Inspired, Jack, and having Butch over one of my squares really works. The guy's been on me for years. Last night's televised joke was about Ryan Seacrest getting bitten on the foot by a small shark off Mexico. I wrote that fortunately he was able to fight it off with the hairbrush he was carrying. We do a lot of Ryan Seacrest/handsome jokes. My only problem with the Bingo square is the absence of Garage Wine - a true star.

Not enough Tensk rants.

I'm honored to have made the list. Oh, and loved the joke, Bill.

So some have been non-incoherent? The troubling thing is that I might never know which ones.

Is there a prize? How does the "winner" claim it?

It's nice to be nasty.

"Bill McD joke that bombs"

Isn't that redundant?

:-)

That is so funny! Who spent the time?

My only problem with the Bingo square is the absence of Garage Wine - a true star.

Remember, there are 75 numbers in Bingo, but only 24 on any given card.

Damn. I don't rate. Going to have to go back to the snark woodshed for awhile, I guess.

You should have a square for torridjoe/CoP employees on company time. We are paying for it anyways.

Jack,

I'm shocked and dismayed that I didn't make your top 24. Any advice on how to move up in the rankings would be most welcome.

//What is Tenkse smoking and can I try it?

Bill's a really funny guy and I am honored --honored-- to share the space next to him. Well, along with my wife...who thinks she's funnier than me, but I don't. But she thinks I talk too much, and really thinks, at heart, I'm just a self-serving bureaucrat and don't really, really like people and that's why Blue Oregon has stopped posting my guest blogs, because I think Democrats can really suck too sometimes.

Anyway, thanks Tenske, for the hit..what is that stuff by the way?

Thank you, thank you! Honored to be among such esteemed colleagues!

Thank you, thank you! Honored to be among such esteemed colleagues!

I resemble that remark...

Bill's a really funny guy and I am honored --honored-- to share the space next to him. Well, along with my wife...who thinks she's funnier than me, but I don't. But she thinks I talk too much, and really thinks, at heart, I'm just a self-serving bureaucrat and don't really, really like people and that's why Blue Oregon has stopped posting my guest blogs, because I think Democrats can really suck too sometimes.

OK, Frank; you can exhale now - just don't blow it my way.

Drink plenty of fluids and get some extra sleep.

Huh?

How did THAT happen?

I'm truly honored that I even got on the page.

If there's 75 and only 24 on each card, and the cards are different, how many cards can I play at once? What's the cost per card?

I've been staring at this thing. I'm floored. I'm flattered. I don't know what to say.

[ And I sure as heck don't know what I said that was taken as inebriated writing. What certain thing I said -- I feel always giddy. I half-bake puns -- it's fun. But, sorry if it disappoints anyone to know I don't inhale and I don't ingest ... no more. It was a different story in olden days, B.C. - Before Children, (early Reagan). But I never had any one-time 'lose it' extreme episode, like one hears of others having and it changing their life and all that. I always moderated my behavior track, but when I indulged, I didn't pretend I wasn't -- I would 'get into it.' Never had a wild episode except once a span of 60 days (or so, I didn't count) of daily low-dosage (10 - 15 mic's) lady lysergic, and wrote a powerful computer program and won acclaim and promotion for it. My health was good during the interval, no 'depleted' feeling, kept up my athletic workouts, and worked -- thinking -- 16 hours a day, easily. Now there's [flakey link ALERT] this: Psychedelic Healing? - Hallucinogenic drugs, which blew minds in the 1960s, soon may be used to treat mental ailments, Scientific American, December, 2007
--- The past 15 years have seen a quiet resurgence of psychedelic drug research as scientists have come to recognize the long-underappreciated potential of these drugs. In the past few years, a growing number of studies using human volunteers have begun to explore the possible therapeutic benefits of drugs such as LSD, psilocybin, DMT, MDMA, ibogaine and ketamine.

Before 1972, close to 700 studies with psychedelic drugs took place. The research suggested that psychedelics offered significant benefits: they helped recovering alcoholics abstain, soothed the anxieties of terminal cancer patients, and eased the symptoms of many difficult-to-treat psychiatric illnesses, such as obsessive-compulsive disorder.

For example, between 1967 and 1972 studies in terminal cancer patients by psychiatrist Stanislav Grof and his colleagues at Spring Grove State Hospital in Baltimore showed that LSD combined with psychotherapy [there's a LOT to be said for human touch] could alleviate symptoms of depression, tension, anxiety, sleep disturbances, psychological withdrawal and even severe physical pain. Other investigators during this era found that LSD may have some interesting potential as a means to facilitate creative problem solving.

Psychiatrist Michael Mithoefer in Charleston, S.C., is running an MDMA study for treatment-resistant PTSD victims of crime, war or childhood sexual abuse. So far 17 out of 20 such subjects have already [Dec.'07] undergone the experimental therapy. “At this point the results are very promising,” Mithoefer says. “I think we’re seeing pretty strong, robust effects in some people. I hasten to add these are preliminary findings—we’re not ready to draw conclusions yet. But assuming it keeps going this way for the rest of the study, it certainly seems that there’s very good reason to go on to larger phase III trials.”
---
In case you missed it, that last piece said guys back from Irag, and flinged out of the military in general, can be 'renormalized' to civic life, 'cured' or 'remedied' of PTSD, with LSD and psilocybin treatments. Try that again: LSD cures PTSD. (There are 2 or 3 other news items, so far in '08, reporting research findings, and in one a figure of 70% cure or 'recovery' or 'repair' -- psychology 'cure' is slippery diagnosis because people change their mind ... get it? change their mind? -- 70% repair of PTSD patients ('clients'?) tracked for 1 year.) With psilocybin. Okay, MDMA ... what's the diff'? Research also has data of 'repairing' alcoholism and post-prison despair. One sensationalized form of the news, of one research, said 2 out of 3 (in a trial of low-100s of caes), said their 8-hour 'dosage' was in top 5 most significant affects in their lives, comparable to birth of a child, and the subjects reported an enduring (years) feeling of well-being, less stress. Half of them called the 'trip' experience 'deeply moving' or 'spiritual' or both.

