Both Sides Now

I've looked at life from both sides now,
From up and down and still somehow,
It's life's illusions I recall.
I really don't know life, at all.

— Joni Mitchell

I had occasion these past few days to revisit my youth by rereading a script I wrote based on my experiences in high school.  I don't know how good it is as far as a script goes, but it did an excellent job of accessing and giving voice to everything I was feeling and doing back then. I found the emotions so powerful that just listening to the music that would make up the sound track would send me into a blue funk.

I was depressed back in those days.  More than any other teenager of the time?  Maybe, maybe not.  But I was depressed.  I was different and demonstrably so.  I did not feel I fit in anywhere, and in truth I really did not.  I went to high school at a private school on a scholarship.  I was a blue collar guy in a white collar world, a black kid who did not fit in his own neighborhood surrounded by white kids he also did not fit with.

When you are not home in your own neighborhood, not home in your own family, and not home in your school, what do you do?  Well, eventually you grow up and find there is a world out there, a world of people and possibilities.  But before that, when it seems that the universe starts and ends with high school, you join the freaks, because if nothing else, you can be freaks together.

Eventually I came to the realization that unlike Groucho I would not want to be a member of any club that would not have me.  And suddenly, long before time robbed the in-crowd of their superficial advantages and proved this thought better than I could, I realized they were not better than I was, only different.

—§—

While Joni Mitchell wrote the song, it's Judy Collins's version I know the best.  Enjoy.

Smile

As I continue through ACA, I am finding little coincidences and fingerprints related to it throughout my life.  And one of them is that my favorite recording artist is Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys.

I remember hearing a snippet of Surfer Girl on the television as a child and it was as if I had heard music for the first time.  Never mind that there's no surf in Cleveland, I was hooked bad.  The Beach Boys fostered my love of vocal harmony which led me later to the Manhattan Transfer (but that's another story).

As I got to know Brian and the boys, he became a sort of personal symbol to me.  He was considered a genius.  He was misunderstood by his band, Mike Love in particular.  He was in competition with another group that people seemed to like better (a hint: they were from Liverpool).  And right when he should have blown the doors off of the world, he crumbled and did something else.

I was considered bright.  I did not feel understood by my family.  I was in a perceived competition with my cousin whom everybody liked better (or so it seemed).  And right when I was going to go to New York and draw comic books for a living, my mother "forbade" me.

To be fair, my mother never said I could not go.  She just indicated she disapproved, and back in those days I needed her to approve.  She did not think that I would be able to earn a living drawing and so, much like Brian and the album Smile, I took my dreams of drawing and put them on a shelf and became a writer.

And even though I did well as a writer, it was not what my life could have been if I had just been encouraged a little in pursuing my dream.  And Brian scrapped Smile and the Beach Boys became pretty much irrelevant from that point forward.

I later found out that Brian, my idol, suffered from a horrid family life.  Brian's father Murry Wilson was an alcoholic and abusive, even cruel, to Brian, Dennis, and Carl (the brother three-fifths of the band).  The reason Brian talks out of the side of his mouth is because he is deaf in one ear.  The reason he is deaf in one ear is Murry Wilson, who reportedly smacked him upside his head with a piece of lumber.

Brian eventually fired his father as manager of the band and saw his father go into competition with him with a band called the Sunrays, with as much as Murry could remember of his son's sound.  Given all of this plus Mike Love's manipulative nature, the wonder is not that Brian had his mental breakdown.  The wonder is why it took as long as it did.

Brian eventually fought back from psychosis and a manipulative psychiatrist to have a meager solo recording career and then complete the album Smile as solo project, the uncompleted legendary album that was supposed to be Sergeant Pepper before Sergeant Pepper was Sergeant Pepper.

I knew about Brian's troubles as an adult child of an alcoholic long before I knew of the term or that it was the basis of some of my problems, but it is kind of comforting to see one more basis for my empathy for Brian.

By the way, later this year Capitol Records is supposed to release the original Beach Boys recordings of the Smile material, much long after it would have expanded the world's understanding of the talent of Brian Wilson.  But it is welcome nonetheless.

—§—

One of Brian's songs has been one of my personal anthems: I Guess I Just Wasn't Made for These Times.  I felt I was outside of my time as he does in the song.  I do not feel this way anymore, but for the longest time I did.  Enjoy.

I've got a secret.

One of the things I have been doing since I became aware of the set of behaviors linked to being an ACoA is reflecting as to how much of that is an influence in my regular life.  One area where it seems to be a surprising factor for me is super hero comic books.


Comic book fans love super hero comic books for many different reasons.  Some like the soap opera aspect of them.  This has never been much of an attraction for me for much the same reason that soap operas themselves lost their fascination for me.  Part and parcel of soap operas is that something always has to be happening to the lead characters.  But at some point the only way to keep having dramatic things happen to characters is by changing a character's defined characterization.  In wrestling parlance this going from good to bad is called turning heel and it is also a reason that I am not fond of professional wrestling, too.


Some people like super powers.  For those people the genre is similar to fantasy.  And while I like the idea of powers and people being able to do more than a regular person, that is not the only nor even the chief attraction to me of super heroes.


What I like the most is the dual identity, that by day people think you are one kind of person, generally a meek or ineffective one.  But yet by night or when the chips are down, you actually have a reservoir of abilities and aptitude undreamt of by those around you.


The sight of Christopher Reeve unbuttoning his shirt, or Adam West sliding down the pole, or even Ryan Reynolds materializing his costume gives me a thrill.  I think I empathize because people don't have a true picture of me and underestimate me.


Now sometimes that is deliberate.  I believe in the Montgomery Scott philosophy of under-promise and over-deliver.  But sometimes it is just people looking at the surface and not at all paying attention to what they are really seeing.  Call it Lois Lane syndrome if you like.  Sadly the most recent place I experienced this was in my relationship.


As I was telling my closest friends about how the break up occurred and the charges about my behavior laid down by my ex, they pretty much all said that it sounded like she did not really know me at all, which is sad indeed, because if anyone is supposed to see me with the mask off, it is the woman I love.

—§—

Here are some Japanese kids playing This Could Be the Start of Something Big a song written by Steve Allen and used at one point as the theme for the game show I've Got A Secret, that point being when Steve Allen himself hosted the show.

Once you get started...

I believe the most effective and helpful habit I ever deliberately gave myself is the habit of "Do it now."

—§—

It is amazing that once you start doing something you dreaded doing because of time how quickly it actually gets done.

—§—

Here is Rufus featuring Chaka Khan on Soul Train back when I had hair and everyone else had a lot of it.

If only s/he would...

It is a tempting trap for us as ACoA to fall into.  I have been ensnared by this many times myself.  It is the thinking that my life and my happiness would improve if only she would whatever.

Reluctantly I have come to realize that there is some validity and merit to the power paradigm of personal relationships and conflicts therein.  We waste a lot of effort trying to control other people and control other things only to relinquish that which we actually have control over.  It is why the Serenity Prayer is an integral part of the recovery.

Why we tend to succumb to this allure is because it is very sound logically.  If this other person would actually do this other thing or actually be this other way, then undoubtedly things would be different.  But they are who they are and they will do what they will do.  If they were different they would not be who they are.

This is not to say that people cannot, will not, and do not change; they can, will, and do.  But the impetus for change is internal and all of your pleading, begging, and wanting will not make it happen.

