The Ativan Ghost Game

No drug I've know of creates such a sense of having people milling about you.  If you a reading a book, or on the comupter, you can sense very clearly people sitting beside you, walking and talking audibly behind you, touching you, or reading over your shoulder.  But with a turn of the head it instantly dissapears; you never really see them.  It's entirely nonthreatening

So twelve artists decide that it would be cool if they could agree with an Ativan taker to allow them to also move in the periphery, but this time as real people.  Their point would be to act just like these ephemeral ones.  To stay out of sight, but actually to be seen if looked at.  They then allowed the vaguest communication, calling it a haunting, or making vague answers.  It's like a seance, trying to decide who is imaginary and who is alive.

The local cops are not so impressed.

Life waiving the 4th Amendment

My new life, under the watchful eye of the United States Army, has me regularly submitting myself to car searches, breathalyzers, urinalyses, and blood tests.  They know that I am clean, in perfect health, and not trying to bring explosives onto a military installation.  I suspect that the recruiters will be contacting me any day now.

The guy whose job it is to watch men piss into a cup is concerned about being unemployed because his contract runs out in a few months. I suppose his particular skill is transferable into the private sector and that there will be little competition from those who would be overemployed.

Phase shift completed--but what is this new phase?

Time has obviously passed, and much of the waiting has resolved itself.  That is a good thing.  Much has happened.  Sobriety seems to have taken hold, and while it brings clarity, I am by no means out of the woods, as they say.  There is ongoing tumult, and much is still unknown, including the job prospects, but it is certainly a new circumstance.

I'll start writing here again to explore the question in the heading and to amuse myself.

Martin Amis

I finished "The Information."  He is a master of the language and has a dark, dark sense of humor and irony.  Like most excellent writers, it takes some reading to get what the style is, but once you are on his wavelength, it will have you laughing and groaning.  The ending felt like a blow to the stomach.

One nice quote:  Analogizing thoughts during insomnia: " On the beach the waves [grow more persistant and more persuasive] ceaselessly, gathering mass and body, climbing until they break and are then resummoned into the generality with a sound like breath sucked in between the teeth."

It is the only Amis book available in this town, so I've moved on to Ian McEwan.

Civilization calls.  I will soon be one train ride away from a slightly better library.

Phase-Change Gestation

All of a sudden all of that waiting I mentioned below seems to be near an end, the steps now under my control.  It turns out the gestation period for the mid-life phase change is approximately twenty months.  Within another month, my wife and I should be finally situated as we planned back in July 2009.  We had talked constantly to each other for months, and within a day or two after meeting in person, we felt married and already knew what we wanted.  People would ask us how long we had been together, and all we could do was laugh.  We knew each other better than anyone else knew either of us.  We felt like newlyweds on a honeymoon despite the fact that we only had a couple of weeks together while she prepared for deployment to Iraq.  (Luckily they shipped her to training at Fort Benning before she deployed.  Otherwise we would have had to wait through the deployment having never held hands).  I bought her ring the third day together.  But we couldn't possibly say that we had been together for just a couple of days.  People would think we were crazy.  And maybe we were.  We certainly didn't know how much effort it would take, but we knew we wanted a new life together.

There was an episode in a restaurant.  We had another soldier with us, and the three of us were eating and innocently chatting..  At some point, with her napkin, she wiped some food or something off of my lip and I just kept talking.  It was nothing.  But this waitress saw it and decided to come sit with us.  She said she watched couples all the time and could tell the ones that would last.  She sat there explaining this for twenty minutes or so.  We tipped her over 100%.

I'm knocking on wood.  Cautiously optimistic, as they say.  But happy.

Waiting

Here's a list of things I have been waiting for over the last couple of years that were/are beyond my control. 

Waiting to meet my wife - 4 months.  Soon afterward, waiting for her to return from war- 10 months.  Waiting for her to then move to the US - 4 months.  Waiting to complete the move - 3 months.  Waiting  to get out of the psyche ward - 6 days.  Waiting for my psyche meds to kick in - 3 weeks.  Waiting for the movers to get my stuff - 3 months and counting.  Waiting to get proof of my driver's license - 1 month.  Waiting for the chance to start a job search - 5 months and counting.  Waiting for my wife's leave to arrive -  10 days and counting.  Waiting to have my next household to be set up - 3 months and counting.

What this all adds up to is that I've been waiting for at least a year and a half to begin Phase Two, and I'm still counting.

I'm a patient man, and all of these things are things WORTH WAITING FOR.  But it has a cummulative effect on the psyche, and given that I haven't even been able to look for a job yet, I'm sure it will continue.  Meanwhile, I'm waiting for a reduction in the waiting.

Poetry Time

There's a poem rattling around in my head.  Ode to abandonment or some such thing.  The image is of a well, but I don't know if I've been thrown down it or am looking down.  The words well, yell, and hell all rhyme.  But a couplet surely seems inapposite.  Meter out of whack.  The sense of talking into silence.  Not knowing and frustrated.  A fresh visciousness seared into the mind to call up later when needed.  Like a bad smell.

Orwell and British Anti-Imperialism

On a Straight Dope thread about elephants, someone posted a short story by George Orwell called "Shooting an Elephant"  I had never read it, it's a great story, and it's a look at his thoughts on British imperialism.

Here it is:

Shooting an Elephant

Hitch had been discussing how reading Orwell was something of an awakening to him, so the timing could not have been better.  (I was not looking for the Orwell--it was a thread about some elephant in the news.)  Hitchens even wrote a book called "Why Orwell Matters," which I now will have to read next.

The Faulkland Islands. Really?

Hitch puts the British defense of the Faulklands into historical perspective.  Apparently the US (Sec. of Def. Haig) gave the Argentinians tacit approval to invade on the assumption that Britain wouldn't bother defending such a small area half -way around the world.  Well, Thatcher thought differently and invaded.

