Perhaps that was the reason for our mother not telling me about your dad's/my step-dad's death, I don't know. I can only guess.

I talked with our mother on the phone on Monday. It was a polite but nice conversation. I do not need her to acknowledge our history together. Through the years, hope changes and my hope had changed. Our mother and I have been like two women waiting for a bus, seeking some sort of conversation and perhaps a tiny connection. And on Monday, I thought whatever healing was able to happen between us had. I misjudged her sense of vindictiveness, her need for revenge.

On Tuesday your second husband died. On Thursday, our mother called our aunt and asked her to tell me that your second husband had died. By Thursday it was too late to arrange for a plane. I scoured the internet for your address so I could send you a bereavement card. I did not find out the arrangements until last night-- courtesy of the internet once again. I looked up your address on Google Earth, saw your home and your neighborhood. Flew past the place you work, the downtown stores, the bay. It was not by my will that I am absent from the viewing today and the funeral tomorrow. All of those things are not really for the dead. We do those things for the living, for those left behind. I would have liked to have been there for you and for your kids. But we have become strangers. (Our mother sure knows how to take the "fun" out of dysfunctional). I am crying on the inside.

Tomorrow I will send you the card I got for you. It is the proper thing to do. My dad says it is and my husband concurs. I wish for you comfort from your family, friends, community. I hope your children will make it, grow up to be compassionate human beings and without any history of the traumas that you and I have both experienced separately. It is many years later, little half-sister. You are a grown woman with a family of your own and a dead husband. I am much older than seventeen now and you are much older than seven. I was not able to rescue you and for that I am truly sorry. Goodbye little sister.

sapphoq on life

One Less Lunatic

2011-05-15T08:49:00.001-07:00

On September 9, 2001 I was down in a basement doing finances for the place I was working at and doing quite a bit of cursing. My assistant ran down the stairs. She began furiously knocking at the office door. This action was in direct contradiction to my wishes to be left alone while I cursed and swore at the numbers before me.

"What?"

"Television...plane...crash..!" Nothing ever excited my assistant but whatever it was had rendered her practically incoherent. Somewhat annoyed, I got up and followed as she plowed back upstairs and into the living room. Smoke filled the television screen. "A plane ran into the Twin Towers," my assistant said, pointing. A second plane then crashed and the Towers were collapsing. "Oh shit," my assistant said.

I passed the rest of that day in an anxiety-ridden fog. I was afraid that the bombers would get Albany next. I stayed overtime that day, waiting for each of my people to return home from day programs across the Capital Region. I was horrified to discover that at one of those programs, the staff turned on the television and watched the horror all day, practically ignoring the developmentally disabled folks they were there to provide a service to. Had I known, I would have gone to pick up my two people who attended that program and brought them to the safety of their home. As it was, I waited until every last van had left the driveway. I stayed for dinner that night. I had to know that every single one of my people was safe.

One of my people in the days to follow became obsessed with the television reports. Another had nightmares. I pulled the plug on the television and announced that it was "broken." The horror receded. The television "got fixed." Life went on.

I went to the gym almost daily. I watched for reports of the dead, searching for the names of folks I knew in the City. The stock market plummeted. The economy began its' free fall souring. I wished fervently that we had gone in and bombed Iran like crazy people back when the students took over the American Embassy instead of trying to "negotiate" with terrorists. Perhaps if we had, 9/11 wouldn't have happened. I declared this to anyone who would listen. (I still believe that today). Life went on.

Wars came. Politicians got elected. People got killed. Our airports now had security checks. Some folks didn't like that. I figured those people in the airplanes on 9/11 would have welcomed the inconvenience of long lines and airport employees with dampened senses of humor if it would have kept them alive. I had my car accident, got my own brain injury. I went cross-country by myself for three weeks in order to retrieve "pieces of my soul" from places I'd never been. During that time, I discovered that there was no security on the trains.

Our country got crazy with religion. More people died. More politicians got voted in and voted out. I was in a chat group on the web that Sunday night when someone said that Osama was finally dead. One of the moderators attempted to keep the chat group on task. That wasn't going to happen. "This is big," I typed. I myself was a mod of that group but suddenly I didn't care about our stated purpose.

Some things I don't understand. In response to hearing about Castro's editorial about how we were "wrong" for killing Osama in front of his family (no, I haven't read the piece yet. It is on my list for another post) my instant retort was, "Screw that." He didn't give a shit about the families of all the people that he had arranged to be killed. I don't give a shit about him dieing in front of his family. Go ahead and call that unchristian of me if you like. I am not a christian anyways and so I really don't care. And I don't understand how the Pakistani government could not have known that Osama was in their midst. I heard that something like 81 Pakistanis were killed a day or two later for their troubles.

Yes, there is one less lunatic alive in a world full of lunatics. My dad says there will be more bombings over here as a retaliation-- smaller targets. And more people will die.

To the people who make decisions about who we may bomb, lets get some balls shall we? Pull our troops out and bring on the nukes, I say. Any bastards who dare to bomb us ought to be nuked out of existence along with their families and friends and countries of origin.

radical bloodthirsty sapphoq

Dearly Demented Dad

2010-10-07T19:55:00.000-07:00

Dad wants to go to alf and I feel guilty.
He even has one picked out-- the one we saw that was affordable.
He is visiting us because he has a neurology appointment tomorrow.
He wants to visit the alf AGAIN tomorrow.
He doesn't know when he wants to move in yet but he clearly wants to live there in his own room on the second floor-- it's a coupla miles from our home.

Dad had five accidents in five months and thus quit driving in May (car got wrecked) and I feel guilty.
I'd tried to get Dad to quit driving a couple of years ago but failed. His wife/now ex-wife felt unable to get rid of the car. I told the state of New Jersey that he had dementia and sent them copies of his records and of his failed driving evaluation-- so they gave him his license back.
And so he had his five accidents in five months this year (thankfully no one was hurt. The last one was the worst-- he plowed into a parked car and then drove to the police station to tell them that he had an accident).
He still has his license. He says he won't "give that up."
But at least the car is gone.

Dad wants to stay with ex-wife "for as long as she has bills that she cannot pay alone" and I feel guilty.
She says she tells him to think about himself and his own needs. He says she doesn't talk to him at home or that she is "mean." He wants to get a part-time job once he moves to the alf-- whenever that is.

Dad won't take any medicine for his dementia, copd, or atrial fib and I feel guilty.
When he lived with us for several months a couple of years ago, after a very long time I had gotten him to take meds and he had even agreed to see a neurodoc up here. But the ex-wife was still his wife then and she wanted him back home so he went. Now it is two years later, he's deteriorated further and he still has no dementia meds.
His walking is worse this week than it was two weeks ago when he was here last.
The only meds he will take now are Rogaine, Robitussin, and an over the counter anti-constipation pill. He says he is taking the cough medicine and the anti-constipation pill for his copd.
His a-fib puts him at high risk for a debilitating or deadly stroke (yes I just saw that commercial on teevee. Dad didn't see it-- he is sleeping in his chair). My primary care doc told him that and he didn't seem to care. There was no reaction to that news. He says his brother takes the meds and his brother had a stroke anyways. (The brother mostly recovered from it).
Can the once again untreated a-fib have caused the dementia or worsened it??? (No, there have not been any mini-strokes). He has the neurology appointment up here tomorrow and I am afraid of the answer for that one.

Dad is here alive and I feel guilty. I have tried to protect him and failed.

Dear Neighbors

2010-05-18T06:47:00.001-07:00

Dear Neighbors,

The other day I noticed that you were adding another panel to your "privacy screen." Although I do not understand why your driveway needs privacy, it is your property over there and you have a right to do as you please over there in accordance with local laws blah blah blah. There are some grand old pines that have been growing between our driveways long before either of us moved in which provide a wind-block and a living natural privacy screen. But no matter. I digress.

I object to your tying of two garbage saplings to a third in order to avoid having to cull them before putting up the latest panel. I found these two saplings tied up to a third with baling twine yesterday. Yesterday was the perfect day to go shopping for another bird feeder, which I hung up on one of the pine branches in front of the tied up saplings and adjacent to the privacy screen on my side of the property line. Yesterday I refrained from digging up some clone saplings of the aspen in my backyard and replanting them on my side of the privacy screen. I also refrained from decorating in front of the fence with some very large bluebells which persist upon reseeding themselves wherever they damn well please. And I ordered myself not to take cuttings of some poison ivy (which seems to irritate my skin much less than most folks' skin) and tuck them in along your privacy screen. I hid the knives and scissors from my mate who had sudden urges to experiment with how much force would be required to cut through baling twine. The problem, dear neighbors, does not lay in the existence of your privacy screen.

You have a pool. It must be an elegant pool. I do know it is an in-ground pool. That much I can see from one of my porch decks. Some Sunday mornings in the summertime you have jazz and champagne pool gatherings. I actually like the jazz-- although the jazz you favor is not the N'Orlins jazz that I remember from living in Louisiana years ago-- and your drinking is not my intimate concern. Although I am brain damaged, I am not brain dead dear neighbors. I distinctly remember pulling into my driveway with the thing held together by duct tape and chicken wire that pretends to be a car and watching the last of your pool contents drain down my driveway that day in early September. I remember thinking, "How odd." This trespassing by your chlorinated water upon my tarmac must have required some finesse. Your driveway lays closer to the source of the water. Indeed I dare to point out that your driveway slopes downward in a direct route to the sewer. This event was not repeated in subsequent years as I happened to be home during the great laying of the pipeline.

You have lilacs. They hang over my yard and that's okay. How it is that you think it is perfectly alright to enter my yard with your shiny shears in hand without so much as a by-your-leave escapes me. Similarly, my rearranged brain cannot wrap itself around the three men I found one day on my property cutting some of your trees down. "It is customary for a neighbor to advise another of the necessity of entry in order to take care of things like trees," I told the workmen. "It is your employers' responsibility to have spoken with me beforehand. I would not have objected had I had that courtesy extended to me. So now that I know what you are doing, carry on."

That reminds me. You have a garage which sits parallel to a portion of my now fenced in back yard. The property line allows for you to maintain your garage and for me to plant columbines. Trimming your trees and then tossing limbs back there onto my columbines is uncool. I also object to your snide comments rendered within my hearing about my supposed need for lessons on where the property lines exist. (I have the map dear neighbors, and my property consists of a square and an added isosceles triangle). And it is difficult for me to ascertain what it is that you "will not put up with" anymore when you declare this within my hearing but fail to tell me directly about your specific objections. If you approach me and calmly state what actions of me and my mate besides breathing that you find so irritating, perhaps we can stand together like adults and work out a neighborly solution to your woes. Until then, there will be no alleviation of your troubles.

Here are some things which you may not know about me dear neighbors: I don't celebrate Christ Mas and I don't have credit card debt. I don't take out massive loans for home improvement. I save up for home repairs and I pay cash. I like doing it that way. My cash paid for the driveway to be paved, the attic to be redone, the new windows to be installed, the fence. My cash will pay for my new clunker after the current clunker gives up the ghost, the window sills to be scraped and painted, and the new linoleum in my kitchen. I never understood the "keeping up with the Jones-es" compulsion and I refuse to participate in it. I choose to live within my means, not above it. We all make our choices.

Today I have chosen this format to put you on formal notice. Dear neighbors, my actions already bespeak my intentions to enjoy life to the fullest for however long I have left on this earth in my present form. I like feeding the birds and watching their antics from my back deck. I like sitting on said deck while my quiet dog snoozes in a patch of sunlight. I like my wildflower patch. I like my trees, bushes, weeds, flowers, bees, and chipmunks. I even like the little violets that grow in my grass. I like watching families of birds in my nesting boxes and forsythia bushes. I like studying the birds and other natural events from my bench on the back deck. I like hanging out on my back deck. The dog likes having a fenced in back yard. My mate likes resting on the back deck after weeding the tomato patch. The back deck and the smaller deck by my driveway both look like two people with brain damage stained it and I like that too. My dad helped me stain both decks.

My dad has dementia and I love him. My mate is fond of sharp edges and I love him. My dog is in love with life and I love her. I am defensive and irritable and brain damaged and I love myself.

No love,
sapphoq healing t.b.i.

Labels: community living, conformity, neighbors, t.b.i., tbi, traumatic+brain+injury

The Aftermath

2010-03-22T06:44:00.000-07:00

I have not heard a peep from the VESID counselor nor from the job handler. I have heard that I am "not motivated to work." And I wonder what caused those two to arrive at that horribly wrong guess. My post-brain-damaged problems with executive functions such as initiation is NOT equivalent to problems with motivation. Idiots! I don't have problems with motivation. I have many other problems, but that is not one of them. I declare VESID as having amotivational syndrome. Not me. Cripes.

It's alright. I choose to concentrate on the next clean thing. The dishes in the sink. The dog that wishes a walk. Phone calls to make. Volunteer work. Looking for a job in a bookstore or library.

And so I find myself on this Monday morning plotting my next moves without the benefit of those two professional/paraprofessional "helpers" in my life.

And one more thing: How dare you, all of you whose job it is to ensure that we the disabled land menial mind-numbing jobs, believe that we all disabled people everywhere sit home on our butts all day in boredom out of our minds without your sheltered workshops to labor at and without the benefit of your entertainment. Idiots!

just spike

Jumping Through Hoops

2010-03-09T06:52:00.001-08:00

A meeting was held between the job developer and myself. We both showed up with an uninvited guest. I came equipped with an advocate whose primary function is to keep me from exploding in fury and the developer with the VESID counselor in tow who "wanted to see" me.

Many things happened during this meeting. Apparently I had met with the VESID counselor in November and we had spoken about going to school for computer repair. I do remember getting a list of questions in an e-mail regarding this and filing the questions under "totally overwhelming and just not able to get started on researching and answering." These questions allow the VESID folks to distinguish between VESID customers who are able to do the required research in order to get VESID to finance a bit of edumacation from those of us who have brain injuries and aren't able to do the extensive interviewing and looking up stats in order to get VESID to finance a bit of edumacation. [This talk of edumacation may be a moot point as I tried taking an online course in computers and stopped doing any of the related assignments after the second or third week]. At any rate, I thought the last time I had met with the VESID counselor was sometime in the summer. And thus I didn't remember to call the VESID counselor in January "after the holidaze" because I don't remember us meeting in November. I believe the VESID counselor when she said we had met-- I just have no recall of it. If I was able to locate last year's appointment book within the disorganized heaps laying around my home, then I would at least have something in my own handwriting showing that there was such a meeting.

Consequently, when the job developer called me whenever she called me to set up the recent meeting and she told me that my employment plan now says part-time work with animals like in a shelter or something I was willing to accept that. Whenever it last was that the job developer and I had a meeting I believe there was a discussion about that. Over the phone, the job handler allowed as how she would go with me to seek out volunteer work related to animals and that she would go with me to get me into such a place. Please bring the names of three animal places you would like to work at. I did.

Once the VESID counselor came into the room though, things changed. Due to funding, this cannot be. They cannot help me get volunteer work, even as a pre-requisite to seeking employment. They can get me "work tryouts" or assessments cleaning animal cages and whatnot. And wasn't I wanting to go to school for computer repair anyway? That was when I found out that the VESID counselor and I had met in November.

Along with work tryouts there was some talk about:
* a "new" t.b.i. day program,
* and t.b.i. residences,
* and the usefullness to them of having reminder notes [I have tons of lists and charts and notes but the problem is I don't remember to look at them IF I remember where they are],
*and a guy doing t.b.i. in private practice at his home evenings,
* and make an appointment with so-and-so regarding getting people in to help me organize and clean my house that isn't based upon Medicaid funding which I don't have.
I became overloaded within twenty minutes but the meeting lasted for forty five minutes.

I told them-- the VESID counselor and the job developer-- three times that I was overloaded with information. The VESID counselor informed me that she wanted me to ask questions if I didn't understand something. I was at the point where I was catching only isolated words of the conversation between the two of them. After the third time of stating that I was overloaded and adding that I was done and had to go, the meeting was brought to a close.

Once in the parking lot, the advocate commented that she was getting overloaded in there-- and she doesn't even have a brain injury. She also said that these two were not "getting" me as far as she can tell and some other things like that. Their whole focus was to push me into working (even as a "cashier" or someone who puts together uretha catheters-- I can't imagine myself succeeding at either occupation). Meanwhile, a friend of mine who lives in the same town was found a volunteer position by the job handler and a couple acquaintances several counties over were both directed by their job developers to do specific volunteer work at specific places related to their job goals.

At any rate, the job developer is supposed to contact me about the next deal-- work assessments cleaning up after animals-- at some point. For those of you whom VESID or O.V.R. has proven useful, that's cool. This has been years now of non-useful for me. I who used to access services and develop resources for others to utilize have been unsuccessful at utilizing services my own self. Ain't that a kick in the head.

sapphoq healing t.b.i.

Labels: O.V.R., t.b.i., traumatic+brain+injury, VESID, VESID sucks, vocational rehabilitation

Redirecting Your Blog URL to a Domain

2010-02-21T08:26:00.001-08:00

Originally when I had moved all of my blogs from Yahoo to Blogger I had done so for a few simple reasons. The most important of which was because I could store my blogs on my own domain and let Blogger deal with the comments and such for me. For those that weren't around back then it was the easiest way to keep stalkers from getting my blogs eradicated through overwhelming the server administrators with spam about what an evil person I was and how they were sure that I was creating chaos. Of course I was, and probably am, but that wasn't the point. Nothing hurt worse than watching six months of your life go up in a flick of an administrators power. It was a techie at Blogger that had told me to have it sent via FTP to my own site, and then they could tell the spammers to kiss off because it was Jeremy's space and not Bloggers space being used. I liked that feeling of security and the added level of having it all backed up to my own server just in case. I then went on to explain to my friends how to do this themselves and a lot of them did.

Now that Blogger has decided that it will no longer supply FTP access to subscribers, we have a bit of a quandry here. After I had convinced more than a few people that it was the best way to go, and had described the way to do it, I now feel obligated to assist in fixing the new problem that is posed. What we have to do is point our custom domains that we had used to hold our blogs, towards a new Blogger or Blogspot address. This will also come in handy for anyone using a different service to hold thier blogs {like Livejournal, or Wordpress} and would like a custom domain or sub-domain of thier own website to point at it. Like in my example if you use the sub-domain http://blog.jeremycrow4life.com it will actually redirect you to http://jeremycrow4life.blogspot.com now after I did what I am about to explain. Ok this is a lot easier than it sounds but bear with me here ..

You need to set up an .htaccess file in your home directory so that it will redirect your traffic from your subdomain [ex. http://blog.jeremycrow4life.com] or your domain [ex. http://jeremycrow4life.com or http://www.jeremycrow4life.com] to your blog on Blogger {Blogspot} or any other place that you use for your blogs ..

If you are transferring from your own domain to a Blogspot domain with a redirect follow these steps, if not skip to Thirdly and work from there ..

Firstly .. You have to go into your Blogger Dashboard Settings for the blog that you want to change over ..

Secondly .. You have to click .. Settings .. Publishing .. Then you have to change to a BlogSpot Address [ex. I went from http://blog.jeremycrow4life.com to http://jeremycrow4life.blogspot.com] .. This will be painless and will take a hell of a lot less time to do than usual, since we who published via FTP were always used to the uploading time. Now it will be instantaneous ..

Thirdly .. You need to create a text file on your desktop [call it redirect.txt or whatever you want to] open that text file and paste this code into it

Redirect 301 / http://www.example.com/

You then change the url to the new Blog url [in my case it would have been http://jeremycrow4life.blogspot.com] .. Save the file .. Then rename it to .htaccess [not a typo .. nothing before the .]

Fourthly .. You need to upload that file to the directory of your blog [in my case it would have been the subdirectory of http://jeremycrow4life.com "blog" but it would depend on where your subdirectory is, or if your blog isn't a subdirectory then in the main directory .. subdirectory is if your blog has something other than www in front like http://blog.jeremycrow4life.com instead of http://www.jeremycrow4life.com] ..

Now the only things you need to make sure you do, is when you upload the .htaccess file that you do it in ASCII mode and not BINARY mode .. If you can't save a file without something before the extension then save the file as whatever.htaccess and then change it on the server after you upload it .. Once you have the .htaccess file on your web server then give it a try and see if it works .. Hopefully it's rocking and rolling ;8o)

Other Crap This Weirdo Publishes... The Crow's Nest {The Homepage of Jeremy Crow} Mental Notes & Random Musings {Daily Blog} Mental Rants & Political Rage {For Those That Like His Political Rantings} Mental Imagry & Random Perversion {Adult Stories .. Assume they are rated X} Itching For Coffee {Community Blog} Jeremy Crow on Twitter {For The Easily Amused} Blogaholics Anonymous {E-Mail Blogging Group}

Nothing that was printed here was intended to offend anyone, and if it did, screw ya, you begged for it. If you believe that there are some measures that can be taken to change me, then please feel free to pray for me, and while you are at it yourself, because you read this far, and if you hated every minute of it, then you are an idiot, not me, or the other people who like what I have to say! .. Jeremy

Want More Free Art? ...Visit the new angelis deZines on the web at jeremycrow4life.com/angelisdezines

On the Table

2010-02-09T05:22:00.001-08:00

I was on the table-- or more accurately, in the bed-- waiting to be put out so the gut doc could peer inside my colon with her fancy camera. I had been in that place just last week and the same gut doc had yanked a polyp out of my stomach. The blond athletic nurse leaning over me this time with a huge needle she intended to jab into one of my contrary jumpy veins began to talk.

"I don't get why people can't work," she said.
"They stay home and get big and fat and lazy," she said.
"It takes work for me to be in this shape," she said. "I work out six days a week at [a local expensive gym]," she said.
"And some people get handicapped parking permits and I see them springing out of their cars," she said.

"I don't have a handicapped parking permit," I said.

sapphoq healing tbi

Use Us! It's What We Are Here For!

2010-01-15T10:45:00.000-08:00

Hey gang. I am writing this short blog to remind everyone who is a member of this group, that the Blogaholics Anonymous Group Blog is open to absolutely everyone who wants to use it. If you feel the need to network yourselves in another place, this blog is an easy way to do so. If you are wondering why you would want to do this, then think about it this way, it gives you several ways to add some value to your own writings. It will give the search engines another place to find your name, your links, and will move you up that writing hierarchy that screams of popularity, and moves you up the blog rankings towards more readers.

As you'll see, I always put the links to all my blogs in all of my posts. This gives me yet another link in Google with links to my links. It will give yet another link in Google with the “Jeremy Crow” name in it, and it also gives me a place to throw some writing out there that doesn't fit into my usual “topic” at the time in my other blogs. It will also give you some extra free advertising from people like me that broadcast the new entries out to my Twitter, and Facebook followers. Think about it this way, but people pay a lot of money for the advertising we give you just by being a member of this group. We appreciate you all, and I say we because I am comfortable in assuming that our fabulous spokes model spike q probably agrees with that statement.

Please feel free to sign up for Blogaholics Anonymous on Google {and if you are please state your reason for joining like it asks you to, we are working on being spam free}, Get a Blogger Account {You need a Blogger Dashboard to post entries to the group even if you don't keep your own blog there}, and then send me your Account Names {My e-mail} or as a post through the group {Group e-mail link}, and I will give you immediate credentials to post entries to this blog whenever you like. Please take a moment to “follow” this blog too when you are on the page, so that we can look cool and impressive. We're here to help you help us, and when I say US, I mean all of us who blog, or read blogs. If you need help linking your pages to the Blogaholics Google Group, or style, content help, then please feel free to read the tutorials on the Group page ..

Signed .. Jeremy Crow {Founder & Co-Owner - Blogaholics Anonymous}

Want More Free Art? ...Visit the new angelis deZines on the web at jeremycrow4life.com/angelisdezines

Absence and Sorrow

2009-12-28T16:45:00.001-08:00

I've been somewhat absent from my blogs (and from as much of life as I can cancel) for several reasons. My dad has dementia and that has involved my own grief as well as his acute sense that his "mind is failing." Dad who is still driving a car (no thanks to the State of New Jersey for giving him back his license even after I informed them of his deteriorating condition) has been up to see us several times over the past few months.

Additionally the iron-deficient anemia (which I thought I had only had since August but the blood doc tells me I've had for three years) remained unmedicated for a month thanks to the shenanigans of the mail-order pharmacy in cahoots with my medical insurance plan. I could not tolerate over the counter iron. The medical insurance plan required a pre-authorization for the iron script. The mail-order company sent me back the script 28 days after they had received it. Insurance company refused to pay. Pre-auth was turned down I guess but I had not been informed directly by the insurance company. Price of prescription that was turned down: 39.99 for a thirty day supply. I need the iron pills and specifically I need the prescription iron due to things like a severe hiatal hernia and an irritated colon. So I shelled out the two twenties and practiced being glad that I had the money.

Meanwhile though, I suffered through several months of extreme heat sickness and tiredness. The t.b.i. gave me cognitive fatigue and some physical fatigue as well. The C-PAP machine stopped the feeling that I was sleep-walking through life, even though t.b.i. fatigue remains. The anemia finished me off for awhile. I am actually looking forward to visiting the gut doc in January. I feel so un-well that I am looking forward to the kind of testing that comes with visiting the gut doc.

Sometimes I think medical insurance companies run the numbers like a bettor would run the horse races. As long as the horse is winning (doesn't access the medical insurance benefits much) everything is gravy. When the horse begins stumbling a bit (needs medical attention for chronic conditions) the bettor begins to doubt his choices. When the stumbling horse falls down deal-- there is no longer any problem. Business is business. I understand that. But I also understand that human beings are not race horses and that somehow our lives should matter. My insurance company insisting that I should be able to tolerate taking over-the-counter iron for an anemia which I've had for three years flies in the face of a certain reality. So the company gets to save on my iron medicine by refusing to pay for it. A certain amount of denial on their part saves them money. But that same denial forces me, an adult on disability through no fault of my own, to spend extra money on a medical necessity. Thanks pal.

There is some inherent wrongness with insisting that a patient be able to take iron over the counter in spite of conditions that are counter-indicative to that. There is some inherent wrongness with the A.A.R.P. lobbying against any state motor vehicle agency requiring adults of a certain age to submit to driving retesting. And along with that consequently, many insurance companies failing to pay for driver evaluations conducted by a professional upon order of a physician. My dad's insurance-- a combination of Medicare and A.A.R.P. supplemental Medicare-- naturally refused to pay a dime toward his eval (one that he utterly failed I will add). That bill amounted to around 400 bucks.

So to say that I am a bit testy, irritable, and sluggish is accurate but doesn't really cover the whole truth. I've had all I can do to continue to be a participant in life rather than an observer on the sidelines. I am filled with grief. Dad knows he has dementia and he is aware that his brain is on strike. He continues to steadfastly refuse medications for all of his medical conditions as well as the brain scans that would make a definitive diagnosis possible. We do not even have a name for the monster that is beating on his brain. I love my dad and when he dies, I will miss him for the rest of my life. I hope he dies in his sleep peacefully before the real misery sets in. I feel like there should be more or better things to hope for but I haven't found those things yet.

sapphoq healing t.b.i.

