Fuck Washington, Especially Seattle

So my problems when I was young, growing up in western Washington (mostly Covington), I had no support from anyone. My mother was psychologically abusing me, even the teachers knew something was wrong but back then no one thought psychological abuse was a thing.

So instead of getting me the help I needed, they would just punish me for my odd behavior. I had no one to turn to, being trans and atheist for as long as I could remember.

In school I avoided the popular kids, even though they often wanted me to hang out with them. Most of the time I was far more happy with cats, dogs, pretty much any other species by my own.

After turning 18 I was lost, no aim, no goals, because I didn't even know who or what I was. All I could do was strive to survive, and that I did well.

I picked up a set of skills, which would better serve some super secret agent in a fictional movie than any real human. After having helped many people and a lot of cats, I was diagnosed with disability and locked into a system that does what it can to keep you there, no matter who is in charge.

The only thing I could look forward to was that one day I could get some surgery and feel happy about my body. Then a medical doctor who was a bastard in Virginia Mason decided to lie and remove my hopes of getting that surgery by having me declared suicidal just because I disagreed with him on something unrelated.

So now I had only one thing to live for, a single cat who I would raise from a kitten and have for their entire life. A cat who I could say "I remember when he/she was so tiny."

That cat was going to be Rhodey, a wonderful black cat with a shady past who got really lucky. Healthy and happy, friendly to everyone, and I was forgetting all my problems focusing on taking care of him and his sister.

I looked so forward to the next twenty years, I probably won't live much longer after that because of a few health related problems and the mistake of smoking tobacco. But at least when I died I would be happy to have had this one thing.

Then, only a year after I had brought him home, our home was flooded and Compass Housing Alliance did not follow through with the repairs, forcing us to live with mold, no kitchen, and exposed insulation. Rhodey lost two pounds in about six months, scared I took him to the vet.

Everything seemed okay, and the vet assumed it was his teeth. I took that diagnosis because it was something I could directly help with.

Brushing his teeth regularly, I hoped he would regain the lost weight and start growing again. But he didn't, though he didn't seem to lose anymore weight.

A few years later, last year in fact, I took him to renew his vaccines and have him checked on. I was correct, he had not gained weight, so they did a full blood work on him.

It was expensive, but I was desperate now, I was worried, tense, scared. A few days later I got the email back, everything looked perfect, as in perfectly healthy, as in what I was doing was great for him, except ...

That except was kidney disease, when I read it I felt numb, fear, rage, hatred, washing over me, all at once. It was obvious who was responsible for it, a disease caused by environmental toxins, a thing which he was only exposed to during the time of the flooding.

Seattle had taken the last two things I loved from me. This vampiric city that masquerades as "environmentally friendly" and a place for equality.

Seattle, the city where everyone will tell you they care about you, as long as you don't rock the boat. Seattle and Compass Housing Authority, the people that claims to be animal friendly while complaining about the extra strong urine small caused by a cat who suffers because they poisoned him.

The last good employee for Seattle Housing Authority, the one who demanded that Compass Housing Alliance actually finish the repairs for the flooding that was caused by a drunk who passed out, retired the same day he did that wonderful thing. The last person who cared about the poor, the needy, the ones truly in danger, retired with one last loving act, though too late, I will always remember that he was the last good person in the Seattle government, perhaps in all of western Washington, perhaps in the entire country of the USA.

Rhodey, My Baby Boy

Three years ago I brought home this tiny ball of fluff. At six weeks old, he was covered in ringworm and looking for a loving home.

Typically I only adopt adult felines, ones which don't have any annoying phases of development that I have to deal with. But Pepper would not accept an adult so my options were limited.

Pepper was still unsure of me, and I needed to bring her out of her shell so I took a chance. Bringing this little adorable boy home did just what we needed, and Pepper is now a very loving and trusting cat because of it.

But one year after I brought him home our apartment was flooded, and Compass Housing Authority did nothing to complete the repairs for a very long time. During this time Rhodey lost two pounds, but was otherwise looking quite healthy.

The vet said it might just be the stress, which kept me at ease and I just tried really hard to find a treat he would love enough to eat all up. But a year passed and no change, so we went in for a checkup last month and they decided to do an in depth check.

Everything came back as "normal", except one thing, his kidneys were not functioning correctly. The vet found he was suffering chronic kidney disease.

Usually caused by exposure toxins, it reduces their life expectancy significantly. Toxins like mold and mildew caused by massive flooding of an apartment which we were forced to live in during his development.

I have been fighting my own brain to accept this, the tiny runt I had come to love so much, the runt I had hoped to get at least twenty years with, I will have no more than five or six years in total. Thanks to the vile monsters who run Compass Housing Alliance, the monsters who dragged the name Compass through the toxic mud.

Since I got the news I struggle every day to do anything, I struggle to keep a smile on my face, I struggle to get out of bed at all. I struggle to live. I will never forgive Compass Housing Alliance for this, may they all suffer long and painful deaths on the streets, forgotten and alone.

The War of Religion

If this offends you, then you are proving that your religion is oppressive and vile.

The life of a gnat is short, it has evolved to fit a very specific niche and it does this well. The gnat knows only one thing, find food, and thus the gnat knows nothing more of the world around it. Note: religion here refers only to the theistic religions and their gods.

Does this change anything about how humans live? Not at all, as fascinating as the gnat it, it's limited view of reality does not alter how reality works in any way.

Often people will defend religion with "everyone's entitled to their own beliefs." This is just a lie to protect the snake oil, reality does not change just because you believe you can fly without wings.

What's worse is that denying reality allows one to ignore the horror done by others who deny reality, even some atheists have demonstrated this huge problem. Many are against showing the horrific pictures of those slain in the name of a god, instead they focus only on the victim's good pictures.

