3-30-06 Coffee

In a very large but empty parking lot where a Caldor department store used to be, there yet remains a handful of other stores. One of these, all the way down in the corner, is a Dunkin' Donuts. The way this huge empty lot is situated, at the intersection of two well travelled roads, there are a lot of people who will come streaming into the lot from a couple of different directions. A few of them are merely attempting to avoid the traffic light at the intersection, but most of them are swinging in to get a coffee at the Dunkin' Donuts.

It's a macabre ballet. Since the cars can enter the lot from a couple of different places, and since the strategically placed exits out of the lot can accomodate a couple of choices for avoiding the traffic light, along with the "I wanna be first in line at the drive-thru" paths that can be taken across the lot, watching this activity is really very interesting.

It's a great place to sit in the taxi and wait for my next job to come through on the computer terminal. I like to sit in one particular area of the parking lot because it's right in the middle of all the action. Although there's a lot of interesting byplay all day long, the morning rush hour is the best.

Like bees drawn to honey, like sharks in a feeding frenzy, the clamoring and jockeying for position in the race across the lot to the Dunkin' Donuts is absolutely riveting.

For anyone who might be interested, these webpages invovle themselves in the history of coffee...

http://www.telusplanet.net/public/coffee/history.htm

http://sovrana.com/libstory.htm

...and, of course, there are plenty of others.

What I find interesting about the history of coffee is that it hit Europe around the middle ages, and may be partly responsible for adding fuel to the rennaissance. Prior to that, coffee had found its way to Turkey. Is it a coincidence that the Ottoman Empire's rise and growth occured during this time of coffee dominance? Who knows?

What we do know is that coffee, rather than tea, is the most popular legal stimulant in America. Dollar for dollar, coffee is second only to petroleum as a commodity. And I can see why this is whenever I watch the people in their cars jockeying for first place in the drive-thru at that Dunkin' Donuts.

There are the equivalent of about 12.7 cubic miles of ground coffee used to brew what the world drinks every year (400 billion cups, at two tablespoons per cup). It's the most successful over the counter drug in the world. Everyone keeps coming back for more, every day.

Everything about coffee makes it my number one drug of choice. It tastes great AND it cranks me up!

As with all drugs, however, there's a downside to be considered in all of this. A webpage here...

http://www.holistic-physician.com/articles/broch-coffee.htm

...can easily ruin anyone's enjoyment of coffee. So, if you don't want to quit drinking it, don't read that particular article. When you think you do need to cut down on your coffee drinking, though, that's a good place to get into the mood.

I didn't get into the coffee drinking scene until around the late 1970's. Until that point, I had never actually been exposed to a good cup of coffee. It was after I got divorced from my first wife in 1977-78 when I began hanging around a restaurant that brewed Mocha Java with spring water as their "house coffee". That was the point where coffee began to effect its fascinating magic upon me. Prior to that I did drink coffee at coffee breaks at work... out of a vending machine. It was truly horrible coffee, but it was the custom at that job to slurp this swill during our morning break.

The Mocha Java set the hook for me, and aside from a hiatus or two, this is where I began drinking coffee in earnest. During the 1980's, I spent a few years hanging out at another restaurant that had a "bottomless" cup of coffee. From that point, my coffee drinking settled in as a regular thing. But it was still only when I went to a restaurant.

Although the "Mr. Coffee" home coffee-maker came onto the scene in the 1970's, I didn't latch onto home coffee brewing until the late 1980's. The problem, mainly, was that brewing coffee at home remained a matter of not having decent ground coffee available at the local supermarket. It was when Dunkin' Donuts began selling bags of ground coffee that I ended up on the final leg of my journey into complete coffee saturation.

With various side trips into other blends from time to time, my coffee drinking centered around the Dunkin' Donuts blend for about a decade. Then one Saturday morning about five years ago, my wife and I went out for breakfast at a local diner, and were served the absolutely best tasting coffee either of us had ever had. It was just plain the best. And to make it even better, the coffee was served in those heavy "diner" style off-white mugs that have all those scars all over them from long years of use.

I mean, it was just perfect! So we went back there a few times, and each time that coffee was enough to set both of us off into coffee heaven! I finally asked the waitress what brand of coffee it was, and she came back to say that it was called "Superior" brand "Columbian Supremo". Well, it was a fitting brand name, that's for sure!

