Doug’s A Hero!  And not a Sandwich. . . .

You will get the full story when Kathy’s comp is back on line–the asshole comp doc lied, never showed on Saturday when he said he would, might show today.  I could cheerfully strangle the pencil-dick geek!  But I digress. . .

Sunday, Doug–Kathy’s son– was the hero in a violent incident which started when a bull moose the size of Nairobi invaded their yard and started stomping our dog, who was on his chain, as required by both law and common sense.  Doug was awakened from a sound sleep by the screams of the dog and Kathy, threw on some clothes, grabbed my .44 magnum revolver, rushed into the yard. . . .but I should let Kathy tell the story, she was there .

The full story involves a black state trooper, Dancing Bear, and  a cantankerous old neighbor who once (I seem to recall) took a few potshots at Kathy and me.  Doug and the dog sustained some minor but painful injuries.  The moose is soon to be history–Kathy made a stew out of the heartmeat, and has both tenderloins, the liver, kidneys and testicles in the fridge.

The Good, the Bad, and the Funny

Good news–the computer doctor is slated to make a house call tomorrow, so my sweety will be back here soon, I hope.

The bad news, she told me on the phone this morning that this is her worst day in years. It is very cold (20 below outside, barely 50 above inside), she is having lots of trouble breathing, her hands aren’t working right, and of course, the comp is down.  What’s more, BOTH PlayStations are down.

The funny–just to show how much she relies on the comp, yesterday she called me to find out what day it is.  Seriously.  I said, “You know, there is this neat bit of hardware that tells you that.  It’s called a calendar.” 

 She replied,”I know, but in the absence of a temporal reference, I don’t know how to use a calendar.”

You gotta love someone like that!

In other news briefly, Silky has a new beau, this big fluffy orange tom–she may be having  really variegated kittens some day.  Then it is off to the vet!

And talk about fragile–the other day, I was blowing up a balloon, strained myself, made my hernia worse.  Ouch!

Hope y’all are doing okay!

Well, here I go again

Greyfox (aka ArmsMerchant) again.  Kathy’s comp is still down and since it is a 40-mile drive for her to get to the nearest public comp, there is no telling when she’ll be back.  I went to her place yesterday to deliver groceries and get some stuff I needed for the show this weekend and I heard her confer with Doug over whether to go with their existing  comp service (the hard drive is still under their warranty) which means about a 300-mile drive, or go with a local service, which would mean only a 100 or so mile drive.  That is one wee drawback of living where we do–nothing is close.  When I got my AAA card, I laughed–it only covered 20-mile tows.  So I have the premium AAA service.  But I digress.

In other news, I am humble and proud to announce that I have been made moderator of the religion/metaphysics forum (yclept Let’s Get Metaphysical) in one of the newest boards out there, Haywood’s Flying Circus.  It is small so far–only 50 or so members–and I invite anyone reading this to check it out, at

www.haywoodsflyingcircus.tk

and would ask a favor, i.e., help me spread the word, either by posting a link on your own blogs or whatever.  And if doing this  is infra dig, offensive to anyone, please accept my apology.

I’m Okay, the Comp’s Not

Greyfox (aka ArmsMerchant) here.  Kathy asked me to let her friends here know that her absence is due to a computer malfunction, not any special personal problem.

Using her forum, I feel this odd sense of power–I want to go “moo hooo ha ha ha” and cackle and rub my hands together.  Ahem.  I will try to restrain myself.  I DO want to take advantage of this opportunity to plug a new board which I spend some time on–it is run by young folks but is mercifully free of the spamming, trolling, flaming, racism, gay-bashing and so forth that plagues some other boards.  The mods do a good job of keeping it fairly orderly.  If you like posting on boards or just checking them out, I am talking about www.paradoxsector.com.  Tell’em ArmsMerchant sent ya.

What the heck, while I’m at it, I may as well plug my own Xanga site, for anyone who hasn’t seen it already. There is a conveneint link in Kathy’s intro at the top of the page here.  Header?  I talk about much of the same things Kathy does, only sans photos and links, and with more vehemence.  Not to mention profanity.  I am NOT plugging the knife catalog, it is obsolete.

Thank you for your attention, and have an interesting life.  In the good way.

