Wasted

Ha ha. Wasted tonight. It only takes me three or four drinks anymore. This is embarrassing, but does anybody else do this?

At about three or four drinks, I start spilling my drink all over myself. Ha ha. That would be a drink in a glass. Not a beer in a bottle. But it’s so embarrassing that I am such a lightweight.

Tonight. Tequila, Seltzer water and fruit juice (Cran-apple and Pink Cranberry). Try it, you’ll like it, ha ha.

Drinking? Ha ha. I hate to say it but at my age, life is simply not that great.

A Lot of Artists Are Crazy or Terrible People, But That’s Not Important

The thing is though that many artists of all types are crazy  to one degree or another. Trust me, I have spent a fair portion of my life intensely hanging around large groups of artists, writers, and musicians, and most of them are nuts in one way or another.

Actually they’re all crazy in different ways, but they’re still all crazy.

Writers and tend to be quite self-destructive. A lot are depressives and boy do they drink. They’re introverted but not as introverted as the poets or especially the artists.

Artists are just very shy and neurotic. A lot are depressives. An artist party is 100 people in a house and no one is talking to anyone because they’re all too shy. It’s actually pretty funny. I went to a number of them.

Musicians are very self-destructive, but they’re not neurotic at all – more like wild and crazy extroverts. Some musicians are depressives, but that aspect of them tends to be more hidden behind the wild partying exterior. Still, musicians often seem to be battling deep pain. They love to drink and hey, don’t forget the dope! Musicians and drugs are like peanut butter and jelly.

Poets are way crazy, totally neurotic or worse, manic-depressive or more commonly just depressive, plus a lot of them really drink hard. I’d say the poets are the nuttiest of them all. Are you sort of a weird, offbeat, neurotic, introverted person who doesn’t fit in anywhere and is rejected by most Normies? Head on over to your local poetry reading. You’ll be right in style there. Most of them are just as nuts as you are. Don’t feel bad.

Furthermore, many artist types are  lousy to terrible people.

Shakespeare was a monster as a human being. But that’s not what we remember him and the others for. It doesn’t matter that Shakespeare was a mean old miser.

All that matters is that he was probably the greatest writer of English prose in history, probably still unsurpassed to this very day. That’s all that matters. Artists stand on their art, the only thing that lasts. That they may have been crappy people is lamentable, but it that’s not why we remember them and ultimately it’s simply not important.

Surgical Procedure Today

Hi folks, just had a surgical procedure in the hospital. Colonoscopy to be exact. Been ages since I had one and at 62, you need these things. Also I have been having rectal bleeding these days. The surgeon asked me how long I have had this bleeding, and I told him 20 years. He was a bit stunned but then he said we’ll look into it.

I never thought it was much of anything as I always just assumed it was hemorrhoids. Well, turns out I was right after all. I’ve got hemorrhoids! Piles! Or whatever you want to call those little buggers. I assume they are internal, not external. Any advice on how to get rid of these pesky critters accepted with gratitude.

I also have diverticulosis. You can look it up. Well, by age 50, 8

But they eat a very high-fiber diet, and we eat a low-fiber, high-fat diet which leads to diverticulosis, polyps, colon cancer and other cool diseases. Also their shit isn’t hard. Ever noticed those hard shits you have? Well, that ain’t normal. Africans don’t have those. Their shits look more like tapioca pudding, albeit brown tapioca pudding to be precise.

The shit is supposed to move through your intestines pretty quickly. Meat and high fat diets slow down the intestinal freeway so you end up with an intestinal traffic jam. Result is constipation, polyps, colon cancer and other groovy stuff. Eat a lot of fiber and the shit just cruises on through 55 mph with no slowdowns.

Anyway diverticulosis is nothing, everyone has it by the time you get to middle age, and it usually has no symptoms. However, diverticula can get infected, that is, something, say a watermelon seed, gets stuck in one of those darned pouches and can’t escape or even call for help. It’s just SOL and this can result in an infection, which is called diverticulitis. This is what my 84 year old aunt has now. It’s quite painful. Not sure how it’s treated. Maybe they cut it out.

Anyway spent a fun morning in the hospital today from 5:30 AM – 10:30 AM. They gave me a shot of something and I was awake and chirping like a bird and the next thing I knew, two seconds later, it was an hour later and I was waking up for a very weird short-long sleep thing. Actually I was unconscious.

Knocked out by Fentanyl. Yes, that Fentanyl, that’s killing thousands of Americans every year. And they shot it right into my vein like any self-respecting IV drug user does. Except I’ve never done needles, drug fan that I am.

Don’t know about this Fentanyl high. Doesn’t feel like much of anything really except I am pretty calm, happy, and friendly, but that’s generally the idea with mild doses of opiates. Also a lot of my chronic pains went away. Thank you, heroin! I mean Fentanyl. Oh well, it’s all the same, trust me.

They said don’t drink for 24 hours, but you really think that is going to stop a determined drinker like me? You kidding?

Die with your boots on! That’s my attitude, baby. And live dangerously!

A little research showed me that there’s no interaction with booze and Fentanyl, so here I am, drinking Tequila like a proper roue, or aging degenerate, pick your adjective. I don’t know about this Fentanyl stuff.

Good high if you want to go to sleep so fast you don’t even  realize it when you knock out I guess. But I go to sleep most every night anyway. Why take a drug that makes you go to sleep? What’s the point? It’s like taking a drug that makes you breathe, eat, or piss. With some things in life, we don’t have much choice you know. It’s pretty much do or die.

Oh well, over and out. Sitting here wasted on Tequila and Fentanyl and not feeling much pain in either my mind or my body.

Do  you want me to write about the Iran-US war situation? I can do it if you want. I have a lot of information, along with a journalist source who is close to the top levels of the Iranian and  Iraqi governments, Hezbollah, and the Houthis. And  what he told me is pretty much the exact opposite of the crap lies that the US government and  (((media))) is feeding y’all these days.

The Myth of Illegal Drugs Frying Your Brain and Permafried People

In response to Jason’s post here about drug use frying your brain, I have written this response. In general, the notion that the use of illegal drugs will fry your brain or make you permafried even after you quit is nonsense. In general, once you quit you go back to the intelligence and sanity level you were at before you started. Few people get permanently lowered intelligence or permanent mental illness from former drug use.

Most illegal drugs do not cause any permanent damage to your brain that would affect you permanently after you quit.

In all of my years using drugs, I have met 10,000’s of drug users and I never met one person who had used so much drugs that they were “fried” in the sense that they were permanently stupid or crazy after they quit using.

Cocaine

There may be some consequences far down the road – say, with Parkinson’s.

Jason’s article discusses an increased risk of Parkinson’s in former cocaine users. But it’s not really due to brain damages so much as changes in a certain receptor that make someone more vulnerable to a toxin. That’s not the same thing as having a fried brain.

I knew a heavy cocaine user who appeared to have neurological problems from the drug. But I am not sure if it persisted after he quit, if he ever did quit. But he’s the only person I’ve ever met like that, and even he wasn’t fried at all. He was still very intelligent and completely sane. However, he did appear to have some sort of brain damage. Whether it was permanent or not is not known.

LSD

I have known people who took LSD up to 700 times, and I know a number who took LSD 300 times. LSD doesn’t damage your brain anyway. It can cause some changes in the visual system due to permanent changes in serotonin receptors, but that just causes some perceptual problems, and this is mostly in people who have taken it 50+ times. It doesn’t change effect you in any way that changes the way you think or feel, in other words, it doesn’t make you stupid or nuts.

There are some very heavy former LSD users who seem to have permanent hallucinations, but those people took a lot of acid over a short period of time – like way, way too much acid. It’s not known what’s going on with them, but I suppose they are permafried in a sense.

LSD is a dangerous drug.

Cannabis

I know many people who have been smoking pot for 10, 20, or even 30 years, and there’s nothing wrong with any of them. You wouldn’t think there was anything wrong with them if you met them. They’re not damaged at all.

The pot lowering IQ discussed in Jason’s piece is only for use before you are 18. If you start using at age 18 or after, there’s no effect on IQ. People under 18 need to be very careful about pot because it can indeed lower their IQ’s a bit.

Pot doesn’t give you schizophrenia, period. The most it can do is trigger it if you are already vulnerable, but even then, most of those people would have gotten it anyway. But it can definitely bring it on sooner than it would have otherwise.

The rate of schizophrenia has been flat for 60 years, all through the 1960’s, 70’s, 80’s, 90’s, 2000’s and 2010’s, and all sorts of drug use rates for different drugs skyrocketed at various times in that period. In other words, neither cannabis nor any other drug is going to give you schizophrenia with one exception discussed below.

MDMA

MDMA is a very dangerous drug and it can definitely cause physical damage to your brain. It permanently lowers scores on a few aspects of intelligence tests such as vocabulary, but you mostly can’t notice any changes and there do not appear to be any changes in mental stability. In general, it doesn’t make you stupid or nuts.

However, there are some people called e-tards out there who took a lot of MDMA very frequently over relatively short of periods of time, and these people appear to be permafried. Mostly they seem a bit stupid.

However, I have heard that even these effects of MDMA go away after ~7-8 years if you stay away from the drug.

 

Speed is another matter but even that tends to clear up after you quit. There are some very heavy methamphetamine users, especially people who shot the drug, who have developed an illness that looks a lot like or possibly is paranoid schizophrenia.

There are some recorded cases out of Japan, and a friend told me about another case here in California. This is not a common outcome and even with all the heavy meth abuse that is going on nowadays, you don’t hear much about people being permafried in the sense that they become permanently mentally ill with paranoid schizophrenia.

Heavy Polydrug and Alcohol Abuse for Decades (30 years)

I have heard of one person who used huge amounts of drugs and drank very heavily over many years, starting as an adolescent. They are now off of everything, and they have a rather poor short-term memory and forget stuff a lot, but other than that, they are still extremely intelligent.

They are also a bit suspicious and paranoid, but not at the level of a paranoid psychosis. I suppose this man is permafried in a sense, but if you met him, you would not appear stupid or crazy.

Conclusion

Bottom line is a lot of that stuff can mess you up pretty bad while you are on it so you seem stupid, crazy, or even brain damaged. But most if not all of that tends to clear up when you quit. Permafried people who are permanently stupid or nuts from heavy drug use must be awfully rare because I haven’t met one in my entire life. The fried brains and permafried nonsense is mostly mythology.

Repost: Alt Left: What Percentage of Homosexual People Is Acceptable To You in a Given Population?

Answered on Queera.

Believe it or not, all of the answers said that if a country’s population was 10

How could having 10

A given population as in for a country?

  • Homosexuals live 20 years less than heterosexuals. It is horribly sad for gay people that they miss out on so many years of wonderful life, but it seems to me that reduced lifespan is costly to society.
  • Gays have higher rates of mood and anxiety disorders. While this causes a lot of suffering to gay people, and this is sad, at the same time, mental illness is costly to society.
  • Gays have much higher rates of drinking, smoking, and drug abuse than straights. The gay male party and play scene revolving heavily around methamphetamine and club drugs is particularly alarming. Lesbians in particular smoke a lot. The costs of drinking, smoking, and drug abuse to gays themselves are no doubt significant in terms of disease, mortality, and the suffering that can come from excessive substance abuse; nevertheless, this incurs a lot of costs to society.
  • Gay men obviously have a very high STD rate. At 2
  • Tragically, gay men have a suicide rate 3X higher than straight men, even in San Francisco, the most gay-friendly place in the US. The attempted suicide rate is also very high. Gay male teenagers have a tragically very high attempted suicide rate at 8X the normal rate. Suicidal behavior causes unfathomable and heartbreaking suffering on gay men. However, attempted and completed suicides impose considerable cost on society.
  • Domestic violence rates are very high in gay and lesbian couples, especially the latter. A gay man is much more likely to beat his partner than a straight man is. A woman is much less likely to be beaten by a male partner than by a female partner. This causes immense suffering to the partners of gay and lesbian batterers. In addition, domestic violence is costly to society.
  • In gay areas, gay men typically take over all of the public restrooms and turn them into miniature sex clubs. This renders most public restrooms unusable by the rest of us. Most gay men typically vociferously support the use of public restrooms as sex dens for gays. I don’t have much sympathy here. Gay men are simply being very irresponsible with this depraved mindset. Further, this is a cost to society.

It is first of all most important to point out that gay men themselves suffer worst from most from these largely self-imposed conditions, a suffering so profound that it almost moves you to tears. Compassion is essential. Nevertheless, there is a cost to society.

Some of these issues may be caused by discrimination (see the high teenage gay male attempted suicide rate), but there is a cost to society no matter what causes it. Some of these problems would lessen with increased acceptance of gays, but others would linger or possibly even worsen.

The question comes up whether gays pay for the costs they bring to society. Many gays seem to have above average intelligence for some reason, especially gay men. Gays seem more artistically talented than straights. More gays than straights seem to get college degrees, in particular gay men. Gay men seem to earn higher than average wages and are disproportionately employed in high paying and prestigious professions.

I am always hearing about a homosexual, often a gay man, who is contributing something noteworthy and exemplary to our society such that it mentions a media notice. Obviously, gay men contribute more to the tax base per capita than straights. So gays, especially gay men, offer considerable benefits to society, not flowing from their homosexuality but from other aspects of their lives.

I have not discussed lesbians here because I know little about them, but I doubt that they impose serious costs on society other than reduced lifespan.

However the question rises whether gays pay for themselves. Despite their excellent contributions to society and their higher than normal tax contributions, I still do not think that homosexuals pay for themselves.

The question then arises about whether the rest of us should be willing to carry a small burden for our gay brothers.

Personally I feel that at

Honestly, even when you get to 1

Homosexuality in society seems to be one of those things, like many things in life, that is best in small doses.

Update: Alt Left: The Sexual Misconduct Charges Against Brett Kavanaugh

Updated post on the rape and sexual assault charges against Brett Kavanaugh. New information is in italic. My personal opinion is that Brett Kavanaugh is or was a serial rapist who raped women at least 14 times, sexually assaulted women three times, and tried to rape women at least once between ages 17-24, mostly between ages 17-21. His friend Mark Judge assisted in most of these rapes and attempted rapes. The scorecard on Brett Kavanaugh. Between 1982-88, Kavanaugh, aged 17-24, committed:

