Episode 125: Genocyde Unleashed

Many things have transpired recently.

The last weekend I was off, I was as sick as hell. I was barely breathing with an erratic pulse rate and feeling like I'd been eaten by a bear and pooped off a cliff. Every cigarette I lit was agony. The uber-flu had left me weak and infected...again. I did a lot of thinking during that weekend. At some points, I'd start wondering if I was even going to make it through my next sleep period. As you can imagine, I resisted sleep for fear of not waking. Not that I'm afraid of dying but the last thing in the world that I wanted was dying with the knowledge that I had done it to myself in larger part than not.

During my sickness, I remember feeling great when I worked out. I remember how everyone else was so happy with me when I'd quit smoking and just how miserable I'd been. At points, I'd be curled up on the bathroom floor, my jaw clenched, sweating, cursing God, the farmers and the scientists who made that evil weed so addictive. I was staring down the barrel of it all. I was facing the horrible truth about cigarettes yet again...I was STILL an addict. I was addicted to the one legal drug that kills hundreds of thousands per year. I was addicted to the one drug that is overlooked in the pantheon. I was addicted, seemingly hopelessly so, to a drug that is underrated in terms of lethality. It's drug addiction and it transcends all things. Even the workouts that I had enjoyed so much were becoming more taxing because of them.

I ripped Allen Carr's Audiobook The Easy Way To Stop Smoking to iTunes and put it on my iPhone, this time, in a concerted effort to get through it. I started noticing that the things were foul-tasting. I'd passively smoked and never noticed it. I thought I was enjoying them but I was only kidding myself. I was sick for the fourth time in the past year and I was not enjoying that in the least.

Through the following week, I smoked as I listened to the book in every spare moment that I could find an excuse to have. By the time the weekend at work had ended, I was like a rabid dog, waiting to break the leash and get on with my plans.

See, if it's one thing I hate, it's having to answer to someone for any reason unless it logically makes sense to me. For some reason, I didn't seem to have a problem being a total slave to some plant. I was letting it destroy me and I was paying through the nose for that very "privilege" and I use that term loosely.

Monday morning, I'd smoked my "final" cigarette. I was ready, I was sure of it. The day came and went. I went out to meet with a friend. I was having a great time. I was blessedly unaware of the withdrawal pangs that would hit me on occasion. They were so subtle, that I went through my day and night, feeling increasingly better. Unfortunately, a series of frustrations later that night had nearly driven me back but I stopped myself. While taking that friend back home, I found myself nodding off at the wheel. Okay, flu I can handle. Car accident as I'm on the verge of moving, no.

On the way back home, I'd stopped at a convenience store with the intention of only purchasing a soda as a means of staying awake. Instead, in my moment of weakness, I caved. Normally, I'd beat myself senseless for such a failure but this time, I made up my mind, no more self-pity parties and no more mental masochism. I smoked each one conciously, asking myself each time, "How's it taste, Mothafucka?" The answer that I offered, "Absolutely horrid."

My plan was revised, I would finish this pack and do away with them. Surprisingly, the pack lasted me through until noon on Wednesday. At Noon on Wednesday, February 27, 2009, I took myself off of that leash. I broke away from the trap and am pleased to report that I am a happy non-smoker. I don't use patches or gums. I don't use any replacements. I'm just done. It was much easier than I thought. I'm still suffering withdrawl but the pangs are so subtle that they can be withstood and they're not painful.

I breathe much better now, I don't wake up hacking and sputtering and I don't feel the "need" for a cigarette any more. Normally, I'd have one upon waking up and right before bed but now, that's a thing of the past.

Now, I'm going to be getting back into my workout. My self-defense studies are becoming more advanced, brutally so and I'll need all the oxygen that I can get.

"As their bodies mounted, his wrath proceeded by that of the sound of thunder, he razed their numbers as they counted for nothing. The skies were rent asunder and the earth lie shaken at the sound of the name as it was uttered. The winds raged and carried it to the nations so that it may fall on all ears. Verily, the earth did cry, 'Genocyde be thy name.'"

-Book of Armaments 30:97

Episode 124: For All Those Who Toil Relentlessly...

I've had my share of stubborn pride. I've pushed and worked through some of the worst of the worst states I've ever had the displeasure of experiencing physically. I've watched as some just bowed out for awhile and then came back to work claiming that the stress was just getting to them. Many of my co-workers and even some close to me have told me that maybe the stress at work was getting to me.