Iditarod News:

The “Blind” Girl Is Back

No, it’s not time for the big dog race yet.  The ceremonial start
on Fourth Avenue in Anchorage (AKA “skid row”) will be March 5, but
this is the time of year for the rookie qualifiers such as the
Kuskokwim 200.  There are dog mushing stories in every day’s news
now.  In case “rookie qualifiers” is not a common term in your
lexicon, I’ll explain:  The Iditarod Trail Committee doesn’t allow
just anyone to run the thousand-mile sled dog race.  According to
Rule 41:

There is also a mandatory rookie meeting each December.  In
addition to those initial qualifications, even veteran mushers must
meet a number of requirements including such details as the number of
dogs in their teams, the food and supplies they have airdropped ahead
of time at the race checkpoints, and the equipment they carry on their
sleds.  If there is ever a question about a musher’s
qualifications, the Trail Committee has the final word.

Last year, the committee rejected the plan
of a “legally blind” 18-year-old girl from Alfalfa, Oregon, to run the
race with the support of a team of snowmobilers running ahead and
behind her to advise her by radio of terrain and trail
conditions.   She has, according to the news story linked
above, “congenital
achromatopsia, a retinal condition that
impairs her central visual acuity. But she has excellent peripheral
vision and some depth perception, she said in a written report on her
vision.”  But that little detail isn’t in all the stories about
her.  Most of the hype surrounding this girl leaves us with an
image of a brave young thing mushing in the dark, perhaps behind a team
of seeing-eye huskies.

The committee didn’t say the girl couldn’t race last year.  They
just said the snowmobile plan was out.  That put the girl out
because her father had arranged most of her financial sponsorship from
a snowmobile manufacturer who expected to have his machines out there
on the trail generating publicity.  When the sponsor pulled out,
so did the girl’s father.  The entire incident last year left a
bad taste for a lot of Alaskans.  Mushers in particular were
aghast that anyone would even consider bringing along snowmachines on a
sled dog race.  The snowmachines they encounter along the way
frighten the teams and tear up the trails, often causing injury to dogs or mushers.

We didn’t get much of an impression at all of the girl herself last
year.  We saw and heard a lot of her father, but almost nothing of
her.  From what I saw and heard, the guy seems like an exemplar of
the lowest form of stage mother, exploiting his kid and playing up her
handicap for all it’s worth.  Apparently, he has been hustling
since last winter.  Having lost the sponsorship of the snowmobile
builder, he now has an insurance company behind him.

Dog mushing at the Iditarod level is expensive.  Most of the top
mushers are sponsored by businesses associated with the sport: 
dog food makers, sports outfitters and the like.  My neighbor Dee
Dee Jonrowe is a walking billboard for Iams and Eddie Bauer. 
Martin Buser’s truck, which he won as part of his prize for one of his
wins, carries several similar logos. 

Other mushers, who haven’t won enough races to gain the attention of
big-name companies, support their efforts with money they round up from
friends, neighbors and local businesses.   Sheep Creek Lodge,
just across the creek from the spring where we get our water, sponsored
one of the local boys for several years until a new owner took
over.  Greyfox was approached by Dave Straub about selling his
promotional t-shirts, but I don’t know how that worked out. 
Charlie Boulding is affectionately known as the duct tape musher
because his clothing and equipment are patched with a lot of silver
tape.  Charlie has won several lesser races and finished the
Iditarod many times in the money, but it barely supports his
dogs.  Charlie and his wife live a typical rural Alaskan
subsistence lifestyle, fishing and trapping to keep themselves going.

It isn’t like that for the “little blind girl” from Oregon. 
Here’s how Beth Bragg expressed it in today’s Anchorage Daily News:

Hype Precedes Blind Musher on the Iditarod — Anchorage Daily News

Given the facts of the matter here, it seems to me that the young woman
herself won’t actually be a competitor in the race, nor will her dog
team.  If that “visual interpreter” must stay ahead of her to
relay information to her, Ms. Scdoris’s progress in the race will be
determined by the speed of her support person’s dog team.  I
wonder how many qualifying races they’ve completed.

More on Why We Love,
plus a few days of catching up –

I
have been up to my old tricks, avoiding the computer because of the
work facing me here.  Several evenings back, I spent hours working
on the neglected indexing at KaiOaty,
writing HTML until my neck and shoulders were on fire and my eyes
refused to focus.  I didn’t even get to the halfway point in the
backlog.  Today, I decided to face it again.

