Facebook Log Outyou can see that he took "your turn" as a challenge not to rebut me, but run to mommy and the teacher and have my playground privileges taken away. Is this the kind of person who should be engaged in political discourse where, if his assertions are to be taken seriously, would have the President of the United States of America accused of violating the oath of his office or the Constitution of the United States, subject to impeachment, and (if warranted and proven) censured, removed from office, imprisoned, and (possibly) put to death? Do you see why what Facebook did is wrong? There is a man accusing an elected officer of "High Crimes and Misdemeanors", and I am banned for calling this man making these allegations a fool, because I insist that if the allegations are true the accuser should be at the door of the proper authorities to present his case and act appropriately to proceed with a trial. How does this work? Well, the truth we forget is that Facebook is Zuckerbergs house. He uses it to make money. And he and his shareholders and other vested interests can't make money if we don't keep the customer satisfied, so that those billions of eyeballs keep getting distracted by the people who want to use Facebook to sell things to people with short attention spans and little need for evidence of claims or critical examination of them. (do you really buy something because the label says "NEW!" or "Now With More Whitening Power"? Remember that someone does, and that's how Facebook makes money.
We Removed Something You Posted
We removed the post below because it doesn't follow the Facebook Community Standards:
Sean, really. You come to a place where the people you have so much negative to say about are hanging out, and spend all of your time pissing on whatever gets posted. What does that make you other than a small-minded malcontent? Your complaints are easily disproved, but you have such a short attention span that you couldn't be bothered to examine anything long enough to know what a galactic fool you look like - at least to anyone who can actually read the Constitution and understand what the issues are. POINT: Tell me why, in the Greatest Country In The World, with so much OBVIOUS evidence you surely have, WHY, PRAY TELL, you can't just present the evidence and get Obama removed from office? How feckless and ineffectual you make the whole country seem - there we are, with this obvious fraud in office, who's broken all the rules, and yet the same country that reserves the right to bomb every other country we don't like back to the stone age can't seem to remove such a blatant violator of it's most sacred laws? Do you realize how stupid you make America look? If you have the evidence, give it to us and get on with the impeachment, or fire the guns and start the revolution. But apparently, hero boy, you and your fellow malcontents have seen fit to just be a noisy trumpet for seven years while this man ruins your country, but you have neither the courage nor the means to save what you claim to love so dearly. you're a fraud and a fool. Your turn. English (US)EspañolFrançais (France)??(??)???????Português (Brasil)Italiano???Deutsch??????… Sign Up Log In Messenger Facebook Lite Mobile Find Friends Badges People Pages Places Games Locations About Create Ad Create Page Developers Careers Privacy Cookies Ad Choices Terms Help Settings Activity Log Facebook © 2015 English (US)
Sunday, November 29, 2015
This is what gets your Facebook account locked for 24 hours
Facebook has locked my account for 24 hours. I found this out when I tried to open a page about 1 AM Eastern Standard Time on November 28. (I subsequently tried again to log in at about 11 AM today, November 29, was presented with the same message, and told that 23 hours remain before my privileges are restored. I don't know whether that's the new math or not, but my math says that if my privileges will be restored at 11 am + 23 hours, that is 10 AM on Monday, November 30. Subtracting the time and day of the original notification, 1 AM on the 28th, that's 24+9, or 33 hours.
Nevermind their fuzzy math. Let's look at what I posted that was so offensive:
Remember - this was posted in a group that has membership; the group was left leaning and I believe may have been about atheist. It's hard to remember when I'm locked out of everything. But the guy is posting things that are cheap shots at Obama, and claiming he is unfit for office.
Saturday, November 28, 2015
Facebook does not operate by standards we would demand as citizens of the United States
We are taught as children the rudimentary elements of a free society; these include the freedom to speak and write, the opportunity for a hearing if we are accused of something, and we are promised some plausible objectivity and fidelity to the rules when we are being judged for having violated social norms.
Facebook does not appear to honor any of these precepts.
The Magna Carta was written in 1215, and is understood to be one of the cornerstones of Western Civilization. What do we know about the Magna Carta? It established the idea of Habeas Corpus - in Latin "To Have the Body" - one must present evidence of WHY a person is being held by authorities.
