Goodbye

Last year, which I really do have to say now, I dated a woman who I had a great time with. Things took a surprising and unfortunate turn for the worse and we sadly but amicably parted ways. Though I'd felt strongly towards her, I figured I'd get over it quickly as we'd only dated for almost two months.

Here I am many months later and I still haven't gotten over her. She's been hovering in my thoughts for this entire time and despite my attempts to move forward, something's kept her there. I'm fairly sure I know what it is now, and I think I know what I need to do... I need to say goodbye.

I did say goodbye to her, but I didn't get to say everything I needed to say. Now I need to say them. I don't know if she ever even got this blog location, or if she did if she follows me or not. I wouldn't if I were her. So me posting this may be just talking to myself. But I think it's important that I put into words what I need to say. Writing what I need to say has a permanency to it that thinking does not. I hope that this is what I need to finally move on.

Yes, this post will be very personal, but I'll maintain appropriate anonymity levels.

Dear Shock,

It's been, well, a pathetically long time since you said we couldn't be together. I know this isn't anyone's fault, and I know it's not what you wanted, but that's not why I'm writing this. I'm writing this to explain a few things it's taken me this long to figure out.

When we parted ways I figured you would get over me in short order and wouldn't waste time looking for someone else. I thought I would too. I went on some dates, met some people, but nothing really stuck. Then I gave up. I didn't try anymore. I chalked it up to a temporary slump, but it's persisted to this day.

When Valentines Day hit yesterday and I saw some of the most foul pessimism about the day and some of the most wonderful and heartfelt attempts it finally made me admit something.

I was with you for less than two months, but in that short time I fell in love with you.

It's not just that I wanted to have someone to give flowers to yesterday, it was that I wanted to give them to you. I wanted to be able to do something sappy and stupid and get you to smile that smile at me. I wanted you to laugh at some stupid joke I made, or throw a chocolate at my head, or comment on my shirt. I didn't care what it was, I just wanted you to be there.

I am intensely aware that this is pathetic. You're some woman I met online who I went on some dates with. Yeah it was great, but it ended and I should have moved on. But you know what? I didn't.

To say you were great isn't sufficient. To say you amazed me doesn't even begin to cover it.

You left me breathless, stuttering, and blushing like every time we were together.

Things weren't perfect, even in my rose colored glasses. You and I were eventually going to have a knock-down, drag-out brawl over astrology and other magical thinking at some point. It's possible we wouldn't have made it past that point. My skeptical thinking and your open mind were bound to have clashes. But I didn't care.

I wanted to try, to give it my all, to be someone you could be proud of being with. I wanted to know that even though we disagreed, we still cared enough to respect each others opinions. I wanted to be with you for more than a few dates. Those fantasies of being with you forever were more than I gave them credit for. I wanted to walk in my parents door with you on my arm and watch that potential catastrophe all the while smiling knowing that you would be with me, no matter what they thought. I wanted my friends to meet you and finally get why I was so excited. I wanted my sister to approve.

None of this will ever happen. I know that. And it hurts to say this, but I'm finally ready to accept that. Goodbye then was goodbye forever. I've immortalized you in my writing, but beyond that, you are gone, out of my reach forever. It's come to this...

I loved you. I really did. I wanted forever with you. But that dream is over. It's finally time to say it and to really, really mean it.

I miss you.

Goodbye.

-S

While I'm on my soap box

Homeopathy is water.

Lots of people out there think that homeopathy is some kind of "natural medicine" (both false) that is a reasonable comparison to "western" medicine. These people have heard all sorts of things in the news making homeopathy sound like a reasonable choice. But, in my experience, almost none of these people realize that homeopathy is almost always 100% water. So, in my tiny effort to spread the truth about this nonsense, the following is how to create your very own homeopathic cure! Specifically the homeopathic product Oscillococcinum, a product that is marketed as flu relief.

Step 1: Get a duck heart and liver and grind them into a paste.

Step 2: Take a single drop of that paste and dilute it with 100 drops of water.

Step 3: Shake vigorously.

Step 4: Take a single drop of this new solution and dilute it with 100 drops of water.

Step 5: Shake vigorously.

Step 6: Repeat steps 4 and 5 four hundred (400) times in a row.

Step 7: Drink 1 gram of this solution!

...

Yes, that's really it. Check out homeopathy and Oscillococcinum on Wikipedia if you don't believe me. How does this in theory work? Well, you see, when you shake the solution the water "remembers" the important bits, and you therefore gain all the benefits even though you are diluting the original solution.