  • 14 rapes
  • 3 sexual assaults
  • 1 attempted rape

Conclusion: Brett Kavanaugh is a serial rapist. 1. The first charge stems from 1982. Dr. Christine Blasey Ford, who was 15 years old at the time, was at a party at a home with several other people. At least one other girl was there in addition to several boys. They were drinking alcohol. Ford went upstairs to go to the bathroom. Brett Kavanaugh, age 17, grabbed her in the hallway and dragged her into a bedroom where his friend Mark Judge was waiting. Kavanaugh and Judge turned the music up loud so the others could not hear their planned rape of Ford. Kavanaugh pinned her to the bed, got on top of her, and tried to tear her swimsuit off. She screamed and he put his hand over her mouth to stop her screaming. She fought him off the whole time, and after a bit of a struggle, managed to get out from under him. Judge laughed as Kavanaugh did this. This was a misdemeanor, 2nd Degree Sexual Assault, and it carried a sentence of 1-3 years. The statute of limitations ran out on this charge in 1985, 33 years ago. I believe that this act occurred. 2. The second charge occurred in 1983 when Kavanaugh was 18 years old and a freshman at Yale University. A woman named Deborah Ramirez, also 18, went to a drinking party in the dorms. She was the only woman there with 4-5 young men about her age. Kavanaugh was one of the men. They engaged in drinking games and got quite drunk. Ramirez was sitting on the floor when several of the men stood over her and began playing games with a fake penis, asking her to touch it. Brett Kavanaugh then stood up and pulled out his penis and waved it in front of her face, daring her to touch it. He then forced her to touch his penis. She was a good Catholic girl at the time, and she had never touched a penis before. Word got around that Kavanaugh did this, and people were shocked because that was considered extreme behavior even by the standards of the sexual hijinks going on at the time. This was technically a sexual assault, but no DA would take such a hokey charge. Nevertheless in Man World this is called a dick move, and the punishment for dick moves in Man World is a punch in the face. I believe this act occurred. 3. The third charge involved a woman named Julie Swetnick. Julie charges that when she was 19 and 20 years old in 1982, she went to ten parties that were thrown by Mark Judge and Brett Kavanaugh. Swetnick said that Kavanaugh would get very drunk at these parties and grope, grind up against, and try to disrobe girls so that sexual parts of their bodies could be revealed. In general, this behavior was done against the girls’ will. She also said that he did not know how to take no for an answer. She said that Judge and Kavanaugh would target one girl and spike her punch with either grain alcohol or a drug of some sort, probably Quaaludes. This girl would then become so intoxicated that she was incapacitated. The boys would then get her into a bedroom and “pull a train” on her. That means that the boys would line up outside the room and go in one at a time to have sex with her. There was quite a bit of this when I was in high school, but I understand that it was all consensual. On the other hand, no one was spiking girls’ drinks at those parties. At one of the parties, Swetnick had her punch spiked and ended up in a bedroom while boys lined up outside and had sex with her one at a time as part of a train. She thought she was dosed with a drug, possibly a Quaalude. She was so incapacitated that she was unable to stop these boys from having sex with her. Kavanaugh was 17 and 18 years old at the time these parties were going on. As far as the groping and grinding up against girls and pulling their clothes aside to reveal parts of their bodies, technically this is sexual assault, but no one is ever going to do down for something that hokey and petty. However, the drugging of girls and pulling trains on them is much more serious. This absolutely qualifies as rape or even gang rape. I believe that all of these events occurred, and I think Kavanaugh and Judge not only spiked Swetnick’s punch, but they probably took turns having sex with her too. The problem is that there is no way to prove that Kavanaugh and Judge had sex with her because Swetnick was too out of it to figure out who was raping her. If Kavanaugh committed this act, this qualifies as rape. However, no DA would take a rape case from 36 years ago. 4. The fourth charge stems from 1988 and was outlined in a letter to the Kavanaugh committee. A woman who knew Kavanaugh well charged that a mixed group had gone out drinking in a bar at a named location. As they were leaving the bar, a drunken Kavanaugh grabbed the woman and threw her up against a wall in a sexual way. The woman and the others in the crowd were shocked at this behavior. Kavanaugh was 24 years old at the time. This event may well have occurred since the woman provided a detailed statement about it, but as the woman wants to remain anonymous, there is no way to prove it. This would be a sexual assault charge, but no DA would take such a BS case like this. 5. The fifth charge involves a boat in a Rhode Island harbor at a named location in the summer of 1985. A woman charged that one night in this harbor, Kavanaugh, age 21, and Judge sexually assaulted her in a boat that the two men were living in. Details of what exactly happened here are not available. She left and the next morning told two of her male friends what happened. Her male friends went down to the boat where Kavanaugh and Judge were living, and her friends beat up the two men. The woman remains anonymous. She made this charge in a letter to Senator Whitehouse. It would not surprise me if this case was true too, but as the woman is anonymous, there is no way to determine if this happened or not. The statute of limitations in Rhode Island for sexual assault is not known. The charge here would be sexual assault, but no DA would take a 33 year old sexual assault case. 6. The sixth charge involves a woman who charges that Kavanaugh and a friend raped her in a vehicle. The woman is anonymous and no date is given. The charge was made in a letter to California Senator Kamala Harris by a schoolteacher in Oceanside, California. The woman charges that she was at a party with a girlfriend. The girlfriend left with a male and the woman had no way to get home. Kavanaugh and a friend offered to give her a ride home. Kavanaugh and the girl were in the front seat, and Kavanaugh’s friend was in the back seat. At some point along the way, Kavanaugh stopped the car and forcefully kissed the woman against her will. The woman objected and said she did not want to do that and that she just wanted to go home. Kavanaugh then started forcibly disrobing her, taking off her top and bra and trying to remove her pants. She was yelling and telling him to stop. Kavanaugh slapped her face and told her to shut up. Then he told her to perform oral sex on him. She did this and he came in her mouth. Then they took off the rest of her clothes, put here in the backseat, and both men had sex with her 2-3 times each. This woman’s charges are very detailed and it would not surprise me if there was something to these charges. What is particularly interesting is that Kavanaugh’s friend put his hand over the girl’s mouth when she was yelling. This is exactly what Ford charges that Kavanaugh did to her in 1982 in the bedroom – he put his hand over her mouth as he attempted to disrobe her to silence her screaming. This is good evidence because it suggests that Kavanaugh and his rape buddies had an MO when they went about raping women that involved covering the woman’s mouth to quiet her cries as they tried to disrobe her. However, as this woman is anonymous, there is no way to determine the veracity of her claims. If this charge is true then it involves at least three counts of rape against Kavanaugh. As we do not know when or where this event happened, we don’t know the statute of limitations on the crime. It seems have taken place between 1982-1985. However, no DA would take a 33-36 year old rape case, even one as serious as this one. Conclusion. Where there’s smoke, there’s fire. If I was going through this process, there is no way that a number of women would come forward saying that I sexually assaulted or raped them because I simply don’t do such things. Since I don’t do things like that, there is no way that a string of women from my past would come forward and all lie about me raping and assaulting them. Life doesn’t work that way. And while it is true that a high percentage of recent rape charges are false, I very much doubt if any reasonable woman is going to make a false rape claim about something that happened 30-36 years ago. In particular, the three women who have come forward have been vilified, had their lives turned upside down and gone over with a fine toothcomb looking for anything bad they might have done, been accused of being crazy and liars, had their jobs and careers disrupted, and in Ford’s case, had to go into hiding due to receiving many death threats. It’s hard to imagine why any sane woman would put herself through all of that to make up some false sexual assault charge about something that happened 30-36 years ago. Why would any sane person do that? Although feminist idiots claim that most or all men are rapists, like most things feminists say, this is not true. Careful surveys have found that only 1 Rapey men typically don’t do it only once. Usually the rapeyness is part of a pattern of general rapeyness, sexual assault, and out and out rape that they have usually done on more than one occasion. In other words, it tends to be a pattern of behavior that doesn’t happen just one time. All of this fits together with the suggestion that Kavanaugh is a rapey guy due to the repeated charges of sexual assault and rape against him over a period of years by different women.                      

Alt Left: The Sexual Misconduct Charges Against Brett Kavanaugh

1. The first charge stems from 1982. Dr. Christine Blasey Ford, who was 15 years old at the time, was at a party at a home with several other people. At least one other girl was there in addition to several boys. They were drinking alcohol. Ford went upstairs to go to the bathroom, and somehow she got into a room with Kavanaugh, age 17 at the time, and his friend Mark Judge. Kavanaugh pinned her to the bed and tried to tear her clothes off. She fought him off the whole time. Judge laughed as Kavanaugh did this. This was a misdemeanor, 2nd Degree Sexual Assault, and it carried a sentence of 1-3 years. The statute of limitations ran out on this charge in 1985, 33 years ago. I believe that this act occurred. 2. The second charge occurred in 1983 when Kavanaugh was 18 years old and a freshman at Yale University. A woman named Deborah Ramirez, also 18, went to a drinking party in the dorms. She was the only woman there with 4-5 young men about her age. Kavanaugh was one of the men. They engaged in drinking games and got quite drunk. Ramirez was sitting on the floor when several of the men stood over her, pulled out their penises, and forced her to touch them. She was a good Catholic girl at the time, and she had never touched a penis before. Kavanaugh was one of the men who stood over her, whipped out his penis and forced her to touch it. Word got around that Kavanaugh did this, and people were shocked because that was considered extreme behavior even by the standards of the sexual hijinks going on at the time. This was technically a sexual assault, but no DA would take such a hokey charge. Nevertheless in Man World this is called a dick move, and the punishment for dick moves in Man World is a punch in the face. I believe this act occurred. 3. The third charge involved a woman named Julie Swetnick. Julie charges that when she was 19 and 20 years old in 1982, she went to ten parties that were thrown by Mark Judge and Brett Kavanaugh. Swetnick said that Kavanaugh would get very drunk at these parties and grope, grind up against, and try to disrobe girls so that sexual parts of their bodies could be revealed. In general, this behavior was done against the girls’ will. She also said that he did not know how to take no for an answer. She said that Judge and Kavanaugh would target one girl and spike her punch with either grain alcohol or a drug of some sort, probably Quaaludes. This girl would then become so intoxicated that she was incapacitated. The boys would then get her into a bedroom and “pull a train” on her. That means that the boys would line up outside the room and go in one at a time to have sex with her. There was quite a bit of this when I was in high school, but I understand that it was all consensual. On the other hand, no one was spiking girls’ drinks at those parties. At one of the parties, Swetnick had her punch spiked and ended up in a bedroom while boys lined up outside and had sex with her one at a time as part of a train. She thought she was dosed with a drug, possibly a Quaalude. She was so incapacitated that she was unable to stop these boys from having sex with her. Kavanaugh was 17 years old at the time these parties were going on. As far as the groping and grinding up against girls and pulling their clothes aside to reveal parts of their bodies, technically this is sexual assault, but no one is ever going to do down for something that hokey and petty. However, the drugging of girls and pulling trains on them is much more serious. This absolutely qualifies as rape or even gang rape. I believe that all of these events occurred, and I think Kavanaugh and Judge not only spiked Swetnick’s punch, but they probably took turns having sex with her too. The problem is that there is no way to prove that Kavanaugh and Judge had sex with her because Swetnick was too out of it to figure out who was raping her. If Kavanaugh committed this act, this qualifies as rape. However, no DA would take a rape case from 36 years ago. 4. The fourth charge stems from 1988 and was outlined in a letter to the Kavanaugh committee. A woman who knew Kavanaugh well charged that a mixed group had gone out drinking in a bar at a named location. As they were leaving the bar, a drunken Kavanaugh grabbed the woman and threw her up against a wall in a sexual way. The woman and the others in the crowd were shocked at this behavior. Kavanaugh was 24 years old at the time. This event may well have occurred since the woman provided a detailed statement about it, but as the woman wants to remain anonymous, there is no way to prove it. This would be a sexual assault charge, but no DA would take such a BS case like this. 5. The fifth charge involves a boat in a Rhode Island harbor at a named location in the summer of 1985. A woman charged that one night in this harbor, Kavanaugh, age 21, and Judge sexually assaulted her in a boat that the two men were living in. Details of what exactly happened here are not available. She left and the next morning told two of her male friends what happened. Her male friends went down to the boat where Kavanaugh and Judge were living, and her friends beat up the two men. The woman remains anonymous. She made this charge in a letter to Senator Whitehouse. It would not surprise me if this case was true too, but as the woman is anonymous, there is no way to determine if this happened or not. The statute of limitations in Rhode Island for sexual assault is not known. The charge here would be sexual assault, but no DA would take a 33 year old sexual assault case. 6. The sixth charge involves a woman who charges that Kavanaugh and a friend raped her in a vehicle. The woman is anonymous and no date is given. The charge was made in a letter to California Senator Kamala Harris by a schoolteacher in Oceanside, California. The woman charges that she was at a party with a girlfriend. The girlfriend left with a male and the woman had no way to get home. Kavanaugh and a friend offered to give her a ride home. Kavanaugh and the girl were in the front seat, and Kavanaugh’s friend was in the back seat. At some point along the way, Kavanaugh stopped the car and forcefully kissed the woman against her will. The woman objected and said she did not want to do that and that she just wanted to go home. Kavanaugh then started forcibly disrobing her, taking off her top and bra and trying to remove her pants. She was yelling and telling him to stop. Kavanaugh slapped her face and told her to shut up. Then he told her to perform oral sex on him. She did this and he came in her mouth. Then they took off the rest of her clothes, put here in the backseat, and both men had sex with her 2-3 times each. This woman’s charges are very detailed and it would not surprise me if there was something to these charges. What is particularly interesting is that Kavanaugh’s friend put his hand over the girl’s mouth when she was yelling. This is exactly what Ford charges that Kavanaugh did to her in 1982 in the bedroom – he put his hand over her mouth as he attempted to disrobe her to silence her screaming. This is good evidence because it suggests that Kavanaugh and his rape buddies had an MO when they went about raping women that involved covering the woman’s mouth to quiet her cries as they tried to disrobe her. However, as this woman is anonymous, there is no way to determine the veracity of her claims. If this charge is true then it involves at least three counts of rape against Kavanaugh. As we do not know when or where this event happened, we don’t know the statute of limitations on the crime. It seems have taken place between 1982-1985. However, no DA would take a 33-36 year old rape case, even one as serious as this one. Conclusion. Where there’s smoke, there’s fire. If I was going through this process, there is no way that a number of women would come forward saying that I sexually assaulted or raped them because I simply don’t do such things. Since I don’t do things like that, there is no way that a string of women from my past would come forward and all lie about me raping and assaulting them. Life doesn’t work that way. And while it is true that a high percentage of recent rape charges are false, I very much doubt if any reasonable woman is going to make a false rape claim about something that happened 30-36 years ago. In particular, the three women who have come forward have been vilified, had their lives turned upside down and gone over with a fine toothcomb looking for anything bad they might have done, been accused of being crazy and liars, had their jobs and careers disrupted, and in Ford’s case, had to go into hiding due to receiving many death threats. It’s hard to imagine why any sane woman would put herself through all of that to make up some false sexual assault charge about something that happened 30-36 years ago. Why would any sane person do that? Although feminist idiots claim that most or all men are rapists, like most things feminists say, this is not true. Careful surveys have found that only 1 Rapey men typically don’t do it only once. Usually the rapeyness is part of a pattern of general rapeyness, sexual assault, and out and out rape that they have usually done on more than one occasion. In other words, it tends to be a pattern of behavior that doesn’t happen just one time. All of this fits together with the suggestion that Kavanaugh is a rapey guy due to the repeated charges of sexual assault and rape against him over a period of years by different women.                      

Game/PUA: The Big Lie about Sex with an Intoxicated Woman Being Rape

Tulio: What I also found is that a huge number of reported rapes are actually acquaintance rapes and involve a guy having sex with a woman who drank too much. I’ve had sex with women where we were both heavily intoxicated. If the girl decided to go to the cops the next day and say she was raped, I’d be included in that statistic.

Yes, and police almost always refuse to make an arrest in these cases, which encompass 4 Like you, I’ve been having sex with intoxicated (on alcohol and other drugs) my whole life. I guess I’ve been raping females my whole life, and I’ve committed thousands of rapes. I’m such a bad boy. Where do I go to turn myself in? It’s not illegal to have sex with an intoxicated woman, despite what so many (all?) ridiculous women think. So far, every woman I have talked to has told me that if a man has sex with an intoxicated woman, it’s rape. Are there any women who don’t believe this? I mean think about. Women who are drunks or alcoholics get raped virtually every time they have sex.  And if the man is intoxicated too, why isn’t it true that she raped him? Or that they both raped each other? The legal standard is “incapacitated.” That means either passed out or passing in and out of consciousness. If she’s not so drunk she’s incapacitated, no DA will take the case. And if she’s so wasted she’s incapacitated as in passed out drunk, DA’s almost never file because there’s no evidence. Especially young men aged 19-23 have sex with women passed out on booze ALL THE TIME. And they almost never go down on it. Actually there are many amateur porn videos uploaded all over the Net showing males doing exactly that – having sex with a passed out woman. Pro tip to the males reading this blog: If she is passing in and out of consciousness while you are involved in a sexual situation with her, stop the sexual behavior. You’re raping her. And if she is all the way passed out, for Chrissake don’t do anything sexual with her. Not only are you raping her, you’re also a necrophiliac in my opinion. I am not sure what the standard is if she is falling down or incoherently drunk. Incoherently drunk might meet the standard of incapacitated. You really want to have sex with a woman who’s that wasted? She’ll probably puke in your bed for Chrissake. But if she’s merely been drinking and she’s not incoherent or passing out, go ahead and have sex with her to your heart’s content. Drunken females are often ravenously horny.

Alt Left: High School Girls "Pulling Trains" in the 1970's

Thinking Mouse: Both the porno and having people on a line sound about the same amount of crazy for me. Were those fish girls hot or did they do it to get access to hotter guys easier? Did the girls discriminate depending on how the approaching guy looked? I guess the second question can be answered with alcohol lol. I’ve never been in an party that wasn’t planned by parents or school.