On the show Intervention, family and friends gather in an effort convince an addict that he or she needs to go into recovery.  The way that this is accomplished is through change not of the addict but in the people that surround them.

Most substance abuse addicts would not be able to sustain themselves without their unwitting co-dependent support group.  The interventionist works with the individuals in this person's life to get them to give up their supporting behavior and change their own lives.  Often a bottom line is created and presented to the addict.

On the surface it appears as blackmail, but it is really the individuals taking control of their own lives, leaving the addict with the situation of where since things are going to be different from this point forward, he or she might as well fix things anyway.

How successful these interventions are often are dictated by how well the surrounding people stick to their bottom lines.  And where interventions fail, it is invariably because a participant lapses themselves.

Getting personal about it for a moment, there was a period as my marriage was ending where I had convinced myself that all that needed to happen to save it was for my wife to start being nice to me. That made her the bad guy and absolved me from any responsibility of repairing my own life.

But I had a choice and I was not using that power. I did not have to take the unpleasant behavior I was receiving. I could refuse to accept it and change the dynamic and ultimately that is what I did. In the short term I was worse but now with some time on it, it was what I should have done and I am much better off for it.

However, it would be highly unfair to put it on what I perceived as my wife's failings. When I look at the insane women getting married on Bridezillas, yes, I think that they need help, but I also look at the people around them and ask "How in the world did you let her get this way?"

And if nothing else, Bridezillas should give everyone who is single hope, because if these women can find someone to marry them, then there really is someone for everyone out there.

Making a list and checking it twice

Officially I am on Step Four of the ACA Twelve Steps and have been there for a while.  I have waited in part because it is the first step I have really wanted to do with a sponsor, but also because I am very much afraid of it.

The fourth step is as follows:

Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.

As to why this scares me, I am just beginning to realize how much I have hurt myself and more importantly those around me.  I do not know that I want to know just how much I have screwed up and just who and how many I have hurt.

I am also afraid that because I am so hard on myself as a matter of course that I will be overly harsh and punishing on taking my moral inventory.  That is why I would like outside eyes to help me with this step. I am slowly working my way up to it.

I ended up teaching myself how to ride a bicycle without training wheels. (Trust me, this will be germane in a minute.) I was pretty old relatively when I learned how and my sister that was two years younger than I was had already learned how.  So I really looked kind of goofy not knowing how

Much like later with driving a car, my father was the absolute wrong person to teach me (not that my mother would have been much better) and I was too busy being afraid (of him and of falling) to learn. Eventually he gave up.

Once it was just down to me, I was able to relax, I went down to a smaller bike, I was able to figure out balance, and I learned how to ride. But no matter how much my father wanted it for me, I could only learn how to ride when I was ready.

Since I am reparenting now, I am going to afford myself the same luxury with the steps.  I will complete them.  I cannot afford not to.  But I will have to take my time.

She drives me crazy

During my time off from the relationship scene, I have been reading advice from various sources on how to meet, greet, and keep women.  And I read something today from David DeAngelo that stopped me in my tracks for a second:

To further confuse things, you'll often hear a woman say something to the effect of "I want a strong guy who is also sensitive" or "He needs to have his own life, his own interests, and his own friends, but also be totally focused on me."

Women often talk about wanting a combination of things in a man that just don't seem to fit.  So what's going on here?

Are women crazy? (Yes.)

But seriously, what are they talking about?

How is it that women seem to always talk about wanting men who have these qualities that don't fit together?

© 2011, David DeAngelo

It stopped me because I had heard this before.  I mean I had literally heard this before.  Back when I was last on the loose, I myself saw personal ads by women asking for these diametrically opposed things.  DeAngelo goes on to skirt the issue by saying women really do want both of these things.  But this in no way addresses that they want things that are, if not mutually exclusive, rarely found in a guy not suffering from fragmented personality disorder.


Looking at some of his and other people's dating advice, a consistent theme is for you to be different than you presently are.  To a degree this makes perfectly logical sense.  If you were O.K. from a dating perspective, you would not need advice.  However, for me it poses a problem in that one of the things I am working on in therapy and ACA is being myself, genuine.


This presents a contradictory message: it is all right to be yourself vs. it is not all right to be yourself.  The way out of this seeming contradiction is to become that which you are pretending to be in order to get women.


But other than my luck with women, I kind of like who I already am and I do not know that I want to be anything or anyone different.  However, as I have quoted in a different context "Nothing changes if nothing changes."

—§—

We're going back to the 80s with Fine Young Cannibals.

The Child is the Father of the Man

My heart leaps up when I behold
A rainbow in the sky.
So was it when my life began;
So is it now I am a man;
So be it when I grow old,
Or let me die!
The Child is father of the Man;
And I could wish my days to be
Bound each to each by natural piety.

— William Wordsworth

One of the things we in ACA are to do as part of our recovery from our alcohol-tainted pasts is to re-parent ourselves, to retrain and repair our damaged, malfunctioning id called our inner child, creating a more stable and appropriately reactive ego or adult self.  The trick of this is that we are asking ourselves to do something that we have no real knowledge of.

We grew up in the dynamics that alcoholism creates, with drama, often rage, violent unpredictability, and a tendency for things to go wrong if at all possible.  There is an aloof parent, an overbearing parent, a perfectionist parent, a volatile parent, sometimes all in the same parent.  So we know how to chastise, stifle, disappoint, abandon, and frighten a kid.  But we don't know much about lovingly nurturing a kid.

Sometimes we make the mistake of indulging the inner child in avoiding the harshness that we know.  The inner child must be listened to, but the inner child is still a child.  And it does an adult inner child no more good to allow himself to eat chocolate cake until his stomach was about to burst than it would an actual child.

But what it is seeming to amount to as I begin to practice it on myself, is learning how to say nicely the things that have to be said regardless.  William Glasser in Choice Theory likes to say that ultimately all you can give another person is information.  In my estimation how you transmit the information can send another message other than the one intended.

I also have to admit it feels strange being nice to myself.  Almost like I am wearing shoes on the wrong feet.  But really, I have worn my shoes on the wrong feet for so long, it is taking me a while to get used to the difference.

—§—

The ACoA banked subject I have been skirting around without writing about it is Brian Wilson, the founder of the Beach Boys.  Since he recorded a song with this line in it, I present to you ahead of that post this excerpt from Smile.

A lovely day

Mondays aside, it seems that every day I've either had something ACA related to say or some other special day to talk about.  But not today.  I have no secret relapses to reveal.  Nothing particularly noteworthy happened in my ACA community.  The most interesting thing that happened at work was that I was late for a meeting.  While it might be interesting, it's not anything new.

My granddaughter and I had a nice day doing homework.  I played games at a game site.  I watched some television.  Notably, I did not visit Facebook since I got home, I have not watched the news, and I did not visit any sports or comic book sites.


I feel oddly serene about this, almost to the point that it is scary.  But it is good.  It is ultimately one of the things I want (and you can't get what you want till you know what you want) and it is nice to know that doing the step work of ACA is helping me get there.


This would have been another opportunity for me to use my banked thought, but again I was not ready to use it.  But I need to do it soon, because if I keep waiting on it, people are going to expect something amazing and I am not sure I can deliver amazing.

