What Happened

I know I've been vague about my whereabouts and activities for the past couple months, but that's only because I was still in the middle of it and needed some distance and a chance to catch my breath before telling this story.

Disclaimer: I'm not telling this story for attention or pity. I'm telling it because I need to. I need to get it out. I'm doing this for me, for her, and for anyone who reads this that might benefit from it.

Here goes:

My ex-wife and best friend, who has MS, came to stay with me for a while when the MS caused her to start having trouble with her job, at first to watch my apartment when I made my trip to New York in March, but also to visit and crash until her housing situation worked itself out. She told me she was moving in with her sister in Michigan once her tax refund check arrived (which was delayed because of that whole H&R Block fiasco (those of you who experienced it know what I'm talking about)). After a long delay, it finally came and she left, assuring me she was going to be okay living with family.

A few days later, I get a phone call, telling me that she was at U of M Hospital recovering after a failed suicide attempt.

Needless to say, I was devastated, but grateful she was alive.

After recovering in the psych ward for a few weeks, I picked her up and we stayed at a hotel for the weekend. She set up some meetings to get an apartment in Ann Arbor, and meanwhile stayed with me for another week until she secured a little basement apartment. I then helped her with moving (some of) her things from Tennessee up to Michigan. She gave me her futon and king-size bed rather than leave them there to be tossed. So, yeah, I have a futon and a king-size bed if anyone wants to come over.

She's getting lots of help from state and local resources (Apparently, Michigan's good for that) and she qualified for disability through her job because of her MS and depression, and has applied for federal disability, not to mention getting local Medicaid for her medicine and therapy. So she's going to be okay, I think.

So, there you go. That's what's been foremost in my thoughts and actions for the past couple months. Any support you can give her right now would be appreciated (thoughts, prayers, positive energy, whatever you can give). I've tried to convince her to start a Tumblr so that she has an outlet and meet some of the amazing people I've met on there. If/when she does, I'll post a link so you can introduce yourself.

Anyway, thank you for reading this far, and I hope you understand now.

My Red Pill Moment, or Why I don't trust the government or the media

Everyone who has developed a mistrust for the structures of society (media, religion, government, etc.)  usually have one moment when the evidence becomes too obvious to ignore - that tipping point where you can never go back to their old way of thinking. As though you'd taken the Red Pill from the Matrix.

The groundwork for my moment was laid on 9/11/01. I was out of work (the company who my call center took calls for went bankrupt. It sucks walking onto your jobsite and being told that you could go home and never come back.) and I had taken a typing test that day to work at the Postal Service. I had heard whispers of something happening at the test site, but I was in no way prepared for what I saw.

I watched it all day long, giving updates to my then-wife (who was asleep at the time and couldn't process what was happening). I was already slightly awake from my own research online, so I watched the coverage with a more critical (cynical) eye. I won't go into detail nor will I interject my own opinions, because, believe it or not, that's not what sunk my opinion about the government and the media.

That came a bit later, after Colin Powell's speech to the UN to make the case for the War in Iraq. During that speech, Powell made reference to a dossier that was advertised as the latest and greatest intelligence on Iraq's nuclear capability, and that was a huge part of his push to justify invading Iraq.

Not long after, one of the sites I frequented at the time (basically amalgamations of news links interjected with commentary) linked a story from I believe the Times of India. In it, a professor from UC Berkeley revealed that a lot of the so-called "intelligence" from the dossier was actually taken from one of his student's term papers - copied word-for-word, complete with spelling and grammatical errors - that was written before the FIRST Gulf War. As in from the early 1990's.

I just kept refreshing the page, and watched the story spread all throughout Asia, then Eurpoe, slowly but surely. Eventually, it made its way to the BBC, and finally onto USA Today's website. And the instant - literally the exact moment - that the story hit American sites, the Jose Padilla story broke. DHS declared an Orange Alert. John Fucking Ashcroft interrupted his trip to Russia to make a speech light on facts and heavy on fear about the "dirty bomber".

The timing was too coincidental to be coincidental. (Not that I believe in coincidences, anyway) That was it for me. There was no going back.

And no, the change in administration did nothing to change my mind. Frankly, I'm not surprised nobody's taking Obama to task over the drone strikes. Not even his "enemies" on the "Right" will call him out on it (But 6 people get killed in a firefight at an embassy, and heads will roll).

Fuck leaving this country. Can someone please build a dimensional portal so I can go somewhere less insane? Like Wackyland? Ot Nichijou?