On Forgiveness

2009-09-22T13:08:00.001-07:00

*This blog entry is dedicated to Holly wherever you may be.*

Forgiveness is not something I extend to others without being asked for it. Nor is it something that I "do" for the sake of my own well-being.

Until I was able to accept the premise of the basic humanity of all human beings on this earth, I was unable to forgive either my self or those people who came seeking my forgiveness. Nor was I able to ask forgiveness of those I had wronged by my actions.

Within my own way of being, forgiveness is conditional upon several things. The biggest thing is that the behavior that causes the injury has to stop. When I go to a human being seeking forgiveness and then repeat the action that I am seeking forgiveness for, I am making a mockery. Inherent to the admission of my wrong-doing is a promise that I will stop doing the wrong thing. Likewise, when someone seeks me out and asks for my forgiveness, my forgiveness is predicated upon the condition that they will quit doing the thing that they are asking forgiveness for.

I also don't do blanket forgiveness. I endorse the direct approach. When I cause injury to another human being, I don't expect to be forgiven without asking. Nor do I forgive others unless I am asked. I am not obligated to forgive anyone who is not seeking my forgiveness. Some people do not want it. In the same vein, I am responsible to seek out those from whom I want forgiveness. My rapist has never sought me out to ask for my forgiveness for his actions. Nor have I sought him out to ask for his forgiveness because I remained actively pissed off at him for a number of years. I don't know where he is today. My sincere hope is that he is rotting in a prison cell somewhere, cut off from his access to women.

The man who rammed my car into a house causing my traumatic brain injury did ask for my forgiveness in court before his sentencing to a year in county. As long as he remains a non-driver, I am willing to forgive the part of him that did not know any better. Once he starts a car and drives off, my forgiveness is instantly terminated. I am not in touch with this man so I have no way of knowing whether or not he made good on his promise to surrender his driver's license. I only hope he has for the sake of drivers everywhere.

My mother has never acknowledged her physical and emotional abuse of me as a child and teen. She may not ever. I am not obligated to forgive her. She continues to play her mind games. In the interest of my own health and well-being, I limit my time and involvement with her. I don't dwell on the past history that my mother and I have between us. (Therapy helped me heal from that). I do protect my self from further harm. On the other hand, my step-father did make his amends. He was in a hospital bed in I.C.U. and he thought he was going to die. He said he was sorry that things were difficult between us when I was younger. I forgave him. He didn't die then, but the forgiveness stuck. Our relationship for the remaining years of his life changed for the better.

And finally, I consider some things to be "too big" to forgive. Those things which fall under that category are extraordinary events such as rape, systemic abuse, and arson. I am not Superwoman. I am no saint. I am an average human being.

To wrap this up, there is one human being that I am no longer in touch with whose forgiveness I seek. Holly from Jersey City, if you happen upon this blog, I am sincerely sorry for getting the other summer day camp kids started on calling you "four-fingered Holly." That was mean. I knew better at the time but I did it anyways. I didn't have the guts to apologize when you bolted off the van that day and I didn't have the guts to stop doing it. I don't know where you are now or what you are doing. I have no way of finding you. Instead I write these words. It is to you that this blog entry is dedicated.

sapphoq healing t.b.i.

Redneck Daze

2009-09-01T09:16:00.000-07:00

1978 was the year that Baton Rouge Louisiana survived my presence along with the hurricane that touched down at Blue Bayou. In November of 1977, it dawned on my drug-fogged brain that it would really be a good idea to look for a job since school would be finished in December. I was babysitting a little red-headed autistic kid named Brett when I grabbed the family's newspaper and turned to the want ads. I promptly discovered that VISTA wanted me. I signed up and a couple months later off I went.

After a whirlwind trip-- through Connecticut (ate a meatball bomber), Boston Massachusetts (stayed at the Little Copley; saw Marshall Tucker in concert, and the movie "The Sting"; went up to the revolving bar; ate crepes downtown and listened to a bagpipe player from Alaska; called Johnathan Kozol up on the telephone and got to meet him and his sheepdog), up on through Salem (toured the House of the Seven Gables), into Maine (Route One), turned left at Bangor, went skiing in Jackson, New Hampshire (Wildcat Mountain; a stoned New Year's Eve at a local's log cabin in Concord; ate dinner with an old lady local at a restaurant who liked to chat with travelers), on through Vermont (more skiing perhaps, memory falls now), and home again-- I packed up the car with pretty near everything I could cram into it plus one cat and headed off for San Antonio, Texas.

I snuck the cat into every motel I slept in, caught a tour of Tuskeegee Institute, and got drunk in Freeport, Texas. My friend Madelin had arranged for me to stay at her two aunties' house there. In return for washing dishes at their Mexican Restaurant, I was given as much as I wanted to eat and plenty of beer to wash the food down with. I (and the cat) slept on their very pleasant screened in porch. The two aunties were actually one aunt and her lover. They were my first exposure to a non-heterosexual couple in which I was able to put aside my xenophobia long enough to discover that prejudice was a prison that kept me from enjoying people.

In San Antonio, I met some other VISTA volunteers and our trainer who was a proud drunken Chicano. I went on a tour of The Alamo, walked the river walk, ate at a cool Mexican restaurant, and got drunk too. I was there for three inches of snow. In amazement I watched the city shut down over it.

After a return stop to Freeport and the two aunties (I believe they must have agreed to watch the cat during my training), I was off to Baton Rouge. Johnnie Oliver was our VISTA supervisor there. I quickly established myself as a party animal and was off to the first of five apartments and my job assignments. I worked in a nursery school mornings (hello Robert Brazeale if you are reading this) and at a literacy center afternoons. I found the bar across from the literacy center and my custom quickly became to drink three frozen strawberry margaritas for my half-hour lunch break. I found that working was not to my liking so in early summer I ditched both assignments, having talked my way into working part-time as a literacy tutor at L.C.I.W. (women's state pen) in St. Gabriel, Louisiana.

I was always high. I got high before reporting to the prison and I left joints visible in the ashtray for my return trip home at the end of the days that I did work. One woman from Connecticut by her self-report was in prison for three years for having been found with three joints while passing through Lake Charles, Louisiana. Perhaps there was more to that story but it didn't occur to me then that there might be.

Besides being high, I was not really suited for prison work. (N.B. and still not). I did not have a commanding voice, I was shy, I had the appearance of one who was gullible and easily manipulated. Fortunately for me, the woman who taught upholstery determined that I needed watching. It was through her direct intercession that my "office" where I tutored women in reading and math was moved from the chaplain's office to a trailer directly in view of where she held her classes. It was the upholstery teacher who told me that if a prisoner asked me to bring her anything from the outside to say NO. Thus when I was approached by two prisoners who asked me to get them a National Enquirer or some other yellow sheet from a Piggly-Wiggly supermarket, I was able to tell them I didn't know what a Piggly-Wiggly was (I didn't, it's a supermarket chain). They gave up quickly, saying to each other "Come on. We will go ask [one of the guards]. She'll get it for us."

Baton Rouge was a university town and a cesspool of drugs. My last apartment was a small loft among other lofts in what was known as "drug alley." There were bars up the street and bars down the street. There were bars all over town then, along with the dirty movie house called the Regina which the locals changed to rhyme with the word vagina. And yes, I had my obligatory trek to the Regina-Vagina where I saw "Seven Into Snowy" as well as the perennial favorite "Deep Throat." The gas station was up the street from Drug Alley. Having quit VISTA and rendered virtually unemployable by my inability to show up anywhere sober, I and some other hippie freaks spent our nights at the gas station. The gas station held the distinction of never having been held up. My guess was that it was because of the ever-present stoners there at night, all night, every night.

During my time in Baton Rouge, I drank, smoked dope, smoked hash, smoked opium once (and I wanted to immediately crawl into a cave in Southeast Asia somewhere with the other opium users and never come out), did shrooms (they grew in the cow shit of the Bramen cows present along the levee of the Mississippi which was rented out to farmers, did a bunch of pills, did mescaline, and participated in the rush of Mr. Natural blotter acid for a couple of weeks which was my undoing.

Baton Rouge was a city which had redneck pride. Yeah there was a gay bar (karate whites were "in" that year) and a definite presence of students from far off places (notably Iran-- I had lunch with several of them in their apartment and went to a meeting of Students for a Democratic Society which was showing the Joe Hill film that night) and certainly it was not a "whites only" kind of city. Interracial couples-- no big deal on the eastern seaboard-- were just allowing themselves to be out in public. The Ku Klux Klan had an office on Florida Avenue and a listing in the phone book. New Orleans was an hour and a half away (and requires its' own entry to do it justice).

I was hanging out with The Shitdogs, a local punk rock group whose music showed a definite influence by the band Devo. I was a foul-mouthed drugged up drunk. When I called home, I told my dad that I wanted to get a pistol for my own protection and he started to really worry. I told people lies about how I was doing and myself even bigger ones but the Bad Acid Trip stopped most of that. There was a rush of Mr. Natural blotter acid and I tripped every night for a couple of weeks. I had stored them in the freezer and the hippies at the gas station said that made it "stronger" but I don't know if that was true or not. At any rate, my last acid trip found me laying on my loft listening to Jefferson Airplane sing "Go Ask Alice" [White Rabbit] over and over again because the stereo for some reason refused to play through the whole album. Instead the stereo tortured me by having its' needle play through the song and then return to the beginning again. After several hours, my brain determined that I needed to get the hell out of there. So I walked to the gas station where several hippies saw my condition and took me out to get me drunk. After a stop for Italian food at the only Italian restaurant in town, we went to the pool-players bar. I promptly began loudly proclaiming that the pool players were "all a bunch of rednecks." The hippies got me out of there quickly and took me to a quieter bar where they plied me with enough beer so that the Bad Acid Trip was no longer so Bad.

The next day I called all the relations in search for A Way Out, and as luck would have it, my grandfather upstate New York on the farm just had a heart attack. I promptly volunteered to relocate "in order to help my grandmother with the cows," once again packed up everything I owned (minus the cat Dylan who turned up with four kittens one day but plus Herbie the puppy who I snuck into motel rooms stoned out on anti-carsickness pills obtained from the five dollar vet in Baton Rouge), and was off again.

Upstate New York was a whole different living experience. I had left acid behind but after a few weeks found the bar. My grandmother never did let me help her with the cows. I was assigned to watering the calves. Cows are expensive.

sapphoq on life

I'm Baaaacccccckkkkkkk

2009-05-15T14:43:00.000-07:00

Yeah, I've been gone for far too long. I've been seduced by Second Life (Fuel Burner referred you, if you ever do decide to sign up). I've spent a ton of time learning how to build in 3D. Considering that I've got double vision in one eye from the brain injury as well as perception problems, being able to build something that actually holds together is a feat within itself. Oh yeah, and one of my relatives got married.

Attendance at that wedding was mandatory. Just before leaving for the very expensive hotel (almost 200 bucks for one night), I had my hair cut. Gave my first braid to the Locks of Love. In case you haven't heard about Locks of Love, basically it is an organization that collects lengths of hair to turn into wigs for kids who have lost their hair due to medical baldness. I decided to grow out my hair once in memory of Marie-- my friend Philly David's sister. She had cancer and she died. She was a Quaker. At the meeting hall, there was a little boy there she admired because he was growing his hair out for Locks of Love. He was confident enough not to care about the other kids teasing him for it. So I grew my hair out in honor of Marie.

I felt really good about it when I saw the braid of hair in the bag destined for a kid who really needs it. I've decided to do it again.

More info can be found at: http://www.locksoflove.org/

Bout a month or so ago, I had a "meeting" with the VESID counselor (my fourth in four years) and the job developer. They decided that I want to be an advocate. Getting into any sort of investigative work does not fit in with their limited ability to see beyond my brain injury. During the meeting, I was asked if I would consider full-time advocacy work if I were to make "twenty-five dollars an hour." I recognized this number as being pulled out of a hat (i.e. not based on reality) immediately. I told both of my professional "helpers" that my health and well-being has to come first. Quite frankly, the fatigue is the real killer for me. Lack of imagination is theirs.

Thanks to the friend who came with me who also has a brain injury, I was able to remain calm. That is to say, I was able to refrain from telling these two to feck off. I am the first to admit that I am somewhat obsessed with the "VESID problem."

I was supposed to send off my resume to the job developer. I haven't. I am currrently suffering from lack of belief that this agency which had put "my case" on hold for a year without informing me of that fact (?cuz I refused to get a "return to work" order from my doctor after a routine vertigo attack?) is able to help me. I waited a year for them. They can wait for me. The truth is less glamorous. It took me awhile to remember that my resume is in the computer files.

The job handler to her credit did call me once, leaving a message. Usually she calls from a blocked number and refuses to leave a message, but she counts it as an attempted contact anyways. When I called her back, she asked if I "still want to do advocacy work." Well, no actually, I thought, that is what yous want me to settle for. No matter, I couldn't talk right then anyways. She asked if I want to meet with her. I said, after I send out the resume I will call you. That is how I left it.

Now that I know where the resume is, I can quit tearing the house apart looking for it. I can print the resume out and send it off. I understand there is something there about allowing the professional helpers to help me. I have not been very co-operative. I acknowledge this fully and completely. Yet I also understand that I have to find my own way. As I am able to let go of the problems I've had with VESID, perhaps hope will then be able to return. Yeah, I do feel hopeless.

I feel hopeless because I want to write and I want to write badly. I've had lots of stuff published. Yet there is no current book in my brain. Just a chapter and a vague idea about where to go with it. And a real sense of loss. As in, "I was finally 'making it' career-wise and everything blew apart in a matter of seconds."

So I will send the job developer a resume. I will even meet with her and make nice. I will even listen to the things she suggests, even if they are not things I can do. The last suggestion involved being a home health aide at the agency that is run out of her agency. The biggest problem with that is my back. I can't lift more than ten pounds, period. One of my friends got pushed into doing that, along with being a nursing assistant substitute on call-- and her back is worse than mine. And quite frankly, there are other problems with that line of work. Like I can't do housework for more than ten minutes at a time. I've forgotten how to cook. And I am beyond disorganization. There is that inability to multi-task too that I've been stuck with. The neuropsych told me that my "ability to multi-task has shit the bed and it's not coming back." The shrink explained that I am highly distractible. Uh wow.

The thing is, I am not an advocate. I am an investigator. I've got total attention to detail (in spite of my disorganization and inability to multi-task). I know how to investigate. It's in my blood. I know how to ask questions. And I know how to write up my findings. I know this about myself. If the job market will not bear with an investigator who functions a bit oddly socially and can only work part-time, then I have to come up with some other way to use my investigative skills.

sapphoq healing tbi

Labels: t.b.i., tbi, traumatic+brain+injury, VESID, VESID sucks

Happy Christmas 12/24/08

2008-12-24T11:40:00.000-08:00

Dear People,

I am sorry I haven't been here once again.
I fell several weeks ago while walking-- landed flat on my back-- and fell again three days after that. Actually I fainted after a shower. I fell on my right side but fortunately had protected my head with my arm.

My back, which wasn't great due to the motor vehicle accident I'd been in that also gave me the traumatic brain injury, is now a spasming mess on the right side. Can't hardly bend to the right, can't move the right arm out to reach all that much, can't get in or out of a chair without extreme pain and difficulty.

Two trips to the doc resulted in a script for physical therapy which I am glad to say I will be starting next week. The muscle spasms in my back aren't bad as long as I don't breathe, shift positions, or move in any way. Traction is beginning to look like something desirable.

I will be back when I can. Meanwhile:

1). Happy Christmas and happy everything else too,
2). I hope that the president-elect is able to help the u.s.a. out of the mess we are in but I sorta think we are screwed anyways,
3). I saw two pileated woodpeckers the other day pecking on a telephone pole while they were hanging upside down. Very beautiful.

Be well my friends. And if you can't be well, then be weller.

spike

Absence

2008-10-27T15:53:00.000-07:00

I've been absent from blogging because I've been dealing with issues with my father. Dad moved up here at the end of August "for awhile." At the time he was in the middle of a divorce. He lasted barely a month in an apartment which was carved out of a garage. He called one week asking me if he washes his hair with mousse or if he applies it afterward. He called the next week asking to move in. Husband and I went to get him. The landlady suggested that I drive on our way out of the driveway.

Dad's driving has become an issue over the last several years. With three reportable accidents in one year and numerous fender benders, his almost ex-wife and my half-sister began to express their concerns. But he kept on driving. One day he arrived home with a brand new car and a two year lease.

Dad has always hated or distrusted doctors. He is also fairly stubborn about the things that he will and will not do. Dad went to doctors at various times over the past decade. Dad threw out any medicine they gave him to take.

Up here, Dad refused to go to a doctor for almost a month. He agreed first to go to my special eye doctor because his glasses haven't been right for several years (and various eye doctors where he used to live). My eye doctor agreed to report him to motor vehicles in Dad's home state as an impaired driver based upon Dad's "confusion." The glasses turned out well. With the addition of prisms, Dad is now able to read again. He can read out of books and newspapers and menus and can now in fact see the road signs.

Then I got Dad to go to our primary care doctor. I told him that if he were to have an appendix [attack] or a broken leg while visiting, it would be better for him to be established with a doc up here. I took Dad to our primary care doc who was absolutely wonderful with him. Doc got Dad to admit that one of the many medicines he had thrown out was a blood-thinner. Doc gave Dad a short e.k.g. which showed atrial fibrillation. (The treatment of choice for a-fib is a specific brand-name blood-thinner which can prevent many strokes). By the second visit, Doc had convinced Dad to take a prescription inhaler for his c.o.p.d., a low dose of an anti-depressant for the unspecified anxiety state that Dad won't admit to having, and the blood-thinner for the a-fib. Doc also got Dad to agree to a full blood panel and to go to the heart doc. (Doc also diagnosed dementia and aphasia, both of which I had suspected. Without neurological studies, we do not know what kind of dementia yet).

The heart doc is a very sharp young woman who knows absolutely shit about dementia. Dad got a full e.k.g. and an echo heart done. Heart doc informed me (but not Dad) most emphatically that Dad should not be driving. She was unwilling to report him to motor vehicles in his state, saying only that it wasn't her job to do so and adding something about any of his accidents being a liability.

Research on the internet revealed to me that docs are reluctant to report impaired drivers in any state-- even in states where docs are mandated to report-- because they are afraid of being sued by the impaired driver and/or the families of the impaired driver. A couple of visits later to our primary care doc and Dad agreed to go for a driving evaluation.

Dad and I went to his driving evaluation this morning at Sunnyview Hospital where I had gone for cognitive testing after my brain injury. (Schenectady New York if anyone has a burning desire to know where Sunnyview is). He did some sit down testing first which I got to see. He passed vision acuity with corrected distance vision of 20/40 but failed totally a bunch of other tests. He remembered two out of three simple words, failed serial sevens, failed connect-the-dots, failed drawing a clock showing a specific time of day. His reaction time was good for his age. The problem was just about everything else that shows how well his eyeballs are (not) working with his brain. Specifically, Dad failed things labeled as attention, distractibility, impulsivity, visual scanning, visual discrimination, color discrimination (to the point where the evaluator asked if he was color-blind, something I have been suspecting), and peripheral vision.

Dad left with the evaluator for a 45 minute test behind the wheel. When they came back, he said to me, "I failed." Then he added that he was only joking. But in fact he had.

Once back in the room, the evaluator asked Dad how he thought he did. He gave himself two or three demerits for several things. Then the evaluator gave her account of things. She had stopped him from turning in front of another car (that was the worst). He had gotten distracted by an unmarked police car, stopped too far away from lights and stop signs, driven fifteen miles under the speed limit and a variety of other things. She told him point-blank that she is recommending that he quit driving and that the time to stop driving is NOW. He decided that "people just want everyone over the age of 65 not to drive." Drat this denial shit.

Once back home, I fired off an e-mail to the half-sister so she and her mom would know how it went (http://www.sapphoqnfriends.blogspot.com). Dad's almost ex-wife (the divorce had been canceled) called then. The upshot of the whole thing is that the lease company would only offer a chance to buy out of the lease (almost ex-wife says she is not doing that) and that Dad has agreed to go back home to the almost ex-wife on Thursday. He will be driving himself and some of his stuff as he would not agree to any other arrangement. She will attempt to curtail his driving.

It is what it is. I cannot control any of this. As it stands now, that is what is happening. So we are back to where we were in July. Except maybe now Dad will take the blood-thinner for his a-fib, the antidepressant, and the inhaler for his c.o.p.d. And maybe his almost ex-wife will be able to get him to go to a primary care doc, a cardiac doc, and a neurologist who knows dementia and is willing to get involved with patients who have dementia. Maybe she will even be able to get him to agree to allow her to go in with to the doctor appointments. I hope that she will be able to curtail his driving somehow. That in itself requires divine intervention from divine beings which I don't believe in.

Everyone has financial problems now with the economy being all frucked up worldwide. We are no exception to that. And I am on disability. I cannot afford to buy his way out of his car lease. Dad's almost ex-wife is also having severe financial problems which dictate that she cannot do this either. I can't really blame the lease car company. Business is business. Folks who get leased cars are offered the opportunity to get stop-gap insurance in case they have to break a lease. Dad said no to that.

Dad's almost ex-wife doesn't want me to report Dad to the motor vehicles as being an impaired driver. She is against that. I have my own principles. Too late for that advice. The report was sent quite awhile ago. The eye doc also reported him. Dad's home state hasn't acted on the information yet. Dad's dad died in an accident when I was in second grade. I don't remember my paternal grandfather at all. I do remember the adults talking about it when he died. What I remember is that it was a head-on. Dad's dad was on a bridge, the long one in Miami. I may not remember what I heard accurately. Dad says his dad had gotten sideswiped or runned into. Dad says his dad had been a heavy drinker but had quit in Florida by switching to pitchers of orange juice. So "drunk" was not in the equation. Dad told me this morning that his dad should have quit driving. But that he himself does not have a driving problem. I hope Dad doesn't kill himself, get himself killed, or seriously maim or kill another human being while behind the wheel of a car. I have my own principles. I am responsible for what I know. Dad's home state will be getting another report, this time with copies of the driving evaluation included. It is hard to deal with the thought of Dad being angry with me, harder still for me to deal with the thought of Dad killing another human being behind the wheel if I do nothing.

I tried my best to get Dad to quit driving. I could not do it. No one else could either. Now I have a bill to pay (I decided that I would pay the bill rather than have Dad use that as an excuse not to go for the eval) and I am losing my Dad's company. I really love having Dad around. It has been a pleasure to have his company really. I learned quite a bit about politics and some of his memories of his life. To my credit, I got Dad to go to the eye doc and he is now able to read again after four years of messed-up glasses. I also got him to take medicine. I provided a safe place for him to live when he found that he could not live alone and did not want to live with his almost ex-wife. I would not have missed having Dad here for the last two months for the world. Dad's almost ex-wife wants him back. He wants to go back to take care of her, he told me. She misses him and she cries. They love each other still. I believe in love. I hope it will be enough this time.

I myself have learned some things while Dad has been here. Dad helped me establish a cleaning routine-- something which I have been unable to do on my own. I learned to eat slower and to eat grapes instead of junk food. (Yes, I am having a total life change and in the process am beginning to slowly lose weight!). I learned that doctors do not always do the right thing because they are afraid of being sued. I learned that I am responsible for what I know, even if acting on my knowledge is difficult. I learned again that it is not weakness to ask for help. I hope that I will be able to graciously quit driving when the time comes for me to do so or perhaps even before the time comes. Public safety trumps anyone's personal "right" to keep driving when they are a loaded weapon behind the wheel with no safety stop.

Dad was the one who taught me how to drive when the driver's ed instructor at my high school could not. Damn it all. The driver's ed instructor spoke in a flat monotone voice, probably through no fault of her own. She could not teach me. She reacted to my driving inability with obvious nervousness. One time that I remember specifically is on a snowy morning, I had turned into the sewer at the end of a block instead of turning right onto the next block. The car got stuck in the snow. She had me rock it back and forth and then proceed to turn. She insisted I go around the same block three times. Each time the same result occurred. I got the car stuck in the sewer grating. A more rational driver's ed instructor might have handled things differently perhaps-- hey we can try a right hand turn on a different block-- but not this one. Looking back at it now, I don't think it was all due to my right hand turns. I think it was the weather.

At any rate, I told Dad what was not happening in my driver's ed behind-the-wheel instruction time. And I had failed the first driving test for my license. Dad then borrowed a different length car every Sunday and had me drive in a variety of conditions. We drove all over. I even drove in New York City amidst a bunch of irate cabbies. Dad came with me for my second attempt and I got my license that time.

Emotionally I still assign blame to the driver's ed instructor for being unable to effectively teach me. Intellectually I now know that my learning style was vastly dissimilar to what that poor woman was used to dealing with.

In many ways my dad and I are alike. We both have sensitivities to a variety of tastes, sounds, and textures. For example, Dad finds the texture of yogurt to be disgusting. While I will eat yogurt, I refuse to wear the polyester fleeces which he relishes. Dad hates the loud tick-tick sound of his car blinker. That doesn't bother me. What I can't stand is the sound emitted by those white noise machines that some people get to block unpleasant sounds. And neither one of us care for fluorescent lights. We can both "hear" them.

I have a traumatic brain injury from my car accident. Dad has some kind of dementia because his brain is puking on him. I have wondered several times over the past couple of months if his dementia is actually an undiagnosed brain injury from one of his many accidents. He will not admit to hitting his head, having a concussion or whiplash. Neither will his almost ex-wife. To me, having brain damage from a car accident is preferable to having a dementia. When I've suggested that Dad may have a t.b.i. either instead of or in addition to dementia, Dad's almost ex-wife reacts with horror. Dad's almost ex-wife doesn't really think he has a dementia. Dad still knows his social security number. And he can dress himself and have rational conversations about politics. Dementia involves more than rote memory. Rote memory is not terribly complex by nature. Dad can remember his earlier life. He cannot remember what day it is today. He has difficulty forming new memories. That is dementia.

I could get lyrical here and write shit like, "Dementia is not losing oneself, it is an enfolding and a transformation." Those words make me want to puke. They aren't true. They hide pain. Pain is painful. Much better to face the pain than to hide behind words I think. My heart is broken a thousand thousand times. Those words are true.

spike

Reeling in Pain

2008-10-27T06:38:00.000-07:00

Dear Little Sister,

Dad went for his two hour evaluation at Sunnyview Hospital for his
driving today.
He had some sitdown tests and then he and the evaluator went out
driving for 45 minutes.

Although Dad's reaction time is above average for his age,
he has visual inattention, poor visual scanning, poor color
discrimination, depth perception and

peripheral vision losses, poor impulse control all which indicate that
he should not be driving at all.

It was obvious to me during the pen and paper testing that Dad does have
some cognitive losses, memory losses (can't remember three words a few

minutes later-- 2 out of 3), sequencing difficulties (drawing lines
dot to dot in order
and serial sevens), has visual discrimination problems (multitude of
examples throughout

the testing and not able to be corrected by glasses) and his distance
vision corrected
is 20/40 (near for reading corrected is 20/30).

When the evaluator took him driving, she had to grab the wheel at one point
in order to prevent Dad from turning in front of another vehicle.