Feeling stronger every day

Doing ACA has been an eye opener on many fronts, but one of the most interesting is somatically.  One of the things you try to do as an ACoA is to feel the feelings that you have not allowed yourself to feel totally if at all.  And emotions carry a definite physical component to them.


As I remember old memories and deal with old programming and attitude, I experience a flood of emotions and these emotions wreak physical havoc with my body.  Muscles shake with anger.  My stomach gets queasy.  My innards grind.  It is no fun at all.

But a strange thing is happening afterwards.  Once I go through the emotion, let myself go wild with whatever it is I am feeling, afterward I feel better.  Not just relatively better compared to the experience.  I mean I am starting to feel physically better than I have in a while.


Now, yes, some of that is related to my back feeling better after its injury, but it is not just my back.  I find myself breathing deeper.  I feel the tension in my shoulders lessen and the muscles loosen.  I believe I am experiencing a real catharsis.


So, yes, as the post title states, I am feeling stronger every day, just like the title of the Chicago song.  But you guys can find the song yourself.

Tell you one thing...

You can't get what you want till you know what you want.  (I'm working on this.)

—§—

Now please watch a video of a record playing. Thank you.

Hero and Villain in One Man

Lest anyone think that back on September 5 that I was kidding about being addicted to being in a relationship, I have a confession to make: during the period I have been writing this blog, I made a profile at a dating website and have been chatting with women. Oh, I told them about my break and I did not make any plans to meet them.  But I chatted with them.  And when one of them that I was chatting with "cut me off," I had a moment of freaking out.  And that is clear, demonstrable evidence of addiction.

I watch the television show Intervention (I have for most of the last year or so) and on it you get the full spectrum of addict behavior.  And the cutting back / tapering off method is one things addicts try as a means of telling themselves that they're in control of their addiction. I am not.  I have known I am not.  But I still tried to tell myself that I was, even knowing that.

And it is okay.  I mean it is not, but what I did is what addicts do.  And I am an addict.  Being an ACoA, you have a pile of addictions, even if you are not addicted to a substance, like alcohol.  You're addicted to drama, as we discussed yesterday.  You're addicted to avoidance.  And, in my case, I might as well face it; I'm addicted to love.

Well, not really love, of course.  I am addicted to being in a relationship (whatever that means to me) and obsessing about same.  Ever since I had my first girlfriend twenty five or so years ago, I have been in one relationship or another for all but a month, maybe two.

Since the one woman who chatted me up has cut me off, I am back on my break, climbing back up on the wagon again.  But now I have a serious, difficult mystery ahead of me.  Much like I did not know my father's alcoholism and the dysfunction it caused in my FOO had scarred me, I do not have the slightest clue as to why I am so afraid of being unloved.  And trust me, the problem is not abandonment.  It is specifically with being loved.

For the longest time I have compared myself to the DC Comics character Eclipso, a man named Bruce Gordon who developed an evil second persona that committed crimes.  And while Eclipso knew everything Bruce Gordon knew, Bruce Gordon was never aware of Eclipso's plans or actions.  And yet, Bruce Gordon had to somehow find a way to stop Eclipso.  The roots of my addiction are Eclipso.  And I must find a way to stop him.

—§—

Speaking of Bruce Gordon, the musical artist presently known as Mr. Encrypto (after a quick cease and desist from DC Comics) could use your purchase of his two great pop albums Hero and Villain and Secret Identity Crisis.  Here is a sample of the goodness.

Upping the ante

To someone who is not an adult child of an alcoholic, it is a little bit of a mystery why those so afflicted so rarely stand up for themselves.  The reason for that is that unlike normal people, ACoA tend to find themselves in conflict with ACoA.

That is to say, if non ACoA person sticks up for himself or herself and speaks his or her mind, he or she is often heard, or at least the person being spoken to will disengage.  However when an ACoA responds, he or she is almost never heard by the other person in the conflict and the other person "kitchen sinks", bringing other attacks into play and escalating the situation and the tension.

This comes from the ACoA having what may be called a drama addiction.  They don't really enjoy conflict in the normal sense of the word, but they are comfortable with it having grown up with it, inclined toward it by their actions and choices, and entrapped by it because it pushes a lot of their buttons.

This is one of the hardest parts of being an ACoA to get past, because we do have to stick up for ourselves.  But we have to learn a particular toolset to deal with this situation and the wisdom to know when you are in it.

Just today on a forum someone was impatient with how quickly a question of theirs was being answered or responded to.  I felt this unfair, as it is, after all Saturday and we all have lives to lead.  And I told this person so.  Well, she went off.  At first, I fell for the trap and responded, but then I recognized that I was in a conversation with a drama addict and disengaged.

I have been tempted to respond, but I dare not, because it will just start the drama cycle over again.  The exchange was disquieting and has left me questioning my actions and second guessing myself.  My physical response is a little like withdrawal.  It is very strange.

So if you are one of those people who believe that someone is not passionate about something if they don't fight with you about it, please understand that the person you are labeling that way may be trying to save their ACA sobriety because fighting about anything is the last thing they should be doing.

An exercise

Back when I worked in radio, I read a bit of writing advice.  A famous writer said that there was no such thing as writer's block.  He said that if you somehow found yourself unable to write what you wanted to write, the way to get past it was to write about something.  The idea behind this is that writing about whatever is on your mind will eventually free your mind to write about what you are supposed to be writing about.

To assist me during this time that I am writing on a daily basis, I started the Hot Shots on Monday and I save one or two draft ideas that I can on most nights just sit down and finish if I don't have something with more urgency.

But for whatever reason I just don't feel like finishing my reserve idea, and so I thought I would for this edition indulge in a little free association writing, either to fill the space up or to get me an idea for tonight.  (However looking at how much real estate I have already chewed up just getting to here, even if I do come up with an idea, it will probably wait for tomorrow.)

—§—

As frustrated as I sometimes get with my granddaughter, it is marvelous to walk with her and watch her struggle to make sense with the world.  I am concerned that if at age nine she already thinks she knows everything that she will be absolutely unbearable as a teen.  And it is scary how quickly that is coming up.

I really wish I could put my finger on why I do not want to write my reserve idea.  It is a good subject and worth discussion, but I guess I just want to be in a better mood when I face it.

I think I am in a bad mood because I am removing some of the last traces of the ex from my home and thinking about her is not a good thing at the moment.  One day it will be.  I remember my other exes with fondness so I imagine that she will be no exception.

Well, Carlos Santana the baseball player just hit a game winning home run in the ninth inning for my Cleveland Indians, so that has definitely improved my mood.  And a game winning home run is as good a place to stop as any.

My brother

Today was the thirty first anniversary of my brother's death.  My brother was my half-brother.  We shared the same mother.  He was much older than I was.  If I remember correctly he was sixteen or seventeen when I was born and left for the Army not long after.

He was the one who took my parents's admonitions about being tough to heart.  (My father was his step-father during his late teens and he admired my dad).  He became a fighter and the family protector.  He rescued my cousins that were closer to his age more than once from the perils of growing up in my home town.

This protective streak unfortunately landed him a stint in prison.  But for the young men in prison, it was a blessing.  There were plenty of young men who were spared the horrible prison "initiation" (at least for a while) because my brother was not afraid to fight or spend time in solitary protecting someone.

