Me and Food are Filing for Divorce

I am tired of food.

Does that happen as you get older?
i did a search on Google, hoping for insight, and I couldn't find any information on this. Not finding something on Google is highly disturbing to me. You can ALWAYS find ANYTHING on Google. I assume I'm using the wrong key words.

But it does make sense that after 40-plus years alive, you've probably tried most everything at least once. But I feel I've tried everything, along with its variations, a hundred times.

I do eat as healthy as possible, and even when I stray from that, I'm still bored with food. Part of this is my inherent need for variety. I never allow myself to get bored in any area of my life, and rarely experience a feeling of boredom, because I have so many things to occupy my mind going on all the time. And food also falls into that category. I will hardly ever eat leftovers because "I've already had that." But now, it's gotten severe enough that I find grocery shopping takes twice as long because I agonize about buying this or that, knowing that I'm tired of it, and not being able to think of another option. There are only so many food groups.

I've had chicken, beef, pork, all veggies, all fruits, all dairy, all cereals, all versions of eggs, all sweets, (although I don't think sweets is considered a food group, unless you're a poor mother of 6 in the South.) And forget about going out--I've tried the usual Mexican, Chinese, Japanese, (most of the "eses") and some Greek, and some Mediterranean (whatever that is). I don't like foods that are so spicy that they numb your tastebuds and make your eyes bleed, nor do I like bitter foods--(bok choy comes to mind--what a waste of a good leaf).

I feel I have simply had all I can stand from all there is to choose from. Am I missing something?

I even tried to grow a garden, hoping that fresh, unprocessed and toxin-free vegetables would make food taste new again. But the only area I have to grow in failed miserably because there wasn't enough direct sunlight. Out of the 100 plants i planted (and the boxes I built on stilts to make the process easier), I garnered one small tomato. It was delicious. But gone in one minute.

The only thing I imbibe that I continue to enjoy, is my coffee. It's my first craving when i wake up. After that, the palatal enjoyment just goes downhill. (Now, if I was in a relationship, my first craving might be different. Nothing like a good morning cuddle. And anything else that might transpire after I have brushed my teeth).

So....Maybe I should date a chef.....but since I'm gay, that would be almost impossible, as I fear there are very few lesbian chefs around here. I still have trouble finding regular women I like well enough to date.

But I'm afraid that now I will look at weird things as possible food sources...flowers, bark, foam, soap, cat chow, doggie burgers, sparrows, groundhogs.....they probably all taste like chicken. But I know I would never get crazy with this, as some things are just repulsive--ala, Fear Factor. I once saw Survivorman eat a scorpion. Live, and kicking, and I thought I would hurl. Eating some things is just mental, plain and simple.

I've had the same menu of choices for over 40 years. So I'm convinced this is age-related--and not in a senility sort of way--senility might help, actually, because I would FORGET that I've had that particular food a hundred times, and it might, therefore, taste new again. (Wow, I bet that would make sex great too). Okay, now I'm actually considering the positive aspects of Alzheimer's.

I welcome any comments that might alleviate my food angst.

(And Georgie, I defy you to tell me you were just thinking the same thing...)

Me and Food are Filing for Divorce

McBush: we'll stay the course for 10,000 Years

There are other candidates who would be worse to have in the Oval Office, than John McCain...like, say, Hitler.....Stalin.....Ghengis Khan, Charles Manson, Jack the Ripper...

McBush: we'll stay the course for 10,000 Years

No More Hall-Decking for You Guys

Jeremiah 10:2-4: "Thus saith the LORD, Learn not the way of the heathen, and be not dismayed at the signs of heaven; for the heathen are dismayed at them. For the customs of the people are vain: for one cutteth a tree out of the forest, the work of the hands of the workman, with the axe. They deck it with silver and with gold; they fasten it with nails and with hammers, that it move not." (KJV).

Okay, that's it for all you Christmas tree-hugging Christians. If you believe in what the Bible tells you, there will be no more Christmas trees or decorating!

Thou mustest not decketh the halls!

No More Hall-Decking for You Guys

Cause for ConCERN?

Have you heard about our potential annihilation?

France is building a "doomsday machine" according to Internet Whistle-blowers. For an overview of these fears, refer to Misunderstood Universe website.

CERN, or European Center for Nuclear Research (which makes no sense, unless the name was Center, European, of Research, Nuclear...but whatever) is the home of the most powerful particle accelerator...with the ability to create (though minuscule) black holes. The fearful public say that a created black hole could gravitate to center of the earth, and swallow us up in a matter of years.


There are always questionable sources for information. Two, perhaps would be Nostradamus and Yahoo Answers.

From answers.yahoo, which I normally find to be a completely useless resource, since anyone can answer whether they are qualified or not, nonetheless, this is an answer and requires some investigation, and some insight from qualified persons:

"Is it safe for CERN to create a black hole on earth? I have heard recent news about CERN creating a black hole on earth to explain how the universe began. As in accordance with what we knmow about black holes does creation of a black hole on earth pose potential threat to mankind?

Best Answer - Chosen by Voters

(I hope these aren't the same voters who will be going to the poles in November).

No danger at all. Black holes are not dangerous as such, its is massive black holes that could pause a threat, those with a mass that would be at least that of a mountain. Any micro black hole produced experimentally would have a mass comparable to that of an atom, and could not even have enough gravity to move another atom in close proximity. Further, it would be highly unstable and would stop be in a black hole in a period of time that is so short, you can't measure accurately, billionth of a second. Even if it could attract something -- and again it can't -- that something would not have had time to move before the black hole stops being a black hole."

And as far as Nostradamus is concerned, someone, of course, found a reference to this in one of his quatrains, and notes that as the population of the world reached 6.66 billion, CERN went online, and this event coincides (maybe) with not only the ominous numbner 666, but with a Nostradamus prophesy:

9:44--"All should leave Geneva. Saturn turns from gold to iron. The contrary Positive ray (RAYPOZ) will exterminate everything, there will be signs in the sky before this."

Which caused rumblings about that Mayan Calender thing, of time as we know it, ending on December 22, 2012.

Posted on Tech Target, is this article:

"Are storage vendors going to help send us down a black hole?
February 6th, 2008 by Beth Pariseau

I’m sure any number of you can come up with witty figurative responses to that, but I actually mean it literally.

Back in August I did a case study on CERN, the world’s largest physics laboratory, in Switzerland, and the petabytes of data storage that are going to support research on its Large Hadron Collider (LHC). LHC is a 12-story-high, 10-mile-wide underground system of tunnels, magnets and sensors that’s designed to do no less than recreate atomic conditions at the creation of the universe and capture particles that until now have been only theoretical.

Having spoken with CERN about their research and the way the whole system is set up, I was surprised when I logged in to my personal email this morning and got a friend request from a profile titled STOP CERN. According to the profile:

This space has been set up to spread awareness of the risks a project due to be launched at CERN next year poses to our planet. For the first time in many decades someone has built a machine that exceeds all our powers of prediction, and although they estimate the possibility of accidentally destroying the planet as extremely low, the LHC propaganda machine that ‘everything is safe’ is well funded by your tax dollars, paying large salaries to thousands of people who have much to lose financially should the LHC be unable to prove its safety. As most of them perceive the risk to be small, they are willing to take that ’small risk’ at our expense. The actual risk cannot presently be calculated, and a Large Hadron Collider [LHC] legal defense fund has even been set up to challenge CERN on the project.

I don’t have any kind of physics background, so I don’t know if the criticisms are legit, but I was doubly surprised to find that the MySpace profile is only the tip of the iceberg of people questioning CERN. In addition to some other critical websites, an LHC Legal Defense Fund has been started with the goal of legally intervening to stop CERN from turning on LHC this May, creating a black hole within the collider and accidentally destroying the planet.

