State of Denial

No. I'm not talking about Texas.

That wonderfully eccentric bundle of lovable joy who calls herself Lulu gave me Bob Woodward's State of Denial while I was up in Tacoma recently. I didn't think I'd find it all that interesting. I was wrong.

If you want a shocking look at what brought about the Iraq fiasco, read this book. If you're the sort who doesn't want to know how hot dogs get made you probably will be equally squeamish to know how policy gets made with George W. at command. But it isn't George who comes out of the book looking all that bad. It's some of those who served him, worst being Donald Rumsfeld.

It's like the events of 9/11 were so shocking to those in command that rational thought went on hiatus and some sort of post-traumatic stress depression took over that tainted the decision making process. Almost like some form of mental illness, so much rationalizing, so much wishful, almost magical thinking.

I've had reason to think of late about mental illness and depression, why people get depressed, how they handle it, how those suffering from inner conflicts have troubles at times maintaining an even, rational keel.

I wonder if any of the people currently in the White House are on any psychotropic meds. I hope not, but I suspect there are at least one or two Wellbutrin/Lexapro poppers.

I was curious about side effects of Wellbutrin and Lexapro. I wasn't too shocked to learn there is evidence of several neuropsychiatric symptoms associated with Wellbutrin in patients with depression---including delusions, hallucinations, psychosis, concentration disturbance, paranoia, and confusion.

Lexapro is also sort of scary. Lexapro discontinuation, particularly abruptly, may cause certain withdrawal symptoms such as "electric shock" sensations (also known as "brain shivers" or "brain zaps"), dizziness and irritability. As with many other medications, you should avoid drinking alcoholic beverages while being treated with Lexapro.

Lexapro has a long list of side effects, like...

Arthritis - Painfully inflamed and swollen joints. The reddened and swollen condition is brought on by a serious injury or shock to the body either from physical or emotional causes.

Hepatic Enzymes Increased - An increase in the amount of paired liver proteins that regulate liver processes causing a condition where the liver functions abnormally.

Hyperglycemia - An unhealthy amount of sugar in the blood.

Increased Weight - A concentration and storage of fat in the body accumulating over a period of time caused by unhealthy eating patterns, that can predispose the body to many disorders and diseases.

Hypercholesterolemia - Too much cholesterol in the blood cells.

Back Discomfort - Severe physical distress in the area from the neck to the pelvis along the backbone.

Jaw Pain - The pain due to irritation and swelling of the nerves associated with the mouth area where it opens and closes just in front of the ear. Some of the symptoms are pain when chewing, head aches, losing your balance, stuffy ears or ringing in the ears, and teeth grinding.

Jaw Stiffness - The result of squeezing and grinding the teeth while asleep that can cause your teeth to deteriorate as well as the muscles and joints of the jaw.

Muscle Cramp - When muscles contract uncontrollably without warning and do not relax. The muscles of any of the body’s organs can cramp.

Thirst - A strong, unnatural craving for moisture/water in the mouth and throat.

Restless Legs - A need to move the legs without any apparent reason. Sometimes there is pain, twitching, jerking, cramping, burning, or a creepy-crawly sensation associated with the movements. It worsens when a person is inactive and can interrupt one’s sleep so one feels the need to move to gain some relief.

Shaking - Uncontrolled quivering and trembling as if one is cold and chilled.

Aggravated Nervousness - A progressively worsening, irritated and troubled state of mind.

Agitation - Suddenly violent and forceful, emotionally disturbed state of mind.

Apathy - Complete lack of concern or interest for things that ordinarily would be regarded as important or would normally cause concern.

Carbohydrate Craving - A drive and craving to eat foods rich in sugar and starches (sweets, snacks and junk foods) that intensifies as the diet becomes more and more unbalanced due to the unbalancing of the proper nutritional requirements of the body.

Confusion - Not able to think clearly and understand in order to make a logical decision.

Forgetfulness - Unable to remember what one ordinarily would remember.