Fish girls? You didn’t get access to the best guys by being a slut. You got access to them by being hot. I don’t know any girls who pulled trains, but most of the sluts were hot. I believe most of the girls who pulled trains were hot. I have heard that if you were part of that train, the room would be dark, and the girl would be cumdrunk out of her head, flopping around on the bed like a fish, and panting like a dog. She couldn’t really see you very well. She would be saying, “More! More! More cock! More cock!”, and she would just welcome you aboard. Most of the girls who were pulling trains were drunk, but you must understand that a lot of girls would deliberately get blackout or near blackout drunk specifically so they could whore out, be promiscuous, or pull trains or whatever, and then afterwards say they were not responsible because they were drunk and could not remember. Some of the wildest sex I have had in my life was with high school girls/women, and when I asked them about it afterwards, they said they had no memory of it. One woman kept yelling out these three other guys’ names while I was in bed with her. I had to keep reminding her, “I’m Bob. I’m not (Ken/(John/Bill, etc.). Remember?” Then she would laugh and say, “Oh that’s right. You’re Bob.” Then back to, “Pant, pant, pant, pant. Fuck me! Fuck me! Fuck me dammit!” etc. etc. We had a bottle of whiskey mixed with Coca-cola in the bed, and we drank the whole thing that New Years Eve night. I escaped by climbing out the window of her bedroom, as all this was going on at her parents’ house. Later I would go visit her by climbing in the bedroom window and escaping a similar way. Good times! She was extremely hot and known to be a serious slut, most of my friends knew her, and some had messed around with her, but none had had sex with her, as she was still rather discriminating. I became a legend by fucking her and was a bit of a hero on campus afterwards. Even many years later, my friend who knew her would look at me in awe and say, ‘Yeah, but you fucked DJ.'” That practically gave me hero for life status right there, just fucking that one hot slut. Most guys in those lines were the cool guys who were most decent looking or at least macho enough to be hot by most girls’ bad boy standards. The dorky, nerdy or lame ugly guys who girls would not date would not even be in a line like that. They would not even be at that party. Those parties were “cool people only parties – no geeks and dorks allowed.” Ugly and fat girls simply were not sluts because no one wanted to fuck them.

Alt Left: On Brett Kavanaugh, "Gang Rape," and High School Girls Pulling Trains in the 1970's

Regarding the sexual misconduct charges detailed against Brett Kavanaugh below, I am proud to say I’ve never done anything of these things or anything close to them. I’ve done a lot of bad things in my life, but I have never raped a female or even come close to doing it. I like to sleep well at night, and I have to look myself in the mirror every morning. This horrible man is now facing a third sexual misconduct charge. The first one involves a charge by a woman, 15 years old at the time, that the then 17 year old Kavanaugh and his creepy friend Mike Judge corralled her into a bedroom at a party while Kavanaugh tried to rape her. Brett threw her down on the bed, tried to rip her clothes off, and put his hand over her mouth to muffle her screams. His buddy Judge was laughing the whole time. She literally fought Brett off and thereby prevented herself from getting raped. This was an actual crime called 2nd Degree Sexual Assault, a misdemeanor that calls for 1-3 years in prison. The statute of limitations ran out three years after the crime. I would be inclined to let him off on this considering he was a minor, but I hate him so much that I don’t care what sort of BS they use to hang him from his own petard with. The second charge, which just came out, is from his time at Yale. Brett was a hard-partying guy, a member of a fraternity subsequently discovered to be a very creepy and rapey organization. This fraternity has been accused of so many sexual assaults that they were actually banned by the university at one point. Brett was said to be rather shy but could get quite aggressive when drunk. These men are called “mean drunks,” and it is a known type. I have known men who were very nice when sober but quite mean when drunk. A woman who was a classmate of his at Yale charges that in 1982 there was a drinking party in a dorm. She was there with several young men. I am going to say right now that she was a damned idiot for going to a drinking party with just herself and five or six sketchy, rowdy college boys. What did she think is going to happen? At least bring a girlfriend along, for Chrissake. Anyway, these boys started whipping out their penises and pointing them in her face and daring her to touch them. The antics also involved the use of a fake penis at one point. The woman was a good Catholic girl at the time, and she said she had never touched a penis before. Well, there’s no time like now, baby! Ah, just kidding, sorry. Anyway she tried not to touch them, but they kept shoving them in her face. They grabbed her hand and put it on their penises. One of the men who did this to her was Brett Kavanaugh. The woman was traumatized by this and confided in some of her friends. This is legally sexual assault, but no DA will prosecute on a BS charge like this. It is a dick move though, and dick moves deserve a punch in the face in Man World. The latest charge is that Brett, Judge, and a group of other boys threw regular parties when they were in high school that involved targeting a girl, feeding her enough drinks to get her completely wasted, and then getting her to pull a train or do a gangbang. These are being called gang rapes, but that’s not the way I remember them. I was around back then. This happened at parties all the time when I was in high school. You would hear this at parties, “She’s pulling a train!” Or they would point to some girl and say she pulled a train at this party last weekend. It was a pretty regular occurrence. My understanding was that all of the girls pulling these trains were drinking of their own free will. I was at many parties like this, and I never once saw boys or men feeding these girls booze. They didn’t need to. The girls went there with the expressed intention of getting wasted on alcohol. I never participated in one of these trains. The idea was always frightening to me, and I didn’t have much sexual experience in those days. Plus I had performance anxieties. A high school girl would get drunk off her ass, then get in bed with some guy. I guess they would ask her if she wanted other guys. These were high school girls who wanted to get gangbanged, so they would get drunk in order to have an excuse to do this without being called sluts. Other guys would come in, and the girl would say, “Bring it on!” I never heard that one of these trains was non-consensual or that they were anything resembling gang rape. I heard that if you went in there at your turn in the train, you would find some ravenous cum-drunk high school in there, her vagina soaked down to her knees along her inner thighs, panting like a dog in summer heat, and flopping around on the bed like a possessed Jodie Foster in The Exorcist. She would be saying something like, “More! More! More cock! More cock! I want more cock!” If you got on top of her, she would look up at you and ask, “A new one?” And then, “Fuck me! Fuck me! Fuck me dammit!”. Females who are this sexually crazed are obviously getting raped, right? Oh, Hell no. No female acts like that unless the sex is consensual. Back in those days, just because some horny as Hell high school was pulling a train in some bedroom, that didn’t necessarily mean crap. In no way was it synonymous with gang rape. It was just some high school girl living out her fantasy of getting gangbanged. Now if Kavanaugh was actually targeting certain girls and deliberately feeding them drinks in order to gangbang them, that was sleazy. But that’s not rape either. No male ever goes down on rape for sex with a drunken female. No DA ever files on a bullshit charge like that. It’s only rape if she’s passing in and out of consciousness, and even then, it’s hardly ever prosecuted. One case that was prosecuted recently was the Steubensville case with a high school girl which was videotaped. The only reason those boys went down was due to the videotape. If she is so drunk she is literally passed out, yes, it is rape, but hardly anyone goes down on that either because there’s usually no evidence. Sadly, this bullshit happens all the time. Girls and women! Don’t drink yourself black out drunk or even worse passed out drunk. You may well get raped and you have no one but yourself to blame for that. This is what the college athlete Brock Turner went down on. 9 Also it was sexual assault, not rape, due to digital penetration. That woman was another idiot who got herself black out and passed out drunk and then got assaulted. She was with Brock at the party for a long time before they left, and people said she was all over him, practically having sex with him in the main room in front of everyone. When they left and went outside, same thing, she was practically raping him. I’m just saying that at least in Brock Turner’s case, there is sometimes a lot less to some of these cases than meets the eye. On the other hand, Kavanaugh and his buddies definitely did what I would call a dick move by feeding these girls drinks and then frankly preying on them when they were wasted. It’s a dick move, not rape. The punishment for dick moves like that in Man World is a punch in the face. That’s exactly what this creep and his friends deserve for pulling this stunt.

How IQ Limits You in School and Life

Rahul: Robert, there are professors with IQ’s in the 90’s out there. There are scientists too, and many other professions. You are being very IQ deterministic. IQ does carry some merit, but it’s not the only thing. Also, intelligence can span from many different things. Intelligence is the ability to learn. People with Low IQ’s are very street smart, more so than high IQ folks. Musical intelligence exists too, many low IQ blacks are excellent rappers. Mechanical intelligence, not every high IQ fella can fix shit with their hands. There’s this article on Grey Enlightenment on illusory superiority. It’s a phenomenal article. Also, you can increase your IQ, it’s not fixed at all. Just because most people don’t increase it doesn’t mean that it’s impossible. Some people get pretty big gains too. For a degree, you only need an average IQ. For a masters too, only an average. Even for a PhD, you only need average. Hell, for the Nobel, you probably don’t need a monstrously high IQ either.

There are almost zero university professors with IQ’s in the 90’s. I dare you to show me one university professor with an IQ at that level. With an IQ in the 90’s, you will have a difficult time getting a BA, for Chrissake. Show me one “scientist” anywhere with an IQ in the 90’s. One. You don’t realize that IQ is intelligence. By attacking IQ, you attack the very concept of human intelligence itself. Street smarts, musical and mechanical knowledge alone won’t get you through university or a job as a professor or scientist. As an aside, most very good musicians are quite intelligent. We think Blacks are stupid, but I have read interviews with great Black blues musicians who no one would ever think would be smart, and I was shocked at how smart they were. I read an interview with Miles Davis, and it almost knocked me on the floor. He’s at least as smart as I am. I am always shocked at how smart auto mechanics are. They’re not book smart intellectuals, but I haven’t met a stupid mechanic yet, and I’ve met more than I can count. We think they are just stupid grease monkeys, and they don’t act all that smart, but those guys are wicked smart. I saw a chart once and I was shocked at how many auto mechanics had IQ’s of over 130. That will literally put you in the gifted program at school. I met a man the other day whose job was fixing the slot machines in gambling houses. I was stunned at how smart he was. I could tell he was smart very fast just by looking at his eyes, listening to his speech and just seeing how sheer fast he was. After age 18, IQ doesn’t go up much at all. Nor does it lower much either. IQ is even preserved in alcoholism, believe it or not. It can damage your brain, but IQ is typically preserved somehow. Show me one person who got an over 15 IQ gain in adulthood. I would even like to see someone who got 15 points. I’ve heard it’s possible, but I’ve never known anyone who did that. An average IQ of 100 will not get you a BA. You will struggle a lot, and you will simply not be able to understand a lot of the material. Many 100 IQ people will drop out of the university. You need a minimum 105 IQ to get a BA. You need a 110 IQ to get one relatively easily. I definitely don’t see how you easily get an MA with an average IQ. I have known people who seemed to do it, but they were schoolteachers getting more or less bullshit Education MA’s, the easiest MA’s out there. And this woman that I knew had to have her attorney mother write most of her papers for her, otherwise she would never have passed. I was in a Master’s program and there didn’t seem to be a lot of average IQ folks in there. Some of them were smarter than I was, or at least they were better at the material. For a Master’s, you will ever struggle at a 105-107 IQ. You won’t understand a lot of the material, and you will have a high likelihood of dropout, assuming you can even get in anyway, as you have to pass the GRE, and it is hard to pass the GRE with average intelligence. I would want a 115 IQ to get a Master’s degree, and even then it will be hard. You need a minimum 115 IQ to get a PhD, and even then, you will not understand a lot of the material and you will have a high tendency to flunk out. You want a 125 IQ to get a PhD. If you have an IQ below 115, in all likelihood you will simply not be able to get a PhD unless you have an extremely lopsided IQ. Most Nobel Prize winners have IQ’s of over 145. They’ve been studied.

All the Ways That IQ Is Relevant to Society

Intelligent Mouse: By “relevant for society” i meant relevant for economics. IQ can matter for many reasons, like for example just being interested in any form of scientific rigor in understand behavior could make it relevant to an individual as the person would seek for all (or at least most) alternatives in models. But lets investigate some of the potencial usage of intelligence meassurments and see how IQ tests meassure up. Measuring potential school performance: Some small amount of years in school will already give the teachers or parents ample information about their prospects, but also traits that make IQ more productive in synthesis: https://books.google.se/books?id=SCyEAgAAQBAJ&pg=PA117&lpg=PA117&dq=Layzer+(1973:+238)&source=bl&ots=9Rf9sy0Jd6&sig=WjWMXZsLTGLGy7SS7JSZQ9RLmNE&hl=sv&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjl0q7t78fdAhUQpIsKHXb7AFsQ6AEwAXoECAkQAQ#v=onepage&q=Layze Job performance: Well, IQ correlates around 0.3 with job performance, but the measurement is subjective so it might capture some things that correlate with social-class and therefore IQ. Eugenics: Pleitropy and polygenic structures makes eugenics by swapping SNPs impractical. Breeding programs can only do so much without further molecular biology knowledge. Twin studies seem kinda ridiculous: Twin Studies, Adoption Studies, and Fallacious Reasoning And i also agree with: Behavior Genetics and the Fallacy of Nature vs Nurture and (which is what GWAS interested behavioral geneticists like Steven Hsu agree on): Height and IQ Genes making eugenics very hard. If we already knew the mechanisms behind Testing mental health: This is actually the best use of IQ, as decreasing IQ is indicative of loss in brain stuff. Criterion validity and correlation: I also think that IQ´s criterion validity lies on shaky grounds when its founded on correlations that are only tested in narrow environments, essentially just creating the same correlation again and again without testing the methodological validity by testing the correlation appropriately. to test correlation appropriately would find anomalies in the pure environmentalist approach (or any level of conviction to environmental explanations) or finding causal IQ relationships (which Environmentalists have done). I’m not really an IQ denier though, i think there probably is an range of IQ that any given person can inhabit, but the fact of individuals sticking around the mean makes it hard to know who could be where, especially in such large and genetically similar groups like economic classes and races. Some people are obviously extreme, but as previously stated, we don’t need IQ tests to know that. And whats to say that smart people have high IQ? IQ is contingent on G, but all of my criticisms on IQ are pretty much equally (for better or worse) valid against G. I see no use in IQ if not for future developments. Its an unfinished project at best.

  I do not think that people realize what they are criticizing when they attack IQ. For IQ is simply the best measure we have for measuring intelligence in human beings. No better test has ever been devised. So when you criticize IQ as a concept, you are actually criticizing human intelligence itself. Do you IQ critics who say IQ is not that important really want to say that human intelligence is not important for human beings? Because that is exactly what you are saying. You realize IQ correlates very well with all sorts of things, right? Percentage of country that are college grads. Grades in college, SAT. Good correlation between college grades, SAT scores and IQ. Wealth of society. As IQ rises, societies tend to become more wealthy. As IQ falls to a low level, you can end up with extreme poverty, a lot of crime and chaos, rampant disease, and sometimes even a failed state. State of the infrastructure of society. Infrastructure of society improves as IQ rises. People and society are more likely to maintain things. When IQ falls to a low level, people often do not know how to fix broken infrastructure and there is a tendency to jerry rig or do temporary quick and dirty fixes to problems that last for a bit but then fail again. Civilizational level of society. As IQ rises, societies appear more civilized. As it drops to a low level, countries can appear downright barbarous. Crime rate of society: As IQ rises, the nation’s crime rate falls. Whether or not you will go to jail or prison and how long: As IQ falls,  you are more likely to be imprisoned and for longer. Whether you will go on welfare programs. As IQ falls, welfare use increases. Whether you will get an advanced degree. As IQ rises, advanced degrees become more common. Income (up to a certain level). Income rises in tandem with IQ up to 125-130, after which it falls Accident rate. As IQ falls, people get into many more accidents, some fatal. Includes car crashes, recreational accidents, accidents at home, etc. Hospitalization rates. As IQ rises, people are hospitalized less often. Rates of alcoholism and serious drug abuse. As IQ rises, rates of drug and alcohol abuse fall. The environment you create for your children. As IQ rises, parents create better environments for their children. Stability for chaotic nature of your surroundings. Even if you look at it on a neighborhood level, as IQ rises, the neighborhood becomes calmer, sometimes nearly to the point of being boring. Yet only three miles away, a large group of apartment complexes housing many low wage workers has a lot of noise, a general chaotic atmosphere, frequent police calls, a lot of yelling and screaming coming from homes, more frequent and more chaotic parties, more violence, more residential crime, and more drug and alcohol abuse. Domestic violence rates. Domestic violence falls precipitously as IQ rises. Men at the highest IQ levels seldom beat their wives. As IQ falls down to a low level, domestic violence becomes commonplace to the point where most men are beating their wives.

Alt Left: What Percentage of Homosexual People Is Acceptable To You in a Given Population?

Answered on Queera.

Believe it or not, all of the answers said that if a country’s population was 10

How could having 10

A given population as in for a country?

