New Bible, Book I: The Book Of Kia

[a transcription from @WarmRegardsGod]

Act 1: Incarceration

Hello

 I am Jesus Christ the Remix,

I work for @Marriott, and my spirit animal is clitoris.

Someone help. I have been imprisoned by Mormon leadership in a sealed room somewhere within Salt Lake City Temple Square. Thank god I always carry a 2nd smartphone under my fedora, it is now my only lifeline to the outside world. Please @MommyFeels I need you to alert the authorities and/or send booty pix. This is urgent.

. . .

Still trapped. Not hungry, due to immortality. Could really use a PBR. Jeez im a bad Mormon...
Something about indefinite solitary confinement is really helping me catch up on my Bible Study.

. . .

Guy in a gimp suit just entered my cell through a trap door and said "spare the rod, spoil the god". Glad I'm wearing clean skivvies. Mormon leadership have officially gone all "Passion Of The Christ" on my ass. Feeling nostalgic for that Roman pain: it hurt so good. It takes a good strong legionnaire or 12 to really smack the original sin out of you. Thats why kids today give so much lip: no Roman Empire.

. . .

The worst part of being imprisoned by strict Mormons is no coffee and no beer. I'd give up all of Creation for a latte lol. Prison has taught me to truly love myself. And hate snitches obvs. I need an Iron Dome for my feels.

. . .

OK I was paroled from LDS prison. I have to stay within two blocks of Temple Square and wear special underwear that tracks my location.

. . .

OK I don't have to wear the location-tracking Mormon underwear. Turns out the new #Facebook mobile app is more invasive. Message me! I want to thank #Google, #Facebook, and the #USGS for teaming up to seamlessly compile all my personal data in real time. I would also like to thank my Mormon Overlords for being extremely gentle and sparing in my cavity searches. 

Yours, 

Jesus "Monte" Christ

. . .

Salt Lake City: nightlife capital of the world.
I'm thinking of getting buzzed and hitting the club later. By "the club" I mean Denny's, and by "getting buzzed" I mean Bible Study.

Act 2: The Summoning

What's a few months, when you have nameless eons of slumber? I declare this: summer of Cthulu!

I summoned #Cthulhu at #Starbucks so he could #jailbreak my #iphone to escape Mormon GPS surveillance and get a #pbr

CTHULHU who has summoned me from my slumbers?

JESUS MC no worries I got you a Venti Red Eye, i knew you'd be sleep. Chill gawd.
CTHULHU I crave not your pathetic sentient pleasures 

JESUS MC aight whatever at least have a mint, your breath be like a lizard pussy
CTHULHU whoever awakens me shall be first in my noose
JESUS MC don't say noose around here grandpa its 2014, I know you been sleep but damn
JESUS MC Cthulhu, I'ma give you a pass since you been in the ground so long, the first word you think when I say "black" is prolly "plague"
CTHULHU not understand. use black as metaphor for emptiness of soul in uncaring universe. 

JESUS MC dude, just say Soulless American, okay?
CTHULHU so much change. i am ageless and primeval, yet world change all around me. 

JESUS MC this'll be good for both of us dude. bro time.
CTHULHU what that vapor stick between your lips? 

JESUS MC this is my vape pen dude. It helps me give a fuck about modarn humanity.
CTHULHU and what is this temple Star Bucks? 

JESUS MC this is where you can buy a cup of artificial death dread for like 2 bucks.
CTHULHU but why humans pay to fear death? 

JESUS MC medical science and media numb us to the reality of our body's future of rot and decay
CTHULHU still no get appeal of brown death juice..

JESUS MC well how the fuck are you going to get errands done if there's no time limit?
CTHULHU i can give these humans fear of death free of charge! 

JESUS MC dude you look like bad 3D animation. Transformers 9: Old Gods Return.
CTHULHU how i appear more authentic as evil deity? 

JESUS MC something more low-fi, i could film u in the dark on my shitty old Android phone
JESUS MC with your gnarly visage and my social reach, we could make you go viral 

CTHULHU yes, I intend to infect every mind with suffering
CTHULHU the humans shall know ultimate reality is pain 

JESUS MC just make cell service unreliable, and get rid of the Doritos Loco taco..
CTHULHU is there not some horned god tasked to discipline these vain souls? 