A few days later, I was at the local grocery store ("Stop and Shop") looking over the various brands available in the coffee aisle, and THERE IT WAS! The same coffee they used in the diner was right there in the Stop and Shop coffee aisle!

Oh, I was positively electrified! I bought two bags and rushed right home and brewed a pot. And it was just fabulous!

Well, as luck would have it, the weeks passed by and the months passed by, and although I was able to get my new brand at the local grocery, I began to notice that the whole line was slowly migrating down to the bottom shelf. Finally, one day I went to get some and they were out...

The whole brand line had been elbowed out by some other brand. That's when I went online to see if they even still existed, and found this...

http://www.superiorcoffeeshop.com/ProductPage.asp?BrandType=2

...the seventeenth item down from the top.

How long will I keep drinking coffee? Well, it's a tough call, really. I've read the webpage I referenced above regarding the downside of coffee, and although I'm still drinking it I do have to admit that I stopped altogether for a few weeks right after I read it. And I also have to admit that when I started up again, I no longer woke up in the morning so "bright and chipper" as I did during that short period of no coffee.

I mean, I started back with just a cup on weekend mornings. But within a week, I was back to at least one a day...

If it was illegal, would I still want it?

So, from time to time I find myself in that parking lot during the morning rush hour watching people blindly racing across the empty lot, many times feverishly maneuvering for position with other cars, sometimes risking their lives, and I think, "Am I that crazy about this stuff, too?"

3-24-06 Less Meat, More Vegetables

I went mostly "vegan" once before, about ten years ago, but this time I'm doing it because my doctor wanted me to either start taking Lipitor immediately, or else call an ambulance. With an LDL level of 242, he seemed to think that I was the kind of patient that he didn't want to have. Part of his sales pitch included the claim that none of his patients go into the hospital, or something along that line.

Let me back up here. In February, I went for my first "check-up" in over a dozen years.

That last check-up was a very disturbing experience. I went into the thing with no complaints. I got the poking and prodding, the blinding light in the eye, and a very draconian prostate check. I mean, the guy had me stand next to that exam table with the flimsy paper on it, and bend over. Then I heard him put on the rubber glove with the kind of "SNAP" that you'd expect to hear from Hildegarde the Nazi Nurse. And he spent an awful long time in there, too...

At one point, he made the comment, "Oh... so you're one of those people who never gets sick..." As if this is cause for him to do his absolute best in finding something wrong.

I really didn't like his attitude.

Then, I got shuttled over to the bloodletting room, where a nurse promptly stuck my arm and collapsed the vein. It made a horrifying slurpy-sucking sound. She then proceeded to collapse the vein in my other arm, too! She pondered her problem for a bit, then decided that she was going to have to use a syringe, instead of the convenient little vaccum sample bottles. After getting someone to find a syringe, which took another half hour or so, she managed to suck out enough blood to make a fine English pudding, and finally sent me on my way.

I never did get any results of the blood tests, but I did start getting bills within a few weeks. This went on over the course of a couple of months, and every time I got one, my wife told me that Blue Cross - Blue Shield would pay them... just ignore them. Our health coverage at the time was the top BC/BS that you can get, by the way.

So, I ignored the bills until a couple of months passed and I started getting dunning phone messages on my machine for these bills. By this time, I had contacted BC/BS a couple of times, and they said that my statements would be coming. So I waited another month, and finally amassed all the various bills together.

Now, the BC/BS coverage should have paid for everything. And the fact is that I went into the check-up with no complaints about ills, pains, aches, or anything else. Further, the results of the check-up turned up nothing that was recommended for me to attend to, no problems. In other words, I went in healthy, and came out healthy, albeit with terrifically sore arms from the collapsed veins, a condition that left huge bruise marks on my arms that lasted for well over a week.

So, essentially, for absolutely NOTHING in the way of "healing", "treatment", or diagnosis of any slightest condition that might need any "treatment" or "healing" on the part of the doctor, I ended up incurring a total debt of ONE THOUSAND DOLLARS out of this experience, over SIX HUNDRED DOLLARS of which BC/BS was simply NOT GOING TO PAY!!!

Imagine that? The premiere healthcare insurance company at that time was not going to cover a check-up that not only had the insured patient going INTO the check-up with no slightest complaints of health problems, but also coming OUT of the check-up with absolutely nothing to treat or attend to AT ALL. This isn't counting the damage done to both of my arms, of course, since there's nothing they can do for that...