...

Doesn't make any sense, does it? That's because homeopathy is batshit insane. Water memory? Diluting it makes it stronger? And why in the fuck would you start with a freaking duck heart and liver?

So remember, next time someone mentions homeopathy, there's only one response to that: "Homeopathy is water".

I will also accept "Homeopathy is bullshit." Not technically true, but it sure gets the point across.

Immunize for Good

http://www.immunizeforgood.com/

I have become a crusader for vaccines, as you may have noticed. Now whenever I need someone to read up on vaccines and get the actual unvarnished truth, I have a great website to send them to, that being Immunize for Good as seen above. It gives direct honest answers while not sweeping anything under the rug. As sources of information about vaccines go, this is about the best one I've seen. It's easily accessible for anyone who can read, laid out simply and logically, and a lot better than trying to wade through forum discussions to find the truth. Spread the word!

The AZ nightmare

As someone who found out about the shooting thing early this morning by reading a blog, I'm a bit behind on the commenting/twitter/whatever conflagration that's going on right now. I have thoughts that I really want to work through, so here I go.

"Don't politicize this tragedy!"

It's kind of hard not to politicize an attempted assassination of a political figure. However, it's really easy to hide behind politicization to avoid actually having to think clearly. This whole Sarah Palin nonsense is just that, utter nonsense. Yes she made an inappropriate graphic, that's not in question, but did that graphic cause this situation? Um... That's one hell of a stretch. Yes it would be nice to have someone to blame, but life is never so easy.

What about the fact that it was a right wing psycho that killed a left wing target? Well, Loughner (the assassin) wasn't a right wing psycho. He was described as liberal by his friends, he has been reported as a registered Republican and Independent which is confusing, and unless the Tea Party put the Communist Manifesto on their reading list recently, he's just not fitting the cookie cutter "right wing" shape.

Well Giffords was obviously a right wing target, I mean, remember that Sarah Palin document? Once again, details cloud the issue: Giffords was a "Blue Dog" democrat, which isn't the leftest of the lefts. As much as it would be easy to say this is is Red on Blue crime, reality complicates things by not making perfect sense.

Most importantly, we don't, as far I as know right now, know why this happened. It may not have been politically motivated. It seems to make logical sense, but as someone once said "Logic is a method by which we go wrong with confidence." This situation is neither simple nor easy and certainly isn't logical. I read today that Loughner had a gripe with Giffords because she failed to answer one of his fairly incoherent questions to his satisfaction, but was that enough to drive him to try to kill her? As he's not talking, we may never know.

Guns

I have heard over and over that if this man didn't have access to a gun this never would have happened. As this particular event took place outside, Loughner could have done as much damage, or more, with a well aimed car. One of the main reasons the shooting stopped where it did was because Loughner took time to reload and was overwhelmed by two bystanders. Imagine if he had brought a sword and was any good with it? Don't need to reload a sword. He could have done as much damage and more. Yes, the gun is bad, but if sufficiently motivated, any weapon would have done.

I have also heard that a bystander helped the situation by pulling his legally concealed weapon and firing on Loughner, but I can't verify that.

I'm sure I'm beating a dead horse here, but it's not a gun that killed those people, it was a person. He made the choice.

Mentally Ill.

As I am mentally ill, this particular point is really grating on my nerves. I am mentally ill; I have mentally ill friends; the stigma attached to "mentally ill" is not fair to the millions of people in this country who are mentally ill but wouldn't ever do something like this. Not every person with a mental illness is sitting on the edge of a knife, a random thought away from a murder spree.

I've heard it guessed, by a doctor no less, that Loughner was very likely a paranoid schizophrenic and I tend to agree that this is likely. I still have to point out that for every paranoid schizophrenic that does something horrible like this, there are tens if not hundreds of thousands who do not. Demonizing the diagnosis isn't helping anyone, and may indeed endanger people who have this diagnosis. It makes as much sense to say that every person who has a heart defect will eventually die because of that heart defect.

Jared Lee Loughner

This man killed 6 people and wounded at least 14 others. It bothers me that this, his defining moment, will be all we're ever likely to know about the man since he's not talking. He'll be branded as left or right wing, a psycho, and a killer. But is that all there is to him? Just some political beliefs and that he killed people? He liked the Communist Manifesto and Mein Kampf, but is that it?