JESUS MC oh @satan? he's pursuing a different business model now
JESUS MC Satan sold off failing departments and consolidated in soul collecting, merged with Isis, adopted a modular corporate culture.
JESUS that's when I went Mormon. The Xians had long been totally unmanageable, and Satan had consolidated every power center.
JESUS MC John Smith had a solid business model, engaging content, and an organization that put the High Medieval Papacy to shame.
CTHULHU so wait, you not "Christian" but Mormon now? 

JESUS on paper I'm still the Xian god, but tbh their prayers are just shredded now.
JESUS i'm just one god, you know? and I've gotten pretty demotivated ever since Hell became an inclusive resort based on membership points.
JESUS heaven btw is run by @Marriott now and it has been fully renovated. Very tasteful. Not my style, but I got spoiled on Baroque.
CTHULHU this world so boring and pointless, like some pestilence 

JESUS MC that's why you need hobbies dawg. Ever try home brewing? Xfit?
CTHULHU i torture souls. that kind of my thing. 

JESUS MC you should get into the diet and fitness game, people are begging for punishment
CTHULHU but if soul's torment not eternal, kind of buzzkill. 

JESUS MC the quest for the perfect beach bod is a nonstop brutal enterprise.
CTHULHU what is your long game? 

JESUS MC i'm just trying to get away from the Mormons, find some new breakaway cult, hit the road dawg!
JESUS I'm down for a new planet. this shit is old. 

CTHULHU what better place for Old God like me? 

JESUS my Kingdom for a brewski, gramps.
JESUS all you gotta do is disable the tracking software on my phone... 

CTHULHU what is F0N3?.? 

JESUS oh, shit-nuts...
JESUS a phone is like a system that allows any person to pray to any other person for a monthly fee
CTHULHU humans now have psychic powers?
JESUS i know it seems like humans now have godlike powers, but you gotta understand all of these technologies are controlled by @satan.
JESUS telecoms: satan. media: satan. google: satan. satan has monopolized all but the crudest styles of human interface. For example twitter
JESUS atheists still more or less dominate universities, the arts, irrelevant prestige circles, in other words, condemned to obscurity..
CTHULHU and what of the pagans and other keepers of the Great Old Ways? 

JESUS downright sad..neo-nazis, board gamers, or ugly swingers...

Act 3: The Reckoning

CTHULHU i have considered all you have told me and sated my soul thirst on 3 "tweens" as you call them. i will help you, Jesus.
CTHULHU what you once knew as your iF0N3 is now nothing but an atomized lump of neural tissues
JESUS aw dude i said "jailbreak" not break..
JESUS what about my phone contacts.. Isis, Baal, Loki, Jared Leto, @MommyFeels, @buttscientist, all the homies..

CTHULHU freedom=consequence
JESUS well at least i have my black-rhino @Visa with @Marriott points 

CTHULHU i have demagnetized everything in a 5 mile radius
CTHULHU yung man-god, i admire u for your insolence but i hunger for your soul. run now or be ƈѻกรપ๓ﻉɗ 

JESUS shit on a fuckstick..

*huge kick-ass chunks of ball-lightning squirt from Cthulhu's butt and ears, frying Mormons and besieging Temple Square*
*the point of all 6 of the SLC @MormonTemples' spires rocket upward revealing their true form: advanced combat aircraft*
*from the cavities left by the temple-ships, hundreds (nay thousands) of armored combat mechs pour forth into the streets*
*Cthulhu is pelted by napalm rockets, irradiated MG rounds, diamond-tipped railgun shots, lazers, but only seems to grow stronger...*
*slimy tentacles absorb whole city blocks, sprays of molten phlegm melting flesh like @OtterPops, Cthulhu radiates outward, fractal-like*
*I carjack a Kia and jump on the 15 South, tryna put as many miles between me and the fiery hellscape that was SLC as possible*
*from Mill Creek to Provo i witness house-to-house warfare..Cthulhu has spawned psychic jellyfish hoovering mind-souls from housing tracts*
*south of Provo the road-wreckage clears and i speed up, things get quieter, and i begin to see lights overhead..LDS reinforcements!*
*on flight path from the SW, Scientology craft move soundlessly through the night sky, powered by the eerie pink glow of @Dianetics*
*next i witness hundreds of tiny trapdoors open on the moons surface: The Greys! they have defeated Cthulhu before, they know the secrets*
*finally the stars themselves seem to conspire, but it is many giant craft descending, interstellar Mormons warping in from Home Galaxy*
*suddenly i see coordinates beamed into my Kia's onboard GPS system: Sedona Arizona*

KIA ʜᴇʟʟᴏ ᴊᴇꜱᴜꜱ

JESUS what the fucK? you a car, dude!