  • Homosexuals live 20 years less than heterosexuals. It is horribly sad for gay people that they miss out on so many years of wonderful life, but it seems to me that reduced lifespan is costly to society.
  • Gays have higher rates of mood and anxiety disorders. While this causes a lot of suffering to gay people, and this is sad, at the same time, mental illness is costly to society.
  • Gays have much higher rates of drinking, smoking, and drug abuse than straights. The gay male party and play scene revolving heavily around methamphetamine and club drugs is particularly alarming. Lesbians in particular smoke a lot. The costs of drinking, smoking, and drug abuse to gays themselves are no doubt significant in terms of disease, mortality, and the suffering that can come from excessive substance abuse; nevertheless, this incurs a lot of costs to society.
  • Gay men obviously have a very high STD rate. At 2
  • Tragically, gay men have a suicide rate 3X higher than straight men, even in San Francisco, the most gay-friendly place in the US. The attempted suicide rate is also very high. Gay male teenagers have a tragically very high attempted suicide rate at 8X the normal rate. Suicidal behavior causes unfathomable and heartbreaking suffering on gay men. However, attempted and completed suicides impose considerable cost on society.
  • Domestic violence rates are very high in gay and lesbian couples, especially the latter. A gay man is much more likely to beat his partner than a straight man is. A woman is much less likely to be beaten by a male partner than by a female partner. This causes immense suffering to the partners of gay and lesbian batterers. In addition, domestic violence is costly to society.
  • In gay areas, gay men typically take over all of the public restrooms and turn them into miniature sex clubs. This renders most public restrooms unusable by the rest of us. Most gay men typically vociferously support the use of public restrooms as sex dens for gays. I don’t have much sympathy here. Gay men are simply being very irresponsible with this depraved mindset. Further, this is a cost to society.

It is first of all most important to point out that gay men themselves suffer worst from most from these largely self-imposed conditions, a suffering so profound that it almost moves you to tears. Compassion is essential. Nevertheless, there is a cost to society. Some of these issues may be caused by discrimination (see the high teenage gay male attempted suicide rate), but there is a cost to society no matter what causes it. Some of these problems would lessen with increased acceptance of gays, but others would linger or possibly even worsen.

The question comes up whether gays pay for the costs they bring to society. Many gays seem to have above average intelligence for some reason, especially gay men. Gays seem more artistically talented than straights. More gays than straights seem to get college degrees, in particular gay men. Gay men seem to earn higher than average wages and are disproportionately employed in high paying and prestigious professions.

I am always hearing about a homosexual, often a gay man, who is contributing something noteworthy and exemplary to our society such that it mentions a media notice. Obviously, gay men contribute more to the tax base per capita than straights. So gays, especially gay men, offer considerable benefits to society, not flowing from their homosexuality but from other aspects of their lives.

I have not discussed lesbians here because I know little about them, but I doubt that they impose serious costs on society other than reduced lifespan.

However the question rises whether gays pay for themselves. Despite their excellent contributions to society and their higher than normal tax contributions, I still do not think that homosexuals pay for themselves.

The question then arises about whether the rest of us should be willing to carry a small burden for our gay brothers.

Personally I feel that at

Honestly, even when you get to 1

Homosexuality in society seems to be one of those things, like many things in life, that is best in small doses.

Psychopathology of Serial Murderers

The primary problem with almost all serial killers is simply ASPD, Antisocial Personality Disorder, (derived) sociopathy or (primary) psychopathy. It is present in almost 10

Very rare is the serial killer without this disorder, although there have been a few. I remember a long-distance trucker who turned himself when he walked into a Northern California police station with a woman’s breast in his top shirt pocket. He had camped out in forests while trucking and had picked up women and killed them. He kept the body of one in the truck for three or four days and drove around with it.

Experts said he was quite unusual in that they said he actually felt bad about what he had done. I wonder how bad he really felt though. You could not get me to drive around in a truck with a dead woman in the back for very long. I would go into severe panic pretty fast, stop the truck, and get out, and start walking or probably running away.

I would not be able to walk around with a woman’s breast in my shirt for long either. I would completely panic almost right away, take the shirt off, throw it on the ground, and start running. But then I am a pretty guilty type person with a strong conscience.

Based on that, while I am sure he may have felt some guilt for his killings, the fact that he was able to drive around in a truck with a dead woman in the back for 3-4 days shows without completely flipping out shows to me that he didn’t feel that much guilt, certainly not on the level that most of us would.

And the fact that he could rather calmly walk into a police station with a cut-off breast in his pocket without flying into total panic shows to me that he didn’t feel that bad about it. So guilt, even when it is present, is not as strong as in most of us, otherwise they would not have even done such horrible things in the first place.

Sexual sadism is also often present, and I have heard that Sadistic Personality Disorder is very common. Juvenile delinquency, voyeurism, exhibitionism, burglary, prowling, petty thievery, etc. typically precede the serial killings. When the serial killer starts killing, he usually has a fairly long rap sheet of more minor offenses. The murders are best seen as an escalation of a chronic criminal character type.

The ones who kill children are typically though not always preferential or fixated pedophiles. Certainly the ones who kill only children are preferential pedophiles. There is a type of pedophile called a mysoped, which is a sadistic pedophile. They are not very common. I doubt if

9

The rage rapist is dangerous, but he generally does not intend to kill his victim although he assaults her. If she fights back or gets difficult, he can fly into a rage and beat her so badly that she dies, but again he usually does not intend to kill. I doubt if these types go serial much if at all. Serial killers intend to kill; rage rapists do not.

Malignant narcissism, the disorder, believe it or not, of our wonderful President, is also present sometimes. Ted Bundy was a malignant narcissist. Yes, our wonderful President has the same mental illness as Ted Bundy! Comforting thought.

A few have Schizoid Personality Disorder, and some of the more disturbed ones have Borderline Personality Disorder.

Schizotypal, Paranoid, and Narcissistic Personality Disorders are rarely if ever seen in serial killers. Schizotypals are probably too disorganized and decompensated and just out and out strange to commit such crimes. The serial killer must blend in, and schizotypals do not do that. A few schizotypals have committed mass murders. James Holmes the Aurora Batman Theater Shooter, was a notable case. But note that he was caught immediately.

Paranoid PD is rarely if ever seen. These people tend to be rather retiring and like to hide away from a hostile world. They also do not like to call attention to themselves from a hostile world. They are suspicious and distrustful by nature, and this makes it hard for them to blend in well with ordinary society as serial killers often do.

Narcissists are usually too self-centered to kill. While narcissists are often very mean, the disorder is usually well-controlled in that the rage rarely escalates to homicide. There have been a few cases of NPD’s committing mass murder, usually of their families. The case of Jeffrey MacDonald, the mass murdering physician of Fatal Vision, seems to be such a case. This is a superb true crime book by the way.

Also narcissists think that if they kill, they will get caught, and if they are in prison or jail they will not be able to live this wonderful life they are supposed to be killing. They are “too cool to kill.”

Killing would mess up all their wonderful plans to exploit others and hold them up to contempt by millions of people, which the narcissist would have a hard time taking. The narcissist is “too good for prison.” Prison would be such a crushing blow to their self-image that it would very hard to take.

However, malignant narcissists can be very dangerous because this is a combination of psychopathy, sadism, Paranoid PD and Narcissistic PD. When you weaponize NPD with paranoia, sadism and particularly psychopathy, you create a dangerous illness.

Cluster C Personality Disorders like Passive-Aggressive Personality Disorder, Self-Defeating Personality Disorder, Dependent Personality Disorder and Obsessive Compulsive Personality Disorder are rarely if ever present in these types. These are PD’s where aggression is mostly displayed passively, and serial killers display aggression actively, not passively.

Mood disorders do not seem to be common. Bipolar Disorder is not common, and serial killers are rarely if ever depressed. They displace guilt and loathing outwards instead of pushing it inside of themselves as depressives do.

Depressives are passive, and depression acts as sort of a freezing agent in that it tends to immobilize people by its nature.

Men in general tend to either experience less depression than women or mask it with other things such as anger and rage, drinking, drugs, gambling, promiscuity, or even workaholism. It is simply not acceptable as a man to be depressed, so depressed men simply channel their depression into other things and say they are not depressed, they are just drunks or workaholics, for instance.

Substance and alcohol abuse issues are quite common with serial killers, but the better ones are more sober, as drinkers and dopers tend to be scattered and unreliable, and serial killers must be on the ball  24-7.

Only a few are psychotic.

They are motivated by many things, but your typical rape-murders or murders of attractive young women almost always have a sexual component. I would call these serial killings lust murders. The Germans coined the term.

Even among the lust-murders, there are a number of different types. Some are motivated by purely sexual desires, others get off specifically on killing and the power gained from it, others are hunter types who get pleasure from the hunt and chase as if they were hunting an animal, which they are of course, but when we refer to hunters, we are always talking about hunters of non-human animals.

Get Her Drunk! Give Her Drugs! Have Sex with Her! Yay!

That is, I get loaded or drunk on dope or booze with women and then I fuck them. Of course the women and girls are willing participants, but feminuts say it’s rape anyway. Anyway, intoxicated sex is a blast, and I recommend it to all discerning degenerates. I have gotten high on a lot of drugs with women and then had sex with them, mostly marijuana and cocaine, and pills. The only pills were tranks like Xanax. They are ok for sex as they relax you. I’ve never done psychedelics, Ecstasy or PCP and had sex. It sounds a bit frightening. I don’t do speed. I’ve never done narcotics and had sex, but that sounds like a bad idea anyway, and the only narcotics I ever took were pills, and I hardly ever used them. Narcotics kill sex anyway. Don’t dose women. That’s as sleazy as it gets, and it’s quite illegal these days. Do I feed women drinks to get them drunk? I dunno? As I usually drink along with them, I guess not. Don’t feed women drinks to get them drunk.If you want to get her drunk, I understand, but you may as well drink along with her. It’s only fair. If a woman gets drunk and has sex, it’s rape and she’s not responsible, say feminuts. That can only be possible if women are children. So are women children? I guess women are children. I would like to point out that a lot of females have sexual inhibitions, and they deliberately drink themselves to get themselves loosened up enough for sex. I have been a party to such self-dosing on many an occasion. Taking the feminut theory logically, I guess these women are raping themselves by getting themselves drunk, but even when women rape themselves, I guess men are still guilty. After all, feminists insist that women are eternal children, objects who have no agency. I agree that women are objects, but I do not agree that they have no agency.

"You Can Do It in 23 States," by Alpha Unit

How would you like to spend some time with a Backwoods Bastard? Or a Dirty Bastard? The Backwoods Bastard doesn’t sound so bad:

Expect lovely, warm smells of simple malt scotch, oaky bourbon barrels, smoke, sweet caramel and roasted malts, a bit of earthy spice, and a scintilla of dark fruit. It’s a kick-back sipper made to excite the palate.

And the Dirty Bastard sounds pretty good:

So good it’s almost wrong. Dark ruby in color and brewed with seven varieties of imported malts. Complex in finish, with hints of smoke and peat, paired with a malty richness and a right hook of hop power to give it the bad attitude that a beer named Dirty Bastard has to live up to. Ain’t for the wee lads.

Backwoods Bastard and Dirty Bastard are made by Founders Brewing Company, a craft brewery in Grand Rapids, Michigan. The Brewers Association defines a craft brewer as:

  • small – annual production of 6 million barrels or less
  • independent – less than 2
  • traditional – either an all malt flagship or has at least 5

People also call craft breweries microbreweries. The term originated in the UK in the 1970s to describe a group of small breweries that were focused on making traditional cask ale. “Microbrewing” initially referred to the size of the breweries but came to reflect a different attitude and approach to brewing, summed up by Founders Brewing as “We brew beer for people like us” – passionate beer enthusiasts. By the 1980s the microbrewing trend had caught on in the US. This article touches on what had preceded it:

In the early 20th century, Prohibition drove many breweries in the US into bankruptcy because they could not all rely on selling near beer or “sacramental wine” as wineries of that era did. After several decades of consolidation of breweries, most American commercial beer was produced by a few large corporations, resulting in a very uniform, mild-tasting lager of which Budweiser and Miller are well-known examples. Consequently, some beer drinkers craving variety turned to homebrewing and eventually a few started doing so on a slightly larger scale. For inspiration, they turned to Britain, Germany, and Belgium, where a centuries-old tradition of artisan beer and cask ale production had never died out.

Some of these breweries were so successful that a new category had to be created for their product – craft beer. The largest of the craft beer brewers in America is the Boston Beer Company. They make Samuel Adams. Founders Brewing Company began in 1997 and has become one of the highest recognized breweries in the US, they tell us. They’re an award-winning company that has been ranked the second-best brewery in the world since 2011. The company made news earlier this summer when the Alabama Alcoholic Beverage Control Board lifted a ban on Backwoods Bastard and Dirty Bastard. The board’s licensing director rejected the names last spring because of a state law that says no ad for alcoholic beverages can show a person “posed in an immodest or sensuous manner” and that they can’t have any profanity or offensive language. In Alabama, grocery stores and convenience stores sell beer and wine where anyone can see them. Dirty Bastard beer got rejected over a concern that parents wouldn’t want their kids to see rough language on the shelves. Founders Brewing and craft beer lovers in Alabama raised a fuss over this decision. A committee that was set up to review the decision approved Dirty Bastard and Backwoods Bastard at the first meeting. A major reason? If they were going to deny Dirty Bastard and Backwoods Bastard, they’d have to reconsider a board decision years earlier to allow the sale of Fat Bastard. Fat Bastard is a French wine that had been sold in Alabama for years. No one wanted to pull it off the shelves. You can sit down with a Dirty Bastard or a Backwoods Bastard in 23 states now.

"Canada At Ground Level: Observations of a US Refugee," by Odin Crow

Warning: Long, runs to 51 pages. This is a fine piece by US expat Odin Crow. Relax and enjoy it.

Canada At Ground Level: Observations of a US Refugee

By Odin Crow

I am an American citizen living in Canada. I am not a sociologist, anthropologist, economist, linguist or any other ist. What I am is a middle class, late 40s working-guy who wishes to share with you what he’s learned about his adopted country from his own personal experiences and hopefully dispel a few misconceptions at the same time. But first, my take on the differences in basic character of these two countries and how they came about.

A Tale Of Two Siblings

If Canada and the US were brothers, the US was the one who said “fuck you” to the parents and left home as a teen. Granted, mom and dad were treating him like shit; he was a breadwinner, the loud, risk-taking one with big plans and ambitions and, to be honest, mom and dad were oinking up the fruits of his labors without giving him any say in how the household was run. Sure, mom and dad got him started, set him up with everything he needed to be successful, but the dynamic didn’t seem fair to Elder Brother, who went indy. Canada, on the other hand was the brother who just wanted to live his life and be left alone. He didn’t ask for much from mom and dad; they gave him very little to work with and neglected him for the most part. But Younger Brother never complained and did receive the benefit of some guidance and wisdom from time to time as he grew up as well as help when he really needed it. So Younger Brother kept his nose to the grindstone, worked hard, minded his own business and slowly built a nice sane, stable life for himself. Meanwhile, after a nasty spat with the folks, who started it out of sheer vindictiveness (and whose side was taken by Younger Brother, since Elder Brother lashed out at him and, to be honest, Younger Brother was still basically an extension of Mom and Dad) Elder Brother built a dizzyingly dramatic, risk-taking, get-the-fuck-outta-my-way life for himself, with stellar highs and deep, abysmal lows, being sometimes unbelievably heroic and idealistic and sometimes bewilderingly selfish, paranoid and self-righteous. Over time, though, both siblings and parents’ relationship evolved into one of general support and respect, coming to each other’s aid, engaging in great endeavors and providing moral support to one another, even though one or more of them may not always have clearly been on the side of right. So if the US is the “loud” one, the flashy, big-talking Type A, the stunning over-achiever who makes everyone else in the room feel inadequate (or at least tries to), the one who’s been out in the world reaping fame and glory, constantly striving always to grow his own wealth, power and influence, Canada’s the one that dresses down, doesn’t dominate the conversation at the dinner table, has his mortgage paid off and worries more about just being a good neighbor and minding his own business. He’s the one who, through patience and consistency, has built himself a very comfortable, stable, relaxed life, and people generally find his company enjoyable. Others generally have mixed feelings towards Older Brother, being sometimes jealous of him, sometimes afraid and very often both. Older Brother wants everyone to be like him and feels the need to justify his choices constantly; Younger Brother’s the one who goes, “No thanks, I’m good, but whatever works for you.”

How I Got Here

I married a Canadian woman, it didn’t work out, and I stayed. I had applied for permanent residence with my wife as my sponsor, which involved paying around $900, submitting a criminal background check and medical examination, filling out a form and waiting seven months. During the interim, I was not allowed to work legally or receive any public services. Once my application passed, I received my “landing papers”, a SIN (Social Insurance Number or Canadian SSN) and was then eligible to live permanently, work and receive health care. My status lasts 5 years between renewals, during which I must spend a minimum of 2 years on Canadian soil or abroad as an employee for a Canadian company. I cannot vote or serve in the military. If I had applied for public assistance (welfare, etc) during my first 3 years, my sponsor (ex-wife) would have been responsible for paying it back to the government. I can and have received unemployment insurance.