And such reports run parallel with one of my favorite anecdotes: Lennon or somebody (Ram Dass may have told me this story), handed a yogi, maybe Maharishi, 3 or 7 tablets of 250-mic acid, and he pops them in his mouth, and sits there cross-legged and silent for a day or two, and says, "this is how God will come to the Western mind."

I think the hallucigens improved ('repaired'?) my character, in several senses of 'character.' I was a geeky nerd childhood, in farm country. Then I was at the Pentagon programming missiles. Now I am a geeky nerd geezer. Saved.

And devotedly atheist. ]

Sorry for the long rant. I am unlikely to do it again. Hit it, and quit it. -- Curtis Salgado

I stared at the bingo card Free Space -- I call it N-3 -- until an optical illusion thing happened and I was looking down on a pyramid with N-3 as the capstone.

And I thought of Free Space as Jack's square, and it is bojack's blog, and this is Free Space to all of us -- we don't pay a dime. And that's where all the goodness comes from in this, flowing downhill from Jack's Free Space pinnacle, and oozing something credible onto some lucky group of us, (24 are named this time, but there is about 500 'regulars'). But it ain't our credit, it all comes from Free Space and all credit is Jack's.

That's what I wanted to say. I am flattered, I feel undeserving, and all credit goes to Jack. Only.

Someone else better said what I feel. Obama. Next week is his birthday,(47 ?), same day as mine, (59). He describes what he has felt in recent months. ( collected Here )

The New York Times wrote Obama said in a December 2006: "It is flattering to get a lot of attention, although I must say it is baffling, I think to some degree I've become a shorthand or symbol or stand-in for a spirit ...."

The Associated Press wrote in February 2007 about an appearance Obama made: "This crowd is not about me, it's about you, I've been a receptacle for your hopes and dreams."

The Cleveland Jewish News quoted Obama in March 2007 stating: "I am an imperfect vessel for all your hopes and dreams. ... At times I am tired, I falter, I make mistakes. The election is not about me. It's about you."

The Cleveland Plain-Dealer reported in February (Obama said): "It's very important for me to understand that those feelings are not about me, they are about us; they are about America. People feeling moved and hopeful about what has happened in our lifetime."

Obama said in a May 6 speech: "So don't ever forget that this election is not about me, or any candidate. Don't ever forget that this campaign is about you -- about your hopes, about your dreams, about your struggles, about securing your portion of the American Dream."

---
Bojack's blog is Jack being the American Dream. The 'great American novel,' and Jack is authoring it in Free Space.

That's how I feel. I don't know why I deserve 3 Bingo spaces; I don't -- all 3 can be labelled in 1. They are only 3 leafs from 1 common root. And that root is 'CIA' (the censored word) in the inexact colloquial term. It's an idea, a concept. It's the idea of 'Top Secrecy', of some people knowing stuff you and me don't, and based on that, claiming they 'know what's best for us.' And they do as they please, and we shut up and do what they tell us. But they are no more job-competent or superhuman than you or I. And their folly -- actually, the foolishness in the very idea, germinates many 'branches' in our society, such as the labels in my 3 squares. And unless we stop it, soon, it'll get in our culture.

Jack posted elsewhere about a case in the anthrax lab. In one backstory, it notes that the lab got its killer spores by culturing the blood from the corpse of a lab employee, who got infected while doing anthrax researh experiments, and died in 1951 !!! That was 'CIA' then. The LSD 'thing' all started in 'CIA' lab experiments, in the early '50s, too. Everywhere we look around at what's going on in society, and trace the developments, 9 times out of 10 it gets back to 'CIA.' 'CIA' slush-funded Poppa Bush in his Zapata oil 'thing', (1953, after Brando was boffo in '52 Academy Award Best Film, 'Zapata'), which boosted the Texas Oil Tycoon substance and style; and then Zapata (Bu$hCIA) 'invented' shallow-water drilling platforms, floated them into place and moved on from Texas offshore into the Gulf. Oil exploration (finding it became 'Top Secret') and coordinated infrastructure development, all came about as the way it is today, at 'CIA' direction. And what's the number 1 topic of conversation today? Gas prices. And what's the most inflammatory argument between people, about oil? Who knows how much oil is left, and who's numbers to believe about it -- we fight amongst ourselves -- while the survey and production data are known facts, 'Top Secret'.

Yeah, I know, it makes it sound like all one big "vast rightwing conspiracy." And sounds like a congenital paranoid saying, 'everything's a conspiracy.' On the other hand, it's the answer solving all mysteries, all confusion narrows down to one simple cause -- Occam's Razor rule: cut away all side-tracks and tangents until we are reduced to the simplest one answer.

Like: Zapata was bought by Dresser Industries, which was bought by Kellogg Brown Root, which was bought by Halliburton.

Just think about it, that's all I'm saying.

Thank you, Jack, and This Space for Rant.

Let's all give Jack a big hand writing stuff that increases and improves traffic, visiting and commenting, for Bojack's blog.

'ip pip: HooRAY!
'ip pip: HooRAY!
'ip pip: HooRAY!

Well.

I think I had a comment but I seem to have lost it after reading Tensky's comments. And I'm totally OK with losing it. And I almost feel like I might be high now. Weird.

Which goes to show that you never know what you'll come away with from Bojack's blog...