In "Dolphin leads beached whales to safety."

Thank you, I now feel squishy inside and ready for bed.

In "Rumours that Patrick Swayze has only 5 weeks to live."

He was in the New York Times crossword today. Hmmm?

In "The Medicated Americans: Antidepressant Prescriptions on the Rise."

A good point there. SSRI's are not for everybody. A stress related grief is usually not permanent. Hopefully, shouldn't be. They can give you a reference point to get on with life. Some folks just get born with a big, black cloud over their heads. When I'm off, for a while I see the most beautiful storm clouds and bizarre sunrises, but after a while it's only clouds and I gratefully hop back on the train. However, I do keep the dose lowish. The weirdly sad shit gives my writing humour.

The shit works for me. My well meaning friends that suggested I should be drug free changed their minds after experiencing the clean me. I go off once in a while to remind myself what fun a no-stop emotional roller-coaster can be. Pills let me step off safely.

In "CBS Reported Flight 93 Crashed Into Camp David."

Mister Story Bored nails the thing that bugs me about the 911 truth folks. If someone thinks for a bit about the arguments and comes up with a very good way of refuting a point, demolitions in the towers, steel girders weakening[but not melting], alternative video footage[WTC7] or simply phone calls to loved ones as the planes are heading in, the responses range from getting shouted down, to " I'm not prepared to speculate farther" and the same crap gets repeated the next day. Never mind that if you pull one block out numerous others take a dive too. People make a living off this and they can get very nasty if you point out the sometimes gaping holes in their arguments [which are repeated the next day/minute] Lack of critical thinking is embraced and If you use it you are A-no fun, or B-a goverment stooge.. One leader of this movement suggested that Popular Science, which did a book on this subject, could not be trusted because one of the publishers shared the same last name as someone in the Bush administration. Conspiracies are so much sexier than gross stupidy, laziness and bureacratic pissing matches. Air India could have been averted if some douchbag hadn't gotten his panties all twisted because a specific warning about it came through [in his little mind] the wrong channel. I think that the people who let this [911] happen are relieved that the 911 truthers are throwing this crap-circus over how pathetic the reality is. I don't mean to sound cranky, but this makes my brain bleed pooh.

In "Try New "Carbon Dioxide"!"

I had been drinking in my local and the Aussie beside me turned out to be a scientist who had just gotten back from Antartica. He explained somethings to me over a few pints. Extremely cold places are generally very dry places, ie Antarctica and Greenland. so as they warm up they become more humid. More humidity equals more snowfall, more snowfall equals thicker ice-pack. Being a P.R. flack means that you creatively lie for your paycheck. That must seriously fuck up your mind over time.

In "Some handy tips on how not to argue online."

Empathy-not-charm! Empathy-not-charm! Fuck sympathy! Andfuck you dog for nuzzling my keyboarnw dskgdvnadkjjnfnfc s

In "Finding a killer's internet history:"

Thank you Jeraboam. This riddle is actually one of many questions on a test developed to find out if the suspect being interviewed has some of the flags associated with being a psychopath. If somebody you know answers the question correctly don't get jiggy, but may be you should just go for the sex. Sorry about the long absence, but my new modem just died. I'm feeling real lack of emotion about this.

In "In Search of the Real Dracula"

Buffy Euro-trashed him. Episode one, season five.

In "Finding a killer's internet history:"

Exactly. Empathy cannot be faked. Psychopaths just don't have it. Psychopaths are not mentally ill. That's why some people call them monsters. Bernardo-Monster. Guy on corner screaming at the eye in the sky-Mentally ill. Serial behavor. Not some one-off terror spree, but a life of banal monsterism. At least the ones that murder people are easier to catch and remove than the psychopaths just damage the lives and societies that they live with on a daily basis.

Damn you, MJ for fucking up another one of my posts. I think slow, I type slow but I can kick your cat in the ass.

Charm is not the same as empathy. I am a very empathetic person, sometimes to the point of social paralysis, depression, etc. Thank God for meds, sunshine, my dog and booze. Charm is something that I have learned in order to get what I want [in my job it is very useful]. I can't use 'empathy' in order to manipulate some person , I'd be looking at myself taking advantage of some schmuck who was just like me. My charm or charming [verb] is kept in check by my empathy, so that I won't fuck someone [myself] over for a buck because of their weaknesses. Empathy is part of what keeps us apart from the psychopaths. Charm can be learned. What people want to hear and see can be picked up by being observant. Empathy is the thing [noun] that gives me compassion for my fellow person, dog and that guy I get chilli for at Tim Horton's after another late night shift. I don't want anything from the Tim Horton's guy. My dog loves me anyway. Charm=wanting something. Empathy=I can't help being it without despising myself. Manipulaters have a lack of empathy. I do not have to have a PHD in order to understand this. These kind of 'people' are not mentally ill, they are emotionally lacking. Why? That should be the topic of another post altogether.