Still, there was one position upon which, I stood adamant. I've always said that it was weakness on the part of those who took off due to stress while secretly harboring a bit of envy that they could simply take off for a month or so.

Today, at the doctor's office, I finally gave in and expressed how I needed some time off. If it was another thing I'd always said it was that little fact that, "Sure, I've got the time and I can afford the visits but there's no way I'd ever get it." I was right.

I could whine about how unfair it is but we all know the bottom line on that one. I've been as sick as a dog for the past few days. Did that make a difference? No. Has the fact that this year has been the year that my immune system decided that I didn't need it any more made one bit of difference? No. So, it's only quite natural that I'm just going to have to grin and bear it.

I've come to understand those that work and work and get nothing in return for it. I raise my water bottle to you all. It seems like, more and more, those of us that put in the work are only asked to put in more and more work only to rack up all that sick leave time but never touch it on pain of reprisal from the system that bestows it upon us.

It's sickening isn't it? We go on suffering our daily crosses and bearing them, most times, without complaint. When it's time for us to go into our respective corners for a bit of rest, our corner people aren't there. It's completely sickening.

I still see people who don't work, getting money and living better than I do. All the while, these people are not asked to submit urine tests for drug analysis but you and I have to submit them so that we can work for what little we actually get out of the deal. I see many of us who work hardly getting by at all while those who refuse to work get a living handed to them. I wonder whatever happened to those posters bearing the rhetoric that no one owes you a living? That's what it is, people, rhetoric. Only that, and nothing more.

Perhaps it's this very reason I'm disappointed in our new president. He's already going with a tactic that didn't work in the first place only to reprise that bit. Had each of us, the worker, the toiling taxpayer, had received a slice of that $700 Billion plus dollar pie, imagine what we could have done. The current unemployment rate would not have mattered at least for one year. Many of us would have had more than what we would have needed to put ourselves into business. The economy would have been more than stimulated...it would have been kickstarted the right way. Why won't it? Because it makes sense and politicians cannot line their pockets immediately.

I guess my fatigue is getting the better of me in this instance. It's no secret that I despise my job. It's no secret that I want out and I'm working on that.

Sometimes, like all of you who go through your own trials and tribulations, I wonder if this whole thing is just worth it. I ask the same questions you do. When will it end? When will I finally see the sum total of what I'm working for? When are the others going to get off their butts and hop to it?

I honestly don't think those questions will ever be answered. I'm sick and tired of being sick and tired.

I say we raise our glasses high tonight and lay ourselves down.

I say we start taking everything we deserve.

I say it's time the tables are turned.

Episode 123: Angels On One Shoulder, Devil In My Pocket

This week has become hell for me. My spine and hip were out of whack again. So much was it out of whack that I went to the chiropractor to be cracked into shape on Wednesday. Why? Well, being out of whack activated a trigger point in my back that made agony legendary in Hell radiate into my right side when I twisted to my left or leaned forward to change my songs on my CD player in my truck. Needless to say...it hurt.

Wednesday night, as I'm getting over that, I notice this lethargic feeling overcoming me. Not only that but I'm popping Pepto tablets like crazy trying to keep from having to go hit the latrine every couple of hours. Use your imagination and do the math, I'm not telling. I had this tickle at the back of my throat, my chest hurt (smoooookiiiiiing, natch) and I started generally feeling like total crap. By Thursday morning, I figured I'd sleep it off and feel better. Well, I woke up Thursday evening and felt generally loaded down. It was like going to sleep naked and waking up wearing the Iron Man suit without the benefit of the servos to help you move the thing. Now, once I'm up and have dragged my behind out of bed, I'm okay. Thursday evening, I was in the bathroom and just could not get myself in gear. I figured I should go back to bed for another 20 minutes and I'd be fine but that didn't work. I slept til it was almost time for me to go. By the time I arrived at work (on time, no less...top that) I still felt like I'd been eaten by a bear and pooped off a cliff. I hung in there until roughly 10:30 p.m. I went home.

In doing this, I called Misty and spoke with her. Once done with that, I did something unprecedented...I went to sleep and slept clean through the night. On a side note, I went from smoking a pack a day to making one pack last 36 hours. I'm doing goooooooooooood. Friday morning I called my doctor only to find out, much to my dismay, that Monday Morning at 10:45 a.m. is the earliest I can be seen. Oh, great. After checking around, I've found that this nice little uberflu has been running riot since Christmas and then went into overdrive over the past couple of weeks. Normally, I'm not succeptable to flus so much as I am upper respiratory infections. The bad part is that I think I know where I got it. See, almost two weeks ago, I spent a lot of time doing hospital transport. Again, do the math.