There were other problems with the driving also:
high distractibility, driving 15 mph below the speed limit at some points,

stopping too soon before a red light, allowing someone at a stop sign to
proceed through even though Dad himself didn't have a stop sign in
front of him...

and other stuff. The driving evaluator told Dad emphatically and several
times in several different ways that the time for him to quit driving is NOW.

His safety while driving is inconsistent. The fact that he was at one time an
excellent driver shows however it is about 50/50 right now. During the

45 minute driving session he was either excellent for 50 percent of the time
and totally unsafe the other 50 percent.

Dad did not take this news very well (as was expected-- who would?) and
does not wish to talk about it yet. He did allow me to drive home and to

the diner for lunch. He also does not want to talk about his own dad
who died in a car crash in Florida when I was in second grade.

The evaluator is not allowed to send the results to motor vehicles but
she is forwarding the results to George (our primary care doc) who is

supposed to write Dad a letter. I will see if I can get him to go see George
to talk about it without me there. Dad really needs to see a neurodoc

(fortunately there is an excellent neurodoc in Albany who is an expert
on dementias and is also informed about traumatic brain injuries)

at this point so we can get a definitive diagnosis on exactly what type of
dementia he is having (or if it is an undiagnosed brain injury from one of his

accidents?) and then the proper medication for the kind of dementia it is.
The proper meds are specific to what kind of dementia as some meds are

counter-indicated in some types of dementia but work well for others.
I am going to inquire about trains since there is a station in Montvale and

there are decidedly times when Dad wants to go to New Jersey without me.
Also because of my own brain injury I really have to stop at every rest area

or every other rest area on any trip longer than 45 minutes. So at this point
unless the State of New Jersey steps in and pulls the license, I really can't

stop Dad from driving. At least we know definitively and from an objective
source that Dad should not be driving at all.

It is bad news for sure, more evidence that Dad is not well neurologically.
Hard for us to hear and go through. Even harder for him.

Love,
spike

Two Brain-Damaged People

2008-09-30T06:15:00.000-07:00

Dad has come to live with us. He has some dementia and some aphasia. So now there are two brain-damaged people in the house-- me, and Dad.

Now I know that the official words for my brain damage is "t.b.i." or "traumatic brain injury." The reality is that traumatic brain injury equals brain damage. My brain damage was acquired after the age of 21 in a motor vehicle accident. It is brain damage nonetheless. One physical therapist from Sunnyview Hospital in Schenectady tried to tell me that "brain damage" sounds like one is "damaged" somehow. Yes, my brain is damaged. Why not just call it what it is?

Dad has some restlessness and is wanting to do housework and fix up the house when he is not sleeping in front of the television set. Last week, we decided to stain/waterproof the back deck. First we had to locate the two buckets of stain and the brushes. That wasn't any problem as my friend Ed had given us those things and they were sitting by the back door. Then we had to wait for a sunny day. That happened.

It was a very sunny day. And hot, considering that we live next door to Alaska. So Dad insisted that we wear long-sleeved shirts. The stain getting on our skin would ?eat it? stain it? At any rate, on went the hot shirts. Then there are the latex gloves-- same reason. We started working out of one bucket but then that went to, "Here's another bucket spike. You use your own."

There was lots of staining, doing and redoing. I redid some of Dad's area and he redid some of mine. Two half-gallons were left when we got done. Between us, the stained deck was definitely personalized. There are some drips and dots from my work. And some heavier stained areas from Dad's work. With two brain-damaged people staining a deck, the results will be interesting. A guarantee.

Yesterday, Dad decided that we should put together a clothes rack with vinyl bag hooked onto it for the clothes he has that he no longer wears. This particular clothes rack/vinyl bag thing was manufactured in mainland China. And I swear whoever wrote the instructions hit the "from mandarin to english" button on babelfish. To complicate things further, Dad dumped all of the numbered poles out of their respective bags. The first attempt came out with two longer sides and two shorter sides. There was a break then during which I hoped in futility that Dad would forget about this particular tortorous clothes rack/vinyl bag thing. Didn't happen.

After some "Divorce Court" on teevee, we went back upstairs for a second go 'round. This time we managed to get the vinyl bag installed but then the poles kept pulling out of their holes. And so this clothes rack/vinyl bag thing stands loosely in a corner looking more like a modern art structure than anything remotely functional.

Because of my difficulties with multi-tasking, perhaps I would have had a shot at putting the thing together if left alone in a cave far away from human civilization. No chance of success yesterday. Dad kept up a running commentary as we were working. And between my t.b.i.-related perception problems and Dad's dementia-related perception problems, shoving poles into holes at flush 90 degree angles was not a task destined for fantastic results. Husband said he will "look at it" today.

I think there is something to be said for joining a nudist colony and forgetting about clothes and things like that.

sapphoq healing tbi

The Rigging of Failure 8/23/08

2008-08-23T20:37:00.000-07:00

a big shout-out to the unknown damsel

The stoopid saga of VESID sucks carries on. The job handler/job developer/employment consultant whatever has transferred to a different job herself. The VESID-sucks counselor (my third) is apparently absent from work due to personal/medical whatever. Consequently, I have once again attained the status of limbo without the use of drugs.

As damsel has pointed out in a couple of comments prior to this post, VESID-sucks has as a modus operandi the rigging of failure. Specifically and anecdotally only (based on googling various and sundry terms such as "VESID sucks" and "VESID horror stories" and "VESID complaints") one problem is the mindset to shove us into a job any job without much regard to anything. The other problem is the tendency of VESID helpers to declare many of us as being somehow falling short in the intelligence department and the blatant advice to lower our goals. Of course, if picking up pins with a tweezer and putting them in a container is a measure of anything at all-- the stoopid it burns-- then lots of people should automatically settle for a two year community college degree or a secretarial course or a job in retail or at a supermarket packing groceries. Sigh.

Anecdotally only, a good friend of mine was advised by his O.V.R. testers in another state that college would be an "impossible" goal for him to reach as well. Friend is brilliant. Friend went on to achieve 4.0 in college courses. See, the rub is that if any of our employment situations, college enrollment in courses or a pursuit of study, etcetera is not in line with what VESID sucks (or O.V.R. sucks) assumes is "realistic" based on our putting pins into a container using tweezers, they don't have to support it. In other words, I can be denied job coaching if the lousy little part-time job I have demands that I do something that VESID doesn't think I should do or am capable of doing. And folks who wish to obtain bachelor degrees or more can be denied needed funding by VESID or O.V.R. because the rigors of academia are a far stretch from what their stoopid testing shows that those folks should be able to do.

Could it be funding? The organization that is supposed to provide me with job development and job coaching services is getting paid more than three thousand dollars for one year of their non-services. (Just as soon as I provide a doctor's note indicating that a temporary exacerbation of vertigo into a two-week "attack" is now resolved for the time being and I can "return to work" which I don't have, my non-services can resume. Just as soon as someone figures out that I am on their caseload that is.)

VESID stands to benefit financially by talking people down into two years of college or a secretarial course versus bachelor's level studies and more. And VESID benefits financially by setting their counselors' objectives to get the disabled customers working (at anything) as soon as frickin' possible. To hell with our aspirations. To hell with what we want. To hell with MEANINGFUL employment. No love, VESID sucks, no love.

The three thousand bucks VESID has wasted on my non-employment this past year could have been used to send damsel to her very much wanted and sought after bachelor's degree. Ah, damsel wasn't even eligible for financial aid from VESID sucks and they made her take those stupid tests anyways. Those of us who are not totally broke don't get to have our tuitions paid. Books and twelve cents a mile was the last I heard. At the price of gas these days, twelve cents a mile is a bad joke. Considering that the professional VESID helpers are getting around three times that amount for their mileage, it is an insult.

Another two friends recently found themselves as "trainees" or whatever the fancy word is at a local sheltered workshop. Apparently, those of us who are judged severely disabled do get encouraged to spend at least twenty hours a week at one of those places. It's part of the process of getting the disabled into jobs. The two friends were told that this was now their best chance at gaining supportive employment down the road. Other avenues-- community college courses or a job developer calling them up on Fridays and nagging them-- failed to produce a job of any sort for my two friends. Who exactly refers the VESID failures to sheltered workshops? I still have not found the answer to that question. Neither the VESID sucks counselors nor the job developer have admitted to initiating referral. I asked. I searched the website for clues. No clear information was given. But I digress.

It is LEGAL to pay a disabled "trainee" less than the minimum wage at such places. Way less. The assumption is (based on "timed studies" often conducted with staff volunteers) that a disabled worker cannot possibly be fast enough or good enough to make the minimum wage. The disabled worker in a sheltered workshop is subject usually to piecework, pro-rated of course. If the disabled "trainee" is lucky enough to qualify for training off-site (welding or warehouse loading or potato peeling or newspaper insert stuffing or cleaning), the disabled "trainee" still will not receive minimum wage. Under the law, the workshop is not required to pay it. In effect, the "trainee" is furnishing part of the salary of the on-site rehab counselor (separate from the VESID counselor), part of the salary of the workshop supervisor, part of the salary of the off-site trainer, part of the salaries of all of the staff people who come in contact with the trainee. And of course, part of the profit of the sheltered workshop comes from the trainee's pittance because the workshop is able to low-ball other businesses when it comes to bidding.

Meanwhile, the absence of vertigo attacks is the least of my concerns. I continue to have serious problems which concern me far more than the fact that my world drifts to the left 24/7. As usual, anything worth having is worth working for. And I shall have to force my damaged brain to think of other options to reach my goals and other people who can point out some ways to proceed. There is a word for those people who are willing to help yet aren't professional helpers-- natural supports. All of this leads me to tentatively conclude that VESID sucks must therefore be the unnatural supports.

Oh yeah and VESID sucks: fruck you.

sapphoq healing t.b.i.

p.s. damsel, if you ever want to get in touch with me, my insanejournal blog (user name sapphoq) allows anonymous comments which are screened. Or, you can e-mail sapphoq. sapphoq has an e-mail account at google.

Spike's Wishes

2008-08-13T06:05:00.000-07:00

Spike's Wishes for All of Us:

Oh that today we not afraid of our essential solitude!
That we are able to extract what joy there may be in life today wherever we may be.
For life is sacred and we don't really know how long we have here.
Let us celebrate life deeply.

Wherever we are, that we don't have too many regrets over what could have been.
That when we are stuck, we remember that we have options even if we do not know recognize them yet.
Knowing that all of us are capable of great things that go unacknowledged,
That we will find those great things and do them anyway.

Oh that we embrace all of who we are!
That we love carefully and selectively and honestly.
That we do not negate our selves for the benefit of others
who would use and abuse us.

To know as much happiness as we have known pain,
as much love as we have known hatred,
as much comfort as we have known heartbreak.
That we keep striving until we can strive no more.

spike

*posting from a library in the middle of nowhere island maine.
*will be back in civ Sunday night.

Dear Asswipe 7/5/08

2008-08-05T13:31:00.000-07:00

A big fuck you going out to V.E.S.I.D. for operational failure.
Taking the side of the stoopid job developer in demanding I get a "return to work" note for a vertigo attack-- bovine fecal matter.
Furthermore, as far as "return to work," what work?
Screw off.
If you aren't going to help me, then get the fuck out of my way.

No love,
the traumatic brain-injury malcontent on your overflowing caseload.

Trolling, Threatening, T.B.I.

2008-07-24T11:02:00.000-07:00

On T.B.I., Trolls, and Threats

The pagan community on the internet is not united by any means. There are various factions and splinter groups. That is an average thing. A bunch of pagans together in one room can certainly fight like liberals and fundamentalists. Or, like frogs and snakes. That is probably average also. No biggie. I've been on the internet long enough to have my own opinions about cyberbullies and even to have acquired my very own cute little chicken trollette. That is no great woop either. I became interested in the study of cyberpsychology as a result of interpersonal conflicts on the web. And as I continued to force my brain to think in my own process of healing t.b.i., I grokked a few things about my own behavior and decisions:

1. I have acted like an ass at times on the interwebs. Oh well.
2. I made my apologies and amends. To the best of my ability, I endeavored to offer no excuses for my poor behavior.
3. I moved on.

I don't begrudge my detractors since I certainly have acted like an ass at times. In one instance, I was playing the part of an undercover reporter and that was the height of stupidity. I was deceptive. I was dishonest. People from various sides of that particular dispute were pissed at me for good reason.

In that particular scenario, I took responsibility for what I had done and endured the fallout. I learned from it. And I have to thank my good friend Jer for helping me think about the situation with clarity. Folks displayed various levels of acceptance as is their right. There are still snarks thrown in my general direction from time to time. To that I say, "Whatever." If I am going to champion freedom of electronic expression, I have to be willing to risk running into some expression that I don't approve of. Oh well. I don't have to engage in mental masturbation today. I know how to use the back button. I can put on my big girl panties and move on.

Unlike a few pathological relatives of my childhood who did their best to infest my being with the soul-sickness of not-good-enough, I do not intend to live out the rest of my life apologizing for my own stupidity of a year or two ago. I don't trouble myself with the notion that I am somehow not good enough for or less than any particular person or group of people. It is rather meaningless to me. I have moved on. I am writing about this today because I am making some connections within my own self about my own self.

* * *

Lest any of you misunderstand, the assumptions about me and the snarks do not fall under the category of cyber-bullying. People can fight, disagree, blow up at each other, call each other names, and all sorts of other stuff without that falling under pretend labels and pretend diagnoses. People do not always understand or approve of my choices. I don't have to explain a damn thing to anyone. I am free to associate with the people that I choose to associate with. I am free to go where I go and to do what I do as long as I don't impinge upon the rights of others. Others are free to do the same. Not everyone wishes me well and I don't give a damn about that anyway. The stuff of conflict is not automatically classified as cyberbullying.

The encyclopedia at P.C. magazine defines a cyberbully as "A person who uses the Internet to harass or intimidate someone else." Someone who calls me a troll or stupid or insane or a toxic fluffbunny or a fucktard is expressing an opinion. Their opinion may or may not have some validity. I am free to engage them in some ritualized name-calling or to respond or not respond in any legal way that I choose to.

The folks at tech target add the word "threatening" to the definition of a cyberbully. Sameer at the Cyberbullying Blog points out that the behavior is repetitive. There is a pattern. It is more than one occurrence. Someone e-mailed three requests to me to close her e-mail box on one of my domains. I have an off-line life. I hadn't checked my e-mail box there in a while so I only got the messages yesterday.

The first e-mail (dated June 29) states that there will be mythological salt pits in my future if I contact the young woman again. The second (dated July1) makes an unflattering inference about either my size or some quality of mine. She asks me in the second e-mail to delete her and in the third (dated July 2) to remove her. I know she meant for me to close her e-mail box but the choice of words was amusing to me. I did as requested. I have no intention of contacting her again. As long as the young woman does not continue to threaten me with mythological salt pits in my future or other stuff, we are both free to carry on in the absence of the well-wishes of the other.

The above example falls short on the repeated part of threat inherent in the definitions of cyberbullying. Here are some things that do qualify as cyberbullying:
cyberstalking,
maintaining a website that is designed to harass someone or threaten them,
posts on a website or forum or journal or blog that tell someone to watch out because the poster or friends of the poster may show up at any time,
making up lies about someone and publishing them on the web (e.g. the teen who killed herself on account of some stuff that was posted about her on MySpace and the teen who killed himself after being harassed on Bebo more recently),
texting someone for the purpose of intimidation,
making repeated fun of someone with social difficulties brought on by Asperger's on internet forums,
provoking someone in an e-group into rages and then mocking the rages,
sending someone tons of spam or bogus e-mails,
repeated racial slurs used in a chatroom against another participant.

The thing about traumatic brain injury, as well as many other disabilities, is that we are more vulnerable whether we want to acknowledge that or not. We may be more vulnerable to cyberbullying because of errors in our judgment. We may be too quick to trust others on-line, too eager to expose personal information, too fast to offer up our struggles. We can participate in flame wars without understanding what we are getting into. We can become too casual about what we publish on our websites or blogs. We may wind up communicating via instant messenger with folks who do not wish us well. (In the early days after my brain injury, a woman began to call me every day. Mate was baffled by the sudden appearance of a new close friend in my life and did not understand the almost daily lengthy phone conversations. I didn't remember who this woman was or where I knew her from. Eventually, I discovered that the woman was the daughter-in-law of a friend who just liked to talk to people on the phone).

Below are a few websites referenced in this post and a bunch that aren't. I recommend the "Are you a cyberbully? Quiz," the cyberethics site for those who like academic stuff, the Donna Williams poem, and the "Shrink the Cyberbully Game" by virtue of their being different than the usual offerings.

The other stuff may help you decide what to do if you are being cyberbullied. Inclusion of the links do not imply the endorsement of any of the websites endorsing this post nor does it imply that I totally agree with every freaking thing said.

sapphoq healing t.b.i.

http://www.pcmag.com/encyclopedia_term/0,2542,t=cyberbully&i=40624,00.asp
Definition.

http://whatis.techtarget.com/definition/0,,sid9_gci1023061,00.html
Definition.

http://www.cyberbullying.ca/examples.html
Examples of cyberbullying.

http://www.cyberbullying.ca/info.html
Suggestions on handling cyberbullying.

http://cyberbullying.us/blog/?cat=13
A blog noting laws being passed in the United States.

http://www.wrcbtv.com/Global/story.asp?S=8706000
Suggestions for parents.

http://groups.msn.com/stayingsafeonline/cyberbullies.msnw
Acknowledges that cyberbullying happens to adults too. Some simple advice.

http://deathby1000papercuts.com/2007/12/cyber-bully-quiz-are-you-a-cyber-bully-3/
Are you a cyberbully? Quiz.

http://www.bullyonline.org/workbully/attent.htm
Attention seekers from Bully-Online.

http://www-usr.rider.edu/~suler/psycyber/psycyber.html
Cyberculture-- pretty cool stuff here.

http://cyberethics.cbi.msstate.edu/mason2/
Privacy from a cyber-business perspective.

http://cyberethics.cbi.msstate.edu/
Various links about cyberethics.

http://smg.media.mit.edu/people/Judith/Identity/IdentityDeception.html
Identities, trolls, etc on usenet groups.

http://www.copyscape.com/
Search for copies of your pages on the web.

http://adequacy.org/
Archives of a site where trolls gathered proudly.

http://www.urban75.com/Mag/troll.html
Writing: an excellent troll how to.

https://groups.google.com/group/alt.troll/msg/bc2e71e19c590d8e?ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&as_umsgid=36a7593e.22750214@ruble.net&lr=&hl=en-us
Usenet trolls.

http://www.straightdope.com/mailbag/mtroll.html
Definition.

http://www.jfo.org.uk/info/new/troll.htm
Classification.

http://forums.station.sony.com/mxo/posts/list.m?topic_id=12200012985
More extensive classifications of trolls.

http://www.reuters.com/article/wtMostRead/idUSN0343424320070705
Griefers. [They are on Second Life also].

http://redwing.hutman.net/~mreed/
Classifications of flame warriors *the pictures are priceless.

http://blog.donnawilliams.net/2008/01/21/cyber-bully/
Poem by Donna Williams.

http://curezone.com/forums/troll.asp
Trolls on the Curezone forums [original aol article not on aol anymore.]

http://rkcsi.indiana.edu/archive/CSI/WP/WP02-03B.html
Study on trolls in a feminist forum.

http://www.emoderators.com/papers/flames.html
Flaming, 1992.

http://www.searchlores.org/trolls.htm
More on usenet trolls, attacking in waves, use of the word "sockpuppets" to mean one person
posting to a board under different names in order to agree with themselves!

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/10/04/bot_herder_profile/
smurfs and bots

http://www.mcgruff.org/Games/cyberbully.php
shrink the cyberbully game

Labels: cyberbullying, flamewars, t.b.i., threats, traumatic+brain+injury, trolls

Google Search Meme

2008-07-11T16:17:00.000-07:00

snagged from

merlinwon
a blogging buddy on Live Journal

Type in what the questions ask you into google search and use the first thing that comes up as your answer.

1. Type in "[your name] needs" in the Google search:
2. Type in "[your name] looks like" in Google search:
3. Type in "[your name] likes" in Google search:
4. Type in "[your name] says" in Google search:
5. Type in "[your name] wants" in Google search:
6. Type in "[your name] does" in Google search:
7. Type in "[your name] hates" in Google search
8. Type in "[your name] goes" in Google search:
9. Type in "[your name] loves" in Google search:
10. Type in "[your name] has" in Google search:
11. Type in "[your name] gets" in the Google search:
12. Type in "[your name] eats" in the Google search:
13. Type in "[your name] can" in the Google search:
14. Type in "[your name] drinks" in the Google search:
15. Type in "[your name] makes" in the Google search:

and my results

Spike needs to give "Carpocalypse" to another station.
spike looks like a bubble about to burst
SPiKE LiKES blends sensible design fundamentals with exceptional creativity.
SPIKE SAYS, "The Man Is Not My Father!"
Spike wants the girl.
Spike does [the] right thing.
Spike hates chickens.
Spike goes to Venice.
Spike loves Luke.
Spike has wide economic impact
.Spike gets more macho.
Spike eats a worm.
Spike can copy word revisions.
Spike drinks at home.
Spike makes [her] bones.

Modded

Spike needs...another station, [another selection, or to change the channel].
Spike looks like a bubble about to burst.
Spike likes the sensible, [the practical, the logical].
Spike says, "This man is not my father."
Spike wants the girl.
Spike does the right thing.
Spike hates chickens [who lack guts and fortitude].
Spike goes to Venice [in her dreams].
Spike loves Luke.
Spike has wide economic impact.
Spike gets more macho.
Spike [has never] eat[en] a worm.
Spike can...revise [words].
Spike drinks [diet soda] at home.
Spike makes [no] bones [about it].

Revised

Spike loves Luke but she wants the girl.
She makes no bones about it.
It is the girl she wants, not Luke.

In her dreams, spike sweeps the young woman
off her feet and they fly off to Mexico for a holiday.
Or perhaps to San Francisco, San Diego, Montreal.

Spike has been accused of being macho,
called a bull-dyke, or a chicken before
but she does not shrug from doing the right thing.

She is sensible, practical, and logical.
She knows that when it comes to straights
the fantasy is better than the reality.

She stays home, drinking diet soda
and watching a corny movie where the heroine says,
"This man is not my father."

Sighing, she changes the station.
Then she takes out the latest manuscript
and revises the words. She dreams

of making a huge splash, an impact.
She dreams of making it big
in books and in love.

No readers, this one is not about any of my obsessive thoughts about VESID sucks.

2008-06-20T13:10:00.000-07:00

Friday. Today is Friday. Friday it is. It is Friday today.
Friday is the day that mate and I go to the bookstore.
I got a Richard Dawkins book (passing nod to all those who hate him for being uppity, crass, and an atheist) which talks about evolution. I am studying my ancestors.

To those who don't know, I am technically an atheist along with being a witch, bisexual, woman, newly Discordian (yes dearheart, you do have to eat a hotdog without its' bun in a park on a Friday)-- Hail Eris, and an evolutionist. Oh yes; and hater of VESID (VESID sucks)-- I did promise an obsession free entry today didn't I, lover of my mate, the internet sleezy as it is at times, my dog and cats and frogs and trees and woods, defender of separation of church and state, supporter of civil rights for all civils.
So shoot me.

In the news: an autistic girl in Canada. Seems the educational aide went to a psychic who asked her, "Are you working with a girl whose name starts with a V?" (yes). "She is being sexually abused by a guy between the ages of 23 and 26." The school did the only logical thing-- Children's Aid Society was called. (Americans: think Child Abuse Hotline or D.S.S.).
Mom was then presented with a list of "behaviors" that could possibly constitute signs and symptoms of sexual abuse. Mom protested. Victoria is severely autistic. The Children's Aid Society fortunately was not willing to put stock in a psychic's tip. The report was taken and then quickly dismissed. Mom has sought legal advice regarding the possibility of lawsuit. Meanwhile, Victoria is not going to school. Mom is not going to work. The two are home together all day.

http://www.nationalpost.com/most_popular/story.html?id=597195

http://toronto.ctv.ca/servlet/an/local/CTVNews/20080618/
psychic_abuse_080618/20080618/?hub=TorontoNewHome

http://www.shortnews.com/start.cfm?id=71516

http://timestranscript.canadaeast.com/newstoday/article/329416

http://canadianpress.google.com/article/ALeqM5hM0zeYRJKc_mp6Lk1JVDqVLIdwSA

http://www.barrieadvance.com/barrieadvance/article/108266

What stupidity! The "for entertainment only" psychic prompted this whole thing. And as almost always, it is the kids who suffer. Victoria was in a self-contained classroom with five other kids. She is non-verbal, entering puberty, lacks inhibitions. The principal interpreted licking a table and gyrating against staff bodies as being indicative of sexual abuse. Some people don't have the sense they were born with.

The psychic shold be prosecuted as being fraudalent, the teacher's aide should be fired, and Victoria should be going to school somewhere.

For dinner tonight-- pizza from a restaurant. Hooray. It was delicious. On the teevee, court teevee as usual. This morning-- dog and I walked our two miles. Mate has been ordered to walk two miles a day by his heart doc. Since he hasn't been or he is slowly working up to it (we will see) I've decided to do it for him. Perhaps he will have some benefits via osmosis.

I visited buddies on multiply tonight. The journals: live, commie, and insane-- will be done tomorrow. The miscellaneous ones: myspace, 360, paganspace-- Sunday.

I'm still doing second life stuff.
http://www.secondlife.com/?u=492430f4263844fdb2cb9ef952ebf4a1

if for some strange reason you feel compelled to join up. Don't bother getting the paid account. Leave me your secondlife name in your comments and I will contact you to give you the url to my secondlife home where you can stay for free.

I am learning 3D building and scripting there. Not to put too fine a spin on things, my buildings all resemble something that someone with brain damage would create. (Well, I do have brain damage. It's called "traumatic brain injury" in polite society.).

Tomorrow is run through the house wildly picking up crap and sticking it somewhere out of sight day. My dad wants to come up on Sunday if it isn't raining.

There. A semi-average post.

spike

Alex Barton, Asperger's and the MisEducation of the Public

2008-06-13T14:48:00.000-07:00

The family of Alex Barton, the little Aspergian misbehaving five year old kindergardener, has decided to sue the school district for his treatment by teacher Wendy Portillo. It is reported that although he enjoyed talking on television, Alex is still evidencing signs of trauma. An attorney from the Liberty Legal Institute's Dallas branch office states that the suit is not without merit. Public opinion as expressed at the end of another article-- published by the T.C. Palm on June 7, 2008 range from "Oh noes Alex will have to goto court and that sucks," to "Give 'em a buck and be done with it," to "Yup, there is a case there." The blog Thinking in Metaphors over at
http://autisticnation.typepad.com/thinking_in_metaphors/2008/05/wendy-portillos/comments/page/2/
is the place to go for a better understanding of the legal issues involved.

