January 2003 - Spellbreaker
RayzRealm (c) January, 2003

-Low level memory formatting in progress
Memory reformatted
-Loading construct
Construct loaded, no errors
-Rebuilding Martix
Matrix build complete, no errors
-Scanning for agents, please stand by...
--Found 1 woman in the red dress, deleting....
--Found 1 man in the red dress and pearls, deleting...
--Found 1 dog in red dress and heels, deleting...
--Found 3 witches in pointy hats, deleting...
--Found 1 closet monster, deleting...
--Found 250 shape shifting sociopaths, deleting...
Agent scan completed, 257 agents deleted

Matrix is now online

Next Commmand>

Friday January 3

The year 2002 will be entered as a total personal write-off. I wonder if I can get an emotional tax credit rebate. It was a year of deep soul searching and angst. About the only thing to be said for 2002 was that I had a number of interesting conversations, read some good books, remained employed and in good health, but for the most part, it was a year of wandering around in the desert searching for things that probably no longer exist and probably never will again.

Two of my only remaining good friends are leaving the area as I make this entry. When I made the final entry of 2002, I was not sure when I would feel like writing, but have received a couple of e-mails, urging that I continue. I'm not sure what I will have to say in the coming year, save to say some observations and commentary I would not usually think twice of entering here, will be struck from the record. References to a couple of sick entities who entered my unprotected air space have also been removed. I thought I was getting much sharper at identifying these personas, but a couple did manage to slip in under my radar. I ended 2002 with a bit of damage control, which will probably continue well into 2003.

I have come away from 2002 with an increased awareness that many, if not most of the people I encounter are shattered and fragmented. What makes it difficult to identify and avoid such people is that they are expert shape shifters. I've spent too many years and effort rebuilding my own life. I spent New Years Eve engaged in a 3+ hour conversation with someone in Salt Lake City who has been where I've been, encountered the same sort of entities and seen what I have seen. It made for an enjoyable reality test that ended 2002 and opened 2003; thanks Prince, I'm sure we'll talk again soon, maybe exchange some writing ideas.

This past year has also been spent researching my own past, as well as those I have been involved with throughout my life and why I have felt such strong attractions to them. I had a number of conversations with someone I met last year about M. Scott Peck's book, "People Of The Lie", which is about the evil that few people see. Most folks would rather not explore childhood, physical, emotional and sexual abuse in out society, but from my long participation in 12 Step recovery groups plus my own long and arduous journey through therapy during the 70's, I realize that it is much more widespread than many people imagine.

I suppose many parents, clergy and others responsible for the well being of the young "think" that the victims of their lust, anger and rage, need for control and dominance will forget about what was inflicted on them by people they were supposed to love and trust. I will tell you from first hand experience that, NO, the child does not forget and time does not always heal by itself. This energy lingers on as the victim grows to maturity, to either perpetuate the cycle of abuse on to the next generation and the next generation, and so forth until the cycle is broken and the demons exorcised. During my early years in recovery I heard the term "Soul Murder" used over and over. This is a fitting label for the damage visited upon the child by parent or guardian who has physically, sexually or verbally abused those entrusted to their care. I am not against corporal punishment at all, as discipline in moderation is needed to instill in the child a sense of responsibility and self control. The problem is that too many guardians carry this way beyond acceptable boundaries, rape, beatings and verbal humiliation.

In extreme cases the personality of the child will fracture into multiple, sometimes totally autonomous personas as a defense mechanism. As I look back through my own life I now know that many of the people I considered "friends" as well as some that I got romantically involved with all had one thing in common, severe physical, sexual and/or emotional abuse. I personally spent the second half of the 70's into the early 80's in therapy and through groups reintegrating my own self. NO, I was not like Sybil, but my anger, the playful silly child, the rational adult, the intellectual and the self flagellating monk all had their own virtual spaces. Today it's just me, nowhere near as exciting as the younger me, but in many ways I'm much stronger and have a solid sense of who I am.

Every time I hear the single by Pat Benatar, "Hell Is For Children", I get a cold chill. It's a reminder of my own childhood. I wonder how many others feel the same sensation when they hear it. I know on some level my parents loved me deeply, mostly with a smothering strangulating love. As a friend I had in early recovery once said, "your parents didn't have children, they took hostages!"