At the time most in the US thought it was pretty meaningless in the scheme of things, but the Argentinians that invaded were the precursors to the Contras, and Britain's actions were one of the main reasons the Reagan administration had to start trading hostages for arms with Iran to finance the Contras.  The irony being that Thatcher's bellicosity almost brought down her hero Reagan.

(Of course in our present circumstance, with Iran's mullah influence spreading toward Mecca, the wisdom of this strategy seems even more misguided, but the US's strategy in foreign policy, especially the Middle East, seems replete with decisions that later turned out to cause us much more grief  than the original problem.)

Hitch on Coming to America

After a romp through the 1970s and that decade's various international revolutions and attempts, Hitch decides to move to the US (and he eventually became a US citizen).  In his memoir he dedicates a whole chapter to his reasoning for the move, and it's some of the best "pro-American" writing I've ever read.  It's odd that sometimes it takes the most scathing critics to do the best job of describing the virtues of something.  I think of Mencken's favorable descriptions of the US.  I knew that he liked the US for the religious freedom, and the founding ideals, but I was surprised at how much he likes the whole experiment.

Hitch is hard to quote meaningfully because he builds up his rhetoric page after page, so there aren't many pithy standalone quotes.  So you just have to take my word that there are many memorable lines.

And he stands in such great contrast to the other folks in the media who write pro-America drivel that makes me question the US.  Hitch actually rouses a sense of patriotism in me, and that's quite an accomplishment.

Saints and Sinners

On this MLK Jr. Day I have come to believe that the hagiography will outnumber and outshout the banal expose's.  He's gonna be right up there with Lincoln and Washington and Jefferson.  Just give it time and time's increasing momentum.

Update: Sunny and Mild

Just to be sure.  Some of you have actually been reading this stuff, and I am honored and thank you.  But I need to mention that although down below, it looked like my marriage was in deep trouble, that is not the case.  It was just a fight, but I included some of the details to put falling off the wagon into some context.  I was in a situatiuon that was driving me crazy, and I in turn was driving my wife crazy, and that has been remedied.  I thank the people who have contacted me with words of encouragement.

More Hitch

I am still laughing.  I just read the funniest description of a trip to a prostitute I've ever read.  Hitchens in his inimitable way absolutely hates it and describes what's going on in his mind in perfect detail.  If I was a decent typist, I'd put it all down here but it's two pages worth.  If you don't want to buy the book, go to the book store and turn to page 165 and begin about halfway down with the sentence, "Not all of our pleasures were innocent."  Then read to page 167 to the sentence, " Seldom can a midmorning have been so ill spent, yet (which perhaps goes to show) seldom can such rank dissipation have yeilded so many divideneds on the page."

Reading Hitchens

I'm spending my insomnial Sunday night hours reading Hitch-22.  I'm not yet half way through it, and it is already even better than I thought it would be.  When I'm done I will write more, but a few thoughts.  I'm chronologically in the 1970s where he is building his journalistic career after a fascinating college career as a leftist revolutionary.  Predictably he makes an eloquent case throughout for his views and ideas.  But I really like one sentence.  He's reflecting on how the movement fizzled out, and he says, "I resolved to try and resist in my own life the jaded reaction that makes one coarsened to the ugly habits of power."  He also demonstrates the great advantage conferred by attending "high school" (he was the age we were in high school, but he was hardly doing high school work) at Cambridge and college at Oxford.

A Change of Climate

I am now in Waycross, where I can sit in the sun and read Chrictopher Hitchens' memoir "Hitch-22."  Work on the house and various errands must wait until MLK day passes.  So for now it's laundry and quietude.  I'll try to keep the posts coming, but I have no internet at the house, so it may be spotty.

Bookie-ookie

When you are betting on sports or horses or dogs, you are playing the same game as betting on individual companies in the stock market.  In all cases the odds/price is set by the all of other bettors, so essentially you are betting against the crowd.  This type of betting lends itself to manipulation by large players who can move the odds/price. 

That's what happened to our economy and why my game of choice is craps, where the betting and odds are between me and God.

Straight Dope Baking

Here's an example of what I mean about the Straight Dope.  This is a subject I care not one whit about, but notice the help that arises from the question.

Does the order of mixing things matter?

Stuff

George Carlin joked about how we accumulate "stuff."  Funny as hell because it's true.  But due to circumstances beyond my control I have been separated from my stuff for about three months, and it's actually wearing on me.  I miss my computer with my files and its speakers.  I miss my guitar.  I miss my bed.  I miss my clothes.

I love perusing you tube videos and listening to them through my loud speakers.  I can walk around and do stuff and hear music or lectures.  It gives me joy.  But now I'm using a tiny laptop that I have to lean forward into to hear.  I like doing the same with any other site, like Radiolab below.

Playing the guitar is meditative.  I will try and play one thing over and over and forget time and look up and hours will have passed.

My winter clothes got me through three years in Wisconsin and would be useful now.

And when I'm tired my bed is wide enough to roll around in whether it's God or the Devil chasing me in my dreams.

2 for 1

My cousin and good friend G.  His wife gave birth to twins today, and I am so happy for all involved.  What a wonderful journey they are now embarking on.

Momentary Lapse of Reason

I intend to be absolutely honest on this blog.  I have nothing to lose in this semi-anonymous realm, or in any realm for that matter.  So I note my successes and failures with equal indifference.

My wife went out and got a large bottle of Jagermeister and multiple cans of Red Bull, brought them home, told me we were done, and that she would figure out what she wanted to do and then tell me later.

That was it.  Days of no speaking or touching allowed, the liquor in the house and very serious statements.  Straw and camel's back.  So now, on day 16 of sobriety, I have fallen off the wagon and am drinking Jager and Red Bull.

So far at least she is is being conversational with me.  But I don't know what tomorrow brings, other than I intend to get back up and just start my day-counting anew.  Damn.  Lost my AA trinket.