Autism, along with many other disabilities, continue to be misunderstood by the general public. Now I know that the general public does not have to understand every disability. But kids in a regular classroom should have the benefit of some accurate information. The real bother of the whole thing is that while "inclusive education" is the current buzzword, kids in general are not given any explanations about the conditions and disorders that may be effecting a few of their classmates. Thus a good friend of mine was left recently to explain Tourette's to his nine year old son. Nine year old was accused of not demonstrating an, uh, inclusive attitude because he had yelled "shut up" when a classmate kept cursing in the classroom one day. Apparently some regulation or concern about private medical information prevented the teacher from offering any useful information. The same reg or concern prompted the teacher to claim (erroneously in my estimation) that my friend did not have a right to explain Tourette's to his son either. Talk about insanity. If kids cannot talk about their differences, how are they ever going to come to an understanding of those differences? In my estimation, "Don't ask, don't tell" does not work when it comes to building community.

Now we have a teacher who decided to have a bunch of five year olds tell another five year old what they don't like about him or his behavior. Uncool for any child to have to go through. That teacher needs to find a different line of work. And in light of the lawsuit, the Florida school system would do well to inservice all of its' teachers on autistic spectrum disorder. Autism is indeed a broad spectrum of disorders. The three that illustrate a wide range of intellectual prowess and behavioral manifestations are classic (Kanner's) autism, Asperger's, and pervasive developmental disorder not otherwise specified (P.D.D.-nos). [There are two other disorders included in the spectrum which probably should be moved to a different category.] Having been forced to sit through a few "sensitivity training sessions" myself, my own prejudice is that they don't do much. I still hold that the information should be offered to teachers as well as to the students and their parents. It is at least a beginning. Furthermore, any teacher who works in an inclusive classroom ought to be dually certified-- in special education as well as in elementary or secondary education (or whatever their primary field is).

The general assumption that "all people with autism" are screaming self-stimming innocents and perpetual children is one that I personally am a bit tired of dealing with. Just last night on secondlife dot com, my avatar tried to explain to someone who was annoyed with my adopted cousin's verbal behavior that yes indeed Aspergians can be verbally obnoxious just like anybody else. The avatar to whom this short explanation was directed had protested, "He doesn't have autism! Autistics don't provoke people." Interesting how any of us can suddenly know more than the neuropsych people who have spent years in testing and observation and diagnosing of a variety of disorders and conditions.

Autism in all of its' manifestations is not something that needs curing as the Autism Squeaks parents would have us believe. Nor is it something that should be celebrated in all of its' aspects. If the Aspergian bank teller wishes to keep his job, he needs to attend to matters of personal hygiene just like the rest of us. An autistic adult who is not able to communicate her basic needs or desires certainly has a tough life journey that not many of us would envy or want to emulate. Similar things could be said of any disabling condition or disorder. There was a time when I thought that traumatic brain injury was the worst thing that could happen to me. Then it did happen through the actions of a driver who really should not have gotten stoned before getting behind the wheel of his automobile. Traumatic brain injury is not the worst thing. And autism is not truly the thing that needs curing. The worst thing is ignorance and it is ignorance that needs healing.

radical sapphoq

References:

http://www.typepad.com/t/trackback/2980678/29447288

http://www.tcpalm.com/news/2008/jun/07/alex-barton-family-plans-to-sue/

http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/local/southflorida/sfl-0612autisticboy,0,5446826.story

http://www.libertylegal.org/

--
Posted By sapphoq to * radical sapphoq at 6/13/2008 07:41:00 PM

Face to Ass with the Past

2008-05-30T15:48:00.000-07:00

Mate and I were at the registers at the bookstore tonight. This in itself was unremarkable, considering that both of us are obsessed with bookstores and that our combined obsessions require our presence at some bookstore or other at least once a week-- even on vacations. I am not on vacation. I just haven't worked in over four years due to the car accident I'd had while on a lunch break at Running Sores, my last odious human servitude employer.

I walked past her backside. She was at the register closest to the exit. I sighed inwardly. I had no desire to say hello to this particular witch daughter of Abraham, chronically unhappy woman boss of the bosses. Her smoldering coal-colored eyes were concentrated on the associate as she was handed her own purchase in a crisp green package with gold words on it. I noted her hair, still the color of the darkest charcoal but now with a sprinkling of a gray storm sky. She held herself the same way as I remembered-- stiffly. Her torso gave way to her chunky rear end a bit too soon as her spine suddenly ran out of space. A certain indentation at the boundary of back and posterior was missing. She didn't see me or was doing an excellent job of pretending not to see me. I found that I did not want her to recognize me. A rash of swear words sprang to my throat. I held them back with the gravest of difficulty.

Mate was dawdling. I swept past both mate and my former adversary and sprang out the door to freedom. I continued my deliberate breakaway to the dark burgundy mundaneness of mate's car. As we drove away, I saw her getting into her own fiery steel machine. I did not deign to offer another glance. After all, two can play that game of non-recognition. Strangers. We were strangers after all and perhaps always had been.

The memories came crashing back. Boss of the Airhead boss, chronically unhappy woman with short practical fingernails that belied her poisoned fangs and a way of being. It was she, witch daughter of Abraham who didn't give two shits when my grandmother lay dieing in the sterile hospital room but who expected me to sympathize with her on the loss of a fat spoiled pet dog with which I had no natural or unnatural bond. It was she who had insisted on those dreaded Monday morning meetings weekly. Under the guise of concern about my performance as the house manager of a residence with three permanent staff out of a slotted twelve and thirty six on-calls filling out the difference, she harangued me over things like someone being two hours late on a Saturday. That particular on-call knew she was supposed to be there at six. That particular on-call sauntered in at eight, claiming that was when I had told her to be there. Obviously, I was the one who had to held accountable. There was no question about that. The on-call woman could not lie, would not lie. It was I who was responsible for all of it. Never mind that in spite of the chaos of scheduling staff, my people got to go out into the community and got to go on vacations.

I had just come from the hospital that morning. I was at the hospital every morning, every evening after work and sometimes dropped in at night. I had to make the end-of-life decisions for my beloved grandmother that my aunt turned out to be incapable of. I fought with the doctor who wanted to give her a C-T scan for cancer of the lung-- what treatment did he reasonable expect to be able to offer a ninety two year old woman even if it came back positive? I fought with a cousin who thought that a shot of B-12 would fix her right as rain. I fought with the nurses about the necessity of the morphine pump and the futility of a feeding tube.

My grandmother was screaming through the morphine that particular Monday morning about not wanting to live anymore with such physical pain. I informed the boss of the boss that I didn't give a shit about the on-call woman being two hours late on a Saturday under my current circumstances. I walked out. Back at the house, she called me on the phone and sent me home for a week with pay. I didn't want to not work that week. She said it was her last inch of compassion and me going home would eliminate the necessity of her gossiping about me. "I don't care if you talk about me," I told her bluntly after having screamed at her on the wireless phone in the parking lot of the residence about the fact that I didn't fucking care about staff being late on a Saturday with my gram in the hospital and all of that. "You do anyways," I said. "So what?" She was angry. I was angrier. My day staffer-- one of three permanent staff-- hid in the medication room, saying nothing much at all to me as I hurled the phone back onto its stupid black receiver and left.

Returning to work the following week, my gram died on that Wednesday before Memorial Day weekend. I left work, curtly informing the Airhead boss over the phone of the one hole in the schedule that Saturday and would she please take care of it. She didn't. The following Tuesday, the boss of the Airhead boss, chronically unhappy bitch harangued me about that hole in the schedule. "I told the Airhead about it before I left. I had to leave. My grandmother had just died." The chronically unhappy bitch witch daughter of Abraham raised her eyes slightly at the Airhead boss. True to form, the Airhead boss did not admit her own lack of responsibility that day. No surprises there.

When the Airhead boss ran into me at a gas station several months after the accident, I deliberately turned my back on her and walked away. "Don't turn away from me," she yelled after me. Bloody hell, she had turned her back on me. Which was worse I could not tell. The pretend recognition by the Airhead boss or the cold iciness of the bitch boss of bosses. I've had to decide not to care as I bit back the curses that waited for both of them. It hurt too much-- this loss of my career coupled with the insulting demeanor of the professional helpers over at VESID sucks.

I was not blameless. The two of them-- the witch boss of bosses chronically unhappy woman with her snooty way of being and the Airhead boss who was resentful because I would not go out drinking with her and the rest of her underlings my co-managers of group homes-- knew there was a problem but they were picking on me about the wrong problem. I was burnt out. I needed a change, a different job, a new start. I resisted that knowledge. I took out my hostility at Running Sores with the computer that suddenly appeared in the medication room one day. I spent hours on that computer instead of balancing the residents' money ledger or attending inane meetings at their various day programs. I'd send my day staffer to the meetings instead-- instinctively knowing that she would take over the reins of leadership for that house when I would be gone-- and I would kick back with a diet soda and the computer. The techie who was responsible for the running of the computer network failed to install any safeguards against what staff might do with a house computer. On that computer I learned things that I could not admit to anyone at Running Sores. It was not the staff scheduling that I should have been in trouble for. My real sin was left unnoticed. When pangs of guilt hit me, I would go to the local office supply shop and purchase another ream of printer paper to replace the paper purchased by Running Sores that I was using at a furious rate to print out my latest discoveries.

We had made an unholy triad during the last year of my employ at Running Sores. The witch bitch boss of bosses and the Airhead boss and I could not see eye to eye about much of anything at all. It was madness, this intricate dance of ours. It is madness still that in spite of everything, there are days when I want to go back to working at Running Sores. This madness should not be a surprise. Even the VESID sucks literature on-line admits that those of us with traumatic brain injuries may need a return visit to the last job as a way of excising the demons that insist that what we previously knew could still work, would still work. The nice man who did my neuropsych testing wrote in his report that I may need to be reassigned at Running Sores and that VESID sucks should provide me a job coach. VESID sucks would do no such thing. It was the shrink who saw that I was incapable of returning to the madhouse of Running Sores, even without knowing of the details of my last year there. I am glad that the shrink is familiar with the machinations of traumatic brain injury, that he could see what I could not see and cannot admit to even now.

"Doing more of what doesn't work doesn't work," is what I remind myself of ala Nathaniel Branden on an almost daily basis. I cannot bring myself to be civil to the various bosses of Running Sores on chance meetings at a bookstore or a gas station. I am flunking out of VESID sucks due partly to my own twisted hostile hotheadedness caused by my traumatic brain injury. I remain unemployed and unemployable. As yet I cannot forgive the players at Running Sores for being human. Can I forgive myself?

sapphoq on life

Voted Out of Kindergarten-- Alex Barton

2008-05-27T18:48:00.000-07:00

The blond-haired little boy stared back at me from a photo distributed on the w.w.w. [w.w.w. = world wide wasteoftime]. In a parody of democracy in action, Alex Barton was voted out of kindergarten for the remainder of the school day last Wednesday. His crime? Having a neurological condition called Asperger's and some associated behavioral problems. The teacher-- a Wendy Portillo-- cajoled her class into voting. And reportedly had children describe what they didn't like about young Alex. One reported adjective was "disgusting." Two kids voted to keep Alex in the classroom that day. The majority voted that he be excluded. Alex who was just returned to the class from the principal's office for his behavior spent the rest of the school day in the nurse's office. Needless to say, Alex has not been thrilled about his experience.

Although folks on both sides of the issue have resorted to name-calling, what I find even more repugnant are the public comments which support Wendy Portillo in her actions. Her excuse ran something like teaching the children about tallying. I wasn't there but I have an opinion anyways-- bovine fecal matter to that. Was the teacher lying about the whys and wherefores of her ill-advised election activity a la Survivor fashion? Nah, she was just being reckless with the truth.

Yes, I know how difficult it can be to maintain reasonable discipline and order in any rowdy bunch of human beings. Been there, done that. Yes I am intimately acquainted with the cluster of symptoms which comprise Asperger's. Of course I know how aggravating it is to herd cats.

I also know the frustration of living with atypical neurology.

I do not belong to the Autism Squeaks camp. [Autism Speaks but not for me, a curebie organization of unhappy parents]. I don't understand why forcing eye contact is such a big deal to neurotypicals, don't wish to blend in, will not give up my passions, and certainly will continue to celebrate diversity. I hate all clothing that is not cotton. I detest polyester and nylon in particular. I don't use makeup or wear high heels. I used to stare at the dust specks illuminated by the sunlight pouring through a window. I was clumsy rather than graceful and the last to be picked for any gym class team. I have been accused of staring too long, daydreaming, having obsessions with the things that are of intense interest to me, being intense or too intense or thinking too much about weird things or the wrong things, eating food in a specific order rather than varying what is on the fork from bite to bite, eating the same thing for breakfast daily, not making small talk, not caring about small talk or the lives of celebrities, being a geek or a space cadet or pedantic, not fitting in. And worse, daring to be content with my own company and my own internal focus and my own way of being.

No Child Left Behind. One Child Voted Out.

radical sapphoq says: A huge phooey to Wendy Portillo. As an adult and as a teacher, I cannot believe that she didn't have other options for dealing with a misbehaving five year old.
While I support reasonable discipline and consequences for one's actions, I abhor what happened to Alex Barton. I sincerely hope that he will find a new classroom where he is valued for who he is, a teacher who knows about the issues that people on the broad autistic spectrum face and who has a better arsenal of tools for keeping order in a classroom.

Bev over at Autism Square 8 has an excellent list of who to write to should anyone feel so inclined:
http://aspergersquare8.blogspot.com/2008/05/not-special-support-alex-barton.html

Educate yourselves if you wish to. Here is a partial incomplete list which includes two news articles from the same newspaper in Florida and some other bloggers who are blogging about this crapola:

excellent thoughts about this whole mess
http://lastcrazyhorn.wordpress.com/2008/05/25/the-golden-rule/

Laura Hershey
http://crip-power.com/2008/05/27/thoughts-on-alex-barton-and-the-way-we-organize/

the politics of exclusion
http://qw88nb88.wordpress.com/2008/05/25/mend-the-link/

Amanda
http://ballastexistenz.autistics.org/?p=538

an interview with Alex Barton and his mother
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/05/27/earlyshow/main4130288.shtml

two Palm Beach Post articles-- links working as of 5/28/08
http://www.palmbeachpost.com/treasurecoast/content/tcoast/epaper/
2008/05/27/0527slteacher.html#comments

and
http://www.palmbeachpost.com/treasurecoast/content/tcoast/epaper/
2008/05/23/0523slclassvote.html?cxntlid=inform_artr

Labels: Alex Barton, Asperger's, broad autistic spectrum, No Child Left Behind, One Child Voted Out, Wendy Portillo

Legacy

2008-05-11T06:39:00.000-07:00

Her voice is papery thin, frailer than I remember, like her bones where shining out of her blanched skin last time I seen her. The message is the same. You have reached this number. Talk to the machine. Because you sure as hell aren't going to talk to me. You are my first-born. I despise the man who contributed the other x chromosome. You are grown. I cannot scream at you or beat you into submission. My legacy remains, tainting you forever. For that I thank all of the demons in hell and a few of the angels in heaven.

I manage to choke out a proper greeting. Say something inane. Here is my phone number. You can call me. I am grown. You are still my mother even though I have rejected your legacy and moved beyond it. I love you. Maybe I will come see you sometime. It's been awhile. Happy Mother's Day. I hang up. Mother's Day is a day of mourning. For what could have been.

She wanted. She always wanted. She wanted my love, demanded it, could not recognize it. I was a terrified child. I could not name the terror to my own self. I told anyone who would listen for a minute that my mother drank too much. No one listened. And she drank on and on. The scotch. After marrying again, the wine. The pretensions. She wanted to be Italian. She really tried. The only spices she knew were salt, oregano, parsley, and sometimes a bit of basil from the garden. She doled them out sparingly. She said pepper was made from little grounded up rocks. We didn't have a pepper shaker. Bacon had to be burned to a crisp in order to be rendered edible. I was a child. I did not always remember everything I had to get at the store. By sixth grade I was doing the laundry at the laundromat and all of the supermarket shopping. I learned to ask the produce man or a lady customer who looked nice to pick out the ripe tomatoes for me, to tell me which of the bunches of bananas I should bring home. I was a child. I didn't know how to do many of the things that were required of me.

When she was angry, her voice took on a vibrancy that is gone now. She screamed. She yelled. She threw a bottle of tonic water at me once in high school. She threw me down some stairs once, after dragging me on my stockinged knees across the carpet. She was the queen of humiliation. She pretended to call my nursery school teacher and screamed into the phone the horrible thing I had become. Years later, I realized that the nursery school teacher had to be dead. She called me a frig. Frig was her favorite word, a baptized substitution for the word fuck. You are a frig. Frig frig frig. Hit her Tony. I always thought of him as a jellyfish, yielding to all of her orders. He was. I was too. Not to be, well perhaps I would not have survived my childhood and adolescence.

She baked cookies. Sugar cookies from a recipe torn out of a magazine. They were good. She made drop cookies and cookies with melted chocolate pieces too. Mainly though, it was the sugar cookies. With lots of butter in them. She made a Polish rum cake once. She dumped an entire bottle of rum over it after it came out of the oven. The cake was so thick with rum that pressing the fork tines against it would yield a flood. In my blackened innocence, I thought an alcoholic drank wine at home. So as soon as I could, I drank beer out. I had forgotten about the beatings, the vindictiveness, how she made my poodle disappear one Sunday when I was visiting my dad. I'd forgotten how at restaurants she would delicately eat the seafood or spaghetti and delicately lift the elegant shining stemmed glass to her painted lips, pretending all was right with the world and that she had two shining daughters from the same father and those two daughters loved her more than life itself.

Every year for two weeks we went down the shore. There would be a house near the ocean, or once a cramped motel room which I hated for the lack of privacy. There were other kids there, down the shore on vacation with their parents. I learned to walk barefoot on the hot tarry street, how to smoke a cherry cigar once, how to dig under the overturned lifeguard boat at night and have a child's seance. J.F.K. if you are here, give us a sign. And the candle would blow out and we would dig back out of there with a quickness. We went to Bingo as a family, to the beach as a family, to a restaurant, to the boardwalk. My little half-sister and I rode the rides, were treated to custards, walked and walked and walked holding hands in front of the two parents who were busy weaving a public fantasy. I learned how to panhandle on that same boardwalk with a younger summer child vacationing down the shore. Mister, I need a dime to call my parents to come pick us up. And so we would collect enough money for a five dollar bag of weed. Then we would walk the three miles back to our beach along the shoreline, avoiding the gate where we were supposed to pay. The beach where we stayed lacked the rides or the matrons of the gates demanding payment. The cars at our beach had parking stickers instead. And there were gazebos instead of rides. And the overturned boats.

I swam out once, way beyond where I was supposed to be. The lifeguards sent a boat out after me. I was fine though, a strong swimmer in my element. The saltiness and the fresh air and the sun invigorated me. By time the boat got to me, I had already turned around and was halfway back. They did not insist that I get in the boat. They didn't yell at me for doing such a stupid thing when I'd arrived back on the sand. My mother hadn't noticed, or pretended not to. A small crowd had gathered to watch the aborted rescue. My mother continued sunning herself, reading a paperback all relaxed as if nothing potentially dangerous was happening. She didn't say a word to me when I got back and flopped on the beach towel. The music pouring from the tinny transistor radio didn't miss a beat. And I learned that silence can be as fracturing as a beating.

If I had to choose one word to describe my mother it would be vindictive. My mother is still vindictive, even in her senior years. The thing inside her that made her give away or abandon my dog and call me a frig and be late for the wedding pictures still exists. I do not pretend to know how it got there. That doesn't matter now. The knowledge of her vindictiveness does not comfort me. Yet it is better to know an unpleasant-- even cruel-- truth than to ignore it and pretend. I do not pretend that everything that is wrong with me or toxic about me is purely the result of her essence. I will not pretend that there weren't good times. It's just that the good times always ran into the bad times, that there was never any escape. After my physical escape, there were years of learning how to escape mentally.

When my mother dies, I will mourn. I will mourn for what could have been and not for the woman she was. I will grieve for a long time and I will carry on. Life is like that. Happy Mother's Day.

spike q./sapphoq remembers

T.B.I. on SecondLife and on-going VESID stupidity

2008-05-10T11:27:00.000-07:00

I took a break from blogging for a bit in order to explore SecondLife(trademark owned by Linden Labs)-- a virtual world created by Linden Labs. If anyone is interested, well then you can go check it out at:
http://www.secondlife.com/join/?u=492430f4263844fdb2cb9ef952ebf4a1

or at the potentially less threatening:
http://www.secondlife.com/?u=492430f4263844fdb2cb9ef952ebf4a1

and for those of you who aren't interested, obviously you don't gotta. End of unpaid commercial.

Anyways, my avatar (a little figure in clothing used to represent me in Second Life, thus from here on in will be referred to as "my avie" or simply "I" -- past English teachers be dammed) got to pick a gender and some clothing, went through utter confusion of orientation, and then was deposited along with other newbies at a Welcome Center. From there, my avie went off exploring. SecondLife is total eye candy in 3D.

After flying around for a bit and collecting a bunch of free clothes, I found that I was lonely for human communication. I went to some 12-step meetings (we're everywhere!) and found a few folks there to talk to. I began studying the events notices, joined a few groups, bought a bit of land. I began my first brain-damaged experimentation with 3D building and started going to events and classes regularly.

My avie got a job as a stripper in a club, something for which I make no apologies. The Lindens (money in SecondLife) are good. Real life mate doesn't care what I do in SecondLife. Dancing is varied and automated. The mobility and vertigo problems which plague me in real life are absent there. Plus, like most other avies, my avie is younger in appearance, skinnier, hotter, and has better hair than I do!

Besides exotic dancing and other events, I also found that the Asperger's community is alive and well on S.L. That made me happy and I now have some friends to hang with who do not expect great social feats from me. Many of them have some of the same passions that I do and that is excellent!

And yes, there is a t.b.i. group on SecondLife. We meet usually on Saturday mornings S.L. time at a comfortable and extravagant 3D clubhouse on a beach. The house is situated on an island. There is the ocean right there, a pleasant deck, several dogs, the meeting room itself, and offices upstairs. The man who facilitates the t.b.i. group lives in the States. He is very welcoming. I immediately found myself at home there.

When I told him about the most recent VESID stupidity, he was appalled and asked me if I have a case manager, case worker, or service coordinator. I am not eligible for Medicaid and thus not eligible for the T.B.I. waiver in my state (a situation which pisses me off-- the financial hit we have taken from my car accident and subsequent loss of career has been astronomical) and so I could not navigate the system well enough to get a Service Coordinator. I had tried but nothing much happened there. The facilitator-- also a T.B.I. survivor-- offered to meet with his case manager in order to seek out information for me and will be checking back with me soon. He also suggested that I call the Office of the Aging and the United Way in my county. I hadn't thought of that. More on the hunt for service coordination as it evolves.

The last time I had spoken with the job handler (a young woman who means well I suppose but who is young enough to have a MySpace account under her own legal name) she expressed grave "concern" over the latest two week bout of vertigo. This should not have been news to her or to anyone else related to VESID. It has been documented in my records that I have benign positional vertigo. The benign means it isn't a tumor or anything causing it. The positional means it is outside of myself, that is to say that the room/the world slides to the left. Vertigo means dizziness of a sort. Thus, I am not dizzy. The world is dizzy. I am used to it. I consider my 24 hour vertigo to me similar to allergies. And the occasional attack--where the world dips and spins madly-- to be akin to a common cold.

The attacks are annoying. The singular medication which the doctor demands I take during the worst of the attacks is annoying. The med leaves me able to navigate my home looking like someone who is slightly tipsy rather than totally plastered. There is not much that I can accomplish during an attack. Feeling miserable, I spend a bit more time sleeping than I usually do. Although I cannot do what I used to do, I certainly am not "home watching television." (That is what most voc-rehab counselors assume that folks with disabilities not slaving in sheltered workshops are doing with their days.) During the attacks, I am too miserable to even consider much teevee or much of anything else. So sleeping fills the bill. And serves to keep me from descending into total fatigue afterwards.

Consequently, when the job handler expressed her cloying concern over my latest two week attack I was not feeling a need for sympathy. I was feeling pissed off. And I knew that her concern was a smokescreen for another message. I may be brain damaged but I am NOT stupid. The job handler went on to inform me that until I got a doctor's note saying I am healthy enough to be nagged by her on a regular basis over where I had put in job applications and gotten interviews that the VESID counselor was putting my case on hold. I asked her, "Is the VESID counselor paying for my doctor's visit to obtain such a note?" Her answer was obviously no. "Well then, the VESID counselor will have to wait until I go to the doctor anyways for such a note. Do what you have to do." Shit. The primary care doc does not require me to see him before, during, or after these attacks. And as I've said already, vertigo to me is like allergies and colds.

I thought that would be the end of it until I delivered the note. But no. The job handler called my answering machine twice more. I didn't return the calls because: 1. a close friend who is also an addict was in the hospital and I was busy in a daily fight for her to get adequate pain relief, 2. I figured if my "case" was on hold then that meant that I didn't have to deal with the job handler, and 3. I just plain didn't feel like it. Angry? Oh hell yes. I was angry and I still am. I am not grateful for the crumbs. I can't get Walmart's to hire me, never mind any agency that offers jobs in my previous career. Hell. I can't even get the local newspaper to agree to give me a route. And I intensely dislike cloying concern and people nagging me for information about exactly where I've applied for work. To top it off, I am at the point where I am not sure that I am able to get back to work of any description. What part of, "I don't fucking feel well enough to do anything for four hours a day, never mind eight hours" is not clear English?

I am not a quitter by nature. I am tired of VESID, tired of incessant demands, tired of nagging whiny voices, tired tired tired. The shrink who understands t.b.i. has maintained from the start of all of this foolishness that the original plan is NOT to work even part-time until a 55b/c job comes through with the state. He tells me repeatedly that the 55b/c program expects me to be a fuck-up (not in so many words, he says it nicer) because I will be hired with the knowledge that I am disabled. With the 55b/c program, I will provided with a job I can do and a salary that I can live on. And the added benefit because I will be hired as a fuck-up, I would really have to be outrageous in order to get fired. The problem I am having in my interviews is that it is obvious that I have some serious impairments and no company wants to deal with a new employee who has vision problems, auditory processing problems, non-existent capacity for multi-tasking, can't navigate stairs well (the vertigo), and is at risk for falling in spite of the braces and cane. And let's not forget the fatigue.

So there is SecondLife. I have a sort of goal there to amass enough Lindens to go into virtual business for myself. And there is VESID and the professional and para-professional paid "helpers" associated with VESID. And there is my life and there are my crumpled dreams.

spike

Dad's Dilemma

2008-03-11T15:44:00.000-07:00

My dad is currently in the throes of a difficult divorce and may or may not be coming to live with us. I've spent the last week alternating between bouts of frantic cleaning/organization and vertigo supposedly induced by a "virus in the labyrinth of the ear" for which I am currently being forced to take Meclizine. Fortunately, I have found a housecleaner who was able to help. (And I plan to keep her on regular once a week as a result of all of this.)

Dad was supposedly driving up Monday or Tuesday for a day visit to check out "what's up there."