For the duration of 2002 I asked myself over and over what it was that made me attract a certain type of person for as far back as I can remember. This may sound hokey, but we all have transceivers that are continuously sending and receiving signals. Call it vibes, aura or energy, but my hunch is that buried parts of us modulate these carriers, and only those who are tuned in to receive our signals respond. I can count...oh 20 to 25 people in my past, who after a relatively short period have all said the same basic thing, "God, I feel as it I've known you all of my life." Unfortunately very few of these liaisons lasted for very long. They burned very brightly, giving off intense heat and energy like a meteorite entering the atmosphere, burning out just as quickly. I will try to exercise more caution in the future when or if such interactions arise.

Last week I pulled out an old binder that contains a number of articles I wrote during the early to mid 80's. From 1982 through 1987 I wrote about 275 very lengthy journals under the pseudonym of "Jason", which were widely read and acknowledged as "wow" by almost 1000 readers from around the world. I have to say I did my best writing back in my drinking days, mostly while in a brownout condition. After I got sober I could barely bring myself to complete a sentence in print for almost two years.

I had written a three part series entitled, "Danny's Chant", about an intense friendship I had from 1982 to 1984. Danny and I shared an apartment for most of this period. From day 1, we felt we had known one another all of our lives, but it didn't take long for me to see that Danny was not who I thought he was. It took almost a year for me to find out he was a true multiple, who had a very dark evil side. Dan was bisexual and attracted anyone of either sex who crossed his path. I admit to envying his magnetism and charisma. It was after I began witnessing the other distinct personalities that I began looking for an exit. In the beginning nobody would believe me, until they had been around enough to see a number of different people emerge. His facial and physical features even changed as one of the other personalities took executive control of his ego. There were times he lost days at a time, pissing friends off while he was off somewhere in another place and time, cloaked in a totally different persona.

After two years of living sharing a space with him, things got so very weird, he had me doubting my own sense of reality to the point I threw him out. A couple of months later he moved to the West Coast. This was when I wrote the journals that got posted to the newsgroup. I didn't expect to get much of a response to "Danny's Chant", getting a couple of hundred e-mails from people who thanked me for writing the series. They were able to identify almost to the letter with my experiences. I found out through the grapevine a few years later that he had committed suicide.

Before hanging out with Dan, there were the two women I got deeply involved with after the divorce with my ex wife. Both of these women were textbook multiples. Then there was Wild Bill (as I liked to call him) who everyone thought was my biological brother. Most people claimed that we could pass for twins, which was where the similarity ended. Bill was probably the most fractured and crazy person I knew, but he had me as well as many others fooled and under his spell.

I always seem to attract the fragmented, both friends as well as the few romantic entanglements I've had. They were among the most talented, witty, charming, charismatic people I've known. In some ways I wish I could have remained friends with them. The only long term friends I still possess have been mentioned in many of my journals. They are the only sane and grounded people I know.

I know this seems like a strange opening for the first Flight Recorder of the new year. Since the turn of the millennium things have gotten strange. Barring any disasters I hope 2003 will be a year of exploration, further self discovery, and a chance to forge a few true and lasting friendships.

I'll end this turn of the new year entry with one of my typical commentaries. Once again we are getting hammered by another monster Nor'easter, anywhere from 6 to 24 or more inches and the possibility of another big'n coming toward the middle of next week. Last Winter was a walk in the park by comparison. My boss told me to take off early today whenever I felt like it, so I left a half hour early.

New England drivers really get stupid as soon as any precipitation begins to fall. As I headed North on 128, I saw flashing blue and yellow lights up ahead. I slowly drove past the ass end of a Ford Expedition sticking up from over an embankment at the shoulder of the road. As I turned off onto Route 2 South there was another SUV facing the wrong way, surrounded by more blue and yellow flashing lights. It looks like the driver made a few donuts on the snow covered road before spinning into a ditch. I'm home and it's time to hunker down, getting my back in the mood for some heavy duty shoveling whenever this thing ends.

Friday January 17

While I was standing in the supermarket checkout line today I was thumbing through that cornerstone of absolute truth and fact tabloid, "The Weekly World News". One cover story was "Prophets Predict Armageddon in 2003", yahoo! let the games begin!

