Watch Taxi to the Dark Side.

No, seriously… watch it if you haven’t already.

At first, after watching this documentary, I was struck with a deep desire to find a way to get the hell out of the United States. Not so much for myself exactly… I was thinking about the family I hope to have one day, how the people in that video will be among my neighbors… I would not want my kids around them at all!

However, I didn’t create this crazy-ass situation, I’m certainly not responsible for it. I could quite possibly become a force for good and help others improve. One of the things I could do in preparation for the hoped-for family is help create a community where I feel safe raising children (after, of course, I marry the best mom-to-be that ever ever was).

Of course, children will have to deal with crazy no matter where they grow up, and hopefully I and others who have spent massive amounts of time and energy working out their histories and spreading the word about what true freedom really is will have made a bit of a dent in that crazy as well.

I still do feel the ambivalence–and perhaps I will for a long time–but it’s not nearly as extreme as it was at first.

Wikileaks is big news now, governments are all flustered, they’re revealing all kinds of secrets…!

And i’m just feelin’ kinda “meh.”

I have nothing personal against Wikileaks… I just don’t think much of them.

First of all, their whole thing is to reveal secrets of criminal gangs (aka governments). I have a real hard time seeing that as anything but begging to have your ass handed to you on a fucking plate.

Apparently, the founder/operator of Wikileaks spends a significant amount of resources to keep his location and personage secret, because revealing the secrets of organizations that routinely steal, imprison, and murder is very dangerous business.

I can’t honestly lend my support to people who spend massive amounts of energy charging headlong into the oblivion of the state, which is how Wikileaks comes across to me.

I came up with this quip a couple days ago that has set some people off:

It’s hard to see how Wikileaks matters if you’re afraid to expose your own family’s secrets.

For me, this is coming out of uncovering some pretty heavy duty secrets in my own history and within myself… and exposing those secrets takes real courage, because those things are going to change real things within my own life.

If I spent time reading Wikileaks, it wouldn’t change a damn thing.

I realize this is a little disjointed–it’s late and I really ought to be sleeping anyway… but I just have one last thing to point out about Wikileaks (kind of an argument):

When it comes to arguing against the government, the argument from morality is entirely sufficient. If you are debating with somebody who will not agree that initiating violence against others is immoral, no amount of evidence will change their mind, and if they agree to it, evidence may be helpful but still not necessary to close the case that government is immoral.

As it happens, however, we are practically drowning in evidence that the government is immoral from the hundreds of millions of lives destroyed in wars to the millions incarcerated in a horribly violent prison system, from entire economies being destroyed to the futures of the unborn being sold off to the highest bidder… the amount of objective evidence that the governments themselves admit to is absolutely staggering! The exact numbers may never be known but no sane person will contravene this evidence.

Wikileaks is, to my mind, a particularly weak form of evidence. I’m not sure how you can fully reliably verify these leaked documents, especially since they take on electronic form (please note that I am not saying that I believe they are forgeries, but that the possibility is quite high). Also, you’re dealing with government documents, so you’re automatically in crazy-land. Furthermore, leaking secrets is an age-old political tactic that is used to attack one’s opponents.

Wikileaks may help some people shake off the shrouds of indoctrination, which is great for them… but real change does not start there.

Real change starts when you make changes to your actions in your personal life. Going to therapy, getting good relationships, working to know yourself, acting with courage, being honest with yourself, acting in ways that evoke self-pride… these are the things that matter.

As Thanksgiving approaches, my memories turn to times that, on the balance, were pretty stressful and unhappy. There were a few good things here and there, but most of my memories around this time of year involved my mother taking me and my brother to her parents’ house, separated from our father… and we would spend hours there, waiting for food, sometimes hungry, often bored… sometimes there would be fighting amongst the adults, always tension…

I would love to be able to go to that scene and enjoy it with people who were kind, caring, loved me and each other, and had that simple contentment of spending time with loved ones–you know, the scene trotted out by every damn Christmas special out there–but the reality is that most people don’t appear to like their families very much… there’s stress and tension and frustration and old wounds and humiliations and anger and sorrow… we’re supposed to be eating turkey, not bathing in cortisol!

The problem is that people want to sweep all of that under the rug… but then it never gets dealt with. Ever try to be honest in a setting where conformity to the fucking Hallmark card is the rule? It’s devastating, and you stuff your face because there’s nothing else to do–unless you want to get into a shouting match with somebody.

This year, I am alone. I tried inviting people but no such luck this time–perhaps next year will be different in this way.

I have no desire to get together with people for the sake of getting together with them… if holidays are meant to be about togetherness, then I will make them be about togetherness. If there isn’t anyone I can currently be together with, then I will be together with myself at least.