By the way, isn’t that really every geek’s dream? To be working on a machine that even theoretically could accidentally destroy the planet?

Anyway, the debate seems to be whether or not something called “Hawking evaporation” (presumably named after physicist Stephen Hawking) will neutralize the microscopic black holes that could be created by the particle collisions in LHC, or if they’ll continue to grow and, well, eat France.

According to another anti-CERN site:

If MBH’s [microscopic black holes] are created, there is a likelyhood [sic] that some could fall unimpeded to the centre of the Earth under gravity…Scientists have estimated that a stable black hole at the center of the earth could consume not only France but the whole planet in the very short time span of between 4 minutes and 30 seconds and 7 minutes.

I’m a little more inclined to believe the multiple accredited physics organizations around the world involved in the LHC project know what they’re doing than I am to believe some people I’ve never heard of from the Internet, but what do I know? The criticism has at least been strong enough to prompt CERN to post a kind of FAQ page about black holes, strangelets, and all manner of interesting potential doomsday scenarios that have been envisioned for LHC.

Despite the impressive power of the LHC in comparison with other accelerators, the energies produced in its collisions are greatly exceeded by those found in some cosmic rays. Since the much higher-energy collisions provided by Nature for billions of years have not harmed the Earth, there is no reason to think that any phenomenon produced by the LHC will do so.

Wouldn’t it just be something, though, if after centuries of war and pollution and all the other things mankind has done to compromise the planet, Armageddon was actually brought about by a bunch of guys in a physics lab?"

But According to MSNBC there is no cause for concern.

Good news! Black hole won't destroy Earth
Fears raised collider would create black holes that could swallow planet
By Charles Q. Choi
LiveScience
updated 12:42 p.m. CT, Wed., Sept. 20, 2006

Scientists could generate a black hole as often as every second when the world's most powerful particle accelerator comes online in 2007.

This potential "black hole factory" has raised fears that a stray black hole could devour our planet whole. The Lifeboat Foundation, a nonprofit organization devoted to safeguarding humanity from what it considers threats to our existence, has stated that artificial black holes could "threaten all life on Earth" and so it proposes to set up "self-sustaining colonies elsewhere."

But the chance of planetary annihilation by this means "is totally miniscule," experimental physicist Greg Landsberg at Brown University in Providence, R.I., told LiveScience.

The accelerator, known as the Large Hadron Collider, is under construction in an underground circular tunnel nearly 17 miles long at the world's largest physics laboratory, CERN, near Geneva.

At its maximum, each particle beam the collider fires will pack as much energy as a 400-ton train traveling at 120 mph. By smashing particles together and investigating the debris, scientists hope to help solve mysteries such as the origin of mass and why there is more matter than antimatter in the universe.

If theories about the universe containing extra dimensions other than those of space and time are correct, the accelerator might also generate black holes, Landsberg and his colleague Savas Dimopoulos at Stanford University in California calculated in 2001. Physicists Steve Giddings at the University of California, Santa Barbara and Scott Thomas at Stanford University in California reached similar conclusions.

Black holes possess gravitational fields so strong that nothing can escape them, not even light. They normally form when the remains of a dead star collapse under their own gravity, squeezing their mass together. Although black holes can't be seen, astronomers infer their existence by the gravitational effects they have on gas and stars around them.

Making black holes
A number of models of the universe suggest extra dimensions of reality exist that are each folded up into sizes ranging from as tiny as a proton, or roughly a millionth of a billionth of a meter, to as big as a fraction of a millimeter. At distances comparable to the size of these extra dimensions, gravity becomes far stronger, these models suggest. If this is true, the collider will cram enough energy together to initiate gravitational collapses that produce black holes.

If any of the models are right, the accelerator should create a black hole anywhere from every second to every day, each roughly possessing 5,000 times the mass of a proton and each a thousandth of a proton in size or smaller, Landsberg said.

Still, any fears that such black holes will consume the Earth are groundless, Landsberg said.

For one thing, theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking calculated all black holes should emit radiation, and that tiny black holes should lose more mass than they absorb, evaporating within a billionth of a trillionth of a trillionth of a second, "before they could gobble up any significant amount of matter," Landsberg said.

Not destroyed yet
CERN spokesman and former research physicist James Gillies also pointed out that Earth is bathed with cosmic rays powerful enough to create black holes all the time, and the planet hasn't been destroyed yet.

"Still, let's assume that even if Hawking is a genius, he's wrong, and that such black holes are more stable," Landsberg said. Nearly all of the black holes will be traveling fast enough from the accelerator to escape Earth's gravity. "Even if you produced 10 million black holes a year, only 10 would basically get trapped, orbiting around its center," Landsberg said.

However, such trapped black holes are so tiny, they could pass through a block of iron the distance from the Earth to the Moon and not hit anything. They would each take about 100 hours to gobble up one proton.

At that rate, even if one did not take into account the fact that each black hole would slow down every time it gobbled up a proton, and thus suck down matter at an even slower rate, "about 100 protons would be destroyed every year by such a black hole, so it would take much more than the age of universe to destroy even one milligram of Earth material," Landsberg concluded. "It's quite hard to destroy the Earth."

If the Large Hadron Collider does create black holes, not only will it prove that extra dimensions of the universe exist, but the radiation that decaying black holes emit could yield clues that help finally unite all the current ideas about the forces of nature under a "theory of everything." © 2008 LiveScience.com. All rights reserved. Legal
© 2008 MSNBC.com

And in an article on NPR's website, this excerpt:

A few non-scientists have been worried that physicists are getting a little too close to god for comfort. They're worried that this experiment could destroy the Earth, because one possibility is that the machine will make miniature black holes. De Rujula describes miniature black holes as particles of extraordinary density compared to usual objects.

He says black holes would certainly be interesting, because they would be evidence for extra tiny dimensions of space-time. But he doesn't think they are likely to appear. And if they do, they'll be harmless.

"Those black holes will not be dangerous ones of science fiction that eat up everything," De Rujula promises. "Being so small they sort of break into pieces."

More discussion on this can be found on Future Pundit. Fascinating, terrifying, slightly encouraging, confusing, highly technical, highly stupid and partially ambiguous.

A poster named Andrew said,

"Having read these pages, I contacted Professor George Ellis - one of the most eminent physicists who worked on Black Holes theory with Stephen Hawking, as well as a highly reputable philosopher of science and receiver of the Temperton Prize. In his reply, Professor Ellis wrote (E-mail of 22-9-06): "I don't think there is any risk. The theories quoted are highly speculative and have no experimental basis. And higher energy particles already exist in the universe - they are in cosmic rays. I don't think it is anything to get worried about."

I can't help but notice that the qualified response to this includes the phrase "I don't think it is anything to get worried about." You DON'T THINK? Meaning, you're not sure? Meaning, there is still some risk we don't know about, or we do know about, but are willing to chance?

It almost seems that we must have some official investigation or interview with some trusted authority who has no conflict of interest in telling us all the truth. I think that ultimately, ANY danger is too much danger in this case. The only situation I can see wherein this would not be true, is if we were insured certain global destruction if we DIDN'T do this. Calculated risk is a sensible method of discerning decisions, but we must always consider worst-case-scenarios. If the worst case scenario is the ultimate annihilation of everything on the planet, then the small risk becomes a moot consideration, and the activities of CERN or any other scientific entity must be prohibited.

I will continue to search for cogent answers to this gargantuan issue. And I welcome anyone who can provide reputable input on it, or direct me toward that in some way.


--------------------------------------
CERN's homepage

Here is a link to a pdf document offered by CERN on this topic. I do not, however, trust the word of those who are being accused of doing something dangerous. An obvious conflict of interest.

Also, here's a list of particle accelerator labs around the world.

Cause for ConCERN?

Favorite cat picture for March

Favorite cat picture for March

Blog Semantics

Is a blog a blog or a post?