It is the usual reaction of people to take someone like this, paint him in black and white, and leave it alone. But this young man made choices, some good, some very bad, and I want to know why. Aside from his choices, he was also a son, a friend, someone who read a lot, and had strong opinions. He liked YouTube and MySpace. He read The Wizard of Oz, Peter Pan, Gulliver's Travels, and Through The Looking Glass. I want more.

My point is Loughner was a person. Whatever his faults may have been, however bad his choices, he was still a person and should be treated as more than just a killer. Yes, he killed people, but if we brush the person off, accept the "right wing psycho" label, and don't try to understand why he did what he did, how can we ever hope to prevent this in the future? He had friends and family. They could see he was unhinged. Could they have done anything to help? Is there anything useful we can learn from Loughner's tragically bad choices?

Imprisoning all the mentally ill isn't an option. Telling politicians they can't do anything that can possibly be taken out of context in a bad light isn't going to work. Restricting guns from responsible adults won't work. We need to find out, from Loughner, how he could have been reached, how someone could have helped prevent this tragedy. Otherwise, we're doomed to repeat this tragedy.

Red Dead Redemption: Undead Nightmare... Or more proof I'm weird.

A while ago I played Red Dead Redemption and, though I admittedly spent more time playing poker and wandering around the wilderness looking for stuff than playing the actual missions, I thought it was one of the better games I had played in a long time. However, far more important, I felt it was one of the best stories that any video game has ever tried to tell with a main character that was very well fleshed out. Possibly the best fleshed out video game character ever.

Why do I say this? John Marston, a former outlaw, forced to hunt his old old gang members to be reunited with his family, was more than just a 3D polygonal thing for me to drive around in a video game. From the very beginning of the game, the personality of John, a very tough man with a softer side that shone through from time to time, was very clear. John was a hard man, vicious when he had to be, but honest and loyal, turning down the offers from prostitutes with a polite but firm, "I'm a married man, ma'am". He wasn't hunting his old friends for any reason but because he had no choice. John would do anything for his family, that was made quite clear.

As the game progressed, John grew beyond the basic shell of a character he started with. He was a hard man, but he had motivations beyond the "save my family" standard, and he made friendships and relationships with the strangest of bedfellows work through a combination of his unerring blunt honesty and his harsh and demanding attitude. He worked with the ranch owner that saved his life (who clearly grew sweet on him over time), grave robbers, snake oil salesmen, sheriffs, marshals, corrupt government officials, and more, never changing in his determination to save his family. As I played the game I grew not only to like John, but to respect him. He was never shy about his past, but had clearly worked hard to become something more. Now he was fighting, tooth and nail, to be sure he could have that back.

Eventually the game did end, and I had played poker and looked for stupid freaking weeds for long enough, so I bid the game adieu and moved on to other frontiers. Still, I was sad to put the game down. I really liked the game, especially the story, and it's hard to not want more of that.

Time passed, then I heard about this new Red Dead Redemption, Undead Nightmare thing, I thought, "Oh cool! Zombies and Red Dead! Could be fun!" And in as much as that, I was dead on. But there was something surprising for me.

Playing the game, hearing John's voice, seeing him interact with his family, brought back a rush of feelings. I realized that, in seeing this video game character, a written fake person, that I had quite literally missed him. That seeing him again, hearing him talk and interact with his family and others, truly brought out a feeling of seeing an old friend again. I'm dead serious, after putting down RDD and thinking I'd never see him again, getting one last real time to see John Marston in action a completely unexpected treat.

It may signal that I'm really insane, but I think it shows just how good the writers were for this game. I missed John Marston, I missed hearing his voice, I missed his aggressive manner of handling his less honest companions, I missed watching him tease his wife and clumsily try to be a good father to his son. I missed his attitude, his smile, and his unending efforts to be a good man in a world out of control.

Now that I've beaten Undead Nightmare I am sad that it's over. I'm losing a friend again. I'm losing John Marsten, and the second time is harder because I really now know what I'm going to miss. John isn't a real person, I can't go find him, or drop him an email. All I can hope is that somehow Rockstar makes another game with John as the main character without screwing everything up, as usually happens.

Goodbye John. I will miss you.

Oh, right, the actual game. As zombie games go, I enjoyed it. Things get really hectic and annoying when zombies get all up in your business, and the first level is a desperate dash to try to find ammunition, but you're blasting away the undead in a myriad of fun settings, you have the opportunity to catch and ride the Four Horses of the apocalypse, and you get to visit, and sometimes kill, all those characters you loved from RDD. It's a great add on to a great game. Visiting with John is just the kind of perk I get worked up about.

Vaccines... Government / Big Pharma conspiracy?