Doug had
things he wanted to do on the computer, so I spent a few days in Couch
Potato Heaven, with my back next to the woodstove, playing on the
PS2.  Earlier this week, the outdoor temps were down around minus
thirty for a few days.  Yesterday they eased up into double digits
above zero.  Indoor temps which we’d been hard-pressed to keep in
the fifties are now in the mid-sixties, very livable.   raguslil
asked me if there are people here who depend on wood heat.  Doug
and I are two of them.  Electric heat is only supplementary for
us.  When the weather warms up as it has this week, we turn off
the electric heaters.  I don’t use oil heat because of allergies.

By his question about injecting amphetamine, baldmike2004 revealed that he hasn’t read my memoirs.  That story is in there among the biker years.

I’ve said this before:  you guys give great comments.  I love the openings you’ve provided with your responses to my latest blog.  I can’t resist responding to them, especially since some of you have implied that you want more info.

lupa wrote:

I haven’t heard of any RA yet, but there is an SLAA, Sex and Love
Addicts Anonmymous.  Just as Gamblers Anonmymous and Food Addicts
Anonymous were started by addicts who recognized the similarities of
one addiction to another, many addicts had picked up on the connection
long before scientists had traced the chemical components. 

Greyfox and I knew that fact when we decided to build AuWay.org — Addicts unlimited.  We are your omni-recovery group
(for which I still have a lot of code-writing to do).  We say that
the key to any addiction is as simple as ABC:  it is All Brain
Chemistry.   There are some different neurotransmitters
involved, for example, in alcoholism than in amphetamine or cocaine
addiction, and addiction to nicotine involves more of them than any
other, but there are some basic similarities among them all.

Twelve-step programs work because they support abstinence and promote
personal responsibility.  Taking responsibility for one’s actions
removes many of the excuses we addicts find for indulging, and
abstinence (if and when the addict maintains a healthy diet and
lifestyle) gets the brain chemistry back into a healthy balance so that
the cravings ease.

It’s interesting that you mention
chocolate.  Theobromine, the addictive chemical in chocolate, is a
precursor to dopamine and norepinephrine, the chemical markers for
romantic love.  No wonder it has become so traditional as to be a
cliche for a suitor to bring his sweetheart a box of chocolates. 
If you want to know more, try googling, “theobromine, dopamine, norepinephrine“.  I got 866 results.

dingus5 said:

Isn’t disillusionment grand?!?  I know it will cause some psychic
pain to some “incurable” romantics (those who don’t want to be cured of
their illusions and delusions), but as for me I can’t shed my own
illusions fast enough.  I am reminded of this definition: 
“magic” is science we don’t understand yet.

I would, however,
take mild exception to calling it an “imbalance.”  That has
connotations that imply an unhealthy state.  Certainly for some of
us whose chemistry goes way above and beyond normal and wipes out all
prudence and reason (speaking for myself here, fershure!), limerance or
“romantic love” can be a sickness. 

But the three basic
drives that Dr. Fisher’s team identified and studied are not only
normal and healthy, they have been responsible for the continuance of
the species.  Lust, romantic love, and attachment
are necessary and identifiable mating drives in every mammalian species
and many non-mammals.  Chapter 2, “Animal Magnetism: Love among
the Animals,” gives many amusing and heartwarming examples. 
Without them, we would not come together to mate or stay together to
improve our offspring’s chances of survival.

Often it is when that chemistry gets out of balance that trouble starts.  Dr. Fisher, in the radio interview
I listened to, suggests ways for couples to keep their romance alive,
and for everyone to ensure that they attach to appropriate
partners.  I’m convinced that this is an area where more knowledge
is better.

narniakingz wrote:

It might be (just maybe), in many people’s lexicons.  That is why I specified, “romantic love is not an ‘emotion’ in the jargon of psychology,
but rather is a ‘drive’ or ‘motivation’ along with two other related
drives she calls ‘lust’ and ‘attachment’.”  One thing that
characterizes an emotion to a
psychologist is that each emotion has its own recognizable facial
expression universally, across cultural and racial lines.  Anger
is an emotion, as are sadness and disgust.

Drives come first,
then emotions are triggered when the drives either meet obstacles or
meet with success.  Emotions generally result when some drive or
motivation is satisfied, denied, or frustrated.  Lust, romantic
love, and attachment are examples of such drives that can trigger
emotions when they are satisfied or frustrated.