Radiolab and Time

Here's the page where you can listen to the archive of Radiolab.  I just finished the show called "Time," and there were some amazing things talked about, but my favorite thing was that they discussed an artist who had taken Beethoven's 9th Symphony, which lasts 70 minutes, and slowed it down so that it lasted 24 hours.  They played excerpts of it, and it was haunting.  I'm not sure I could sit through a 24 hours version.  Maybe 12.

They also discussed people, who due to brain injury, either slow way down or speed way up.  This one guy would sit in these weird positions, seemingly motionless.  One day, the guy had his arm raised partially, and the doctor asked him why.  He responded that he was wiping his nose.  So the doctor set up a camera to take periodic photographs over two hours and when he flipped them he realized the the man made a smooth motion to wipe his nose.  When he showed this to the patient, the patient was astounded.  To him, he was moving at a normal speed.

They also discussed a woman who was in fast motion.  The doctor would put her in a circle with 7-8 of his students and the purpose was to toss a ball to her and for her to throw it back.  She reacted so quickly that the ball would snap back into the thrower's hand before he could lower it.  Although she was dysfunctional, her reaction time was much faster than that of the most well-trained athletes.

I have always thought that my circadian rhythms were a few hours too long for the rotation of the Earth.  For most of my life, if left to my own devices, I would stay awake and sleep too long for a twenty-four hour cycle.  I thought once that forcing myself onto a twenty-four hour cycle was causing me mental damage and leapt to the simplistic idea that all mental illness derived from people's coping with the difference between the speed of the rotating Earth and their innate circadian rhythm.  But then I heard of an experiment, where scientists built an apartment of sorts deep underground.  They filled it with all of the amenities needed to support human life except any way to tell time.  They sent a women down and told her to re-emerge when three months had passed.  About four and a half months later, she emerged thinking she had been there for three months.  Her menstrual cycle had even slowed down.

So for those of  you who believe that life arrived on Earth partially evolved, seeded by an alien race, it would suggest that this alien race lived on a planet that rotated a bit more slowly than ours.

Anyway, this is a page filled with hours of intelligent radio entertainment.

http://www.radiolab.org/series/podcasts/

Ellie

For Phase Two I have decided to go with dog ownership.  My wife and I went to the pound the day she came home and picked out Ellie.  She was tiny and shy, lying in her cage amongst the cats.  The folks at the pound said she was Chihuahua mix and would probably not get much bigger.  My wife only had thirty days to show me how to care for a dog and then had to leave the country for a few more months.  During that time I discovered that the folks at the pound were wrong.  It seems that she is Chihuahua mixed with a bull terrier, and now she is four times the size she was, muscular, and no longer shy at all.  She's had a rough first year of life.  She's been dealing with the move along with us, living in a motel room for a month, lots of travel, etc.  We've had her about 7 months now, she will be one-year old in February.  She managed to knock a table over and break her leg.  I call it her $2,000 leg.  She's still not completely house trained although she knows she's supposed to go outside.  I had envisioned a house with a fenced yard for her so she could run wild, as is her bull terrier nature, but we ended up in base housing which is an apartment.  Luckily she is still small enough to run about the place and burn off energy inside.  Once I get her registered with the county, I'll be able to take her to the dog park in the next town over and let her run free outside.

I love Ellie and show her affection when she's not growling at, barking at, or biting me.  I walk her and pick up her shit and we mostly get along.  I'm learning it as I go.  I do though sometimes get the impression that she hates me, sees me as a prisoner sees a guard, someone to get along with superficially, but with a simmering hatred below.  She destroys my things.  I just discovered that she tore my souvenir psyche ward wrist band to shreds.

But she's my dog, so if you are following along, I'm sure you'll hear about her from time to time.

Cats

All of my adult life I have had multiple cats in the house or yard.  In the cat person-dog person dichotomy, I am a cat person. 

Back when I was trying to teach semi-literate welfare moms how to write a five-paragraph essay, I would always start with the topic "What's better, a cat, or a dog, and Why"  Everyone has an opinion on this, so it was the best topic I ever came up with.  It's not a five-paragraph essay, but here are my pro-cat arguments.

Although all pets make messes, cat's are instinctively pre-house trained.  Place a cat in the litter box, and boom, house trained.  Cats clean themselves and thus smell good with no effort required by the human.  Cats are emotionally self-sufficient, but they have a sense to come lay with you when you want them to.  Cats do hilariously stupid things and then shake it off.  Cats are acrobatic.  Cats are aesthetic to watch and hang out with.  Where dogs bounce around licking and barking, cats walk like the silent killers that they are.  Cats keep rodents and bugs at bay.  For some reason, cats like me, and I'm good at making them do what I want them to.

Over the years, I've had many cats, but two or three stick out in my mind.  One back in undergrad was named Chicken Frank.  He once climbed on the railing of our back deck and grabbed a raw steak the rich frat boys next door were going to put on the grill.  He stole it and brought it back to our side.  I thought that was so cool, I cut it up so he could eat it.  Being too poor in those days for vet visits, we never had Chicken Frank fixe, so he sired a couple of litters.  They were free to come and go.  I left food and water for them, but all of them, when they grew up, Chicken Frank included, decided to eventually strike out on their own.

Another cat was named My Cat if I was referring to it and Your Cat if anyone else referred to it.  I had her for probably eight or nine years.  She had one litter before we got her fixed, and we did the right thing and gave the kittens to loving homes.  While in business school she started hanging out at the neighbor's house across the street a lot to get away from the cat I'm about to discuss.  The neighbors fell in love with her, and she seemed happy with them.  So when they moved, after some socially awkward conversation, we let them take her.