I have heard this particular line of nonsense before, usually from anti-vaxers, but occasionally from well meaning if misinformed people. I mean, really, who doesn't want to mistrust the government? Buncha taxing jerks, and they're in bed with the Big Pharma jerks who want to poke us with expensive needles, right?

First, look at this from the view of the greedy government types. They get money from us via taxes, and boy howdy do they get our money. But that one important prerequisite of getting that money? The people they are taxing have to not only be alive, but live long enough to get some serious cash. And the higher quality of life those people have, the longer they live, the more taxes they pay. So in the view of the greedy government, those vaccines better work really well. Therefore, in this case, it is in the government's best interests to make sure Big Pharma is getting those vaccines to everyone they can.

Now, Big Pharma is clearly in it for the money, right? So they're charging thousands of dollars per dose of vaccine, right? Well, actually, no. If you really want to squeeze all the money you can out of not only America but indeed the entire world, you have to make that vaccine as cheap as possible. A $5 injection is a tiny deal here, but in poverty ridden Africa? If we are really going to reach those millions of potential customers then those vaccines have to be as cheap as humanly possible. And if one pharma company puts out a vaccine cheaper than yours, you scramble to find a cheaper way to get your vaccine made.

Oh no! Cutting corners is a clear sign of shoddy and even dangerous vaccines, right? Did you forget about the greedy government? They want their people alive and taxable, and Big Pharma damn well better keep people alive or the government will remove your funding and give it to the other guys making the cheap yet still effective vaccines. On top of that, cheaper vaccines mean more Americans to tax, so the government is pushing on Big Pharma to cut costs as well.

How does that big pharma government conspiracy sound now? Two huge greedy groups who both benefit from cheaper and more effective vaccines. They may be greedy jerks, but there's no money to be made unless the vaccines work and are affordable.

Again with the personal anecdote ending... My old Capoeira instructor, Gorilla, don't ask, got his PhD in micro biology, or something similar, and got a job with a pharmaceuticaal company shortly thereafter. His job was to find a way to reduce an already cheap vaccine to less than $.05 a dose. Big Pharma reducing costs, not at government behest, but in an effort to make the vaccine so affordable that they could help prevent that disease in as many people as possible. Making money? No. Helping people acoss the globe. That is what the real goal is: saving lives by preventing horrible diseases. You can take that to the bank.

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It's Vaccine Awareness Week!

Hopefully you've either never heard or this or at least heard about it from either sciencebasedmedicine.org or scienceblogs.com/insolence/. See what's going on is there's this Anti-Vaccine/Anti-Science, trying to be polite here, person by the name of Joe Mercola (to whom I will not link for fear of speading his lies) who has dubbed this week the title above in an attempt to bombard the Internet with his misinformation and falsehoods regarding the dangers and efficacy of vaccines. The doctors at SBM and Respectful Insolence decided to mirror that... Guy's idea by trying to spread as much truth about vaccines this week. While I am aware that like three people actually read this blog, I'm still going to throw my hat in the pro-science/pro-evidence side of this little online tussle.

Vaccines work. Want proof? Find me a case of Smallpox. Go ahead and look! I'll wait... Note how the only Smallpox on the planet is frozen in researcher's labs under high security? That there is proof that vaccines work. There's other evidence, but it doesn't get better than Smallpox, a horrifying disease that was completely eradicated by vaccines. If you insist on more proof, SMB and RI both have dozens if not hundreds of posts on vaccine efficacy that you can check out.

Don't vaccines cause autism or something? No, they don't, but if you've heard this there's a good chance it's because of Mercola or Jenny McCarthy by way of Oprah. Not only is this false, but it's the most pernicious attack on science, relying on emotion fueled rants from parents who believe their children were thusly affected by vaccination. Science and studies don't make these parents feel better, and all the evidence in the world won't change the mind of a parent who "knows" what really happened. That Mercola and his ilk use these poor people's tragedies to fuel their weapons is deplorable. Vaccines do not cause autism. Parents beliefs aside, the evidence clearly shows this. Again, SBM and RI have all the information you need.

I implore you to read the evidence about vaccines. Not just from the shrieking people, but also the calm doctors and medical professionals who really are helping people and aren't the "big pharma" schills they are being made out to be.

As a final point, a personal anecdote. My father is having some health issues and can't afford a bout with the flu because he might die from it. Because of this, for the first time in my life, I am getting a flu vaccination. I'm doing this because it might save my father's life. Does this seem reasonable to you? I sure hope so.

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