This is a defensive action, protecting religion from scrutiny, allowing people to deny reality instead of embracing and improving it. We need these horrible images shown, to spread the truth and fuel the outrage against all religion, but more importantly to show their kids how horrible their parents behave because of these religions.

Indoctrination is difficult to break in older people who are set in their ways, neurology explains why this is. So the best strategy to end this insanity is to show their children the reality before they have the wool pulled over it, and instead of fear display anger and mock the fucking religions.

We must also remind ourselves why we fight against the indoctrination, the delusion, and why any delusion is bad when it's protected. We all need to look at these images and put ourselves in the shoes of the victims.

To burn to death us the most painful way to die, imagine the pain through your whole life suffered tenfold in one moment knowing that this is the last thing you will ever feel. Then cry for the victim and raise your fists toward the religious people in outrage, demand justice, not fear, not excuses, not cowardice.

Demand they are all held accountable for this, moderates of any religion are nothing more than subversive liars, those who deny this fact are enablers and complicate. "Moderates" defend and support the doctrine used by those who commit these atrocities, they are just as responsible.

We must end this insanity, or we will all face the same fate at the hands of those who do not like us.

Leelah Alcorn - Her Murderous Parents

It has come to my attention that the USA is still stuck in 1800 … BC, especially for transgendered people. Consider this: you can have synthetic silicone injected into your breasts, a deadly virus injected into your face, and poisonous inks injected into any surface without even a single psychiatric evaluation; but to do the planet a favor and have your genitals removed or modified requires not only two full psychiatric evaluations and 1,000 times the cost of the procedure in funds, but also 10 years of living in the most dangerous environment with no safety, no protections, and no respect.

That's just the requirement for the surgery, society here has no respect for the transgender, when they realize you are one. I am considered 100% passable by the medical industry and supporters, even after getting to know me it is impossible to tell I am transgendered without seeing me nude, or seeing my birth certificate.

This produces a very hostile and dangerous situation, not only do my own alienate me without knowing it, I cannot take the chance of making any local friends lest they find out and kill me, which is legal in the USA in all states except California. Even in California the law is useless to the person who is dead, they were erased from the planet just because society is unwilling to accept some very basic facts.

The first fact is this: we exist. Get over it, deal with your own insecurities and stop taking them out on us.

Second fact: we have no choice, but you do. It takes a conscious effort to hate someone, and we have a genetic predisposition to be us, one which is largely ignored and misunderstood by all but real biologists.

Third fact: your comfort is no more important than ours, stop pretending like you are the center of the universe. We all have to live on this over populated world because straight cis breeders won't take responsibility for their own actions, yet we are the one being blamed for doing the world and our own species a favor by reducing the chances of increasing that population beyond the breaking point. Don't blame us for your stupidity.

Fourth fact: removing or modifying the genitals not only has health benefits, it is a billion times safer than a tattoo. Not that tattoos are wrong, some are awesome, but put some damned perspective into your head for once.

Fifth fact: it costs the public more to care for transgendered people for one year prior to surgery than the surgery costs. You pay for it, in all cases, because your hatred of us is what makes us unable to find jobs. You could hire us for actual jobs, instead of ridiculing us after you discover what we are. You were our friend for years before I told you, nothing changed except you.

There's the biggest problem, cishet change their perspective of us when they find out, even though there was no chance they'd get into a sexual relationship. They suddenly invent some slight that never truly existed, only because of their invented fear of the unknown.

The fact you could not tell is not because we lied, it's because we are the gender you mistook us for. You lie to yourself when you say otherwise, you are the one pretending to care about people but place such shallow conditions on your friendship and love, you are the reason we die horrible deaths.

The term cognitive dissonance comes to mind, because we shatter your idiotic and invented notions of what reality is so you become violent to defend your fantasy world, and we pay the price for you being unable to deal with reality. This is your fault, not ours.

We owe no one anything, for we do no harm to anyone else and often seek safe medical help but end up becoming the toys of a cruel psychiatrist for our efforts. Psychiatrists who are given legal rights to kill their patients under the false pretense of science.

This is your fault, cishet, because you made us then turn your back on us just because we are different from what you thought you were making. Ironically this is not the end of our problems.

Almost all transgendered people have fought for gay rights, against racism, for animal rights, and even for women rights. But the only ones who stand with us when we really need it are not the ones we fought for, the small percentage of cishet who are intelligent and/or caring.

We get harassed and publicly executed by black folks, gay people turn their backs when we ask for help, women deny we exist, and the animals that are not human have no power to change us. Which makes it almost everyone's fault that the transgendered are slaughtered in horrible ways, slaughtered even in the USA.

So when you try to sleep at night, know this, one transgendered person in the USA is being tortured to death somewhere because you don't care.

Space, Time, Matter - Eternal Questions

I sit here in a Starbucks, having been awake for about 24 hours, sipping coffee to keep going. An image on Twitter reminded me of how vast the universe actually is, not difficult for a scientific person to grasp, the notion that we are a tiny speck, inside a tiny speck, inside another tiny speck, of a tiny speck, of dust in this vast cosmos.

The sad fact is that no religious person truly grasps the concept of forever, much less infinite in any amount. Even Einstein, a deist, was hard pressed to comprehend it, thus why he was afraid of things like quantum physics.

It is easy to see how little they grasp about the concept of infinity, as they talk about "forever" as casually as if they are talking about tomorrow. This limited view keeps them from facing the most scary notion to a planet bound organism, that we float endlessly for all eternity through an infinite vast emptiness.

It also protects then from fearing their own myth, by not comprehending the notion of infinity, the "after life" becomes nothing more than a pleasant weekend getaway, instead of the truly horrific monotonous form of torture that it would actually be. Consider the vastness of the universe, and living as long as it would take to get from one side to the opposite if the universe stopped expanding today, using current space travel technology and an infinite source of energy.