The best cat I ever had is the one that eventually ran off My Cat.  We had been hearing quiet mews coming from somewhere for a couple of days.  We looked around but never found anything.  Then one night while the two cats we had were eating we noticed that this kitten had walked in and was standing in the kitchen watching our two cats eat.  When they were done, she walked over and started eating.  Then she started farting, so I named her Toot. (that's what this little boy I babysat called it)  When she went into heat about a week later, we realized she was not a kitten, but a miniature cat.  We got her fixed pronto.  I had her for about 12 years.  With a string and something tied to the end of it, I could get her to jump acrobatically to almost the level of my head at will.  She understood a couple of voice commands.  She would come to you if you said her name aloud.  If she was in your lap and you said up, up she would jump down without any further prompting.  She also had a good sense of when I was feeling bad and would come lay on me.  She traveled well.  She would be relaxed in a car for hours, and in a motel room she would hide silently under the covers.  If I kept her litter box reasonably clean, she would always use it.  She would never pee outside the box, but if it got too full she would shit next to to the box, but that was my fault, not hers.  She was fastidiously clean and soft and always smelled good.  As she got older, her teeth started falling out until of her four main hunting teeth, she only had one left.  I wanted to change her name to Tooth.  She was my favorite cat of all time.  Not long after the divorce from my ex, when ideas about Phase Two began to come together, I gave Toot to her.  She's an old kitty, and even though my ex is furious with me for multiple reasons, I assume she would have the decency to tell me if Toot died, so I assume she's still alive.

If a Tree Falls in the Forest and there is No One Around...

I write for myself.  It's a compulsion, and it gives me pleasure.  I have probably 1,000 pages of stuff sitting in various word documents.  Putting it in a blog is just the extra step of posting it, so I'll be adding to it daily, and hopefully it will get better as I go along.  But the purpose of a blog is that somebody read it (I guess?), and I can't tell if anyone is reading this unless people leave comments.  So if you are out there, and you see something you like or hate, leave a comment.

Light and Tunnel

Tonight, I'm feeling the psyche meds finally starting to kick in.  That means that within a day or two, they should rise quickly to full strength.  That will help a lot with the sobriety and my circumstance of isolation and dislocation.  I get my driver's license and reunited with my meager, but sorely missed, possessions, and I'll be rockin'.

Psychopaths

To pass the time I have been watching crime dramas on TV, both real and enacted, (there are about five stations that seem to play them around the clock), and so I have psychosis on the mind, if not in it.  Here is an interesting discussion from Straight Dope about psychopaths, followed by an interesting article about an almost-psychopathic neuroscientist.

http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=592615

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=127888976

Criminals, Cops, or Crimes?

Check out this interesting graph of imprisonment rates by country.  The US easily tops the list.  So either we are an especially criminal country, we have the most effective (draconian?) police and justice system, or we have too many criminal statutes.  Take your pick.

http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/cri_pri_per_cap-crime-prisoners-per-capita

Car Wars and Health Care

Everyone knows how crappy the service at  the Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) is.  This is especially true in more populated areas.

Due to my wife's busy night schedule and my lack of proof of licensure to drive, getting our two cars registered and getting our new state's driver's licenses is requiring three or four trips to the DMV.

First you have your car inspected and pay for the inspection and any repairs that need to be done.  Then you go to the DMV, and you wait in a long line to get to the desk.  At the desk they tell you what documentation you need.  You are missing something, so you go home and arrange to get that document.  On the second visit, you wait in the long line and eventually get to the desk where the proper documents are ordered and stapled, and you are given a number.  The second phase of waiting, you at least get to sit.  You watch a board that lights up with numbers and listen to an automated female voice call out numbers.  After an hour or so of this, finally your number is called, and you can hand the papers over to a person who will complete your registration and give you a tag for $250.  Next you have the second car inspected and repeat the process once for the registration of the second car and then twice again for the driver's licenses.

Because the DMV is so horrible and bureaucratic, opponents of a single payer health care system argue that government run health care would be like going to the DMV.  And that argument must be taken seriously.  The problem with the DMV, of course, is simple underfunding.  Even though the DMV is universally hated, it could be made wonderful if tax revenues were used to double the number of DMV stations and streamline the paperwork requirements.  And the decision whether to fully fund a well-functioning DMV presumably rests with the people.  Yet, despite the fact that most people hate the DMV, it remains underfunded.  And that's the danger of a single payer health care system.  It too could be underfunded and become a disaster.

Underfunding seems to be a natural result of democracy with a two-party system that requires compromise.  Education, social security, medicare, etc are all funded based on a compromise between people who want to fully fund them, and people who want them to go away.  Thus, not quite enough money is allocated to these programs, and so they don't work well, acting as evidence for the proposition that they inherently do not work.  It is misleading evidence, however, because your can't judge whether something is inherently good if you never really try it.  That's why when the party who wants something funded gets control it should not compromise.  (and of course this applies to the other side's ideas as well)  With compromise as the necessary requirement, neither side gets to fully test its ideas.  As has been said, Democracy is the worst form of government except all of the rest.  The solution will come only when things are desperate and both toss aside their ideals and do something pragmatic.

Black and White

If anyone, say, three years ago had told me that three years hence, I would be walking a dog and picking up dog shit in the snow, I would have laughed.

The advantage of the snow is that due to the contrast in colors, it's easier to see the shit at night.

But as the title of this blog indicates, I am now in another life, my cats and subtropical weather behind me.  Quite a contrast.

Taters

Remember how in childhood you used the one-potato, two-potato, three-potato, four method for "randomly" selecting someone?  Well, it's rhythmic, like most music, and as such has eights beats (two measures in 4/4 time).   In groups of two people to eight people, the first person counted is only "it" if there are seven people.  In groups of eight or higher, it's just the eighth person.  (Corollary: If it's just two people and you want to be "it" be the counter.)  Further, except for a group of five, the person who is "it" is next to the person who is counted first.  Which side the "it" person is on depends on whether the counter goes clockwise or counterclockwise.