Of course it was first called a weblog , then people truncated it by calling it a blog. A blog was where the page was that you posted, but it also seemed to refer to the actual post.

But if you said, "I just posted a blog, go read it."-- that would seem to indicate that you created a blog site every time you posted...even though most people know that's not what you meant. You meant you posted a post. Or blogged a post.

But you don't say, "go visit my posts", you say "go visit my blog." Because hopefully, they will read all your posts, posted at your blog.

Although you could very well go visit a post, I suppose. And you would be on that person's blog.

Blog Semantics

The Attack of the Wal-Martian

So I went to Wal-Mart to get a re-recordable DVD or two, and some regular ones.

As I made my way to the front, a rather elderly Wal-Martian, with Spandex pants pulled up high over her pot belly, stood staring at me, awaiting my need for her check-out prowess. I paused, saying, "I'm ready if you are."

She frowned. I noticed her eyebrows seemed unnaturally bushy.

"Are you open?" I indicated her empty line, which she was posted at, like all good Wal-Martians, who wish to snag you and encourage you to pay for your selected items before leaving the store.

She nodded, but didn't move.

So I just walked over to the checkout and waited for her to catch up.

She then took her post.

I said, indicating the two different packages, "I want to pay for this on one card, and this on another card."

She seemed confused. I wasn't sure if she was still thinking about her confusion of seconds ago, when I made the assumption that she knew what she was there for, or if this was new confusion. But she said, "You want each of these, both on the same card?"

"Nooo." I was wondering how she made it through training. Maybe she hadn't had any. Obligingly, I repeated my request, that I wanted to pay for each item with a different card.

"Why do you want to do that?" she asked, holding my dvd's.

My knee-jerk retort was Nunya damn business why. Just do it. But I'm nice. Usually. "No ma'am, I want to pay for this item on this card--" I held it up. "And this other item on this other card--" another visual. "I want to pay with two different accounts, that's all..."

She seemed baffled, but rang the first one up. I waited for her to press credit, and she didn't. "Okay..." I said.

She lifted her caterpillar eyebrows.

"Okay. You can press credit, now."

She whirled, with one finger already aloft in preparation.

Same thing happened with the next item.

Then, she paused to ask, "Do you want them in the same sack?"

No, I want THIS one in this sack, and this other one in a sack from way over there! Again. Nice. Play nice. I bit back my retort. If this continued, my tongue would be bleeding. "You can put both of them in the same sack, I don't think it will foul up the credit card statement."

She frowned again. The caterpillars mashing together atop her soupy brown eyes. She had a mole on her chin, I noticed. And there was a huge whisker planted in it. I looked down for my sack, but she hadn't rotated the little caddy yet. It was still on her side of the counter. I waited, my own eyebrows high, hoping she'd remember.

"Have a day..." she said.

Have a day? Did she have a glitch in her software? I am having a day, that's for sure. "Um, could you..." I rotated my finger to illustrate to her again with a visual, because words were obviously not her friend. She actually TURNED AROUND. I guess she thought I didn't want her to watch me as I took my bag. We don't want any witnesses, apparently.

I grabbed the metal sack arm, and whirled it myself, snatched the bag and was on my way out as she was turning around, still confused, her caterpillars waltzing on her brow.

I hoped this was her first and last day.

The Attack of the Wal-Martian

Flatheads Rejoice

After about the 3rd century B.C., no one really thought the earth was flat. that idea became popular with the publication of The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus by Washington Irving.

There is, however, a Flat Earth Society, which sprang from interpretations of biblical passages by one Samuel Rowbotham, who took part in public debates with the scientists during much of the 19th Century. The debacle was reminiscent of the flack Charles Darwin endured for his Origin of Species. While Rowbotham's legacy dwindled into obscurity in the mid-20th century, Darwin's legacy, as we all know, lives on with the support of empirical data from scientific research.

Now, it seems Samuel Rowbotham missed the mark on a cosmic level. Scientists now say that while the Earth is obviously not flat, the universe IS.

Astronomically, this "flatness" refers to geometrical constants existing in the cosmos--namely, that light travels in straight lines. Einstein suggested the universe was curved, and it most likely was for a short time after the Big Bang, but now scientists have proven to within a couple of percentage points of certainty, that the expansion of the universe is a very real event, and is expected to continue indefinitely, since there isn't enough matter to make it collapse again into a repeat performance of the great Singularity AKA the Big Bang scientists speak of.

To say that the universe we see is all the universe that IS, however, would be a cosmic understatement. The geometrical "flatness" to which this discovery refers is based on Euclidean geometry and in the context of the "observable" universe. If you're small enough, on a big enough surface, it will always look flat. Thus, we exist in a dimension of time, but time does not exist outside the purview of this universe. Time exists completely in the whole of our universe, so things a billion light years away from us is in a sense "the future"--but it's more complicated than that. Just like when you drive your car down the highway, your final destination exists, even if you haven't reached it yet, and it might take a long period of time to get there. Time, in other words, exists all at once, even when we can't fathom it, nor have any experience of it outside our own past or present. The future is still there.

We know that when the universe was formed from a gas cloud that began to rotate, it was easier for matter to collect on the poles, since centripetal force would push them away at the center belt around the spinning cloud. Thus, this spherical cloud would eventually collapse and expand outward, exponentially, to create our solar system. This is the "flatness" of the Universe. It just means that it's not folded up on itself as it would be if it were spherical, and not flat like a compact disc, but flat like something round that has been mashed down. But parallel lines remain parallel, and triangles always have 180 degrees.

Remember making a round ball with Silly Putty, when you were a kid? And how you'd flatten it with your palm? The universe is sort of like that. What once was curved, now is flat. Now, with your hands, you can pull this squished ball of Silly Putty in all directions, stretching it--that's like the expansion of the universe.

And that's not necessarily suggesting any supreme entity had a "hand" in it. The laws of nature and science took care of that as a matter of course. Just like they did in evolution. Who says the Big Bang wasn't God Himself exploding in a Swan Song of Ultimate creation?

So, FlatHeads rejoice. You have the universe on your side, now.

Flatheads Rejoice

I Don't Keep Hoardly Anything

....Looking at the Hoard Mentality

Every so often, when I'm doing Spring cleaning, or having guests over I want to impress, I look around and think: Hark! I might be mental. I think I'm a hoarder. I'm reorganizing and cleaning, and everywhere I have things that need a place to go, and then I ask myself, why do I have so many things? I know it is my lack mentality. I did without, and was always broke my whole life, and so now it's a habit to hang onto things just in case. Every time I had let go of something, I needed it later, and then I had to buy it, which cost more money that I needed for other things, which meant I would not have enough money to go around. . . So it's more a Lack Mentality than a Hoard Mentality. Maybe I need to light a match and set it all on fire in the back yard. Then I'd get a ticket because of the burn ban, and that would cost MORE MONEY. Grr.

I'm not at all suggesting that my clutter is indicative of any real mental illness. I regularly go through things and take it to thrift stores, sell on eBay, or simply throw it away. And in the recent past, I did get on a kick of collecting odd, funny or unique cigarette lighters. Got rid of those after a while. I only need ONE after all. And then I accidentally started collecting sunglasses. It was easy because I only bought them at the dollar store, so they aren't in any way interfering with my finances. And I like being able to choose among a collection of them depending on my needs and my mood. I still have about 20 pairs. If I break them, or scratch the lenses, I simply throw them away. Innocuous enough.

But there are many people who seriously have a problem with hoarding things. It could be papers, movies, trinkets, clothes, shoes...or even animals. I knew two women who lived together for many years, and their house was a labyrinth of "stuff"--hundreds of video tapes stored in shelves that lined the walls ceiling to floor, stacks of papers with an inch of dust on them, dirt, grime, and 5 large dogs that ran the house. They always had a roach and flea issue that was out of control.