What It’s Like To Be a Working Guy in Canada

I have no college degree and am actually a high-school dropout, though I’ve always lied about it, and it’s never been questioned (fortunately, they didn’t check on that in my residency application). I live in Alberta now, so I don’t pay provincial income tax. Regardless, when I was in Nova Scotia, I still took home more of my wages than I did in California, despite paying both federal and provincial income tax. Canadian tax rates are lower for lower incomes, higher for higher incomes. If I were to make 100 grand a year, yes, I’d pay a higher tax rate, but I don’t. The Canadian and US Dollars hover around parity for the most part, so for all intents and purposes, a buck is a buck. My cost of living is about the same as in the US. Rents are comparable and so are utilities. Food can be more expensive, and smokes are over 10 bucks a pack for most brands in Alberta and more in some other places; the more liberal, the more expensive – same with booze. Gas is currently about $CN 1.12/liter., ($4.20/gallon.) in Alberta, which has the lowest gas prices in the country, naturally. It’s as much as $CN .50 more a liter in other places. Canada has a federal sales tax of Nova Scotia, being a notoriously liberal and socially-conscious province with higher unemployment than the national average, has a HST of 1 Alberta, which is shoveling in oil revenues like there’s no tomorrow and has a thriving agricultural industry (grain and cattle) is probably the least socially-conscious of all the provinces, being somewhat the Canadian version of Texas. It has no HST, only the So, in short, I’ve sort of made a deal with the devil by coming out here for work after having been laid off in Nova Scotia; I enjoy the economic benefits, but am slightly at odds with the social climate which is, to be fair, still more liberal than that of the US as a whole. Here’s an example of the difference between the IRS and Revenue Canada: I get a check every 3 months for $CN 100 as a GST rebate because I make below a certain income level (I gross between  $CN 38k-45k/year). When was the last time you ever got anything from the IRS aside from something terrifying telling you you’re fucked? Summary: Being an average, middle-class working person in Canada means you can actually have a good, comfortable life.

Health Care

If you live here, either as a citizen, on a visa or as a permanent resident, like myself, you get health care. Each province administers its own system, and it comes out of the tax base; there is no premium deduction from your pay, no check box on your tax return form. I hear Alberta (surprise, surprise) used to have a mandatory premium deducted from your tax return each year, but not any more. Your provincial health card will get you care no matter where in the country you are. Emergency room, ambulances – no charge to the insured. Neither dental nor optometry are covered, and seeing a specialist requires a referral. My employers provide me with health insurance for things like optometry, dental, chiro, prescription plan, etc, as does everyone else’s, to my knowledge. But if you’re a small business, one less burden of responsibility and concern has been removed. Even if you’re a cheap, mean bastard who cuts corners every chance he gets, you and your employees are still covered. Here’s how my Canadian doctor visits have gone: Scenario 1 Receptionist: Hello, dear, have you been here before? Me: No. Receptionist: Can I see your card, dear? (I hand her the card). Is this your current address? Me: Yes. Receptionist: OK, here’s your card back, have a seat and someone will call your name in a couple minutes. 10 minutes later: Mr. **********? Scenario 2 Receptionist: Hello, dear, have you been here before? Me: Yes. Receptionist: Your name? Me: ********** Receptionist: Is this your current address? Me: Yes. Receptionist: OK, have a seat and someone will call your name in a couple minutes. 10 minutes later: Mr. **********? This is not a fantasy; I am not exaggerating. No co-pay, no multi-page forms to fill out, no pissed off, fat, black bitch in teddy-bear scrubs studiously ignoring me as I wait for her attention, all-but-daring me to interrupt her personal phone call by meekly saying “Excuse me”, no interminable wait, nothing. Now, I’m sure a clinic in a huge city like Toronto or Vancouver would probably be much busier (though nothing like the Cinco de Mayo fiestas of Southern California, I’m sure) and its staff more unpleasant (my experiences are limited to Halifax and my small Southern Alberta town of 2,000), but seriously, anyone who can compare this with an HMO experience in the US and see no difference is an abject boob. My ex-wife was diagnosed with thyroid cancer when she was 20. She had surgery, was treated, recovered fully and takes thyroid medication. Aside from the cost of the prescription, which was about 12 bucks a refill, her cost was zero. She had merely to show her Nova Scotia Health Card and her life was saved without any worries that she would face any complications when it came to receiving care or paying for it afterwards. Summary: It is not a myth – the Canadian health care system works and it works very well. For everyone.

Politics

Quick primer on the parliamentary system: Political parties elect a leader. General elections are for MP’s (Members of Parliament), the equivalent of House representatives in the US. Whoever gets the most MP’s in Parliament is the Majority – their leader becomes Prime Minister. You do not elect a Prime Minister, you elect a Party with whom you agree. As long as that party is in the majority, their leader is Prime Minister. There is a Canadian Senate as well, but Senators are appointed by the Prime Minister – not elected – so they are all, inevitably, of the same party as the Majority (I’m sure there are a couple exceptions, but for the most part, who’s going to pick a guy from the Opposition?). I’m not clear what the Senate does, but I know that the lawmaking process is not bicameral. The Majority party is the Progressive Conservatives (PC), colloquially known by the traditional English term “Tories”. The Opposition are the Liberal Party (which held power for quite some time but has diminished in recent years due to lack of leadership), the New Democrats (which are the largest minority and surged suddenly in ranks at the last general election), the Green Party (a handful) and I think Bloc Quebecois still has a couple MP’s. Bloc Quebecois is essentially an ethnocentric provincial party whose only real platform has been the secession of Quebec, and their place in national politics has been the subject of some contention; they have been, however, utterly decimated, many of their seats lost to the burgeoning ND Party in the last election. There may be some stragglers from all-but-defunct other parties with a seat here or there, but I’m not sure and nor would be your average Canadian. A Canadian Conservative is a lot closer to a US Democrat than it is to a US Republican. They are not trying to repeal universal health care, abortion rights, gay marriage or any of the other causes celebres of their Bizarro-World US counterparts. They object to things like making trans-gender public restrooms mandatory and legalizing pot and support things like privatizing government entities and easing up on business regulation, etc., for the most part. Yes, PM Harper and his crew are trying to emulate some US Republican fashion trends, for example a “3-strikes, tough-on-crime” bill and building more prisons, but everybody’s response to that is generally, “Why? The crime rate is actually dropping.” Thanks to the Canadian Parliamentary system though, the MP’s are really not much more than what they should be, which is bureaucrats put in charge of keeping shit running smoothly, sanely and reliably. Canadian politicians are also by-and-large not millionaires and lawyers as they are in the US. They come from a pretty wide demographic (a recently-elected ND MP from Quebec is actually a female bartender). At the provincial level, Canada has Premiers instead of Governors (It always reminds me of some Communist Eastern European country when I hear that term – still doesn’t sound right to me). They attain office the same way as national PM’s: Parties field candidates as reps for the various provincial “ridings“, and the Party with the majority’s leader becomes Premier. In Alberta, the Tories have maintained a hegemony over provincial politics for the last 40 years (PM Stephen Harper is an Albertan). The current Premier, Allison Redford, was a constitutional attorney, a field of expertise rather uncommon amongst US Republican politicians, but not among Democratic Presidents it would seem. Provinces sometimes have provincial political parties, limited to provincial politics, though Quebec’s Bloc Quebecois made its way into Parliament, concerned as they are with Quebec’s secession, though their position and influence in federal politics is marginal to say the least. Alberta‘s further-right party, the Wild Rose Party, went balls-out during the last provincial election, and their gaffes were many and hilarious; one of their candidates mentioned in a mass emailing something about gays being “condemned to a lake of fire,” and another quipped that he would win his riding easily as he was the “only white guy“ on the ballot. In true neocon fashion, the party responded not by asking either of the doddering farts to step down, but by making the statement that “there are many differing views within the Wild Rose Party, and all are tolerated.” Needless to say, they got their asses handed to them instead of winning a majority. In Alberta, the Tories have been making noises about privatizing Alberta Health, giving the usual bullshit arguments about how the “private sector can deliver services more efficiently and cost-effectively than the provincial government can,” etc., but it’s not a position that seems to be gaining much traction with the electorate….. To put it simply, Canadians are generally not stupid; they see what works with their own eyes, thus they are far less susceptible to specious arguments, panic-mongering and outright bullshit than their US counterparts. They know when something is working and aren’t obsessed with change for its own sake, not even Albertans. Summary: Politics in Canada actually has more to do with working for the people than it does furthering ideological agendas or political careers.

Immigration and Race

Per the most recent census statistics, Canada is comprised of 8 One of the things I truly love about Canada is that there aren’t Mexicans all over the place. There are no undocumented aliens per se, since not only is Canada not conveniently within walking distance of Mexico, but an illegal alien isn’t able to get work or free medical care here. There are no mobs of day laborers in the Home Depot parking lot, nor have I seen massive, ethnically-homogenous ghettos in which an illegal can live and receive community support with impunity. This may not be the case in the bigger cities like Toronto, Vancouver and Montreal, but the numbers of illegals must be so low as not to have much effect as a socioeconomic issue. Illegals aside, I don’t see Canada suffering the negative social and cultural impact of being overwhelmed by immigrants from one particular culture. Canada has a policy of basing immigration approval upon needed skills. Since Canada is not suffering from a shortage of gardeners, pool cleaners or sidewalk ice-cream vendors, that would pretty much exclude the bulk of the Mexicans wanting to come in. Canada has a foreign temporary worker program just like the US used to since there’s more work here than there are people who want to do it. A Newfoundland seafood processing plant that had shut down for awhile opened back up when the catches improved and couldn’t find enough locals for the jobs, so they imported a bunch of Thais along with an interpreter. However, in most other circumstances, immigrants have to prove a functioning grasp of either English or French depending where they‘re going to be working and living. Children who cannot speak English are sent home by public schools, and the parents are informed that the school will be happy to teach their child once the parents have taught the child English. Recently, the English requirement for citizenship was actually increased. Canada seems to feel, oddly enough, that two of the keys to properly managing immigration are ensuring that an individual not only can speak one of the official languages but that they can somehow contribute to the economy and society as a whole. Absent giant ethnically-homogenous communities of immigrants, Canadian immigrants seem to assimilate much more quickly and willingly than in the US. Every first-generation-born Canadian I’ve met has no foreign accent; they say “eh”, and they seem to hang out with just about anybody. I never get the vibe that foreigners and their kids here hate Canadians while enjoying the benefits of being Canadian. The mayor of Calgary, the biggest city in the most conservative province, is a Muslim – Naheed Nenshi – and you’d never know by hearing him speak on the radio. You see “people of color” scattered throughout the media and government, and they all seem to retain ethnic names, despite sounding and acting like Canadians. Blacks in Canada are not ubiquitous. In Calgary, the Blacks I meet are invariably immigrants; there is no “Black” part of town. In Halifax, which was, among other things, at the other end of the Underground Railroad, the Black population is mostly descended from former American slaves and is proportionally larger than in many other areas of the country. This population in Halifax began in earnest following the War of 1812 during which “Black loyalists” (slaves willing to fight their masters in exchange for freedom) were deeded land on the outskirts of Halifax as reward for helping the Crown, which was named Africville. Africville has a tragic and disappointing history which I’m going to expand upon in a separate piece, but suffice it to say that Blacks in Nova Scotia suffer from many of the same socioeconomic problems as do their counterparts in the US, though certainly not to the same degree. I understand that there are Black communities in and around Toronto which are primarily Caribbean in origin, that there is public housing inhabited mostly by Blacks and that crime rates are higher in these areas, but I’m not aware of specifics. I have never heard a Canadian say “nigger”. Oh, I’ve had friends say “What up, my nigga,” plenty of times, but as far as it being used as a pejorative, never. Much of what many Canadians believe about Blacks, since many of them have never spent much time around or lived around them, they get from US TV shows, so many of them are understandably scared shitless. In Nova Scotia, where there is a Black population descended from American slaves and not immigrants, I often heard the general stereotypes bandied about by Whites: They don’t like to work, but they do like to commit crimes, do drugs, get bitches pregnant and split, etc. My ex-wife was utterly petrified of them. She saw a Black kid walk down our street once and, since no Black people lived on our street, wanted to call the police, I shit you not. She did not, though, and the ensuing argument lasted about two hours. Canadians are, however, very quick to characterize Americans as racists, despite the fact that Canada had Jim Crow “Whites only” bylaws in rural areas just like the US did. But, in fairness, the institution of slavery did not exist here, and that counts for rather a bit. Aboriginals, still commonly referred to as Indians, seem to take the place, in many ways, that Blacks do in US society. They are disproportionately plagued by crime, poverty, alcoholism, drug addiction and prejudice and are distributed across Canada. They receive government assistance and are spoken of by most of the Whites I know as a “problem” and with little compassion. A disproportionate number of their males are in the prison system. They are, in effect, the Blacks of Canada, and the origins of their problems are as convoluted and difficult to figure out as are those of US Blacks. However, to be real, they were doing OK before Whitey showed up.

The French

As you may or may not know, the English defeated the French in the battle for supremacy in Canada but allowed the French to stay and maintain their own culture. Like any defeated people, despite the magnanimity of the victors, a lot of them are still sore about it. As I’ve mentioned before, there are elements within Quebecois society who believe that Quebec should exist as its own separate country. Anglo Canadians love to point out that the federal government paid for and built their infrastructure, so if they want to pay back all of that, fine, go ahead; many Anglos are constantly irritated and annoyed by the French. Despite this, however, Quebec and its French culture are clearly things that make Canada, well, Canadian and add an extremely cool flavor to the whole mix here. In 1980, Quebec held a referendum about whether it should secede from the Canadian federal government or stay. Literally thousands of people from all over Canada came to Quebec to plead with the citizens to remain part of Canada. I’ve heard the old radio news reports from that time, and people were actually crying, “Please don’t leave.” Many Quebecois were also crying, saying, “How can we consider this? What does it say to the rest of the world?”. Fortunately, the results were 60-40 against. I can’t help but imagine that if Texas tried to do the same thing, millions of Americans would show up saying, “Please! Do it! Leave and good riddance!” OK I was being a smart-ass with that one, but I think you’ll understand my point. Canadians seem to like other Canadians more than most Americans like other Americans, even when they’re French. Summary: Canada is very White, its culture is Western European, and the people who emigrate to it seem to acknowledge and appreciate that, as such, it is a much better place to live than wherever they came from. Canada is a clear example of the superiority of Western Culture and the benefits of White Rule.

Religion

Yes, we have it here. I see churches all over the place, especially in Alberta, which I believe boasts more churches per capita than any other province (once again, proof that Alberta secretly wishes it was the 51st State of the US). However, there is much less “religion” here. It is not part of the political conversation and seems rarely, if ever, to be part of polite conversation. Alberta is the province which boasts the most Evangelicals, and it’s the only one where I’ve seen occasional billboards in rural areas featuring Right-To-Life slogans. However, when I tried to call the 800 number on one to tell them to suck my dick, the number was disconnected, and the website on the sign no longer existed; that’s the degree of religious fervor out here. In Nova Scotia, I did see an anti-abortion protest outside of a hospital: Two old ladies in camp chairs watching a portable TV on an ice chest, their picket signs leaning against the fence behind them as people walked by in both directions. Summary: In Canada, religion is essentially no one’s business but their own, so shut the fuck up, and please don’t block the sidewalk.

Guns, Crime and Violence

Guns are not banned in Canada; they are regulated and controlled. Allow me to slack off for a second and quote a Wikipedia article for a brief historical background:

Registration of firearms in Canada has been an issue since the 1930s when the registration of handguns became mandatory. Over the past few decades, legislation had become increasingly restrictive for firearm owners and from 1995 until 2012, all firearms were required to be registered. As of April 6, 2012 the registration of non-restricted firearms is no longer required in any province or territory, except for Quebec, pending litigation. Systematic auditing and criminalization of firearm owners and sports is implemented and enforced in most of Central Canada, and to a lesser extent, in Western Canada (in most cases firearm ownership regulations vary slightly in different provinces and territories, where some provinces have decided to mandate their own laws, such as the Quebec Law 9 course, which is mandatory for all owners of restricted firearms). The Criminal Code of Canada provides recognition of self-defense with a firearm; The Firearms Act provides a legal framework wherein an individual may, acquire/possess and carry, a restricted or (a specific class of) prohibited firearm for protection from other individuals when police protection is deemed insufficient. This situation is extremely rare, as evidenced by the fact that the (publicly available version of the) RCMP Authorization To Carry application refers only to protection of life during employment that involves handling of valuable goods or dangerous wildlife.