Now, I seem to remember an optional addition where the potato counting would be continued with "My mama told me to pick the very best one and you are it."  That's not rhythmic and has fourteen additional beats.  In that case, the first person counted is "it" in groups of three and seven.  (Also in the unlikely event you are using the potato method in a group of twenty-two people, the first counted would be "it".)

The only random thing about the potato method is the choice whether to go clockwise or counterclockwise.  Once that is determined, then the person who is "it" can be determined by counting the number of people in the group and reference to the chart I'm making for all K-4th grade teachers in Montgomery County, Maryland.

[Just thought I'd mention that since once I got it into my head, I went to the trouble of drawing groups on my legal pad and playing out both scenarios.]

Jobs

Here's the video that fits my entry about finding a job.  It fits pretty well.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IQ5UVRWWO4I&feature=channel

Social Capitalist Liberaltarian

Labels are usually no good.  I think I’m agnostic, but I use the term atheist so that people will understand.  I think there are limits to our knowledge and within those limits there is no evidence for any of the thousands of gods that have been worshipped, but as to the unknown, we just don’t know.  I think that’s agnosticism.  But to be clear that I absolutely don’t believe in any of the currently worshipped gods, I use the term atheist.  Indeed I’m with Christopher Hitchens and am anti-religious and would wish that it be ridiculed out of existence because it's mostly a racket.

The same trouble happens with political labels.  The one that seems to fit me best is left-libertarian.  I believe that we have an ethical duty to redistribute wealth in a capitalist society, preferably in cash and health care, but I also think the government should be stripped way down and put back into the box the framers of the Constitution envisioned.

A few examples of my stances.  I mention health care.  I am for a single payer that would drive private health insurers out of business.  This is an ethical imperative as well as an economic one.  The system should be funded to cover anything a licensed doctor asks for with minimal oversight to prevent blatant fraud.  Cutting the military budget in half could help pay for it, and we would still be quite safe from invasion.

The Internal Revenue Code is a multi-volume impenetrable cluster fuck of legislation piled upon legislation.  To actually know what a particular provision is requires following multiple cross references to different parts of the code.  I’ve taken every tax course required to be a CPA and every tax course offered in law school, and I would never do my own taxes.  The government’s administration of the IRC, and the taxpayers’ compliance with it represents an enormous waste of talent and effort.  I envision a tax code half the size of the Waycross, GA phone book, written in plain English.  Income should be defined with all sources of income, salary, capital gains, gifts, and estates being treated equally.  There should be a few basic deductions.  And then a rate table.  The code itself should be stable and hard to change except for the rate table.  The rates would change according to need, and could easily be debated in public because most people can understand basic rates.  The table should be progressive, with the poorest people actually receiving cash. (the negative income tax).  With a properly set negative income tax of cash and “free” health care, most of the ethical duty to care for the poor would be met.

The criminal law needs to be reduced to about 10% of its current size and complexity.  Federal criminal law should only concern things that are Federal in nature and not overlap existing state laws.  All consensual crimes (gambling, prostitution, drugs, etc) should be struck down and people serving sentences for those crimes (that didn’t involve violence) released.  White collar crime should be punished as severely as street level theft.  In Wisconsin, the criminal code was revamped into a much simpler version.  It was easy to understand and short.  Most people understand what should be illegal, and the list isn’t all that complex or long.  Indeed in some instances it has been reduced to a list of ten things.

Many of the functions of the government can be handled by private contractors, as long as the bidding and contracting is done in public view.  Thus, the Federal government should be more like a bank, taking in tax money, and paying contractors to do the necessary things that aren’t already done adequately in the private sector.

All of that said, I usually vote Democrat in our two-party system.  I don't know if that harms or helps my goals, but they at least mostly seem to have their priorities better aligned.  Society can't be run purely on goals of economic efficiency.  There is an important ethical component as well.  Maybe I should call myself an ethical libertarian.  Or does that just make me a moderate?

Mmm, mmm good.

I was in business school and enjoying some Campbell’s soup one day when it occurred to me that I should do a report on them.

I love Campbell’s soup and could live off of it for the rest of my life.  Unfortunately for me as business student, Campbell’s is not a publicly traded company, so I had to write their management and ask them to voluntarily give me an overview of their production process.  They politely responded that it was proprietary and added some coupons for soup.  So I dropped it as a subject for business school.  But I was still curious.

I’m not all that great at sleuthing about the internet (I usually just ask on Straight Dope) but I did learn that they put their factories adjacent to large farms they own.  I found a site selling used business equipment and discovered that they make the broth in vats about the size of a telephone booth.  I had imagined much larger batch production.  After all, they have probably twenty versions of soup that have the same chicken stock.

I later learned on some TV show about another soup maker that they plop the ingredients in the can first and then add the broth.  So there is never large amounts of complete soup.  It gets mixed can by can.

 

The other day,  I had the first can of alphabet soup since childhood.  I was very tempted to strain it and see what the letter distribution was.

Here in DC we are not snowed in.  We’ve had little to zero snow and all of the roads are salted just in case.  But due to my lack of proof of licensure to drive, I might as well be snowed in.  Aaah, but I have a cupboard filled with Campbell’s soup, so I will survive. Mmm, mmm.

The Best Message Board on the Internet

This is the Straight Dope Message Board.  You can get hours of pleasurable, intelligent reading.  You can ask ANY question and have a group of experts helping you out within minutes.  Be sure to at least look at General Questions and In My Humble Opinion.  But all of the categories are great.  A lot of it is funny.  They also have a slight link to Mythbusters.  Their slogan is Fighting Ignorance Since 1973.

http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/forumdisplay.php?f=15

What am I Going to Be when I Grow Up?

I’m 44 years old and married to the military, meaning I may not have any job I take for more than a few years.  I’m educated and experienced as a teacher, a CPA, and an attorney.  I’m in the process of moving to D.C. (actually live here now, but waiting for my stuff to get here and to put my previous house up for sale.)

In D.C. the prospects are so endless I don’t know where to begin.  I’ll probably have to end up  using an employment agency, just to sort it out, and to find out what my skill set is worth here.