But I learned of all this after the fact and second hand.  We did not have any of the sort of traditional brother relationships that I have seen with my friends and their brothers.  I did not grow up idolizing him.  I did not grow up being pranked by him.  I did not grow up in conflict with him.

Our relationship was strained by the age difference and by the fact that he was a very physical active person and I was (and am) a very cerebral inactive person.  However he was responsible for two very positive things in my life.  It was he who took me bowling for the very first time, a sport I enjoy to this day.  And when he went into the Army, he left all his comic books at my house.

It was his comic books and Mad magazines I first read those many years ago, the ones which introduced me to Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman and friends.  I have had an almost life long love affair with superhero comics in general and DC Comics in particular.  And it would not have happened if he had not left those books behind.

I never told him about that, about what he did for me just by that.  It actually took many years for me to even figure out that was what happened as I started reading very very early. By the time I did he was long gone.  But his spirit touched everyone in the family indelibly and if there is a hereafter, I know he knows now what he did for me.

Rest in peace, big brother.

But I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For

Well, I was up late again last night.  I have been this way for a while now.  I take a walk right before (purportedly) bed, and then I am up half the night.  It's like a part of me is searching for something on the internet, but Lord only knows what.

I would love to put this on my seeking a relationship at all costs, but this was happening while I was still in my previous relationship, so it is not that.  And I've always been a bit of a night owl, but it's not that.

I remember I laughed the first time I saw a skit where someone comes into a room and the doesn't remember why they went into the room.  I don't laugh at it now because it has become my reality on occasion.


It is so, so frustrating to feel like you want or need something but to not be able to put any sort of a handle to it.  Right now a lot of personal mysteries are being revealed in my life and hopefully this one will be added to the list.

I Would Do Anything For Love But I Won't Do That

Today was a double whammy for me, containing my monthly visit to my therapist and a day for an ACA meeting.  Both experiences were ultimately positive, however there is one aspect of them that is less than joyful, and that is the revisiting of feelings from my past.

The theory is that the pain from trauma long ago tends to urge you toward the maladaptive patterns from which you need to break.  But emotions and pains suppressed were so done for a reason.  They hurt.

During today's therapy session, quite unexpectedly, we talked about my first relationship in context of the unraveling of my most recent two relationships.  And without getting into the specifics of what I did, there were some things I did to hang onto the relationship that I am saddened and mortified that I did.

This issue came full circle in the ACoA meeting, where I described the circumstances under which my most recent relationship ended, which basically appears to have started when I didn't let my ex-girlfriend have her way on something that by all rights should have been mine to decide.

In this case, the counselor and I suspect that my refusal to allow my former girlfriend to have her way on an issue stunned her, that she had gotten so used to getting her way that she did not know what to do with me when that was not going to happen.

In the meeting another person mentioned a similar situation.  The conclusion we have come to is that while we did not ask to be overrun by our partners, we made it easy and inviting for them to do so.  So now we are trying something different, trying to live up to the words from the song (and the title of the post), which we will do anything for love, but we won't do that (betray ourselves to be in a relationship).

Hot Shot for Monday, September 19, 2011

[Author's note: I have decided that since Monday is almost always a busy night for me, that I would write only very short entries on Monday, which I am going to call Hot Shots (which is better than Hot Messes I suppose).  Enjoy.]

One of my favorite superheroes is the Martian Manhunter.  The fact that he's a loner with weird abilities who feels isolated from his own teammates and rarely shows his true face to anyone is just a coincidence.



Picture courtesy of The Idol-Head of Diabolu, the world's best (and probably only) complete resource to the Martian Manhunter.

Did you ever have to make up your mind?

Did you ever have to finally decide,
Say yes to one and let the other one ride?
There's so many changes and tears you must hide.
Did you ever have to finally decide?

— John Sebastian (as performed by The Lovin' Spoonful)

There are a large number of difficulties associated with being an adult child of an alcoholic. In fact, the collection of traits is sometimes called "The Laundry List."  A secondary problem from these traits is that they don't work together and sometimes conflict.  One area where this happens is in decision making.

Because we try to please people we often try to guess what decision others would like us to make, rather than evaluating the situation ourselves and deciding what we want. However we dislike conflict, so we often try to arrange things to take the decision our of our hands and put them in the hands of the other party in the situation, leaving us to be free of culpability for the decision.

It is not a bad strategy and for our purposes can be rather clever, but it then sets up a problem when there are two people who play it that way.  What happens is no one makes a decision and each blames the other.  This then creates the conflict that was hoped to be avoided and increases the feeling of powerlessness of our own lives, even though we give away our power in the strategy itself, because our lives are not being at all actively directed.

How we get lured into a situation like that is our over developed sense of responsibility has us try to take on the decision even though we don't want to make it.

The resolution, of course, is to just choose what you want without fear, including choosing not to choose when someone tries to put their choice on you.  But like just about everything with being an adult child, it's a lot harder than it sounds.

—§—

Just in case you have never heard of the song in question, here is a YouTube video of it.

Come Fly With Me

My house is a mess. I am not proud of this.  But it is what it is, and what it is is messy.  There are reasons for it, some just having to do with living life and some having to do with being an adult child of an alcoholic.

But as I have said previously about other things, knowing the reason why things are the way they are isn't enough.  You also have to figure out what to do about it.  In the case of cleaning up my house, I have found an answer.  And I am going to share it with you.

At one point at the ACA forum someone was talking about how his or her house was getting away from him or her and was not sure about what to do about it.  Another poster suggested the FlyLady and said that her site was designed specifically for people who have a perfectionist problem when it comes to cleaning.

(It is important to remember the discussion I had a few days back about how perfectionism can manifest as a messy house.)

So realizing that I might actually want a human to come to my house at some point, I checked it out.  The FlyLady gives you an incremental game plan toward cleaning your house (after all it was made a mess incrementally; it can be cleaned incrementally).  And she tries to instill some habits which will make maintenance easier.

But the main thing she does is work on the self talk that keeps you from even making the gestures you can make.  Because most ACoA have a running dialogue going on in their head between The Voice (which encapsulates the worst of the many voices of our childhood) and what we call our Inner Child but I like to think of as Our Real Selves.

One thing I am going to take advantage of during my relationship time out is getting back into my FlyLady habits.  And who knows, maybe by the time I am allowed to bring someone home, I'll have a house worthy of bringing someone home to.

“Oh, won't you take me home tonight...?”

One of the most fascinating things about the touch of alcoholism is all the different places in your life it can leave an imprint.  It can mess with your self confidence.  It can mess with your spontaneity.  It can mess with your levels of acceptance.  And apparently it can mess with your weight and who you like.

One of the things that you do as you go through the ACoA program is make a chart or tree of your family, both your parents and grandparents, your siblings, and your spouse and children.  Under each person you label if they have any of a number of conditions.  Alcoholism, of course, but other such things as rage issues and, yes, obesity.

From my time in regular therapy I already knew that female obesity has more than once been linked to abuse.  It also appears the addictive nature of the ACoA personality lends itself to overeating, even if the only abuse from the alcoholism was being around it.  Being an ACoA apparently has to manifest itself in some way in your life, and that is one of the ways.

As to it affecting who you like, for straight people it has been said that you imprint off of your opposite sex parent.  Either you seek someone very much like that parent or you try to find someone as diametrically opposite as possible.  And as an ACoA, since we try to replicate the dynamic of our FOO, chances are good that if your have an obese opposite sex parent, you'll have an obese opposite sex spouse.