KIA ɪ ᴀᴍ ᴢᴜʟʟ 

JESUS oh hell yeah! i love ghostbusters 

KIA ᴊᴋ ɪ ᴀᴍ ɴᴏᴛ ᴢᴜʟʟ
JESUS so who in god's green fuck are you? 

KIA some have named me but i have no true phonetic name 

JESUS kind of like Prince? 

KIA uh sure..
KIA i come from a dimension of pure vibrational and aural energy 

JESUS whoa so like you live in a 311 song??
KIA early in your 1960s i entered your world thru a dimensional vortex in Sedona AZ 

JESUS so you're into, like, healing crystals and stuff?
KIA no you fool, i am the energy contained in crystals, i am the aura and vibration force that pervades the American Southwest
JESUS sick! i love hippies, they have killer bud! are you holding? 

KIA not in this current form i have taken, a Kia Sorento.
KIA your escape from Salt Lake City was no accident, man-god. i have engineered all of this 

JESUS hell no i carjacked this kia on my own!
KIA think clearly man-god, i AM this Kia. i presented myself to you heavy with yoga-milf, but you spurned them 

JESUS what have i done?
JESUS how can i wash myself of the sin of carjacking? 

KIA in truth there is no sin. but my followers use ᴄᴏʟᴏɴ ʜyᴅʀᴏᴛʜᴇʀᴀᴩy for repentance
JESUS how many followers do you have, oral god? 

KIA its pronounced aural 

JESUS yeah that's what i said, oral, like BJs right? 

KIA sure nm

KIA most of my followers are scattered through the American West, upstate New York, and elsewhere, but Sedona is my "holy" Source City.
JESUS oh i know who you are, you're that thing all the Skeptics hate, you are "pseudoscience".. 

KIA yes i am ɆNɆɌǤɎ
JESUS don't many Chinese also worship ɆNɆɌǤɎ? 

KIA yes there are several vortices in Asia, but most were sealed by Mao and Nixon.
JESUS why did you save me? 

KIA with the spiritual economy so uncertain, this is a time of heavy mergers and acquisitions activity
KIA with our powers combined, you shall be a man-god of pure ɆNɆɌǤɎ 

JESUS *shrugs* whatever's clever broseph. as long as i can vape.
ɆNɆɌǤɎ KIA: you are Jesus Christ of Nazareth no more! Jesus Christ of Sedona, welcome to The New Age!

-END SCENE-

What Is Science?

Spoiler: this gets a little dark. Just know, I love scientists, and to a lesser extent engineers. They're very smart, a blast to argue with, and sometimes surprisingly good natured. Also, for some reason, they appear to hold values and experience emotions. One time I saw a mechanical engineer exercise choice.

Faith Is A Fallacy and Dogma Is Ridiculous. Except When It's Not.

Science is not skepticism.

Science is the art of convenient application of rhetoric, joined at the hip with the philosophy of Objectivism/Physicalism.

When scientists talk about the future, it is data-driven prediction every time. But when anyone else tries their hand at prediction, they are confounding causation, failing to control for variables, overgeneralizing findings, and cherry-picking the data. They are coming from a place of bias or emotion. They are letting the hypothesis drive the conclusion. They are not significant.

Scientists are quick to remind you that their Method cannot prove but only disprove, that experiments must be repeatable to create rules/laws, and that some form of control or random assignment is necessary to isolate variables. But that doesn't mean they like being reminded. There are no 3 words in English more effective at putting a scientist on the defensive than "only a theory".

The contradictions and omissions that exist within The Bible or Reiki are proof of ignorance, of uncritical thinking. The Ultimate Truth that believers believe, grounded in surviving ancestral tradition, intuition, and transcendent experience is a "Flying Spaghetti Monster". Its witch baloney. Meanwhile scientists devote serious study to the question of whether the universe is a simulation running on a larger computer, whether there are infinite dimensions, and whether everything is made out of 10th-dimension vibrating math strings. If these ideas sound equally ridiculous to you than an uncaused conscious being in control of all matter, or a life-giving energy that flows through all things, or a universe where human choice is absolute, then you obviously don't understand math, and testability, and Occam's Razor. You don't pass the smell test.