We spent Saturday driving around with Big Ed who helped up pick out an eight drawer dresser and a full-sized futon/bed along with two lamps. Big Ed also found a fellow to help unload the stuff. Husband put together the futon, lamp, and dresser-- rather impressive I must admit-- leaving me only the drawer handles to screw into place.

Sunday afternoon Dad called to announce that he was halfway here. I was instantly glad that we had set up the bedroom on Saturday. We scurried around like rats to scrap away the last remnants of sludge from the homestead. A couple hours later and still no dad.

The police department called. First thing I said without even saying hello was, "Is my father alright?"

Turns out his cell phone stopped functioning so he went to the police department. The desk sarge was good-natured and hunted through four log books before finding our address and phone number. We went down to the police station to pick up my dad.

Dad had worn a leather jacket. For years now I have been telling him that it really is colder up here but to no avail. We got him home and warmed him up and then went to a diner for a bite to eat. Husband lent him a warmer jacket. After dinner, we spent some time with the telly. The dog and the most courageous cat spent some time pestering-- I mean getting to know-- the stranger in the easy chair.

Dad slept in the bedroom we had set up for him that night. The next morning, husband went off to work. Dad and I went out to breakfast at the same diner, I gave him a brief tour of Hiserville, he shoveled some ice off of the driveway, and then he was off.

He doesn't know if or when he is moving in yet. I am not terribly interested in him spending another moment in the condo with my soon to be ex-stepmother but it is not my call. There was a bit of cognitive slippage that was noticeable-- "vagueness" is the word that husband used. I sure hope it is not some sort of dementia or neuro problem in vitro.

If it is, that just makes the whole divorce thing that much more horrid. In other words, dumping a mate because he got older and broker bites. Dumping a mate because he got older, broker, and may be showing signs of losing it is total suckage.

Oh, I know that it takes two to make a problem. After all, I am still my father's daughter. The only thing that stops me from telling my soon to be ex-stepmother where she can get off is my half-sister who is her daughter and really hurting about all of this.

spike

Whatever Happened to SpamBob

2008-03-11T15:23:00.000-07:00

I don't know what happened to SpamBob, the site that allowed you to create an email addy with the "@SpamBob.com" (or .net if you wished it to be forwarded).

The great folks at BugMeNot have partially filled in the gap. Goto http://email.bugmenot.com/
to created a non-password protected email addy "@bugmenot.com."

I will miss SpamBob although I applaud BugMeNot for branching out in their services.

spike

Pre Approved Credit Cards - Yea!

2008-03-10T13:27:00.001-07:00

If you are sick of getting pre-approved credit card offers, and other crap from Predatory Lenders then might I suggest a subtle way of getting even with them. I wrote this letter when I received 3 letters from Bank of America on the same day. One of them was to tell me that despite the fact that they rejected my credit application {that I never sent in} they had a program for people with bad credit like me. It was a Bank of America debit card that I pay a 150$ a year maintenance fee on. I was finally pissed off to the point of needing to be diabolical, as Bank of America will give credit cards to illegal immigrants despite the fact that THAT is a crime.

I devised this letter and place it in any “Pre Paid” envelope from an unwanted credit trawler that sends me anything containing a “Pre Paid” envelope. It not only puts a smile on my face, but you need to think of it as your Patriotic duty to stimulate the coffers of the United States Postal Service, and keep the costs down. It’s all about VOLUME my friends and I hope that any of you that would like to participate in this program to “GET THEM” back. Feel free to change the name, or leave the name.

Dear “Insert Name of Predatory Lending Company Here”

I am not actively enrolling in one of your schemes to separate me from my money, but wanted to send you this letter of Thank You, for determining that I am exactly the type of idiot that you look for. I am sure that Experian, Trans Union, or Equifax have earned their money that they had gotten from you to get my name out of its database as a certified moron. Heaven forbid that your wonderful company should realize that they have most of their databases totally incorrect, but who cares anyway?

In regards to your offer to separate me from my money, I have taken the time to deliberate the appropriate measures, to such a charming offer of an amazingly low credit rate, horribly high interest rates, and oppressive late fees and have developed this approach. I write a boring and condescending letter {that I realize hardly anyone will actually read}, use my 9.99$ a cartridge Kodak Printer to create the letter {at about 1 cent per dozen}, and use the paper that I stole from work anyway, to send you this reply. I of course am using the “postage paid” envelope that you have supplied to make sure that it costs your company money, and since I am sure your company will send me hundreds of these a year, it WILL add up sooner or later.

To further encourage the decline of your company profits I have also posted this letter to my blog {it’s unimportant really, but some really Predatory Lending Company friendly people will be reading it} and encourage any of the wonderful people that read it to copy this letter and send it along whenever they receive a generous offer to have their money stolen from them. It is after all the least I can do, as I know like yourselves, they probably don’t have time to come up with ideas to ~~get even~~ thank you properly for all that you do! Perhaps, in time, you all will be sitting on this end of a computer screen {if we all work hard enough on this end now anyway} and will need that little boost to get your own animosity towards people like ME out there in a more constructive way. Remember me.

Signed, your doting admirer, Jeremy Crow

Link

2008-03-01T10:08:00.000-08:00

http://www.commiejournal.com/users/sapphoq/19624.html

FryDay Five

2008-02-29T14:26:00.000-08:00

http://asylums.insanejournal.com/thefridayfive/

xo_tara_xo of insane journal's asylum The Friday Five says: Something's gone terribly wrong with the F5 entry.

I keep putting in the questions and all that come up are the answers. So I look to you for the questions...

Answers
1. scrambled eggs and bacon

2. 11:34pm

3. *$%#@!

4. Banana Peel

5. Jello

Alrighty then, here are my questions:

1. What breakfast do you never eat anymore?
2. What time do you think you will go to bed tonight?
3. What do you think about working for a living?
4. What do you never put into banana bread?
5. What can you fill a bathtub with to make it an inviting place to have sex?

spike

Wikileaking Wikileaks

2008-02-23T15:33:00.000-08:00

Any of you who have been following the drama over at Wikileaks will be glad to know that following this here linkage: http://88.80.13.160/wiki/Wikileaks will get you there (a mirror site from Sweden) for the time being anyways. Alternate linkage outside of the United States was part of the original plan-- to have sites set up in various countries should the courts of one country succeed in getting a shutdown order. Here's another one, this one is based in England: http://www.wikileaks.org.uk/wiki/Wikileaks .

Wikileaks protects whistle-blowers from corporations (or governments) who would much rather not have folks tattling on any suspicious practices. Recently, a Swiss bank challenged Wikileaks and now the site is facing a court battle with the United States versus responsible exercise of the First Amendment. Bloggers across the internet have protested the February 15 court decision and this blogger too joins in the fray. Buzz-flash has quite a few things to say about this whole mess over at: http://www.buzzflash.com/articles/contributors/1545 .

Quite amazing to me is that the court case took place in the United States. While the order to erase the D.N.S. from U.S. servers will certainly not hold up on appeal,http://commons.globalintegrity.org/2008/02/us-court-order-shuts-down-activist-site.html<--- here it is disconcerting that this case involving documents regarding a Swiss bank doing business in the Cayman Islands made it court on United States soil. Still, we are far better off living here than in places like Egypt where one can be severely physically beaten for dissident web-surfing and document leaking or in Red China or even Vietnam where folks have been imprisoned for similar activities.

radical sapphoqcross-posted all over

Wikileaks
first amendment
censorship
sapphoq

LInk

2008-02-20T17:46:00.000-08:00

I made a test called "What blogging site am I?"
Go check it out:

Http://www.testriffic.com/test/sapphoq/20910/What-blogging-site-am-I-

Broken Things

2008-02-18T13:01:00.000-08:00

I.

It was cold outside, but not that cold. Still, the ice hadn't fully melted and pissed-off-woman wasn't real good at maintaining an upright position on the slick stuff, even with the fancy smancy ankle braces. The dog required walking and so p-o-w headed to the abandoned building where the roof overhang kept a bit of sidewalk free from the troubling stuff. P-o-w parked along side the building so she didn't have to slide across the parking lot to get to the sidewalk in question. Three women, two golden retrievers, and one schipperke were heading for the same sidewalk. None of the dogs were attached to leads. Two of the women were dragging their goldens along by the collar and the third had picked up the schipperke and was cradling him in her arms.

P-o-w stuck her head out of the car window. "Are your dogs friendly?" she asked. The three women looked at her. "Friendly?" p.o.w. repeated while pointing to the two goldens and the schipperke. "No," one of them spoke up at last. Undeterred, p-o-w parked her car in front of the targeted sidewalk, where the small party of women and allegedly unfriendly dogs had just been heading. They turned around and left. That was their right. And indeed their obligation if their dogs truly weren't friendly and they weren't able to control them.

P-o-w hung the required placard on the mirror since she had just created a parking space. She hooked up the dog and grabbed Benjamin Copernicus Galileo (the cane). She locked the car. She and the dog walked. The dog was happy and p-o-w smiled.

II.

"Are your dogs friendly?"
"No."

"Are your dogs friendly?"
"No. We happen to have the two most vicious golden retrievers with us right here. And the schipperke is a little daemon."

"Are your dogs friendly?"
"We are afraid of other dogs."

"Are your dogs friendly?"
"We are afraid of you because either you intend to kill us or your disability is contagious."

"Are your dogs friendly?"
"We aren't friendly. We don't want to talk with you at all. Your need for an accessible place to walk your dog inconvenienced us."

"Are your dogs friendly?"
"We really just wanted to be alone in this wide space and you weren't invited."

*Epic fail*

III.

Pissed-off-woman stamped out letters in the snow. The letters read: F U c k U 4 J U d g i N g M E . She and the dog walked. The dog was happy and p-o-w smiled.

sapphoq healing tbi

Survivor Needs Meme

2008-02-17T19:58:00.000-08:00

SPIKE SELF-CARE LIST:

play with or pet or walk with the dog
play with or pet the cats
watch the birds at the feeder
sit on the deck
watch a funny movie

read a book
blog or write something
surf the net
computer art
draw or color

go to a meeting
call someone
call someone else
visit a friend
go to a bookstore or greenhouse

movement
hold a frog
take a bath
take a nap
meditate

ice cream
coffee
chocolate
power bars
diner or take-out

SPIKE WANTS:

to have oodles of money.
to travel around.
to write a book that is good enough to be banned in 14 countries and challenged in 2.
to continue living in a house that we own.
to meet more of my blogging buddies.

Rules of the "Survivor Needs" Meme:

Please link back to: http://survivorscanthrive.blogspot.com/2007/12/ive-created-survivor-needs-meme.html because that is where the meme came from. Marj aka Thriver created the meme specifically for survivors of any sort of abuse or assault, violence, etc.

List 25 needs and five wants. Needs are the things you need in order to take care of yourself, not a list of things that other people, professional helpers, critics, and in-laws think you need. Your wants list can be anything that you want!

Use this list to remind yourself to take care of YOU. It's nice to have other people around; however, it is not always possible. Those of us who call ourselves adults are ultimately responsible for getting our own needs met. No one other person can do it for us. Or: no one can be my everything. And I certainly am not looking to be anyone else's everything. We are all alone in our own skins. In my opinion, society as a whole needs to step away from the victim stance. Helplessness is a learned state and can be unlearned. It takes time and work. Anything worth having is worth working for.

Pass on the meme and tag five people if you want to. As usual, I tag no one. Even if you are not a survivor, you can still do this meme. I'm not going to claim that we survivors have the monopoly on pain because it just ain't so.

spike q. human bean

Viking Kitties

2008-02-13T04:59:00.000-08:00

http://www.rathergood.com/gaybar/
http://www.vikingkittens.com/

Autistic Kids Grow Up...

2008-02-12T15:35:00.000-08:00

Christopher DeGroot had autism. Because he reportedly would bolt from the apartment that he lived in with his parents Nicolaas and Agnes, they locked the windows and doors. Because they needed to go do things like feed their horses without their son, they left him alone in the apartment which was secured against his escape into traffic. Their 19 year old son who had severe autism was left alone in their apartment for several hours a day so they could go do chores. In my opinion,leaving a severely disabled man alone in an apartment without supervision is wrongon so many levels. Even if Christopher DeGroot possessed the knowledge of what todo during an emergency, the deadbolt on the door and the locks on the windows precluded any means to get out. And if he was unable to act during an emergency on his own behalf due to his disabling condition, he should have had a (hired if necessary) caretaker supervising him in his parents' absence.

On Sunday May 14th, 2006 the apartment did indeed catch on fire. Two family cats were saved. One firefighter was injured. 77K of damage was caused to the apartment building and stuff inside of it. Christopher, then 19, had to be airlifted to a hospital in Portland, Oregon. The burns covered 80% of his body. He died on Friday May 19th, 2006.

Nicolaas and Agnes reported to the police station as requested for questioning. They were charged with first-degree arson and first- or second-degree manslaughter. (Report of the manslaughter charges differ in degree). The fire was thought to be caused by arson, specifically by Nicolaas and Agnes DeGroot setting fire to paper in the middle of the living room floor and then leaving their son to burn while they left to feed the bloody horses.

Yeah, they had their day in court where they (via separate attorneys) were allowed to Alford plea the charges. An Alford plea means that the defendants admit that the State can prove its' case against them, but falls short of admitting any guilt on the part of the defendants. The original charges were pled down to criminal negligent homicide.

Two people testified that Nicolaas and Agnes De Groot were cool and devoted parents. Nice to their autistic son, caring about his needs, blah blah blah. The judge decided that the parents did not intend any bad vibes when they left their severely autistic son alone in the apartment without any supervision. He sentenced Nicolaas and Agnes DeGroot to six months in the county jail.This is a case that in my opinion should never have been allowed to be Alford plea'd.

Autistic kids do grow up to be autistic adults unless their uh devoted parents kill them.

spike

Parents charged with first-degree arson and first- or second-degree manslaughter:http://democratherald.com/articles/2006/05/22/news/local/news02.txt
http://www.cityofalbany.net/services/news_releases/show_item.php?id=521

Alford pleas and a sentence to six month in the county jail:
http://www.dhonline.com/articles/2008/02/08/news/local/2loc01_jail.txt#blogcomments

Christopher DeGroot
autism
manslaughter

I didn't write this one but I could not resist...

2008-02-06T20:20:00.000-08:00

There once was a man from Boston,

Who drove a little red Austin.

He had room for his ass,

and a gallon of gas,

But his balls hung out, and he lost 'em.

- a limerick making the rounds currently, written by unknown

Humor is altogether a funny thing.
spike

Johari Window

2008-01-30T14:57:00.000-08:00

Go here: http://kevan.org/johari?name=spikeq1love and pick out the five words you think best describe me. After doing that, get your own if you are so inclined.

Lifted from live journal user angry_biscuit.
spike

I Support Anonymous

2008-01-29T17:05:00.000-08:00


The Chanology Project just might be true love do0ds.

From $cientology: Church of the Holy Censor Available at: http://www.whyaretheydead.net/mirror/xenu.ca/pickets/leaflets.html
One of Scientology's preferred sayings is "Think for yourself". Why, then, does Scientology censor its own members?

It all started on March 13th 1998, at the L. Ron Hubbard birthday celebration in Los Angeles. Mark Ingber, a Church
of Scientology official, announced that Scientologists would be given an opportunity to sell Scientology books and
recruit for Scientology through nearly-identical promotional websites (getting 10% of the money that these recruits
end up spending in Scientology, but that's another story). To put up one of these sites, a Scientologist has to sign a
contract. Here's a short excerpt from that contract:
"If you wish to use this authorization regarding the Marks and the Works, you must:
...
(6) agree to use the specific Internet Filter Program that CSI [Church of Scientology International Incorporated] has
provided to you which allows you freedom to view other sites on Dianetics, Scientology or its principals without
threat of accessing sites deemed to be using the Marks or Works in an unauthorized fashion or deemed to be improper
or discreditable to the Scientology religion;"
"Deemed improper or discreditable", eh? Boy, aren't Scientologists lucky to have someone there to decide for them
what facts about their religion they can and cannot see. If they didn't use this filter, they might find out about the
suspicious deaths in Scientology and the uncomplimentary things that judges have said about Scientology. Can't have
Scientologists finding out the ugly facts behind Scientology, can they? So, Scientology tries, through this internet
filter, to prevent its members from reading negative information about Scientology on the internet.
This internet filter does 4 things to words and websites that Scientology doesn't like:
The filter blocks a list of websites. Anyone with the filter installed can't access these websites, AT ALL. Examples of
blocked sites include: http://www.xenu.net, http://www.entheta.net, http://www.lermanet.com, all websites
containing information the "Church" of Scientology doesn't want its members to see.
The filter blocks a list of newsgroups. Anyone with the filter installed can't access these newsgroups, AT ALL. Some
of these blocked newsgroups include: alt.religion.scientology, alt.support.ex-cult. Since scientology claims it's not a
cult, why would it need to block an ex-cult newsgroup?
The filter blocks a list of words, that will be removed from a web page or email message. Some words blocked lead to
odd combinations: NOTs and Anima are blocked, so "I'm not sure that animal is healthy" gets changed to "I'm ure that
l is healthy". Other words blocked are peoples' names: Deana Holmes (a critic of Scientology), Bob Minton (another
critic of Scientology, who appeared recently on NBC's Dateline). Why does Scientology try to prevent its members
from reading about these people? What does Scientology have to hide?
The filter has another list of words, that will stop an internet page from loading, or kick a user from an IRC channel
(remove him from the discussion). If the filtered computer sees one of these words, the computer will stop receiving
data through the present connection. These words include: Entheta (refers to http://www.entheta.net), xenu, Fishman
Affadavit, Bare Faced Messiah (a critical book on Scientology, in the Books on the Net section at
http://www.xenu.net).
These words and websites are only some of the terms blocked by the Scientology internet filter. The whole list can be
found at: http://www.taniwha.com/crack.list.html
Some information sources, for further reading:
Operation Clambake: http://www.xenu.net (Lots of information!)
Canadian Critical Scientology Information: http://xenu.ca
Occupied Clearwater: http://www.xenu-city.net
Deaths in Scientology: www.b-org.demon.nl
Church of Scientology Censors Net Access for Members: http://www.xenu.net/archive/events/censorship/

[end of copy and paste. N.B. this docu is available as a pdf download and is meant for distribution.]

In case any of you have been dead, drugged beyond recognition, or doing mundane things like working-- as a public service-- I am providing a brief synopsis of recent events. The Church of Scientology is considered to be a cult by some [including Germany] and has been blamed for a handful of deaths. A vid of Tom Cruise (remember him?) appeared on You Tube briefly. The Church of Scientology or someone over there didn't like this. Believing the appearance of this vid to be a violation of copyright, a takedown order was issued. Some pissed-off hactivists known individually and collectively as Anonymous or Anon declared a sort of internet war. This internet war apparently involved D.D.O.S attacks, faxes, and phone calls. Leafleting has also been carried out in select cities and more actions protests are slated for February 10th or thereabouts.

Warren Buffett approves of these goings-on and so do I. Sure, I am anti-censorship. And the folks of scientology have a legal right to publish their ideas. Protesting has a noble history. It is through protesting that some things get done. The message gets out. The meme gets around. The stuff gets to go surfing electronically. Well, okay some of the stuff that Anon is doing might border on illegal or might be illegal. I am not a cop, lawyer, or judge. Some other folks will have to decide all of that stuff later on maybe. Meanwhile, in retaliation at least one site where Anon hangs out was attacked in turn by an organization calling itself "The Regime." That particular site is now back up and in service as of this posting.

My sources are below. Many of them support Anon. At least one doesn't. And several are official scientology sites, as far as I can tell. Adding .nyud.net/ to the url will cause any that are loading slowly to speed up. spike

http://cominganarchy.com/2008/01/25/is-the-war-on-scientology-4gw/ http://partyvan.info.nyud.net/index.php/Project_Chanology http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,972865,00.html <----5/6/91 http://whyaretheydead.net/ http://www.factnet.org/Scientology/memorials.htm http://www.news.com/8301-10789_3-9857666-57.html http://www.news.com/8301-10789_3-9858436-57.html http://www.news.com/8301-10789_3-9858603-57.html http://www.news.com/8301-10789_3-9858956-57.html?tag=recentPosts http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,141839-c,hackers/article.html http://www.xenu.net/ http://www.xenu.net/news/20080122-OC_pressrelease.html http://www.scientology.org/ http://www.scientologyreligion.org/sitemap.html http://www.volunteerministers.org/seminar/index.html http://www.lronhubbard.org/ http://factnet.org/?p=240 http://www.encyclopediadramatica.com/PROJECT_CHANOLOGY http://www.warrenellis.com/?p=5476#comments http://theunfunnytruth.ytmnd.com.nyud.net/ http://preview.tinyurl.com/2zvstv [Open in new window] or http://tinyurl.com/2zvstv [Open in new window]

All of the words below are either businesses which may be associated with Scientology or owned outright, or terms associated with Scientology.

Dianetics. Sterling Management Systems. The Way to Happiness Foundation. Applied Scholastics. Fair Game. Old Mayo. Citizens Commission on Human Rights. Concerned Businessmen's Association of America. HealthMed. Foundation for a Drug-Free World. The Drug-Free Marshals of Seattle. The Drug-Free Marshals of Los Angeles. Say No to Drugs, Say Yes to Life. Volunteer Ministers Corp. Religious Technology Center. E-Meter. Clear. The Bridge. Operating Thetans. Engram. Lead the Way to a Drug-Free U.S.A. Drug-Free Ambassadors. Golden Era Productions. Bridge Publications. New Era Publications. International Hubbard Ecclesiastical League of Pastors. Scientology Missions International. Narconon. Criminon. Feshbach "stock busters." Flag Service Organization. Fort Harrison Hotel. Field Auditor groups. Class V Churches. Celebrity Centre Churches. Saint Hills. Advanced Organizations. Freewinds. The Drug Busters. Food for All. Hands of Hope Quilt. Sea Org. The National Commission on Law Enforcement and Social Justice. Koenig photometer. Purification Rundown. Effective Solutions. Suppressive person. Disconnection. Linksfield House. Emotional Tone Stress Test.

My Friday Five

2008-01-25T14:37:00.000-08:00

Five Things I did this Week

1. I began reading "Jingo" by Terry Pratchett. I love Terry Pratchett's Discworld books. My favorite character is Death. Death speaks in capital letters and has a granddaughter. There is also a Death of Rats which Death allowed to continue on in spite of no need for same. The funniest book that Death was in was "Hogsfather." I am also a fan of the Unseen University, Carrot, and Granny Weatherwax.

2. I took the doggie visiting and we spent four hours in the woods. Human friend and I snowshoed, made a fire, and drank coffee. Doggie played with a doggie friend. She handled herself well. Although the doggie is mid-size, she prefers smaller playmates. This particular doggie friend is larger than she is. At one point, she was humping him. "You got it wrong!" I yelled at her.

3. I took a friend to drug court. She has to go two times a month. It was my first time in the smaller courtroom. I've gone several times to drug court held for the once-a-monthers and the two-weekers held in the larger courtroom. I support drug courts because I have seen the success stories. I also learn some things from listening to the judge interact with the folks who go there. The first thing I learned was "You gotta have a Plan B." This week I learned, "The brain has to be in the game or the journey will be harder." And, "Now is the time to be UN-confused."

4. I applied for part-time work and I have decided that I will aim for one company a day face-to-face until I find one. The stupid VESID morons have done zilch and I have decided that they are a waste. I am going to call the job handler on Monday and make an appointment. During the appointment, I will have her read to me exactly how many hours I am currently limited to working by the medical professionals (15), explain once again that my plan is to ease back into working via part-time work, and remind her that I was accepted into the 55b program and that I am waiting for a state job.

5. I made a bunch of new icons. I like doing computer art. I've got Paint Shop Pro 9 and 10, The GIMP, and Jasc Animation Shoppe.

spike

Total Aggravation

2008-01-20T23:37:00.000-08:00

I got accepted into a 55b/c program which basically means that I may be able to get a (real) State job with accommodations. The shrink (who is well acquainted with more than drugging people to death and is actually keeping track of what is happening with my traumatic brain injury (from a car accident); and who is familiar with the program) tells me this is my best bet for getting employment after being out of work for four years due to my car accident. I don't just want any old job where the chances are high that the salary will be not enough for me to live on and that I will get fired. I can't multi-task at all anymore. I wasn't really good at it but now any ability I had to multi-task is totally dead. I want a job coach to assist me during the first couple of months or so at the State job which I haven't gotten yet. This has been my plan since I first heard about this 55b/c program.

(VESID is OVR in other places but in New York State it is called VESID).

I told the VESID "counselor" (third in less than three years) this. Apparently, the paperwork, my suppos-ed Individualized Employment Plan-- which took a couple years in the making because I had refused to go to their favored agency connected with the sheltered workshop for job coaching services-- requires a specific job goal. Fine. A couple of months ago, I rattled off several job choices so that way just maybe I could finally get to the agency of my choice to arrange for job coaching.

I finally got to meet with the job handler who then would assist me in helping me find a job. Again, I repeated myself by telling her that I want to get a job with the State via the 55b/c program. (She has never heard of said program). Again, the suppos-ed Individualized Employment Plan requires a specific job to fill in the blank. "Working for the State" is not adequate. The job handler changes the job goal from "animal care technician" to a state job title. This requires the VESID "counselor" to rewrite the I.E.P. but I don't care about that.

During the meeting with the job handler, I learn that VESID approved my request for job trials. A job trial means I would get to follow someone on a job for a couple of hours to see if I could possibly stand doing a job like that one. I am approved for 15 hours. 5 for the job handler to set up a few. 10 for me to actually shadow people on several jobs. I tell the job handler very clearly that I had asked for this and that I want this. This was in December. Okay.

Now it is January. The job handler assumes the role of a nag. She calls me with a lead for a full-time job in the newspaper-- one that would require extensive multi-tasking but no matter. Note full-time. (My plan has been to start part-time to see if my fatigue level will allow me to work up to full-time. I can do this at the State with accommodations under the 55b/c program. (My aunt is the one who is actually helping me regain some stamina because the professionals do not understand how freaking tired I am from the brain injury. I am glad that my aunt is working with me on this because no one else is). I am a bit aggravated but that's okay. I decide to go to the Job Service place which is part of unemployment because they will re-vamp my resume for free. The job handler is nagging me to go there to look for work.

Now it is several days and a weekend later. I am leaving for my appointment with the shrink. I get a letter in the mail from the job handler. It is an advert for a "job fair" listing several full-time positions with an agency and a note advising me to attend said job fair if I am interested in any of these jobs. (The jobs happen to be in direct care with people living in group homes and I cannot lift due to my spinal injuries {car accident}. All of these things are documented in my records which both VESID and the job handler have. But no matter. The job fair ended shortly before the postman came with the letter.

This is January. There is no longer any talk of job trials. There is no acknowledgment by the job handler that I am endeavoring to get a State job at which time a job coach might be useful. I go see the shrink after the mail comes. I determine that I am going to call the 55b/c program people to find out if there is anything I can do to help them get me a State job. The shrink says they are just supposed to find me one and I don't really have to do anything except wait. An acquaintance who had gotten accepted for 55b/c last year in fact was offered a job some time later without having to do anything.