Less than one percent of the way through the voyage you would have read every book ever written to date, including all alternatives, and all languages they have been printed in. Yes, you would even actually finish War and Peace, and every word of every scientific paper published and unpublished.

After two percent of the trip you'd have done every scientific test in the scientific papers you read, and verified them with several repeated tests. You would have the scientific understanding of a god at this point, nothing would be a mystery to you because of our inherent ability of inference.

Now we're just nearing the fourth or fifth galaxy of this trip, at three percent. Your tops scores on every video game ever written would be perfect, impossible for anyone to score higher. You would have ever race track memorized, every glitch mastered, ever combination perfected, every letter of every script known.

Any psychologically healthy human would have been insane three fold at this point, and there is still 97% of the universe left. You would have lived a thousand lifetimes just to get to the next galaxy, eaten more than a billion tons of food.

Food would literally be tasteless after only a few hundred years of thus trip, your taste buds would be unable to distinguish one flavor from the next out, because the repetition would would eventually cause the neurons in your brain to be flatlined in sensory input, all valences would be neutral.

Hallucinations, a combination of memory and imagination, would haunt you after only five hundred years because of the monotony. This is less than a hundredth of a percent of your trip too.

Adding more people to the trip would increase the degradation of sanity, after a few hundred years everyone would be paranoid of each other with violent consequences. This is not because of a biological flaw.

There's the catch, religious people will likely claim it's a biological flaw in our brain or body that would be removed after death, but this is not an effect of biology. The boredom is an effect of memory.

Unique memories always stand out to us, because they are easy to identify in the crowd. When no memories stand out we begin to lose focus, we call this phenomenon boredom.

The progressive insanity and delusion is an effect of logic, once all that is possible is known to a single logic center, it will make up new things to explore because curiosity is an inherent trait of logic, the need to explore. Religion seeks to destroy the curiosity, which always results in psychological instability because the logic engine of the intellect becomes damaged.

This can cause many things, almost always the loss of curiosity results in hallucinations of various degrees. You often hear religious people describing a relatively mundane event as "spiritual," even mentioning voices or visions.

These are hallucinations cause by logic methods being imbalanced. Much like a painter with only three colors, the picture is incomplete because there us no curiosity asking the important questions, so the gaps are filled in with random nonsense.

Shelter Life - A Time of Deep Insight

In previous posts I have stated I was "100% passable," that essentially means I have no traits that are considered opposite of my gender identity, even my voice and face offer no reason for anyone to question my gender. While this has produced a lot of complications and resulted in discrimination by the medical industry, it did offer me a very unique position in the shelter system while I was a resident of it. I had informed the staff of my situation, only to reduce the risk of discrimination from them, but the other residents had no idea.

This was not a deception, nor a lie, I never once lied to the residents, they just made their own assumptions and accepted those without question. Who was I to correct them, right? It was their belief and they were, and are, entitled to those beliefs, it is not my right to shatter their beliefs with facts and reality. At the time I just really didn't care, shelter life was about living through the day, and nothing more.

But this very unique position, being an atheist and transgendered, helped me to become more critical of what the women said, their choices of words and conversations. They spoke so openly around me, since I never added anything to the conversations and they believed I was just like them. What I had heard was appalling, today I speak against it all the time, working to dispel the myths and misconceptions I had heard in these times I was incognito.

The very few who managed to figure out what I was, usually by some rather aggressive curiosity, still did not see me as any different than the others, just more informed and a great source of information. The more educated women often turned to me as their encyclopedia of obscure information, information that they had not even considered studying until they met me. I was the sage of the shelters for women, considered wiser than my age, but you had to ask the right questions, or you'd not get the right answers.

The conversations of the others, the ones who never had any reason to consider me different than they were, had become the focus of my attention very quickly. There were other transgendered women in the shelters, one who's brain was scrambled by psychiatric medications for problems she did not really have, another was very young and passable enough as to not be seen as much of a threat, and the last that I knew of was an older one who had fallen prey to the nonsense and become an alcoholic. All the the three were always treated so well to their faces, the women behaved with respect and even acted like they were best friends of these women.

But when these transgendered women were not present, the vile hatred that filled the conversations regarding them was a shocking contrast. Many of the things they said about the one who had given up were so horrible that I cannot repeat them legally, or morally. Sure, she had become weak, fallen into a pit of despair, allowing the negativity of those around her break her own resolve. But that was no reason to hate her, it was only a valid reason to pity, and try to help, this poor creature. But the women honestly hated her, and for reasons that defied logic.

They would refer to her in the inappropriate gender when she was not present, and often say it was unfair she was allowed in their shelter. Before I left, I had already signed my lease and was working to leave so I saw no reason to remain the observer, I confronted one, asking why it is they believed a shelter was a place for sexual activity. It was at that moment they realized just who had been watching them for all that time, who was taking notes, and the look of horror on their face, the raw guilt of knowing they were complicit, was worth having endured hearing those horrible words they spewed.

Last I had seen, she was no longer a bigot, but instead treated everyone equally. Such a drastic change in a person, I was given hope for humanity by it. The damage she had done could never be repaired, but she was no longer a threat to humanity because of one simple question. The transgendered woman is still in that deep dark pit though, sadly, it does not appear she has the strength to lift herself from it, drowning her pain in alcohol. She could help so many people with her own story, if only she'd see the value of them.

The younger one was very stereotypical, one of those transgendered women who seemed to be only interested in sex and clothing. When I first met her I thought she may be a lost cause, that some people will just be stereotypes. I did speak with her, often helping her out when I could, offering a hand in friendship to her as often as I could. The other women seemed to have almost no interest in her, even when she was out of sight they didn't gossip about her at all. It was as if those who fit the stereotypes were somehow better than those who didn't, to them. That bothered me more than the gossip though, accepting that stereotypes are better is essentially saying we are all robots with predefined personalities.