So right now, I'm friggin' miserable. Great.

So what's been happening? Well, I've been using my iPhone to listen to Allen Carr's book The Easy Way To Stop Smoking. Yes, I'm going to make another attempt to slay that dragon once and for all. Allen's humorous and educated approach is nothing less than encouraging and motivational. If you are one who smokes and wants to quit, hit your library up and get this book or get it on CD. I've also been rediscovering some of my old tapes. Look, I spent $50 going retro, I'm gonna use it. I've also been wearing my glasses a lot more than my contacts. Truth is, with the Transitions lenses, these things have allowed me to do something I haven't been able to do in ten years...see daylight in living color without pain or irritation. Even when they don't darken, I can still see as you do and I don't have one single problem. It's worth foregoing contacts for the time being.

What's been going on with the show? Well, I could tell you but I'm going to stop at only this; we're recording for podcasts, I'm still listening to CDs for review and these podcasts will be available for release soon. How soon? Well I don't have a release date for the podcasts yet but soon...just keep an eye open. Live broadcasts won't begin until I'm moved to New Jersey and settled in. Once that happens, then I'll start broadcasting live again.

One more thing, an old friend of mine has been emailing me at my gmail address. I'd email you back but it only reaches you if you're on...whenever you're not signed on, I get my email kicked back.

Episode 122: Paranoia

Let me fill you in on a little something. If you want to join PrisonPlanet.tv, by all means, I suggest it. Go look at all the information there and share it with others. It's Alex Jones' site and it's a really good site with plenty of video (downloadable, no less) audio and news. On top of that you can listen to his show via the web or even your phone. I listen through my iPhone most of the time. Then again from the previous entry you probably caught that.

If you're thinking about joining the discussion forum...let it go. I was there and recently bore witness to the biggest spiritual pissing contest I have ever seen in my life. Christians have non-Christians pegged as types who are disinformation agents for the New World Order and non-Christians are more frightened of the Christians than they are of those in positions of power that want them dead or enslaved.

Okay, I'm of the mind that there are people in positions of power that use us like cattle and would like to see about 80% pass on while the remaining 20% just serve them like a buncha good little monkeys. Anyone who agrees that there is something wrong and agrees that something needs to be done (like imposition of more oversight by the citizenry) is fine by me. I'm a Christian of about two years and I'm still discovering more and more about my faith by the day. It's no prerequisite of mine that you believe in what I believe to stand against traitors and those who would commit the act of treason against our constitution. My only prerequisite is that you keep an open mind. It's fine to question and make observations. Hell, that's something that's needed but a spiritual pissing contest is not.

I'd kindly pointed out that there's an old war tactic known as "Divide and Conquer." This tactic makes perfect sense when you need to end the whole mess. You simply get the people divided and blaming each other and then you move in for the endgame. The endgame usually doesn't take long. Once those people realize that the game is up, it's too late...they're pretty well fucked.

Needless to say, it did nothing to abate the bullshit. The bullshit floweth over in that instance. I figured I'd just ignore it until I began getting attacked myself.

My mistake was that thinking I had found a solid group of people who wanted to take their country back. No, they're just as divided. Sadly, this is where our country's headed.

If I'm right, over half of us will end up dead and the rest will end up microchipped and shoved away into some microcity somewhere. Families will be divided and the tyrants in government, finance and world politics will have their agenda completed. We will end up falling in line.

I still remember on September 11, 2001. I'd heard about children crying to their parents that the world was going to be blown up. I can't say that the concerns of those children weren't legitimate. I don't remember anyone being black, white, asian, mexican, christian, jewish, satanist, pagan or otherwise. That day, we were all Americans with one sentiment. As horrible as that day was, I would like to think it was also our best day. In the week that followed, I remember seeing the best of us step forward to help with the cleanups, rescues and comforting of those who needed it. Now, I see we have degenerated. We've been staring in the face of a new 9/11 for about two years since those in government stated that they felt another one coming. With that will come more legislation and our freedoms taking a backseat...if not the goddamn trunk. We'll probably see martial law all over. We'll probably see America get locked down and guns confiscated. Basically, we're going to have our asses handed to us.