Still, I think that sending them a new fancy resume and talking to them on the phone might be a good idea.

VESID's whole focus is to get me working ASAP and it doesn't matter about what is best for me. And VESID in the region where I live is the worst one in this state.

I would tell VESID and the job handler to bugger off except that if I quit VESID, the delayed review of my disability would then take place. I can't afford to lose disability right now unless I am working and able to maintain the full-time thing. My mate is totally obsessed with money and thinks I should have magically gone back to who I was before my car accident several years ago so there is that. My good friend keeps pushing me to get jobs at various places where I know I just can't do it. (For example-- a bilingual staff at a telephone hotline for tax help. Problem. I can write Spanish better than I can read it and read it far better than I can speak it. My voice is too soft to be effective on the phone, I can't multi-task, and people who speak Spanish tell me they cannot understand me and I am butchering their language). My primary care doctor thinks I should have gone back to work full-time two weeks after my car accident and the last two times I saw him, I got a bit angry when he asked me, "So, where are you working now?"

I have determined my course of action and I am taking steps toward my goal. I even have a plan B in case the 55b/c program can't come up with a state job for me in the three years allotted for this before I would have to apply again.

I feel like the people around me (except for my aunt and the shrink) are all nagging me to hurry up, go to work full-time and forget about what I want to do. Additionally, the people around me (except for my aunt and the shrink) are acting as if I am nuts and they are the sane ones. My fatigue is real. I am not a faker or a poser. The last several years have been really really taxing to say the least. I now have sleep apnea (I love my c-pap machine and before that, I felt like I was sleepwalking through life) and supposedly I now have "hypertensive heart disease, undifferentiated, without hypertension" (a gift from the pc doc and I may have to go on a cholesterol-lowering drug if the diet hasn't done enough. I've had untreated high cholesterol for seven years now because my good cholesterol is really really high. After awhile, the good cholesterol can stop being as effective and then a script has to be given). I have the fibro-related aches and pains which I treat with exercise. The brain fatigue which I treat with extra sleep. The cognitive difficulties which I keep doing the computer exercises for. And a bunch of people who are nagging me who I keep trying to ignore. Because trying to explain to them my Plan A and Plan B hasn't worked.

If there is anything that I am not perceiving here, please tell me.
Thanks,
spike

The Stoopid 1/14/08

2008-01-13T17:26:00.000-08:00

The ill-tempered man was walking his two little dogs around the abandoned school. I am supposed to believe that they were both on lead at the time of this incident. To me from the distance, one looked like it was on lead. The other I couldn't tell except to say that if it was on a lead, it must have been one of those horrible retractable things.

(F.Y.I. This particular abandoned school borders on some woods. Many people run their dogs there. This is common and acceptable behavior among the townsfolk. The cops don't care. Actually, the cops here don't care about much but that is another story in and of itself, having had several examples of their laissez-faire in my own life.)

My dog and her doggie friend the daemon dawg (mother-in-law's little terrier terror who genuinely loves me cuz I take her running several times a week) tore off to meet the cute little dogs. The foul, petty, little man was afraid of my dog (mid-size) and the daemon dawg (small).

He was yelling at me as I and my cane came up the side of the school building. Normally when meeting other dogs at the abandoned school, there is a quick "Is your dog friendly?" followed by a bit of pointing and the words, "Very friendly. Fixed." My dog is so friendly that dogs that usually fight other dogs don't fight with her. (The last dog did not care for his butt getting sniffed and that led to some rather uncomfortable and intricate situations).

man: "There is a dog law around these parts."
me: "The dogs are under my voice control."
man: (Trying to hit the smaller dog with his plastic shovel and not succeeding) "Some control."
me: (My dog went and sat on the curb. The daemon dawg who was the object of the attempted murder sensibly backed away from the dickless man and sat next to my dog.) "Mister, I am not in the mood to argue with you."
man: (the daemon dawg now a safe distance away from the man barked at him exactly three times) "Some control..blah blah blah..."

The dogs both ran back to me then and so we continued in a direction away from the disturbed man who should be locked up in the state mental place. In my unasked for opinion, he was afraid of all dogs except for his. I did not indicate anything further to the man who appeared to be looking for an argument for whatever reason which I could not ascertain.

The dogs were under my voice control. Just that my voice didn't tell them to do anything. They both handled themselves very well. and I was proud of the daemon dawg in particular who in times past would not have handled herself so well. Seriously though, I have been able to call my dogs (the one I own now and several others) off of a deer in the woods. That is pretty good voice control.

I do understand that technically my dog and the daemon dawg should not have run off to meet two potential doggie friends. Technically, he was correct. I know this. I can even accept this although I don't like it. I also understand that swinging at a small dog with a plastic shovel makes one look idiotic. I cannot say that a defense of "It's against the dog laws to attempt to hit a dog" would hold any weight since the jerky man could claim he was afraid of nine whole pounds of dog flesh. But I digress. And any reasons behind his bad behavior is not my business. And his bad behavior does not excuse my bad behavior. I chose not to argue with him because he was a troll of the f2f variety.

So I have plans. I am going to locate the whistle I have somewheres around here-- it is very shrill being one of them rescue-me type whistles for when one is lost in the woods-- and do a bit of training with both dogs in the fenced-in area there which used to be a ball field. I am going to teach them to come back at the sound of the whistle. Yup, sounds like a great plan. The dogs love training and I love doing it. Using the whistle will save on my voice which is rather soft even when projected. And that could also be useful in the woods as well.

spike

Blessed Trinity

2008-01-08T16:46:00.000-08:00

The professionals hand out boxes to all of us. The boxes have covers but we know that there are rainbows in our boxes. We can hear the rainbows twirling around and making giggly noises.

The professionals tell us, "You all need to quiet down and listen to our instructions."

"Fuck your instructions!" someone yells. "You professionals are the stoopids," adds another.
"Your behaviors are unacceptable," the professionals chant together. "You both need a ten minute time-out."

The two go to their time-out chairs smiling, because the rainbows in their boxes are now tap dancing and singing a rather risque drinking song.

The time-out is over. Before the professionals can stop us, we all run to the barred windows. The youngest in the group opens all the windows.

We let the rainbows out of our boxes. They escape through the slits and blow kisses at us as they fly away.
We return to our seats and sit quietly in awe and wonder.

The professionals pass out M&Ms because we are now sitting quietly with our [now empty] boxes and no longer arguing with them about the contents.

Or:
The autistic youngster wants to reach for something and can't manage it so he uses the arm of a friendly adult to get it.
The standard issue kid whines and throws a temper tantrum and maybe climbs up on the furniture and breaks a leg.

Or:
Those that accuse us of not having this other mind thing don't recognize that we do. We are quiet about it. And we are free from the compulsion to arrange the environment into socially acceptable small talk.

spike

Monday MemeDay of Spice

2008-01-06T16:52:00.000-08:00

snagged from Live Journal buddy idiotgrrl

Your Score: Juniper Berries

You scored 75% intoxication, 50% hotness, 100% complexity, and 75% craziness!

You are Juniper Berries!

You're a drunk. No, really. Cool it with the hooch. I used to be fermented but then I got tired of throwing up! -spike

Just kidding. You're really good at adding flavor to boring old life. You can be astringent at times, but once the harshness passes, you're quite relaxing. And you smell good, too. Okay, I like this one. -spike

Link: The Which Spice Are You Test written by jodiesattva on OkCupid Free Online Dating, home of the The Dating Persona Test

The NFL Speaks Up to Fix Patriots Cheating!

2008-01-04T19:44:00.000-08:00

In order to address the complaints and hurt feelings of the rest of the NFL, the commissioner has adopted 10 new "Special Rules" for all New England Patriots games. They take effect immediately, and are as follows:

Special Rules for the Patriots …

1) In the course of an NFL game, if the Patriots go up by more than 31 points, they are not allowed to play offense until the opposing team draws to within one score. (Pats will kick-off after an opposing team's touchdown or FG). Once the team is within one score, the Pats offense may play, but Tom Brady may not, unless: the Pats play with 8 players (including Tom), or the Pats play with 9 players, but 1 player for the Patriots is chosen by the opposing team from the stands. no Patriots linebacker is allowed to play offense, unless that LB is inserted at quarterback. However, Mike Vrabel cannot be quarterback.

2) If an opposing player states "It's like were playing 7-on-5s" (7 offense, 5 defense during practice), such as indicated by Justin Smith, DE, Cincinnati Bengals 10/1/07, the Patriots must take a time out and serve ice cold lemonade or hot tea (weather dependent) to the opposing team. Scones are optional.

3) Once the 31 pt rule is in effect, Patriots may challenge any play, but the opposing team gets veto power over the referee.

4) Once the Pats offense is allowed back onto the field (7 pts), for any forward pass the Pats QB must point to the receiver and call out his number BEFORE passing. If Tom Brady is quarterbacking at the time, he must do that, plus turn the opposing team's water cooler into wine BEFORE passing.

5) Belichick must diagram any Patriots play to the opposing defense and ensure they understand exactly how to disrupt the play. This all must be done within the play clock. If this process is not complete prior to the play clock expiring, the Patriots will be assessed a delay of game and double unsportsmanlike conduct penalties.

6) Randy Moss must play with 10lb ankle weights on each ankle. An additional pound will be added for each TD this season.

7) Wes Welker is not allowed to have "that crazy look" in his eyes. 10 yd, "crazy eyes" penalty assessed.

8) Tom Brady must immediately stop dating supermodels as he will not be allowed to date anyone that is more attractive then the least attractive significant other of an opposing team member (including coaches). He also must start doing commercials for every product imaginable, especially ones where he chants "cut that meat!" or refers to himself "as a 6'5" quarterback with a laser-rocket arm"

9) Bill Belichick is not allowed to be within 100 yards of any infant, for fear that his evil super-genius powers would assimilate such a defenseless creature into the Patriots System. We have already seen this effect on an inordinate amount of chipmunks, squirrels, and 'possum that commit suicide while crossing Rte 1 to reach Gillette Stadium.

10) The Patriots must respect all opposing player’s feelings and apologize for every first down. Touchdowns must be followed by a written apology and a fruit basket presented with a hug.

sapphoq's predictions for 2008

2008-01-02T23:17:00.000-08:00

or, if Jeanne Dixon and

nebris

can do it, then dammit so can I...

JANUARY: Part of downtown Jerusalem will be destroyed by bombing.
FEBRUARY: Pakistan will become a bloodbath. The elections will be fixed. People will riot and be shot to death by the militia on the streets.
MARCH: Pope Benedict will make some asinine proclamation about all scientists who are Roman Catholic must follow his dictates at their jobs and not engage in stem cell research or genetic research.
APRIL: An outbreak of botulism will occur in Atlanta, Georgia.
MAY: President Bush will have surgery for inflamed hemorrhoids.
JUNE: Jimmy Carter will die in his sleep.
JULY: O'Hare Airport in Chicago will be forced to close for three days shortly after the fourth of July due to a bomb threat and the finding of a suspicious substance by a bomb dog named Boozer or Hoosier.
AUGUST: Britney Spears will die from blood poisoning. Traces of heroin will be found in her system and five empty bottles of whiskey in her hotel room next to her bed and in a drawer.
SEPTEMBER:
OCTOBER: News of the impending divorce of Hill the Pill and Bill will be leaked to the public in spite of precautions to keep it a secret.
NOVEMBER: The Republicans/Conservatives/Dominionists will win the election which shall be close.
DECEMBER: Sinead O'Connor will get married and no one will give a shit.

spike

I remember reading Jeanne Dixon's predictions at the end of every year for the next one in the newspapers. Her track record wasn't all that good and I suspect mine won't be either.

sapphoq on life

Herding Cats

2007-12-17T13:22:00.000-08:00

My dog who is part border collie can herd our cats into the corner. When the younger kitty-- who knows not what fear is-- made an escape into the snows the other night via back door, the dog dashed around and around the deck until mate could catch the kitty and bring him back in. The kitty was cross about it. The dog-- delighted whenever she succeeds in rounding them up.

spike

You Tube video-- short-- with cowboys herding cats can be found at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pk7yqlTMvp8

Dog Snoring Problem

2007-12-13T14:53:00.000-08:00

Link

My friend RedBarron has a great solution for snoring dogs. Go take a peak at it. I dare ya.

The Hunter and the Bear

2007-12-07T19:54:00.000-08:00

This one is making the rounds on the web...

A hunter went into the woods to hunt bears. He saw one in the distance. When he went to aim his gun, the bear was gone and he felt a tap on his shoulder. He looked up and it was the bear. The bear asked "Were you going to shoot me?" to which the man replied "Yes, yes I was". The bear said to the man" I will give you two choices. I can either maul you and kill you right here, or you let me have anal sex with you." The hunter, not wishing to be mauled, consented to the anal sex. After the bear was finished, the man went home, vowing to kill the bear.

About a week later, the man returned to the area looking for the bear. just as before, he saw the bear, but when he aimed his gun, the bear was gone, and he felt a familiar tap on his shoulder. It was the bear. The bear told him" I'll give you the same two options." The man, again not wanting to be killed, consented to anal sex again. As the man crawled home, he again vowed to kill the bear.

Another week passed, and the man returned to the area to kill the bear. Again, he saw the bear, and again he raised his gun, and again, the bear was gone. He cringed as he felt that all familiar tap on his shoulder. Turning around, he saw the bear. The bear looked at the man and said, "You're not in this for the huntin', are you?"

Run-on Sentences and Running Feet

2007-12-07T16:49:00.000-08:00

The foot doc's office called today to tell me that the paperwork has been filled out for me to get a handicapped placard for the car, and to advise that I should make an appointment for a fitting of the ankle braces he will be making for me [and I will be getting] in January or sometime thereafter.

It's been five years [I still think it was four, I guess I lost a year in there somewheres] since my accident. I had wrestled with the idea of getting a parking permit but then decided that a medic alert bracelet was the way to go. After I started falling more often, the p.c. doc advised a cane rather than a placard. Things were bad then with the walking and falling but not nearly as bad as they are now. The chirodoc was willing to sign for an accessible parking permit back then but legally chirodocs aren't allowed to. So off I went with Benjamin Copernicus Galileo [the name of my cane] and some inane determination to only use it when the weather sucked.

I started falling even more-- and I am now more prone to falling to the right, since the vertigo makes my world spin to the left in the direction of the brain damage which caused the vertigo-- and have succeeded in wrecking the right ankle the last two times to the point where my slow since the accident pace became even slower and really painful. Interestingly enough, when I am walking the dog on a lead, I don't fall nearly as much. I have taken some tumbles with the cane and an almost equal number without. I don't tell the docs that the dog helps me stay upright because it sounds stupid and made up.

At any rate, I wound up being sent to the foot doctor. The foot doctor turned out to be a foot surgeon, a fellow of foot surgery, with feet x-ray machines and buzzy machines in his offices. Everyone else there was walking out with orthopedic shoes so I figured I too would wind up with the special shoes and an admonishment to lose weight. Not so.

While the vertigo and falling to the right has made the right foot "worse" [it used to be the stronger of the two], the foot surgeon informed me that my feet were fucked since day one, that they "are totally turned in," and here is the left foot brace, the right one isn't in but the office will call you, and I'm making you customized ones for January. Oh and by the way, you may need an operation on your right foot say in March or April and you may not. To tighten up the ligaments is what he told me. Whatever.

The first snow/ice storm of the season showed up. My difficulty walking around from parking lots to buildings safely prompted me to yield to the idea of a handicapped parking permit, especially since I do not care to break the right foot. And I've spent several days home being unwilling to brave the ice even with one brace and a cane. Odd how societal judgments and the judgments of those who should know better have coalesced into a brief feeling of "o.m.g., I'm taking advantage of the sys-tem" because now I really need the placard. I suspect with the fatigue issues that it might have been a good idea before. Before when I gave more of a shit about what other people thought. As I continue in the punking out of my brain and body, I am much less inclined to consider the ignorance and stupidity of others when making decisions that effect my well-being. This is my life that I am living, Briella [brilliant brain a bit sideways] and body doing a slow tap dance edging slowly toward mortality, my pain. My fucked up feet.

I don't seem to be pigeon-toed or anything and I don't know the name of this condition which he has firmly indicated I've always lived with during this lifetime. He also stated that losing weight will not help this one. I am relieved that there actually is something demonstrably "wrong" which is now worthy of treatment with these braces [the right one not being in yet and the customized ones not made yet]. And glad that I get to go to doctors even when I don't want to. Cuz lots of people in the world got stuff wrong with them and they don't get to go to a doctor.

The foot surgeon asked me what brought me here and I looked at him. "My feet." People don't usually go to a foot doc because their ambulation is just ducky. None of the fellow sufferers in the waiting room looked like they were training for the Olympics Sprinting Team. I didn't look like it either, though I certainly was the youngest specimen there. The thing is though, I never liked running. I never ran well. The kids in school used to make fun of the way I ran. My fastest run [when forced to run like during gym class] was and remains rather slow and tedious. Well, now I know why. My feet are fucked.

So the first couple of nights after learning about my fucked feet, I sat on the recliner looking at the two monstrosities which nature or genetics had gifted me with. Periodically I would mutter, "You two feet are fucked." As a sense of rationality returned to invade this really morass demonstration of self-pity, I realized that the fucked feet of today look the same as the feet I've had my whole life. So really I could just stop that. I did.

The other spot of news is that after ?two or ?three years of putting up with the stupid moronic VESID people [O.V.R. in other places] my third and current VESID overlord-- oh, I mean vocational rehabilitation counselor-- has finally relented and has agreed to refer me to the local R.C.I.L. for job handling/ job coaching rather than continually trying to force me to go to the other local agency which is merely a cover for sending people to work in the sheltered workshop after not being able to "find" them a "job" that "they can do."

This latter accomplishment was not without pain. I had to tell the VESID overlord [the more accurate term for all of them in this particular region, sorry] what "job" I wanted to do. I made up five or seven possibilities off the top of my head so she wrote the Individualized Employment Plan for the lowest paying one-- "Animal Care Worker."

I met with a job handler from R.C.I.L. this week and I was immediately comforted-- so much so in fact that after she mentioned that what I tell the R.C.I.L. folks they cannot tell VESID, I looked at her and said simply, "They suck." Because they do.

The first VESID overlord and her boss had both tried to convince me to go to the cover agency for the sheltered workshop, telling me that this is what would be best for me and claiming that the R.C.I.L. job coaches had a waiting list. The second overlord was relatively useless and aside from the meeting with the first overlord, him, and someone from the rehab hospital who was there to advocate for me, I have no memories of him other than that his hand takes on the role of a limp fish when shaking it. And he had almost non-existent eye contact.

He was also willing to go along with whatever overlord #1 had recommended, including the idea of where I should go to get job services. I know that working in a sheltered workshop, making slave wages because by law they are allowed to pay much less than the minimum wage for their lousy piecework "opportunities," is decidedly not in my best interest. And the job handler told me there is not or has there ever been a waiting list for job-related services at R.C.I.L. What I am conveying in this post is that from my sitting down point, the VESID folks have been rather reckless with reality.

We went over many forms and I had the opportunity to correct some of the written nonsense that the VESID office had sent over. One of those things is the notation that I might possibly have balance problems with a question mark. The first overseer had thought this because I walked into a column outside of her stupid little cubicle several years ago now when I really wasn't thinking very clearly and my t.bi.-related vision and perceptual problems were worser. I do not have an inner ear problem and thus no balance problem. I have an unsteadiness in my fucked up feet. I did remember to ask the job handler nicely to please attempt to have the VESID idiots fix that little gem to reflect the medical truth. Rather pedantic on my part I know. It is what it is and I am what I am.

Another thing was the claim that VESID wants me to follow along on several jobs-- follow alongs are job trials to see what I might like doing-- when in fact that was my idea, not theirs. The job handler told me that the purpose of the job trials is to see what I might like to do and be able to do. Now I suspect that having to come up with a definitive list of "what I want to do" was just another stall tactic. The third overlord had told me if I didn't know what I wanted to do, there would be a round of vocational testing [but alas, no vocational counseling connected to the testing] and quite frankly, I've had enough bloody testing. Since telling her what companies I want to work for wasn't sufficient, I had had to make up some occupations. Another exercise in futility.

I informed the job handler that I've been accepted into the state 55 b/c program and that if the Thruway would hire me as a toll collector, that is my first choice. That sort of job would actually be sufficient to pay the bills. Also, since "old learning is better than new learning" per the neuropsych doc I think I could do well there. I was a part-time per diem toll collector before the accident and I suspect I might have some success there if I can get in under the 55 b/c thingy and work within the accommodations that I will need.

Second choice is doing anything at the O.M.R.D.D. offices. There are some truly dedicated human beings working there. I'd done serious incidents investigations at the last fuckhole and that was the part of the job that I was best at and enjoyed the most. It was job handler's turn to be surprised I guess. The VESID overlords hadn't bothered to note any of my skills or any of my specific work-related accomplishments before the accident.

There were some other choices in there and other ideas being kicked around. One of the things that I now have courtesy of the traumatic brain injury is that in conversation I can be somewhat of a motor mouth, hopping around topics with no perceived organizational schemata. It's called random chaotic style. It doesn't bother me nearly as much as it seems to bother others. I think of it as part of my innate brain-damaged charm. If I can't have grace and flowing words, then by golly I can have random chaotic style. It is much worse in unstructured settings. At least I've managed to get the cursing under fairly tight control. The meeting with the job handler I think was supposed to be a bit more structured but I just wasn't able to respond well to her attempts at structure. The meeting took an hour and a half as a result. The next meeting [topic: resume] is scheduled for earlier in the afternoon.

sapphoq on life

A Circle of Insects

2007-11-29T16:52:00.000-08:00

I have been thinking about stealing spiritual practices from other cultures, particularly [in the Untied States] the indigenous tribes of the Americas. There are new agers, white lighters, wiccans, and some folks who don't know what else to do with their money who are all souped up on shamanism, medicine circles, and other practices which they believe to be the real thing. And because there is an average of a sucker born every minute, there are lots of grown up suckers willing to part with their hard-earned cash to go on vision quests. And there is a market for those glossy slick-backed "Medicine Cards" with the nice drawings of Bear and Shells and stuff on them.

Awhile back, I posted to an e-group which I no longer belong to asking about how come no one ever claims the cockroach as their special animal. Everyone wants wolves, lions, tigers, bears, eagles, buffaloes, deer, frog. But absolutely no one wants to have any sort of spiritual relationship with a cockroach. The cockroach is the most successful evolutionary experiment, able to adapt under a myriad of conditions, and quite the traveler too. The spiritually bent should be fasting and begging for Cockroach to be their power insect or totem animal. But alas, not.

Now and again, there are folks who assign mythical beasties to the four cardinal directions or elements in a working circle. Dragons and unicorns abound, right along with the more traditional undines and salamanders. Phoenix and sirens, gargoyles and mermaids yet nary a real insect is noted.

For those who are so inclined, I present the Circle of Insects!

earth: deer tick, cockroach, wood bee, head louse, termite, house fly, ground killer wasp

air: flea, white-faced hornet, pubic crab, fruit fly, horse fly, jumping spider, hover fly

fire: firefly, honey bee, wasp, sweat bee, fire ant, red ant, scorpion

water: skate, diving beetle, mosquito, springtail, noctuid moth, leech, stone fly

sapphoq healing t.b.i.

Finding Common Ground

2007-11-27T18:13:00.000-08:00

The things you learn in maturity aren't simple things such acquiring information & skills. You learn not to engage in self destructive behavior. You learn not to burn up energy in anxiety. You discover how to manage your tensions. You learn that self pity & resentment are among the most toxic of drugs. You find that the world loves talent but pays off on character. You come to understand that most people are neither for you nor against you: they are thinking about themselves. You learn that no matter how much you try to please, some people in this world are not going to love you - a lesson that is at first troubling & then really quite relaxing.

-- John W. Gardner

excerpts from my own posts at http://pagannation.com :

Well, okay.
There are a bunch of things here that I don't know or can only guess at and perhaps we agree on some of those?

I don't know how person X is as a mother.
Person B has seen person X with her kids.
My fellow wingnut friend C for whom I feel some affection has not observed Person X with her kids.
I will rely on the observations made by Person B-- that Person X is a good mother to her kids.
And yes, I have to agree it is a low blow to any mother to be accused of poor parenting or things similar or worse.

I don't know how many screws loose any of us have.
Is having one big screw loose worse than having two or three little ones loose? What proportion of big screws to little screws determine the severity of the rattling around of a brain?

Even if any or some or two or all of us do have screws loose, is that germane to the original argument?
Is my not being entirely sure of the original argument an indication of too much caffeine [actually caffeine calms me down] or too little caffeine or
an indication of my own brain injury gone awry from fatigue or
perhaps that I've just stumbled into this forum haphazardly?

I don't remember getting born.
A bunch of other people assure me that I was born.
On earth.
So if they are lying, is there a chance that I am a martian viking transplant?
How do I know?
What are my sources?
How valid are they?
Can they overcome my innate strangeness and sense of otherness?

Or, maybe you think I am a whack shack and in that respect as bad as Alan Webster or should be committed or a funny farm escapee or
any number of things.

Here I have to admit that vingnut, whack shack, mental derangement, screws loose, schizo, hallucinating... are just words to me and rather devoid of meaning or threat.

And if you were to tell me that I need "mental help" of some sort, since you aren't my medical doctor I am free to discount that conclusion while admitting that my posting is off the wall.

Yet if you began calling me a Untied [spelling on purpose] Statsian version of Alan Webster [http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article787073.ece], I am free to examine the evidence and conclude that there really isn't any evidence for me being an Alan Webster [http://www.guardian.co.uk/crime/article/0,,1793469,00.html] in the making.

As Nathaniel Branden would say [badly paraphrased here] what other people think about me today can never be as important to me as what I know to be true about me.

What I am trying to convey here is that as long as PersonX knows he is not as sick as despised scumbag, not as bad as despised scumbag, not like despised scumbag; and there is no legal evidence that he has ever done things similar to the things despised scumbag has done [shudder],

isn't it more important that PersonY and crew know that he is not despised scumbag, as bad as despised scumbag, or like despised scumbag in respect to that sort of stuff?

This is a forum. It is a lively forum and there are some exciting people here yet it is a forum. Whatever mix of people on this forum may like me, hate me, think ill of me, wish me well, don't have many thoughts about me at all, it is still just a forum.

The sun will more than likely rise and set somewhere in the world at some time tomorrow, my dog will still wish for me to take her for a walk and spend time with her, there will still be laundry to do and bills to pay and frogs for me to feed, and so on.

Marian Zimmer Bradley said, "The world will go on as it will, and not as you or I would have it."

Bowing out now,
spike q. whack shack

***

To practice self-assertiveness is to live authentically, to speak and act from your innermost thoughts and feelings, as a way of life-allowing for the obvious fact that there may be circumstances in which you wisely choose not to do so-for example, when confronted by a hold-up man.

— Nathaniel Branden

My self-respect is not based on how well I defend myself in a public forum
*or on whether or not I choose to defend myself at any given time in a public forum or in real f2f life
*or on people choosing to think less of me because of my choices in this matter.