I find it quite disgusting that it's all free speech when people talk trash about President Obama. But if you remember Oliver Wendell Holmes, one cannot yell "fire" in a crowded movie theater. My interpretation of this is that if someone is openly accusing the president of things that, by the letter of the law, are impeachable offenses, this is NOT to be taken lightly. For IF the president - or any officer of our government is indeed GUILTY of "high crimes and misdemeanors", they can at minimum be removed from office, they can serve a punitive sentence, or they can be executed.
I don't know why a person can cavalierly make overtures that the President is acting outside his authority or in contravention of the Constitution of the United States and that's not a problem to Facebook.
What I said to this person is what he says when he sees anything of the kind:
"If you have the evidence, present it, and if it's valid, you can get at least an indictment and a hearing if not a conviction and a sentence"
But no, I call the man a fool because he makes these very serious claims, but then does not apparently have either the evidence to get a conviction, or his own conviction to follow through on what are very grave claims and accusations.
Instead, I get blocked from an entire worldwide community of friends, readers, followers, and - yes - adversaries.
Free speech is protected by law because words have meaning; words inspire action, and actions have consequences. If a person can offer up speech that implies very serious action with very serious consequences, but another man's speech is censored and the speaker is locked away from the community to which he speaks because he offended one member of it
well, then we have Facebook operating in a very unAmerican manner indeed.
In my never humble, but apparently sometimes worthless opinion.
Thursday, April 7, 2011
Inspired by someone who recognized my angst and wanted to know more about me...
Just going to put this up in it's original form. Someone found me on an open forum (on an albeit sequestered blog, it is a community that is not in the mainstream) and this is what I wrote back:
Invitation for friendship by the other:
My reply:
So.
How was your day?
.
Invitation for friendship by the other:
You mentioned mental illness. I take a small dose of an antidepressant. I have for twenty years. I tried to "think" myself happy in my early 20's, and it wasn't possible. I took the pill, and it was a miracle. What caused the mental illness in the first place? I'll never know, nor do I need to know. It doesn't matter. I'm fine now.
If you don't want to be friends, do nothing. If you want to be friends, friend me and I will accept.
My reply:
Your comment is appreciated. It's a much longer reason to explain why I don't take the pills; and a longer discussion than that to explain why I treat people in the mental health profession (read that to mean "industry") as if they were Dr. Mengele.
Wanna know why I'm pissed off, angry, depressed? Because every upright walking moron with a TV thinks they're Dr. Phill and they just know what all my problems are - and of course that I'm the only one in the room with a problem in the first place, because surely it could not be them.
Now - if that were actually true - if I really was the only one flying upside down and backwards and everyone else was Mr. Rogers, I'd off myself just to save them the trouble and allow their utopian perfection to continue without me screwing it all up for them. But you and I know that life is a bit more complicated than that, and I'm a child of Doestoyevsky. "too great a lucidity is a terrible disease. The average man's awareness is more than enough" -
I'm angry and an outcast because I cant' ignore all the other things that so many (too many) people have become comfortable with; and they sleep with themselves at night in peace because they bullshit themselves with a creation of their mind (with a little help from that pill) that they are fine and of course all the problems lie in everyone but them. Either way, it's not their job.
So Doestoyevsky pointed out (and I paraphrase to my own liking) that "the most intelligent, aware, and ludcid person in the room is always going to be the most miserable son of a bitch there" - we shorten that in the common vernacular to: "ignorance is bliss. Therefore; the popular practice of willful and wanton avoidance of anything uncomfortable is a self-fulfilling orgasm"
No, I find far too many legitimate reasons to explain my behavior than to have to search for one in my body chemistry. I"m not interested in becoming someone who others would like more when I know I would like him less. Those same people who tell me to take the pills are the ones who put me on the couch at hundreds of dollars per hour (20x more than I've ever earned) then tell me that I have to be true to myself. Somehow the room doesn't explode as a bolt of lightning should strike their head in recognition of the contradiction they just posed.
Psychology has to be the only profession where a doctor can ask the patient where it hurts --- and then argue with him; and not be thrown out for malpractice or just abject sadism.