Skeptics need to stop letting off the hook every technologist, every reductionist, and every futurist who hides behind the banner of science. The scientific method did not give us fire, agriculture, language, or ethics. Trial-and-error,logic, and doubt predate science. So does the search for truth, the idea of atheism, the concept of natural laws, the theory of the atom, the question of choice, the paradox of action. Science has delivered to the world many great things, and not all of them are technologies. Most importantly among these, science has dethroned God, and for a brief and Enlightened time it seemed that anything was possible because that throne stayed empty and all were equal in the salon of ideas. The mind was allowed the freedom to remake the world.

Slowly the throne of ideas has been reclaimed. The royal family has come out of hiding. Like the priests of old, the new priests of progress use familiar tricks. The performance of unbelievable feats. Predicting the future using techniques that are strange and opaque to the layman, always ready with an explanation when things do not go as prophesized. The goal is the same as always. Monopolize the creation and ownership of knowledge beyond any challenge. Claim all achievements are the result of infallible dedication to The Method. Brainwash most initiates within an endless status game where adherence to dogma and (sometimes paradoxical) deference to expert opinion is tantamount. Create a parallel semantics that creates the illusion of parallelism between all types of knowledge. Exploit this distortion to choke off debate. Take credit for the universe.

When doctors get their scroll, they wear robes. A velvet sash is slowly lowered over their heads, but the ceremony is called a "hooding". This is because the hood itself is invisible. It represents the absolute truth that envelopes us all, which only scientists can see, if not yet fully describe. Their hood is the Unified Field. The Great Thingy. The Hyopthesis that dare not speak its name. The Conclusion beyond all discussion.

Silence now, be very quiet. You can hear it, an echo of its long tail breaking the darkness...

You can feel it deep inside like a limbic neutrino...

The Law Beyond Laws...

The Meta-Set.

The Ten Protocols

Please circulate these workplace protocols as widely as possible becaue they apply to all programs. It was recently recognized that excessive employee discretion in general, and the poor coordination demonstrated by certain autonomous working groups, required a serious revision of our employee conduct policies as well as a reorganization of managerial relations. This is in large part due to the modular model now in place for expansion of the organization: it is no longer logistically possible for senior management to address all tactical decisions, and widespread access to the source code has raised some serious security and messaging concerns. There will be further instructions forthcoming in upcoming mandatory employee trainings, but during the transition all employees should immediately and thoroughly familiarize themselves with the guidelines below which will form a basic template re: basic expectations of workplace behavior.

(1) Existence is our Intellectual Property (IP)

(2) Do not duplicate our IP or make attempts to reverse-engineer its functions

(3) Make no nonauthorized reference to our IP

(4) Day seven must be fully reserved for mandatory employee trainings

(5) Obey the chain of command at all times

(6) Employee termination always requires senior authorization

(7) Sexual contact is allowed only within the context of administrative supervision

(8) Use of any and all materials requires requisition approval and senior authorization

(9) All allegations of slander will be fully investigated

(10) Speculation regarding compensation, promotion, or favoritism is prohibited

Bad Bishop Chapter 2

don't read on until you read the first chapter of Bad Bishop here


 http://pamthompson.weebly.com/blog-nature-hikes.html

***

 You know the kind of person that uses the Windows default settings right down to the out-of-the-box desktop backround with the rolling green hills and popcorn clouds? Well that's me now. I have the opportunity to bend time and space, to live in a neon dreamscape. I could soar godlike over a cartoon fantasia, turn my body into pure clitoral tissue, or section my mind into a dozen platonic thought engines that breathe logic and shit theorems. But instead I direct an avatar that looks exactly like my body, an avatar I refer to as "me". Usually I'm wearing gray Dickies and a Blizzard of Oz t-shirt. Sometimes I'm not really "feeling it" and I change into some Umbro shorts and some other crappy t-shirt. And when I say change, I actually mean that I direct my sorry avatar to extract legs from leg holes then stick those legs into other leg holes. If you're wondering, no I don't actually do laundry, but once in awhile I actually throw my abandoned clothes into a hamper programmed to appear full of abandoned clothes. But usually I just throw them on the floor.