I don't operate under the same rules or shoulds as you do.
Different strokes for different folks.

Of course it is always acceptable for someone to choose to defend themselves, their reputation, their character, their abilities, their family members...

The operative word here for me is "choice."

There are times when I may deliberately choose not to defend myself. When I choose thusly, it is an active conscious choice. In my own case, my level of self-respect does not dictate my actions or my choices when it comes to arguments and disagreements.

For example, lets' say you or someone here accuses me of being as bad as despised scumbag or a pedohead or another Alan Webster [http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/legal/article752141.ece] or really sick in the head, demented, needing medication, or any other thing. My choice to defend myself or not will be based on several factors.

When I choose to defend myself, my self-respect is not one of the determinants in making that conscious deliberate choice.
When I choose not to defend myself, it is not a sign that my own self-respect is sinking or not existing at a good enough level.

I appreciate that self-respect may be one of the factors for others when they decide to defend their character. It just doesn't weigh when I have to pick which battles I will fight, that's all...

spike

I am a viking vingnut or is that a wiking wingnut
or maybe a ...

***

Of course it is always acceptable for someone to choose to defend themselves, their reputation, their character, their abilities, their family members...

The operative word here for me is "choice."

There are times when I may deliberately choose not to defend myself. When I choose thusly, it is an active conscious choice. In my own case, my level of self-respect does not dictate my actions or my choices when it comes to arguments and disagreements.

For example, lets' say you or someone here accuses me of being as bad as despised scumbag or a pedohead or another Alan Webster [ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Webster] or really sick in the head, demented, needing medication, or any other thing. My choice to defend myself or not will be based on several factors.

When I choose to defend myself, my self-respect is not one of the determinants in making that conscious deliberate choice.
When I choose not to defend myself, it is not a sign that my own self-respect is sinking or not existing at a good enough level.

I appreciate that self-respect may be one of the factors for others when they decide to defend their character. It just doesn't weigh [in] when I have to pick which battles I will fight, that's all.

spike

***

My intention was not to call into question Person X's ability to parent and nurture her children.
Nor was my intention to smear or besmirch anyone's character in any way.

Actually, my intention was to find a tiny bit of common ground with you rather than to concentrate on our differences.

Perhaps you or anyone may wish to ask Friend C why she said the things she said. Or not as you choose.

It is not for me to speculate upon the actions of another. For me to guess would be mental masturbation. My brain is battered enough from thinking my way through everyday life.

I endeavor not to engage in sorting people into categories such as [opposing camps]. Usually, I will take people at their word unless there is a preponderance of credible evidence to the contrary.

...The rest of my post did have something to do with all of the name-calling, character assassination, labeling on the parts of many of us here regardless of "sides" and alliances-- and other thoughts and observations that flitted through my head at the time that I was typing it.

As always, you or anyone is free to disregard or to place my name on the iggy collection.

If it don't apply, let it fly.

Kyrra,
spike

***

Your balls don't itch?
I was just about to suggest athlete's foot cream...I don't see why that wouldn't help itching in damp places.

I will duck now.
spike

***

No. I'm saying [that if] you stick your feet on your balls often enough they can suffer from fungus.

Okay now I am really ducking.

spike

***

Warm coffee salve applied to the balls will relieve the itch temporarily.

I read that in a book somewhere.

spike

***

Regarding Person Z's chocolate balls.
No actual balls were harmed in the creation of this treat.
Had they been harmed, we would have told you so...

Actually, his balls are like fluffy bunnies.
They reproduce, however not on this plane.
The chocolate balls have reproduced themselves on an astral parallel plane of existence, thus we are free to offer you Person Z's chocolate balls for loving and gushing without impinging upon the immoral scrutinies of anyone observing us for fear of us becoming a mob of thinkers and doers--

On the second day of solstice, my lover gave to me
two chocolate balls and a...

spike q. chocolate freak

***

Oh goody an assassination.
Two tickets for front row seats please and some popcorn heavily buttered.

Two-four-six-eight!
Who do we assassinate?

Oh what's that? Yuck, no thanks. I don't eat hot dogs and I don't allow my dog to either.

spike

***

Quote: Spike, you have been assassinated!

I have resurrected myself with the help of a holy pot of coffee poured onto my smoldering remains.

*Ta-da*
Never better.
Wow. More muscles even.
And I'm thinner and blonder.

Walking along in the woods by the coliseum, my dog brings back a limb-- looks like a right forearm-- of--
oh no it couldn't be!-- Person R!

Crap! Hey everyone, Person R has been assassinated!
Oh what to do, what to do.

Doggie, put down that limb!

spike

Quote:

Here's how it works:

I just assassinated you! You are now dead. Or you can resurrect yourself and assassinate someone else. All you have to do is just post in the assassination forum this entire post...

Okay, I can't tell you who assassinated me, or I'll lose! So, I have chosen to resurrect myself and assassinate you!

GAME ON!!!

***

I don't believe that our government has proven itself to be adept at keeping very many secrets secret.

Nope, I don't believe that Bush "ordered" 9/11, plotted it, caused it, was in cahoots on it, or any other thing.

http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/military_law/1227842.html

http://www.debunking911.com/

http://www.daylightatheism.org/2006/05/loose-marbles-i.html

***

I do not believe that President Bush is a puppet of the Religious Right. There are many assumptions about his specific religious beliefs floating around

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A24634-2004Sep15.html

however, I am personally appalled at some of his policies. There is some evidence for the idea that the agendas of the Religious Right are being pushed through the Senate and Congress in the form of various laws.

http://www.theocracywatch.org/
The folks at Theocracy Watch are based from Cornell U.

Call me reactionary or a crackpot or any other name if you will, I care not.

Bottom line for me is I don't particularly care for what is happening to this country in terms of religiosity and how that effects policy-making.

We disagree on this last I am sure and I for one agree to disagree peaceably.

spike

***

Yep, well-versed on that aspect.
And opinionated too.

I don't happen to believe that Bush is anyone's pawn.
I do believe that the preponderance of evidence points toward the founding fathers [signers of the declaration of independence] were deists rather than christians

and that furthermore, even if the United States was founded as a christian nation, it does not naturally follow that it should remain so today.

spike

***

I like fluffy bunnies coated with shake-n-bake and barbequed.

spike
a wiking wingnut

_________________________
I am a viking vingnut or is that a wiking wingnut
or maybe a ...

***

...am I growing on you like a fungus?

I hear that coffee is a great anti-fungal...

spike q. fungus

Fungi rule. Pictures of fungi altered make great backgrounds for e-stationary.

***

Okay, I am not a fungus then.
A mold?

I must be a mold.

That's it! I'm a mold.

[spike goes wandering off in the direction of coffee and happy pills]

***

sapphoq on life

Woe to Pagan Poop

2007-11-27T16:22:00.000-08:00

Go here:

http://www.outofthedark.com/WitchTower/Portolets/

for an example of a Christian man discriminating against pagan poop.
The resultant mp3 is not to be missed.

sapphoq n friends

Job Ideas for spike q. poet

2007-11-21T18:18:00.000-08:00

*Disclaimer: not necessarily approved of by the local unimaginative VESID/O.V.R. office*

1. Grow hissing cockroaches, crickets, and earthworms-- may distress lover.

2. Photograph frogs.

3. Breed frogs-- too technical. Apparently frogs in captivity can't figure out how to do it without
human intervention.

4. Rescue unwanted or hurt amphibians-- lover thinks fifteen frogs are enough.

5. Raise llamas--- may really distress lover.

6. Trail guide and llama trekking-- requires llamas.

7. Breed snakes-- lover will move out.

8. Receptionist at very quiet office with no telephone lines.

9. Starving artist-writer.

10. Inspirational speaker.

11. Career coaching.

12. Have year round yard sales.

13. Sell things on the web-- requires things that people will want to buy.

14. Drive a truck-- spinal problems will rebel.

15. Teacher's aide-- hate kids in groups of more than one.

16. Landlord-- been there, done that, ain't doing that to myself again.

17. Event planner-- poor organizational skills.

18. Be a clown or stand-up comic.

19. Start a new religion-- bad karma.

20. Grow flowers in a greenhouse-- requires greenhouse.

21. Professional poker player.

22. Raise corn, hay, and other stuff-- requires farm.

23. Own a human services agency-- would rather manually shovel cow shit.

24. Restaurant hostess at a very slow restaurant.

25. Cook at a small diner-- people will die.

sapphoq healing t.b.i.

On Poetry, Writing, and stuff like that

2007-11-15T21:27:00.001-08:00

I started writing poetry in fourth grade.

It wasn't until high school that I began experimenting with prose poems
without rhyming words at the end.

Although I like to play with words using internal rhyming,
alliteration, and other stuff like that, I am lousy when it comes to traditional rhyme and meter schemes. Consequently, almost all of my poetry is written in the style of prose poetry.

Even with a rhyming dictionary such as the one that can be found at:
http://www.rhymezone.com/, my attempts at rhyming are un-good!

Here is my latest endeavor-- the beginning of a prose poem:

The kitten ran out into the street, then stopped halfway.
He strutted up to me, staring at 60 pounds of blond
fur trying to hide behind my legs.
"Oh, what a cute kitten!" I said to the woman on the curb
as I dragged the scared dog out from her hiding place.
"You want him?" she asked.
"He's going to the pound in an hour along with his
two brothers and one sister."

Rhyming used to be much more popular and in my opinion, people used to be better at it. Some rhymed poetry has become classic.

Roses are red,
violets are blue.
Sugar is sweet,
and so are you.

There are other variations out there.
Roger Miller wrote this one:

They say roses are red
And violets are purple,
Sugar is sweet
And so is maple surple.

Here are a couple more that I've heard:

Roses are blue,
violets are red.
If you believe this,
you're sick in the head.

Roses are red.
Violets are bluish.
My audience has all fled
cuz at rhyming I'm newish.

Violets are blue
and roses are red.
I'm 'llergic to them it's true,
so I'll have the fake ones instead.

My dad is a big fan of Shel Silverman, thus as a kid I got to hear dad's renditions of many of his songs and verses.
Dad would recite random ditties such as
"I never saw a purple cow. I never hope to see one. But I can tell you this right now-- I'd rather see than be one."
And the ultra-risque "Ladies and gentlemen, take my advice. Pull down your britches and slide on the ice."
He would sing out, "There's a dead skunk in the middle of the road" whenever there was one and he knew all the words to fun songs like "I don't want a pickle, I just want to ride my motor-sickle. And I don't want to die. I just want to ride my motorcy------cle."
He too liked the sound of words.
I never read anything he wrote though and I wonder now if he himself has written anything.
I shall have to ask him about that.

I remember when I got older that dad had a subscription to Omni right along with his subscription to Playboy.
I counted myself lucky because I was able to read both.
I never did tell my mother about the Playboy articles. She wouldn't have appreciated it.
Dad also was interested in psychology, an interest which I share. He allowed me free reign to his own book collection, much as my maternal grandmother did. I read what I wanted there and there was no judgement about material being "too old" for me.
Things I didn't understand he explained in ways that I understood.

My mother sold me on Robert Lewis Stevenson and I spent lots of time reading his stuff.
My mother didn't break out into spontaneous song or verses but she did encourage me to write my own poems.
And she knew that Saturday was Library Day as far as I was concerned.

Many Saturdays I walked the couple miles to the library where I would search the aisles for books to check out. I always walked to and from the library, although the buses were available and I knew how to use them. On one such walk, my younger friend Richard and I threw ice cream cones off a bridge and one landed inside a police cruiser. On others, Richard or Grace and I stopped at the local greasy pizza spot for slices or bought cherries off the vendor on the corner. If no friends were around to go with me, I went alone. I loved the library. I can still see the outside of our neighborhood branch, the blue aluminum-looking framed windows, the take out desk, the houses and stores and streets along the way.

I enjoyed the school library also. We had a one-legged librarian-- she had bone cancer and used crutches rather than a fake leg, I don't know why-- who taught me how to find books in the library, was willing to allow some classmates and I access to the Life magazine issue with the pictures of embryos and fetuses, and always listened to what we had to say. I remember going through reading binges-- one month I read all of the biographies of scientists in the library. I also went through binges of fiction from other countries, mysteries, and series. I was a serious child. Words were everything to me. I was a word nerd.

Those trips to the library, along with helping the one-legged elementary school librarian shelve books, parents who fostered my love of words all contributed to my desire to have my stuff published. I've had lots of stuff published now and yet I can still remember the first acceptance letter, and getting a copy of the first zine with my words in it.

sapphoq the word nerd on life

Four Years

2007-11-11T16:03:00.000-08:00

Last week I passed my four year anniversary since my car accident and my traumatic brain injury. I thought somehow I would be working by now. Although I am closer to working now than I've been. Yeah, I am writing a novel and that is cool. To me though, that doesn't really "count" until the contract has been signed and an advance check is in my sweaty hands. I have one potential job substituting for a dishwasher should they get sick and another possibility to work for a friend who is manager at a restaurant. I don't think I will mind washing dishes once in awhile. Working at the friend's restaurant-- well, I gotta start over again somewhere. I haven't even been able to get an interview to deliver newspapers. So I will take what I can get and remember it is just for now, just until I can find something else.

I still have my vision problems, the mild expressive aphasia, and the occasional vertigo. As far as medical experts say, traumatic brain injury is permanent. We improve over time at some stuff, especially if we keep working at it but the basic brain injury itself is there and will be there. Folks say that "the brain can regenerate isn't that amazing?" sort of thing until I am sick of hearing it. Again, I will tell yas that yes, some neurons can regenerate however they do not always reconnect to the correct halves [causing cognitive slowdowns] or at all to anything [causing a central nervous system tremor which yes I do have].

I will never be who I was. I won't lie for the sake of the comfort of others and claim that who I am is a new improved model because it isn't. I don't believe that "all things happen for a reason" or that "I'm right where some god wants me to be" or that "there are no true coincidences." What I think is that life is sacred-- neither fair nor unfair-- and that it is the finite part of our selves that requires and maybe even demands meaning, thus we create it. I don't particularly feel bound by any compulsion to have reasons and lessons for learning. I think that life is far beyond our petty little explanations. Most other folks I know find comfort in believing that there is some sort of grand plan. That stuff doesn't help me though so I dumped it.

Some things have improved. My hearing-- which was supersonic before my accident and right on the borderline of needing a hearing aid or two afterwards-- has re-established itself into the supersonic category as per the last audiology test this summer. The addition of a c-pap machine after two sleep studies and a diagnosis of sleep apnea has really helped me to have a life [although it takes me much longer than average to get into REM sleep, at least I am dreaming again at night]. I keep working on my aphasia and now most folks don't notice it. I got involved with an incredimail creators' group [thanks Jeremy Crow] and that has been of immense help to me in restoring motivation.

If the accident didn't happen, we would have been better off financially and I would not have had my career viciously kicked out from under me. If suffering builds character and strength, I certainly could have done with a bit less of both of those things. In a perfect world, folks who smoke pot would be picked up by the magic yellow submarine bus and driven anywheres they had to go. [The driver who ran my car into a house was high on marijuana]. In a perfect world, we wouldn't need lawyers to protect us from our places of employment after we get hurt, little kids wouldn't be abused or die of starvation and diseases and all stuff like that. But it is not a perfect world. So I just have to do the best I can [most days] with what I got. As Nathaniel Branden would say, "It is what it is."

By this time next year, I hope that my novel will be written and submitted. I also hope to be working at least part-time at a job that I can tolerate. Still be married and in love with my husband and he with me. Saving money for my next cross-country trip. [I want to go every year or every two years for the rest of my life]. And still enjoying my animals, the woods, and life.

spike

I am writing a novel, as I've said before and thus am behind once again in visiting all of your blogs and commenting. Sorry for that. I will get to visiting all of yas to leave comments over the next few weeks or so.

And anyone who has a dog, if you haven't watched The Dog Whisperer, you ought to give it a whirl. He has most excellent ideas about dog psychology and communication. My current dog who is really angelic has become even more perfect since I started doing some of the things he suggests.

Places

2007-10-06T21:13:00.001-07:00

That excitement of finding new places or re-finding old ones.
Pieces of me scattered in places I had never been.
I set off in April alone to find those pieces and indeed
they have been found. I knew. Never any doubt or question.

In my brain, I have snapshots of the many places I've been.
Places I have loved and places of tragedy or apathy.
Sacred places and places that have lost their holiness to me.
I have lived and loved and died many times over.

I have always been able to navigate through fairly well even those cities which I've visited after lapses of decades.
I remember how to get around neighborhoods and I can still see houses, apartments, stores, trees.
There are very few maps in my world; and very little need to ask strangers for directions.
An acute sense of direction combined with almost no sense of distance and a marked indifference to time.
Time leaks onto the fabric of the pages of my life,
muddying the words therein. I can still sing the words and I do.
I can read upsidedown with no problem.
I can write with two hands in various combinations of left, right, forward, backwards, rightsideup, upsidedown.
These things I have always taken for granted.
A long list of "Can't everyone?"

Just like the phone numbers from childhood and the addresses I can still recall.
First memory-- learning how to walk. And the revelation of a secret tryst inherent.
I was on the second floor of a house being encouraged by an old Italian man with missing fingers
to walk around the coffee table with no hands to steady me.
That old Italian man turned out to be the father of my step-father.
That is how old the affair of my mother and step-father was.
She was still married to my dad at the time.
From that memory, I understood how the two of them had met.
My mother had happened to hire an old Italian woman as a babysitter.

Odd. Almost everyone with a traumatic brain injury winds up with deficits in memory.
I am not one of those. I tested in the 99th percentile in both working and long-term.
My t.b.i.-er friends all tell me that they can't remember. I can't forget.

I did forget for a time who I was before my brain injury.
I could not describe my self pre-bonk.
And then random memories of my life began to return at random times.
Not anything I'd been counting on or even expected to happen.
More memories to add to an already bulging mental scrapbook.

Oh, I did forget how to cook.
The burnt pot of wilted herbs in a smoky kitchen told me so.
Cooking, like so many other things now, not automatic pilot.

I cannot take much for granted.
No. Having walked with death, I've been catapulted into life.
Vision like a permanent acid trip took some getting used to.
The world was too fast. I got used to my own pace, my own music.
I've "adjusted." Those who say otherwise know not of what they speak.
Yes, today I can describe my character traits before the accident.
Today, that doesn't feel important.

My mother told me when I was moving out, "You can never go home again."
I thought that meant she would not take me back in. I was too traumatized to care.
She had lost me through her abuse years before I was able to leave her house.

I understood a different meaning to not going home again many years later.
That people and places change, that my memories of those people and places
were expected to dull to inaccuracy, that returning does not render magical healing of heartbreak.
She was wrong.
So fundamentally wrong
in ways that I cannot explain and don't want to.

I have gone home again.
To places where I had never been before.

sapphoq healing t.b.i.

spike manifesto

2007-09-20T16:27:00.000-07:00

I am spike. I am who I am and not who you want me to be. I was never good at being what you wanted me to be and now I am even worse at it. So I gave that up. I have my own way of being, my own dreams. I have my own timetable. What you think I should be able to do by now means nothing in my world. I am healing. I am experiencing a remarkable albeit slow recovery process. Nothing is automatic anymore. Being on manual overdrive is the way it is for me now. I march, skip, dance, and fly to the beat of my own steel drum band.

I am spike. I don't "look" disabled. Casual observers do not recognize my double vision in one eye or my physical pain or my expressive aphasia which I have learned to work around. Only doctors note the hyper-reflexia and the ocular-motor dysfunction, sleep apnea and sometimes the fatigue that plagues me. I take naps almost daily. When I don't, I fall more on uneven ground. I don't like falling. So I've learned to manage my energy and to take naps. I can be a citizen of the universe on those days when I am not screaming with fatigue. On days when I exist in a swirl of fatigue, I need solitude and rest. I am comfortable with my own company. This is my brain, my life. Not yours.

I am spike. I do not care much for instructions on standards or how to behave properly or things like that. I compare myself to myself, not to some impossible standard of normalcy. I know that there is much to be said for blending in, for fitting in when and where I am able to. The world does not owe me a living. I intend to work at something just as soon as I can. Try hard to remember that a traumatic brain injury diagnosis means no open machinery, period. That test for factory work that you are dieing to give me is not going to happen. I cannot do it. I am not equipped to work in a factory. Nor am I able to stand on my feet cashiering. Any ability I had to multi-task is dead. I have not given up on myself. I am my own best advocate, not you. You are someone who is being paid to offer a service. I don't engage in false displays of admiration and gratitude when you the professional "helper" finally do something that is in your job description. You don't get to live vicariously off my back any longer.

I am spike. Do not tell me that "mind matters" or show me your stupid green rubber bracelet. I am not placated by meaningless empty platitudes. Do not tell me that you "know" what or how I feel unless you have had to have three sets of six very long needles stuck into the back of your skull in order to ease the severe constant t.b.i.-induced headache. We are all alone in our own skins. You better hope and pray with all the fervor that you possess that you never have to deal with the things I've had to face in the past almost three years. You may not be able to get through it as well as I have.

I am spike. I cannot bend. My body doesn't allow it. When I am able to work on the garden or rip up carpeting, I have to do it my own way-- sitting. Do not criticize my lack of speed unless you are willing to offer your help. I am not emotionally invested in doing anything because you say I should or at your whim. This is the way of it. I am also not interested in hearing any wangst about "how difficult it is to live with [someone who has] a t.b.i." I don't complain loudly about how hard it is to live with a neuro-typical. Take your wangst to a support group for families and friends. I claim my right not to listen to it and not to get caught up in it. I have no time for bullshit.

I am spike. I am not interested in your pity or your displays of affection. I do not want to be swallowed in your vampiric bear hugs or have the life sucked out of me by your neediness. I have no energy to spare. I don't care for your crises or your drama. If you cannot relate to me friend to friend, I will reject your overtures. Anger is my truest friend. If you are afraid of my anger, chances are that any interconnection between us will be limited. If you are looking to get me "healed" of my anger or want to convert me to your religion or your way of being, save your breath. If you want to be my friend, you must remember that I am living on borrowed time. Those of us who have a nodding acquaintance with Death are forever changed. I offer no apologies for my attitude. I am not a t.b.i. I am spike. I can be a great friend. Or I can leave you in the dust as I and my dog go wandering off into the sunset happily.

I am spike.

sapphoq healing t.b.i.

Hints for living

2007-09-12T05:36:00.001-07:00

I declare myself inspired by both
ranting dyke: http://ranting-dyke.insanejournal.com/
and tigresslilly: http://tigresslilly.insanejournal.com/ .
Kudos and thanks.

Hints for survival while employed by a human servitude agency:

1. Keep looking for another more saner job. Sanity of existence is one benefit that you will never hear about at your human servitude agency. Sanity of existence is priceless.

2. Don't go to office parties or dinners unless you wish to be accosted by the c.e.o who absolutely must dance with you while the d.j. is playing "It's Your Thang. Do what you want to do..." and experience him shaking his thang. Alcohol does not account for all random acts of bad behavior.

3. Remember that you have a life. The other workers do not know this. Keep it up front. Say no to overtime. If you never say no, then your yesses won't mean anything at all.

4. The people you work with and for are not your buddies. When push comes to shove, they will rat you out in order to gain brownie points. Anyone who says, "Trust no one here. Except for me." upon first introductions should be watched.

5. You are expendable. When you wind up in a car wreck, the human servitude agency will quickly forget that you too are human. Instead, they will call you and argue with you about meaningless paperwork when you are sleeping 20 hours a day because now you have a traumatic brain injury. They will also fax you a safety committee form to the place where your mate works. The form will ask, "How can this accident be avoided in the future?" Knowing that the answer is something akin to, "Ensure that all those who get stoned are picked up by the magic bus instead of being allowed behind the wheel of an automobile," give the paper to your lawyer so he can promptly lose it. When you are down and out, the human servitude agency will not watch your back. You are an insurance
liability now. All insurance companies wish you would go away or drop dead and so does your former employer.

Hints for getting over your loss of a career after a bad car wreck and traumatic brain injury:

1. The helping agency which is supposed to help you get gainful employment that you can do is also a human servitude agency. Remember that. Do not allow any organization or person to take control of your life and how it's gonna be. Advocate for you. There is a high probability that no one else there will.

2. Get rid of toxicity, especially toxic people wherever and whenever you can. They are a strain on the brain. Become involved in disability culture instead.

3. To badly paraphrase the folks at http://www.biausa.org/aboutbi.htm , life is different after a traumatic brain injury. It is still very much a life. Celebrate life.

4. Surround yourself with cute doctors. Fire all ugly docs and replace them with eye candy. When you don't feel well anyways, pretty helps immensely.

5. You are not expendable. You are sacred. Remember this always.

9/11 came and went. I woke up wanting to cry. It is six years later. I grieve for all of us having to live on this planet and trying to kill each other off.

9/08 came and went. 9/8 is my birthday but not the day I was born in a hospital. I have been free from active drug addiction [including the drug alcohol] since 9/8/80.

spike q.

Excuses

2007-08-27T22:21:00.000-07:00

Excuses-- something that I think about quite a bit and guard against. Making excuses can be confused with that amotivational stuff that I fight with due to the t.b.i.

Do I make explanations for myself out in public? Usually, I consider things as "need to know info." The casual human being I meet in a store does not have to know that I have mild expressive aphasia. My talking is too soft but understandable even if I miss a word and find a similar one to stick in there instead. The jogger that appears down the street does not need to know that I might see him as having two heads, two necks, four arms, two trunks somehow connected to one waist like a morphed out hydra. [The double vision in one eye thing].

It is important for me to know when I am tired and to pace myself so my energy is more even.
And important for me to know when taking time for healing turns into a convenient sort of laziness and unwillingness to extend myself and get out there and job-hunt [again]. Maybe I can't do what I used to do. Maybe I can do something. Even if it is part-time, "something" is better than sitting home crying about my unlucky break and all of that. Taking risks is risky.
And yes, I have used my own t.b.i. as an excuse not to take risks because I am afraid.

The c-t scans and the m.r.i.s don't always show the extent of the damage. Mine showed the specific damage in the left frontal-temporal lobe but not the stretching of the axons that were part of the more diffuse damage. No way am I allowing radiation to be shot into my head [PET or SPECT scans] even if some insurance company would like to spend that kind of money.

The hyperreflexia and double vision in one eye,
the refusal of my eye muscles to move unless forced,
the inability of my eyes to work together or with my brain,
the borderline hearing loss [which has now cleared up],
the difficulty navigating on uneven ground,
the true photophobia,
the objective vertigo [not dizziness, not a balance problem--
the room slides to the left],
the pervasive lack of ability to multi-task;
all are things I live with daily.

I don't get to add those things up in an attempt to justify quitting. I don't get to whine about things being harder for me than the average person even if sometimes they might be.

I am alive and I shouldn't be. My car was rammed into a house at a high speed. I opened the one door that wasn't stuck and let myself out of that car. The last neurodoc didn't understand why I "walk so well" as he put it. My hyperreflexia is very high on the spastic scale. I'm glad he wasn't checking me out in the emergency room. Else I might not be walking today. I walked because no one told me that I shouldn't be able to.