I think there is some inherent security in this Stuff-Mongering. And I can see how animals would be one of the hardest things to let go of, even when you have way too many of them. They are living and breathing and you have some kind of benefit from them in company, love, and affection and even entertainment. I am frequently entertained by my two cats. But I'm really clear that I don't need 20 of them. Even though I am fond of making jokes about myself in that regard--that I will probably end up that crazy old lady in the big house with all the cats. But I don't really believe it will come to that. Not really. I'm way too stable in my psychology.

Contrarily, I know of someone in Texas who has 7 dogs, 2 parrots, 9 cats, 2 pot belly pigs, 17 tropical fish, and 13 Pygmy goats. While she does not yet have a partridge in a pear tree, she does speak of wanting a Fennec Fox, and is also in the market for a monkey. She does not live on a farm. And they don't all live in her house. The goats are outside.

Now if this was a farm, I'd understand. But it's not. She doesn't milk the goats and they will not let her get near them. The parrots don't talk, but they do screech a lot, and she has to keep them separated so one won't snap off the toes of the other. (That happened twice already and the vet bill was staggering--as most of her vet bills are). The cats are not declawed because she believes that removing their claws is psychologically damaging to them--and thus, they destroy her furniture. She also doesn't have them spayed because that's also some kind of crime against nature. So her cat family continues to grow exponentially as one or two of them have kittens. She hasn't been able to eat at her kitchen table in years, because the cats like to lounge there and it's full of fur. The pot belly pigs have rooted holes in the carpeting under her bedroom door because they want to come in and sleep in the bed with her. But the cats get mad. So she makes the pigs stay outside the bedroom. Where they pee, because THEY are mad.

Her tropical fish require specialized water, tank and maintenance. The dogs sleep on the bed when they want, on the furniture, where they summarily dig holes, and often take a wizz on the furniture too, if they are "afraid" of guests, or "just marking their territory." She doesn't breed any of these animals to sell. They don't produce anything in return for her trouble. Yet, she insists she could not live without them, and that she understands them as they do her, and she has this symbiotic and spiritual relationship with all of them. An erstwhile Dr. Doolittle sans medication.

All these animals occupy a grand majority of her time, interfere with her life, her plans, her autonomy, and her relationships. They cost her shocking amounts of money, and not only does she shell it out, but talks of buying more land for the goats, building huge playhouses for the dogs and cats. She has to get up at 3 every morning to get all the care and feeding taken care of before she drives to the Post Office to deliver mail for the day. Once when she had to go out of town for a funeral, it cost her $5000 to pay someone to take care of it all. Her neighbors call her home "The Ark." And I'm sure they're hoping for a heavy rain so she'll float away with her self-imposed zoo.

Forgive my bluntness, but this woman is mentally ill. Not even on the precipice of mental illness. She has leaped with no parachute into the crazy void. And she wasn't always that bad. It started small and then just continued over a period of years until it reached a point of complete and utter obsession and delusion. I believe it is the manifestation of a severe Obsessive Compulsive Disorder.

Healthy people who feel such an affinity with animals usually just become veterinarians, or animal breeders, or they have animals that in some way pay for themselves as in chickens who lay eggs, Parrots that sell for $500 to $1000 each, Llamas who can be shorn and their coat sold for various other products to be made. Sometimes people who have lots of animals live on farms and the animals are part of that process, but aren't viewed as pets, except for the occasional dog or cat. This in no way describes those who collect animals for no apparent sensible reason. These collections are just money pits. Fer godssake, get rid of all those animals and get a job at the zoo! I understand feeling a connection to a certain animal, but do you need to have 17 fish and 33 non-water-bound animals to remain connected?

Now, I feel a connection with dolphins somehow, but I'm not gonna build a big aqua park in my back yard and buy some dolphins to put in it. I'll just watch them on TV and say "Aren't they pretty?" And maybe one day I'll get to swim with one. But I won't try to collect the dolphins. I did that once, years ago--not with REAL dolphins, but dolphin trinkets. It started with one or two and then word got around that I "liked dolphins" and then every birthday, Christmas or freakin' Ground Hog day, I got another dolphin trinket. Then one day I was dusting that huge shelf of dolphin trinkets and I thought--why am I doing this? Why do I need all these? And it ended there. I sold some at a garage sale, and the rest I gave to thrift.

One of the pertinent questions to ask yourself, I believe, is Does this collection get in the way of actually living my life? Another question is, Do I USE this, or gain anything tangible from it, or just look at it? and another is, Do I have to spend extra money for space to store or keep these things?

In the case of those who tend to collect animals--notwithstanding those like Charles Darwin who are scientists, studying them--I think it must be some kind of coping mechanism gone awry--a live creature who loves you unconditionally, is sometimes easy to get addicted to, if you're needy that way. And pets don't demand that you look good, don't care if you're smart or a good conversationalist. Pets don't care what you drive, what you wear, or if you're naked. Or crazy. They are happy to have food and water and a little affection. It's the simplest relationship to maintain. And also one that often leads to a degeneration in social skills and isolation.

I knew a woman who had several dogs, and several cats, and her house stank all the time of urine and feces, and there was always some present on the floor in the kitchen, and hair on the counters, and she could never go anywhere for any amount of time because she couldn't stay away that long. The piddle pads would be full, you see. And inevitably, they missed the piddle pad. Then her carpet was ruined. She'd burn incense when guests (rarely) would come by. She never had a second date with anyone after they came to her home, because they never wanted to come to her house again.

Having too many pets is a way, quite often, for people to avoid having any real human relationships. If this is the case, then there is the obvious question, Why are you afraid to have real human relationships? And maybe another question is, What gaping void in your psyche are you trying to fill? I believe that most if not all of these types of people have a history of abuse, or abandonment. So their solution is to stock their existence with many beings who will do neither.

There is paltry research on those who hoard herds, flocks, clutches, gaggles, and schools of animals. But it's an obvious problem when there are companies who can make a living cleaning up the chaos that is left behind when one of these people finally dies and is found amid the menagerie. Often, having been used as food by their beloved "pets."

I Don't Keep Hoardly Anything

Medical Professionals Were NOT Stunned

The sexually ambiguous humans among us are here to stay. Regarding the Oregon man, Thomas Beatie, who claims to be pregnant...

I suspected when I heard the headline that he either had a sex change or was a hermaphrodite AKA intersexed. Indeed, the man used to be a woman. And he retained some of his female reproductive organs. He's married to a woman.

But my first burning question was, who is the father? Did his wife also have a sex change--was she formerly a man, who retained some of HER male reproductive organs? So i had to go glance at a few paragraphs about the story.

I don't know why everyone seems so shocked, Obviously, men can't have babies. So you know right away this is being hyped. Neighbors have seen the man recently and swear he doesn't look pregnant to them. Regardless, it was ridiculous for the British online paper, the Telegraph to print the headline "'Pregnant man stuns medical profession." I'm relatively certain that no medical professionals were stunned. Now, if he was biologically and completely a man, and they discovered he was pregnant, that would be stunning. The news media just can't help but make the unsensational, sensational. I'm sure this was a deliberate decision made by he and his wife, since reports state she is infertile and they wanted to have a baby. Duh.

Medical Professionals Were NOT Stunned

Beware the Drooping Cerebellum

..a cautionary tale. Maybe.

One of my ex girlfriends has this weird and rare condition where her cerebellum is drooping down too far and impinging on the brain stem. For real. It's called Chiari.

Now for a long time, even before this diagnosis, I discovered that I didn't want to talk to her anymore because every conversation consisted of her condescending to me at every turn. Gone was that delightful, brilliant young woman who so fascinated me with her thoughts on things...she had become sort of...well, an arrogant prick. (sorry).

For more insight on this, see Phone a Friend.