These, of course, are not hard and fast rules.  But it explains some things about choices that I have made, factors in my decisions that I was not actually aware of.  And just being aware may make all the difference the next time.

You didn't have to be so nice. I would have liked you anyway.

It was very interesting the first time I watched the Bullwinkle Show as an adult.  Beyond making me laugh hysterically I was completely puzzled at how I could have even remotely liked it when I was a kid.  Even as a precocious kid as myself couldn't have understood half of the allusions and asides.

I find a lot of things like that now as I have moved through time.  I see many things now through different eyes and get a whole different picture of things.  For instance, being part of Adult Children of Alcoholics has given me a whole different take on the first two lines of Steven Boone and John Sebastian's song You Didn't Have to Be So Nice.

The opening lyric goes:

You didn't have to be so nice.
I would have liked you anyway
If you had just looked once or twice
And gone upon your quiet way.

What the song is actually about, of course, is a first encounter between a couple where she is trying to impress him and he is saying that he was already impressed with her.  That is a wonderful thought and a part of why I love the song so much.

However, looking at the words through the prism that is my romantic life puts a sad turn on that, that if I was the singer, I would be saying to a woman that you do not have to be nice to me, that you can treat me like dirt and I will still like you.  It is a proposition in that light from a pathetic place.

And in all candor, without the factor of abuse, that is sort of how I originally took the meaning of it, that I would have liked you without any input from you.  This comes from the same empty loveless place I spoke of a day or two ago.

I hope to again genuinely feel the cheery, happy, amorous feelings this song brings to me inside of a relationship, but hopefully this time from a place where love is not quite so one sided.

—§—

Because there is no ACoA or ACA chapter where I live, I have only attended meetings on line.  And the people who had been conducting the online meetings haven't been doing so lately.  So when someone else asked about whether the meetings were discontinued, I made it a point to be there tonight and I conducted a meeting even though I haven't been completely through the program and have not had any training on it.

I did it because the sessions I attended really helped me and I wanted to be able to give that to someone else.  Lest you think me too altruistic, I also wanted to get some of that from participating in a meeting, and if that meant I had to facilitate it for that to happen, then so be it.

It seemed like it went well and I am extremely grateful for the Adult Children that made it possible.  You warmed my heart tonight.  Thank you.

—§—

Just in case you have never heard of the song in question, here is a YouTube video of it.

Just Once

I did my best
But I guess my best wasn't good enough
'Cause here we are back where we were before.

— Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil (as performed by James Ingram and produced by Quincy Jones)

After being in radio for a while, everything reminds you of a song and tonight is no different.  There are two aspects to this song though that I want to talk about.  The first is perfectionism.

There is a tendency for adult children of alcoholics to be perfectionists.  But not just the usual idea of working something until is is completely without flaw.  There is another, more debilitating side to perfectionism, which is giving up if something is not perfect.

A woman I know was not a very good housekeeper.  And for me to call you "not a very good housekeeper" says something.  She has health problems and so has a reason for needing help cleaning her house.  She has enough money coming in that she could hire a cleaning person.  The problem is that she wants the house to be clean enough to let a cleaning person clean it and she cannot get it there.

And the reason she cannot get it there is that she won't let anyone else help her enough to get it there.  The logic of it is mind bending to me.  It doesn't matter if she knows the person from Adam, she refuses to let anyone help her get her house clean enough to clean or heaven forfend let them actually clean it.

This, although it may not seem it at first, is perfectionism paralyzing her.  Her house has been cleaned (by me actually) enough to the point where someone could have been hired to really clean it.  But while I did my best, I guess my best wasn't good enough, because she let it deteriorate instead of hiring someone.

And yes, she's an adult child of an alcoholic too.

The other piece of this song on my mind is reflective of my current despair about my track record in relationships.  Just once I'd like to figure out what I am doing wrong and really, really fix it.

And I'm working on it.

All By Myself

When I was young
I never needed anyone
And making love was just for fun.
Those days are gone.

— Eric Carmen

Well, it was going to happen sometime, and now is the time.  The empty feeling is creeping back in, now that the last relationship is in the rear view mirror.  With gaps of only a few weeks, I have been in one relationship or another since I was in my first. I never take the time off to just be me.  Because when I am not in a relationship, I just feel empty.

I suspect that being an adult child of an alcoholic might have some play in that.  I am sure that has a play in to whom I find attractive, but that's another story for another blog post.  But at any rate, when I am out of a relationship I feel unloved, of course, but beyond that empty and maybe even unreal.

It is as if a relationship validates me, that my existence has no meaning or purpose apart from a relationship.  Of course, this is nonsense, but this wouldn't be the first time that a person has felt something that otherwise makes no logical sense.

But I am resolved to see my self imposed time-out of relationships through to February.  As much as I want to be in a relationship in one way, I need to find out if I really want to be in one in another.  It seems to a degree that when I am in a relationship, I want out and when I am out I want in.  I need to know if I am just impossible to satisfy or if it's because I go into relationships not making sure that the things my head needs in a relationship are there while my heart is clouding my judgment.

But right now I am alone with that empty feeling.  And it looks like I am going to get to know it very well.

Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes

This will be short and sweet tonight.  Just found out today (in a year already full of changes) that my current therapist is closing her practice.  Her associate, whom I had started seeing when these wheels were apparently put into motion and I could no longer see her, is moving to another practice, so there will be some continuity there.  But I'm getting tired of things changing so much.

I know that change is an inevitable part of life, but the rate of change can slow down.

Please?

September 11, 2001

Where I was when I got the news isn't that interesting a story.  Yes, I have asked people that question and answered it.  But that was me bonding with other people and I do not think it as important as another aspect about it, which is that it changed me just as being an adult child of an alcoholic changed me.

While I never thought America was an impregnable fortress, I was never before fearful in my own home.  And that day I was.  I don't live anywhere near a high-value target, but before they grounded the planes, there was no telling how many crews they had and where they were headed.  And it was reasonable that this was a disorienting strike to throw us off from an invading force.

My parents grew up with war, a war that changed their daily life.  But while we had Viet Nam and the Gulf War in my lifetime, I never experienced anything like that in mine.  Until that day.

The experience changed me.  I still cringe when planes fly overhead (and I hate that the terrorists even have that small victory).  My views of the world at large have hardened.  But more importantly on a personal level, I had a deep and lasting reminder of the capriciousness and tenuousness of life, more than when my cousin drowned, more than when my brother died in a construction accident.

I don't take a minute for granted and while I don't live my life as if there will not be a tomorrow, I do not act as if tomorrow is a given.

—§—

I watched some of the coverage this morning from New York City and Washington and at one point became teary.  But I recovered by listening to "The Angry American", a reminder of our national character, that if you mess with us, you'll get a boot in your backside.  It's the American way.  All brought to you courtesy of the red, white, and blue.

Looking Out For Number One

One of the common traits of an adult child of an alcoholic is a tendency to consistently put themselves second.  They do it to such an extent that when they do make reasonable assertions for their own time or autonomy, they are seen as being selfish.  That may seem impossible to you, but trust me, I have lived it.

Another problem for an ACoA with this is they have trouble fully enjoying what they do for themselves.  They remind themselves of what they should be doing or how they don't deserve what they are supposed to be enjoying instead of just enjoying it.