It is both a benefit and a burden that I really don’t care what field I work in.  All I require is a middle class income and reasonable hours.  I know I don’t want to go into private practice as either an lawyer or an accountant.  That’s for climbers.  I’m done climbing.  I’d be happy sitting in a cube for 40 hours a week, reading contracts, or doing research, or writing.  I’d be happpy being a paralegal, as long as I didn’t have to type.  I’d be happy teaching business law or accounting at a community college. And there are probably a million other things I wouldn’t mind, that I just don’t know about.  I could fight the good fight for some non-profit or lobbyist, but I really don’t care what the cause is.  Maybe I'll get on with the Fed in some way.  I think am not typical for the D.C. labor force, with little ambition and no cause to further. 

Married to the Military

A year and three months ago I married a beautiful, wonderful woman who happens to be in the Army.  Anyone who knows me knows that on paper, that’s a very strange fit.  But love is not under our control.


As a left-libertarian, I am for limited use of the military.  The word “defense” is in the name of the governing department, and more attention should be paid to that word.  The primary focus of our military should be to keep another country from invading us (and perhaps helping out with natural disasters, since they have all of that equipment).

The Iraq war has been a huge strategic blunder.  Not only was it unnecessary for the defense of our country, but we knocked out the secular state that separated the shias from the sunnis.  As a result Iran’s influence will drift westward toward Mecca.

And it’s cost a lot of money we don’t have.

Afghanistan should be wrapped up.  We don’t need boots on the ground to disable the Taliban.   The mess has lasted longer than WW II, and aside from bombing some terrorist camps, has achieved nothing but lost lives, tragic injuries, and billions of dollars.

But now, I’m learning about the military at the ground level.  The first surprise was that soldiers have to buy their own uniforms from private companies.  All of the hundreds of billions of dollars that go to defense must be going to contractors for gadgets (the military industrial complex), and the soldier is treated poorly.

The next thing I noticed is the rampant level of incompetence.  Communication within the organization is horrible.  And this not due to the need for tactical secrecy.  A lot of the military is performing mundane functions that private companies perform, but there is missing the element of trained management that one finds in the civilian world.  They need some MBAs.

I also learned that despite all the talk of honor and discipline, the higher ups have very little control over the social behavior of the soldiers.  It seems like a large dating pool, with rampant sexual harassment, babies being made, lots of adultery, divorce, families broken, etc.  There are high rates of unnecessary mental illness and suicide.  The soldiers run buck wild.

But I’m learning some of the acronyms.  I get Military Spouse magazine in my e-mail.  (It’s entirely geared toward wives and girlfriends, there being few of us military husbands).  I’m a dependent and will never hold a job more than a few years at a time until my wife gets out, which is fine with me.  I feel like I’ve proven myself to myself in the work world, climbed as far as I want to climb and am ready to focus on family and more pleasant aspects of life.

And I sincerely support the troops.  I waited anxiously for ten months while my wife was in Iraq, and she may well end up going to Afghanistan at some point.  (I hope not.)  But now I know how bad it is for them and their families, so I am much more sensitive to their plight and longings.

Day to day, the good soldiers seem to be just trying to do their jobs amidst the bad soldiers who are there to avoid a misdemeanor conviction.  It’s just the higher up decision-makers (deciders) that I so vehemently disagree with., so I don’t know what stickers or ribbons I should put on my car.

Sobriety

I am 14 days sober now after 25 years of daily drinking.  My anti-depressants have not kicked in yet, and because of my grumpiness, my wife is irritated with me.  She told me she’s learned a lot about me lately (not in a good way).  I’m in the middle of an extended military move (she’s in the Army).  Due to that, most of my meager possessions, including the two most therapeutic ones, my guitar and my exercise machine, are 1,000 miles away.  I have no proof that I am licensed to drive, so I can’t drive.  Also due to the move, I have been unemployed for months, and I have no idea when I will be able to complete the move and start looking for a job.  I’m helpless for now, but I have time to write, so I started this blog because the stuff I write about is not appropriate for Facebook.  Ha!  Cheers.  Clink. Here goes.

6 Days in the Cuckoo's Nest

In so many ways I am being slowly birthed into the second chapter of my adult life.  New wife, new career (pending at the moment), new city, new life.  So I might as well start with this story.

[First the background.  How I lost my mental health meds.  I was 1,000 miles away when my wife calls and says that she is so sick that she is being hospitalized.  (We are in the middle of an extended military move.  I unwound my law practice to follow my Army wife)  So I leap in the car and begin driving.  It sounded serious, so I was very worried.  After many hours of driving I stop to get a few hours of sleep at a Motel 6 and then go on my way.  About two hours down the road, I realize I left my toiletry bag with all of my meds at the motel.  I had not saved any of the documentation of my stay, so I had no address or phone number or anything.  I turn around and drive approximately two hours and start checking every exit with a Motel 6, but I can’t find the one where I stayed.  So I said to hell with it, I’ll deal with that later, and continued on.  I spent about a week taking care of the wife, the apartment, and the dog, and didn’t really think about the meds.  But during that time, the effects of the meds wore off, and I began plummeting into depression.  And the problem with psyche meds is that when you go off of them you lose the judgment to get back on them.  Now here’s the story of how that all played out a few weeks later.  Forgive me if it is disjointed and random, but as I write this I am disjointed and random myself.]

Six Days in the Cuckoo’s Nest

This is what happens if you tell your wife you are feeling suicidal.  Moments later the police arrive and take most of your possessions off of you.  They then handcuff you and take you to the hospital.  

The first twelve hours you sit in an observation room.  It is brightly lit and unclean, and you are wearing nothing but your underwear, socks, and a flimsy hospital gown.  There is a cot in the room and nothing else.  There are cameras and a small window with a person looking in on you from time to time.  I paced most of the twelve hours, going around and around like a confused, caged animal. 