I put up with it during the last slew of phone calls, because she was telling me about her brain condition, and i felt genuine sympathy. I'm not a heartless bastard. Though I wasn't sure what to say. We hadn't seen each other in something like 7 years, and I only periodically talked to her on the phone or email. But as time went on, I was reminded again that I always felt like she was judging everything I said. Just an overweening disrespect in general. Well this haughtiness will only go on so long, brain condition or not, before I say good luck, bye bye. During our last conversation, I kind of reached my breaking point, and unloaded on her, telling her I was really not happy with the way she spoke to me, and i made sure I fully explained why i felt that way, and I said, "Do you talk to everyone like this, or is it just me?" She hung up on me.

A week later, she called, but I didn't answer. Just couldn't get sucked into that black hole again. And then she emailed, asking for some favor. Like nothing happened. No mention of having hung up on me, or being an ass--nothing. Whatever, Becky.

So the best I can do is chalk it up to still another person who seems mean or damaged or otherwise unpleasant to have in your life. And after that, I tend to just make jokes about it. Like, she can't help it, her brain is falling out of her head. I know it's not supposed to be funny, and maybe it's awful of me to joke about it, but dark realities sometimes need to be used as fodder for humor, because otherwise we'd all just be blubbering and wailing through this life. I don't think she's behaving that way because of her condition, either. I think it's just who she's become. For lots of reasons I won't go into here.

BUT. If I had that condition, I'd milk it. I'd do all those things that are inappropriate and blame it on the fact that my brain was falling out of my head.

Beware the Drooping Cerebellum

Brain Dump: Mortality & Meaning

Okay, I know this is going to be less a blog, and more a journal entry, but whatever. Consider it the first in a series of brain dumps.
<<--Look, i even made a graphic for it....

Onward.... I usually try to see the bright side of things, and when I can't do that, I try to see the funny side. Anyone who reads this blog knows that. And often the dark side can be funny, if you know how to manipulate the data.

But this morning, I think my brain is in some other gear....PARK, maybe. It hits me like this every so often when it gets triggered by news from loved ones, or dreams I have.

I dreamed I had my ex girlfriend's parrots. Like they were mine or I had inherited them or something. Maybe in the dream she had died...I don't know...(and no, i don't wish any ill toward any of my ex's. They all tend to merge after a while anyway...E Pluribus unum.*) But I was enjoying the parrots. I was always playing with the Cockatoo, named Sophee (that was her real name) but in the dream she wasn't crippled and her personality was more like Keegan's--the African Grey of the pair, who was talkative and personable. I was living in my father's house --have no idea why. A few days ago, I dreamed my father died, too...I'm sure all this came from finding out that another one of my ex girlfriends lost her mother. And once you hear that, there's this mortality bacteria in your brain...and it sort of infiltrates your life for a while, until you get back into the bliss of ignoring all those harsh realities.

When I woke from all this, I lay there with Shoes curled up with half her body on my shoulder, purring softly. (Yeah, my cat. Women don't seem to purr...well, okay, if I'm doing it right, they do.) For a long time I just laid there, and thought about things. Like you do when you're sleepy and just waking up and the brain starts to make that trip back to rational consciousness again.

I felt sad. Like why doesn't my ex, the one who lost her mother--why does she feel she can't be in my life somewhere? Why can't I be one of those friends to her that she seeks out during times like these, for support? Why does she continue to judge me by the person I was 10 years ago? And why does it still matter to me at all? Because she was the only woman I was ever so madly in love with? Because it was the only time I've ever had my heart ripped out of my chest and handed back to me as that person walks out of my life, while I hold my bloody thumping, dying heart in my own hands? Is that why?? (Okay, that was graphic, but that's what the emotion surrounding it is like for me).

And I thought of how sad it is that I am alone so much. Is it mostly my choice, or is it part and parcel of being an author-artist-songster- type person? Everything I do is something I do alone....And I stayed sad as my thoughts wandered to the two dreams of my father.

How tragic that I have a biological family who rejects me on the basis of who I am, (an oxymoron in and of itself) and that it somehow offends their sensibilities to the degree that they would abandon their own child; and I thought maybe it wasn't their sensibilities. Maybe they were all just selfish, shallow people, and I can still feel good about my decision to remove all toxic people from my life. Maybe it's a blessing that I might never know when any of them die.

And I thought of my own mortality. I coughed. I thought for the umpteenth time, that I should quit smoking. It was the last thing left on this "take good care of yourself" train. Addiction to cigarettes is so hard to conquer. I've stopped smoking a large number of times, (yeah, quitting is easy: I've done it a bunch of times) and it was okay for a while, but then I would need that---what? comfort? is smoking really like having a Friend? And I know it makes my brain feel better. It's like I can't think clearly without cigarettes. A crazy excuse from an addicted smoker?

And then I thought about all the weird things that happen to your body as you get older, and how it's a little frightening. The older I get, the more frightened I become. I lament the lost years--wishing I'd known 20 years ago, what I know now. Wishing I had more time. Wishing, as I've mentioned before, that I really could live forever. (Ironic, since there have been so many times that i wished to die). So many things on the horizon, other than a mushroom cloud (if we're lucky). Things I'd like to see and experience....but as each birthday comes and goes, I find myself lying about my age more and more...and I get this dread in my gut...knowing I won't grow old gracefully. That I'll be kicking and screaming the whole way. Never mind all those big personal cosmology questions that arise about death and life and life after death. Just dealing with your own declining vessel is enough to worry about....Like when you're driving a car that starts to have problems, and then there's a whole list of problems on its heels and you know at some point it won't be worth fixing and it should just be given over to the great junk heap. Is that my fate as well?

And will I face this progressing disintegration by myself, with no one to support me, care for me, love me? (I am so thankful for my best friend). Will I live out this timeline of mine without being able to give my heart to someone who deserves it? And why is it so hard for me to give my heart away? Why don't I fall in love easily? Why is it so rare for me to even be sparkin' on a woman? That's only happened a grand total of 2 times in....god...how many years? And the first spark was doused with water pretty quickly. Well, not water. Wine. The second one--I don't know about that. It's current. I have no idea what this woman feels toward me, and I'm too chicken to ask, so I'm focusing on the friendship, which is very important to me anyway.

But amid this, The same questions continue to arise. Will I never find my PERSON? Will I meet my ultimate demise without knowing what it feels like again to be so in love with woman that the thought of her not being there aches like a case of restless legs and angina, combined. After all I've done to evolve and become the type of person who would be considered a valuable discovery for some lovely, evolved, intelligent, and funny woman out there, will it not matter? Is fate just fate? How much control do we really have over how our lives go? And I wondered if maybe my high ideals and constant concern for the practice of sound ethics has gotten me here. Is it just subterfuge? Does it really matter if I'm a quality person? Finding love seems to have almost nothing to do with how great a person you are. Rude awakening, that. Maybe I'm having a mid-life crisis.

So today I must try to coax myself back over into my concerted efforts to ignore these things that simmer on the burner at the back of my mind.

R. D. Laing, a British psychiatrist noted for his alternative approach to the treatment of schizophrenia, once said, “Life is a sexually transmitted disease and the mortality rate is one hundred percent.” I wish I didn't resonate with that quote quite so much.

--------------------------------
*Latin for "out of many, one."

Brain Dump: Mortality & Meaning

Catching Hell From the Hellish

Even within my own "supposed" community, the community assigned to me by virtue of my sexual preference, I catch hell in the online dating realm, whenever I complain about the content of insipid emails from the dull and ignorant on personals sites. Misspelled words, fragmented sentences, fake modesty, transparent bravado, shallow beliefs, misplaced haughtiness, gender confusion, the walking wounded.... Sometimes I can't believe it. Unfortunately, I have no choice but to believe it, because it's true. It happens to me repeatedly, like some recurring rash... I continue to get those kinds of mails.