Irritability - Abnormally annoyed in response to a stimulus.

Restlessness Aggravated - A constantly worsening troubled state of mind characterized by the person being increasingly nervous, unable to relax, and easily angered.

Tremulousness Nervous - Very jumpy, shaky, and uneasy while feeling fearful and timid. The condition is characterized by thoughts of dreading the future, involuntary quivering, trembling, and feeling distressed and suddenly upset.

Yawning - involuntary opening of the mouth with deep inhalation of air.

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Okay, I don't need to list anymore bad Lexapro things, I'm almost convinced Donald Rumsfeld was being medicated by psychotropics. It explains so much. That last one on the list is disturbing. Was someone slipping Lexapro in my water when I was up north? Because I was constantly yawning. I never yawn. Or hadn't til my month in Tacoma. I've not yawned once since I've been back in Texas.

National Geographic's Top 50 Best Places to Live

National Geographic Adventure magazine's September 2008 issue has one of those lists ranking cities and towns by who knows what criteria. The article seems a bit unfocused, judging just by the titles.

As in "50 Best Places to Live: The Next Great Adventure Towns. Where to Live + Play Now! The fifty next great adventure towns."

I guess it isn't too shocking that only one Texas town made this list. Texas towns don't often appear on these type lists. Unless it's in something like Men's Health. And then it's not a good thing to be on the list. The one Texas town that made the list is San Antonio. With San Antonio being in the Top 12 along with Seattle.

National Geographic divided the list by regions. Somehow Reno and Tucson ended up in the Rockies region. You don't see any Rocky Mountains in Reno or Tucson.

Anyway, here's the list. Those in BOLD are Top 12 picks, in no particular order.

West
1. Seattle, Washington 2. Coos Bay, Oregon 3. Lihue, Kauai, Hawaii 4. Girdwood, Alaska 5. Hood River, Oregon 6. San Francisco, California 7. Joshua Tree, California 8. Leavenworth, Washington 9. Arcata, California 10. Klamath Falls, Oregon 11. Bellingham, Washington 12. Malibu, California

Rockies
13. Missoula, Montana 14. Lander, Wyoming 15. Idaho Falls, Idaho 16. Silver City, New Mexico 17. Ogden, Utah 18. Carbondale, Colorado 19. Prescott, Arizona 20. Reno, Nevada 21. Pagosa Springs, Colorado 22. Red Lodge, Montana 23. Tucson, Arizona 24. Colorado Springs, Colorado

Central
26. Grand Marais, Minnesota 27. Rapid City, South Dakota 28. Traverse City, Michigan 29. Bardstown, Kentucky 30. Mobile, Alabama 31. Lafayette, Louisiana 32. Hermann, Missouri 33. Mountain View, Arkansas 34. Peoria, Illinois 35. Oklahoma City, Oklahoma 36. Milwaukee, Wisconsin 37. San Antonio, Texas

East
38. Brattleboro, Vermont 39. Boston, Massachusetts 40. Charleston, South Carolina 41. Charlottesville, Virginia 42. Plymouth, New Hampshire 43. State College, Pennsylvania 44. Blue Hill, Maine 45. Lenoir, North Carolina 46. Avalon, New Jersey 47. Salisbury, Maryland 48. Islamorada, Florida 49. Chattanooga, Tennessee 50. Saranac Lake, New York

Transactional Analysis in Texas

A shrink named Eric Berne came up with a post-Freudian way of looking at psychology and psychotherapy that he called Transactional Analysis. This spawned several books, like Games People Play and I'm OK, You're OK. Big best sellers that were disdained by some as "Pop Psychology."

But if you read one of these books you'll likely see a lot of truth behind the theories and many examples in your own existence.

I've long found Transactional Analysis useful when trying to understand otherwise incomprehensible behaviors.