I really don't have anything much to say as you can see. I've been in the deepest of funks for the past 6 to 8 weeks. There are a bunch of new links on the Library, Hangar18, Medical, Spiritual pages. Here are a handful of news item and journal links to chew on.

Friday January 24

During the past two weeks I received calls from a couple of vague acquaintances who would never usually call me, asking if it was ok to call since they didn't feel comfortable calling friends to vent their frustration. Both had recently lost their jobs, and like myself, are among the older workers who are having a much harder time finding any sort of work. It seemed strange that they chose me to call, but I patiently listened to them vent their anger. Of course I didn't sleep well on either of those evenings.

I'm depressed over having the two remaining close friends I have left in the world leave the area due to being out of work for extended periods after having depleted all of their resources.

I am grateful that I'm still (knock on wood) employed and have my health coverage. I have a (rented) roof over my head and enough to eat "today", plus I'm still in pretty good health despite a couple of medical scares during 2002 where tests came back normal. I was going to buy myself a frisky new PC, but have put the purchase on hold for now. My archaic 300MHZ PII machine with 256MEG of memory still runs fine with Windoze 98-B.

I borrowed "Minority Report" starring Tom Cruise from the cafe at work. I enjoyed it, but it's not something I would go out of my way to purchase for my own library. I did pick up a copy of "Signs" starring Mel Gibson on DVD at Costco for cheap. I like M. Night Shyamalan's style, along with his other two films "The Sixth Sense" and "Unbreakable". I admit that I did not sleep well after watching Signs, the aliens in the film were nasty pieces of work. So, OK, I fess up, I left the bathroom light on and the bedroom closet door wide open when I went to bed that night. Shyamalan does a nice job of capturing a dark foreboding feel in his films, it's very subtle.

This past weekend I did very little due to the frigid temperatures. I did venture into Boston on Saturday to just get out of the house. I figured that no one would be in town on Saturday due to the temperature and wind chill, but Boston was quite busy with the other million people suffering from cabin fever. My downstairs neighbors moved out Saturday; they just bought a house. I hope my new neighbors are half as nice as the ones who just left. I was feeling a bit funny all day, stomach cramps and mild nausea. I went to bed early Saturday night.

Sunday I was up at 6AM to make coffee, read my daily 100 email spams and surf the web. After having coffee and a danish had wicked cramps plus the trots, so went back to bed and slept almost all day Sunday. I did manage to shower and drag myself out to get something to eat. I had not been to Jimmy's Steerhouse in Arlington Heights for quite a while, so treated myself to a steak dinner for $12. I used to go to Jimmy's a lot, but have not been eating that much meat lately. I was probably one of the only people under the age of 70 in the dining room. Jimmy's has always been very popular with the Laurence Welk, Social Security blue rinse set, probably due to the reasonable prices and good quality food.

I should have opted for something gentler, like some Lipton chicken soup and crackers, but I had to have a nice heavy meal with dead cow in it. When I returned home, got undressed and went back to bed at 4PM, not getting up until 4:45AM on Monday for work. I think I may have come down with one of the many G/I bugs that's been making the rounds this Winter. At least I hope it's just a bug and not something more sinister.

Tuesday I borrowed "Men In Black II" and "Austin Powers - Goldmember" from the cafe. Both were sort of mindless fun that I'm glad I didn't shell out $9 to see at the theater. MIB II was fun, but not nearly as good as MIB I was (in my opinion). The temperatures have been running well below zero with the wind chill factor, and nothing much is supposed to change for the next 7 to 10 days. About the only thing this sort of weather is good for is curling up and reading or watching escapist movies after work.

I've been very busy at work this week, which is much better than having nothing to do. It has been so friggin cold for going on 2 weeks now that all I feel like doing is crawling into bed and reading when I get home from work, which is mostly what I have been doing all week.

Today I got a bit of free entertainment on the way home. The drivers of two mammoth SUV's were in a standoff over who saw the one remaining parking spot first. After 10 minutes of no-stop horn honking and middle finger thrusting, the conflict escalated into bumper bumping, attempting to use force to move the other driver out of the space. I lost interest as a small crowd gathered to watch the show, which was getting to be like WWF Smackdown on wheels. Did the dispute escalate to fisticuffs, gun play, a nuclear exchange? One driver was a young professional soccer mom type, the other some young yuppie male, probably an investment broker. Talk about two (what appeared to be) adults acting like a pair of toddlers with full diapers.

