IMPORTANT PRECAUTIONARY INFORMATION:
- This site and all linked resources contain generalized information that cannot be substituted for direct one-on-one care provided by a health professional. Clearly, some providers are better than others, but every case is unique and no internet site, book, periodical, or documentary can ever take the place of such one-on-one care provided by a health professional.
- Automated blood pressure monitors (public or home) and home glucometers likewise cannot be substituted for one-on-one care by a health professional. Thoroughly read all literature and precautions accompanying such devices regarding their use and limitations, record all data from these including date, time of day, and other pertinent information, and furnish your provider with this information as an aid (not a substitute) for your ongoing treatment plan.
- Automated blood pressure monitors often dangerously underestimate the BP of the elderly and patients with peripheral vascular diseases. Manual BP cuffs are the only reliable way to check the BP of these two demographics. I am very disturbed to see some hospitals and health care systems rely exclusively on automated BP monitors.
- Although the only way to stop caffeine or tobacco is to quit cold turkey, never stop any psychiatric drug(s) cold turkey. Sudden withdrawal or rebound from these drugs could result in suicide or violence. Quitting cold turkey is also likely to fail because of painful withdrawal symptoms from these highly addictive drugs. The best way to discontinue psychiatric drugs is to taper off slowly one drug at a time under the supervision of a health or mental health professional. Although some have "lucked out" upon quitting cold turkey, these cases are exceptional and these individuals assumed a grave risk. Tapering off slowly under professional supervision is by far the safest and the most likely to succeed.
- Stopping alcohol and many other drugs of abuse is difficult and should also be done under the supervision of a health or mental health professional. Detox is fraught with pitfalls, which is why there are so many inpatient programs for initial treatment of alcoholism and other substance abuse.
- In order to prevent hypoglycemia (low blood sugar), dietary supplements to help lower blood glucose should be added gradually one at a time under the supervision of a health professional and regular monitoring with a home glucometer. Hypoglycemia is potentially a medical emergency that can result in loss of consciousness or other adverse events.
- Due to risk of adverse cardiovascular events, do not start any new exercise program or start any new job, volunteer work, or other project involving manual labor without consulting a health professional. This warning is commonly issued regarding exercise programs, but such warnings typically overlook manual labor from gainful employment, voluntarism, and personal endeavors such as home improvement. Do not engage in any sadomasochism under any circumstances. Even basic sex acts are notorious for precipitating fatal or disabling cardiovascular events!
This no-frills site has not one, but two groundbreaking pages. Over the upcoming weeks and months, new additions will be made to all pages. It is a haven for voices that have been frozen out of the controlled media, and particularly for issues I call "post-partisan," which cannot be defined as 'red' or 'blue.' Some examples include alternative medicine and psychiatry, the threat of Chinese Communism, caffeine addiction, government subsidies and bailouts of business, the continued need for dress and appearance reform, the threat of corporations and free-trade agreements, and extreme animal breeding. However, since there are plenty of fora available to discuss all sides of the abortion issue and its correlates, that will not be explored here because these issues have been badly overexposed, diverting time, attention, and money away from other, more urgent issues. It seems that the only real difference anymore between the two "major" parties is reproductive and end-of-life issues, as this Democratic majority in both houses can't even censure 2 war criminals who had stolen 2 elections and reached their term limit. In 2010, the situation deteriorated to an emergency, exacerbated by unprecedented environmental catastrophe on the Gulf Coast and ongoing legislative and judicial disasters. I highly recommend
Grist Magazine (see Links page) for ongoing coverage of the Gulf oil disaster, the Japanese post-quake nuclear disaster, and the climate.
NOW AVAILABLE on the Links page: Amid all the hype on the center left and all the whining on the right about the alleged US assassination of Usama bin Laden, there is one slight problem that is all too common with capital punishment, especially in Texas: he was innocent. Sure, he was significantly involved in several terror attacks in the '90s with major loss of innocent life, but neither he, Al-Qaida, or the Taliban had any involvement in 9/11 whatsoever. The real culprits are running loose in this country right now without so much as an arrest warrant, some even on book tours!