I could never bring myself to tell her how much damage she was doing to the transgendered community as a whole, because even if she was a stereotype, it was still her choice to be who she wanted to be. It was that internal conflict that probably encouraged me to be so kind to her, it never occurred to me that sharing my story may change profoundly alter her perspective. She was an interesting person, often upbeat and without a care in the world. I was envious of her at those times, how even the worst of life couldn't touch her.

At that time I had started getting into a routine, which is the worst thing to do when living in a shelter, you become a permanent fixture of that culture. It felt like I had lost the will to fight, the will to cause change in the world. So I just regarded her as a distant friend, one who I would help when I could, when it was convenient. I should have become more involved in her life and formed a much stronger bond, but hindsight is always better.

She got out of the shelter system before I had, of course she had discovered what I was before that and seemed to regard me with some pity, and some respect. I ran into her one day, much later, and it was like seeing a different person, not just different, but a complete person. Her knowing me had altered her own perception of herself so much that I now saw a beautiful young, intelligent, and secure lesbian.

A rather surprising turn in what I had known, she had broken free of living the stereotype and become someone unique who no longer cared what society thought, and no longer behaved how society expected her to behave. I felt as if I had just seen a daughter graduate from higher education, at least I imagine the feeling was the same. I do not know where she is now, but I am certain she is well and happy.

The third transgendered woman, the one who's mind was destroyed by psychiatrists, I had never known her prior to that. Though I could say she is the second friend of mine that psychiatry has killed. You see, I always defended her, stood up for her even against those in charge. She is also what has encouraged me to actively fight against psychiatry, to take it to their throats. She was a very well educated nurse, before the psychiatrists got hold of her, well adjusted, pleasant. The people who knew her before they killed her would reminisce about how great of a person she was.

I had made friends with many of the staff, and one in particular had known this woman for many years, and seen what horrible monsters the medical community is to transgendered people. The staff member was a cis woman, one of those women who truly treated everyone equally and had no hangups at all. I am honored to call her a friend, but it was her who had informed me of the sad tale of the transgendered woman who was slaughtered by psychiatrists in the guise of helping her.

She had an emotional breakdown, a very common thing for many humans, our minds can only take so much stress before this happens. The best treatment for such a case is to place them in a safe environment and allowing them to just work it out in their heads. This is the only treatment that has ever worked, ever. But that is not what they did. Instead, the psychiatrist used her being transgendered as an excuse to declare her unfit, then force her to take medications that completely destroyed her. That is murder, it is a form of murder that is not only legal, but considered acceptable by everyone.

When she was finally released her mind was completely shattered. She could no longer differentiate between reality and imagination, her perception of reality was so skewed that she could not even remain focused on one task. She had a place to live, but kept returning to the shelter, the last place she had ever felt safe in. She had to be reminded to bathe, could not manage her own bowels or urination, and went on incoherent rants.

She would let very few people near her, trust was gone, and rightfully so. With no friends, and the one time she trusted some stranger they killed her, she was lost in a maddening cloud of reality and delusion. I still cry thinking about it, knowing full well that if I give them a chance, they will do that to me as well, just for being different then them. The rather peculiar part, something very few people knew, was that she would talk to me. Though I could only understand some of what she said, I listened to every word.

I always treated her with respect, always kind to her, never once did I mock or get angry with her. Sometimes her delusion would overpower her behavior, and she'd become a bit of a nuisance, others would scream and yell at her, demanding she be quiet and settle down. I'd glare at them for a moment until they were all silent, then calmly, politely, and respectfully ask her to calm down. The sheer anger of the other women when she would apologize to me for being too noisy was something of a mixed emotion. On one hand, it felt good to let them know that I was more capable of handling the situation than they were, but it was a horrible notion to think that they did not understand why my method worked better.

All our lives, the transgendered people are told what we should do, how we should act, what we should be. All our lives we are considered outcasts yet also expected to conform to being outcast. We are rarely ever offered any real choice in our lives, we treat everyone with kindness, treat everyone equally, and offer help when we can. But when we need help, when we are forced to put ourselves into dangerous situations, we are the ones blamed for it, always. We are scorned, tormented, beaten, and discarded. People feign friendship, then wish us harm when we are not present, insult us when we make even a tiny mistake.

Is it not enough that we have more problems to deal with socially? No, of course not, the medical industry does not care about us, they are just as abusive to us. When the safest place for a transgendered is in the shelters, there is something wrong with your society. It's not our problem, it's not our flaw, it's society that is wrong. When hospitals turn us away for simple needs, or worse offer us to the butchers we call psychiatrists, where can we turn for our health? When everything we do right is considered wrong, why should we continue to conform to your ideals? When we abandoned by those we once cared about, why should we care about anyone but our own?

Society does not teach us well, young and old, the transgendered community has no reason to regard society as important, nor valuable to us. Yet, we are all still have such kind hearts as to still hold out our hands in aid, not only to our own, but to other people. Who is the purest in a society, if not the one who society harms most?

A Fond Farewell - The Dangers Of Smoking

At least this post could be, any of my posts could be my last, technically. That is part of what makes life both interesting, and scary, the thrill of not knowing what the future holds. However, that future becomes less and less of a mystery the more we learn about how the human body works, which tends to make life more scary and less interesting.

This is a flaw of modern medical science I had not considered, until just tonight. For the last week I have noticed symptoms that are common in throat cancer, and strep throat. Right now it is a toss up between the two, considering I live in a big city, going shopping is taking a huge risk with your health, you will come into contact with people who have all sorts of illnesses and not even know it. However, I have a very bad habit of smoking, and thus the throat cancer is also as likely as the other. This is what started me to thinking about my future, so suddenly, and what the implications of cancer would be.