Here's this week's mixed bag of articles scavenged from the web.

Friday January 31

The high points of last weekend for me were visiting Paul's folks on Saturday and my old college chums Noel and Ellen on Sunday. Other than that life has settled into almost total social seclusion outside of work. The sub zero temperatures have not helped at all, but thankfully it could be in the low 40's by early next week.

I was reading in one of the online news services that Japan cannot seem to find a few hundred kilos of Plutonium. If all of the missing Plutonium was gathered from every source that seems to have lost a few kilos here and there, someone could build a 100 giga-ton bomb and put the entire world out of it's misery in a single dropping. I used to be involved in inventory analysis at my prior employer, and heads would roll if assets could not be accounted for. People seem to get more upset over locating all the registered copies of software than they do over stuff like materials that could be used in weapons of mass destruction.

We could gather up all the copies of obsolete bug filled windows software, load them onto C130's and drop them on Iraq. This would assure Iraq of complaining the US was using weapons of mass annoyance. They may even surrender, or come up with more stable and bug free versions of Windows as retaliation to the West.

I missed Bush's "State of the War" address to the nation last night, but did print off a full transcript of his speech from the Washington Post web site; all the content without the smirk. My prayers are still going out to the men and women who are either already taking up stations in the Middle East, as well as those who will be shipping out soon. Being a Navy vet myself, who served honorably for 4 years during the zenith of the Vietnam era (and a card carrying member of the Tonkin Gulf Yacht Club), I reserve a soft spot in my heart for America's men and women in uniform. Come home safe kids, and God be with you.

While I'm on the subject of war, the war on netizens keeps escalating by the spammers. I get an average of 30 to 50 spams a day in my e-mail. Of course there are the normal get rich quick messages from scam artists, See Bambi and her drunken cheer leader friend get gang banged by a pack of German shepherds, Zelda the Whip Lady's sex toy emporium catalogs and spams promising penis, pec, bunz and boob optimization.

I've begun getting spams feeding normal inborn human paranoia and territorial imperatives, "Is your neighbor a criminal", "Is your neighbor a terrorist?" I always delete these spams unread, and maybe I'm passing up an incredible deal, place a few drops of the included criminal/terrorist testing fluid on your neighbor. If they turn blue, contact the local FBI office immediately.

I just received a couple of spams offering an incredible introduction to a new, all natural and totally safe pill that will increase the length and width of my pocket rocket by 12 to 40 percent, plus restore the sexual vitality I had when I was a teen ager; just what I need!

If you stop to think about it "war" is nothing more than a battle of penis waving, and/or penis envy. Some primate males intimidate their opponents by wagging their weenies in a menacing manner. What the world powers are engaged in is a highly stylized form of weenie wagging, "my nuclear stockpile is bigger than yours", "my guns shoot further and kill more people than yours", "my missiles are bigger and can go further than yours", etc, etc. More realistically, war is organized mass psychosis. The opposing sides agree to go totally nuts and kill as many people as possible until someone cries uncle. War is just plain irrational and counter productive, but the human race seems to be hooked on the sport and gets better at it with each new conflict.

I watched the program on PBS about the history of Air Force One last night. I never caught it when it was on the first time around, but found it very interesting. Of all the presidents the show had footage of, Dubya seemed (to me) to be the least presidential. As I watched the program I felt a sense of national pride. Air Force One is supposed to be a beacon of hope to all that see it land and take off. After Dubya is finished wrecking the country and tarnishing out national image, Air Force One will need an updated paint job to portray a new image. I suggest painting her jet black, with flame detailing streaming along the wings and body, green dollar signs here and there, a jolly roger on the vertical stabilizer, a confederate flag replacing the Stars and Striped, big menacing shark face with bared teeth on the nose and in bold flaming letters along the side "Beware evil doers everywhere!"

I know I said that it was a new day with a new focus, but honestly I've have next to nothing to say. I don't know if it's the perpetual frigid temperatures or the overall feeling I've been having of uncertainty surrounding everything, but the muse has left me for now. Here's the final January roundup of articles from my weekly web wanderings.

This concludes the January 2003 journal. February will be online barring war, pestilence, plague, stray asteroids, earthquakes, tsunami, the antichrist making his first appearance on late night TV or the second coming; whenever...

Shalom, Ray