I am a reactionary person, and I make no apology that the people in my life who go out of their way to deliberately provoke me (i'm not addressing you here, but in general) because they are expecting a specific response thusly need to blame me when they dont' get the one they came looking for. I call things as I see them; that is the reason I'm an outcast - I can't be what people want me to be just to please them, I have to be what I am. And generally they don't like that and they make no excuses for it.
So why should I?
I'm not talking about you, I'm addressing my general angst; commonly pigeonholed and labelled as a "disorder". Maybe one of the reasons that I'm so "dysfunctional" is because of the 10,000 people in my life, some qualified, most nowhere near so, who put labels on me and then get pissed when I peel them off and tell them I fit no mold, I am unique. Maybe it's the crowd of people who always question me and insist I should have wanted to be someone else or do something else or want something else than what I actually used my own volition to arrive at on my own, who, after 43 years have created a man who doesn't know what the fuck he wants because he's sure if he tells anyone some asshole will pop up out of nowhere to tell me I can't have it, shouldn't want it, and if I don't let it go they will have a problem with me.
We live - well, I live - in a society. There are far more variables in this experiment than just my body chemistry; so when people suggest that the only remedy we're going to apply is to tweak me and leave everything else as it is, I scream bullshit.
It's like we're not going to investigate plane crashes any more; we're going to accept that they fall out of the sky and deal with it by putting pillows all over the ground and hope that when they do plummet downward on fire at 400 miles per hour they will bounce - because to actually address what makes them fall in the first place - well that's just beyond their control.
Imagine the hubris - humanity thinks it can rule the whole goddamn universe and change anything it puts it's mind to...
...except other humans.
Wow. Imagine that - the only thing that can cut a diamond is...another diamond.
I can't take the meds because I dont' trust the people who prescribe them. If you want to help me write the book I've been struggling with for six years, I'd welcome that. I dont' have the attention span for it; but when I tell people about what I'm going through, they always tell me I have a different problem Been this way for 25 years.
So the book is called 'Building Broken People" - however the working title always has been "Stories so fucking bizarre you won't believe they could be real, but since this shit goes on every day, it's nothing to get worked up over". Either way, I'm not going back. The first thing any of them will ask me (tell me) is that they can't change me, only I can change me, and if I'm not interested in changing then they can't help me.
Ok, they can't help me. Can I leave now?
That usually starts some kind of conflict that has more than once ended in the shrink coming apart in front of me and displaying they've got far more issues than I do and they have found a way of dealing with theirs - by telling other people what to do and ignoring that they are the antithesis of their best advice.
I have no respect and little patience for such people. Seriously - let me tell you soem of the stories. These bastards ought to be in cages and not hosting couches in their office. They take no responsibilty for their own words - if I heal, they are Jesus - but if I walk out of their office in a fit of rage and kill 38 people at a McDonalds, surely they were not to blame because -
...well, you know why....
"he was obviously sick, it wasn't anything that I said..."
And. So. It. Goes.
If I pick my nose, the world as we know it comes to an end and it's solely my fault. Meanwhile, they could skull fuck the Virgin Mary with a rusty egg beater and as long as they have their white coat on, well, that must be what she needed to heal her pain.
So if that means I go to an early grave even by my own hand, I'm more at peace with that decision than I ever could be with somehow still witnessing and recognizing all the bullshit and lies around me and somehow masturbating myself to think it's OK or offering myself up as the only real problem in the room while the rest all continues unabated.
Please dont' misread my comment; this is not anger offered towards you, it's who I am. I'm comfortable this way, at least that means I could not be more comfortable as someone else which is what those around me who judge me are insisting that I must become in order to escape their opinions of me.
I tried to take an antidepressent. I felt lobotomized; but that's not the point. I had to take the pill. Taking the pill, meaning that I woudl be happy that day but knowing that all of the shit, misery, lies and bullshit that should still enrage me because it is nonetheless enraging to a sober mind, well that seemed like a betrayal to me.