I even started a special forum called Atypical Lesbians, to try to accommodate those who felt as I did. I saw it as a sort of Underground Railroad for chagrined, dispirited lesbians who wanted more from their lives and their people; those who wanted to rise above the mundane and stereotypical. I have simply lost my patience with the kind of mentality so commonly revealed in ads and emails from personals sites. Associating with those "types" just depresses me. But five months after I launched the forum, there's very little activity, because apparently, there are not enough lesbians out there who are Atypical. Notwithstanding my good intentions, it's not like you can bring any rise to the unleavened, as it were. This is another thing that Political Correctness helps keep afloat. No one speaks out, no one says this is not acceptable. It keeps us all from evolving. Some truths are still the truths, even if they are uncomfortable to some.

So...I am an individualist, non-conformist...among other things some would label "bitch." Why is it that having standards for yourself and others, automatically relegates you to bitch-status? I don't enjoy being so schismatic with my identity and the identity of others...but somehow if I don't, I feel I will be sucked into the abyss. And if I'm going to be sucked into the abyss, I want it to be the Bliss Abyss, not the abyss of ignorance.

I suppose all this means I am also an Intellectual Separatist. I'm not judging the people, per se, just their behavior, their choices, and the surrounding issues that arise. But it's often so hard to divide a subjective self-concept or cosmology from the objective universal ones. Meaning, some people have certain ideas about themselves, and anything that threatens it is rejected out of hand. Even if what they believe is inaccurate or delusional. They believe what they believe and sometimes can't understand that beliefs are malleable; that evolution is predicated on questions and data-gathering; that what is true now, is not always written in stone; and perhaps most importantly, that if you don't educate yourself and make learning your friend, you will be INCAPABLE of understanding the very concepts that might lead to inner peace and happiness. Contrarily, you also cannot make a silk purse out of a sow's ear. Ultimately everyone has to take the reins on their own buggy and guide it where they want it to go.

And then there's that old Prime Directive (from Star Trek)--never interfere with the natural evolution of a species. I think that applies here, too. We can help when asked or when we think we might be able to LightSwitch someone; we can put our ideas out there and hope they are considered. But ultimately, everyone is on her own path, and what she learns has to be visceral. Ideas will only take you so far. Action is the defining element. And I can't make anyone do anything they don't want to do.

Catching Hell From the Hellish

PC, Bad. Honesty, Good.

Political Correctness, I believe, is doing more harm than good in this country...

For instance, that message you get when you call almost any business line that says,"Press one for English." As an American, I understand that the native language is English. If there are those in this country who only speak Spanish, then let them press one for Spanish. If they came here to integrate, then it's "When in Rome, do as the Romans do." It's not that it's all that profoundly inconvenient to press one, it's that it's aggravating because of what it represents.

This sort of thing goes on because everyone is trying so damn hard to be Politically Correct. It goes on because there is some misguided fear that we might hurt some feelings. We tippy-toe around things like fearful slaves. I'm not expecting anything from anyone I don't also expect from myself. If I moved to France, I would expect to learn French in order to be there. I wouldn't expect every public service to provide me with English Language options. I would respect that French was their native language and if I wanted to visit there, I should learn how to speak it.

I also think that our fear of not being Politically Correct keeps us from communicating in other ways. How can we discuss something fully, and gain any understanding, if we are censored in our speech? It's counter-productive to the health of our country and the progression of us as a species. If we are always so overly concerned with offending someone, things don't get discussed. And when they don't get discussed, they don't get solved. It's like that old cliche, "you can't see the forest for the trees." Political Correctness can often serve to cloud the issues, rather than solve them.

For instance, when I say, "Those welfare mothers who continue to use children as pawns for their own sustenance should be booted off the system and made to make their own way more honestly," I get blasted for being insensitive, prejudiced, and even racist. (Oh my god! don't be racist--only black people can call each other nigger, you know. Maybe if black people spoke to each other with respect, white people would do that, too). Yet, this issue has profoundly affected our society and has done nothing to solve the real problems that sprout from it. It's not about skin color. It's not about me trying to feel superior. It's about, "Here's a problem that needs to be solved, here are behaviors that are counter-productive, and let's make sure everyone has the opportunity to improve themselves, without handing all of it to them on a silver platter, so that they don't have to do the work like the rest of us." This issue is at the root of a need for Tort Reform, as well. If anyone can sue for any kind of thing said or done, no matter what, where does it all end? It clogs our courtrooms, it makes the right people poor and the wrong people rich.

People need to stop being such whiners and just do the right thing.

PC, Bad. Honesty, Good.

News I'd Like to Hear

1. Matthew Lesko was gravely injured when the question mark from a "Got Milk?" sign fell and beaned him on the head.

2. Pat Robertson finally struck by lightning.

3. Bush & Cheney on the run as Federal Marshalls try to serve them with an arrest warrant for War Crimes, High Treason, and various other crimes against humanity. Officer in charge of the manhunt says, "We're gonna stay the course, smoke 'em out, and get 'em runnin'."

4. Jerry Falwell's daughter appears on Penn & Teller's Bullshit, and confesses she is a proud lesbian atheist. She credits her father for her conversion.

5. Monica Lewinsky caught "servicing" McCain.

6. Kelli Jae Baeli receives hefty advance and publishing contract from Random House.

News I'd Like to Hear

Red Light Needs a Green Light

The oldest bordello in the red light district of Hamburg Germany has closed its doors. The madam cites a lack of business for the closure.

Let me get this clear...sex isn't selling anymore?

That place has been around since 1948, and like any business, certain trends can effectively close it down; not the least of these trends is the ban on sale of alcohol in the area, the loud dance clubs nearby, and, oh let's not forget, it costs about $3000 per night to enjoy its services. So, the madam can blame it on all those other things, but I'm sure her high price tag figured into the demise of her business. Her prices were prohibitively high in today's economy. It's also not economically feasible when the Internet lets you download porn for cheap.

The other reason I can think of for sex not selling, is that you can't sell anything that is being given away for free so often. I've always been a bit dismayed by the inherent contradiction in those who look down on women who sell their bodies, when there are so many other women who give it away for free. And somehow the ones who give it away, behave as though they are more ethical than the women who recognize the value of their bodies, and demand compensation for the use of it. The problems inherent in prostitution have more to do with the environment in which it is forced to operate, than the profession itself.

So if it's not about the act, but the nature of the act, then from whence do our notions of sex derive? My suspicion is that it derives from the nature of our society. We are a nation steeped in religion, and religion has a long history of framing sex as a "dirty" act. Even in the Garden of Eden myth, Adam and Eve become aware of their nakedness, and then become ashamed before God. This didn't happen until after they ate of the Tree of Knowledge, which meant that knowledge equals awareness, and awareness brings with it responsibility and questions and confusion and--by extension--an opportunity for evolution. Yet most Christians believe, and the creation story implies, that this message has more to do with the value of ignorance and innocence than it does with wisdom and growth. I reject that tenet.

In one of my favorite series, Firefly, a futuristic world included the normal practice of having paid "Companions"--this was framed in an aesthetic manner, including none of the seediness that usually goes along with this activity when illegal. A need was recognized and met by two consenting adults agreeing that one would pay for the service of another. No different than paying for a massage, or electrolysis. I have to say this little bit of futuristic fiction helped sway me toward agreement with the legalization of prostitution, since I had not considered the possibility of viewing it from a standpoint outside the normal stigmatization. There are high-priced call girls in America, but the practice is still illegal, (except in 10 counties in Nevada), and much of this misunderstanding of its usefulness is fraught with the common erroneous ideas that preclude its implementation.