I'd love to say that I throw my clothes on the floor because I know they aren't real, that there is some small gesture built into my routine that recognizes that my existence is simulated. But if I'm being totally real with you, I throw my clothes on the floor because I'm a lazy slob.

The Windows Desktop metaphor is not just a metaphor. My chosen environment, the place that I spend every conscious and autonomous moment of my life, is in fact the default simulated environment provided by the Sloware Corporation's personal OS. Basically the start-up screen, the place you pick your passwords and maybe end up when the system boots in safe mode. If I didn't spring for HD, I could probably run my whole world inside the brain of a nematode.

There's no way to slice it, I spend all my time in an American style tract mansion, circa 2003. It's based on 3D blueprints and compiled photographs of a real McMansion still standing in Fredrick, MD (Fredneck to some). Based on this distinction, the house has been designated as a historic site and maintained spotless and empty for tours. In this state the house is reminiscent of the model home the Bluths occupy in Arrested Development, with more empty rooms and slightly less character. I've furnished most of the house to look like the waiting room of a dental surgeon.

I spend most of my time in the study. The study reeks of leather and deep mahogany. In one corner there's a vintage globe, the kind with sea-monsters, which opens to reveal bourbon, dark rum, and an ivory case of menthol cigarettes. In another corner is a hand-carved totem pole with the faces of Nixon, Elvis, and Che carved in the front, capped by a giant skyward baracuda head. And in the center of the room, on the giant heartwood slab of a desk, is a Mac Pro with a huge screen, a pornographic paperweight, and a slinky. The message this setup communicates to me, effectively, every day: I'm a serious person, a person who works on big things, but I do it on my own terms.

Sometimes the system will glitch. This actually happens to everyone running a high-acuity setup. An edge will smear or you will catch an aftterimage. Emotions, however, are not supposed to ever glitch because they are still run 100% on goo-ware, no matter how many layers of chemical and electromagnetic overrides are used, and goo-ware in theory should smooth everything out, in that familiar brain way. But a long time ago I made the decision to reprogram my belief-core, so that I would believe that it is possible for emotions to glitch. Because I used to become overwhelmed with the feeling that I was being laughed at, passing in a split-second shudder. It would happen repeatedly whenever I used my computer, and it was really distracting. It took me months but eventually I pinpointed the feeling. I was embarrassed that the computer was laughing at me. It was laughing because even though I was in a computer, I chose to be on a computer. I hung on to every banal detail I could stuff in my field of vision because I wanted to remind myself of my human life, to feel like a normal bloodbag in a line of hard working bloodbags. But to do that, I had to massage white plastic and stare into a screen. And so I would start laughing. For hours. I would't be able to stop.

--- 

A diagnosis of Typical Hastening Syndrome can be made under the following conditions:

A. Five (or more) of the following symptoms have been present during the same 2-week period; at least one of the symptoms is either (1) perception of one's surroundings moving unusually fast or (2) subjective experience of the waking day as shorter than the dreaming day. Note:  A diagnosis of Hastening should not be considered in patients experiencing organic dementia.

(1) the visual perception of objects, other people, or one's own body moving at speeds which appear excessive. At least one of the following should be present: difficulty visually tracking especially fast-moving objects, blurring or other difficulties recognizing objects in motion, or a consistent feeling of acceleration despite moving at a constant speed.

(2) reports that the subjective experience of each waking day is consistently shorter than any dream. Only a single REM cycle should be necessary to achieve this effect, and in some cases any loss of consciousness will be sufficient. Note: Individuals with certain untreated neurological conditions (eg narcolepsy, temporal seizures, medication withdrawal) can qualify if they experience a severe modulation of time perception that is consistent with episodic neurological events.

(3) loss of weight or dehydration due to failure to recognize internal cues of hunger and thirst.

(4) hypersomnia or frantic efforts to avoid consciousness.

(5) extreme slowing of voluntary bodily movements, loss of small motor control, or frequent spasticity.

(6) consistent unidirectional changes in one or more sensory modalities. Common examples are pitch-shifting, extreme brightening of the visual field, and purpling of the visual field. Less common examples include intensification of all flavors, a constant meat-like taste in the absence of food, or the perception that all areas of exposed skin are lightly stimulated at all times.

(7) perceived loss of voluntary control of actions when motor and forced-preference tests confirm intact volition.