I know the standard response; and you should know what book by Joseph Heller I'm going to return fire with. I should keep trying medications, and keep trying shrinks until I get the "right" one -
but if I'm so fucked up, who amongst them will grant me the authority to tell them even if it's not working. How could I know, being as sick as I am. ANd how dare I question medical professionals.
I'll wind this up, because I know this is way more than you askef for and I probably got msyelf in trouble by not saying, "i'm fine thanks, great to meet you, let's have a cheeseburger and a coke and be on our way"
Imagine you're on a bus. Everyone is glued to the windows of the bus and they're having the time of their lives because they're enjoying the scenery and reminding themselves what a great time they're having and all is well. Id' be the one dumb bastard on the bus looking out the windshield and noticing that the driver fell asleep at the wheel and we're heading for a bridge that is not there.
Now in my world, were I to stand up and scream "THE DRIVER IS ASLEEP AND THERE IS NO BRIDGE" - the crowd around me would turn to me in anger and demand I sit down and shut the fuck up because I'm making it impossible for them to enjoy their trip.
I'm not sure learning how to be "happy" in the midst of that is really to anyone's advantage - and lets' face it. Any counselor, any medication is only going to be the "serenity prayer" in a bottle - learn to live with the things I cannot change, and make peace with it. Courage - well that's bullshit because whether or not you were supposed to have courage or seek serentiy is always judged ex post facto by the people who know the outcome and who never had any skin in the game.
Sure, if we were supposed to change things, then we were supposed to have courage.
If it was futile to try, (because after it's already played out, any dumb fool can see that this was true) we were supposed to seek serenity in capitulation to the fates and let go
that "wisdom" they threw in there - it does not exist - only in hindsight from others who never had to put their balls on the line when the time was at hand.
Thanks for the discussion; we can have more. There's a munch here in Hazleton, although the dates are somewhat in flux right now. Maybe we'll meet someday. I tend to run in Black Phoenix circles but have been staying on the porch lately because I'm broke.
Be good.
Felt good to unleash all that. How much for today's session, Doc?
So.
How was your day?
.
Monday, June 15, 2009
Nikki Catsouras is a reckless killer who got lucky that no one else died.
I am so fucking pissed I could scream. But there's nobody here, I'm on my back porch and it would just scare my dogs.
Buckle your seat belts, people, this one is going to be a wild and fast ride over bumpy ground.
I just read the Newsweek Article about Nikki Catsouras, and I'm disgusted. And yes, I'm going to give you the link to the site where the photographs are posted.
Note: the Catsouras family had the original website and it's address somehow captured for their own use. The original link now goes not to a site that shows the horror of the crash, but the "horror" of showing the photos of the crash. The internet being what it is, there's always another site that can pick up the slack: Be prepared to be sickened; it's horrific.
http://www.documentingreality.com/forum/f10/nicole-catsouras-nikki-lost-control-porsche-hits-toll-booth-gory-pictures-1248/
And I don't mean about the photographs - I hope the publicity makes them the most popular photographs on the internet.
That's the point - imagine seeing this crash, realizing what factors allowed it to happen, ponder what else could have happened, and then ask yourself, the Catsouras family is going to do the world "good" by standing up to people who publish the photographs?
What about the accident? http://www.documentingreality.com/forum/f10/nicole-catsouras-nikki-lost-control-porsche-hits-toll-booth-gory-pictures-1248/ That doesn't bother them, but the photos are the real issue?
And to the Family? Here's what I have to say to you directly:
There was another car in this story - it was "clipped".
There was a toll booth in this story - the car landed two feet from a door that is designed for the ingress/egress of humans. There are a dozen other places where other people could have been killed in this story, literally a thousand other opportunities for disaster from the moment she left the driveway.
And that's the point. Take a good look at the aerial map and the trajectory of the Porsche - it crossed two lanes of oncoming traffic which normally would have been traveling at highway speed in the opposite direction, another lane coming from the toll booth traveling slower but also in the opposite direction, and the car ultimately stopped only when it smashed into an uninhabited part of the building.
You've figured this out already, right? How many cars got lucky that she didn't nail them head on (do the math - if Nikki was doing 100 mph, and the opposite lane of traffic was doing 60-80 - how much more horrific would this have been if she had not merely "clipped" the other car? That's a 160-180 mph collision.)