Accordingly, from an ethical standpoint, how do we categorize legalization of prostitution? Is the concept of sex-for-sale as a tainted morality a knee-jerk reaction, or does it actually adhere to ethical precepts? Consider these statistics:

• 78 percent of women who sought help from the Council for Prostitution Alternatives in 1991 reported being raped an average of 16 times a year by pimps, and were raped 33 times a year by johns.
• 62 percent reported having been raped in prostitution.
• 73 percent reported having experienced physical assault in prostitution.
• 72 percent were currently or formerly homeless.
• 92 percent stated that they wanted to escape prostitution immediately.
• 83 percent of prostitutes are victims of assault with a weapon.
• 75 percent of women in escort prostitution had attempted suicide.
• 67 percent meet diagnostic criteria for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

In short, the victims of prostitution are mostly the prostitutes themselves. It just may be that they no longer have the ability left to "consent" to be a willing participant in their so-called victimless crime. Estimates of the prevalence of incest among prostitutes range from 65 percent to 90 percent. The Council for Prostitution Alternatives, Portland, Oregon Annual Report in 1991 found that: 85 percent of their prostitute clients reported history of sexual abuse in childhood while 70 percent reported incest."**

Some might see this as a case against legalization, when really it is a case FOR it. Legalizing prostitution eliminates almost all of these things. While it won't prevent women from being abused in their own homes before becoming prostitutes, it does help insure that these women aren't re-victimized. And it's crucial to point out, too, that these women didn't suffer abuse because they were prostitutes, they suffered abuse because they were WOMEN. About 80% of the women I have known well enough to ask has confessed some form of abuse in childhood... and none of them were prostitutes. Let's don't confuse the sex-trade with the prevalence of rape and abuse in general.

More confusion can be found in the rhetoric of Feminists and Conservatives, who claim that the anti-prostitution laws protect women. Yet statistics show that 90% of those arrested are the prostitutes themselves. Additionally, 50% of street prostitutes are drug users, and this illegal and street-bound profession perpetuates this. So, in considering the viability of legalization, what are the negative aspects of prostitution in general? Most would say:

• Immorality
• Spread of disease,
• Infidelity
• Gateway into drug-use
• Degradation of women
• Property values in prostitution districts
• Exploitation of young women or men

Immorality--since the principals of right and wrong are largely subjective, we can only go by the degree or presence of harm, when making a judgment about immorality. If a person enjoys sex and engages in sexual activity with someone else who enjoys sex, and there is an equitable agreement that sex will be traded for money, and this harms no other person or causes no other equal or greater negative result, then how is it immoral? The most common argument in this regard stems from religiosity, and this, too, is highly subjective and has no basis in empirical fact. It is merely opinion by rote.

Disease--Statistics show that only 3 to 5% of STD's are prostitution-related, while 30-35% of STD cases are found in teenagers. (Sad commentary on the parenting issue). If the safeguards would include the use of condoms, and the testing for STD's in the employed Paid Sexual Companions, plus the proof of clean STD status in the customers, this would completely avoid the spread of sexually transmittable disease. More so, ironically, than adults who do this non-professionally, by merely being promiscuous.

Infidelity-- this is perhaps the one ethical drawback, as customers for PSC's could be married. I'm not sure there could be some way of insuring that customers were not married. Maybe being able to screen clients via legal ID, check marriage records, and even calling the spouse, if there is one, to verify that he or she gave consent. Many of those who seek sexual gratification in someone other than their spouse, do so because they have a loveless marriage and their needs aren't being met, or else, their needs are copious, and they believe those needs can't be met with just one person. My thought on this is that maybe people wouldn't get married or stay married if their needs weren't being met, because they can be single and get those needs met with a legalized PSC's. It might not cost any more than it would to go through the rituals of dating. This might actually help the stats for marriage and divorce. There might be both fewer marriages, and fewer divorces.

Gateway into Drug Use--drug use begins BEFORE the decision to be a prostitute, not after, as some believe. Individuals don't "dabble" in prostitution, and subsequently develop a drug habit. They develop a drug habit and often turn to selling themselves as a way to afford the drugs. The contrary is a misconception at least, and misinformation at worst.

Degradation of Women--the defining point of degradation seems to be subjective. Many women choose this trade for economical reasons, and don't necessarily enjoy it, or as stated, find themselves forced into it due to addiction or other economic precursors. Those women should be afforded other choices, and if they do not have those choices, then this is a geopolitical, economic and social services issue, and not one of morality. But many others enjoy sex and have their own copious need for sexual activity and so providing this service as a legal career allows them to meet their needs both sexually and financially, without all the negative consequences attached to illegal prostitution.

Property values-- in "red-light" districts, property values are notoriously low. This is due to the illegal nature of prostitution, and the environment it encourages. If prostitution was legalized and transferred to attractive establishments, and effectively removed from street corners, neighborhoods would not be downgraded, and those that were transformed from street prostitution to legalized brothels, would be able to enjoy the safety, normative property values, and aesthetic values such a legalization would offer. Property values are not contingent upon perceived morality of the inhabitants. They are contingent upon location, location, location, as real estate agents are fond of saying. This refers to the value of surrounding properties and the fiscal decisions by local governments. If a bordello is paying taxes, those monies can be used to maintain a quality neighborhood. And we all know sex sells and it will always sell.

Exploitation of young or under-privileged individuals-- madams and PSC's would benefit equally from the legal sex-trade arrangement, and the vocation would be one of consent rather than desperation. Since PSC's would have to be of legal age, this would prevent the exploitation of those below the age of consent. The under-privileged would have a legal means of supporting themselves in an environment that wouldn't compound the problem. Legalized prostitution would also reduce violence against women, since women and men in this vocation would be less likely to be in a position of danger, and more likely to report any misbehavior or abuse.

Within the milieu of prostitution as it stands, is the fact that prostitutes won't report abuse and rape, due to fear of being arrested for their illegal profession; though 80% of prostitutes have been raped 16 or more times per year. Accordingly, crimes against prostitutes are among the "safest" crimes to commit. Thus, the illegal status perpetuates violence against women and men who are prostitutes. Another 35 to 85% of prostitutes have suffered abuse in the form of rape, incest and molestation, mostly by family members, well before becoming a prostitute. Thus, the current laws make them victims again.

Contrary to popular belief, in comparing "House" prostitutes--those working from a house or other structure specifically for that purpose--and street prostitutes, 97% reported higher self-esteem. Surprisingly, statistics also show that abuse of prostitutes and women in general were about the same. So the violence against women is the issue here, not prostitution.

With these precepts in mind, here's how it would be plausible and beneficial:

If prostitution were legalized, and practitioners became Paid Sexual Companions, with the expected safe-guards, regulations and oversights in place, and it was mandatory to run the business from an actual building designed for it (a brothel/bordello), then this would, I believe, solve many, if not all, of the aforementioned issues. Some women have practiced prostitution for a short time, and prefer to call it "survival sex." If a woman feels that all she has to offer at any given time is her body, in order to survive, then first, she needs more options available.

Second, legalized prostitution would provide the PSC a place to live, regular income, and a support group. Women who have economical challenges or are single mothers, or otherwise lack appropriate resources, would be free to choose the vocation of PSC in lieu of homelessness and poverty. If these legal brothels also hire trained security guards or "bouncers" and implement educational opportunities for employees in the form of GED teachers or night classes in college, then the PSC is effectively building a future for her or himself, and any children the PSC may have. Arrangements could be made for a daycare nearby for those who live on-site. This would create a community of support that will allow the PSC to make other choices later, if he/she chooses, instead of spiraling into poverty, drug addiction, alcoholism and hopelessness.

So legalizing prostitution is at once a viable and feasible solution to the problems that illegal prostitution presents.

-------------------
*Prostitutes Education Network. http://www.bayswan.org/index.html
**"Prostitution: Fact sheet on Human Rights Violations" by Melissa Farley, PhD of Prostitution Research & Education. http://crime.about.com/od/prostitution/a/prostitution.htm

Red Light Needs a Green Light

Pretend it's a Secret...