In short, you can have a gun if you have a good reason for it. “Personal protection” and just being afraid the government is going to show up and shove you in a FEMA trailer for re-education are not considered valid reasons. It is a matter of record that Canada’s rates of homicides and suicides using guns have further decreased as more and more restrictions have been put into place. This has not eliminated crime, but it has clearly mitigated it. I’d rather have a guy come at me with a knife than a gun even if I’m similarly armed any day – I don’t know about you. To anyone in the US who maintains that lower violent crime can be achieved through an “armed society”, you need only look to Canada to see how absolutely shit-brained-stupid that is. Canada has crime though. People get their cars stolen, there are rapes, there is drunk driving – all the usual. Canada even boasts some celebrated serial killers as well. Most Canadians do lock their doors when they leave for work and when they go to bed, despite what Michael Moore might want you to believe. The difference between Canada and the US in this regard is the crime per capita. In a city as big as Calgary (approximately 1.4 million), which is about 30 minutes from me, the amount of crime compared to a similar-sized US city is ridiculously lower. There isn’t even as much trash on the ground. I’m not kidding – same goes for the rest of what I’ve seen of Canada. What doesn’t exist are gangs to any great degree. In Vancouver you have some Asian gang stuff, some minor shit with Russians and some others in Toronto and Quebec, but nothing even close to what you have in the US. Another thing I’ve noticed is the role of the “career criminal”. In the US, being a criminal is an actual occupation for many, one which they pursue with great professionalism and acumen. In Canada, most of the criminals I’ve seen and read about are basically stupid assholes. They steal some shit, maybe sell some drugs, and they get caught. This one idiot drug dealer in Halifax lived in a trailer park, yet bought a bright yellow Hummer and parked it out front. After a few stray bullets zipped through his neighbors‘ homes courtesy of a rival “drug kingpin “ (yes, this is how the local news referred to him), the cops pretty much figured out that if they nabbed the guy in the yellow Hummer at the bridge toll-plaza, they’d get some answers. Random acts of violence occur. Guys get dumped and kill their ex and her new boyfriend; a middle-aged loser who’s sponging off his grandmother’s pension checks decides he can smother her with a pillow and pretend she’s still alive; some guy hears Satan tell him he can fuck Avril Lavigne if he kills his whole family in their sleep, and so on. But to be honest, most random, violent crimes I hear about around my neck of the woods, few as they are, involve immigrants. You can take the boy out of Viet Nam, but if you smile at his girlfriend during lunch time at the meat processing plant, he just might shove a fork in your neck. The cops here are actually nice, at least the ones I’ve met. You’ve got your Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP’s), which function as the equivalent of the FBI and State police in provinces without a provincial police force (unlike Ontario or Newfoundland), the city police forces and the “peace officers” who enforce by-laws and do not carry weapons. The only times I’ve dealt with cops, whether local or RCMP, they have said, “Hey, how’s it going,” introduced themselves and shook my hand, then calmly figured out what was going on. No twitchy hyper-vigilance, no hand on the gun as they approached. I’m guessing they may be a little different in the metropolii, but still, you don’t get Rodney King situations here. If called to a bar in response to a complaint of a disturbance, a Canadian cop is more likely to say, “Hey, I think your friend’s a little drunk, why don’t you take him home?” as opposed to calling in six cars for backup and making the entire place lie face down with their hands behind their heads. There are occasional stories of abuse, and there was a spate of deaths caused by tasering, but generally, since everyone doesn’t automatically hate them and want them dead, I think the cops are a bit more relaxed and less concerned with being intimidating. They are, after all, just guys trying to do their jobs, and I get that most Canadians understand and appreciate that. Despite the fact that they seem less violent as a culture, do not make the mistake of thinking Canadians are pussies. Canadians drink, and they also fight. Hockey, the world’s most violent sport is, after all, a Canadian invention. The difference, though, is the absence of ubiquitous and constant belligerence. If I go to a crowded concert or sporting event in the US, it’s a safe bet there will be more than one fight. My ex-roommate’s best friend from Northern California was jumped and had his brains beaten after a Dodgers-Giants game in LA; it put him in a coma, and he’s barely escaped being a vegetable. It would be impossible to me to conceive of that happening here and actually is impossible to any Canadians I’ve spoken with about it. Can Canadians hold their liquor better, or are they just generally less angry, violent and belligerent? Maybe a little of the former and a lot of the latter. Summary: Less guns, garbage, crime and violence, nicer cops, fewer incarcerated citizens and far less anxiety as a whole.

Weed

I smoke a lot of weed. I have been doing so for over 35 years. In Canada, medical marijuana is federally legal, but I can’t just go to a podiatrist and tell him I’ve been having trouble sleeping to get a license like in California. It requires multiple signed applications by several doctors and, like the gun licensing, the determining criterion is, “Why do you need it?”. Unfortunately, mild insomnia isn’t considered a valid reason. Things like rheumatoid arthritis, cancer and serious medical conditions which require pain management are generally what are required. Once licensed, it means you can go anywhere in the country without getting hassled; you can even walk through an airport with a sack in your pocket, provided you have your license on you. You cannot, of course, burn one in public (legally). You can also grow some. Despite the fact that I must, then, smoke weed illegally, there are a couple of benefits to doing so in Canada. First and foremost is that I can get a half ounce of good smoke for 120 bucks. Second is that the general attitude towards marijuana law enforcement is pretty relaxed. In most metropolitan areas, it is considered of “lowest priority,” officially, when it comes to enforcing pot laws. In Vancouver, there are Amsterdam-style cafes where everyone’s smoking weed, and the cops leave them alone. In the case of illegal grow-ops, though, or significant trafficking, the cops, understandably, do not look the other way. But as far as normal people getting high and not causing any problems, the worst they usually do is take it away from you, tell you to “watch it”, and maybe smoke it themselves after work. For the record though, Harper and the Tories have stated unequivocally that marijuana will not become legal as long as they are the majority. Fuck the Tories. Summary: Canada’s a cool place if you smoke weed; just remember it’s still illegal (technically).

Civil Liberties

Gays can marry here – it’s been legal for quite some time – and, despite that fact, they are not running around having anal sex in the streets. Pre-employment and random drug screenings are forbidden as unconstitutional, yet people aren’t snorting coke at work or showing up baked to the gills. Women can get abortions, and their health care covers it, yet there is not an epidemic of female promiscuity (much as I wish there were). Prostitution is, by certain definitions in certain areas, basically legal, or at least not criminal. Even the age of consent is much lower in some provinces, yet teenaged girls are not being incessantly fucked to death and discarded by middle-aged men. The guiding principle behind Canada’s attitude towards civil liberties seems to be, “If they’re not hurting anyone or causing a fuss, leave them the fuck alone, it’s none of your business.” Pierre Trudeau wisely stated that the government has “no place in our bedrooms, period,” and he was agreed with by even the most right-wing politicians at the time, eventually. I laugh my ass off every time I hear some Republican or Libertarian troll threaten to “move to Canada” if Obama gets re-elected. Not only would they not be issued a visa for such reasons, if they were, they would be forced to live in a place where fags can teach their kids, sluts can get abortions, niggers can get decent jobs, hippies can smoke weed and people claiming God speaks to them are not only banned from public office but they’re quite often placed under psychiatric observation. Summary: I think my freedoms are more well-protected here than in the US.

Language

Canadians do not say aboot. Most commonly, the ow diphthong, which is broken down into the phonemes a (like cat) + oo in US English (and every English dictionary), is very often pronounced eh-oo in Canada, similar to how the Irish pronounce it. In Atlantic Canada, it is common to hear the diphthong pronounced oh (I had a boss who actually spelled couch as coach because that’s how he pronounced it). They also usually pronounce sorry as soar-ee, been as bean, produce (n.) as prah-duce, project as proh-ject, process as proh-cess, schedule as shed-jule, missile as miss-isle and a slew of other British pronunciations. What drives me nuts though is their insistence on pronouncing virtually any a they see as the short a in cat. It’s difficult for me to represent graphically, but go ahead and say to yourself the following words with that short a and see how lame it sounds: pAsta, tsunAmi, drAma, mAzda. Ugh. Sonically, it makes me fucking cringe. And I know it’s a matter of taste, but to me, mispronouncing names and proper nouns from other languages in that fashion just seems ignorant. I guess that’s a vestige of the famous British contempt for other cultures giving a last, dying twitch. I have adopted the Canadian forms of spelling; I think it’s cool. They use the British forms here almost exclusively: colour, centre, defence, and so on. They do not use the spelling aluminium. They do, however, use the silent h in herb. But while Canadian spelling I may have adopted, most of Canadian pronunciation I have not. The exception is when I play “I’m pretending to be Canadian.” I have at various times when doing this been pegged as a Maritimer (someone from Atlantic Canada), since I have a good grasp of the accent and “isms“ I absorbed while in Nova Scotia. Though I am functional in French, I rarely have occasion to use it. Canadian French, though, is far more dissimilar to its parent than Canadian English, and volumes could be written about Francophone (French-speaking) culture in Canada, and I haven’t enough experience to do so with any credibility or thoroughness. Summary: Someone could drop you in the middle of any major Canadian city outside of Quebec in your sleep, and it’d take you a bit to realize, just hearing people speak, that you weren’t in the US.

Civility

This is, to me, the single most important difference between Americans and Canadians, and I believe this trait informs all the positive ones I’ve previously outlined. Canadians are civil. They are brought up holding doors for other people, apologizing if they think they’ve offended or been a nuisance and just in general trying to be kind and decent to everyone else, even if they don’t like them. The concept that your negative personal feelings towards others should not inform your actions towards them, that it’s right and beneficial to society to be polite to everyone regardless of whether you hate their guts or not is so obvious to them that it doesn’t bear mentioning. Canadians’ default mode is “nice”. When in doubt, just be nice. Don’t understand something? Be nice and ask what someone meant, don’t just immediately go “Oh, yeah? FUCK YOU!” and start swinging if you aren’t sure whether you’ve been insulted or not. Canadians don’t automatically assume the worst motive for the actions of others. If a guy’s going off and making a fuss about something, the first thought is usually, “Wow, he must really be having a bad day.” One of the keys to civility is cutting each other some slack, being easy on each other, at least the first couple times. Canadians seem much better at this “a mile in my neighbor’s moccasins” philosophy than most Americans. They’ve been inculcated with good behavior through example; they don’t even think about it. As a result, even the immigrants get in on it within a generation. Of course, there are those who recognize this tendency towards civility and understanding and try to subvert it for their own purposes. These types will invariably either adopt a disingenuously oblivious mien (“Oh, did I cut in front of you? Gee, didn’t see the end of the line.”) or will behave blatantly aggressively in the hopes of causing others to back down and avoid any type of confrontation, something that seems bred into most Canadians from birth. I am at times frustrated by what I sometimes perceive as a pathological need to avoid confrontation of any kind. I see people allow others to take advantage of and inconvenience them without saying anything, and it pisses me off. Some ass-wipe the other day at a movie theater, in which one joins a single line while waiting for the next available cashier, was standing near a particular window which looked as if it would free-up next, clearly intending to head straight for it while avoiding the line. I, of course, ever-vigilant to such things and being a self-appointed Guardian of Civilization and Warrior against the Americanization of Canada, moved forward immediately when the register became available, shoving in front of the asshole and saying, “I was here first. The line’s over there.” He muttered something under his breath as he walked to the line. Coincidentally, he was quite swarthy and spoke with a thick Middle-Eastern accent. Fuckers who style themselves “wolves among sheep” in this country fill me with cold rage. Despite the fact that your average Canadian finds my attitude and actions inappropriate, I will gladly suffer their disapproval, kinda like Batman has to. Canadians are also far more respectful, in general, of people’s privacy. I hear less gossip and less mean shit behind people’s backs than I did in the States. People don’t pry as much, they aren’t as obsessed with going through your laundry, and are far less likely to share something private they may have learned about you. For example, I was a porn actor in the US for a time; I got some press, and my stuff shows up on cable every now and then (gotta love Canadian cable; when they show porn, they leave in the penetration), so I am infrequently recognized. A guy I worked with, when I confessed about my former occupation after having known him a few months, told me he already knew. When I asked why he didn’t tell me he knew his response was that if I’d wanted him to know, I would have told him, and it was none of his business. In a similar situation in the US, a guy I worked with was so excited to know that he told everybody I worked with, including my bosses, and from then on, every time I spoke with them, though they never let on they knew, there was this weird awkwardness, like they couldn’t look at me without seeing me naked. On the flipside, an Iranian immigrant kid I was in training with at this call center in Halifax sat down next to me one day, grinning. “Hey, hey, do you have tattoo? Show me”. I lifted my sleeve and showed him, and he all-but shouted “Ha! I knew it! I see you, I see you on TV!” I convinced him to keep his mouth shut, but I’d catch the weird little fucker staring and grinning at me from across the room fairly often, and he’d give me the thumbs-up if I looked up at him. Summary: The more civil you are, the better everyone gets along and the better your civilization.

In Closing

A banking system under control, sane gun laws, lower crime, universal health care, a thriving middle class, no illegal immigration problem, cheap weed, way less garbage all over the place, fewer assholes per capita, a strong federal government with excellent social programs…isn’t this sorta what Obama’s America would look like?

Alcohol/Drugs and Brain Damage

Repost from the old site. For those who are worried, I would add a few pointers from my own life. I’ve been using drugs and drinking, one or the other or both, recreationally, for almost 40 years, and my health is superb. Of course, as with all things, moderation is the key. There were some wild binges of drinking and/or drug use where I thought, “Wow, this time I have definitely damaged my brain for sure!” At that time, I just stopped using whatever it was that had me worried and waited for a bit, and it seemed that at some point, all my brains came back, and then some. In some cases, I a number of cases, I had to wait for 3-10 days (average ~1 week), but in one case, it took a month to get back to where I was. After almost 40 years, you would think that I would be getting more and more fried by the year, but it’s just not so. To be quite honest, in many ways, it seems like I am smarter than I have ever been. Furthermore, no one who meets me or knows me ever thinks I am stupid in any way whatsoever. It is quite the opposite. Not trying to brag here but people regularly say things like, “You’re are one of the smartest people I know.” I don’t think they would say that if I was fried. When you exercise or play sports, they say listen to your body. With drinking and drugs, that too, but also listen to your brain. If things start seeming foggy, slow down for a bit and see if things clear up. Most if not all cases of permanent damage from this stuff have occurred from people who did not heed the warnings and careened right on ahead. To summarize my writings on the subject: Methamphetamine and Ecstasy are terrible for the brain, Ecstasy so bad you should not take it even one time. PCP is quite bad for your brain and probably ketamine is too. You can play around with any of those drugs a dozen or so times in a lifetime (and possibly more), and you won’t suffer any permanent damage. Any more than that, and things get a lot dicier. Heroin is easy on the brain but nasty in any other way. Opium, and all opiates, are also harmless to the brain but can be addicting. Use must be judicious and occasional, if at all. In particular, don’t mix with other downers. Long term alcoholic drinking permanently damages the brain. With less heavy drinking, the permanence of damage is much less clear. At low levels, drinking causes no damage whatsoever. The widespread notion, proffered even by many doctors, that each drink “kills brain cells” is utter nonsense. Cannabis, marijuana or hashish is one drug that can be used even very heavily by adults with minimal permanent effects on the brain. Occasional use by adults seems to be completely harmless to your brain. The question of brain damage by very heavy cannabis use has not yet been resolved, but even if it occurs, most of it seems  to clear up on cessation. Daily use of small amounts by adults can occur for years with apparently minimal damage. Any damage that occurs has not yet been proven, but if it exists, it seems to be quite subtle, and I am uncertain how significant it is. Unfortunately, for minors, the question of little to no damage is much less firm, such that I recommend that anyone wait at least until they are 18 to begin using cannabis. Of all of the drugs of abuse, as far as heavy use goes, cannabis is by far the easiest of them all on your brain.