Now imagine the toll booth - do you think the people that operate and maintain a toll booth expect to be dodging oncoming traffic at 100 mph? The rest of us get tickets if we're going much faster than 15 MPH even with an EZ-Pass lane.
So, how many degrees of variation would we have to apply to the ten thousand different variables in the equations of this nightmare for the story to have been a lot different? Not many. What if the headline had read: "An innocent driver and three passengers were killed in a head on crash, caused by a girl driving her father's car without his permission at a high rate of speed, who had a history of cocaine use, and cocaine in her system.
The autopsy photos are what the family is upset about; instead of being grateful there weren't more bodies - innocent people - to bury for no good reason.
And did I also read that they claim that this whole thing is some "condition" that makes her vulnerable to the effects of cocaine? Holy shit - holy shit - are you fucking kidding me? As if without the genetic mutation, a "normal" person doing cocaine would not have been a problem in this story?
How many pebbles would have to be shifted to a different location to make this story not about the horrific release of the autopsy photos, but how a stupid decision by a reckless person who had the opportunity because of the carelessness of her parents cost the lives of how many other people?
To the Catsouras family: Shut the fuck up. You have no idea what monsters you are. For all the times I have been told "be grateful it wasn't worse" - and I hate hearing that - does the Catsouras family even have a clue how this story would be so much different than who released the autopsy photos if Nikki's land rocket had taken out other cars filled with other people?
My mother, born in 1939, graduated from High school in 1956, told me about the day after her Senior prom; the parents of two students killed in an accident on the night of the prom had the wreckage towed to the high school - where it stayed for the next year - to show and remind the students the consequences of drinking and driving and having "fun" behind the wheel of a car.
But I'll do you one better - I'm going to take the lack of personal responsibility you have shown for any of this - did I read that you're seeking $20 Million dollars in damages? - and call you outright whores. And here's why: You aren't the only ones who have suffered the loss of someone you love, and what happens to the image of the aftermath ought not to even be on your top 1000 list of sorrows if you had a heart to begin with.
Here's a diary I wrote about the sport I enjoy being a spectator of: NHRA Top Fuel Drag Racing. Before 2008, they used to cover 1320 feet - four football fields - in 4.5 seconds, and the highest recorded speed across the finish line was 337 miles per hour.
That's 430 feet per second.
You'd think these guys would be dropping like flies - and indeed talented men with the best safety that engineering can provide have died. The very first race I ever went to, saw the death of Blaine Johnson in 1996. Darrel Russel was killed in 2004, Eric Medlen was killed in testing in 2007, and I was at the track watching with my own eyes as Scott Kalitta desperately tried to stop his car at 330 miles per hour as an engine fire melted his parachutes and he slammed into a steel pole designed to catch him from running off the track at over 130 miles per hour.
And because of that, they now only race to 1000 feet - a full football field and both endzones shorter - and still manage to reach 310 miles per hour in 4.0 seconds.
And here's where irony meets sickening reality. One of these NHRA top fuel drivers, Doug Herbert - who still pushes these limits a dozen times every weekend for a living - lost both of his sons, the oldest 17 (driving) and the youngest 14, a helpless passenger, in a passenger car on a public highway on their way to McDonalds.
That's right - on their way to McDonalds. Not the kind of situation where one woudld need fire-retardant suits with boots, and gloves, and a head-sock; not the kind of situation where one would need fire extinguishers, a helmet, head and neck restraints, and a safety crew on standby only 50 feet away. The older of the two brothers, a newly licensed driver, tried to pass on a double-yellow line and hit another car head on. Both he and his brother were killed. And do you know what Doug Herbert is doing about it?
He's not filing lawsuits about how traumatized he is over the autopsy photos. He's on the road - promoting a program that he created called "BRAKES" - Be Responsible And Keep Everyone Safe. And you ought to know that my heart aches and I cry every time I watch the interview of him, admitting to the entire TV audience that his own son was reckless, and that is what got him and his brother killed. Amazingly enough in that story, the other driver was not killed either.
So to hear the Catsouras family think the photographs are the issue here pisses me the fuck off.