It would be dishonest to say I am not genuinely scared about this, the awe and wonder, the splendor of life itself, has suddenly been overshadowed by the fear that I may have caused my life to be cut very short. Being only 39 years, I should have at least another 50 years of life, had I not been so stupid. I have mixed feelings about making this mistake, as you know I do not think we should regret anything we do in life, even our mistakes make up who we are, but this time I am beginning to feel regret about this one.

But let's look at this more in depth, to understand why I feel regret I had to think more on the decision that was such a huge mistake. What did I learn from it, oddly the addiction to nicotine is the one and only reason I did not try any really hard drugs, even so far as to avoid prescription pain medications whenever possible out of fear of becoming addicted to them. There are many pains I have never told my doctor about, because I know they will just prescribe pain medications for them anyway.

Okay, so that is one good outcome of the decision, but that can't be all, that can not in any way be the only good thing to come of it. Nicotine is suppose to have a benefit, and effect that's desirable, it's suppose to calm you, right? Well, yeah, sure, the same way sucking on a pacifier would calm you, and that's it. There is no real calming effect to smoking. The calming effect of nicotine is so mild that it is unnoticeable, the smoking itself has a much bigger calming effect, but that could be achieved by sucking on anything, really.

So then perhaps being an example of what not to do, well yeah, that's great, for the people who learn from your mistake. For you, being an example of what not to do has no benefit, none at all, because there are many more just like you, who made the same mistake as you, and none of you will stand out, or be remembered for that mistake. This is not a good outcome of your mistake, if anything it's beneficial for other people, but has no benefit to you, because the benefit to other people is when you become nothing more than another statistic.

Is smoking a part of my personality? Not really. It is one decision that would have had no impact on my personality at all. I learned little from it, had little change in influence because of it, and my social interactions would have never been impacted either way. It has the same impact on my personality as what I ate for lunch last year, during the Spring equinox did. I have found one decision, one choice, in my entire life that I can, and should, regret.

I still do not recant my assertion that you should not regret your decisions, but you should really consider why you made those decisions and consider if making a different one would impact who you are before you regret them. If the decision would not effect your personality, if you would learn nothing from it, if it would have only harmed you, then you should regret it. However, if a decision did result in something that would change your personality or teach you a valuable lesson, you should not regret it no matter how bad you think the outcome was.

I regret smoking, it would have been better and I would still be the same person if I had never started this bad habit. There is no benefit, there is nothing to learn from it, there is only danger, risk of a horrible life and death, that is all smoking has to offer. Yet, I still do not believe it should be made illegal, actually no drugs should be made illegal, because that actually does encourage people to do it more than making it readily available. We need education more than anything, I will always call education the cure-all for everything, because it really is the only thing that has demonstrated a flawless track record in decreasing problems in our species.

Suicidal Atheists

The folly of many religious people is that they believe, not believe and not know, that us atheists are inherently suicidal. That makes as much sense as saying you are insane for not jumping off a cliff because you don't know how far down it goes. The reality of this is completely backwards, and this works for agnostics as well.

The notion of not knowing something will cause you to fear it, that is one of the instincts that have given humans the advantage over some other species, like lemmings. If we don't know what's after life, we will fear ending that life because of that lack of knowledge, so to those of us willing to admit we don't know, it would be illogical to assume we'd want to end our life. Even our strong curiosity cannot overcome this fear, because it's permanent, as far as we know.

However, that also means the inverse is true, those who know there is life after death would lose that fear, they would be willing to get there as soon as possible, even to the point of being suicidal. We do see this in many religious people, suicide bombers are the best example. They believe they know something so well that they are excited to get to that life after death, so excited that they are willing to blow themselves up. But if they admitted to themselves that they did not really know, they'd be to afraid to end this one chance to live so quickly.

This is one of the primary reasons religious people are so willing to kill, the fanatics at least, they believe they know that there is something after life so they do not see it as robbing a living organism of that life, they see it as a release. The question that comes to mind is: why don't they just end their own life?

The answer is more actually a perfect example of the hypocrisy that religion breeds, the one reason this delusion needs to be addressed more than all others. They have doubts. No matter how vehemently one claims to know there is a life after this, no matter how adamant they are that their god exists, deep down in their subconscious there is a doubt that prevents them from killing themselves. They know that they don't really know, that they are just buying some cookie cutter philosophy spoon-fed to them by someone else.

Deep down, everyone is an agnostic atheist, even those who are anti-religion. The problems arise when you deny that you don't know, that is when you create your own delusion, you have to be deluded to believe something without any supporting evidence that exists outside of your own perceptions. The scientific method has given us a way to test evidence, to ensure that the evidence holds true outside of our own perceptions by allowing others to test that evidence.

This is why religious people tend to hate real science. Yeah, I said "real" science. Anything can be called scientific, and who's to argue, however the scientific method is what separates real science from science fiction. Anything that exists in this reality can be tested, anything, that's a simple fact of the matter, one that cannot be denied by anyone with a functioning brain. That makes so-called miracles vanish, without even testing them, because for it to happen in this reality it would have to be tested.

That does not include things outside of this reality, but those cannot be tested within this reality, another simple, hard, and undeniable fact of the matter. We cannot cross the boundaries between realities to test what is outside of this one. That does not mean that other realities do not exist, nor that other possibilities are never played out, it just means this: What can be tested is reality, what cannot be tested is unknown.

It is that final fact that many of the new religious fanatics are perverting for their own ends, using it as a means to convince people that they know something more than they do. That is dishonest, for if you asked an atheist what's beyond this reality, an honest and true atheist would say: we don't know. But if you ask a religious person that same question, they will dishonestly attempt to convince you that they do know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, making that not only a con, but also an outright lie. They have a doubt, lest they'd have gone there already and not be present to try to convince you of their lies.

That entire line of thought demonstrates the fact that a real atheist could never be suicidal, ever. Even when wracked with pain and suffering, and atheist will still fear the end, because as far as we know it means we cease to exist. Not existing anymore is even more frightening to the human mind than eternal torture, so much in fact that it is the only reason our species has survived long enough to extend our own lifespan.

