it was opaque and had no lights, it blocked the stars it went in front of and then it seemed to disappear.

I know I saw it. My wife saw it too. She said "its probably just a satellite".

I've seen satellites and this was nothing like what I'd seen before. Not reflecting light and small, but large and dark and blocking light.

Now this was last August. I've been thinking about it daily for the last week for some reason.

Okay, I'm probably a little whacked eh?

I'm actually finished with my 3rd and final (term limited to 3) term of being a board member of my professional organization's state chapter. It has been a way for me to be politically active towards liberal causes, and serve my profession and the people that we serve.

I am a little sad to leave, but glad to unburden myself of this really!

Frankly, it has been a rather thankless undertaking, but rewarding at times as well.

We fought against banning gay marriage, we, and the state I think as a whole, lost that battle.

We are currently fighting to keep gay foster parents and adoption legal in the state. We are fighting against the most idiotic and cruel forces who think that children can't be loved unless they are in a two parent, heterosexual, married household.

There have been fights to try to change our licensure, won by us without changes that were attempted.

We actively campaigned for democrats in state races, endorsed democrats (even when one of our members ran as a Republican we didn't endorse him) We did phone banks for Kerry, and back in 2000 for Gore. I will miss all of this but I know that there are plenty of ways to stay politically active and it is time for someone else to take my job.

So I'm glad to be home from my last board meeting, glad to be finished with my terms of duty, and sad to leave my friends I've met there. Although I know that they are not far away and just a phone call or an email away. In fact one of them is moving to the city I live in!

So ask me anything or just say or whatever

1. Do you ever lie in threads that ask what you're listening to? no

2. Are you hiding from anybody? no Is anybody hiding from you? don't know

3. Is the message very plain on your answering machine? yes

4. What's your favorite gadget? ipod

5. What concert are you kicking yourself for not attending that you had a chance to go to? Who

6. What's your favorite Steve Buscemi role? Con Air

7. Does your body ever reject foods that you used to like a lot? yes

8. Why is being the King of Beers a good thing in a country that rejected monarchy? we all need a king?

BONUS: Post a photo just for the hell of it




Please provide your answers RIGHT FUCKING NOW okay right fucking now it is!

unless you have a cast iron stomach

we got global generalizations that everyone who has "bad teeth" is a meth addict

we got someone calling someone else an addict

we got two d00ds calling each other names

and then there's Grovelbot begging for donations in the middle of it

Surreal, totally surreal

I'd have died of a car wreck, an overdose, alcohol poisoning, being shot, beat up, hell who knows... Any of a number of things that tend to happen to people who are drunk and stoned out of their fucking minds on a daily basis and are out of control and can't stop.

The love of others who loved me until I could begin to love myself has proven itself to be a lifesaver over, and over, and over again.

People who love me, they are my higher power. If there is a universal goodness or gawdess or whatever, they use people to do their job. So I thank all who have loved me, and continue to love me today.

I am learning to love myself more and more, but it is a slow and arduous process that is a one step forward and two steps back kind of process.

that we even have this kind of thing happen.

I remember a time not that long ago when this was unthinkable.

Now we are wondering whether they did an adequate job of preparing and dealing with it.

Horrendous stuff.

How does this happen is what I can't stop asking myself.

I worry for all of us, our world, our society is at the point of being stretched to the maximum point of stretch, if it snaps, will it ever be fixable?



I won't dispute your points, I just am horrified that the idea that we have to think about second guessing with this. Monday morning quarterbacking used to be about football, not school shootings.

Now, it's all out of control

omega 3
Vit C
Multi Vit

that's all right now.

and don't care too much.

I am instead just posting my thoughts about today. Reading through the thread about the lounge that Skinner posted is an eye opening experience really. I love the lounge, and the people here as well. I also know that I need to take a break from this place after reading through it. I see pain, and anger in people I care about. I recognize my own part in this drama called the lounge well enough to know that I've pissed a few people off here. I can only say that I never had the intention of doing that. I'm sure I'll not be believed in regards to that also. So I'm going to once again, take a little breather from this place. Maybe read a little here, keep in touch with people I care about here, and be back to posting when I gain some perspective here.

I really love this place, and sometimes I wonder why, but it's because I've met some really great people here. It will all come together again for us here. So to anyone that I've hurt, I'm sorry. To anyone I've pissed off, I wish we could talk about it. To everyone I love here, I'll keep you in my heart and stay in touch, okay.



SPK

I'm never against anything that helps...

with that caviat in mind, I've worked in the alcohol and drug treatment industry in the past and will tell you that the problem I have with RR is that it isn't necessarily an abstinence program which flies in the face of the dis-ease model of addiction (the biochemical/genetic/psychological/emotional/social/cultural/spiritual dysfunction model) that says one is too many and a 1000 is not enough.

However, that doesn't mean it can't or won't work. It is just not something I would ever recommend to anyone.

I also don't know it all. As a professional who worked with alcoholics and drug addicts I would have felt I was committing malpractice to have recommended it. I'm sure I couldn't have been sued for that as even 12 step programs have low success rates and it would be hard to argue that there was truly a terrible risk by not recommending a 12 step program.

I sobered up in AA, and have found recovery there. I'm biased, and I know it!

If RR works for you d00d, then I say more power to ya!

I have found in this thread courage, pain, sadness, and a kind of comradery in the darkness of this horrible subject.

I thought more about my own dealings with the subject. I've dealt with it professionally, and personally. I've had friends kill themselves, clients and former clients kill themselves. I've worked with lots of people who've tried to kill themselves.

Personally I've come as close as I care to killing myself as I want to. I always thought that my son would be what kept me alive. I got to a point once where I decided that even he would be "better off" without me. At that point it was just me, the means, the plan, the note, and... I somehow decided that I really didn't want to die. I just wanted to stop hurting. I wonder if that isn't really what all suicide is about, to stop hurting.