Here's a quote from another article - and I need some verification on this quote, but if it's accurate, take everything I said in this diary and muliply by 12.
If that is the "bottom line" in this family, not only do I have utterly no sympathy for any of them, they deserve no mercy. Their indifference to the potential consequences that they were unfathomably fortunate to have avoided is paralyzingly unconscionable.
How can anyone be that indifferent to what took place?
But it gets worse - Leslie, the mother, says,
"The fact is that we will never get rid of the photos anyway," says Lesli, Nikki's mother. "So we have made a decision to make something good come out of this horrible bad."
I'm paralyzed with disbelief that these selfish narcissists think that they're the one's who have suffered here - like the real problem is not that a young girl had a drug problem, an emotional problem, that her parents have so much more money and luxury and comfort that any of us will ever dream of and seem to be indifferent to all of that - but the real tragedy is that they can't live with the image of the girls head split wide open.
The image is what bothers them - not so much how it got that way.
I wish you could watch me seething with rage right now. I am so disgusted.
Who are these people?
Who's fault was it that this girl is dead? (It can't be the Nikki's fault or her parents or any of a dozen other factors in this story, right?)
Who's fault was it that there isn't anyone else dead? (well we don't need to think about that because it didn't happen, so just leave them alone)
But the thing that has you seeking TWENTY MILLION DOLLARS - ONLY because of that - is the wretched autopsy photographs?
No effort to address what caused the accident.
No effort to address prevention and some thought given to all the factors involved.
Just your own personal trauma over the photographs.
Spare me.
Get lost.
Do you know why I'm so pissed at you?
Because we still have almost half of this country frantic and hysterical and looking at their own neighbors and family like we're enemies of the state because they have an obsessive fear of terrorism. Terrorism -
Let's take a look at the top causes of death in the United States in the year 2001, the year 2,978 Americans were killed in the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, and the revolt of the passengers of United Flight 93:
NationalVital Statistics Reports,Vol. 52, No.3, September 18, 2003
The 15 leading causes of death in 2001 were as follows:
700,000 - Diseases of heart (heart disease)
550,000 - Malignant neoplasms (cancer)
163,000 - Cerebrovascular diseases (stroke)
120,000 - Chronic lower respiratory diseases (lung disease)
97,700 - Accidents (unintentional injuries)
71,000 - Diabetes mellitus (diabetes)
62,000 - Influenza and pneumonia Alzheimer’s disease
39,000 - Nephritis (kidney disease)
32,000 - Septicemia (infection)
29,000 - Intentional self-harm (suicide)
27,000 - Chronic liver disease and cirrhosis
20,000 - Assault (homicide)
20,000 - Essential (primary) hypertension and hypertensive renal
disease (hypertension)
See terrorism in the top ten?
I don't. I see suicide...that ought to be a sign.
Suicide and Homicide in the top ten, and let's call the 100,000 accidents a form of suicide and homicide. Either the one who caused it lost their life, or the poor unsuspecting victim who couldn't get out of the way in time.
Traffic crashes are the leading cause of death in people of all ages from 2 to 33 years in the US 2000 (Traffic Safety Facts, National Center for Statistics and Analysis, NHTSA, 2003)
Estimated 1.48 people died per 100 million vehicle miles of travel in the US 2003 (Traffic Safety Facts, National Center for Statistics and Analysis, NHTSA, 2003)
Estimated 117 deaths each day were caused by motor vehicle crashes in the US 2003 (Traffic Safety Facts, National Center for Statistics and Analysis, NHTSA, 2003) .
If you want to put that in perspective you can hardly grasp, the average number of people on the most popular airliner in the US, a Boeing 737, is about 120 people.
Do you think we'd be so absurdly indifferent if a planload full of people fell out of the sky and killed everyone aboard - every day of the year?
Stupid, careless, preventable accidents. And we even have libertarians who think it's some kind of salute to patriotism to take their seat belt and helmets off just to thumb their nose at what they see as the "Nanny State".
So we're indifferent to what we can change; what is in our control - and yet we're obsessed with the causes that are at the extremes: The war on drugs: What causes the violence in death, the drugs, or the criminal network because it's still illegal. Almost a hundred years after we gave up on trying to legislate morality with Prohibition of alcohol, we're still at it with everything from prescription drugs to marijuana.