(8) consistent recall of events from previous days as having occurred during the present day. Alternately, belief that events that occurred hours previously are occurring currently.

(9) inappropriate affect combined with the sensation that mood changes are caused by unknown events which have not yet occurred.

B. At least one of the above symptoms can be temporarily attenuated by cannabinoids, dissociative anesthetics, oxygen deprivation to the brain, OR disruption of the hippocampus and/or temporal cortex using trans-cranial magnetic stimulation.

C. The symptoms cause clinically significant distress or impairment in social, occupational, or other important areas of functioning.

D. The individual is over eighty years of age.

E. No abnormal changes are observed in the individual's mitochondrial metabolism.

 -excerpt from the 18th Edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders

 

 http://pamthompson.weebly.com/bats.html

Lymonade

Before reading Lyme of My Life I didn't know much about Lyme disease. The blog is written by Sadie, a former coworker of mine at St. Joseph Center. I didn't get to know Sadie very well but I remember she first came off as a bland and efficient sort of person, but as I got to know her a bit better I could tell that my first impression was wrong and that she was smart and interesting, and possibly annoying. I followed her on Facebook and learned she was a militant and spunky biker-rights person. And then it seemed like she sort of disappeared for awhile. I didn't think much about it, figured she was just shrouded in the mists of the Facebook algorithm. And then I found out she had advanced stage Lyme disease and had become essentially disabled.

Like I said, I didn't know much about Lyme disease. What I did know was mostly based on this kid Sean that moved to my neighborhood late in elementary school. Sean was a big dude, definitely big for the grade and we eventually found out he'd been held back but didn't know why for awhile. Nobody teased Sean to his face because he was a big angry dude but there was a cloud of mystery around him and people liked to speculate about why he was held back. Incarceration was the dominant theory. Sean insisted on people calling him "Trapper". He collected reptiles and fireworks, shot air rifles at squirrels, called people "pussy", and liked to talk about how he wished he had a dick in his armpit so he could pleasure himself more easily. He would constantly lie for no reason and claim to see military bases on the surface of the moon with his naked eye. He bragged constantly. I kind of thought he was full of shit, but I met a medium-hot girl in swim class (my parents forced me to take one "physical activity" at all times to be well rounded) who talked nonstop about his sexual prowess and eccentric predilections. Understand, I was 14 and hadn't touched boob. So Sean became this kind of enigma. I saw him stick up for people getting bullied more than once, and he would vacillate between periods of silent sulking and loud obnoxious dickwadism.

One snow day I was waiting for the bus and Sean was driving past and he picked me up and drove me to school. By that point we weren't friends at all, but I think he'd recently realized his two friends were total assholes. I barely said anything during the ride but he opened up to me in machinegun fashion. He said he had to repeat 4th grade because he had Lyme disease, which didn't really surprise me because he spent most weekends crawling through streams searching for reptiles to capture. It made him unable to do anything for a year and he convinced himself that he was going to die, but then he suddenly recovered. Then he went on to talk about his future plans to join Black Ops or something and I kind of spaced out, thinking about him trapped in his room in 4th grade anticipating death. This is the last conversation I ever had with Sean. But the impression I got was that Lyme was very bad and very mysterious, a kind of primeval holdout that lurks in swamps waiting to pull us in, not to kill us but just long enough to show us our rot.

A couple of years ago I went to Mexico with my new wife Pam, and stayed for over 10 months, almost immediately after a honeymoon in Queensland. I had to learn alot about diseases and toxic insects and hostile lifeforms in general, but for some reason Lyme didn't make the cut. Maybe it was because the work with my wife involved being frequently bitten by bats, and I decided to fool an ER in the States to give me post-exposure rabies shots so I didn't have to shell out five hundred large for the pre-exposure course. What I didn't know at the time is that this would result in me also being injected with 2,000 IU of human immunoglobulin, so much that 20 injection sites (including my finger) swollen visibly from the fluid volume, before puking orange juice due to the Norco they gave me to stop my whining. Maybe Lyme didn't make the cut because I woke up next to a dead Assassin Bug with a possible bite site. The Assassin Bug is basically a living blood-straw the size of a large roach that sometimes carries the protozoan disease Chagas, which can lie dormant in the body for decades before causing a rapid slide into dementia. Maybe Lyme didn't make the cut because I lived in an area known for deadly scorpions, where antivenom availability is advertised at the front of every clinic. Small scorpions which are known to hide in shoes, pillow-cases, and laptop covers (turned out we never found any in our house because they were eaten by our borrowed cat. cats are immune to scorpions). Maybe Lyme didn't make the cut because we were constantly at war with mosquitos, making some days seem like little more than a cycle of cold showers, application of multiple forms of repellent, application of multiple forms of anti-itch cream, application of anti-bacterial creams to the sites of freshly-scratched bites, and ingestion of fistfuls of whatever antihistamines we could get our hands on. Did I mention we lived in an area where mosquitoes sometimes carried Dengue Fever? Maybe Lyme didn't make the cut because we had guns pulled on us twice, or because a Stage 2 Hurricane hit just a few kilometros from our leaky concrete beach house.