 

Once they are satisfied that you are not banging your head against the concrete walls trying to off yourself immediately, you are released into the psyche ward general population.

This psyche ward is a short-term program for people who had been on the outside and had somehow hit bottom.  You stay there until a psychiatrist thinks you can be safely returned to the world.  Many came in having been arrested for something.  A few had attempted suicide.  A few had admitted themselves.  Many of them had been there before.  My time was extended because of New Years, when the psychiatrist took off.  I did not kiss my wife upon the new year or even notice it for that matter because I was locked up, drugged, and pacing the hallway when the clock struck zero.

Here are some of my thoughts about the psyche ward and some of the things that happened, and at the end my final conclusion, my New Year's resolution for real..

The first thing you should understand is that they keep everyone drugged.  Aside from my regular meds and the shots and pills they gave me when they determined that I was anemic of all things, they had me on a heavy cocktail of valium, ativan, and something else I didn’t recognize.

I arrived at the psyche ward around midnight, in bad shape but sober, but they gave me so many drugs I needed assistance to walk around.  They took my belt, lest I hang myself (or someone else I guess), so I had to hold my pants up.  They also took my shoes because shoe laces are not allowed.  I guess they thought I could strangle myself with my shoe laces.  So they issued me some sky blue footie socks to be my shoes for the duration.  So I’m walking in socks on a slick floor, holding my pants up, drugged to the hilt.  On my first morning my handler took some tape and made two straps and wrapped them through my belt loops to hold my pants up.  He did this expertly, obviously having faced this problem before.  He then held me up and walked me to the group session and placed me in a chair where I sat undisturbed for two hours as people shared stories of life’s maladies.  When it was my turn, I just said “I quit taking my meds and sunk into depression with ‘suicidal ideations’”  (That’s what they call it.)  Because of the shoe lace issue, the people in the sky blue footies envied the people who happened to have arrived in shoes without laces and got to keep their shoes.  My wife went through all of my shoes, and the only ones without laces were flip flops.  (Note to self: buy one pair of shoes with velcro fastening.)  She could visit me one hour per day and bring me stuff, and she came every day for that one hour.

Every day after breakfast you would stop by the drug window, and the nurse would give you a small plastic cup filled with pills and a slightly larger plastic cup of water.  For smokers, there was a nicotine patch.  And some of us got a shot too.  Then about midday, a nurse would find me and give me more pills and another shot.  And these shots were this red fluid that looked like cherry syrup.

The meals on the psyche ward are awful.  They are items that are meant to be at least warm, but they are never above room temperature (which varies from day to day—one day the heat went out, so everyone sat in our circle group wrapped in blankets).  Doctors plan each patient’s plate based on his or her dietary needs (as determined by the daily drawing of blood and the vitals taken every five hours)  So each person’s tray is unique with their name on it.  Once the trays are matched to the people, every one sits down and the food trading auction begins. “I’ll trade my fruit cup for a piece of bread.”  “Anybody want this milk?”  “Anyone not want their meat? That kind of thing goes on until everyone ends up eating pretty much what they want from what is available.  Because each person is provided one tiny paper container of salt, no one is willing to give that up.  Faced with a bowl of grits, some eggs, and some potatoes, you have to make the decision which item will get the salt, and which ones you can stomach plain.  Of course it’s all cold.  And what’s funny is that everyone is so drugged up, no one is really hungry.  But everyone attends meals if for no other reason than the meals mark time.  And they eat the food because it’s something to do.

Despite all of the strange things you see, the essence of the psyche ward is absolute boredom.  And boredom is one thing that can destroy the mind.  Even the drugs they keep you on don’t cure the boredom.

When I first arrived, there was a single torn-up paperback.  It was a biography of Sally Hemmings, the slave who was Thomas Jefferson’s real mate.  It’s not a book I would normally pick  out but I was elated to find a book after about 30 hours of near sensory deprivation.  I sat there from midnight until about 4 am reading it by myself in a chair (I barely slept the whole time I was there because it was loud and uncomfortable.)  One of the handlers saw me reading it and brought in a stack of slightly outdated Newsweek magazines.  I thought that was nice.

On the psyche ward, there is no ego.  How can there be? Thus, people from all stations of life are rendered equal.  The lack of ego allows for absolute open communication with strangers, which oddly reminded me of what it’s like on the drug ecstasy.  Further, on the psyche ward, everyone is at their absolute worst.  So there is no judgment.  And at the first meeting of the day, everyone has to give their name and tell what their malady is and what caused them to be there.  So we all knew each others’ problems, so no matter what happened, no one was phased.  For example, the wild schizophrenic guy, who only talked about food, began walking out of a crowded room, and his pajama pants fell to his feet.  But then he just stepped out of them and kept going.  The people in the room looked at each other to make sure they had all seen the same thing, but no one even cracked a smile or even gasped.

In the psyche ward, trading e-mail addresses or phone numbers is strictly verboten.  And you are so heavily monitored it would be impossible to sneak it.  I had a long conversation with a historian of the Middle East about how the Iraq war has upset the balance of power in the region. (she was also well-versed in Southern speech patterns).  I also had a long conversation about steak with a guy with thirty years experience as head chef in downtown hotels.  I wouldn’t mind keeping in touch with these folks, but I’ll never talk to them again.

Being in the psyche ward you see people who have a much wider range of acceptable activities and aversions, and just seeing this widens your own range.  Thus, to an extent, being on a psyche ward makes you “crazier.”

In the psyche ward, you get 90 minutes of art/music therapy every day.  About 15 of us sit around a table stocked with various colored paper, crayons, markers, colored pencils, etc.  We are given a certain task. Then soothing music is played as we all color and draw away for about 45 minutes.  (It felt like prison kindergarten.)  I was skeptical at first, but it was really the most pleasant part of the day in the psyche ward.  Mostly because the music was good.  They even played some Michael Hedges.  As to the drawing, you had to put some effort into it because in the second 45 minutes you show your work to the group and explain how it meets the task.  Some of the shit people drew actually made me almost laugh. (The only time I cracked a smile in the psyche ward).  At the same time, some of the stuff people drew was fascinating, especially the schizophrenics. Thus, I am no longer skeptical about art/music therapy.

