Media Censorship and the Obvious Alternatives

Lately I've been surfing for alternative news. Not because I'm a whack-a-doodle, but more because I've essentially completed the internet. I've reached the last page and I'm starting over. I'm a newsy, always have been. I start everyday with coffee and BBC, CBC, CNN, CTV, whatever. As long as it fills my desperate need to be informed about my ever changing world, I tune in and read absolutely everything, even the comments. But lately I've been bored, so I end up looking for off-the-grid stuff. Alternative news that isn't published in the mainstream. 

Some of it's entertaining and makes you shake your head, like this guy...
Or disturbing to the masses and makes you wonder why you hadn't heard the story. Like this... Of course some just scare the hell out of you even though you can be a clear minded logical person, like this...

Take these stories with a grain of salt. I'm not endorsing them, but what they did do was make me hungry for information. Once you read one of these off-beat articles you begin to scan the rest of the page to see what other "news" is linked. Some of them are on the money, like the story of the girls killed by the police. Why isn't this in the headlines on CNN? Last year police in the US killed over 1,000 people. (http://thefreethoughtproject.com/data-shows-1000-people-killed-cops-2014/) Yet CNN chooses to post stories of celebrities doing stupid things, football, parodies and the like. This morning, among the news you would expect to see on the landing page are 15 stories about anything related to football. Think about that for a minute. 15 stories on football from the number one news site in America. Nothing about cops killing unarmed people. So I go elsewhere for news. I hate football.

Facebook feeds news. That's wonderful, but not. Facebook news is directly tied to your content. Your location, page likes, things you've commented on, etc. The algorithm used to feed you news depends on your interests, and in theory that's great, but you end up with crap. Of the ten news tidbits on my feed today, five are related to celebrities. Yesterday at least that many were - you guessed it - football. I hate football. Did I say that already? Sorry. If the algorithm is so accurate why am I getting that junk? 

There's one thing about getting your news from FB that does work, people find and post interesting stories they've come across. Most times these stories are worth the read especially if your friend posting it has like views. But there's this problem, 90% of anyone's friends are in the same general area you are. So again, they have the same problem in that the focus is too narrow. It's the 10% I rely on to find out things I can't get where I am.

Then of course, there's the wingnuts who post things you just have to shake your head at. Right wing, left wing, conspiracy theories, or just plain dumb. These guys are worth checking out, there's no shortage of them out there, but you really have to go into these sites with your brain turned on. Pick through the obvious garbage and you'll find interesting tidbits here and there. Yesterday I spent time on a FB page called The Anti-Media. They claim to be a grassroots revolutionary media site. Yup, uh, wait, nope. They're wingnuts true through. They are truthers, claiming 9-11 was a hoax, they're anarchists, anti-government free-roving hippies. So what! They have some good stories every now and then, like this one... Read it carefully and you see the point - the CIA lied for years about the dangers of waterboarding and other torture methods used since 9-11. Again, read carefully using at least a portion of your brain, there's still garbage in there that needs to be picked through. But this story was never in any mainstream media that I saw, and it was well worth the read in the sense that it ties into mainstream concerns.

I also follow Anonymous. The hacker group with it's own agenda for what they say is the betterment of free speech in the world. I like their take on justice, or what they feel should be justice. I don't necessarily buy into the stories posted on the site but they have good intentions. Case in point, Anonymous shut down ISIS' twitter accounts, took a ton of radical websites offline, and declared war on the KKK, taking down their online presence. This was in response to the klan's activities following the Ferguson shooting of Michael Brown. The klan reportedly was heading to Ferguson to take part in the protests but with their own agenda - incitement. Whether you believe them or not, nobody has the right to incite hatred against anyone else. Anonymous may not have been right to do that, and yes, they break the law, but they act in a manner that is pro-moral, pro-speech. I'm going to get ribbed for that opinion. 

Then there's the just plain stupid. 

You have to read this junk for the sheer enjoyment of it. Idiotic news that makes you laugh. It's a nice digression from the mundane everyday war, killing, famine, pestilence stuff. Things like this... Or, this idiot...