But can you imagine how absolutely outraged I was? I mean, this was the ultimate "healthcare" absurdity!

It took a lot of calling around and visiting the hospital where the check-up was done over the course of several weeks, all the time getting these dunning phone calls from a collection agency, before I eventually landed in the office of a middle aged woman in the "patient accounts" department who, as luck would have it, struck me as true kindred spirit. I finally found a willing ear, and I explained this absurd situation to her. She was absolutely wonderful. She took every single one of the "patient has to pay" bills and, through the magic of her long years of experience, got all the fees "waived" for me.

Well, at any rate, that was the experience I had over a dozen years ago, and the reason why I have been completely unwilling to have another "check-up" all these years. I probably would have never had another check-up, or any other contact with doctors, hospitals, or any kind of medical establishment until I was ready to kick the bucket, had it not been for the development of a small cyst that began to get infected last August.

Meanwhile, my wife has been carrying me on her health insurance all these years, and she has chosen various doctors as my "primary physician" on her insurance each time she changed jobs. (We go with her insurance, since she's a nurse.) So, when I needed this infection tended to, I just went to the latest designated "primary care physician" on the insurance.

This turned out to be a doctor that isn't taking on new patients, so when I made the appointment, I was met with a bit of resistance. They did, however, let me come in and see this doctor's associate, a russian lady who, as it turned out, was a great doctor. She took care the infection right there in the office with finesse, hardly any pain, and actually dug out the cyst. When I was leaving the office, the front desk people had me make an appointment for a "check-up". They put it six months out.

As the six month timeline slowly came down towards the appointed deadline, I kept entertaining thoughts of just cancelling it. As luck would have it, though, the phone message "reminder" for the appointment came in when my wife and I were both sitting there within earshot of the message machine. Now, I had no choice. I had to keep the appointment.

And why not? I figured, what the hell, at least I'll have a chance to see what all those hamburgers and all those gallons of cream in my coffee might be doing to my cholesterol level.

Indeed I did. The one thing that I considered might be a matter needing some attention was exactly what came up. The LDL level of 242 was a bit beyond what I had thought it might be.

The bloodletting was painless this time. I told the nurse at the outset what had happened the last time anyone took a blood sample, so she used a smaller needle for the vacuum thingies, and it worked just fine. And the doctor was really a great guy. He was very much the opposite of that last doctor. And the prostate exam was done so quickly and unobtrusively as I lay on my side that I hardly had a chance to think about it before it was over.

Well, anyway, the highlight of this latest check-up was that the doctor did his absolute best to get me to agree to start taking Lipitor immediately. I am, however, quite opposed to caving in and buying some product from the chemical companies and taking it for the rest of my life, however long or short that may be as a consequence.

That was last month. Another bloodletting and visit four weeks later (a week and a half ago) turned up the LDL level being down 14% to 208. This is the result of my diet change.

Essentially, I had been drinking a cup of cream every day, and eating 90% meat and fat for the past decade or so. I mean, one medium Dunkin' Donuts coffee with "cream and four sugars" gives me three ounces of cream. I would typically have two of these a day, so that's 6 ounces of cream. Then, when I got home in the afternoon, I'd usually brew one or two more cups of coffee with "half'n'half", which brings the total amount of cream well within the range of at least one cup for the day. That's a cup of cream every day, now, for about a decade (or about 128 gallons). And then there's the so-called "food" I've been eating all that time, ie- hamburgers, fries, steaks, butter, mayonnaise, cheese, eggs, and so forth.

When I got the intial cholesterol level results last month, I changed immediately and began eating 90% fruits and vegetables, and drinking water, taking vitamins, and doing that "california thing" of standing in the aisle of the supermarket reading the labels on everything I buy.

Y'know, I kinda sorta knew that I shouldn't have been eating the way I was eating, but I did need the kick in the butt from that cholesterol level result to get me to pay attention.

I've been reading up on everything I can get my hands on. The first thing I went after was info on Lipitor. It only took a few minutes of surfing before I found this...

http://www.spacedoc.net/lipitor_thief_of_memory.html

Well, that pretty much led me off into much searching around for any corroborating claims, which is easy enough to find. The consequence of which is that I won't ever consider taking Lipitor, or any other statin drug to lower my cholesterol.