Damn you MJ. I was about jump on the empathy train. I think that it might have been Hare who wrote that because psychopaths are so lacking in complex emotions that they sometimes commit excessive acts in order just to feel something. How about a riddle? Two sisters are attending a wedding. On of the sisters is getting married. The sister that isn't getting hitched wanders around the party and notices a very hansome young man that she's never met before. She manages a brief flirt with him but doesn't catch his name before the ceremony interrupts her. After the ceremony she can't find this young man and no one she asks seems to know who he was. Shortly after she murders her newly married sister. Why? Answer tomorrow.

In "Somebody drilled a hole in a Florida nuclear reactor's cooling system pipe. "

Small hot hole.

In ""

I'll never forget Gino beating up an entire Blues line during a Canuck/Blues playoff tilt. He was a bit more humble than Tiger Williams and always seemed to scrap with a big'ol grin on his face. He fired up the team [and his little pal Bure] and they went on to win the series. Nomeansno/Hanson Brothers song-"Oh no! Gino!"

In "High school teacher dissects live dog for students' benefit."

Skrik, Albert Camus wrote a book called 'The Rebel'. In it he described a slave being told by his master to do something that struck the slave as 'wrong'. Wrong in the way that goes to the bone, may be it was murder, or torture or just something that the slave would not do because it was a thing that would remove his humanity. The slave said no. Even if he hadn't been to a college ethics course. Empathy for a victim, or something as basic as a need for that shred of dignity that sometimes we have to cling to to exist without becoming some kind of robotic puppet made him/her to rebel against the only athority that he had known. We can't be robots anyways, we have minds, we are born with them. No choice. Even Al didn't really know, but I doubt many people could take him on in an argument like that. By the way, Mr. Camus really seemed to like people. That is not a weakness. Follow the logic, or illogic of his argument. We see things that we vehmenently disagree with and it is NOT because mommy or the church told us it was wrong. Gut reactions should be followed sometimes. If pure intelligence is your criteria look to experiments apon the retarded. Horses, I've heard, can be as smart as three year old humans, some parrots as intelligent as 5 year olds[with the emotional level of 2 year olds]. Smarter than some of the handicapped I've come across. Species then? Shit son, we white boys liked to sport hunt aborigonals on Tazmainia. Differn't species, right? H-Bob is talking about the human race growing up some more. Thats all. Aside from his revulsion at the vivisection, he is hoping some folks are taking some intellectual steps as the human species. Look into it. We really are not islands.

In "Belinda "

Peter and Belinda will have much hotter sex now.

In "Fewer than one in 10 climate scientists believe that climate change is principally caused by human activity"

Dang. I'm a bit liquered up ands it is rather late, but. Ahem. There is a very good book out there right now called 'Coal, a human history.' by Barbara Freese, a former Assistant Attorney General of Minnesota. She looked in depth into the effects of human industry on our little green planet and the future is not too bright. In short; coal came about from a couple of hundred million years of solar income. Uh, photosynthysis. Giant, bizarre, swampy forrests sucking up solar power, storing it, growing big, dying, turning into black sludge, compressing into fossel fuels and waiting for some hairless apes to figure out that it burns good. A couple of hundred million years of solar energy is being released over a VERY short time and nobody wants to turn off the television or the lights. The U.S.A. burns more coal for electricity than any other country in the world. The Kyoto Accord will never pass for that reason. Coal is still king and will change our world in ways that will kick all of our asses. Oh, by the way, China has the second largest coal deposits in the world after the U.S.A. Write them a very concerned letter.

In "Buttons and Soles"

Quick cobbler on Denmen for shoes, Embassy cleaners on Davie for other stuff, Melriches for wine and good-bitchy service while u wait.

In "Octopuses walking on two legs... I mean, tentacles."

The octopussies at our Vancouver aquarium used to sneak out at night and gobble up fishies in near-by tanks and then slip back home, innocent as lambses. Video caught the octo-star. Sneaky little inksters. True.

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