There's a nasty world out the window. Our computers have become the new window to that world. We are infused with things each day that scare us or make us think. I prefer the latter. I prefer to read into what people are shovelling down my gullet, calling it news, and pick the items I want to know about, and that ain't football, thanks CNN. (NFL?) I've taken some ribbing lately because of my views, and I don't mind that, it starts good debates. What I do mind however, is people telling me what to think instead of encouraging me to use the brain God gave me. We all have opinions, that's what makes us free people. ISIS, nazis, bolsheviks, and the North Korean government subscribed to the idea that people should only think in terms of the government line. We're better than that. But are we really free to think? Or are we only thinking about what is being fed to us through the mainstream? I've seen many articles in alternative sources that theorize that the large news corporations are controlled by the government. Well, yup, it's called censorship, and it's always been there. But now with the advent of social media the censorship doesn't work all that well, and that's good for us. It's given us freedoms we didn't know we had. Embrace that. Make the world a better place by using it, just do it with a few brain cells.

Cheers.

Fuck Being Sick

Screw it. I don't want to anymore. I don't want to be sick. So I won't.

People with cancer, heart disease or any other deadly ailment can say that and if they put their minds to it can make a difference in their well being, but frankly state of mind only goes so far. People living with life threatening diseases can only go so far in pushing back. Frame of mind can change one's game plan with the attitude towards the illness, but can't do much about the physical disruption to the body. Changing the attitude means aggressive treatment instead of giving up. My condition is not like that. The positive attitude can make all the difference.

So fuck it, I don't want to be sick anymore.

I'm Bipolar, which means I can switch from an ecstatic manic high to a horrible sinking low depression in no time at all. It's more annoying than anything else. It's kinda hard to plan your day when you don't know if you're going to give up living at 2pm and at 5pm start an expedition to Mount Everest. At one point a few years ago I was researching realtors, I planned on selling the house and moving to Scotland. Not for any other reason than it seemed like a good idea at the time. In my mind the family would have figured it out soon enough, when the sign went on the lawn. Meh.

Then I sunk low. Crying constantly, not getting out of bed, throwing things out, life became, well, meh. Then there's the panic and anxiety attacks which are completely debilitating. A feeling of complete and overwhelming fear grips me and forces me down. I can't move except for the uncontrollable shaking. Cold sweats, pain in all limbs, screaming at nothing, ignoring all who try to help, I've even smashed my head in one of these and not known it. Then, suddenly, sleep. The attacks always knock me out for hours.

I've been living with this for five years now, and thank you, I'm done. Fuck it.

Every therapist, doctor, support group and family member I've talked to over the past years has given me the same advise, and I've been too damn stubborn to take it. Get involved. That's it. Simple. Get active, find something to take my mind off the problem. It won't ever heal me, I'm with this for life, but I know now I can make a difference in how I suffer with this. I'm finally taking some advise and doing something about it. Fuck it.

I started projects. I started doing things to encourage a tighter and more focused frame of mind. First, I started looking at money. Since I got sick I also got unemployed. That kinda hurt the wallet. Last year the car came off the road which took away my flexibility and independence, not to mention that I really like my car! I still say high to her and pet her when I walk by. Money became a focal point in the illness. I was afraid of anything to do with it and just opening the online banking threw me into an attack. I stopped paying bills. That of course, was stupid. But you couldn't tell me that then. I decided to do something about it, I re-did the entire house budget. I juggled the numbers and found how to save, I threw myself past the anxiety to look for the positive. Instead of counting how much I had to pay out, I started counting how much we were bringing in. A completely new perspective. The problem hasn't been solved but at least now I can look at it with a positive light instead of collapsing.

Then I started learning things. I started researching how to build websites. As a graphic designer I should have done that years ago, but being stubborn and stuck in my ways I opted to stick with traditional media. Many years later I saw that little error and decided to correct it. I've spent the past three months immersed in Adobe Dreamweaver and tutorial videos on HTML5, CSS, PHP, and Java Script. In the grand scheme of things I'm in grade 2 now, so much still to learn, but it allowed me to completely refocus.

Finally, I started writing. A lot. I've written things lately that will never be published, and things I hope to publish in the future. Five years ago I had a story idea. 15,000 words in I lost it, I wrote myself into a corner and shelved it. Yesterday I dusted it off, re-read it, and had an epiphany. Like the preverbal lightbulb going on over my head, I suddenly had the story laid out. 4,963 words and seven hours later I now have focus. For the time I wrote I forgot about being sick, I forgot about ISIS, money, monster storms, Charlie Hebdo, the dog, well, the dog let me know he was still here. Anyway, I immersed myself in the story and let it flow. I felt it was like reading a book with my fingers.