The next thing I began looking for was any cutting edge medical science involved with this whole cholesterol lowering frenzy, and I found this...

http://www.csmc.edu/6189.html

This is all about the so-called "milano gene" and the discovery that there is a completely different paradigm to be considered in the arena of "high cholesterol = heart problems". It just isn't that simple. The basis for the address of cardiac problems and circulatory problems falls back onto the whole healthcare industry's focus, which I consider to be inordinately upon "the magic pill" playground of chemical company profits and public brainwashing.

Here's the basic picture... If you eat foods high in cholesterol, and your body manufactures its own cholesterol, and if the body's basic method of getting rid of too much cholesterol is hampered by highly processed foods that produce chronic levels of constipation, then much of the cholesterol that the body would normally eliminate sits in the intestines far longer than it would otherwise, and is thus re-absorbed. Further, if this situation persists across many years, the body accumulates inordinate amounts of cholesterol that it has to put somewhere, since it can't get rid of it. The result is, among other things, deposits of plaque in the arteries that can produce circulatory problems, and also be a cause of the blockages causing heart attacks and strokes.

Along come the pill doctors, and they find that the heart attack and stroke victims have an overwhelming thing in common, ie- high levels of LDL cholesterol, low levels of HDL, and plaque damage. Eureka! They conclude that they have to get rid of the bad cholesterol, promote the increase of good cholesterol, and so forth, and VOILA! The chemical companies finally come up with statin drugs which magically plunge the LDL cholesterol levels down to a point where they figure they're doing something really fantastic.

There's no argument that they are doing something fantastic. Pfizer, the manufacturer of Lipitor, is absolutely rolling in massive profits from this drug. Unfortunately, the REAL drug trials and testing of the long term effects of statin drugs is being done on a massive scale with an unsuspecting and blindly trusting public as the guinea pigs.

Instead of addressing the real cause, incredibly bad dietary habits, they address the thing that INDICATES incredibly bad dietary habits. This is like having a chemical plant at the head end of river dumping nasty pollutants in, and "solving the problem" by building a multi-billion dollar water treatment plant twenty miles downriver.

Pretty goddam stupid, if you ask me.

But the profits involved with letting the CAUSE of the problem persist, and "treating" the fallout from the problem is endemic to the chemical/healthcare industry.

Now, I wouldn't be so onto this whole thing if it weren't for the fact that I had been given, in effect, a "sales pitch" for Lipitor by the doctor, and by the people who call me with my test results, every time I've been in contact with them. And the doctor changed his sales pitch to Crestor the last time I saw him a little over a week ago, BEFORE we even had the blood test results from the second blood test. I mean, what the guy has been insisting is that "diet, alone, will never work. It's genetic." But then, when they called with my test results a few days later, the nurse was back to recommending Lipitor.

So, he's not even interested in my going this "diet change" route at all. I'm beginning to wonder if he gets a commission from Pfizer for every prescription he writes. Every time I've sat in the waiting room, I have heard the nurses making the lab result phone calls. My LDL was 242, so I should take Lipitor. I listened to the phone calls, and heard, "Your LDL is 132, so the doctor wants you to start taking Lipitor immediately." And then the next one is, "Your LDL level is over 180, so the doctor wants you to start taking Lipitor immediately." The same urgency, the same sales pitch, the same implied threat of an early death from heart attack or stroke, if this drug isn't taken RIGHT NOW.

I'm pretty much resigned to the prospect of having to find a new "primary care physician" within the confines of our current health insurance list, someone who has some level of separation from the medical mainstream of AMA, FDA, big bucks "pill doctor" healthcare systems. My next appointment is April 20. If the bloodletting isn't scheduled to be done BEFORE I see the doctor for this visit, I really can't imagine what the point would be in seeing him...

3-11-06 Soul Man

Quite often, I run up against the idea that science has provided us with enough information to rationally dismiss any and all further consideration about the so-called "soul". Having failed to locate it, detect it, or develop any significant body of data that might prompt further investigation into the matter, supposedly, the conclusion can be made by any rational person that the matter has been put to bed.

I don't buy it.

How could lack of scientific evidence support the non-existence of anything?

Well okay, so, nevertheless, the matter has been dropped, essentially, and the idea is that science has moved on. Science, originally pursued to uncover the secrets of the universe and the secrets of our souls, is often believed to have basically come to a conclusion in the matter of the human soul. In this wise, an assumption has been made that human beings probably don't have "souls". It's a somewhat widely held belief, based upon the apparent lack of evidence that might support any contention that humans do have souls.