At any given time, a person manifests their personality through a mixture of behaviors, thoughts and feelings. Typically, according to TA, there are three ego-states that people consistently use:

Parent: a state in which people behave, feel, and think in response to an unconscious mimicking of how their parents (or other parental figures) acted, or how they interpreted their parent's actions. For example, a person may shout at someone out of frustration because they learned from an influential figure in childhood the lesson that this seemed to be a way of relating that worked.

Adult: a state in which people behave, feel, and think in response to what is going on in the "here-and-now," using all of their resources as an adult human being with many years of life experience to guide them. This is the ideal ego state, and learning to strengthen the Adult is a goal of TA. While a person is in the Adult ego state, he/she is directed towards an objective appraisal of reality.

Child: a state in which people revert to behaving, feeling and thinking similarly to how they did in childhood. For example, a person who receives a poor evaluation at work may respond as they did in their childhood, by looking at the floor, and feeling shame or anger, as they used to when scolded as a child.

Ego states can become contaminated, for example, when a person mistakes Parental rules and slogans, for here-and-now Adult reality, and when beliefs are taken as facts. Or when a person "knows" that everyone is laughing at him, because "they always laughed". This would be an example of a childhood contamination, insofar as here-and-now reality is being overlaid with memories of previous historic incidents in childhood.

A racket feeling is a familiar set of emotions, learned and enhanced during childhood, experienced in many different stressful situations, and maladaptive as an adult means of problem solving.

A racket is then a set of behaviors which originate from the childhood script rather than in here-and-now full Adult thinking, which are employed as a way to manipulate the environment to match the script rather than to actually solve the problem, and whose covert goal is not so much to solve the problem, as to experience these racket feelings and feel internally justified in experiencing them.

Examples of racket and racket feelings: "Why do I meet good guys who turn out to be so hurtful", or "He always takes advantage of my goodwill". The racket is then a set of behaviors and chosen strategies learned and practiced in childhood which in fact help to cause these feelings to be experienced. Typically this happens despite their own surface protestations and hurt feelings, out of awareness and in a way that is perceived as someone else's fault. One covert pay-off for this racket and its feelings, might be to gain in a guilt free way, continued evidence and reinforcement for a childhood script belief that "People will always let you down".

In other words, rackets and games are devices used by a person to create a circumstance where they can legitimately feel the racket feelings, thus abiding by and reinforcing their Childhood script. They are always a substitute for a more genuine and full adult emotions and responses which would be a more appropriate response to the here-and-now situation.

Supermodel Vice-President Sarah Palin

Has a possible Vice-President been on the cover of Vogue before? Al Gore, maybe?

I'm a bit non-plussed over both the Dems and the Reps vice picks this time around. I've never cared much for Joe Biden. I think it goes back to when he got hair plugs.

As for Sarah Palin, I'd not heard of her til I was up in Washington last month. Alaska news is news in Washington.

It has long seemed odd to me that we go through a long long process to pick a nominee, with the nominee thoroughly put through the ringer during the process. And then that nominee gets to pick who would replace him.

It's not like that's never happened. Just in the last 60 years, Truman replaced Roosevelt, LBJ replaced JFK and Ford replaced Nixon.

We've gone 34 years without a Vice President taking over. It would seem we're overdue for such a thing. John McCain is 72. Sarah Palin is a bit more than half his age.

Sarah Palin has been a governor for 2 years. And before that served 2 terms on the Wasilla, Alaska city council from 1992 to 1996 and then was elected mayor of Wasilla twice, in 1996 and 1999.

The possible future Vice-President got a Bachelor of Science degree in journalism at the University of Idaho.

When I heard who McCain picked I wondered wasn't Elizabeth Dole available?

Paranoia Strikes Deep

There's something happening here. What it is ain't exactly clear. There's a man with a gun over there. Telling me I got to beware.

It's time we stop, hey, what's that sound? Everybody look what's going down.

Paranoia strikes deep. Into your heart it will creep. It happens when you're always afraid. Step out of line and the man comes to take you away.