Chances are, we probably deserve it. See, we need to rise up and take back our freedoms. We need to send a clear and intelligent message to our government that we're not going to give any more than what we have and we're taking that which we've given back. We don't deserve those freedoms, though. We've used them to get the wrong kind of legislation passed. We've used them to impose upon each other. Honestly, we deserve those FEMA camps that are now popping up in the news that we were told did not exist. We deserve the more losses. We deserve the government we've ended up with because of our lack of participation. We wanted security so badly, now, here it comes; one side of it's face, a kiss and the other, genocide.

We deserve all this, mostly, because of our paranoia first and our apathy next.

The Stories That Made America And The Stories America Made Up

Check This Out When You Get Time. It's a thirty minute long video of former actor Robert Wuhl teaching a history class and the most valuable lesson that's in it is priceless. I laughed 'til I couldn't breathe.

Episode 121: Unidentified Communications Object

Throughout my life, I've always wondered just what would happen if the world released the ultimate Multimedia Machine upon the world.

Would everyone carry one? Would it change the state of things as we know them?

Seems that way.

You've seen the commercials that tell you that, if you can think of a use, the iPhone has an application that will allow you to do it. Well, after three months of playing with this fucker, I can tell you that the saying is true. Apple isn't advertising falsely. It's a phone, an iPod, a radio, a day planner, a gaming device, a personal computer, comic books, books, do nothing fuck off device and general boredom killing machine.

I told you that to tell you this. I've gone retro for the moment. My iPhone keeps me up to date on everything I could want and it's my constant companion. Hell, if I get bored enough, I'll chat with Amy, an A.I. program based in New York City. She still isn't up on the lingo and who can blame her? The English language is the toughest to learn, after all. If I need to go somewhere I've never been, the map/navigation system will get me there. If I need to know something about The Constitution or the Bible, I've got apps for those too, I can watch movies, old T.V. Shows, shit, name it.

I even listen to The Alex Jones Show on this thing. While listening to Alex's show, I came across a website called VaticanCatholic.com and they promised a massive package of information for only ten bucks. I love cheap info, so I bought it. A week later this massive package came in. I got two encyclical books, Two larger books (one of them was the size of a phone book), Eight DVDs, Some papers I haven't gone through yet and two cassette tapes.

Wait...cassette tapes? No one on earth had a cassette player anymore. No stores even sell them anymore. Oh boy...all these DVDs and they couldn't slap the info onto a CD? Next thing you know, these guys will wanna bring eight track tapes back.

This is where I went retro. Last place I even saw a cassette player was on a video for Lordi's song "Hard Rock Hallelujah" and I couldn't help but think that the only reason everyone was looking at the girl in the video sideways was because she had a tape player on her belt. I hit the dollar stores and found nothing. Not even some shitty cheap ass version that would let me plug into the computer via patch cable and convert to MP3. Geez!

All the way to and from the Dollar store, I was listening to more bad news on talk radio about how we were about to go down the drain economically. Yeah, tell me something I don't know. On the way back, though, I lamented the loss of my one tape deck. I had no clue as to where it went. I actually found myself wishing that I'd had my Aiwa tape deck again with the AM/FM tuner and something like 40 Presets even though I only used maybe five total.

I remembered walking around with tapes in just about every pocket and just listening to them for hours on end. I wouldn't stop walking until I was done with nearly every tape in my pockets. Life was really good back in those days. I remembered getting together with friends, putting scotch tape over the small write protection holes at the top and making mixtapes of various songs from different CDs that my friends had. We were the original Rip, Mix, Burn Generation. Does anyone else remember those days? Probably if you're over 30 by now, you remember how long that process used to take. You always had a favorite. Remember when portable CD players cost almost an arm and a leg and CDs would break your bank too?

I can't say I didn't see the day coming. I knew it was on it's way but I didn't think about it and I should have had a technological backup somewhere. Getting rid of that tape deck was a great idea....suuuuure. Now, I was stuck with two tapes that I couldn't listen to and I'd have to turn to the one place I didn't wanna go...the 'Net's own black market. What stunned me was that the best tape deck I found was nearly $50 and was actually (please refrain from laughing) listed as "vintage electronics." HAHAHHAHAHAHAHA...Whaaaa? The money wasn't a problem for me...I've got that but it was how the damned thing was marketed. Vintage Electronics is like marketing a used rubber like you'd market a used tire. Sure, it's used but look at that tread!

What will happen when the ultimate communications device is unleashed upon the public? What will we see? What will we hear? What will we sense?

Will there be wonder and awe? Will there be riots in the streets?

Will we all be watched?

iPhone 3G vs. Blackberry....FIGHT!!!

I wasn't surprised at how this ended and, quite frankly...I know about 99% in what this guy is talking about.