That only bothers me in that people believe it with some degree of religious intensity. It certainly isn't a scientific fact, by any wild stretch of the imagination. And it isn't an objective stance on the matter, either. It's based entirely upon an absence of any scientific data at all. We can only describe that type of viewpoint as being a belief.

As a belief, the "no such thing as the soul" viewpoint, since it deals directly with answering the questions surrounding "the soul", might possibly be considered a religious belief except that it doesn't fit into the definitions of what a religion would be. Consequently, this dogma is commonly relegated into its own category of being "not religious".

In other words, the dogmatic belief in "no such thing as the soul" escapes the pigeon-hole of being religious because it's not a religion. Instead it's considered to be just the opposite, a "not-religious" stance.

Conversely, however, it is most definitely not a scientific stance.

So what is it? And why is it that holding this viewpoint of "no such thing as the soul" is widely considered to be a rational and scientific stance? It's hardly an objective viewpoint, based as it is upon absolutely nothing but personal preference. And it's not a scientific viewpoint, as science has produced no evidence whatsoever to support it.

The problem here is that in our culture, the idea of "religion" is glued to the definition, and that definition is shaped by all the religions that preceded that definition. So the argument I'm making here is that a dogmatic belief in the "no such thing as the soul" idea needs to be more accurately described, because it most definitely addresses a traditionally religious element.

Further, most adherents to this concept (that I've ever known, anyway) will generally hold a firm and dogmatic belief in the concept that there is also no such thing as "God". This also addresses a traditionally religious element, and it's also based upon nothing "scientific".

I would suggest that any such dogmatic belief regarding any "answer" to not just one, but two of the most basic matters concerning religion, religious beliefs and religious practices around the world, would have to be considered a religion, in some sense of the word, as well.

It would be rational to take the stance that, despite there being, apparently, no scientific evidence to suggest the existence of either God or the human soul, one should nonetheless hardly take any stance on these matters, and endeavor to refrain from prejudicial skewing of scientific pursuits or conclusions that such dogmatic beliefs might taint. One would call themselves "agnostic", I suppose, in this matter of endeavoring to be "scientific" about it.

This, of course, leaves the matter open, rather than closed. A very important distinction.

It's the practice of considering the matter closed AND rationally, scientifically based that bothers me. The more dogmatic that practice is, the more it tends to evidence itself as a religious practice in terms of the behavior involved.

There appears to be a belief system "package" in all of this, a sort of "party line" involved with the various shibboleths and "everybody knows" kinds of things that make the exclusion of "religion" from science and scientific endeavors somewhat inoperative in a cultural sense. The religious nature of the "party line", however, is very difficult to argue, so I can only address it in terms of what the specific dogmatic beliefs are comprised of.

The central issue is the existence or non-existence of the human soul. How can any stance on this issue be defended as "non-religious"?

In the traditions of western religion, there are two core issues involving the human soul, and God. Both of these issues are dogmatically asserted in this "package", namely, there is no such thing as the soul and there is no God. It's the dogmatic assertion of these beliefs that has very little, or no basis in science. Science can only be pursued to look into these matters, but if anyone believes that science has produced enough evidence, or any evidence at all to support any final conclusions regarding these beliefs, they are sadly mistaken.

Instead, the cultural viewpoint regarding science has been skewed. It boils down, essentially, to personal preference. It also boils down to the way in which science has taken its place in our society over the past century.

There is a long standing dichotomy between western science and western religion. Wherever science has tread upon any of the two issues (above) concerning religion, this dichotomy has raised its ugly head. These conflicts have cemented the relationship between the societal embrace of science and existing western religions into a confrontational one. Because of this, only the traditional conceptualizations of what "religion" actually is have defined the belief systems involved on the "non-religious" side as, most often very insistently, "non-religious".

The "religion" side is easy enough to see as religous, but the belief system of the "rational" side, the "scientifically oriented" side, the "humanist" side, the oft asserted "non-religious" side, is rarely understood in terms of the religious nature of its adherence and practice. But how can any belief system that dogmatically asserts anything concerning the soul and/or God, considering the utter lack of scientific evidence one way or the other, be considered anything other than a religious belief system?

One would therefore have to add another defintion to the word "religion", applying a more modern and up to date recognition of the behavior involved with any sort of belief system. However much or little any religion could be seen as "organized" or simply "personal view", the fact of the matter is that the holding of dogmatic views regarding the soul and/or God is behaviorally consistent across all forms of religious adherence or practice, whether it be the behavior of individuals or groups.