I can look around and see people worse off than me in any direction I look. When I came that close to killing myself, I couldn't see anyone or anything but myself, and my own pain.

I've heard people say "I didn't have the guts to kill myself". I guess it takes a kind of "guts" to kill oneself. It also must take some kind of guts to not kill oneself. I do not want to sit in judgment of anyone who kills themselves. I just know that I no longer want to do that.

Yes, life sucks sometimes, and sometimes it sucks all the time. I think of the tragedies that people I've known have gone through. People on this board have gone through. People I know and love have gone through and are going through. Somehow, we all have much more in common than we have not in common with each other. The more we can embrace our sameness and get past our differences, the richer life gets and is for us.

Today I'm trying damned hard to embrace this life I was given. I don't know why I was given it. I don't know why some people don't make it. I don't know why a lot of things in this world happen. I do know that the more I can focus on what I can give back to the world, the better off I am. I know that the more I can actually do something for someone else, the less I focus on my problems and concerns. I know that the more I can get out of myself, the less concerned I am with the 'petty" things of life and the more I'm concerned with the world and the welfare of others.

I truly hope that anyone who posts on this thread, or posts on DU, or reads threads on DU will read through a lot of these threads as I have. There is so much humanity in them. People who have shared and bared their souls on a message board to try to help someone else. I'm in awe of them, and I so much respect these people today that I don't even know how to express it other than to say thanks to all of you.

SPK

Cognitive Process Level of Development (Preference, Skill and Frequency of Use)
extraverted Sensing (Se) *************************** (27.9)
average use
introverted Sensing (Si) ************************* (25.9)
average use
extraverted Intuiting (Ne) ********************************* (33.3)
good use
introverted Intuiting (Ni) *********************************** (35.3)
good use
extraverted Thinking (Te) *************************** (27.9)
average use
introverted Thinking (Ti) ********************** (22)
limited use
extraverted Feeling (Fe) ************************************ (36.3)
excellent use
introverted Feeling (Fi) ******************************** (32.2)
good use

Summary Analysis of Profile
By focusing on the strongest configuration of cognitive processes, your pattern of responses most closely matches individuals of this type: ENFJ

Lead (Dominant) Process
Extraverted Feeling (Fe): Building trust through giving relationships. Empathically responding to others' needs and take on their needs and values as your own. Checking for respect and trust. Giving and receiving support to grow closer to people.

Support (Auxilliary) Process
Introverted Intuiting (Ni): Transforming with a meta-perspective. Withdrawing from the world and focusing your mind to receive an insight or realization. Checking if synergy results. Trying out a realization to transform things.

If these cognitive processes don't fit well then consider these types: INFJ, or ENFP

If these results are different from what you know of yourself, you might consider why your developmental pattern does not align with your expectation. You might also consider exploring this result as a possible better fit.

The Four Temperaments
Corresponding best-fit temperaments based on your profile: Catalyst; secondly Theorist; then Stabilizer; and lastly, Improviser.
To read more about the four temperaments click here.

Sixteen Patterns
Jung observed that everyone has potential access to all eight cognitive processes but that we each prefer one as dominant — playing a lead role — with a second process playing a support role. Your two preferred cognitive processes allow you to do information gathering and decision making, introverting and extraverting. Maybe you prefer introverted Intuiting in a lead role with extraverted Feeling in a support role, or maybe you prefer extraverted Sensing in a lead role with introverted Thinking in a support role. Or maybe you prefer some other pairing. These pairings tap into sixteen possible patterns which are often represented using a 4-letter code. Here are the sixteen type patterns and the preferred cognitive processes associated with each:

just kidding

Yes religion or rather religious people have been responsible for a large percentage, if not the majority of evil things done to people.

Why is that?

I think that it is because people are fear based for the most part and intolerance is based in fear.

Intolerance leads to some pretty nasty stuff. Human evil I believe can be traced to fear and intolerance for the most part. Then throw in a few sociopaths who feed on the masses fears and you have a movement of fear based ideology.

So, Elton has a right to make his observations. Not all religious people will fit his description, but unfortunately religion has a long history of easily meeting his expectations, and the current mood in many religious circles seems to be to be to look for a scapegoat to blame the problems of today on.

Gays, Lesbians, and others make scapegoats because they are "different" in the eyes of a fear based person, or group.

It is a sad thing to see that religion is still in this day and age used as a hammer to hit the heads of the people who are fearful. Not saying I'm not a person who has fear, but I try to realize that my fear is my fear and not the result of some easily scapegoated group or person(s)

I have explored the possibilities of existence vs. non-existence, and found that I do/feel better when I believe in a higher power. I know that this is outside of the realm of the theme of this thread, I just don't spend a lot of time thinking of proof(s) to my beliefs.

That's not to say that I don't experience doubt, discouragement, curiosity, etc. about what this higher power might be. I have come up without answers as to why there is suffering in the world. I don't believe that it is a "test", hell I don't know why suffering exists. It does though. Life ain't fair. So I'll put on a helmet when I need it and go forward with the rest of the world.

People do have odd ideas about what constitutes a reason to believe. My idea is that I haven't found a good reason not to at least suspect that there is something more to this world/life, etc. than what we can see and that it is logical, and has purpose.

In the end, it won't really matter whether I'm right or wrong. I don't believe that anyone but perhaps the most evil of us (Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot, etc.) will face a real wrath or judgment if there's a God.
If I'm wrong, then I'll never know it either.

So it's an interesting line of thinking to consider that some people come up with arguments to prove their reason for belief. As I've implied before, it is pragmatic for me to believe vs. to not believe. I feel better when I allow myself to believe.

Thanks