Fuck it, I'll write this illness off.

It's been two weeks since my last attack. two weeks of normality. I've lost my temper at times and fought the anxiety away, but I've fought it! I'm focused on something better now and I don't want to let the demons creep in. I'm not healed, I never will be. I'll live with this the rest of my life, and that's ok, because many that are sick can only say that knowing that the illness is what will take them. Mine won't, unless I fall apart and do something completely ridiculous. Which by the way, is something Bipolar people live with more often than not. I don't want to go there. I'm going to force my life the other direction, one step at a time. 

I may lose the light at some point and fall backwards into the mire of my mind. Like other projects I've undertaken in the past I may shelve these ideas, but now I know something I haven't considered, I can do this! So I put the manuscript away again. I'll start something new. Writing calms me, so I'll start there. Maybe I'll crash and burn on the website idea, so what, I'll dream up something else. I know I have options now, and given the dark places I've been lately there's only one way out, and that's the way up.

Fuck it. I'm normal.

Cheers.

Our Personal Christmas Spirits

Christmas is different now. There's something about it that hurts, and I don't know why I feel the way I do. So I'll try to figure it out as I write this.

I lost my dad five years ago and my mom 12 years ago. Since they've been gone it feels different, a kind of empty something missing feeling. My family is here with me and that feels good. The music's playing, there's a turkey cooking, the presents have been opened and the greetings came in waves this morning from friends and distant family. It all feels like it should. A happy day to celebrate the true meaning of the holiday - thanks.

But something's missing. I miss my parents and the way things were growing up. First of all, my dad was a nut. He was all over Christmas. The house was bedecked in every sort of decoration you could imagine, including dozens of Santas - everything from small ceramic statues to a giant plastic Santa hanging on the front door. We never had a wreath. If we did, it would be covered in Santa's face. There was over 100 of them. Then there was the rest of the decorations. And the tree. Covered in Santas. It was a running joke each year that when dad put everything away there would always be one Santa left out, somewhere. It was always fun to have the kids find it. Eventually he just left it alone, one Santa out all year. Each year it would change.

Dad also was Santa. He was the mall Santa, rang the bell for the Salvation Army campaign, hired himself out to people on Christmas Eve to visit the kids, and always visited the hospital where mom worked to put some cheer into some sick people's hearts. He was the embodiment of the Christmas spirit. And he loved it all, especially the kids. I took him to one gig one year, a rather wealthy man wanted to pay him a good sum to visit his kids at 2am Christmas morning, after midnight mass. He didn't take the money. He did it for the kids.

Mom was in the spirit too, although I still believe she didn't have much of a choice, she married Santa. We called her Mrs. Clause, appropriately. Dad called her SWMBO (pronounced schwambo): this stood for She Who Must Be Obeyed. My wife is now known as schwambo junior. Mom was a very spiritual woman, and ironically, dad wasn't, his spirit came from somewhere else. At least that's the impression he let people have of him, but we knew that without spirituality and faith, he couldn't have been anything like he was. It was in his heart.

Since they left us there's been a hole in our existence. We carry on like family does and deal with our loss. They will always be with us in spirit - their memories are just as important as those of us who are left to remember. We still hang ornaments on the tree that were part of our childhood and my parent's life. We always will. We still sit on their couch, read their books, I'm writing this on mom's desk. They're always going to be with us and everyday I feel that. But today is hard. Today is Christmas Day and they won't break bread with us.

But that's okay. I have to move on with life and realize that our existence on this little blue planet is fleeting. We will all go one day. It's the time we have with each other that matters. I cherish the memories of my childhood and the season. That's a spirit I share now with my children in whatever way I can, except for the Santa heads everywhere, they got a little unnerving. But traditions of old mixed with new traditions come together to mould us into a new family. A little of time gone by with a sense of the future. But above all else this year we never forget how it all began. Our traditions began with the traditions of our parents, as theirs did before them. And so on. Our children will take up the torch once they have families of their own and again the traditions will evolve.