For many years I did not worry about quitting smoking, to me it was something I'd get around to eventually but was not in any real hurry. I was raised religious, and even after leaving that religion, even after admitting to myself I did not know, I held to the hope that there may be something after this life. That one belief caused more damage than anything I knew. Recently I pondered what was after life, what it would be like to be dead, and I kept drawing a blank, literally. All I could imagine was simply not existing.

That scared me, it frightened me so bad that I actively started resisting the smoking addiction, paying attention to when I smoke, how much I smoke, and reducing it. That fear kept me awake at nights, I still wake with a start sometimes as my dreams will often feed on that fear now. When I think about being dead chills run through my body. The reason for this is that when I went for surgery recently, I got to experience not existing for several hours. When I woke I was in a panic, not because of the surgery itself, but because my mind knew there was something missing, time, sensory input.

The surgery had gone wrong, I was under far longer than I was suppose to have been. Recalling what it felt like, that absence, that moment of knowing that I did not exist for a short period of time, it frightened me. But instead of turning to religious nonsense, instead of running to the arms of some con artist with an easy answer for comfort, I started thinking about the entire matter logically. Now, I not only fear being dead, I also feel remorse for all that we have lost, the people who could have contributed so much to our species, their knowledge and wisdom being gone forever.

And Then This Happened

Student Faces Major Trouble Over Knife Found In What He Says Is His Father's Old Car

I found this story in my Twitter feed, was bored and monitoring it for whatever caught my eye. As I read it, it is a very short article so take the time to do so now, I found so many examples of what's wrong with our cultures today.

The first clue to one of our biggest problems is the "random search" of a car driven by a high school student. Have we really reach the level of paranoia in which this is considered acceptable by society? To invade a child's privacy in such a manner does not give them much reason to respect the privacy, or lives, of anyone else. We are teaching them that people don't matter, is that what we really want them to learn?

They once tried to propose this in my school once, and my school was pretty violent at the time, the 80s were really violent compared to today. The student body, with the support of parents and many teachers, protested this notion so strongly that the board had no choice, they didn't employ such an archaic policy for us. Today the students have been beaten down by the authorities as to accept this policy, and that scares me more than the kids with knives. This scares me even more than kids with knives who intend to actually harm someone, because that's so rare now I haven't encountered one in more than a decade.

The implications of this are made worse by the fact that society does not question it, at all. A long time ago someone famous once said something very profound, if we are willing to sacrifice even our basic liberties for an illusion of security, we deserve neither. Of course I added my touch to the phrase, because security is truly an illusion, no government agency can really effectively protect it's people, that's just not possible. This is because our biggest threats are ourselves, no one else. No one can protect you from yourself. So giving these agencies the power to do what they want simply so we can pretend they are protecting us is ludicrous.

Okay, so back to the story before I go on and on. The next part that stands out was that it was not even his property, he was borrowing it. So not only was his privacy infringed on, his father's privacy was also trampled under the boot of an obviously authoritarian party. The reason for them being authoritarian is that they are taking what is unlikely to occur as justification for enforcing their authority. The reasons for the tool being present are perfectly valid on their own, however, even without those reasons, a knife is a tool far more than a weapon. If you want to get technical, retractable pens are more useful as weapons, those can be turned into dangerous projectiles with only simple modifications.

This entire situation only demonstrates why paranoia is so bad for us. Originally, in the 90s, they made a claim that violence was on the rise, which it was actually on a steep decline in that era. They attempted to blame video games for this, Super Mario was convincing kids to kill everyone around them, after they grew up and did a ton of drugs and alcohol of course. But we now know this was all nothing more than alarmists seeking a way to attack something they just didn't understand.

Today violence, the world over actually, is at an all time low. Mind you, we still have a lot of work to do, but not in the USA. Our violent crimes have been in check for a very long time now, I can remember when you had to carry a weapon at night, in rural Washington, just because us kids would rob you blind .... for fun. Now, I can walk down the streets of downtown Seattle without seeing any crime at all. We need to take back our paranoia, and focus on important matters, like helping other countries who do still have problems with serious violence.

Now here is where the story really takes a turn for WTF. They are considering punishing this student for something their father did, which was completely innocent and practically expected. This means he's guilty until proven innocent. Now remind me, what is it our justice system is based on? Oh, that's right, innocent until proven guilty. This is one of many stories that show our culture has completely discarded the basic foundation of our justice, the one thing that made the USA better than most other countries, the only saving grace in our government, and we are discarding it for a false sense of security from threats that don't even exist.

Parents, teachers, authorities in the USA, you are all wrong. Stop ignoring that fact, you are wrong, we have lost our soul here, the one thing that made this country great, the only reason I even liked the USA, you are destroying. This is not my country, my country had a sense of justice, equality, and freedom, not authoritarian dictators who want to tell you what to do.

Garbage - The True Value of Psychiatry

Psychiatrists are often looked on for diagnosing the sanity of another person, or to determine if that person is a danger. In the USA our courts still give these witchdoctors the power to, essentially, end someone's life for any reason they see fit. I do mean any reason.


Psychology is a scientific study of behavior in humans, a very scientific one that utilizes the scientific method and incorporates information from solid sources. Yet psychologists are largely ignored in the USA, the people in charge still give psychiatrists a free ticket to torture, maim, and even kill patients who often need nothing more than a hug.

So what makes a psychiatrist no more than the modern witchdoctor? Simple, they have absolutely no scientific research backing up any of their claims. It's all based on stereotypes and personal opinion, often relying on the highly inaccurate anecdotes of other people. Basically, the psychiatrist just chooses who they want to destroy, and who they want to leave alone, the "mad scientist" archetype.