It's especially consistent when observing the situation of conflict between individuals with differing beliefs, and the specific behavior patterns of the individuals' unwillingness to find common ground.

In other words, the recognition of behavior patterns involved with dogma, and what the holding of conflicting dogmatic beliefs does within the workings of human interaction, should open our eyes to what one of the most fundamental aspects of "religion" might be all about. It's all about holding things to be true upon faith, alone.

There is a human mechanism that fuels conflict. The firm holding of a dogmatic view, essentially unsupportable in terms of objectively recognized data, can allow a person to become irrational in the defense of that view. This is why it's considered "ungentlemanly" to discuss politics or religion in polite company. We can all understand that debating one's personal beliefs is to tread on dangerous ground.

Consequently, when a person holds a firm and dogmatic viewpoint that there's no such thing as the human soul, along with the misconception that this is somehow a "rational" and "scientific" viewpoint, the religious nature of their belief is completely hidden from them. If called to task on such a viewpoint, the person will become defensive. This mechanism that fuels conflict can kick in if the person is pushed, and in my experience, not pushed very hard at all.

Now, I wouldn't be writing on this subject at all if it weren't for the more recent developments in particle physics, and research being done in Quantum physics, in relation to the "observer effect". There's hardly any doubt at all that the observer effect is a very real phenomenon in our universe. And, more and more, this begs the question, "What, exactly, is this 'observer' ???"

All these years, all these decades, scientific research has been happily rolling along with a fairly confident sense of there really being no such thing as "the soul". Culturally, and much within the scientific community, this viewpoint has been comfortably accepted as being, probably, what we'll end up settling upon in the end. Then, all of a sudden in the past couple of decades, this whole notion has been slammed up against so unexpectedly, and we've been completely blindsided by all of this unexplainable phenomena associated with the "observer effect".

Completely taken by surprise.

We've come full circle. In its infancy, science was a new hope for finally uncovering the secrets of the universe, perhaps the secrets of our very souls, and maybe even God. As recently as one short century ago, the research being done to somehow find evidence for the existence of the soul, to possibly discover what it might actually be, to reveal how it works, and so forth, was considered to be right over the next horizon.

It was pyschology and and psychiatry that forwarded the paradigm of "no such thing as the soul", at first. People who originally worked in these areas of research were derided, shunned, and laughed at for holding such a view of "no such thing as the soul". But while science, generally, appeared to have failed in the quest to uncover the human soul, or any evidence at all that it might even exist, the work being done in psychology and psychiatry began, coincidentally, yielding practical results in the field of "mental health".

Who could argue with apparent results, versus no results at all? The basis of the work being done to produce results was "no such things as the soul", whereas work done based in the premise that the soul exists, and all we have to do is apply scientific method to find it... well, that produced no results at all.

So, that's how we got to this point. Funding is always going to go to the areas that produce results.

Great scientific discoveries, however, often come on the heels of such innocuous statements as, "Huh... I wonder what the heck this is?"

The simple question, "Huh... I wonder what the 'observer' is?" borders upon the threshold of something absolutely profound. Let's just hope that deeply held dogma regarding the non-existence of the "soul" doesn't get in the way of science over the next few years.

3-5-06 Corruption

Corruption, n 1: lack of integrity or honesty (especially susceptibility to bribery); use of a position of trust for dishonest gain.

Once upon a time, I probably had a tendency to trust that our government here in the United States of America was run by honest people, people with integrity. I grew up in the 1950's and 1960's, when there was an upheaval of social change, so the transition from trust to mistrust took place during my "formative years". My first hint of all not being quite right with our government was one day in the late 1950's when my grandfather commented upon Richard Nixon, saying, "...he's an evil man."

That's where the first chink in the armor was placed, for me.

The first real blow to my trust was the day that JFK was murdered. At first, I trusted that everything I saw on the TV that day, and everything that went down concerning this horrible event afterwards, was trustworthy information from our government. But as the years passed, this "official story" of the lone gunman in the book repository eventually failed to satisfy any sense that this "official story" was adequate to explain what had happened.

From my perspective all these years later, here in the beginning of the 21st century, the long years of evidence suggests that my government is not worthy of my trust. But no period in my whole life has been more prolific in the development of events to suggest this than the past five years.