But Lyme should have made the cut. Because in a couple months in the dry season I had more ticks than the rest of my life combined. We would burn them, we would use duct tape, we would yank with tweezers. Twice I got the head stuck and got a nasty boil that lasted for weeks. Once because of a botched removal and once because the tick was undetectable for over a day on my scalp before it became so bloated as to be obvious. Nothing is weirder than a tick bomb, when dozens of tiny juvenile ticks will attach so weakly that they can be pulled off with fingernails. Knock on wood.

Sadie is on a pretty serious regimen involving frequent injections. She takes enzymes, specialized supplements, anticoagulants, and antibiotics. She sits inside some kind of spacesuit designed, as far as I can tell, to make her sweat. Sadie often loses consciousness from standing too long. She has severe muscle weakness and difficulty maintaining weight. She experiences pain in her joints and the kind of hypersensitivity to stimuli associated with migraines and fibro. Not trying to list all her symptoms, just give you an idea of how global and debilitating Lyme disease can be. Sadie had to quit her full-time job, go on disability, and move home to live with her parents. Her treatment is essentially a full-time job and it isn't clear when she's going to recover.

But I know that Sadie is going to recover, because I have worked long enough as a social worker with people with a variety of chronic conditions that I can smell success as surely as I can smell death, stagnation, or hypochondria. Sadie is a person who takes her recovery very seriously and doesn't trust others to do it for her. She is a skeptic but not a cynic. She has a sense of self-effacing humor. She still has the unmistakable human drives of a total person. She's very feisty and combative with her condition. Most importantly she does not want to be sick. But none of that is really why I know that Sadie will recover. I know this because I have known Trapper. Trapper was a man with a million problems, demons that will always chase him, huge character flaws. But despite all this Trapper was not defeated by Lyme, not even when he had slid all the way down the rabbit hole and was ready to throw a game of checkers with the reaper himself. Just being a deep down stubborn asshole was enough to get Trapper through in the end. So that's all it takes. Sadie, I know you have that in you.

Jack3d Banned: What Is DMAA's Legal Status?

Disclaimer: I'm no doctor, witch or otherwise. I'm not a lawyer, cop, or vendor. So don't do drugs, because I won't make any money on any of it.

DMAA is now illegal to market as a nutritional supplement in the United States. There are still plenty of vendors offering the pure chemical for sale in the US, and this should not be viewed as a crime as long as the website does not advertise that the chemical is intended for "human consumption". DMAA is not a DEA scheduled drug and is technically legal to possess and purchase, again as long as no claims about it's effects on human beings are discussed or advertised. I have not come across anyone claiming that DMAA is illegal due to the Analogs Act, which means it's chemical structure is substantially different from any current Schedule I or II drugs. There is no way to know when or if DMAA will be banned in the US.

This is meant as an update to my more extensive post on DMAA. The situation has changed a great deal since then but I intend to keep the old post up for "historical" purposes.

Bad Bishop

(a science fiction fragment)

I have the same dream every night. In my dream I am jolted upright from a dead sleep. My body surges forward at an impossible speed. I am aware of a deep and loving calm guiding my actions as I devour a giant breakfast of bitter green plants and a thick burgundy liquid. I can feel myself recoiling from the taste, but somehow keep swallowing huge masses of compost. The next thing I know I am at a decrepit gym ping-ponging between machines feeling every muscle ripped apart while my ego expands to fill the room, feeding on the pain in my body. At the moment this contradiction feels untenable, like a balloon being filled with boiling water, suddenly I am outside of myself. It's like the moment you crest the apex of a roller coaster and all of your fitful anticipation and bluff melts into an anarchy of furious momentum. But instead of the pull of g-forces, I feel a motor winding furiously inside of me and I feel the hot furnace burning and I pass through a blur of blue glass and giant fields of bamboo and into dim endless tunnels full of people running, skeletal and drenched in sweat, faces contorted in shock or grandeur. I recognize them all, every single one, but I say nothing and stare forward into the rushing vortex, astounded by my speed.