So this year as you gather around your table with your family don't neglect to pay homage to your ancestors. Don't forget to thank them for what you have in your heart this Christmas. I intend to thank mom and dad for their generosity, love and hope. I do that everyday, but at this time of year we all stop and feel the presence of our parents and grandparents. We say Merry Christmas to them as they are still part of our families, even though they may not be here in person, they are still here in spirit.

Merry Christmas.

Don't You Hate It When You're Head Explodes?

Boom.

Me. With enlarged idea tumour. Soon, boom.

That's the sound of my head blowing up. The ideas want out, I have to open some sort of release valve soon. This blog is one part written explanation of my sordid little existence, and one part storage pit for the ideas and thoughts that fill my head on days I don't feel like crawling under a rock and hibernating. Today is the latter.

The nature of my illness, as I've explained previously, is that I bounce from one state to another rapidly, like, in a minute and a half. I can go from a deep solemn depression to a ecstatic high, or manic state in no time at all. If I'm really lucky, the manic state doesn't cause a deep crawl under a rock sort of depression, or crash. Today I feel good. I have ideas and thoughts I want to let out and put to practise, it will occupy me for the day, and hopefully longer. If there's one thing I've learned about this state of mind, it scares people. Lots of people. People slowly back away from me when I start into a rant about something occupying my brain. Sometimes the ideas are like tumours I'd like to yank out through my ears with a melon baller.

About five years ago I dreamt up a project and I haven't had the opportunity to bring it to fruition. The long drive home from work everyday on the highway gave me about a solid hour of thought time. Never good. I relished in ideas that were both terrifying and absorbing, all the time trying to keep out of oncoming traffic. Most times that worked. Other days I drove along like a lemming, mindlessly following the endless flow of commuters leaving or going to mindless jobs, like mine.

But I digress. 

The idea is unique and if I may say so, damn good! But I bit off more than I could chew in the sense that I haven't the resources to pull it off. I talked about it with several people, none of whom slammed me, if anything the idea was met with optimism and encouragement. This led me to believe I really have something here, and it needs to be done. But how? I need resources, I need assistance. And I don't want anyone stealing the evil plan. So I'm hush about it, still, after five years. 

Now it needs to be done. I need to open the valve and let the steam out. I sit in the house all day looking for a direction for the life I have in front of me. At mid-life, my career is stalled because of medical conditions, but I'm far from dead. I don't want to be a house husband for the rest of my life. As far as my doctor and the government are concerned I'm retired. To that I say bollucks. I'm not sitting on my ass for the next 40 years, I'm going to make a difference. Hence the idea. Again. 

And no, I'm not going to tell you what it is.
Deal. (Move along if you're only here to steal it, you bunch of selfish thieves).

I opened old files this week and dusted them off. I started working on the business plan again, and messed with options for progressing the project into the future. I have to consider things like marketing, design, web presence, sales, administration and logistics, sanity, and running out of coffee. (And bacon, I have to consider running out of bacon).

Most of this is easy to consider, that's what I did for 20 years. But I'm stumped at the web presence. I'm kicking myself in the ass now for not getting more involved in web building when I was younger, I always focused on print media. I have a working knowledge of web design but I've never really gotten the hang of it, too much code. I'm a graphic designer, not a frickin' code monkey. Now I realize I have to be both, as well as a salesman, administrator, marketing expert, and the rest. I have the software and the internet is full of people who know how to use it, so I started with tutorials the other day. My brain really hurts now. I'm stuck, probably because I'm listening to what the tutorial is saying and trying to figure it out visually, as an artist would. I need to get past that really annoying bit and think like a code monkey. Yuck. Don't want to. I like pictures.

Today I'll take a break from that and work on something else, like writing here. Or laundry, haven't quite decided which is more important. There's always bacon. I have coffee, that's a good start.

I'll let my mind wander back and forth, let the ideas flow around a bit, maybe take a walk. I couldn't sleep last night as I had visions of websites dancing in my head. Today I have to focus on something else to distract me from my nightmare of XHTML and CSS. I have to focus on other aspects of the project like 'how the hell am I going to sell this? There's a reason they kept me in a locked room all those years'.