In regard to my previous post "The First Idiot & His Right-Hand Dick".... I have given friends a heads-up. I told them that if I disappear, they'll know who's responsible. The Secret Service.

I want to know: How come they call it the Secret Service, when we all know about it?

So I have two things on my side: First, those guys in suits with a somber expression and a wire coming out of their ear and always speaking into their cufflink--Could they BE any more conspicuous? And they often wear these vests that say right there across the front, "Secret Service." Are we supposed to pretend we can't read?

So...this Secret Service thing...do the members of this elite bodyguard squad have to lie to their families? Like, "Honey, what exactly IS your job? What do you do every day?"

"I'm in the service industry...."

"What kind of service?"

"I can't tell you, it's a secret. If I told you, I'd have to kill you." (I added that last bit because I know people expect to hear it. It's all James-Bond-Romantical.)

Second, I do know they usually abduct people in the middle of the night. (I know this because I watch movies about it, and you can't get a more reliable source than Hollywood). But see, what they don't know is that I'm usually awake in the middle of the night. If they really want to catch me by surprise, they'll sneak in during THE DAY.

Either way, I'll be waiting for them, and when they creep into my room, I'll whip out my squirt gun filled with Absorbine Jr, and then my OTHER squirt gun with warm water, and aim at the same places.

They'll be so uncomfortable with THAT burn, that they'll retreat and make another plan.

But so will I.

Now, of course, I realize they might be reading THIS TOO...but they don't know whether I'm leaving misinformation either...maybe I'm planting red herrings. Maybe I'm not even who I say I am. Maybe that picture on this blog is not a picture of me. Maybe I'm not even female. Or gay.

Okay, yeah. I AM gay.

Pretend it's a Secret...

The First Idiot & His Right-Hand Dick

The First Idiot is once again revising the reasons for going to war. Now, it seems it is about Osama Bin Laden again and the economy. Funny, in an interview with Anne Curry on February 18th, Bush said, "I don’t think so. I think actually the spending in the war might help with jobs…because we’re buying equipment, and people are working. I think this economy is down because we built too many houses and the economy’s adjusting."

At any given time in the past, Idiot-extraordinaire Dubya said the war was about oh-so-many things--according to what his pea-brain thought would fly. How stupid does he think we are? I can recall when he first announced this war, it was called Operation Iraqi Liberation...until someone with two brain cells to rub together pointed out that the abbreviation for that was OIL. It was changed to Operation Iraqi Freedom.

A recent graduate of the University of Illinois, Devon Largio, did a study of rationals offered by the Bush administration and its cronies for the war. The study only covered a time span between September 2001 and October 2002. "Largio examines the public statements of President George W. Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, Senate Democratic leader Tom Daschle, Sens. Joseph Lieberman and John McCain, Richard Perle (then chairman of the Defense Policy Review Board), Secretary of State Colin Powell, National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, and Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz." The table for this study can be found here.

This is the text list:

1. To prevent the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.
2. For regime change
3. To further the war on terror
4. Because of Iraq's violations of U.N. resolutions.
5. Because of Saddam Hussein's evil dictatorship and actions
6. Because of a lack of weapons inspections in Iraq
7. To liberate Iraq
8. Because of Iraq's links to al Queda
9. Because Iraq was an imminent threat
10. To disarm Iraq
11. To conclude the Gulf War of 1991
12. Because Hussein was a threat to the region
13. For the safety of the world
14. To support the United Nations.
15. Because the US could (easy victory).
16. To preserve peace around the world
17. Because Iraq was a unique threat
18. To transform the region
19. As a warning to other terrorist nations
20. Because Hussein hates the U.S. and will act against it
21. Because history calls the US into action.

And this does not, apparently, cover ALL of the statements made in this regard.

A few days ago, Bush added "the economy" and "because the surge is succeeding" to that list. Once again, Dubya-Dumb-Dumb is under the false illusion that the American people are as stupid as he is, and that you can make a silk purse from a sow's ear. He even had the gall to say that troops would start coming home now. He failed to point out that they were the extras sent for the surge, and the other ones will still be there.

And then there's that other Dick: the Vice President, Dick Cheney. When Cheney said, "On the security front, I think there’s a general consensus that we’ve made major progress, that the surge has worked. That’s been a major success," White House correspondent Martha Raddatz responded, "Two-thirds of Americans say it’s not worth fighting."

And Cheney's Dickish response was, "So?"

Raddatz pushed on: "So? You don’t care what the American people think?"

"No." Big Dick answered. "I think you cannot be blown off course by the fluctuations in the public opinion polls."

This, when we know that there has been no fluctuation in public opinion. Any changes in public opinion have been steadily and increasingly AGAINST the war. But DICK doesn't care what the people think--though ironically, he thinks he can speak for us like he did in February when he said "The American people will not support a policy of retreat." Could there be any clearer indication of public service being a cloak for self-service?

On the 5th anniversary of the "Shock and Awe" (the beginning of the war), Cheney was fishing off a yacht belonging to the Sultan of Oman. It's obvious why he doesn't care what people think and wants the war to continue. He's benefiting from it.

I say try Bush and Cheney (among others) for High Treason and War Crimes, and hang them by the neck until dead.

And just in case someone monitors this and sees it as a death threat, I am NOT offering my services, nor soliciting the services of anyone else. I am instead exercising my right to free speech. We do still have that right in America don't we?

Mark Twain once said, "Patriotism is supporting your country all the time and your government when it deserves it."

That's what I'm doing.

The First Idiot & His Right-Hand Dick

Fireworks from Space

Scientists were thrilled to have captured images from the largest supernova explosion known to humankind. The star, named SN2006gy (SN for Super Nova, and the date it was discovered...an example of the patently droll naming conventions of astrophysicists everywhere) emitted four gamma ray bursts; the only time an event has been visible with the naked eye.

The actual explosions happened before Earth was even in existence--about 7 and half billion years ago in Earth-time, which is about the same amount of time it takes any tech support person to answer your email. That should, in any case, give you an idea of how far away 238 million light years is, when it takes that long for us to even SEE it. And understand that a light year isn't 365 days, and it's not a measure of time at all, but a measure of distance. So the distance light can travel in one of our years is 5.9 trillion miles--for ONE lightyear.

This stellar event even transpired on the same day that the infamous award-winning science fiction author Arthur C Clark died. Most of us can't even hop for a 21 gun salute, Clarke gets an a truly astronomical display of fireworks. I think they ought to at least name it after him--the Clarke Supernova, or something.

I had to do a little research to even understand this event. In an article on stuff.co.nz, astronomer Dr. Peter Tuthill is quoted as saying that another unstable star, WR104, threatens earth.

Though there was debate among scientists about the effect of gamma-radiation blasts, some predicted they could burn off 50 per cent of the ozone layer, creating "dramatic" climate events like rampant global warming or even a nuclear winter, he said. *

In another article within the same topic, I saw the phrase "Gamma rays can't penetrate Earth's atmosphere" and as Tuthill's concerns seemed to blatantly contradict several other more scientifically oriented sites, I'm still not sure what to make of it. Maybe he's just one of those guys that needs to wear a hubcap on his head, so we can spot him for the nut he is...or maybe not.

But the general consensus is that these gamma ray bursts can travel billions of light years across the universe, but can't penetrate our atmosphere. So nearby stars going supernova, are apparently not a threat, as gamma ray bursts go, and very small threat as far as debris, since a gamma ray burst shoots onto a specific stream, like a water hose, and comparatively, Earth is a very small object on the Universal scale.

Regardless, because the event happened so long ago, and we only now seeing it, i find it fascinating that as "old news" goes, this event is just about as old as it gets.

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*New Scientist article

Fireworks from Space