People Are Getting High on Bath Salts

Here. Actually it is some kind of designer drug being sold over the counter as a bath salts or plant food. Apparently you can use them for those purposes and they work just fine and don’t get you high. You sniff it inject it or smoke it. The drugs in question are mephedrone and methylenedioxypyrovalerone, also known as MDPV. Apparently these are stimulants something like methamphetamine, but I don’t know much about them. Looks like a pretty crappy and evil drug, I would say. It’s mostly in Louisiana right now for some reason, and the state has banned the sale of the drugs. But the Feds have not banned them yet since they are not marketed for human consumption. Banning them will take some time. Most users are apparently meth users looking for a new high. I increasingly agree with the Neurosoup girl on Youtube. She hates meth, cocaine, PCP and heroin. She comes right out and says that they are crappy and evil drugs.She doesn’t like alcohol either. She’s up on marijuana and what she calls entheogens, which is something like hallucinogens. If a lot of the people using coke, meth, alcohol and heroin started using pot and entheogens instead, our society would look a lot different. I would say that the damage from drugs would go way down. The hallucinogens are somewhat self-limiting in use. They are so strong, and people are so afraid and paranoid of them that people tend to only use them for a short period of time. People want a drug they can get high on regularly. My generation promoted the use of coke and to some extent speed. I would say we screwed up bad on that one. Those drugs are just crap. One thing I always hated about drugs were the anti-drug morons. They’re still everywhere; in fact, they’re the majority. Instead of being sensible like the Neurosoup Girl and dividing recreational drugs into different classes, the anti-drug morons just lump them all into one great big mess. They’re all the same. They’re all dope, and they’re all evil. Weed is meth is heroin is coke is LSD is mushrooms. It’s nuts. I had to deal with this all the time while growing up as a pothead. As a pothead, I was said to be “into drugs” and was lumped in with PCP users, cokeheads, meth freaks and heroin addicts. It was all the same. To some extent, this was true of drug users too. They weren’t so stupid as to think all drugs are the same – no user is that stupid – but since pot was illegal, and you had to deal with illegal drug users to get it, a lot of pot users were also using and promoting the use of other stuff, often along the lines that the other drug was as easy and safe as pot. Pure pot users were quite rare. Legalizing pot would put it in the class as alcohol. How many people have you met who drink, often a lot, but won’t touch any “drugs” (LOL)? Lots. Making weed legal would increase the number of pure pot users who don’t mess with other stuff. One thing I noticed that is people, often the older generation, will talk about someone who ruined their life on drugs, often the son or daughter of a friend. Often I will ask, “What kind of drugs?” A legitimate question, right? After all, I’m an old drug fiend, so I’m very interested in details like that! I always get this frustrated response, “I don’t know!” as if it doesn’t matter. Ok, so they got into weed, is that right? Is that how they ruined their lives? This is more of the, “All drugs are the same,” BS. Very frustrating dealing with this moronitude.

Juice Fasting

Repost from the old site. Juice fasting is highly recommended for anyone who wishes to try it. I just live off coffee, juice, wine and water for a few days. After about four days, things start getting kind of weird. You will start to get a lot more energy, but you will feel strange, like you are on LSD. The increased energy is because your body is not wasting energy digesting food all the time. You may also find that aches and pains may also go away during the fast. I also found radical diminishment of anxiety and much clearer thinking. But that seems to go away as you start eating again. Water fasts are dangerous, but are ok for a day or two. Juice fasts work great. Just drink around 32 oz of juice per day for 1-4 days. You can go up to 64 ounces or so. It’s completely harmless. Your body odor will start to stink after a well and so will your breath and your farts. This is probably because you are leaking out toxins. You can exercise, but be careful as you may faint. Just go real easy. You may find yourself tired a lot. Just lie down and sleep. You can also lose weight this way, and I have lost 12 pounds doing juice fasting lately. Make sure to drink 40 ounces of water per day. You can continue to drink coffee and alcohol. After all, what does a man need but coffee, wine, water, juice and sex? And maybe a steak once in a while? In fact, alcohol will get you very intoxicated when you fast. Break the fast after 1-4 days. I don’t really care how I break it, but some say it is important.

Rumors of My Death Are Greatly Exaggerated

Savvas Tzionis, one of my favorite commenters, writes in, expressing some concern:

Robert,I thought YOU were dead…. post wise, you were (relatively) quiet! LOL

Boo! I’m here! Scared you, huh? Sorry folks, it’s Thanksgiving, I’ve been depressed for some reason, and I’ve been extremely tired. This is a very bad time of year for me. I tend to get depressed from around Thanksgiving to around Christmas and maybe through January too. This coincides with the two months in which the days are the shortest of the whole year. Not only that, but even when the sun bothers to come out, it might as well not even be there. It gives off little heat and the light it gives off is pitiful. You look up at the sun and think, “Damn, is that all you can do? You’re sorry!” Sometimes the sun is so shitty and dim, I figure the moon might as well come out in the day instead and it’d be a wash. I think I may have Seasonal Affective Disorder – SAD. This time of year is so damned dreary for me! I used to have it a lot worse, but I’m on Lexapro fulltime now, and ever since then, I don’t have it as long. I used to have it all winter until the start of true spring! I remember once I was in therapy for OCD and Depression. It was March or so and we were making no progress with the depression. I was apologetic, but when you’re down, you’re down, and there doesn’t seem to be much you can do about it! I had a girlfriend at the time and she was getting pissed too, because she wasn’t really subject to depression. Finally, Spring came, and I brightened up just like that! Nothing had changed; my life still more or less sucked just as bad as before. Next therapy session, I announced that my depression had lifted. The therapist was joyful and wanted to take credit. I shot him down real quick. It was nothing he had done, it was only that the seasons had changed! He looked a little downcast, but he was still happy that I was better. Often, it’s Spring, Summer or Fall, and I’m happy as a clam. Every now and then I look around and notice that my life frankly sucks to high heaven, but I’m happy as a pig in shit anyway. Then I look outside, it’s 90 degrees outside, and it’s like no matter what’s going on, how could you possibly be depressed in this? I’m told that most humans in non-tropical climates get happier and more active in hotter weather and longer days and gloomier and less active in the depths of the dark and cold days, but it’s only clinical depression in a minority. I’ve also heard of folks in Minnesota or places like that who had bad Winter Depression moving to tropical places like the Philippines and suddenly they were happy year-round. By the way, there are high suicide, depression and alcoholism rates in Siberia, Russia, Scandinavia, Canada and Alaska. Obviously, it’s related to latitude and little else. I wonder if any of my readers have the same experiences?

Facts and Nonsense About the Brain

Repost from the old site. Like most things, there is much nonsense spoken about our brains. Our brains are very interesting to us, even to stupid people, because we use them to think. Yes, even dumb people do use their brains to think. We don’t really understand how our brains work, so some of us try to sound smart by pontificating about our mysterious brains. Here are some widespread myths about our brains: We only use [choose one: 1 It’s one of those feel-good statements that is complete nonsense. We use all of our brains. Even total idiots are using all of their brains most of the time, strange as it may seem. There are parts of the brain that are emotional and parts of the brain that are dedicated to cognition. This one is not nearly as silly as the first one, but it’s still not true. I know this because 15 years ago I was acquainted with a neuropsychologist. He did various sorts of cognitive testing, and he also worked with people with various forms of brain damage. He was also a strange guy, but he was nice enough, and he did have a PhD. I assumed that getting the PhD had probably driven him partly crazy, and he was neurotic as a result. He informed me that there were no emotional or thinking parts of the brain. He said that all of the brain engages in both thinking and emotion. Sure, some parts, like the amygdala, are more dedicated to emotion and other parts, like the prefrontal cortex, are more dedicated to thinking, but all the parts do both. Every drink (or joint) kills a few brain cells. I can’t believe even physicians tell me this crap. It’s nonsense. Yes, alcohol is one of the few drugs that actually kills brain cells, but you have to drink alcoholic-style for years before it happens. Cannabis, like many drugs, does not kill brain cells at any dose. Unfortunately, drugs don’t need to kill cells to mess up your brain. They can damage cells and destroy connections between cells. Male brains are better at math and science than female brains. Actually, they start out the same, but worldwide studies show that at about age 13, when massive male hormones kick in, males all over the world start to surpass females. A personal observation is that females who do well at these subjects are more likely to be more masculine (not necessarily lesbian) than other women. The President of Harvard, Lawrence Summers, was recently massacred for stating this obvious fact. Female brains are better at verbal than male brains. Apparently the case, though there are arguments about which type of verbal we are talking about. If you think about it, there are evolutionary reasons why females would end up better at verbal (needed to raise young kids) and males are better at visuospatial (needed for hunting). There are some more facts about the brain that you may find interesting. We have a maximum number of brain cells at age 23, and after that, there is a steady decline. This is correlated with what is known as fluid IQ, a rough measure of brain efficiency. This is why mathematicians, physicists, novelists, poets, songwriters, musicians, artists and others like them tend to do their best work when they are still pretty young. On the other hand, only an insane person would put the 18-22 year olds in charge of a country. This group has never been put in charge of anything in any society, with good reason. Their brains are going like gangbusters, but they don’t have any sense. They think they know everything, but they don’t know shit. They are supremely self-confident, and they have not even reached the stage of self-doubt. Other than passing their classes, they are contemptuous of learning and knowledge in general and never admit there is anything they don’t know. If they can’t figure it out, it’s worthless. This age group is a prime example of the notion that a little bit of knowledge is dangerous. They have a grotesquely poor understanding of their fellow man, and they are horribly intolerant. Also, they are very much group-thinkers who are terrified to defy group-think and peer pressure. If we put them in charge, it would be a nightmare. They would hold public executions and would probably torture people in public. There would be stupid wars all the time. Everything would be legal, and no one would care. There would be private armies all over the place and probably some form of fascism would be the flavor of the day. We occasionally put them in charge of some stuff, like being Presidents of fraternities, but often they even fuck that up. Mind you, I was an 18-22 year old too, and those were the best days of my life. I remember myself as being supremely mature and with-it, but I assume I had my head up my ass like the rest of them. Yes, the brain declines with age, but wisdom is good. The crystallized intelligence of age does have advantages over the rarely-used super-brains of the young. Our brains are slower, but with the gifts and harsh lessons of time, we are vastly superior at making decisions. Any tribe or civilization of any worth always put middle-aged to old guys in charge and revered its elders. We are cautious and careful, and we already did most of the dumb things there are to do, and we are not likely to do them again. Crystallized intelligence is more or less the stuff you know. As you age, you accumulate knowledge and theoretically wisdom. You don’t get a hardon with every passing breeze, but you’re much less likely to do stupid shit. It’s called a trade-off. A process called pruning occurs in which there is actually a massive loss of brain cells and connections. Most folks do not know this, but there is a massive overgrowth of brain cells in childhood. At adolescence, the brain decides to clear out all those stupid dirt roads that don’t go much of anywhere and make some superhighways instead. The result is like pruning a tree, and the brain works much better as a result. There is quite a bit of loss of brain structure in the process, but it’s all good in the end. In fact, pruning is an essential process for the adolescent brain. If you observe most adolescents, it would not seem controversial that they are experiencing massive loss of brain structure, but a lot of folks still refuse to believe this. There is a window in the brain for language that starts to close at about age 7. If you wait until later, you never really get language right. We have folks born deaf who got hearing at age 33 and have still never picked up language right. You can learn a foreign language in adulthood, but you will always have an accent, and you will never get 10 There is a blind cave fish that has a window for sight. If it is exposed to light before a certain age, it can see. If not, it just figures there is no light down in this cave, so it just goes blind and turns the visual portion of the brain over to something else. The brain seems to open up windows, so to speak. The brain opens a language window that says, “Any language here?” as it waits for input. If there is no input, the brain just closes the window, figures there is no language coming, and turns the area over to something else. The brain is plastic. That does not mean it is made out of polyurethane. It just means that it is smart. For instance, if one part gets damaged, your brain will try to reroute connections around the damaged area. Also, other areas of the brain will try to take over for the damaged area. Brains are smart! They actually think about how to fix up messed up brains! Cool!

The 50 Craziest Rock Stars Ever

Here. This article is pretty damn funny. A lot of rockers are or were seriously nuts! I’m having a hard time figuring out dx’s for a lot of these people. It seems to be something towards the more extroverted end. I suspect a lot of them are acting this way on purpose, sort of like a lot of artists act “deliberately insane.” I only see a few who were obviously psychotic: Syd Barrett, Peter Green, Roky Erikson, Brian Wilson, Jim Gordon and Skip Spence for starters. I’m familiar with all these cases. They all had schizophrenia or schizoaffective disorder. It’s commonly said that they are all drug burnouts, but I doubt it. For one thing, LSD does not appear to cause permanent psychosis. I’ve known too many completely normal folks who have taken it 100-300 times. It’s not even proven to damage your brain. The worst that can be said about it is that very heavy users sometimes do go psychotic and have to be hospitalized. Typically, they get better, but they often go back to heavy LSD use and become mentally ill again. No one has any idea how LSD even makes you temporarily insane. All of these people simply developed schizophrenia. LSD can trigger schizophrenia, but no one knows how that works either. LSD-induced schizophrenia looks just like the rest of schizophrenia and it responds to the same drugs too. Since acid doesn’t damage your brain, I can’t see how it could cause schizophrenia. There are good reasons not to do acid, but fear of being permanently mentally ill is not one of them. For the rest of them, dx’s are difficult. Some seem to have issues with narcissism and borderline personality disorder. Some were just seriously whacked out on booze and dope, often cocaine and/or heroin. Ike Turner used cocaine for some 45 years until it killed him at age 76. Sly Stone spent years on cocaine, even living on the streets smoking a crack pipe. No one quite knows what is up with Sly these days. He shows up at occasional performance, acts very strange, walks off stage in mid-show, gets on his motorcycle and rides away. Rick James spent a good 15 years on a crack pipe. Whitney Houston is ruined and is heavy into cocaine. David Bowie went nuts on coke in the 1970’s, became full-blown psychotic and embraced Nazism. Ol’ Dirty Bastard is on crack. John Frusciante almost killed himself on heroin and coke. Ozzy Osborne, Jerry Lee Lewis and Liza Minnelli were alcoholics. Keith Moon was a drunk and a pillhead who liked to blow up toilets with dynamite for fun. Elvis was a hardcore pillhead who apparently went insane from all the tablets. Arthur Lee of Love spent 20 years abusing drugs heavily, became homeless, set buildings on fire and shot up his neighbor’s house. Carlos Santana used acid heavily, then 20 years ago met up with an angel named Metatron who looks like Santa Claus who has been guiding his life ever since. He communicates with Miles Davis, a dead person, on a regular basis. Miles Davis (while he was alive and not talking to Santana) spent years shooting heroin, beating his wife and just acting weird. Little Richard spent years binging on cocaine, having sex orgies and sucking cocks in men’s restrooms. James Taylor was a depressive and a heroin addict. Some were suicidal. Wendy O Williams sawed instruments in half with a chainsaw, then retired and blew her brains out. Ian Curtis recorded some of the most depressing music ever made, then hung himself on the night of his US tour. Adam Ant is a depressive. Mariah Carey assaulted staff and reporters and slit her wrists. Some like Courtney Love and Britney Spears simply cannot seem to function as adults. Sinéad O’Connor is just a kook. Lou Reed’s main problem is that he’s a terminal asshole. R. Keely is just a weirdo with a taste for underage girls. Sid Vicious assaulted fans, carved up his chest onstage, murdered his girlfriend, then OD’d on heroin as a grand finale. Jaz Coleman, George Clinton, Captain Beefheart and Julian Cope are unclassifiable. No one knows what’s up with Sun Ra. GG Allin was just nuts, dx’d as narcissistic, Borderline PD and masochistic. Michael Jackson was one of the weirdest of all. No one seems to know what was wrong with him. He seems to have been a homosexual pedophile. I’m familiar with most of his weird antics, but I never knew that he said he had fathered 2 “Aryan” babes named Prince 1 and Prince 2. Weird! Just because you aren’t psychotic (and most of these folks are not) doesn’t mean you’re not nuts. You can be plenty nuts without being psychotic, plenty.

The Perils of Late Immigration

My mother had a friend named Edna. Late in life, around age 40, she moved out of her mother’s house, got married for the first time, went off to live with the guy on his big estate, then divorced in a few years when it all blew up.

After that, she went on a lifelong bender. Prior to that, she had hardly touched a drink. She died sometime in the past decade. My Mom wasn’t even all that sad; she figured it was inevitable. What an odd life she led. What strange secrets did she hide from the world that sent her tossing adrift on life’s rough seas? What had happened in that strange and short marriage? What makes a teetotaler hit the bottle at 40 and never put it down until she’s dead?

Anyway, Edna was Norwegian, or her mother was at any rate. Her mother had come from Norway to the US. At some point, the father died, and there was no one to speak Norwegian to anymore.

One time, her mother was in a state of linguistic existential despair. She was in a prison of language, with a No Exit sign on the door.

“I haf forgotten all of my Norvegian!” she moaned. “Ent I never lernt gut the English!”