Dr. Fisher’s
research team found that the primary factors which trigger the mating
drives in humans are visual stimuli.  For many other species,
scent is the primary trigger, but having once been a tree-dwelling
species that needed to be able to recognize potential mates or enemies
at a distance, we developed an “eye-brain”.

The portions of
our brains associated with processing visual data are bigger than those
for any other sense.  Dr. Fisher’s subjects were shown pictures as
they lay in the MRI scanners.  It is upon their measurable
electrochemical responses to the pictures that the research conclusions
are based. 

The team also studied the subjects’ emotional responses to such things as satisfaction
in long-term relationships (which generally brings the changes in brain
chemistry that mark the transition from lust to romance and then to
attachment) or to the frustration
of being dumped.  She also has useful suggestions on how to
restore a healthy and comfortable brain chemistry after being dumped.

This comment from canek20xx really made me stop and think:

There are certainly
numerous chemical ways to alter the drives.  If you watch any TV
you’ve probably seen commercials for various pharmaceuticals that have
or are claimed not to have “sexual side-effects.”  Dr. Fisher has
found that SSRIs (selective serotonin reuptake inhibitiors) such as
Prozac, which are specifically noted not to have sexual side-effects, do have inhibitory effects on romantic love. 

This makes total sense since the drive is related to elevated levels of
dopamine and norepinephrine, and reduced levels of serotonin. 
Anything that inhibits the natural reuptake of serotonin is going to
increase blood levels of it.

In that  radio interview,
she cites the case of one woman who felt she had fallen out of love
with her husband and was considering divorce until she stopped taking
Prozac.  Then the romance came back, and they decided to have a
child.  To Dr. Fisher, the moral of that story is that SSRIs can
interfere with your mating and reproductive health.

That’s her opinion, based on her personal perspective.  It seems apparent that canek20xx has a different viewpoint.  From my
perspective, there are ways to alter brain chemistry that are
preferable to taking drugs.  Greyfox and I have taken nutritional
supplements including vitamins, minerals and amino acids
(neurotransmitter precursors) to alter our brain chemistry and get us
over the cravings in early abstinence from our addictions.

I’m
off them now, but am considering taking at least phenylalanine again
since I read this book and made the connection between being in love
and being in remission from many symptoms of my neuromuscular
disorder(s).  Phenylalanine is a precursor of
norepinephrine.  I forget what the amino acid precursors are for
dopamine, but you can be sure that I’ll be looking them up.  I am
NOT going to revive my chocolate addiction — that is for sure! 
If I did that, I might very well surrender to the sugar addiction
again, and then before long I’d be morbidly obese again.  I have a
couple of dozen pairs of GV jeans to motivate me to keep my current
size.

Norepinephrine is an “energy” chemical in the brain.  Dopamine is a “pleasure” chemical.  I think canek20xx
might be on the wrong track in wanting to suppress the chemistry. 
Take away those neurotransmitters and you take away the pleasure and
energy.  Then the body-mind will seek other ways of supplying its
perceived needs for pleasure and energy.  Cocaine and amphetamine
are two well-known chemical substitutes for love in generating pleasure
and energy.  I would not recommend either of them.

There
is, I know, a better way.  In the well-ordered being the spirit
controls the mind and the mind controls the body.  That is the
principle behind the effectiveness of 12-step programs:  they work
(when we work them) to put the spirit into control.  But if our
minds are strong enough we can control our bodies from intellect and
reason.

If we simply understand the chemistry of energy and
pleasure, give our bodies the nutritional requirements to produce the
brain chemistry, and provide our minds with something besides a mate on
which to focus our passionate commitment, we can have it.  Mating
is not the only way to trigger the release of those
chemicals.   It is only the simplest, easiest and most
accessible means.  It’s the one hard-wired in us for the
preservation of the species.

In times when overpopulation,
pollution and aggression threaten extinction of the species it should
not be difficult for aware individuals to divert their mating drives to
other uses.  I can see how just being aware of the chemistry
involved could help someone avoid an inadvisable match and a subsequent
commitment to a person or a family that eventually becomes a source of
discontent or contempt — as many of the marriages that result from the
natural drives do evolve.