Stop, hey, what's that sound? Everybody look what's going down. Its time we stop, hey, what's that sound? Everybody look what's going down. Stop, hey, what's that sound? Everybody look what's going down.

2008 State Fair of Texas

Yesterday I blogged about this year's Big Tex Choice Award finalists. That's an annual competition to see who can come up with the most bizarre thing to deep fry and make tasty to some people's taste buds.

That's Big Tex you see in the photo.

The State Fair of Texas this year runs from September 26 to October 19. Today I was informed I will have 10 tickets to the fair. Who wants to go with me?

The Texas State Fair is a good thing. It's not quite at the level of the Western Washington State Fair in Puyallup, but it's still a good thing. For one thing the Puyallup's food is better. And you can buy things with good ol' American money. At the Texas fair you have to buy coupons and then use the coupons to buy everything from rides to food. The Puyallup Fair has way more farm animals and way fewer cars on display. And way more free stuff. I like free stuff.

Ironically, well maybe it ain't irony, just interesting, but every year at the Puyallup my favorite thing was going to this free show stage. I'd see hypnotists that did amazing things. And every year there'd be this band from Dallas, called The Shoppe, that was always very entertaining. The Shoppe should play at the State Fair of Texas. And they could use a hypnotist or two.

Go here to the webpage version of my visit to last year's State Fair of Texas.

Or watch my YouTube video of that visit to the State Fair of Texas.

Level Red Toxic Human Alert

The air doesn't look dangerous this morning. But, apparently it is. Here in the Dallas/Fort Worth zone we are still under an Ozone Alert. It varies day to day from a Level Red to a Level Orange Ozone Alert.

I wish there were Alerts assigned to humans. Mandatory testing and then you're issued an Alert Badge. Level Green for totally non-toxic, well-adjusted humans, Level Yellow for humans with some interactive issues, but not toxic. Level Orange for humans with some degree of toxicity who are likely best avoided. And Level Red for those humans who should be avoided totally due to their extreme toxicity.

With no Human Alert system in place I have to rely on instinct and warning signs.

One big red flag warning sign is if you find out someone is a religious fanatic. You probably don't want to be friends with a religious fanatic. By religious fanatic I'm meaning a member of some twisted cult thing, like Hare Krishna.

Another big red flag is if a person is on any sort of psychotropic mind-altering prescription medication. If a person needs to have their brain altered to manage to get through the day this is a strong indication that there is some seriously degraded thought processes in play which could come out at any random time in an extremely toxic manner, despite the medications.

A long history of being in therapy is another warning sign. The fact that the individual is seeking help is a good thing. But the fact that the individual needs help is a warning sign.

If you make note of a person being self-indulgent in self-destructive ways, this is a warning sign that the person could be toxic. Such sorts are self-loathers who can quickly go from loathing themselves to spouting irrational loathing at humans with whom they interact.

Catching a person in a lie more than once is a huge red flag. I have a 3 strikes and you're out policy, likely due to my love of baseball. Okay, that was a lie. I don't like baseball. I've known one or two pathological liars who lie for no fathomable reason, almost as if they want to see what they can get someone to pretend to believe. Sadly, the liar's lies are usually quite transparent. And they easily get caught in their lies, because basically liars are not the brightest lights on the planet.

Currently I am totally free from dealing with any toxicity. That's a good thing. I intend, I hope, to remain free from toxic humans. It's a lofty goal.

Stairtown Latest Texas Natural Gas Explosion

June 7, 2010 Natural Gas Explosion Kills 3 in Hood County.

Five homeowners on Carter Avenue in East Fort Worth, near Tandy Hills Park, continue to fight to stop Chesapeake Energy from running a natural gas pipeline beneath their property.

Condemnation hearings have begun.

Chesapeake Energy spokespeople and gas industry propaganda touts the safe practices of the modern gas exploitation industry. However, nothing as extensive as the hundreds of miles of pipelines flowing from well over 1000 wells has ever before been attempted in an urban zone.