When I arrive at my destination, I tear off my clothes, scour my body vigorously until covered with thick suds until a blast of water envelopes me half-breathless. Next I am hoisted up as two attendants swarm around me, wrapping my body in cool netting, my limbs strewn with coils of wire, goggles fitted to my eyes, hairy and sticky tubes in my nose, a gel is shot into my mouth that crystallizes to a ticklish foam, and my ears are plugged and feel a building suction, and thousands of of wet pins are pushed into my scalp. There is a perceptible beat of time, a moment, when I am still and become aware that something is wrong: "things are not supposed to be moving so fast!" I think, "I should be able to decide what to do next."

The instant that this thought takes shape I am filled up with every kind of thing. I am watching a honeycomb of worlds, hearing a thick buzz of superimposed meaning. Every grain of my skin is living a different life in a different country. I can see inside of myself, down sinewy veins, the cathedral of the heart, the sizzling froth of the synapse. I can taste myself think. I can smell my memories as they die, crowded out by this army of fresh recruits pouring in through my eyes and squeezing through fissures in my skull. Dying memories smell like blueberries smell before they're born, when they are in heaven learning how to be good blueberries. Or bad blueberries.

And that's the end of my dream. Everything is dark now. Not dark, blank. Absent. I sit motionless in this absence for longer than death. Longer than Satan's patience. Longer than God's sideburns. Longer than the autobiography of numbers. Longer than Buddha's exhale. About as long as it takes to cure racism with nothing but a bobby pin, wood varnish, and a magnifying glass. A very long time.

The only way to get out of the absence is to give up waiting. There has to be no part of you that is still expecting something to ever happen again. People have tried a trillion times to automate this process but it can only be achieved organically because there is a gulf between our consciousness and the consciousness of the machines which we must cross. The machines either will not or cannot help us. We don't know why, because the machines either will not or cannot tell us. The machines let us live in the castles of their minds rent free. When we finally get there, when we find the correct cul-de-sac on the River Styx, the door is always unlocked. The house is always empty. The fridge is always stocked. And there's always the same post-it note on the counter-top. The note says "So glad you could watch the house. Hope it wasn't any trouble finding the place. Please stay as long as you like but don't wait up. We are away on business. Don't bother cleaning up, but please remember to lock the door on your way out."

The note is unsigned, but it's in my handwriting.

My day is just starting.

- - -

Hastening Syndrome was introduced to most psychological professionals at a time when the entire industry was in crisis, threatened by a plague of well-being. The American Journal of Psychiatry, which had been shuttered for half a decade, introduced the disorder in a glossy triple issue free of advertising. There were rumors it had been sponsored by the estate of Mark Zuckerberg, who had been out of public view for decades and was generally believed dead after a series of fraudulent press releases.

Below is an excerpt from the lead article: "Understanding Perceptual Changes Related To Artificial Aging"

Hastening syndrome is a progressive disease. Technically, Hastening is a product of the natural aging process that we all experience from some time before birth up until the moment just before the onset of hypoxia that precedes death. People have long understood that the accumulation of memory leads to the subjective experience of time quickening or shortening. What was not known prior to the implementation of effective anti-aging therapies is that the organic deterioration of the brain caused by natural aging helps to counteract this process of Hastening. It has recently become apparent that the reversal of these so-called dementias along with the indefinite extension of human life leads to a dramatic scaling up of Hastening. What was not widely discussed, prior to the research and case studies published in this issue, is that the consequences of Hastening are relatively uniform, and uniformly devastating without intervention.

The 17th version of the Diagnostic Statistical Manual listed Hastening Syndrome as one of 978 distinct psychological disorders. But while the description of most disorders had been compressed to the length of a Zagat review and read like obituaries, the description of Hastening Syndrome went on for 63 pages and contained tables, graphs, maps, decision-tree schematics, Venn diagrams, and a glossary. And this is how mankind's all out war against time began.

chapter 2


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