If you know that the overwheming
feelings you experience are not coming from that good-looking guy or
girl, but from your body’s response to the mating drive, then you might
be able to keep your wits about you well enough to make more
intelligent choices.  However, in doing so, you are going against
not only the evolutionary imperatives built into the species, but the
mythology developed by our cultures.  I suppose only the
strong-minded individuals will succeed, and perhaps unfortunately, they
will be unlikely to breed and pass on their strong-minded DNA.

UPDATE, Saturday, January 22, 2005, about 4 PM:

It vexes me when things I write are taken out of context.  A new
subscriber apparently saw the “Why We Love” reference and didn’t know
it was a book title.  Nor did he apparently notice that I draw a
clear
distinction between “romantic love” (which I call limerance) and the
real thing, the kind of love that Erich Fromm called “an act of
will.”  Perhaps he did not read all of this entry.  I’d be
willing to bet all the money he dropped into my little purple hat that
he didn’t read the foregoing one to which this one refers. 

Terry says he loves, “because he can.”   Maybe he means he
has the neurochemical capacity to fall in “love” and is grateful for
that.  Maybe he means he has the spiritual capacity to willingly
give unconditional love.  Maybe he’s just being cute.  Who
knows?

Uh huh! and Aha!

Have you ever read anything that gave you one “Uh huh!” (confirmation
or validation of something you had intuited, assumed, or suspected) or
“Aha!” (learning a delightful and relevant new fact) moment after
another?

If so, you understand how I felt this morning as I read my new book, Why We Love.   If not, awwww, I’m sorry — you just don’t know what you’re missing.

I crawled into bed with the book late last night and was so engrossed
that I sat up until almost seven this morning reading it.  I’m not
finished yet, am about halfway through, but already many pieces have
fallen into place for me.

The author, after extensive research including functional MRI scans on
the brains of madly-in-love subjects, has demonstrated that
a)  romantic love is not an “emotion” in the jargon of psychology,
but rather is a “drive” or “motivation” along with two other related
drives she calls “lust” and “attachment.”
b)  the brain chemistry of romantic love involves elevated levels
of the neurotransmitters dopamine and norepinephrine, and low levels of
serotonin.

That latter datum explains a lot to me.  Norepinephrine acts like
amphetamine.  This explains why I experienced similar remission of
symptoms of my neuro-muscular disorder when I was madly in love and
when I was shooting speed.

The brain scans revealed that the parts of the brain affected by
romantic love (or limerance, to use Dorothy Tennov’s word) are the same
ones involved in addiction.  No surprise there, just a big uh huh.

Chapter 2 was a fun read, all about expressions of this same drive
among other species such as beavers and elephants — and of course
chimps and orangutans.

I marked many passages last night as I read, thinking I’d transcribe them, but instead I found online a radio interview with the author that you can listen to if you’re curious.

It is not my usual practice to write a review on a book I’ve not
finished reading.  Just don’t consider this a review.  It’s a
tip, a pointer, a recommendation.

I will review it when I’m done reading it.

---

I’m concerned about Greyfox and his furry family.  He called this
morning to say there is a windstorm in Wasilla and a power
outage.  Our temps here are in double digits below zero, so it
probably isn’t much warmer there.  His only heat source in that
cabin is electric (except for a few candles), and wind will suck what
little heat there is right out.

I’m hoping power was restored quickly but, since he doesn’t seem to
have been out to the net cafe to leave me any xanga grams, that seems
unlikely.  A few of the cabins at Felony Flats have oil
heat.  I suppose if necessary he could wait it out with a neighbor
telling stories or playing cards by candlelight.

Last time I was in town, his little heater was having a hard time
keeping the place warm and we talked about his options should the power
go off.
 If he really needed to, he could box up Silky and the kittens and
drive around in the car.  Not the best way to spend a day, but
better than kittencicles.

Step Ten of Twelve

While I was watering my plants Sunday night, I was doing a tenth
step.  I don’t ordinarily set aside a particular time for step
work, I just do it when the spirit moves me.  The tenth step is
one I do almost constantly, examining my behavior and motives.

I had posted my previous blog, then talked to Greyfox about it after
his gun show was finished.  After that, I did the law search he
suggested and posted my update.  As I watered the plants, I
thought over what I had written.  I realized I’d done a couple of
things wrong.