I'm not particularly focused upon whether democrats or republicans might be better or worse at governing us. And I'm not particularly focused upon whether any leaning to the "left" or to the "right" is preferable. What I've tended more to be concerned with over the years has been whether the people in our government have integrity, honesty, and the best of intentions for the American people, as opposed to the best of intentions only for their own personal gain.

The tool that corrupt individuals in our government have used to manipulate the American people over the years has been fear. Early in my life, it was the fear of global thermonuclear war breaking out during any given 20 minute period. This was the "cold war". During the Vietnam era, it was the "domino effect" and the "enemies list" of the Nixon administration. During the 1970's it was the rising threat of energy costs and impending economic collapse. The fear of nuclear war stayed with us through the Reagan/Bush era.

Then, all of a sudden, the "cold war" was over. The most significant symbol of the cold war, the Berlin Wall, came down.

Our basic fear of nuclear war was suddenly reduced to practically nothing. Meanwhile, those corrupt individuals within our government who had been living off of this fear all those years began scrambling around like rats in a sinking ship. What the hell were they going to do now??? The basis for manipulating the American people into agreeing to support the vast war machine, the "military/industrial complex" as Ike had called it, was suddenly erased!

The Clinton administration had absolutely nothing to do with the prosperity we enjoyed during that last decade of the twentieth century. It was just a coincidence of timing that during those years the scumbags in the military/industrial complex were scrambling around trying to figure out some way to save their golden goose.

Well, they found a way to not only save it, but to make it even bigger and more profitable than ever.

Before the term of the current administration is over, that rogues gallery of corrupt individuals in our government, both elected and appointed, will have grown to such numbers as to completely overshadow any previous era of corruption in this country. The indictments and convictions that have already taken place under the watch of this administration is beyond belief, but it's hardly begun.

I only hope the depths of corruption that this administration has fostered will not destroy our great nation before the righting of these wrongs has fully unfolded.

3-3-06 T.G.I.F.

I drive a taxicab. I've been doing this for three years, now, including an eight month hiatus working in dispatch. It's an interesting way to earn a living, if you can handle "dealing with the public" all day.

I don't mind dealing with the public, and I'm hardly pressed at all to provide the service with good humor and stress free interactions. But, to be honest about it, I'd prefer to have a job where I didn't have to deal with the public, or anybody else for that matter... and, yeah, not have to produce anything, either. I'd want a job where I just basically got paid a lot of money. A job like "lottery winner", where all you have to do is pick up the first check at the lottery office, then they send you the other 19 annual payments by mail.

I apply for that job every once in a while, but they haven't hired me yet.

Once upon a time, I was an electronics technician, but now that manufacturing electronic products is more cheaply done with offshore labor, that 25 year career ended with a layoff in May, 2002. What really irks me is that all the companies on my resume are out of business, except for the last one I worked for.

But I only have four and half years to go before I can collect Social Security. I'm really looking forward to the government paying me, for a change. Of course, the way things are going, the whole economy might simply collapse before that happens.

So, I just chug along paying my bills by driving a taxi five days a week. By the time Friday arrives, I've pretty much had enough.

I've got plenty of "taxi stories," such as the young woman I drove four hours into Vermont one day, who "outed" herself to mommy and daddy on her cell phone about halfway through the trip. "Daddy, I'm a LESBIAN!" I heard her say. Such moments are rare, but worth relating from time to time.

More recently, I had a very dangerous looking guy get into the cab, take one look at me and come out with,
"Are you a cop?"

So, I turned around and calmly asked him, "What would you do if I was?"

"Well, I'd have to get right back out..." he retorted, with a very perplexed look on his face.

At which I immediately responded, "Well, then, I'd suggest that you get right back out."

After a couple more exchanges back and forth, his incredulity increasing with every deft avoidance I made to
actually answering the question of whether I was, indeed, a cop or not (I'm not), he finally got out of the cab, muttering all sorts of foul language and how he asked for a cab, but they sent him a "*^$#&^%* COP!" He slammed the door and walked off.

I breathed a very big sigh of relief. He was a VERY dangerous looking character.