A person without a language is a sad thing. A person who once had a language, and now has none, has lost the next best thing to life itself. You’re naked and crippled at the same time, probably for the rest of your life.

What to do? Pour a drink, no?

Cannabis Is Neuroprotective

A fascinating new study shows that cannabis offers some neuroprotection to young people who engaged in binge drinking episodes. The binge drinkers were young – aged 16-19. This is an age at which the effects of drugs on the brain may be particularly bad, since the brain is continuing to develop.

What was shocking was that binge drinking in adolescents caused the type and degree of damage that it did. Binge drinking caused actual losses of white matter in the brain, similar to the damage seen with drugs like cocaine and methamphetamine.

Briefly, white matter is the axons that connect brain cells to each other. Grey matter consists of the connections and also the cells themselves. So heavy drinking in adolescence causes actual damage to the connections between brain cells. That’s pretty serious stuff. It’s not known if the damage repairs later, or at all. However, connections between cells can grow back.

If the damage does not repair, then a Hell of a lot of adults are walking around with significant brain damage from binge drinking in adolescence. If this is the case, then clearly the brain can handle this sort of damage, since most such folks, assuming they are damaged in this way, are able to function well both cognitively and psychologically.

The study was fascinating because if the adolescents used cannabis in addition to binge drinking, the damage was notably less than if they binge drank alone. Therefore, cannabis use was somewhat neuroprotective to the brain in terms of the damage caused by binge drinking.

This does not mean that cannabis use is good for your brain, or that it does not damage the brain. But no study of cannabis use has ever found anything as dramatic as extensive white matter losses in the brain (that’s a pretty serious type of damage). So, if anything, binge drinking in adolescence (which many adolescents do) is remarkably worse for your brain than using cannabis in adolescence, which is an amazing thing to say right there.

But that’s not exactly what the anti-drug moralfags and fuckwits tell us, is it? In their view, binge drinking is a necessary evil, while cannabis use, especially in adolescence, is a moral and public health catastrophe. God, what a load of shit that is.

Cannabis and Brain Damage: Cannabis Compared to Other Drugs

The original post in its native form was far too long, so I broke it up into seven different posts, in addition to this post. The separate sections are listed below. The original post, what is left of it, is here. For an examination of the evidence of whether or not cannabis causes actual structural damage to brain cells, axons or dendrites, see here. For an analysis of neuropsychological batteries of cannabis users to determine whether or not they suffer brain damage, see here. For an analysis of EEG testing of cannabis users to discover evidence of brain damage, see here. For an analysis of studies looking at cerebral blood flow in cannabis users, see here. For an admittedly impressionistic analysis of whether or not cannabis causes schizotypal symptoms in users, see here. For a summary of the findings of cannabis and brain damage, see here. LSD and psilocybin, while not causing permanent brain damage (that we know of so far), can cause HPPD (Hallucinogen Persisting Perception Disorder), a long-term perceptual disturbance of unknown etiology. I have HPPD myself from using hallucinogens about 40 times, but “suffering” from HPPD once again is an interesting concept, at least in my case. All I get are brighter colors, mostly in neon signs and store displays, and only at certain times. Maybe lots of people would love to have this effect, as the world looks so much better this way. I called up an ophthalmologist about it and he laughed me off the phone, saying he doesn’t treat people whose colors improve. It is only my continuing neurosis that causes me to view these changes as frightening instead of integrating them. LSD does have a deleterious effect on the visual system of the brain – it is hypotoxic to that area in lab animals, for instance, birds – but it doesn’t cause any generalized brain damage at all that we know of, and we have been studying LSD’s effects on the brain for about 50 years or so now. LSD does cause reductions in 5-HT2 receptors on serotonin neurons. But this is a case of these receptors retreating back into the cell due to LSD’s assault on those receptors. After about a week, the receptors to poke back out of the cell again. The most recent evidence also indicates that psilocybin (mushrooms) and mescaline (peyote) also do not cause any generalized brain damage, although psilocybin can cause HPPD. Due to the risks of HPPD, this blog unfortunately does not recommend that anyone use LSD or psilocybin even one time, unless maybe if you are dying. Ecstasy (MDMA) produces comparatively dramatic harm to the brain after only a handful of doses (2-10 doses), with the effects increasing with continued use. The drug causes degeneration of serotonergic axonal terminals, which afterwards do not grow back correctly, if at all. There are suggestions that there may be hippocampal damage. On intelligence tests there are deficits in working memory, declining vocabulary, impairments in verbal learning, associative learning and attention and increased distraction. There also seem to be some mood changes. Perfusion deficits and increased delta waves on EEG have also been found, but the same study did not find these in cannabis users. Impairments were also found in the ability to drive a car in Ecstasy users, even after they were abstinent. However, a recent study found no persistent effects from one dose of Ecstasy. Therefore, it appears that using Ecstasy one time is possibly safe. However, taking Ecstasy as few as an average of 3.2 times causes noticeable damage in verbal memory. Ecstasy should be taken no more than once in a lifetime, if at all. Evidence strongly suggests that the heavy use of PCP, ketamine and DXM may cause permanent brain damage and can often cause schizophrenia-like symptoms which may be related to that damage. The theorized damage involves the vacuolization of neurons (basically a hollowing out and death of the neuron) in various parts of the brain. The evidence comes from rat studies and the dosages have been criticized, but humans are far more sensitive to the effects of dissociatives than rats are, so the differential doses are probably about right. The rat evidence has now been challenged by monkey studies, so the matter is far from settled. But until it is, extreme caution, if not outright avoidance, seems to be the best policy for these drugs. PCP can probably be used up to a dozen or so times in life with no permanent damage. Beyond that, things get a lot touchier. Heavy users show an extremely high rate of schizophrenic and psychotic symptoms, along with symptoms of brain damage. There seems to be some recovery with abstinence, but full recovery is by no means assured. Evidence indicates that ketamine can be used at least once with no permanent consequences at all to the brain. Beyond that, it is up in the air. Ketamine can surely be used at least a dozen times with no risks to the brain. Beyond that, things get hazier. Heavy DXM users have reported a very high rate of psychosis and schizophrenia-like symptoms, along with symptoms of organic brain damage. Users should approach DXM use with caution, and heavy use should be ruled out. Heavy methamphetamine use has been proven to cause permanent damage to dopaminergic systems, especially in the striatum, caudate and putamen (at ½ gram a day, 5 days a week, and 2 years of use). Studies have also shown degeneration of axons on serotonergic neurons and loss (cell death) of up to 1 In the study above, there was some recovery of the dopaminergic system with abstinence, but it was only partial. Meth can probably be used a dozen or so times without any permanent damage. Beyond that, no guarantees. There is some suggestive evidence of chronic psychosis, depression and anxiety directly related to heavy methamphetamine use (over 10 years of heavy use). Impairments in learning, processing speed, and working memory, along with delayed recall, are found in meth users. Brain dysfunction is often readily apparent in heavy meth users. This is one category of drug user, in contrast to most other drug users, that does sometimes appear “fried.” Much of this “fried” appearance seems to clear up with abstinence. Methamphetamine can probably be used up to a dozen times or so in moderation without any permanent consequences to the brain. Nevertheless, some users have reported permanent effects from only 2-3 weeks of very heavy use. Meth is nasty stuff, and it’s best to keep away from it. Heavy drinking can depress neurons for up to two years. With continued heavy drinking, at some point, there is organic damage, which in many cases is permanent, although there is often significant recovery with abstinence. The case of the “wethead” and “dry drunk,” the former alcoholic who is still damaged, psychologically or cognitively, is well known. Heavy use of barbiturates over many years causes a damage syndrome that looks like chronic alcoholism and that does not completely recover with abstinence. Even chronic Valium use causes long-term EEG changes of unknown significance. Sniffing glue has been proven to be possibly the worst thing you can do to your brain short of putting a bullet in it, and the effects do not recover completely with abstinence. Cocaine, unfortunately, seems to be capable of causing brain damage with as few as 11 doses (constriction of vessels in the brain). At three years of using several times a week, there is slowing on the P300 event related potentials test, that may not recover fully with abstinence. Recent studies have also shown that chronic heavy cocaine use causes reductions in gray matter in various parts of the brain. This means that heavy cocaine use causes an actual loss of brain cells in parts of the brain. It may also cause white matter reductions, which means a loss of connections in the brain. There are also impairments in attention, learning, memory, reaction time and cognitive flexibility in cocaine users. It is not known whether these clear up with abstinence. This blog recommends that lifetime use of cocaine be limited to 10 times or less. Even there, there is a slight risk of sudden death due to perturbations in the heart’s electrical rhythms. These perturbations can cause a sudden heart attack or even possibly a stroke. Vasoconstriction is probably involved. In many of the above cases, there is some recovery with abstinence, but often not to the previous level. Experimental use of PCP, ketamine, cocaine and methamphetamine (use up to a dozen or so times for each one) probably does not cause significant permanent damage. Beyond that, you play with matches. Compared to other drugs of abuse, such as Ecstasy, PCP, Ketamine, DXM, cocaine, methamphetamine and alcohol, the effects of cannabis on the brain are dramatically less deleterious. In terms of its effects on the brain for heavy users, cannabis is surely by far least damaging intoxicant of them all, for what that is worth.

Middle Age: Get Healthy or Die

Repost from the old site. Mentally healthy, physically healthy and happy. Once you get around my age, God doesn’t give you many more breaks about this stuff. If you can’t be all three by middle age (mentally healthy – relatively speaking, physically healthy – no excuses, and happy – who needs misery?) at least give it a good shot! When you’re young you can blow off one or more of these things things and get away with it for a while, but as you get older, omissions like that really start to bite! Mentally healthy? Seems you can get away with being kind of nuts when you’re young, but I wouldn’t want to try it at my age. In males anyway, suicide becomes much more of a risk as we age. If I’m going to get depressed, I need to think about that. As a young man, I regularly felt horribly sad, but now I’ll hardly touch it. Depression in middle-aged males is often deadly. How odd. You would think it would be the young guy to buy it with his own hand, but it’s not. It’s the older, wiser, more mature guy. Anxiety? Young men are expected to be anxious. In an older guy, you just seem like an idiot. You’re already an old fart anyway who practically needs to buy friends, and you just gave people one less reason to talk to you. Psychosis? Never tried that one, but some of my friends did. Once again, that’s probably easier as a young man. Most people think young guys are insane anyway, so young psychotic males are generally not behaving dramatically different. With an older guy, it’s like, “Whoa!! Nam vet! He’s gooot a guuuun!” They just know you’re going to go postal. They have a point. It’s usually a middle aged guy going postal, and he’s usually not even nuts. He’s just depressed, plus he just got fired from his job, plus it was a shitty job in the first place, plus he needs Viagra now and he can’t afford it, plus his woman left him, plus he looks around at the women his age, half of whom looked like they swallowed Right Whales, and he thinks, “I’m getting tired of being a mammal.” Add it all up and the guy wants to just write “I’M A LOSER” in block letters on his shirt and walk around town for a few weeks. Pride prevents this of course, so the only logical alternative is to shoot up the former workplace or mall or wherever. Honestly! After every one of these shootings, we get all these people on TV and the press running around saying, “Why? Why? Why?” Oprah holds one her “Oprah Asks Why Shows”. Why, why, why, everyone is running around saying. They’re nearly at the end of the alphabet, they’re running out of letters, and they’re genuinely puzzled. They’re not asking the right question! The right question is not why do people go postal in the US and go shoot up random humans, the question is, Why the Hell does this shit not happen every day, or more than once a day? That’s the damn miracle. Like when teenagers get shot up at a school. People act like that’s the most horrible thing of them all. It’s totally incomprehensible. Huh? Why is that? Teenagers are the most uniformly unpleasant members of our bedeviled species. We shouldn’t be shocked if their perfectly reasonable fellow humans reacted to teenagers’ general assholitude by blowing away multiple numbers of them at once on a regular basis. What’s incomprehensible is how controlled and repressed we are, but that’s the reason for all the postal dudes anyway, right? You’re supposed to nod your head. If you can’t be mentally healthy, at least be as mentally healthy as you can possibly be. It’s important, dammit! Physically healthy? I blew off brushing my teeth for a while recently (I still flossed daily or more than daily) and at the last check-up, I had eight cavities. I’ve got two metal crowns in my mouth now from root canals, and if I don’t watch it, I’ll have a mouth full of metal or even worse, teeth I can pull out and show folks for a gag. In middle age, your sex drive goes from a continuous annoyance that gives you a great big embarrassing hardon (Often with no where to put it either!) every time the wind blows, to a closely guarded treasure capable of being snatched away forever at any time. Use it or lose it! You crave the beautiful young women you couldn’t stop screwing as a young man, and now they look at you like you’re a creepy old pervert. You look in the mirror and you seem to be actually aging, physically and observably, with about every new day. You want sex, but then you look at your wife or girlfriend or the women you’re dating. If she weigh 300 pounds or so like so many, she’ll probably almost kill you every time you do it with her. If she’s not 300 pounds and she’s around your age, you look at her and think, “Well, at least it’s female.” What are your alternatives? You could be in prison, getting fucked in the ass by other guys against your will. Ok, that’s a kind of sex. You could be having sex with your hand, but that gets old. I swear to God for every year men age, women age two. Correct me if I’m wrong! Like to eat lousy food? No problem, but by middle age, you’re going to start paying. If you’re not a fat pig yet, you soon will be. Fat tastes good, sugar tastes good, salt tastes good, so we Americans eat crap and commit suicide by fork. Hey, it’s the red, white and blue, man. Life, liberty and the pursuit of fattiness. Comes with a price. I had high blood pressure and high cholesterol by age 35 and was on health food the next year. I’m still on it, and I’m still on the statins and BP pills too. That’s if you’re lucky. If you’re not lucky, you’ve got diabetes. That’s one shitty disease. You can smoke cigarettes until about mid to late 40’s. Then they are going to start fucking you hard. You’ll only get a really crappy sounding hoarse voice that sounds like you got shot in the vocal cords if you’re lucky. If not, lung cancer or throat cancer and a weirdo voice box. All by 50. I’m not kidding; I’ve seen this. Like to drink? Have fun! Sure you can drink as a young man. That’s what being a young man is all about! Think you can keep it up til 45 or 50? Think again. Assuming you can even stay alive and do this, you will start to look like serious shit. Your face will look like it got run over by a tractor. Your teeth will all fall out. You will look 20 years older than you are, and you’re already old to start with. Your eyes will contain bottomless wells of sadness. And you will become bitter, angry and nasty. You’re old anyway, you look like crap, and now you have the personality of a wolverine. And why should anyone so much as give you the time of day now? By 45 or 50, you and your cohorts will start dropping dead. No one will be surprised, and saddest of all, hardly anyone will give a fuck. The autopsy will be unremarkable. “Natural causes” is not uncommon for this sort of thing. You want to take drugs for 30 years? Who are you fooling? You can’t do it. If you’re male, you will look like Keith Richards. Keith looks like a cadaver with a motor inside that gets injected with motor oil every day to keep the rusty parts moving. I honestly think Keith is a zombie. I think he died a while back, climbed out of the grave and back to life, and here he is with us again for a bit somehow. Ron Woods has that same “I got shot and lived” look about him. Many of the Stones do. You think that’s attractive? To look like human petrified wood? Get real. If you’re female, you end up like Marianne Faithful. People will look at you and think, “Wow, why doesn’t someone just shoot her and get it over with?” So, drugs for 30-35 years? Forget it. You can maybe smoke some pot, but that’s not really drugs. Hate exercising? Great. I hope you like canes, walkers or wheelchairs, because you will be using them soon enough. Seriously, get moving or get dead. In middle age, it’s not just a saying. Like your cock and how it works? Better get off that couch. The longer you sit on that couch, the sooner that thing goes into permanent suspended animation. Happy? Goes along with the mentally healthy part, but also the physically healthy part. Why do people engage in this unhealthy stuff above? In part because they are miserable. Why do emo morons cut themselves, burn themselves and sit around talking gleefully of suicide? Simple reason. Because these shitheads are not happy. How do we know this? Because happy people simply do not do these stupid things. You think happiness is something you can just blow off and be a callous cynic, a stoic hardhead or a cold fish, but look what happens when you do. Happiness is not something to be trifled with – lack of it has some hardcore consequences. If you can’t be really happy, then at least be kind of happy. If you can’t be happy at all, then lie and fake it and pretend to be happy. Laugh and tell jokes and act like you don’t care. I’m convinced even pretending is better than misery. Middle age. It’s no time to fuck around!

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