ABOUT THE BACKGROUND IMAGE: On Fri. May 21, 2010, I brought this cake to a small gathering at an area restaurant celebrating the 30th anniversary of one of the greatest films ever made and the best anesthetic autobiopathography ever filmed: The Empire Strikes Back. The blue and white represent the glaciers of Hoth, the green leaves the swamps of Dagobah, the orange and purple roses the Bespin sunset, and the white cake underneath represents the deceptively immaculate corridors of its cloud city. The frosting was made with whipped cream rather than satin to minimize sugar content and not curl my toenails. I was absolutely delighted with it, and it was very excruciatingly painful for me to cut it! A week later, we screened Empire in our church parish hall, as scheduling/noise issues permitted, because an U2charist with a rock band was being rehearsed on the 21st. Despite being strung out at the end of the school year, I'm glad I took the time and effort to observe this anniversary. On Tue. May 18, I also attended what certainly was the official Lucasfilm observance of the occasion when it came to Memphis: the Star Wars in Concert event, which was very nice. It was a full orchestra accompanied by a montage from the entire cycle. One highlight was the asteroid field music cue. Some impressive items were displayed in the lobby, the most popular being Vader's costume, with the carbonite block being the runner-up. On Jun. 5, an unplanned but inevitable celebration of this 30th anniversary occurred. I went to a Mexican restaurant with a few friends, and ordered a "monster house margarita," which was enormous! Consequently, I became drunk for the first time in approx. 20 years! I quipped that if I had another rita like that, I'd be an anesthetized patient!
Coincidentally, mid-December was the 20th anniversary of another anesthetic autobiopathography: Edward Scissorhands. Although not as magnificent as The Empire Strikes Back, it is Tim Burton's second and most successful effort at an anesthetic autobiopathography, the first attempt being the 1989 Batman, which turned 20 about a year earlier. It has essentially all of the necessary ingredients: pallor, mutilation, black garb, thwarted romance, ice and snow, incomprehensible loneliness, heartbreaking tragedy, and a shallow, frivolous society in which the people continuously engage in a grotesque danse macabre to avoid their feelings. A red herring is that the actor who brilliantly portrayed the anesthetized patient in ES was and still is an unanesthetized person in real life. That's why they call it acting! Sadly, Burton's third attempt at an anesthetic autobiopathography, Batman Returns, was a disaster and a total failure.
Curiously, I had an unplanned observance of this anniversary that was much more subtle but much more profound: delivering real compassion to a real anesthetized patient, which is ongoing to this day. I would've preferred that this tragedy had been averted, but the individual's lack of health insurance amid this obscene crisis likely made that impossible.
COMING THIS YEAR: the Assume the Opposite political platform. An alphabetized listing of where AtO is on most significant issues and why.
It's not what you know.
It's not even who you know.
It's who your parents are/were.
It's a secular caste system.
In 1970, my father was part of a mass layoff at Ling Temco and Vought (LTV), a defense contractor in Dallas. Ling was a much hated person in the Metroplex, so no one would hire any of the former employees. Finally, my father got a menial job in the bargain basement of Titches, an erstwhile Texas department store similar to the erstwhile Goldsmith's in Memphis. Frustrated, my father publicly denounced the defense industry and all of conservatism, and our family literally became pariahs as a result. Further complicating matters is that he is almost certainly gay. Realistically, the chances of his
not being gay round down to 0. Consequently, people have automatically assumed that I am gay for my entire life. Making matters even worse is my mother having been an abusive shrew with whom nobody wanted to be associated. Thus,
decades before I ever became radicalized regarding public health and other issues, my whole immediate family were outcasts. Aunts, uncles, and cousins were completely unaffected, until one of my mother's brothers was fired from a Chinese-owned company 25 years ago for having an affair, and denounced capitalism as a result. He was supported by my grandmother until her death, and he now draws Social Security. Even though my brother never had a closed head injury like I had, and is free from the speech and manual dexterity disabilities from which I suffer, and has had Travoltaesque good looks since age 18, he only was able to marry in middle age far, far outside our race because no white woman would accept him for more than a one-night stand because of this ostracism. Most white men who marry Chinese or other Asian women are acting on a sexual fetish manufactured by the Vietnam War. Not so with my brother; he had no other choice. Therefore, I couldn't sell out even if I wanted to!
NEW AND VERY IMPORTANT: In this era of controlled, manipulated media and rampant urban legends, it can be very difficult to ascertain which conspiracy theories are real, which are half-truths, and which are outright frauds. It is a grave error and a sign of brain damage to either blindly embrace or summarily reject all conspiracy theories out of hand. For example, just a few years ago, "postmodern" or postmillennial libertarians were great champions of the environment and the climate, until they fell hook, line, and sinker for right-wing "conspiracy theories" manufactured by polluting industries, and made an about-face. Conversely, in their well-intentioned zeal to combat creationism, Objectivism, and Holocaust denialism, center-left pundits in the scientific community have all but dismissed any religious belief whatsoever as "superstition," playing right into the hands of the pseudo-religious radical right. Both types of errors are doing irreparable harm to the cause of truth, which has become more and more of an Easter egg hunt. Mindful of this complexity, I have spent several months sorting out the information and disinformation and compiling an original document representing what I believe to be the truth.