First, I said I hate all lies.  That’s not true.  I knew at
the time it wasn’t true, but just as sometimes in fear or frustration I
forget I’m enlightened, that time in my indignation I forgot how I
really feel about Immanuel Kant’s Categorical Imperative.  I’ve no
excuse for forgetting, either.  Greyfox reminded me of it recently.

He had read me (on the phone) a quotation he thought I’d appreciate:

I liked it.  I’m somewhat of a fanatic about telling the
truth.  I even disapprove of parents scaring their kids into being
“good” with the Santa myth.  I asked Greyfox to post the quote so
I could copy it into my favorites list.  He didn’t get that done
right away, so I went to Google to look for it for myself. 
Finding it wasn’t easy.  Kant wrote in German, I think.  No
matter what the language of the original, that word one translator
rendered as “altruistic” has also come out as “humanitarian” and
“benevolent” in English. 

If I’d found the quote quickly, I’d have copied it and posted it in
ignorance.  As it was, before I found the quotation I found its
larger context and decided the quote wasn’t one of my favorites after
all.

It started with Kant’s Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals,
in which he described his theory of the Categorical Imperative: 
“Act only according to that maxim by which you can at the same time
will that it
should become a universal law.”

Those few words that Greyfox quoted me from the essay sounded good,
but the more I read of the essay the less I liked the idea, and the
more I recalled of my original response to Kant’s Imperative when I
read it as a teenager.  I
don’t suppose I’d reveal the location of an intended victim to someone
intent on killing him, even if by lying I incurred legal liability for
his death in the event that the guy had meanwhile left where I thought
(and refused to tell the killer) he was and had gone somewhere that the
killer would run into him.  I’d keep my mouth shut or perform some
form of prior restraint on the potential killer.

It’s a far-fetched scenario and largely irrelevant anyway to my own
personal view of the categorical imperative.  I have often said
that I won’t lie to my kid, my friends, my readers or myself about
anything, but I would readily lie under oath in court to keep someone I
don’t consider a menace to society out of jail — for example, for any
of a host of “victimless” crimes such as possession of marijuana. 
How I feel about jail is, I suppose, stronger than how I feel about
lying.

I hereby retract my earlier statement that liars are the lowest form
of life.  I think that title goes to some unicellular organism or
maybe a mycoplasm.  I was definitely using hyperbole there. 
My bad.

My other bad move was in forgetting in the heat of the moment that
I’m enlightened, that it is equally unevolved spiritually to take
offense as to give it.  I choose to forgive the liar for the lies.

I feel ever so much better now. I just hope I can call off the Old Fart before he wreaks havoc.

UPDATE

(on top to save those who already know what it’s about from having to
go through it again — but if you don’t know, you can still go down and
read the rest)

Predictably, when I told Greyfox about the libelous allegations, he was
all for suing the Amazing Randi.  I didn’t think that would work,
since he’s probably protected from liability for statements made by
others on his bulletin boards.  Greyfox suggested that I look up
internet libel laws.  I did.  It was an interesting trip.

I found a list of precedents on the Phillips Nizer website, and a detailed article
from Jack  M. Balkin in which he says that new laws, protecting
ISPs and website owners from liability for the actions of third
parties, don’t protect the individual writers themselves from suit for
libel.  For example, if someone posted a libelous statement in a
chat room, the host and moderators would not be held legally
responsible, and if someone posted a libelous comment on this blog, I
could not be sued for it, but the one who posted the comment could be.

**sigh…**

I don’t think that ignorance is bliss.  To me, ignorance is a
state of unknowing, a lack of knowledge or education.  This is why
I really like my new x-Tracker. 
I have only had it a couple of days, but without it I wouldn’t know
that I’m being libeled.  I checked the log for KaiOaty and
followed the link to the referring page from which a “guest”
(non-Xangan) reader had come, and Voila!  — lies, dirty,
defamatory lies.

Of course, if I didn’t know I’d been libeled, I wouldn’t need to decide
whether to take any legal action on it.  I suppose that’s what
that old saying about ignorance being bliss really means.

Here’s the story:  somebody here at Xanga got a bug up her ass
over something about my KaiOaty site.  She’s not someone I usually
read, but for some reason (maybe I’m psychic or something) I happened
to read her blog the day she was bitching about it in an oblique
fashion.  I asked her what was troubling her, but she didn’t
respond to that opening.