My common response to the difference between the two is "a psychologists asks you what you are thinking, a psychiatrist tells you how you should think." This adage is highly descriptive on so many levels, I will look at them all. The first being that we know, for a fact, that there is no real insanity, for if there was there would be no real sanity. Every type of thinking, or method of logic, is inherently unstable, that is the price of being an organic organism. This we know from neurology and genetics.

This means that a psychopath is no less sane than a pacifist, a vegan no less sane than a carnivore, and a hypochondriac no less sane than a sky diver. The problems arise when these modes of thinking interfere with social interactions in a manner that causes unnecessary harm to others. Note, that does not include one's self, which I will get into in a bit. A psychotic personality works very well as a military soldier, or even a slaughter house, because killing is the primary thought in their logic. In reality, most psychotic people are never a problem, and many do work in fields which killing is acceptable, or required.

I am a morbid personality type, everything my logic follows is mechanical and curiosity can cause me to do things which others may consider stupid, or insane. The reason it's considered morbid is that I am willing to look into things that others dare not contemplate, I know of the most painful way a human can die, for example. However, I am far from suicidal, I fear being dead more than anything else imaginable.

As for being a danger to one's self getting a free pass, it does anyway, all psychiatrists do is determine which calculated risks they approve and then deem all others "insane," often resulting in the destruction of many lives. But living is not simply breathing, and altering a personality kills that person, making them a completely different person. Psychiatrists employ many methods to kill someone, from drugs to electroshock "therapy," even surgery. Yes, even today psychiatrists, untrained as neurologists, can perform surgery on patient's brains, even in the USA.

They work around the laws by using consent forms, while the patient is under the influence of potent drugs. Ironically, these same methods available are ignored by medical doctors, who actually have the proper training to do surgery. But that is for another time. The psychiatrists have a license to kill, and no one ever questions it out of fear of becoming one of their victims. So what do we do? We fight back, inform the people in charge that these monsters are not only wrong on everything they assert as "sane," but that we are tired of them being given a free license to kill.

One of my friends fell victim to these murderers, she was talked into getting electroshock "therapy," which is only effective for combating extreme cases of seizures, by a psychiatrist. She is gone, her body is now inhabited by someone else, someone who is not her. That psychiatrist got away with murdering my friend, killing her in a savage way. Psychiatrists are no better than Gilles De Rais.

Doctors Who Care

Nope, the title does not describe doctors in the US, not by a long shot. Perhaps one out of every thousand doctors here does care about their patients, but that's being generous. Medical doctors in the USA probably care less about you than moth being hunted by an owl cares about the owl.

One of the key pieces of evidence is how many doctors wanted the health insurance act proposed by Obama and many other politicians, including most Republican politicians, enacted. What does this act do? It certainly does not require doctors to care for their patients, it does not force hospitals to take any urgent care patients, nor does it require that a patient's rights are honored.

All this act did was force every patient to pay for a middle man to deal with the doctors. Why would the doctors support this? Greed, plain and simple. If you have insurance, they will be paid, in full, by someone, even if you die because of their mistakes, or lack of care. A medical doctor can now get away with ignoring all your symptoms, ignoring all your ailments, and still be paid all the money they want.

The key to why this is a problem lies in the fact that you need insurance, even for basic care, regular checkups, and life saving medications. I am not for "handouts" at all, especially handouts for those who own yachts and overpriced cars. The insult to injury in all this, doctors are not basing their practices on scientific research at all.

There's why I hate doctors so much. A university physics professor once said, on a national program, that he had failed most of the medical students for his classes. This is very easy to see, when you see a doctor and happen to know a thing or two about biology or genetics, you can easily test them. Most doctors still assert that asexuality in humans is impossible, when not only is nothing impossible (according to scientific research), sexuality is a genetic trait and this means every possible behavior that we know of is possible within every organism that has a genetic system. Meaning, not only is it possible for humans to be asexual, it's one of those traits that will always be present in the population.

That is the simple test I use, being asexual I get to see their reaction when I explain to them what I am. Their expressions are often the first sign, but how their attitude changes is the most telling. Almost every time they take on the attitude that I must be ignorant or lying, not realizing that I have been studying biological sciences for the last decade, lacking anything better to do really.

So now the doctors can do whatever they want, ignore scientific research and information, even kill their patients, and still be paid a lot more than they deserve. All because of patients buying into the lie that insurance is the problem. This is often referred to as a placebo, create a solution that only appears to address some problem, then convince the people it does.

The danger of placebos is that they ignore the real problem, the root of the problem, something doctors are very skilled at doing in the US. They often claim "pain is not a symptom" to me, which I know is complete folly as pain is often the first alert, and primary, symptom of the most deadly and serious ailments. This phrase is simply a cop-out, a method of placating the patient so they can still get paid without having to do anything. Their reasons for not wanting to do anything will vary, though it takes a cold heart to not care about a patient, a very cold heart indeed.

So what is the real problem here? Greed, in the only industry that greed should not be present. I am not one to be nostalgic, I love the future, but in this instance the old way of thinking is better. Doctors use to take a "Hippocratic Oath," in which they promised to do what they could to make people healthy, even if it opposed their religious ideals. They took that oath very serious, often even giving free medical care to uphold it, and only those who did care about their patients became doctors. Then doctors started being able to charge more money, the economy improved and even the least of us lived as kings.

That was when the oath lost all meaning, the greedy people, the ones who learned they could make a fortune by duping the uneducated and naive masses, they began flooding the medical industry. Doctors today abuse patients as a means of gaining more money than they are worth, everything from hiding the true costs to dismissing important symptoms. But the one fact that bothers me is that these are almost all doctors in the US.

Doctors in various other countries are often more giving, or more understanding. Many will even take cash on delivery, some do not get paid until the patient is healthy, others will listen to patients through long distance communications without any promise of being paid for it. Doctors in Washington state are some of the most greedy though, a state I am currently stuck in through no fault of my own. I am sure others exist in other states, but as a general rule any US doctor should be suspect of being driven by only greed.