But cars? Hey, we all gotta get somewhere, so it's just a price we think is worth all the misery that comes with it.
We've got people being put in jail left and right for drug offenses, and while these people are bitching about the autopsy photos, I don't see much responsibility being addressed because their daughter had cocaine in her system. For all of us who think that drugs ought to be legal, Nikki Catsouras just gave the drug police another reason to keep arresting people, thanks for that.
So do I think you have a case in recovering "damages" for the showing of the autopsy photos?
No way. You should be paying for those pictures to be blown up to real-life scale, and to be posted in every drug rehab center and high school and college campus in America.
Hey - a lot of us lose people we love in horrific ways. Let's ponder the alternative, Mr. Catsouras - I watched my father drink himself do death after having half his mouth and tongue cut out to remove cancer; But he still kept smoking and drinking. I was forced to watch the slow self-destruction of someone I loved, who in his last eigth years let his own bad habits gradually make his quality of life so unbearable, that he passed up the morphine that the doctor had prescribed, and instead chose to drink himself to death with two half-gallons of gin in a single day.
Was it more traumatic for you to see your photos go public, or for me to have to watch all that in private and listen to those who knew about it tell me there was "nothing I could do"?
Was it less traumatic to watch that with my own eyes over the course of eight years; the last two being so agonizing that the shrinks in town locked me up rather than come and get him, than it is for the Katsuras family to have seen the autopsy photos?
So now we're measuring the value of someone's life by the image of how it ended.
Oh this is going to be ugly indeed.
You can just take your little act and go the fuck home. I am so disgusted, so repulsed, so unsympathetic with your little charade of pitty and lack of remorse, I hope they charge you back for the legal fees of your own case.
How dare you.
How dare you.
You know it is a matter of fractions of an inch that made the difference between your daughter being the only victim in this (I'll admit senseless tragedy) and the possibility of there having been many more victims.
You have the luxury -- yes, the luxury -- of knowing that your daughter merely "clipped" another car, and that the ballistic weapon that was your precious fucking Porche did not destroy the toll booth and who knows how many other people or vehicles.
You should be forced to have that picture printed on a T-Shirt, and be made to wear it while walking through every shopping mall in the country for the next ten years. And show the world that you're not a victim in this story because the photos were leaked; you're the luckiest father in California because his reckless and out of control daughter didn't kill anyone else with his fucking hot-rod Porsche that he bought to show off his wealth and deal with his mid-life crisis.
How dare you.
Go home already. And be grateful for all the headstones you don't have to apologize for, you selfish stupid fools.
I downloaded the photos so that if they get taken down, I can put them up again.
So sue me. To think that any of us have some right to privacy in this day and age is a pretty bizarre fantasy in itself; If I went out and caused such an accident that killed someone else and I had lived; do you think that I would be able to keep the photos private if the family of who I killed wanted to make them example of my reckless behavior?
How can it be anyone can declare the right to keep private an event that happened in full view of those forced to witness it live with their own eyes, and yet a captured photo of that event is an invasion of privacy?
Privacy? This was an event that took place in the open on a public road - where's the privacy?
Do you really want to tell me - I can't even believe you're going to give me the opportunity to write this - do you really want to tell me that somehow the death of your daughter under the given circumstances would be less traumatic, and easier for you to deal with if only it weren't for the photographs?
Are you fucking kidding?
Do something right for once in your life.
Drop the goddamn lawsuit, and call up Doug Herbert. You can google him yourself. I'm sure he would welcome the opportunity to have you to join him in his BRAKES program, and instead of you trying to get rich(er) from the lawsuit over the autopsy photos, why don't you do what you can to make sure that some other kid doesn't use his or her father's car as a loaded weapon??
You still have shown little evidence of how grateful you should be - but don't seem to be - that your daughter is the only one dead in this story.
I cant' believe you have the gall; the unmitigated gall, to think you're a victim in this story.