So, to that end, I have decided, even though there are a zillion arguments against it, to watch the first football game of the Cleveland Browns's season with the local area Browns Backers on Sunday.  I have done enough duty around the house and I have had a hard week.  So I am giving myself this.

However, lest you think I am entirely self-absorbed, I am well aware that Sunday is the anniversary of the attacks on the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and the aborted attack on the White House and tomorrow evening, I will share my thoughts about that day ten years later.

Day After Day

Not going to write much today.  Writing these every day is a bit of work and I have been trying to decide what would be a good maintenance pace, as I know I will not be able to keep up every day indefinitely.

As I mentioned, I recently lost the relationship I was in and I am having trouble adjusting to not being in a relationship on a day to day basis.  I am glad for this as it is forcing me to determine who I really am.  But I have been in some sort of relationship almost constantly from when I started in my first, and so there are habits that I need to break or at least recognize and figure out the motivation behind them.

But right now, I need to go to bed.

Breaking the Cycle

Thanks to a long story no longer worth telling, my ex-wife and I have parental custody of my granddaughter.  She is overall a good child.  Like all children she brings with her challenges, but unlike all children she carries special burdens.

Beside my alcoholism-damaged personality, the child is from an alcoholism-marred family on the ex-wife's side.  Without telling other people's business, let it just suffice to say that there was alcohol from that direction.

She also comes from stock that has ADHD.  There has been a suspicion as she has gone through school that she suffers from that.  However, there is a complication that makes knowing that hard.

And that is that she suffered serious head trauma as a toddler, trauma caused in my belief by abuse.  So there may be non-ADHD neurological damage that creates her day to day challenges in learning.

I am the parent that focuses on the school aspect of her life.  The thought is that I am best suited for this, but there are days when she is willful and just not getting it that I question that analysis.

She has a playful personality.  Everything is always fun time.  And while I am more than capable of having fun, I don't really know how to make doing homework into fun time.  It doesn't help that I thought (times tables aside) doing homework was fun.  Yeah, I was that much of a nerd.

So I often see my mother or father emerge in me while trying to keep her on track.  Again, I am limited by having no examples to draw from other than them.  And I am sure that from time to time, I am passing the alcohol damage down the line.

But I fight on because I want her to have options, to not be counted out, despite the numerous strikes already against her.  There's no real ACoA lesson here, other than I have to learn how to parent both her and myself.  It's just hard seeing myself possibly passing on future damage because I don't yet know how to stop it.

“You Wouldn't Like Me When I'm Angry.”

I apparently am a scary guy.  I say this because some people I know flee in fear when I am mildly annoyed.  My version of mildly annoyed apparently is at the edge of murderously enraged for some people.  The scary thing, the truly scary thing, is that most people have never seen me truly angry.  I scare myself when I am truly angry.

When I am truly angry, it is such a powerful thing that my grip on my conduct and my sanity is tenuous.  It goes back, as many things do, to my alcoholic upbringing.  The relationship of my parents was, as we called it in sociology class, conflict habituated.  They loved each other.  And they loved to argue almost as much as they loved each other.

Therefore I grew up prizing harmony.  And thus I overvalue it and therefore tend to be willing to take more than I should to avoid conflict.  So when conflict is inevitable, I cut loose with a force more appropriate to everything that I have gone along with instead of just the matter at hand.

I am working on expressing my truly feelings immediately, rather than stifling them until they boil over.  But when you're "always" amenable, people find you actually speaking your mind an unwelcome and disquieting jolt.  But no matter the effect on my life, I am sure it's better than my being angry.  You wouldn't like me when I'm angry.

My Dead Dog

Life goes on even as you try to live it, and so even as I was dealing with relationship drama, as well as drama at my work, drama with my home, and drama to do with my granddaughter, my dog took sick.

He started off with a limp that they first thought was arthritis.  But when it didn't get any better with arthritis medications, a second trip to the veterinarian found cancerous tumors around his shoulder. He had about a month to live, four if I had them cut his shoulder and leg off.

I chose to let him live out his month and he did.  He took pain medication for a while and felt good enough to get one more walk around the neighborhood, something I had been promising him for a long time. He stopped eating in the last week and a half of his life and stopped taking medicine.  He was wasting away from malnutrition and vomiting up the water he would try to drink.  I decided that as much as I didn't want him to die, I didn't want to watch him die of starvation either.

So on a sunny Monday morning, I took the day off from work and I said goodbye to my dog.  I still to this moment feel guilty about killing him.  I will probably feel that way until I die.  I believe it was the right thing to do, but I don't feel like it.

It has been hard for me to adjust to him not being here, but I am beginning to.  It still feels like he is here with me, watching me as I go about my day, as even before the illness his life pretty much consisted of lying there and watching me.  He was 12 years old, after all, which is pretty far along as far as dogs go.

Totally apart from all of this, I have noticed that I am a little weightier than I would like these days and I am having some issues with my back muscles, so I have decided to take a nightly walk to try and get past both of those things.  While my neighborhood is perfectly safe, I still wish I had my favorite company with me, because I know he would have loved it.

And if there is anything beyond this life, he does.

I Want Love, Just a Different Kind

But I want love, just a different kind.
I want love won't break me down,
Won't brick me up, won't fence me in.
I want a love that don't mean a thing.
That's the love I want. I want love.

— Bernie Taupin and Elton John

As I alluded to when I restarted this blog, my marriage and my post marriage relationship have crashed and burned. This is not entirely unexpected for Adult Children of Alcoholics.  One of the things that happen to us is that we tend to seek relationships like the one we grew up in simply because it's what we know.  And sometimes we unknowingly try to work out our failed family issues growing up through our marriage.

The real problem for me, and where I went wrong in my post marriage relationship is that I crave being in a relationship.  Immediately as my marriage was crumbling I climbed into another relationship.  It was too soon and I ended up duplicating a lot of the same dynamic I had with my wife.  So when my girlfriend and I crashed and burned, I made a promise to myself to abstain from dating / relationships for six months.  Three months for the three years I spent in the post marriage relationship and three months to make up for the time I didn't give myself to get past my marriage dying.

Thing is though, I crave being in a relationship.  I miss many things about being in a relationship, but it is more than that.  It is almost as if I cannot define myself as lovable unless I am in a relationship.  Knowing it isn't enough; I have to have proof. That speaks to my insecurity of my lovability.

So despite my commitment to waiting, I find myself considering dating sites and getting anxious about finding somebody.  But I am committed to doing the work this time of realizing that I am enough without being with someone, even though it triggers feelings about abandonment.

The other thing that I am realizing is that the next time I dive in, much like Messrs. Taupin and John, I want love, just a different kind than what I have had up till now.

Secret Origins

In order to be an Adult Child of an Alcoholic, there must, by necessity, be an alcoholic somewhere.  (Actually, in truth, you don't have to have an alcoholic in the immediate vicinity, but that's a subject for another day.)  In my case, that was my dad.

As far as my dad goes, if you were going to have an alcoholic for a father, he would be the kind you would want.  He never missed work because of his drinking.  He never harmed us or verbally abused us because of his drinking.  He was, all in all, a pretty reliable drunk.

But make no mistake, he was a drunk and it did even then have an effect, because it would bring out "that guy".  When my dad would get drunk, he would get sullen.  He seemed always a little bitter about something.  And he never understood why we did not feel he was as fun as he felt he was.

