Winter for real appears to be upon us. A few nights with hard freeze in a row are sign enough – time to go into the deep freeze now for months. I did it to myself – so no complaining. I mention it because I got some big news on the health front this week: I need a new shoulder! I need it, but I likely won’t get it for a few more years because if I get it now (at 50 years old) it will wear out in my mid-late 70s and then I will be too old to get another new one; thus, what I need to do is wait as long as I can so that the replacement shoulder poops out as close to my death as I can steer it. As you can see – very cheerful stuff! I am not through digesting it all, and there is much more to it, but I am never going to have a time where I can’t use more content, so I will save the details for the weeks to come. Until then, I am just trying to get my life in order. First among priorities is spiritual – I am working on getting baptized before the end of the year. I am trying to also be diligent on the mundane stuff too and get my to do list down to ZERO by the end of the year. That would be an epic accomplishment too. I am making some big leaps forward as a person, and so while I dislike 2020 for the same reasons everyone else does, I must say, I am having more success between my ears, and in my heart, than I ever have. Hang with me. I will keep updating as I can, but if I can get myself turned around, anything is possible! More to come – some miscellany from around the planet we all share:

• When you allow the government to whittle your right to medical privacy back, you will lose that privacy.
• If you aren’t angry, you aren’t paying attention. We need to stop being so hateful to each other. We need each other. We need to help people in emotional pain too. They are dying.
• That said, those left suffering after a suicide need a wide lane for their grief – I feel for them – but THC didn’t kill their child. This is why there is still a robust black market for pot.
• No one has the right to the contents of anyone else’s mind and the law needs to be clear in saying so.
• If this works, it is a great moment for us to have a new weapon in fighting disease. I consider such things a gift from God.
• The CDC guidelines were and are political statements designed to accomplish political goals no matter the consequences to people in pain. They are lying about it to this day. These people need jail. Medical error is the 3rd leading cause of death in this country and it is time the white coats are held accountable.
• In 2020, the cigs are good for you.
• The CCP seems well adjusted.
• People have no clue what nastiness is coming with AI. I wish there were a choice of planets!
• Once we legalized medicine for profit, closed hospitals were the only possible outcome. We do this to ourselves and then act like it is some great mystery.
• No lawmaker fears this for themselves – they will get what they want when they want it. It is YOU who won’t be able to get what you want. That isn’t a big source of fear of politicians. I guarantee it.
• The opportunity cost in the arts of allowing drug-dependent people to die over that dependence is astronomical – and yet barely noticed.
• They are gonna need the tax money from weed so bad they are eventually going to force you to smoke pot in your apartment.
• Harry ain’t wrong.
• Affluenza is being democratized.
• When the footage of the sheriff kicking people out into the street during the winter with their kids starts showing up – keep this in mind.
• Data needs to be transparent – including the methodology used to collect and create it. You will see more of this as people in power come to understand how this works.
• I classify the NY Times as dangerous drug warriors.
• As has always been…the rules are only for you sucker.

I have been kicking the can on this weblog (plus an audio companion) for awhile. It isn’t that I don’t intend to do this for real real, but I am in the middle of some significant changes and my thinking about this is still evolving. I have always identified as Christian, but never really practiced. Now I really practice – and I realize that my motives here are not what they ought be, spiritually speaking. I need to be more charitable and less tribal. I can’t just do this all from a point of anger and expect results. Living like that is exhausting, and the more successful I am in getting my relationship with Jesus right, the less interest I have in any sort of anger at all. Jesus was not a hippy – but that is the way I chose to see him because it suited me and what I wanted. I wanted a nice little life that was vaguely hippy “live and let live” and no bad vibes and tasteful hedonism and so on. Christ didn’t claim to come as a “great uniter” (quite the contrary!) I simply can’t make myself spend all the time and money required to pursue that nice little hippy lifestyle. Peace without justice isn’t worth pursuing. Justice takes time, but the hippy stuff feels good in the moment. Perhaps those things can be balanced – just not by me, and certainly not by me not that my concept of peace is the Christian variety. I can have peace without the phony affectations, and that is where I am headed. I will still live in the world – but I am not putting my faith there. The inhumanity of some towards others is still entirely repulsive to me, but what has changed is that I would now say I expect no mercy from the people in this society, least from those who seek power over other people. I don’t expect anything more from such people than institutional sadism. I can (and do) rebuke them all day and still not run out of constructive energy for the promotion of mercy & understanding & peace (of the exact variety I have received since giving my life to Christ.)
My point is simply that I am working on getting myself spiritually together before pushing too much further. I am gonna park more show-prep for the future in the links below, and will continue to do so regularly. Not much will change for now but my attitude. Might move it to a new name and such – that is all tbd. Something really will come – I need to make sure I am not just a ranting loon pushing polemics for their own sake. I am learning much, and one of the biggest breakthroughs has been in my own understanding of how to live with the pain that will surely come into all of our lives. I have been able to free myself of the (frankly, silly) idea that I should expect a life free from pain – or even spend my entire life energy trying to create one. To bastardize a phrase from Paul Weller – I stopped dreaming of a pain-free life because it is one we’ll never know. This is a big breakthrough for me because as naive as it seems, I spent incredible energy fighting the idea that my pain had to be “managed” rather than simply “relieved”. It isn’t that relief isn’t possible – it is, and should be freely given when it is possible – but we must be active in using all means of relief available. I did not understand how seeking a Christ-like life could be effective to this end, and I now see better. I have made incredible leaps forward as a born-again person. Where there is not relief, there can be grace; and with grace, the forward march can resume. If this is just unwelcome evangelism to you, I can’t apologize, but I can say I am close enough to my old life to acknowledge I understand why. If you don’t really believe in God and Christ, it all sounds like nonsense. None of it really works if you don’t believe (as one who detests Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, the irony of that statement isn’t lost on me – believe me!) Part of the Good News is that it all works if you do believe, but I will try to persuade you of this without just asking you to take my word for it. I don’t expect you too.