Instead, she posted on a BBS devoted to debunking psychics some lies
about me along with links to some pages at KaiOaty which, when taken
out of context, don’t make much sense.  When one follows the trail
I built over there and pays attention, it makes sense.

The out-of-context page isn’t a major concern.  It’s a snide
little joke I made, but I still feel it’s appropriate.  Without a
direct link to it such as she posted, the only way anyone would find
that page would be to ask repeatedly for something I had previously
repeatedly said I don’t do, such as giving lucky numbers or investment
advice.  Anyone who bothers to read and follow the instructions
would never see it.  A few people have deliberately clicked on the
stupid choices to see where they went, and have let me know they
appreciated the joke.

The libel is the part I don’t like.  She claims that I charge in
advance for readings and then refuse to give refunds.  Everyone
who has ever had a reading from me knows that I don’t charge in
advance.  Technically speaking, I don’t “charge” at all since no
fee is set and the client is asked only to pay what they feel the
service is worth.  Besides that, nobody has ever asked me for a
refund, but this misguided miscreant has invented some “friend” of hers
named Robin to whom she claims I have refused a refund.

Months go by sometimes between the times that I think of Roger Aloysius
McShea, the Anchorage lawyer who won a settlement for me seventeen
years ago when my car and one of my knees were totalled by a drunk
driver making an illegal left turn.  I like Roger.  I haven’t
talked to him in years.  He has written a novel and had it
published since the last time I saw him.  I know he’s still in
practice, because I just checked the latest phone book and there he
was.  Maybe I should call him.

My dilemma is manifold.  I ask myself if it’s worth the
bother.  I know I’d probably have to go to Anchorage — yuk. 
I might even need to go to court, which is something else I don’t
particularly enjoy.  Heaven knows, I could use some money, since
at least half of the readings I do end up being pro bono because all I
get for them is a thank you. (and I want to take this opportunity right
now to thank those of you who have paid me for my work)  But maybe
this tight-jawed and loose-lipped lass has no money.  Who
knows?  Her true identity is not revealed on her Xanga site. 
She might even be a he, for all I know.

I’m thinking it over.  I’m remembering all the crap I went through
with the last lawsuit, the time spent with the economist Roger hired to
determine a documentable figure for my lost potential income, and the
trips to town, etc.  Even if Roger would do it on a contingency fee
basis, multiple trips to Anchorage would cost a lot, both in money and
in terms of my scarce physical resources.  On the other hand, my
sense of justice is outraged.  I hate lies, not just the
defamatory ones told about me, but any lies about anything.  Liars
are the lowest form of life.

this ‘n’ that

This weekend, Greyfox is working the gun show at Wasilla High
School.  In summer, his business is outdoors, a roadside stand
where he sells knives and other items.  In winter, almost all our
income is from the tables he sets up at a few local gun shows.  I
got a call from him on the CallWave earlier.  His cell signal was
breaking up and I didn’t catch all of the “good news” part when he told
me how much he had earned so far.  But even so, I could hear the
distress in his voice, and waited for the “bad news.”  Someone
stole a $110 knife.  There was chagrin in his tone as he went on
to say,  with a rueful little chuckle, “Gotta stay vigilant.”

---

Yesterday when I posted my latest blog, AEIC was reporting seventeen earthquakes in Alaska for the day.   Stash_living_dangerously
has asked if that many earthquakes is “normal” for this area. 
Before the day was through yesterday, another ten quakes had been added
to the list: 27 for the day.  Up to 4:25 PM today, the list shows
ten.  Whether this is normal or not depends on how far back one
goes for statistics to average out.  They come in swarms usually,
and there was a swarm of seismic activity around the northern edge of
the Pacific Ring of Fire on Thursday and Friday.

I grew up in California, and I think that Alaska is generally shakier
than California.  We are on the boundary of the North American
plate, where the Pacific Plate is sliding under it.  Those forces
have raised a range of mountains that includes North America’s tallest
peak and several active volcanos.  Throughout the history of
seismic recording and reporting, the general incidence of activity
seems to be showing an upward trend.  Some of that could be due to
more sensitive instruments and better networks for reporting, but even
so it does feel like more shaking now than in the past.

---

I guess that’s all I have for today, except this:

Which OS are You?

I took this one twice because some of the questions had no single “right” option for me.

Which file extension are you?

I got two results on the next one, too.

Which Nigerian spammer are you?