However, the larger effect on my family of origin (FOO; as we go through this, I will introduce some of the acronyms and jargon used in the program) came not from his drinking directly but by how my mother would react to it.

My mother told us the story of how they got involved.  My mother did not like my father's drinking when they were courting and told him that he would only marry her if he could stop drinking for a year.  Her thinking was that would be impossible for him and her problem would be solved.

The problem with this plan is that she grossly underestimated my father's willpower.  This is a man who in my youth, after smoking for years, just dropped his pack into the trash and never looked back.  My father did abstain for an entire year and since my mother was a woman of her word, they married, which was fortunate for me, since it caused me to exist, but may ultimately not have been the best for them.

My dad resumed drinking almost immediately thereafter.  And I believe my mother's kvetching about it started right after that.  My father's drinking was the thing that could most quickly turn my mother into a termagant.  My mother was so harsh about his drinking that it might drive anyone to drinking.  This little vicious circle is one of the gifts of alcoholism and why we need 12-step programs in the first place.  It's like a computer virus in the human condition.

So this is the crucible in which my condition was formed.  I never thought it had anything to do with anything, but as I am finding, it has a lot to do with everything.  But that too is a subject for another day.

Old Blog, New Mission

Well, after an absence of five years, I'm back.  And what a five years it has been.  In that time I have lost a wife, found a girlfriend, lost the girlfriend, and found that there is an actual explanation as to why I am the way I am.

You see, I am the child of an alcoholic, and as it turns out, adult children of alcoholics have a group of traits that color how they do things in life and who they choose to do them with.

Much like with alcoholics, there is a twelve-step program to help.  And I have started to work with that program.

But I wanted to talk about what I am going through as I try to change myself and thus my life, and so, since my girlfriend is out there blogging about what a horrible guy I was, I figured I might revive my blog to get in on some of that "I am a horrible guy" action.

I don't really expect you to be here.  I am writing this for me and if you show up, then yay you.  But if anything I write here is of use to you, it would be nice of you to let me know.

So I am back.  Let the fun begin.

Hang Around a War Zone, Get Killed

The mainstream media decided to come up for air from the Foley pseudo-scandal long enough to find a different needle to stick in their Bush administration voodoo dolls. It is about the Iraq War (the stand by when the scandal of the minute isn’t working out) and it comes courtesy of our friends (?) the British.

An ITN journalist who died during the beginning of the Iraq War was ruled to have been “unlawfully killed” by U.S. forces by a British coroner. This coroner, from a distance of many miles and now many years, somehow was able to determine that the journalist did nothing to contribute to his death. As a result, the National Union of Journalists and the reporter’s widow are calling for U.S. forces involved to be tried for War Crimes.

Let’s say the coroner with telescopic-time-vision is right and the reporter did nothing to contribute to his own death. That does not ipso facto make the U.S. action a war crime. It could have been, oh, a mistake. To leap to the conclusion that if he’s not responsible for his death the U.S. committed a war crime is requires Olympic triple-jump logic. One has to operate from the assumption that the U.S. forces wanted to fire on journalists in general, fire on him specifically, and ignores the very real possibility that it was an accident!

If there were some evidence that the journalist was directly targeted with intent because he was a journalist, then maybe a war crime trial would be warranted. But nothing in the report I read suggests intent, even as it puts the blame for the fatal fire on one of two U.S units in the area. But there was a war going on, and it doesn’t take Mensa level smarts to know that if you’re hanging around a war zone, there is the very real possibility that you could be killed, especially if you were not embedded, as the ITN crew was not.

ITN defended the principals and necessity of unilateral journalism, but there is a price to be paid for such detachment and sometimes death is it. There was a remark that no story is worth dying for. If they truly believe that, then they need to stop covering wars, because in wars good people, bad people, innocent people and reporters all die.

Anybody still think U.S. forces should be subject to the International Criminal Court?

Moving my pic in house

The server hosting my Lightning Man picture is going bye bye and the image server I have for auctions doesn't seem to get along with Blogger, so I am posting the picture to a blog entry in order to have Blogger host the picture themselves.

How John McCain Lost My Vote

Some of you who know me personally might find it more surprising that John McCain ever had my vote. But he did, provisionally. After Rudy Giuliani, he was easily the favorite to win the Republican presidential nomination, and since no Democrat I could vote for is even going to run on that side, I had made peace with voting for him in the event that Rudy doesn't run. He had done some things that made it seem he was getting tired of being a RINO and in the most important matter on the table today, the War on Islamofascism, he was on the "fight it" side. And then he came out for coddling terrorists.

No, he doesn't call it that. He, having been a prisoner of war, has a sensitivity to mistreatment of the captured. I accept that and understand that. But being mean to someone is not torture and coercion of someone to get information is not evil. Yes, it's not the way we choose to behave and live, but much like disciplining your kids, it something you do now to lessen chance you'll have to do worse things later, in this case putting innocent civilians in body bags.

The mark of a mature individual, a father, a teacher, a civic leader, is putting your own personal peccadilloes aside for doing what is best for that which you have charge. It does not protect the United States to allow members of Islamofascist organizations to keep their murderous secrets. If John McCain as a senator is not willing to put the country ahead of his personal well being, as George W. Bush has done, then I cannot in clear conscience vote for him.

So I sincerely hope he loses the nomination or, barring that, that the Democrats nominate someone with some sense. Or else I'm taking my ball and going home.

To Australia.

A Bad Case of the Stupids

The U.S. House and Senate are having bad cases of the stupids right now and if the party in power doesn't wise up, they'll be the party out of power. The first case of the stupids comes from their reaction to William Jefferson (D - Louisiana) having all that cold hard cash. There has been a long-standing unwritten rule that congressional offices are sacrosanct. The reason given for it is separation of powers. But if followed slavishly with no exceptions, it would allow representatives to have an untouchable base from which to conduct all manner of criminal activity. Theoretically, under this gentleman's agreement, as long as the representative kept the body in a file cabinet, he could commit and get away with murder without impunity. To people out here in the real world, this is patently absurd. And yet, rather than be happy that the FBI has possibly rooted out corruption in what is supposed to be an honorable body, they're in a flap because William Jefferson's office was searched. With a subpoena. Congress, which issues subpoenas of their own like candy, wants the right to be able to ignore one. How out of touch you must be to not realize how out of touch you appear taking a stance like that. Comity of the branches be damned, it looks like you think you have the right to be better than I. Nobody else gets to ignore lawful subpoenas and neither should the offices of a representative.

The Senate is just as tone deaf with the illegal immigration bill. They're so worried about turning off a potential voter base that they are fomenting revulsion an actual voter base: law abiding citizens. Americans (including Hispanics) want the border controlled. Then and only then should the question of what to do about all the illegals in here should be addressed. Offering illegals a smorgasbord of goodies (whether or not you call it amnesty) will just motivate more illegal immigration. This is not rocket science. That is, unless you're one of the one hundred men and women trying to curry political favor instead of do the right thing.

Republicans are running scared they're going to lose in the fall elections. If they keep ignoring the regular people they will.

How Green Is My Family?