Today, I had a social services client that I transported from a church where a funeral had taken place, to a restaurant where all the people would be going after the burial at the cemetery. This guy had a walker, and needed assistance. It turns out that he actually had no trouble walking, but he was agoraphobic (fear of open spaces), and it was clear that the walker was like a "security blanket" for him to traverse open spaces with. So when I got to the restaurant, I pulled the cab up as close to the door as possible. I got his walker out of the trunk, unfolded it, and placed it conveniently by the car door so that he could easily reach it. We were about six feet from the door of the restaurant. Well, this was apparently too big a space for this guy, and he needed to cling to my arm to cross this chasm.

I really bristled at this, but helped him out anyway, putting on a cheerful tone, mixed with outward expressions of compassion.

After I parted company with him, though, I really felt completely devoid of any real compassion. I had made an attempt to get him to just use the walker, rather than clinging to my arm, but with no success. The reason I bristled was because it was clear this little scene was an enabling one, him firing up the personal indications of panic at the first hint of my not doing exactly what he wanted me to do. It wasn't about the panic trigger of the open space at all, it was all about this guy using his condition to make other people do things.

I run into these kinds of things often enough to have it press upon my patience and willingness to act in a friendly and courteous manner.

There seems to be a number of pathos driven societal encumberances that have developed over the years concerning disability, client/customer interaction, and (my favorite) the "handicap parking space".

The first one, disability, I have no qualms about. The only fine line that enters into the picture for me as a taxi driver is figuring out the least obtrusive manner for each individual as to whether I should assist them or not. Basically, old men with walkers tend to bristle a bit at the idea they can't do anything and everything without any assistance, while old ladies are very appreciative of having a younger man lend them his arm.

The politics and vagaries involved with client/customer interactions is an area that's sometimes strained with certain people. As a taxi driver, I'm sometimes perceived as a "captive audience", for monologuists. This can be a strain. The longer the ride, the more of a strain it can be. Other times, I'm perceived as "the hired help" that can be treated as less than the dust beneath the rider's feet. This doesn't happen very often, though. In rare cases, the rudeness of the passenger brings them closer and closer to the situation of my stopping the cab, and telling them to get out. So far, I've only had a couple of those. One of them threw up inside the cab, and the other one was pissed off that I hadn't arrived sooner. The former was told at the beginning of the ride that if she had to throw up, to do it out the window, or ask me to stop the cab so she could open the door. The latter started unloading on me the minute I picked her up, with foul language and a shrill voice that cold take the top of anyone's head off.

Two out of, roughly, eight to ten thousand people I've transported over the last three years is, obviously, a tiny percentage of the taxi-riding public in this town.

The last item, handicap parking, is one that really gets under my skin. Every week, I see Escalades, Continentals, Mercedes, Lexus (is the plural of Lexus "Lexi"?), and all sorts of other high end vehicles pull into these handicapped parking spaces, the driver pull the "officially authorized handicap parking permit" out of the glove compartment and hang it on the rear-view mirror, then get out of the car and dance across the parking lot into the store.

Since the taxi isn't equipped with one of these "officially authorized handicap parking permits", I can't pull the cab into one of these parking spaces even if the passenger has leg braces, a walker, and my assistance. I can be fined $200 in such a situation.

What I do instead is BLOCK the handicap parking spaces nearest the door, turn on the four-way flashers, and take my sweet fucking time making a show of the debarking passenger, assisting them far beyond the point they might need to be assisted. This has reaped great fruit in situations where some ass-hole in a Lincoln wants to park in a space, but can't because my cab is blocking it and I'm busy helping the passenger. They honk their horns, they yell at me out the window, but they can't do a goddam thing about it because I DIDN'T put the cab into the hallowed ground of the handicapped parking space.

Well, anyway... I'm glad I had a chance to unload this stuff somewhere... it is the "T.G.I.F." post, after all.

Realistically, I have to say that the overwhelming majority of people I have in my cab each day are pleasant company. As a "fat and bald, middle-aged white guy", I also have to say that non-white people often get into the cab expecting the white guy behind the wheel to not be who they'd prefer to have as a driver, but that as soon as I greet them, this instantly melts away. It sometimes takes a couple more minutes to do this with non-whites who are clearly racist in their sentiments, but I do have compassion for the reasons behind why they might have that tendency, and it apparently comes across.

In other words, I can genuinely say from my experiences that the vast majority of people that I come into contact with every day are really interesting, basically good, and very welcome in my cab.

It should be clear by now though, that the tiny percentage who wear me thin, no more than one every two or three weeks, if that, tend to make me look forward to the end of the day on Friday, and utter "T.G.I.F." with sincerity and relief.