Incidentally, I do believe this is the first year that I can honestly say I am together with myself.

It has been an awful long time since i wrote anything substantial in this blog, and why the hell not?

The title of this blog, “Personal Archaeology,” is meant to indicate self-exploration and discovery… and I have been doing just that.

It’s just that… well… I have been spending time doing much more than writing or talking about it. Over the past year, I have started acting, I have been in therapy almost this entire time, and I have gained some really valuable friendships.

I am still doing my day job, of course, and will likely be doing it for a while. I am still pretty good at what I do and I don’t have any particular complaints about where I am, but I am still at a point where I don’t see it having much of a future for me, personally. That perspective (or lack thereof) has only solidified with the foray into acting!

So far, I have appeared in a couple of student films, one as an extra, the other as a pretty major speaking role. I’m looking forward to more work, of course, but I am quite happy with my progress so far. Apparently, I’m not that bad of an actor! I study and understand and can convey the characters, at least according to my last director and his teachers who have reviewed some of the footage

Dietarily, I’m still at around 250lbs. I’ve bounced up and down and around it, but I’m still in this ballpark. I think that has a lot to do with “cheating,” though–I’ve not been stalwart against Foods I Should Not Eat… and really, I don’t want to have to take that stance.

That said, wheat is bad news for me. I hadn’t had wheat for a few weeks until yesterday, and over the past 24 hours I have experienced a few breakouts, the corner of a rash that had been slowly healing turned bright red, and my bottom is irritated.

When it comes to food, sometimes I feel like one of those toy robots that runs into the walls outside the front of the toy stores in the mall. I mean, I really want to break that rule I have set up for myself: no wheat, no bread, no pizza, no etc., etc.

And I totally understand that there are alternatives… but if you know anything about these kinds of things, either from experience or closely knowing somebody who’s experienced it, then you know that the alternatives are relatively poor.

Also, there is more to wheat than gluten (this is covered in-depth elsewhere) and nearly all of the alternatives (certainly anything resembling a grain) has most–if not all–of the same issues as wheat, though it is probably gluten itself that is the main factor in the issues I’ve been experiencing.

So anyway… therapy! Holy crap, therapy… alright.

My experience of therapy and my experience of others who have spent time with a good therapist informs me that everybody should see a therapist…

Facebook has broken ads all the time… for example, the following ad is clearly broken:

I took a few minutes to fix it:

Come one, come all to my apartment for a Thanksgiving feast! If you’re a FDRer living in Denver, come on by

[edit] nvmd

I was getting a slow but steady trickle of spam account signups to this blog and one day I looked around and discovered SI CAPTCHA Anti-Spam.

It has lots of options but I primarily only use the CAPTCHA on the registration page… and I have not had any spam accounts sign up since!

I have so many thoughts and feelings about this day…

There is sadness for the countless GLBT people out there who must hide their identity for fear of punishment by others.

There is anger towards those who drive certain poor souls to suicide.

There is annoyance about there being a “day” for something like this. It seems that every cause has to have a “day,” and I recognize the need for people to change their minds about this… but whose mind has ever been changed by a day of observance?

You know how this all will change?

Reject bigotry in others.

Don’t associate with people who nurture those intolerances.

If you care about your relationship with them, then challenge them, try to help them if you can, but also remember that life is short and bigotry is not a position to be argued out of.

It is a sign of deep damage, an irrationality lodged deep within their history that only a lot of hard work on their part can dislodge.

The alcoholic all too often doesn’t stop until he hits rock bottom… so too must go the way of the bigot.

Show some compassion by having the courage to face up to the rotten people in your life.

I wrote a comment in response to Anger makes the world seem more threatening on PsychologyToday.com:

Anger? What About Rage?

One thing I notice about most popular articles on anger is that they fail to differentiate between anger and rage and often classify anger as an entirely negative emotion.

Anger is necessary and healthy–it’s part of our social immune system as it enables us to detect bad people in our lives. Rage, however, occurs when anger is not allowed its natural expression, which may be fight or flight. The purpose of anger is to alert us to danger and allow us to escape. How can this possibly be a bad thing?

Too often, rage is inflicted on children by their parents, teachers, and peers. These children then grow up unable to consciously differentiate from present threats in order to survive… and I feel that this is tremendously widespread and not relegated to a few isolated incidents.

I don’t necessarily doubt the results of this study, but I wonder if they controlled for people who have received therapy for traumatic childhoods or have gone through anger management training to see how their response differs–if at all–from your average Joe. I think that would be a much more enlightening approach.

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