So, naturally, people have their concerns. Despite claims to the contrary, there have been natural gas explosions in recent times. Just today a town in Texas, Stairtown, had a natural gas explosion.

Simply Google "Texas Natural Gas Explosions" and you'll find quite a long list of Texas explosions. Some recent. With the most deadly one taking place way back in March 18, 1937, killing 100s of students at New London School in New London, Texas. It's at the top of the list.

It seems reasonable that a person would have some reservations about having a large gas pipeline running under their property. Or a gas drilling rig nearby.

Watch the YouTube video below. Survivors of the New London tragedy are interviewed. A couple interesting comments follow, from YouTube, regarding the below video.

"This happened a month before I was born. I had at least 12 cousins killed. I went to school in the new building that's there now. I know everybody in this video."

"My mother's father was a pipeline welder that was hired to construct the heating unit for the school. He thought the design was unsafe in theory and till his death felt terrible guilt for having been involved in the construction. The family was living in Tyler Texas at the time of the tragedy and he raced there to assist in the rescue efforts. My grandfather worked in the construction of the boiler and steam heating at the grade school that I attended in Dallas in 1954."

Protesting Chesapeake Energy in Church

Interesting incoming today from the leader of the Eastside Rabblerousers, Don Young, commemorating the 3rd anniversary of a protest outside a Baptist Church in Fort Worth. If you are going to protest outside a church in Fort Worth the odds are that it will be a Baptist Church. There are more Baptist Churches here than Starbucks.

Below is the message from Don Young....

"It was a hot and humid Sunday morning on 9/28/05, but that didn't stop a couple dozen folks from picketing outside a Baptist church in east Fort Worth. This was before Just Say NO. FWCanDo was not yet named. Just say WHOA! was still a star in the sky. Urban gas drilling was in its infancy. But we knew trouble when we saw it, even back then.

The reason for the protest? Sagamore Hill Baptist Church, owned 50 acres of very rare, original Texas prairie which is next to a historic neighborhood. They had announced that they were striking a deal with the devil. The devil in this case is Chesapeake Energy who wanted to extract the minerals under the property which is also adjacent to Tandy Hills Natural Area.

With full knowledge of the negative impact to the immediate neighborhood's integrity, its residents safety, wildlife and the adjacent, natural area, church leaders signed a mineral lease with Chesapeake. When all efforts to reason with the church failed, we felt the only way to get their attention was on Sunday morning.

Chesapeake later bought the property, outright and continues to terrorize the neighborhood and the region in the name of free money. The church has abandoned the neighborhood for greener pastures.

As far as I know, this was the first public protest against urban gas drilling in the Barnett Shale, maybe the world. It will not be the last.

Stroll down Memory Lane by reading this report in the Fort Worth Weekly by Jeff Prince, who we all met for the first time at this protest on '05."

State Fair of Texas Big Tex Choice Awards

The State Fair of Texas starts up in about a month, running from September 26 through October 19. Each year there is a competition among food vendors for the Big Tex Choice Award.

This year over 40 contestants tried to be among the final 8.

Last year's winner, Abel Gonzales, who won with his Fried Cookie Dough concoction is in the running again this year, making the final 8 cut with an even more disgusting sounding dessert, this one called Fire & Ice. Consisting of a battered deep-fried pineapple ring, topped with frozen banana flavored whipped cream covered with strawberries and syrup.

Other equally disgusting sounding final 8 desserts were a Deep-Fried Banana Split, a Deep-Fried Grilled Cheese Sandwich, Deep-Fried Chocolate Truffles, Deep-Fried Jelly Bellys, Deep-Fried Chocolate-Covered Strawberry Waffle Balls on a Stick and Chicken-Fried Bacon Strips.

If I hadn't seen this type stuff with my own eyes I'd think someone was making it up, but I saw last year's winning Fried Cookie Dough. I also saw the Deep-Fried Latte and the Deep-Fried Coke.

And I saw a lot of really fat people buying this stuff.