Surprisingly, the living quarters in the psyche ward are co-ed.  There’s a hall with rooms for two and showers.  They didn’t put men and women in the same room, but we were all on one hall.  Thus, there was occasional inter-gender accidental visible nudity.  But it mattered not one whit because as I said, there is no ego in the psyche ward, and everyone is too drugged to care.   The men were kind of on one end of the hall, and when I stalked the hallways at night there was snoring coming out of every room.  Luckily though, my roomie was a near catatonic depressive who made no noise.  So I could get some sleep.  Oddly, he didn’t sleep in his bed.  He slept on the floor between his bed and the wall.  I asked him why, and he said it was because it was closer to the ground.  So when the checkers came by counting heads every 15 minutes at night, I would remind them that although he was not in his bed, he was indeed in the room.

Although we were not segregated by gender, we were segregated.  There were two “sides” to the ward, one for cooperative patients and one for non-cooperative patients.  The two sides were separated by locked double doors, but occasionally a non-cooperative would escape to our side requiring multiple staff members to remove them.  Each time this happened, we were all called together to be reassured that we were safe.  But most of us were glad it happened because it was something to watch at least.

One lady on the other side would shake these locked double doors to create a drumming effect and sing this weird but pleasant tune over and over.  I would listen to her, and she would go on and on until staff needed to go through the doors and shooed her away.

In the psyche ward, there is a rule that a patient can not touch another patient at all.  But on day two, in the TV room, a woman freaked out and went after another patient.  I tried to stop her, and she grabbed my arm and wouldn’t let go.  Someone even said she did that and wouldn’t let go.  Staff arrived, loosed her grip on me, and took her away.  The staff then came back to debrief me, make sure I wasn’t hurt, and make sure I felt safe.  I said, “I’m alright.”  I was so drugged up, I didn’t give one shit.

The TV room. You would think that having a TV room would ameliorate the boredom in the psyche ward.  And it did to an extent, but it had nothing to do with the TV, even though it was always on.  The room was just a convenient place for people to gather and talk.

The TV didn’t help for  a couple of reasons.  First, you are too drugged up to understand what was going on on most shows.  Second, it rarely stayed on a single station more than fifteen minutes.  This was due to the fact that no one agreed on what to watch, there was a constant stream of people coming in and out, and drugged psyche patients have no compunction about picking up the remote and changing the channel everyone is watching.  In the extreme, there was one guy who thought that channel surfing meant continuously cycling through the channels without ever stopping on one. And this guy seemed to have the remote a lot.   One time a woman said “Pick a fucking channel!”  I thought the fact that the guy was just cycling through as if it were normal was just as interesting as watching 15 minutes of some random show, but I thought the comment was appropriate.  Indeed, the only time the TV was on one channel more than fifteen minutes was when none of the drugged mental patients could find the remote.  It was always between the cushions on one of the sofas.

In the psyche ward, people with little education have a very sophisticated knowledge of the chemistry of their meds.  I heard a man who could barely form sentences speaking in terms of chemistry way beyond my understanding.

It may have been coincidence, but the people who were there for having attempted suicide seemed the happiest.

You can have a fascinating discussion with a schizophrenic, but eventually you realize it’s the only conversation you can have with him.

If I wanted to shave, I had to find a handler to come watch me.  That didn’t really make sense to me.  If I wanted to remove the blade and slit my wrists, I could do that in my room.  But while using it to shave, it would be pretty hard to seriously injure yourself.

While shaving was optional, daily showers were mandatory and ice cold.  Again presumeably to prevent a hanging, there was not the traditional shower head.  Instead, the cold water shot directly out of one of the upper corners of the room.

One difference between prison and the psyche ward.  In prison, it’s difficult to get medical attention.  One the psyche ward, you are bombarded with medical attention.  At all times, there were phlebotomists and nurses roaming about with these rolling devices taking blood and blood pressure.  If you happen to be sitting in a chair staring at the wall and one of them came by, they would ask you your name, look at a list, and then usually either draw blood or take your vital signs.  My arms are bruised from all of the shots and blood removal.

One woman barely spoke English.  She was there because she was pulled over by a cop while driving a friend’s car, and there was no proof of insurance in the car.  The cop was going to arrest her, and she didn’t understand why.  She panicked and freaked out crying and wailing, and said she wanted to kill herself.  She really had no intention to kill herself and has no mental illness.  But there she was with us crazy people.  Her main concern was to get back to her grandchildren.  She had probably never taken any sort of drug like valium or atavan, but now she has.

In the psyche ward system, I was twelve, double one, double nine, six-o.  I memorized it in honor of Alex in “A Clockwork Orange.”  I kept my wrist band that had my number and my sky blue footies as souvenirs.

Toward the end of my time there, they lowered my drug level, and I mostly returned to normal.  And some of the group discussions were at least somewhat interesting once I regained the faculty to see the absurdity of it all.

But here’s the important part.

Although it was mostly a miserable and surreal experience, it saved my life.  First it put me back on my psyche meds.  More seriously though, through all of the blood analysis, the doctor determined that I had reversible damage to my liver, but that if I didn’t quit drinking, it would soon become non-reversible, and I would die young.  He explained it well.  He said I was OK if I quit now, but I was right there on the edge.

That’s the kind of news that clarifies things, so after thirty years of enjoying the benefits of ETOH, I will now be sober Joe.  No more Natty Lites for this boy.  I always knew the day would come, and now it has.  Just further evidence that I am entering a new chapter in my life.  So I’m very glad my wife had me arrested.  How many people can say that?