I was lazy before my t.b.i. That didn't go away. I got another crack at life. Maybe I can do it a bit better this time. I hope so. I've got to try. And that means attempting to blend in whenever possible and being as productive as I can be in whatever form it takes. It means not blaming others for my problems. It means being able to see my self as a sacred human being, not as my symptoms or my labels. It means ignoring those who tell me that I am not able to. I can wallow in my self-pity or I can turn my excuses into determination to get back up again and get going. I have to keep striving. I am part of this society, a citizen of the world, and I intend to make my contributions to the society that I live in.

sapphoq healing tbi

Friday on the island

2007-08-25T07:36:00.000-07:00

I woke up to a hazy day and a dog who was quite unwilling to take a walk for fear that we were going home and
leaving her behind. She'd seen the Bean bags and suitcases and assumed the worst. I dragged her to the tennis
courts and back.

We made the eight o'clock and headed up route one for Freeport. Once there, we ate at Stickey Buns [overpriced
but delicious] and then we browsed a few stores. I got a pair of fuzzy socks for lounging around in. We walked
around Beans too, neither one of us purchasing anything there. The L.L. Bean's staff are trained to ask everyone
they walk into how they "are." What if I told them the truth?

The truth is husband's oldest sister asked us the other day if we wouldn't want to go with her mother to some rock
city in Jordan or somewheres in October on a tour. Not having the money to drop, we said no. Does it dawn on
these people ever that we have not had an easy time of this for the past three and a half years or so since my car
accident? I'm on disability. I've got no job. My prospects are thin. Running Sores is not exactly telling
anyone that I was golden. I'm being pressured to work full-time and I don't even know if I can manage a part-time
unless I wind up working for myself. I interviewed for an aide position at a t.b.i. day program and possibly even
to sub as a kitchen helper or at a group home. Dude claimed I have to be able to lift for their group homes. I
know they got some where no, one does not need to lift. No dice. I can't even get an interview for delivering
newspapers or working at a store for cripes sakes. Where are we supposed to pull this money from to go on such
a trip in October? Out of our asses? I'm too old to be a prostitute.

After escaping the clutches of Freeport, husband drove us down to Portland so we could eat lunch [overpriced but
delicious] and go to the comics shop. Then a run to the supermarket for him and the Goodwill for me and back to
the island on the two o'clock boat.

The dog was happy to see me and I was happy to see her. Husband's cousin had arrived on island and stopped by to
talk to me. I like her well enough. We click and she doesn't roll her eyes in horror at the thought of surfing
the net or having a computer art program. One of the great things about her is that she is not afraid of the words
traumatic brain injury. [The rest of husband's family dwells on my back injuries which by far is the least of my
troubles at the moment. My father didn't even tell his side of the family that I'd had a car accident]. Cousin
happened to mention the same trip to Jordan. She and her husband will also be going. Mother-in-law has been
complaining about 8-12K she needs for roof work to be done on this cottage in the spring of '08. Bloody hell, why
not go to Jordan?

Mother-in-law has been having stream-of-consciousness over-idealized monologues about her perfect life lately. The
topic over dinner [chicken for me, salmon for them, stringbeans, corn on the cob, and tomato slices for all] was her
very own perfect diet and she eats salt and butter and still manages to keep her weight the same. That along with
the idyllic farm that her mum grew up on and that she visited. I was not having an easy time of things. I cannot
seem to lose weight and barely manage to stay around the same weight. And she has a perfect life and a perfect
upbringing and a perfect everything and perfect trips to England and one other exotic location every year.

I am tired of having to start at the bottom with the job thing. I have been told over and over how smart I am, how
much talent I have and I know these things. The tragedy is that I have not been able to sell myself into a position
of money. It's always start at the bottom, work my way up. My working experience seems always to count for naught.
So with the last job, starting at the bottom once again, I worked my way up and then along comes a moron who had to
get high before driving and there went my well-paying career. I hated it anyway. But this? An insult to my life
once again. I am tired of having to pay for what other people do. I am angry. Seething. In a rage over it and
I cannot find my way home.

After the meeting tonight was reading, computer time, this bitchy synopsis, listening to the neighbor's drunken kids
peel up and down the road, and bed.

spike

Maine-- Friday and part of Saturday

2007-08-18T08:52:00.001-07:00

Friday
This morning, husband and I loaded doggie and a variety of suitcases into the car and we took off for Maine. We got here this afternoon. Husband's eldest sister came to pick us up. Dinner was a cream chicken dish, salad, and peaches and ice cream. Mother-in-law complained during dinner about one of her granddaughers. Granddaughter had moved far away with her lover and hadn't seen my mother-in-law in pretty near a year. Mother-in-law complained about the guests that granddaughter had invited along. Mother-in-law has something wrong with her I think and has probably had her whole life. Because she is rich though, she got to be eccentric rather than subjected to mental hell 'treatment.' That is a story for another time, After dinner was the island A.A. meeting and now a bit of reading before bedtime.The fire is going in the kitchen woodstove which makes things toasty. The skeeters are out full-force tonight and the autumn weather is slowly moving in. It was a relief to get back here after the meeting and away from the little bastards who are flying blood-suckers.The reason for coming up here has been moved from tomorrow Saturday to Sunday evening. And it has become a family of four plus whatever other flotsam plan to show up for lemonade and whatever alcohol will be available. I was a bit put out at first for the party being moved and us not being notified until Wednesday evening. In the end, I decided that it didn't matter to me. Husband was the one who had to take the extra day off of work when he still believed that the party was to be Saturday.We left this morning anyways. I do not enjoy the feeling of being held hostage to someone else's whims. Since this party has dissolved into something less than family, if I'd had my druthers, I woul have elected to come back up here some other week. My homegroup N.A. picnic is Saturday and so I am missing it this year for this non-party up here in Maine. It was supposed to be a big gathering with all the family and some sort of weird-ass christmas tree out front decorated for the occasion. None of that happened. It is what it is. Pretty island and the dog likes it-- two things right there.SaturdayCloudy day.I took the dog for a nice walk.Then husband and I went to the library.I was all set to download my mail to incredimail here at the library hotspot
and the stupid ucking puter will not connect.
it says the adapter is under control by another program.

Going to instructions windows from husband's computer it says
run system 32 root etc and the damn puter
cannot find it.

I will have to fix when I get home
hopefully without a high bloodpressure attack.
I hate my laptop.
husband's just a button connects.
mine doesn't..

Stupid party is tomorrow-- it turns out
just four of us "family" including motherinlaw--
if I knew that iIwoulda just
stayed home.

Meanwhile I am sure iIwill feel better but
I just dont know when,

On the plus side I finally finished and sent in
application for the state program to give me a job.
It is not definite that I will get one but at least
it is sent.

And when I get home I am going to apply to
Goodwill for a part-time job.
Maybe some other places too.

love yas,
spike

The First Cutting

2007-08-01T16:09:00.001-07:00

Disclaimer: Those who are looking for scholarly essays on the witch's holidays based on ancient, historical resources are encouraged to look elsewhere. There are thoughts and memories only. No gnosis. No, not even that.

Some folks in the witching world are celebrating Lugh's Day [as I call it] or Lughnassad or Lammas. At least one group of pagans has gone off to the local park for a picnic and a swim over the weekend. Some other folk got together and had games and such dedicated to Lugh. I didn't. One druid of my acquaintance broadly insists that August 1 is the first day of autumn. Not here.

My second teacher celebrated the Solstices and Equinoxes as the major holidays and hardly gave a passing nod to the other four. Not quite a newbie some years ago, I was amazed to discover during my brief exposure to a witch temple of sorts that I was out of step when it came to holidays. I don't much care now. I still hold the Solstices and Equinoxes as the major days and consider them to be the astronomical marking of each new season. It was only through a flurry of stints in public witch circles that I began to grudgingly acknowledge Sam Hain, Bridhe's Birthday, Belta[i]ne, and Lugh's Day.

Oh, I don't have anything against Lugh. I'm sure he was a grand fellow and very skilled at all that he undertook. I like Bridhe well enough. And Hallowe'en costumes are pretty cool as is fertility rites superimposed upon the driving of cattle through fire to get rid of their fleas and stuff. And I am sorry that the English weather by all accounts is rather crappy. Damn the potato famine too. Yet, I don't live in England or anywheres near there and I am no druid.

I am the grandchild of two dead farmers. My grands bought their farm in their retirement years and worked hard to gain a living out of the cows and the land. My grandmother had quite the green thumb. Anything she planted grew. She planted by the moon. She kept a faithful record of daily temperatures for many years. My grandfather was a dour man who kept making me promise him never to become a farmer. He wore a green cap and had two tractors and a red truck. Grandma understood what I was becoming. Grandpa consoled my fancy for candy and other sweets while fighting his own madness and his tobacco habit. He managed to quit smoking.

In addition to the cows, two dogs, chickens, geese, and barn cats, my grands raised hay. They had hay fields, including one which got infested with pumpkins along the southern edge after my grandfather had dumped pumpkin seeds on a manure pile there. My grands would watch the weather carefully and when there was three days lined up without rain, they would go out toward the end of July or early August and take the first cutting. After cutting, the hay laid down for three days-- and provided the weather co-operated by being dry-- then it was baled and thrown into the creaky ol' black hay wagon, then taken to the barn where it was then transported to the top room.

It was hard sweaty work for two older people, one of them prone to severe untreated depressions. My grandmother could run circles around both my grandfather and the hired kid from down the road when it came to working. A couple of years before he died though, my grandpa had two heart attacks in succession. The second was worse than the first, as is typical. Damage was severe. The cardio doc wanted my grandfather to not lift, not work the farm, not drive the tractors. By April, grandpa was doing all of that and more daily. When he died, it was cancer that took him. His heart remained loyal 'til the end.

My own heart is not into this artificiality of picnics and games. The
artificiality of celebrating Lugh's Day or Lughnassad or Lammas hurt. I stopped doing it. The First Cutting is what has meaning for me, the grandchild of two dead farmers. The first cutting of my memory was the first yield, the first harvesting of the hay. The first cutting prepares the way for the second cutting.

And so in my life, I gather the first fruits of my own endeavors this year and I wonder. I take the dog over to the creek and we watch first and second year bullfrogs dart into the water, swim under rocks, pop out to lay on top of one, sit quietly by a frog hole, test out their voices. The dog wades right in. I hold myself back in wonder and in awe. A slinky blue dragonfly hovers over the weeds growing in a clump by the shoreline. A few birds trill loudly to each other from trees farther away. The natural flow and ebbing of life's tides; the cycles of grow, green, brown, die, begin again; it just keeps going.

I used to be a go-getter. I am no longer. Now I am content to sit by a creek watching and waiting. I gather my thoughts to myself like stray children and I wonder-- will the rain hold off for three days for me this year? Or will my own hay field grow moldy and damp under the onslaught of the summer rains?

spike

9/23/05 Mabon Thoughts of a Heretic

2007-07-28T11:26:00.001-07:00

A bit early for this perhaps but nevertheless...

Nathaniel Branden, The Six Pillars of Self-Esteem. Bantam, New York 1994. p.8

"But if I lack respect for and enjoyment of who I am, I have very little to give --except my unfilled needs. In my emotional impoverishment, I tend to see other people essentially as sources of approval or disapproval. I do not appreciate them for who they are in their own right. I see only what they can or cannot do for me."

Armando Favazza, PsychoBible- Behavior, Religion and the Holy Book. Pitchstone Publishing, Charlottesville, Va, 2004. pp. 227-228.

That self-mutililation may be a morbid type of self-help is not such a far-fetched idea...Consider the Hamadsha, a group of Islamic, Sufi healers in Morocco...Then they dance and slash their heads. This is the moment that the sick participants have awaited. They step forward, dip bread or sugar cubes in the freely flowing blood, and eat the miraculous food in the belief that the power of healing resides in the healers' blood...here the therapists mutililate themselves to benefit the patients...'

"...At another level, however, the symbolism of the behavior suggests something profound, something that is embedded in elemental experiences of healing, salvation, and social orderliness. Without understanding why or how, some self-mutililators seem to tap into these experiences unconscioulsy, intuitively seeking to heal themselves and to restore order to their disordered minds and lives...'

"In shamanisn...the healing of illness and reversal of misfortunes are affected by the shaman's personal contact with the spirit world."

Issac Bonewits, Real Magic. Weiser Books, Boston, 1971. pp148-149, 159.

"...general prayers...Passages are then read from various books...Thus the deity in effect replies to the prayers just offered...sermon...basket...resumes his dialogue with the god, presenting him with gifts, especially bread and wine...'

"The priest now identifies himself with the god by repeating the incantation that turns the bread and wine into the body and blood of the god...If you are a Catholic, this is a literal change...if you are a Prostestant, this is a symbolic change. Somewhere there is a very important difference between these two terms; you can tell because millions of men, women, and children were maimed, mutiliated, and murdered over it...'

"Now the congregation and the priest consume the now tangible god, believing that in doing so they will absorb his power and characteristics....The minister tells the people that their prayers will be granted, that the god is with them, and then dismisses them."

"Note the pattern so far: Supplication-Introduction, Reply from the Deity (or personified group-mind), Identification of Participants with the Deity (same note), Statement of Requests and Statement of Success."

Take the passage by Nathaniel Branden and substitute the word "god" or "higher power" or deity of your choice where it says other people. Thus you now have a description of an impaired relationship with divinity:

"But if I lack respect for and enjoyment of who I am, I have very little to give-- except my unfulfilled needs. In my emotional impoverishment, I tend to see...' [insert the deity or deities of my choice here] '...as [a source or] sources of approval or disapproval. I do not appreciate [him or her or] them for who [he or she is, or] they are in [his or her or] their own right. I see only what [he or she or] they can or cannot do for me."

How we grown out of that sort of relationship with divinity? Or have we clung fast to it because it is the only thing we have ever known? What is a good [Pagan, Christian, Polytheist, Monotheist, Duodeist, regular Deist, Nontheist, Buddhist, Hindu, Moslem, Spiritualist ...] to do? How can we grow away from our old notions and mature into something better?

At the risk of offending everyone, I'd much rather believe in the flying spaghetti monster or in the olden Hebrew god who made the world and then flat-left it than base my self-esteem on my idea of whether or not I am looked upon with favor by any god or goddess. If I believe in the flying spaghetti monster or in nothing or in the impersonal forces of nature which are indifferent to my pleas, my life becomes simpler. I don't have to get hung up on whether or not I am going to heaven or the summerlands or the flying spaghetti spaceship in the sky when I die. I can concentrate on the here and now, squeezing whatever joy I can out of each day-- and not forgetting to share the joy. Can I have joy without a personal relationship with the olden ones of my pagan roots? You betcha. Can I have morality without religion? Sure I can. And it is unencumbered by a belief in the twist of fate, no coincidences, the frozen chosen, or being 'right where I'm supposed to be.' Why then should I believe?

Why then magic? Why then the cycle of prayers, reading/singing/sounding instruments, meditation, gathering energy, sending, cakes and ale, grounding the circle? Why not just skip the whole deal?

There is freedom when walking the [somewhat modified] path of my spiritual ancestors. There is power too. This mantel of power I will not deny. Because I am not afraid of my separateness--my intrinsic aloneness--I do not fall into the error of believing that individualism must be dammed in favor of the new agey "we" of the cosmic soul. Because I embrace who I am, I am no longer a frightened child calling in the dark praying to whoever cares to answer. I no longer have to hide behind the great collective "we." I have grown up.

Because I have freedom from religion, I can freely choose how to conduct my life without regard to whose god is the right one. And I don't have to fear scientific knowledge. I can truly embrace life as being sacred. And I can truly celebrate diversity.

I am a Pagan. I am a Solitary Hedge Witch. These words are visceral. They are words of power because they hit me in the gut. These words sprang forth from my innermost being when I first began to re-claim all that I am.

What do I believe? Do I believe? Are all the gods one god and all the goddesses one goddess? Are there more than two? Are there less than two? Why does this matter to you? How I work with power and spiritual principles is within the sacristy of my own life. Shall I profane it by spelling out my spiritual or religious beliefs or non-beliefs? What does it matter who or what I gather energy from? It is not the who, it is the how. It is focused intent. It is healing. Witches didn't used to be afraid of pissing into bottles or of offering their own blood. They knew something that our sanitized society and modern how to be a witch books no longer care to acknowledge. In the healing, blood must be spilled.

In the healing, blood must be spilled. People who cut feel the pain of the universe keenly. In western society, people who cut are looked upon as pariahs and social outcasts. People who cut need "treatment" where very often the professional helpers do not believe that people who cut can truly "get well." The best the professional helpers can hope for is that their cutting patients can "age out of their personality disorders." The professional helpers all participate in professional supervision sessions lest they catch the 'craziness' of their cutting customers. If the cutting is the letting of blood, then is there not a holy act in the release? In our society, cutters are unhappy traumatized people who need "treatment." In other societies with other expectations, cutters are holy people and healers.

In the Moroccan society, Shamans cut their own heads open. The afflicted partake of the sacred offering of blood by mixing it with the staff or the sweetness of life. Bread has been called the staff of life. The holy man Jesus is called the bread of life. Jewish people offer each other sugar cubes during their new year as a symbol of the sweetness of life that is possible. Isaiah in the hebrew bible tells us, "By his stripes we are healed." [KJV]. Wounds caused by whipping bleed. Some modern day celebrants of easter in Spain beat on drums until their hands bleed. Others flagellate themselves in religious estacy. Jehovah's Witnesses do not believe in blood transfusions. There is indeed power in the blood. Cutters and people of faith all acknowledge this power in different ways. But it is there, whether we embrace it or deny it.

Catholics and Protestants unite with a tangible god in partaking of communion. The body and blood of their god is [or is like] the bread and wine is [or is like] the cakes and ale of the Witches is like dipping bread and sugar cubes into bleeding heads of shamans. Vodoun practitioners refer to loa possession as "riding the head."

Learning to navigate through this life with true power is the challenge I present to you today. Remember though, that all revolutions are bloody. It is indeed a bloody gauntlet that I throw down before all of us, regardless of anyone's creed or non-creed.

May we all put on the mantel of power and embrace ourselves in our aloneness. Only by embracing our aloneness can we truly find each other without merging into nothingness.

-spike q

Sylvia Plath and Sleep Apnea

2007-07-17T23:01:00.000-07:00

Awesome woman she was, melancholy in the good old-fashioned way.
Well okay, crazy then if you must be picky about it.
Yes, she was a wonder. Wonderful stuff she wrote.
When Sylvia Plath decided to end her life with the gas pipe,
she left out milk and bread. For whom?
A question left unanswered still.

Oh Sylvia, when you were coming into your death
did you smell the stink of vinegar and did the bees'
roaring cut off your hearing?
If you still lived today, what meds would be prescribed for you?
How many weeks in between shrink visits for you?
Would they send you off to a day treatment sort of program?
A partial hospitalization thing? Or a "clubhouse?"
Would the professionals mutter against your writings during their staffings?
Would they claim that your writing was part of your sickness?

Benedryl makes me hyper.
Some folks use Seroquel for insomnia.
"Might you have sleep apnea?" I ask people when they talk about insomnia,
"That can mess up sleeping too."

Might I be obsessed with asking random people if they have sleep apnea?
I want the world to get a c-pap machine and to have some real sleep like I get now.
But the world does not have sleep apnea.
And the news mediacs continue to dole out poisoned sugar drinks to the masses.
I swear politicians do not get enough sleep.
Again, the world does not have sleep apnea.
Too bad I think.
Yeah. At least that woulda been a relatively painless fix.

I might be content to leave the practice of medicine to the practitioners if I was convinced that they don't want us to be in their mass guinea pig parade.
Instead, I compulsively read Medscape articles
hoping for more clue-by-fours.

Pills and c-pap for a manageable life.
For me, better than the alternative.

Sylvia Plath thought that she was living in a fishbowl and folks were looking in.
Some say that is a mark of craziness. I rather think there is an element of truth in the most bizarre delusion.
And hers was rather tame.

I've rambled enough.
Here's to better days and a kinder gentler reality.

radical sapphoq

Two Forks, Maine

2007-07-12T06:02:00.000-07:00

A friend who is nuts over white-water rafting wanted to goto this place in Maine for a few days and I went along.

We left on Sunday with my doggie looking out the bedroom window and crying. That was a bit sad.
There is no direct route to this place. It took seven hours or so. And the last bit of that was on a rather dinky road.
Ah, but the scenery was most rewarding. There were pine trees and little houses and stores and water and all of that.

The pictures in the on-line brochure really are a poor representation of The Forks Resort Center. Actually, The Forks looked a tad run down.
The lodge was not as splendid, the hot tub was made of metal, the pool had a line of algae along the rim.

The cabins and lake were sweet though.

Our room had comfortable albeit noisy beds, hooks and hangers but no dressers at all.
The air-conditioner [an older model hung out the window] worked well.
No phone in the room-- not even a direct line to the front office or emergency number-- was a safety hazard.
No television was forgivable since the wifi signal reached upward.
And the price-- 25 bucks or so per person per night-- was right.

For dinner Sunday, I had a huge portion of dead cow cooked as steak-- just the way I had ordered it and deliciously flavored with herbs and spices. Along with that came a salad [satisfactory green stuff], mashed red potatoes, and three very large grilled slices of squash.

Monday dawned wet and got wetter.
Friend went off on her white water rafting adventure [$129 buckeroos] after a false start [a showing of a vid and a solicitation to rent a wetsuit]. She came back looking very much like a frozen dead rat.
I spent most of the day sleeping. I did some puttering on the computer.
Friend and I went to the outskirts of Jackman to a trading post which had cool tourist trap stuff.
For dinner we split a plate of nachos. At 5 bucks apiece, it was a bargain. And quite tasty.
A huge portion which included the nachos, cheese, black olives, peppers, onions, and salsa.

Tuesday was a sunny-cloudy-sunny sort of day. The breakfast buffet was like buffets all over. Not distinguishable from any other breakfast buffet. Morning was spent poolside.
Afternoon we went off to Moxie Falls, a quiet stroll of less than a mile to some very turbulent water with signs advising not to even wade.
In spite of the danger, there were two locals jumping off of one rock into a swimming hole.
We also found a small memorial to someone who ?had died? at the falls.
The water was brown from tannic acid and the rocks were all broken up into slender pieces of bluish-gray.

We went off to a meeting that night at the library in Jackman.
It was a small meeting and everyone felt they had to tell us that no one could get sober and stay that way without god.
The regular members were warm and welcoming there, a point in their favor.
We ate at a little diner afterwards. I had a nice juicy reuben.

Today being Wednesday, we packed up and left with rain whipping at our backs.
Yeah it did rain more.
We did get home and doggie was happy to see me.

spike

Social Acceptability

2007-07-06T10:55:00.000-07:00

Social Acceptability has become a dominant lifestyle. In fact, it has taken over. Well, I've had enough of Social Acceptability. And I quit. I am not doing it anymore. No. Nay. Never. Or rather, I am only doing the parts of it that I agree to. And I am dumping the rest of Social Acceptability back into the morass that is the cesspool of societal demands.

If I want to wear teeshirts with holes or jeans with threads hanging off the bottoms or ~~odd~~ artsy color combinations, then I am going to do so. If I want to talk to my dog in public or talk to my houseplants in private, there ain't no stopping me. If I want to express an unpopular opinion in public or at 12-step meetings or in any of my blogs, I'm gonna do that with reckless abandon. Get it? This is far beyond the red hat society; or wearing purple when I am older; or shouting, "We're here! We're queer! And we won't change our clothes!" in a rainstorm during a certain memorable gay-lesbian-trans-bisexual-intersexed-queer pride march in New York City.

I celebrate diversity. I embrace the freedom that I have to be me and the freedom you have to be you. I welcome well-thought out differences of opinions, rational thinking, good-natured debates, the willingness to take risks. Risk-taking is risky. Testing limits is cool. Stretching beyond the norms is freeing. I am a W.Y.S.I.W.Y.G. kind of being. I breath radical stuff. My life is not designed for your comfort.

I am no longer responsible for anyone's comfortability level. Those who are skating over to my blogs during work hours or in front of children should err on the side of caution and assume that something somewhere I post is not work-safe or kid-safe. I use L.J. cuts at ~~El Gay~~ El Jay for all of my entries, and the adult filter at yahell 369 for those entries that contain manure subject matter. Even so, please assume that there are many somethings lurking in my writings that are bound to offend. It just might be that we are each responsible for what we do and where we go when whoever may be watching. You are responsible for what you do at your job, not me. You are responsible for you [and your younger relateds that may be hanging over your shoulder] and I am responsible for me [and my younger relateds who I've told clearly not to hang over my shoulder].

Oh sure, I do agree to certain basic principles that make for good living with others like clean clothes, armpits that don't reek, freedom from dirt-encrusted skin and hair that one can squeeze salad dressing out of, mowing the lawn before my dog gets entangled in it, upkeep of my castle home, attempting to stay within the ~~restraints~~ guidelines set by service providers, and all of that. That is for my own comfort and the comfort of the 4 leggeds that live with me. Not for yours.

I have never considered Social Acceptability to be one of my goals. That is not going to change. I've earned the right to celebrate my own eccentricity. And even if you think I haven't, that's just too bloody bad. Complain to your ~~boring~~ Socially Acceptable friends, whine to your god, work through it with your sponsor or spiritual adviser or teacher, go do the Drama Llama dance, whatever. And hey. Here's a ~~slug~~ quarter. Call someone who cares even. Cuz i sure don't.

spike
cross-posted to sapphoq n friends, L.J. and Insane Journal

sapphoq on board

2007-07-04T19:59:00.000-07:00

I have far too many e-mail addys and I have been accused of having too many blogs. Each blog has its' own purpose. Two of them are being maintained until the powers that be kick me out-- Yahell and El Jay have both been noted to have difficulties with censoring talent and allowing crud in the form of baby rapers to stay on. I have a blog now at Insane Journal-- a warm friendly little place that has pledged not to remove any content unless legally forced to. This blog here is the second team blog experience for me; and my fifth or sixth blogspot blog.

Blogspot is pretty much WYSIWYG; that is to say it is a push-button operation. In defense of Blogspot, I will note that armed with some code it is possible to get a more individualized look.
Both of the team blogs I belong to are on Blogspot. The set-up for team blogging is particularly appealing. The head blogger can set the layout, get new posts and comments mailed to their e-mail box, invite or ban authors, and do any co-ordination in general that might be required.

One of the greatest things about blogging is that [through meeting Jer over at Yahell], I got involved in PSP and IncrediMail e-stationary making. Making stats, tags, and icons has been a personal highlight of my life for the past year. Two months after making my first background, my work was in an art show [non-juried] in Pennsylvania. Participation in a computer art group has been largely responsible for the return of my motivation to achieve.

For any blogger with no experience with computer art and photo manipulation, I highly recommend it. It adds an extra dimension to blogging and the personal satisfaction therein.

spike

The First Posting

2007-06-16T16:54:00.000-07:00

Here I am demonstrating how easy it is to get your blog set up. This is pretty much what one of my blogs would have looked like 2 years ago and after I had gotten good at writing I thens started working on making them look prettier. I hope that you all would want to join in on the group blog experience ... JC