• The science community hasn’t really done much to distinguish themselves during this pandemic. Giving over to stuff like this only makes it worse.
• I actually dont think the DEA expected the other side to just surrender when the DEA declared war on drug users. They certainly didn’t expect to eradicate drugs and drug use – to the contrary, they are dependent on these things to fund their lives. It is more profitable to treat cancer than cure it dontcha know! The DEA hasn’t won so much as a battle against the drugs. The drugs are winning and they have always won, and they will always win. The black market for drugs is a jobs program for the kind of hateful people who want to work at the DEA, and the black market is how the even more hateful people who work in intelligence fund their lives as well. Such people shouldn’t be allowed to live among us let alone thrive on our dime – but here we are! There is no doubt these people will be held to account for unleashing such misery on their own people – but until then, watch how quickly every one of their efforts is immediately and totally parried by even the lowest level street dealer! They are depending on all of us remaining fearful of them. They get their power from you.
• Yes, but what was he wearing?
• Ableism justifies the elimination from society of entire class of human beings. Defining what a human being is, and what a human being isn’t, is a discussion we are all entitled to an equal voice in.
• Highlighting the good news from Alabama today. Take note.
• I have eaten salads worth more than $15, but most salads I ate which cost more than $15 weren’t worth it. Let the heavens fall if they may on the $15 salad.
• Dystopia is just around the corner kids!
• It’s old – but I promise, it is also new. Think any of these people ever score themselves?
• Elizabeth Warren is a disappointment, but I probably shouldn’t have expected much!
• Biden isn’t a disappointment because he has always been a drug warrior. Same with Trump.
• Survey the callers about whether they believe in medical privacy or not!
• Is it only right-wing kooks who see this stuff and say “we have to do something”? This feels like they were using the scouts like a catalog for that crap.
• Not to get too into the social stuff, but this is a good thing for baseball and society. For all the women who have loved baseball over the years like my mom, this is a big deal. Good luck Kim Ng.

The election is supposed to be over – but it isn’t. I am numb to the stupidity at this point. Very few of our institutions are showing themselves to be of any moral significance, and so we are just sort of left to wander while the pillage goes on. I myself have less to complain about than most, so I won’t. I think Trump is really only marginally worse than any politician, but I can respect that he and his supporters went out of their way to target people who have been targeted for hundreds of years of abuse here – and for that, he belongs on the scrap heap of history with the rest of them. If this election provides any relief to those who have been on the receiving end of the nastiness, then that is a good thing. It shouldn’t have gone that far to begin with – but this is the planet we live on.
Biden doesn’t help me at all. He loosed the beast of the DEA on his own people with relish, and so I expect more of same. Before getting to excited by him, it would do well for pain patients to look at his record packing prisons and co-signing for drug warriors. He is without mercy or pity, and only worships power. If he hurts fewer people in the process, then I support him to that extent, but beyond that, I have no use for him either.
In any event – no shortage of material, and I expect no shortage any time soon. Luckily, I have no shortage of will power to stay at it – at least not yet. All in due time! For now, more of same:

• This country will take from you your legal pain medication and give you more legal ways to get assisted suicide. This nation will create your despair and then sell you more escapism. They will make money at both ends – and you will lose. And if they don’t get your money above the table, the remaining choices they have left for you will assist you to your end the other way.
• The demonization of Hunter Biden is cruel and should be out of bounds for all human beings.
• Medical Privacy is an issue everyone claims to care about, yet no one seems to have a word to say as it is taken away from everyone right in the open.
• I have never considered myself a member of any “resistance”, but if this is really what Biden is about, I am all-in resisting. Fuck this shit.
• Having just been back to CA dispensaries, I can honestly say they are kinder than almost all the others I have seen. The noobs are likely gonna be stingy and uptight like Illinois.
• Few have been more relentless in pushing the war on drugs than the NY Times. I will take any port in a storm, but no way are we going to whitewash the record of drug warriors for them.
• This shit can bounce. It is done with the same techniques the marketers of the drugs use to boot.
• The banks never dream of getting business to pay for the costs they generate for this society – and make no mistake, you commuting to an office is not to anyone else’s benefit.
• The voters voted themselves a cleaner stupor – not health care policy. I welcome Wired, but step up your game nerds.
• Oregon’s opiophobia is bad news, but if they fight against the drug war I will take it.
• If Maine was Chicago, I bet this would be on Fox News all day.
• Remember – the assisted suicide options are growing as the pain management options dwindle. Don’t lie to yourself about whether or not our culture would do just such a thing.
• What does this mean?
• No reggae song I know of says “Babylon, deprioritize it” – but it is Des Moines.
• I welcome Vogue to the humane side of the “debate”.
• Good for NJ!
• I feel like it was all a cheap grift. Really.
• “I am more interested in the Rock Of Ages than in the Age Of Rocks” – W & THE JBs
• I want to write a book on how street drugs get named.
• Huge if true.
• If you can afford to give away edibles and don’t use your money more wisely than that – I frankly do want you off the street! 😉