Life, Death - Why

Scientific research has allowed us to answer many of the questions in our reality, allowed us to begin to explore this cave we live in and see it with clarity no religion can offer. But there is one question no living thing has an answer too, the question of "why?"

I recently contemplated death, and life, the difference between living and existing. As I thought about death I came to a better understanding of why religion was invented, the sheer terror of thinking about just ceasing to exist sent me into a panic. For the first time in my nearly four decades of existence I was afraid of something, but it wasn't death, it was ceasing to exist.

So I pondered a bit, there is something unique about the human species, something that did change. Scientific research indicates that all our qualities and abilities exist in other species, so I had to dig for a difference between us and the other animals. That difference was not an easy thing to find, but it dawned on me, we ask "why?"

Whether the other species are capable of asking that one question, or they are simply unwilling too ask it, we cannot tell at this time. Though it's probably the single most important question in the universe. Eventually I came to the one question I cannot figure out an answer too, why am I aware?

Awareness is common, many species are aware of the self, but it dawned on me that we are the only ones who appear to have asked why we are aware. The discovery that I have made is that not all humans have, or are even willing too ask that question. Instead they take whatever promise they are handed and accept their fates. So maybe it's not all humans who are unique in this manner, perhaps it's only a few of us that are truly unique.

The problem with this line of thinking is the long list of implications that could, potentially, destroy the very fabric of society. In fact, it has several times in the past. Someone asked these questions, dreamed up some answer that they hoped was correct, and someone else, who was unwilling to ask these questions, saw the answers as fuel to placate the masses, to control the masses. We call these dreams "religion" now.

So here, as an atheist, I propose the new religion of the masses, the one with no invented answers, with only your own hopes to consider in place of a mass produced placebo. There has to be more than this life, not a continual life, or some form or reincarnation, but simply something more. How we live is not an issue, but consider that helping humanity progress and survive does help you to forgo death a bit longer, as well as ensure you at least have a chance to live on after your body dies in the memories of others.

Instead of accepting the dreams and hopes of someone else, keep asking the question, for if there is any hope of something beyond this, it's the questions that cannot be answered that will be the keys to gate. Instead of making decisions based on some ancient texts written to drive the masses into wars, make decisions based on well thought out logic.

The more you look at the universe with logic, the more sense all the simple answers make, like "how" or "when." Logic for these answers will also help you to make better decisions than some ancient texts filled with pipe dreams of barbarians and troglodytes. The most important question to ask is why you are.

Surviving is Not Living - The Medical Nightmare

Yes, I am still surviving, surprisingly enough, in spite of the medical industry of the USA. A quaint little story of my life will illustrate what I mean by that.

I have had some medical problems, lots of them recently, and each one has always been diagnosed wrong, resulting in nearly dying. Now I live with a lot of pain, and suffer every day because of the failure of doctors to diagnose something not only preventable, but common. So I went in to a specialist one time, they told me "pain is not a symptom," flat out denied the first symptom of any ailment.

I was attempting to get something diagnosed and stopped this time, before it became worse, before it cost taxpayers more money to correct. Yes, all my medical bills are covered by the taxpayers. Anyhow, the doctor simply denied there was anything wrong without a single test, the last time this happened I was admitted to the emergency room several times and needed an expensive, life saving, operation that could have cost only a few thousand dollars, but wound up costing the taxpayers more than $30,000 .... plus the costs of all those emergency room visits.

Anyhow, the answer to my complaint about it being a real problem was them attempting to lock me up, claiming I was suicidal in spite of me actually trying to save my own life again. A few thousand more from the taxpayers and they finally let me go. This is what psychiatrists are, a scam to be used by the state as a means of justifying more tax dollars to be funneled into the medical industry, nothing more.

So now the problem is getting worse, I am sleepless most nights, the pain becoming too great at times. But here's the real problem, doctors are not interested in the patients living, they are only interested in keeping the patients breathing so they can milk the insurance companies, and states, for every penny possible. Sounds like a bit of paranoia? Well, I would have thought it was nothing but paranoia 10 years ago, but nothing beats actually going through it.

But wait, there are statistics that help my case. This is where the patients are failing, you all need to start doing some research and demanding that doctors do their jobs. A majority of gallstone cases are diagnosed as "irritable bowel syndrome," basically means they are saying it's all in your head instead of something that will eventually kill you. Yep, my biggest brush with death was gallstones that were misdiagnosed. Thinking I was a rare case I didn't think too much of it.

Then I go online, yes, the internet. While there is a lot of junk online, there is also a ton of useful information, like the fact that my case is far from rare. Turns out I knew, personally, a dozen people online who had the exact same story about the gallstones. That piqued my interest and I started searching for more. To my shock, a Google search turned up more than a few hundred stories that were exactly the same.

Here's the kicker, the surgery for removing the gallbladder, in optimal situations, is only a few thousand dollars, and minimally invasive with a high success rate. The surgery required if there are complications is extremely expensive, and can be very invasive, requiring a longer recovery and hospital stay. Not to mention, there is a high chance of developing medical issues in the future because of the complications and invasive surgery.

This is a gold mine for the medical system, not the insurance companies mind you, but the actual doctors and institutions. Insurance companies have to pay for this, and if they don't, the taxpayers will pay for it all. The medical professionals are paid, in full, for their mistakes for the rest of what they call your life. But it's not really a life, is it? You are just surviving, pain and other problems making living very difficult, if possible at all.

This is the reality of the medical system in the US, the reality that is often whitewashed by the doctors and nurses, and administration. They point the finger at the insurance companies, to make sure you ignore their mistakes. It is time the US changes for the better, instead of one step forward, two steps back. We need to force this country to leap ahead.