Addicts, and experimental users. You have no idea the people I have hung out with, and yet I have never used. Crazy, isn’t it? I suppose it has come to some good end, and these people have passed into my life and out again, hopefully ending up using the services of Narconon along the way, or some similar program. I think the worst was the boyfriend of a friend of mine, who was on crack, and an alcoholic. He actually had a son, whom he loved, but he could not break the habit. My friend, who should have known better, did everything she could to get him off, but this is not the sort of thing that someone else can do for you: you have to come to want it.

You have to be like TD mentioned on the site above, who came to look at the man in the mirror, as Michael Jackson calls him, with disgust and loathing. Broken in mind, heart, and spirit, you then must accept personal responsibility, and turn back to life. You can be assisted, with exercise, vitamins, and saunas to detoxify the body and rid it of the residual drug poisons that lurk in the cells for weeks, even months. You can learn to overcome your addictive personality, through improved communication and personal integrity classes. But in the end, you are the only one, like TD, who can walk back to that mirror some day and see the man looking back out at you, and look at him with respect.

I hope no one expected that the results of the election would be some sort of magical improvement in the economy. If they did, they were bitterly disappointed. I hope that no one similarly expects some sort of magical turn around in the economy after the Inauguration. They too will be similarly disappointed. You can’t swing a dead cat without hitting an economist that believes that things will remain bad until at least the middle of next year, and a steadily growing majority project the recession– which now officially has lasted for a whole year! Remember when they pooh-poohed it and said we weren’t in recession just a couple of months ago? — will endure at least another year from now, making it the worst contraction since the Great Depression. No one wants to consider doing this, but as many more people are going to lose their jobs, many more people are going to have to seek the services of debt consolidation and credit card consolidation. Millions, through no fault of their own (through accident and sickness,) or through improvidence are facing overwhelming debt, and all the federal programs in the world won’t help them. The fact of the matter is, consolidating debt to make it more manageable is one direction many consumers will have to take to get out from the dark wing of staggering interest rates and clumsy, multifarious mounting debts, avoiding (hopefully) bankruptcy and consolidating payments into more manageable lumps.

In every city of this midwestern region, in Kansas City, Saint Louis, Oklahoma City, or Houston debt consolidation may assist desperate people reduce balances and save thousands of dollars. But again, I strongly recommend everyone who is seeking this road to look into credit counseling, shop around, and closely examine all of their alternatives, and to make every effort to avoid adding further debts to their portfolios.

The violence in Mumbai claimed the lives of Alan and Naomi Scherr, two pilgrims from the Synchronicity community in Virginia. It seems tragic and ridiculous that two people, father and daughter, peacefully visiting ashrams in India, should be slain in this callous way. It seems that anyone should have died there that day, walking down the street and minding their own business, but there it is.

There is something wrong afoot in the world. Maybe there always has been.

Indian security forces are saying that the only one of these persons they have caught alive is Pakistani. Pakistan is not keen to hear this. We shall see where this goes.

Killing and killing and killing, and eye for an eye until every eye is blind.

I’ve never been a sun glasses-wearer. I fact, to be perfectly honest, I’ve always considered people I’ve seen in sun glasses to be somewhat affected, using them, more to hide behind than to actually protect their eyes. The cop who looms over your car with jet black lenses, the pretty girl who hides behind huge gray orbs, the thick-necked frat boy with his stylish sun bans–it all seems a power trip to me, whether they are wearing the best sunglasses or some drugstore knock off. It’s a way to hide the soul by shuttering the windows there to.

There’s really only a couple of times I’ve worn sun glasses, and I don’t think I’ve ever actually bought any. Back when I began to first work at The Place That Must Not Be Named, a guy named Jimmy, an actor, constantly left the document handler up on the Kodak 110. The 110 was noticeable for have an ultra bright flash from the bulb, a palpable smack smack smack that you could almost feel against your skin. Naturally, at the time photocopiers were not digital, and every time an image was taken, that mighty bulb had to flash and make an image on a black photosensitive belt looping deep in its bowels. He wouldn’t be deterred from his habits, and for a time I wore a pair on sunglasses on the floor, both to make a point and to protect my retinas against a constant barrage of near solar radiation.

This passed, and later I began taking long walks across the city, generally in a deep depression. At first my eyes rebelled against the long exposure to ultraviolet, and I’d wear these glasses to protect them, but being cheap ones they interfered with my signt more than they protected it, and I ultimately got in the habit of furrowing my brow and projecting my rather woolly eyebrows low to screen my eyes.

I don’t have those glasses any more, and I think I just found them some place rather than purchased them, but I guess if I really needed them I’d buy another pair. I just think that much of the time they are for style an intimidation, and less for professional needs. I’ve never had a good pair on. Maybe they really do, rose-colored, make the world look better, and I am all mistaken!

And a slow one. There is traffic on the street, but it is somewhat trickling.

The debt and credit crisis continues apace, and it passeth mine understanding. Apaprently the government is going to pump in another six hundred billion dollars by buying moere mortgage related debt? Who forecloses now? The government? And twenty — or is 25, or 100 — billion dollars are being “pumped” someplace — Brush Creek, perhaps? — to “free up” consumer credit, whatever that means.

I begin to believe that there is no end to this. They are just making up money now, money that doesn’t even exist. Where is it all coming from?

I have also ceased to believe in Obama’s tax credits for the middle class. There are no such things, and I will never see them. And having dutifully paid my mortgage so far, I see that I have been a chump.

This is just chaos. If we have an international crisis of any significant scale we are toast.

I have a friend who has a problem. We’ll name that friend Q — and judiciously refrain from mentioning wither Q is man or woman or avocado or what. Q is what I would describe as unlucky in love. Seriously. Q likes to meet people in bars, and become i=entangled in relationships quickly with them, without having the slightest idea if they are a good person or not, or what their history is, or anything at all. Q is impuslive this way, and pretty self destructive.

Now, Q once ahd a roommate, Z, who got onto a dating site, one of the big ones you see advertised on TV all the time. It did not work out particularly well for Z, because although there were lots of dates, the dates were inconsequential fluff with some pretty dull and uninteresting people. Obivisously the wrong dating site was chosen! Q made an enormous point of this, touting the “trolling the bars method” as superior. However, if Q, or Z, gave such sites a second chance, and went to a site that gave free reviews of online dating services, which are in depth and specific, their quest for love, as opposed to Q’s quest for catastrophe, might have much better fortune, don’t you think? One could check out all of the dating services available to one, and see which was most fitted for one’s circumstances.

Lord knows I’m not fond of online dating — in interests of disclosure I have never tried it myself — but something has got to be better than Q’s style.