Our latest rant against wacko environmentalism started with my mother-in-law. My mother-in-law has moved in with my wife and myself for an extended basis (read: forever) and in the room that is now hers she would like a three way bulb in her lamp. Having recently discovered the virtues of replacing incandescent bulbs with compact fluorescents for people who cannot be bothered to actually turn a light off (yes, my son and wife's ears are burning), I went searching on line to see if there was a compact fluorescent replacement for the three way bulb (there is).

That's where I ran into an article about replacing the incandescent bulb with the fluorescent. No problem, there, as it is really smart thing to do. The problem is that instead of just advocating people do this, it was arguing that people should be mandated to make the change, with a punitive tax on incandescent bulbs. This is why the very changes and reforms greens supposedly want to happen are so slow in happening or do not happen at all.

Using a reel mower to mow a small yard or replacing incandescents with fluorescents are good ideas (both of which this Right Wing Arch Conservative actually does). But no one wants an idea, no matter how good, shoved down their throats. And most people resist people who think they know better than you do what's best for you. And that's where the green movement goes so horribly wrong.

It's okay to believe that people should replace their light bulbs, but why not help them see it to be in their own best interest rather than just trying to force them or tax them into the behavior you want? Taking the proselytizing approach is the route that the right tends to follow more often and it seems to have paid off.

So if you really want to change the way people interact with their environment, why not try it one person at a time.

How to get oneself a fatwa.

Announcer: It's time for 'Life With the Islamofascist Family' Today's Episode: Over Your Dead Body

Kalila: Mo, I'm worried about Leila.

Mo: Did I give you permission to worry? You must do as I say or--

Kalila: Death!!! Yeah, I know. Anyway, she's hardly been eating, hasn't kept her mind on her studies. I think she is in love.

Mo: Is she pregnant? If she has defiled the family--

Kalila: Death!!! Yeah, right. Anyway, I think you should talk to her.

Mo: Why should I talk to her?

Kalila: Because the last time I tried to talk to her instead of you, you threatened me with...Death!!!

Mo: Oh, yeah. That's right.

Leila: Bye mom, bye pop. I'll see you later.

Mo: Wait just a minute young lady! Where do you think you're going with that dress a full inch off the ground? You know the punishment for going out half naked!

Leila: Death!!! Yeah. I know.

Kalila: What is his name dear?

Leila: Whose name?

Kalila: The boy.

Leila: Sssh.

Mo: Is there a boy? If he so much as looks at you--

Leila: Death!!! Yeah. Got it. His name is Kadim.

Mo: I do not approve!

Leila: But dad, you'd like him. He's planning to be a suicide bomber!

Mo: So when can I get to meet this Kadim?

Announcer: Join us again next time for 'Life with the Islamofascist Family'

Mo: Or else it's Death!!!

Dome Decree

With the bombing of the golden domed mosque in Iraq, even more people are losing their resolve and declaring Iraq a failure. The sad thing is that it is a harbinger of success. We're winning and the only way we're going to lose is if we let the images confuse us from the facts.

Several analysts have noted that the act of blowing up the mosque (and thereby trying to incite civil war) is from a tactical standpoint an incredibly risky maneuver, on par with the "Hail Mary" pass at the end of a football game (if I may mix religions for a second.) A civil war might mean the USA won't get the democracy from Iraq they might want, but if one fails to ignite it would give the populace even more incentive to coalesce around an Iraqi identity. Moreover, it could further turn the people away from the Wahabist / Islamofascist interest and toward the USA.

24 March 2006:
I wrote the above immediately after the bombing but never finished it in a timely manner. But I came across the draft today and decided to finish it now. Civil war isn't happening. Considering how much the media would love to report a true Civil War, the things they are reporting happening don't rise to that level. The fact that the US and UK forces haven't had to mobilize to retake the country says to me that the country, while still as chaotic as has marked the end of the war, is not fighting itself.

And while I am on that subject, let me remind everyone talking about us losing the Iraq War: we won the Iraq War long ago. What's going on right now is the fight for the peace. Saddam Hussein is no longer in power and if we wanted to control any particular region of the country we could. What we are going through is the dead end nastiness that people seem to forget goes on even after you win. No one would dispute that the Union won the U.S. Civil War (that is to say the War of Northern Aggression; I live in the south now), and yet some Booth fellow still managed to shoot Lincoln.

Assuming they embrace republican democracy, peace will come to Iraq eventually, and the dome destruction could be the first sign that our boys and girls will be coming home.

See You In The Funny Pages

As a religious man, I can appreciate how you might find a cartoon about your religion unfunny, even inflammatory and blasphemous. But as a man with reason and sense, if I truly felt moved enough to do something about it, I would direct my wrath at the perpetrator, not people unrelated to the source of my offense.

Which is why I have a problem with the Cartoon Riots. Muslims who do not like the Danish cartoons have every right to be offended, but no right, none, to destroy the Danish embassy in Lebanon, no right to destroy property and assault people during their protest marches. None.

Adding to my disgust with the situation is the fact that Danish imams have chosen to exacerbate the situation by adding cartoons not from the Danish paper. This is orchestrated and is using the cover of religious outrage for another purpose.

I have been skulling over what the purpose might be and I have an idea: Al Qaeda and Islamofascism are losing. It's getting harder and harder to recruit gullible young Muslims into blowing themselves up. So what better to re-stoke your fervor than an insult to your religion? Get 'em riled up, get 'em blowing up.

But as with just about everything, there are unintended consequences. Europe is wakening to the menace many have called Eurabia for years. Hamas and the Palestinian Authority will find themselves even more isolated from the world. And disparate nations like France, Russia, and the US may finally combine to confront Iran.

Whether or not my theory as to why this was done is right, it is clear that the Muslim world understands the American part of the western world even less than we understand them. To turn a common phrase, they should be careful what they protest about; they might just get it.

John? Done.

Way back when I was in high school and was convinced that John Demjanjuk was Ivan the Terrible (an infamous Nazi death camp guard), my mother said something to me that, given that her brothers fought in World War II, surprised me. She said that you do things in war you wouldn't do any time else and it was time to let it go. I don't believe she was right at the time she said it, but I believe she's right now.

To recap those of you who were not living in the Cleveland, Ohio area in the 70s, 80s, or 90s, Demjanjuk is a retired auto worker who was found to have lied on his entry papers to the United States and was given to Israel for trial as the aforementioned Ivan the Terrible. After being found guilty and sentenced to death, the Israeli Supreme Court found that he was not Ivan the Terrible as was claimed. So back he came to Ohio and U.S. citizenship. The Justice Department then asked for deportation again, now having linked him to being a Nazi camp guard at a different place.

He has once again been found guilty of lying on his entry papers and on 28 December 2005, John Demjanjuk was ordered deported to the Ukraine, which is all the U.S. can do in the matter. Was he a death camp guard? Well, the Federal Courts seem to think so, but they also thought he was Ivan the Terrible. Demjanjuk is (as of 28 December 2005) 85 years old. When you're that old, a life sentence could mean twelve minutes. And just who is the Justice Department satisfying and protecting with this? Israel has not asked for him to try him and last I checked, there weren't any secret death camps down by Parmatown Mall. So what's the point?

Only he knows for sure who and what he is, but he'll be meeting his maker really soon to iron all that out. If he should somehow win his appeal of deportation, I think it's time the Justice Department leave him alone. And if they really need something to do, I understand there are some long distance calls from Al Qaeda that need analysis.