I wish all this was as easy as writing, words flow like water some days, just as ideas. I am WRITING about this instead of DOING this. I'm sure that will change soon as I am becoming obsessed with accomplishing this and starting the next phase of life. I want this idea to become a career of sorts. It's entirely mine and no boss can fire me, no doctor can tell me to stop. The biggest concern I have is that I'm my own worst enemy, I still crash on occasion, but I need to find something to occupy myself, that's the best medicine for mental illness. Being alone with thoughts and fears can make anyone fail but bring mental illness into the picture and it's ten-fold. Besides, I would like to make some money in the future, it's hard to eat without that. You start gnawing on chairs after a while. I may crap out on this, I don't know. I hope not as I am really enthralled with the idea and I feel right now that nothing is going to stop me from at least attempting it. Except me.

Now, if you'll excuse me, all this talk of bacon is making me hungry.

More later.

Cheers.

Christmas 2014 Is Not Going To Be Normal

Tis the season.

Christmas is right around the corner, and I'm a little nervous. I haven't felt the spirit yet this year for a number of reasons, first being my ongoing struggle with the whole state of mind issue. I sink into a depressive state so easily now, and when I see people going on about how wonderful the season is shaping up to be I get quite disturbed. When I go shopping I get quite perturbed. More often than not a panic attack ensues. Tough to pull up the socks and move forward into the best time of the year. It's got nothing to do with money or commercialism. It's the simple fact that I'm supposed to be happy and I'm not. 

That being said, I move forward knowing that I'm completely in the wrong mindset. I can't do that. If there's one time of year to thank God for what I've got in this life, regardless of how else I feel, it's now. Christmas is a time for thanks. I have a wonderful (if not dysfunctional) family, I have my physical health, I have good friends, and a neurotic dog. It's all good! I have more in my life than many others have. This year like so many we've experienced, we have too many people with nothing. People on the streets or in refuge camps in some far off land. I feel for them and think of how we should be trying to change that. One step at a time.

This year things are different, and so the season will reflect that. 

We always get a real tree at Christmas. It's an annual tradition, we load up and head out to the tree lots and spend hours in the cold slush trudging around for the perfect tree that 'talks' to my wife. She's the deciding factor. The tree must speak to her and her alone. Nobody else can hear trees talk. And they call me crazy. The best times are when we head out into the county and cut down our own. Doing that brings the whole nostalgic feeling of the season to fruition. But it begs the question, why couldn't Christ have been born in July?

This year is different. We didn't get a tree, we built one. Out of books. 

Two factors led to that decision. Ok, well three. First, we have no car this year and it's a long frickin' walk back to the house lugging a live tree behind you. We figured by the time it got home there would only be needles on one side. So no. Secondly, we have a dog that will eat anything. (see previous post). We were afraid that we'd wake up one morning to a bare dead skeleton of a tree and the dog happily sitting on the couch licking his chops. Then there's the whole antique decorations thing. Wasn't going to happen. The third factor was that we have a ton of books, and technically they used to be trees. So we decided to recycle.

The tree is up, it took the four of us about two hours to assemble it, each one of us picking books based on size and thickness for each stage of the project. Moving from large coffee table books for the base and working towards small pocket books at the top. Each book had a meaning. They weren't chosen at random. Here's what Kim had to say about the selection process....



A brief story about the tree that adorns our front hall. We did not randomly throw books into the pile.....books were chosen so that a piece of each of us is included in this tree of knowledge. We have Harry Potter from Bug, Winnie the Pooh from when the children were small. We have The Complete Works of Shakespeare and of course a Dictionary..From my Gramma Nora a copy of Gone with The Wind. From my Dad, a copy of Poem's to be Read. Faith's copies of Anne of Green Gables, and of course Papa's Poems of Robby Burns. My first copy of Little Women, and my original copy of Now We are Six. Keith's copy of The Chronicles of the World and Iain's copy of Mighty Machines, that he and Papa used to read together. It is a history of our family both present and past. It is the perfect reflection of who we were and who we are. It is Love.



The tree is done. The dog hasn’t attacked it, the stockings are hung with care, the mistletoe is up and more will be put out soon. But it’s starting to feel like the season. We had a problem that needed a creative solution, and because of that problem, this Christmas is shaping up to be one of the best instead of the mindset I was in just a short day ago.

This morning made me happy. It made the anxiety and fear go away, at least for now. 

And that’s all I really wanted for Christmas. Joy.

Merry Christmas everyone.