Click here to read [Word 97-2003].
Here is one conspiracy I have first-hand experience with: in the summer of 2004, I had been laid off from a job for political reasons, and my unemployment benefits were within weeks of expiring, and it was triple digit heat back in Texas, so I quickly took a job at a local call center where several people I knew were working. The center processed relay calls for the hearing impaired, which sounds nonviolent, right? Wrong. The majority of the calls that came through were actually international fraud typically involving purchase of bulk merchandise from small businesses with fraudulent credit card numbers. Initially, the calls were originating from Nigeria, but towards the end of the year, the fraud escalated to another country: Ghana. With fraud from 2 countries, people who were actually disabled were no longer able to even get through, so management instituted a "fraud process" in which calls meeting certain requirements that likely constituted fraud could be disconnected by floor support. However, someone on the inside must've leaked the criteria to the Nigerian and Ghanian mafias, as the scammers quickly learned to evade the disconnection criteria. So a cat-and-mouse game ensued over the next 3 years, which was often ineffectual. Only when the center changed hands for the second time at the beginning of 2008 were all calls originating from West Africa blocked. Why wasn't this done as far back as the 20th century? Because each call was paid for by the government to the tune of $1.60 per call per min., and because management and the FCC were certainly getting a cut of the booty. And as small businesses are bankrupted, that creates less competition for the bloated, tyrannical corporations. This is not the only abuse this criminal operation is responsible for; please see the Antisexuality page for more. What I have revealed here and there in no way violates the legitimate privacy rights of actual people with disabilities. There is really nothing to say about them that isn't already common knowledge: a lot of them are unemployed or underemployed and dependent on family or public assistance, those who are well employed are invariably in IT or the deaf ed industry, some have multiple disabilities, and conservatives treat them no better than they do undocumented immigrants or sexual minorities. One thing that persons with communcation disorders can do about this scandal is to support nationalization of telerelay. Nationalization will remove all financial incentives for fraud and abuse, substituting disincentives. Nationalization will also eliminate the worthless, overpaid executives who were getting a cut of the booty from the fraud (I also support nationalization of central banks and the fossil fuel industry).
Here is another conspiracy I have second-hand experience with: I know someone who used to live in Ft. Worth, where her husband used to work at Carswell Air Force Base. During their tenure there, they had 2 children, both of whom had birth defects. The eldest had a serious heart defect, requiring open heart surgery, the anesthetic of which left her with a serious intellectual disability. The second child had a cleft palate, requiring multiple surgeries. My friend noticed that all of the babies in the nursery had some form of birth defect, most likely because the men were constantly exposed to radiation from the base's radar at close range, damaging the sperm. This is not the first time I have heard of men on a military base being harmed by radiation emanating from radar. When my friend and her husband moved to another state, their other two children were born completely normal. Their new pediatrician was puzzled and concerned, and looked into the matter. Shortly after that, the doctor was contacted by federal agents and told to discontinue investigation of all the birth defects or else lose all his federal funding forever. He apologized to my friend and told her what had transpired. I told her that she should share her story with Democracy Now, but she said she feared repercussions. I retorted that in the Gospel it is written that if one saves one's life, one loses it, but if one loses it for the sake of the good news to the poor (socialism), one saves it. We need a groundswell of testimonials like these in order to affect the revolutionary social change which will save all of our lives and the biosphere as well, which is the root meaning of this biblical teaching. For example, Dickson, TN, where I had gone twice in 2008 to attend seminars, is the cleft palate capitol of the country if not the world. I hope my home page here sets a good example for her and millions of others.
And yet another known conspiracy involving my content on this site: On Oct. 2, 2009, I uploaded Consumerism, The Autobiography of an Anesthetized Patient, and its postscript to Slide Share, which receives a lot of traffic. Three days later on Oct. 5, after an entire decade of total silence including 3 years of total silence by the current apartment manager, this manager started harassing me that my apartment was dirty. Obviously, this was direct retaliation for uploading anti-psychiatric and anti-anesthetic content to the most popular slide sharing platform on the internet. It is also a diabolical attempt to keep me off the internet, as it is a truism that all writers need time to write. A month later, the manager started harassing my next-door neighbor and a few other residents in a lame attempt to disguise this retaliation. This is my response to the bitch and to the allopaths and neocons who gave her the orders: Not only do I want all the beer cans and bottles off the property, and the dumpsters emptied frequently enough so that they are not constantly overflowing all over the ground, I want the Gulf of Mexico spotless.