You could have locked up the goddamn keys, Dad. Like any good father would to keep his kids away from loaded weapons. Then again given the galactic stupidity and shameless bravado of the NRA in this country, I almost expect to see you on tour with them bragging about the freedom to own Porsches without having to use a "trigger lock" mandated by the nanny state government.
Funny how nobody in the conservative movement gets it that a Nanny is only needed when the kids can't behave properly by themselves.
Drop the lawsuit and go home.
I'm sorry for your loss, but you don't seem to be at all.
And that's the story here.
Buckle your seat belts, people, this one is going to be a wild and fast ride over bumpy ground.
I just read the Newsweek Article about Nikki Catsouras, and I'm disgusted. And yes, I'm going to give you the link to the site where the photographs are posted.
Note: the Catsouras family had the original website and it's address somehow captured for their own use. The original link now goes not to a site that shows the horror of the crash, but the "horror" of showing the photos of the crash. The internet being what it is, there's always another site that can pick up the slack: Be prepared to be sickened; it's horrific.
http://www.documentingreality.com/forum/f10/nicole-catsouras-nikki-lost-control-porsche-hits-toll-booth-gory-pictures-1248/
And I don't mean about the photographs - I hope the publicity makes them the most popular photographs on the internet.
That's the point - imagine seeing this crash, realizing what factors allowed it to happen, ponder what else could have happened, and then ask yourself, the Catsouras family is going to do the world "good" by standing up to people who publish the photographs?
What about the accident? http://www.documentingreality.com/forum/f10/nicole-catsouras-nikki-lost-control-porsche-hits-toll-booth-gory-pictures-1248/ That doesn't bother them, but the photos are the real issue?
And to the Family? Here's what I have to say to you directly:
There was another car in this story - it was "clipped".
There was a toll booth in this story - the car landed two feet from a door that is designed for the ingress/egress of humans. There are a dozen other places where other people could have been killed in this story, literally a thousand other opportunities for disaster from the moment she left the driveway.
And that's the point. Take a good look at the aerial map and the trajectory of the Porsche - it crossed two lanes of oncoming traffic which normally would have been traveling at highway speed in the opposite direction, another lane coming from the toll booth traveling slower but also in the opposite direction, and the car ultimately stopped only when it smashed into an uninhabited part of the building.
You've figured this out already, right? How many cars got lucky that she didn't nail them head on (do the math - if Nikki was doing 100 mph, and the opposite lane of traffic was doing 60-80 - how much more horrific would this have been if she had not merely "clipped" the other car? That's a 160-180 mph collision.)
Now imagine the toll booth - do you think the people that operate and maintain a toll booth expect to be dodging oncoming traffic at 100 mph? The rest of us get tickets if we're going much faster than 15 MPH even with an EZ-Pass lane.
So, how many degrees of variation would we have to apply to the ten thousand different variables in the equations of this nightmare for the story to have been a lot different? Not many. What if the headline had read: "An innocent driver and three passengers were killed in a head on crash, caused by a girl driving her father's car without his permission at a high rate of speed, who had a history of cocaine use, and cocaine in her system.
The autopsy photos are what the family is upset about; instead of being grateful there weren't more bodies - innocent people - to bury for no good reason.
And did I also read that they claim that this whole thing is some "condition" that makes her vulnerable to the effects of cocaine? Holy shit - holy shit - are you fucking kidding me? As if without the genetic mutation, a "normal" person doing cocaine would not have been a problem in this story?
How many pebbles would have to be shifted to a different location to make this story not about the horrific release of the autopsy photos, but how a stupid decision by a reckless person who had the opportunity because of the carelessness of her parents cost the lives of how many other people?
To the Catsouras family: Shut the fuck up. You have no idea what monsters you are. For all the times I have been told "be grateful it wasn't worse" - and I hate hearing that - does the Catsouras family even have a clue how this story would be so much different than who released the autopsy photos if Nikki's land rocket had taken out other cars filled with other people?
My mother, born in 1939, graduated from High school in 1956, told me about the day after her Senior prom; the parents of two students killed in an accident on the night of the prom had the wreckage towed to the high school - where it stayed for the next year - to show and remind the students the consequences of drinking and driving and having "fun" behind the wheel of a car.
But I'll do you one better - I'm going to take the lack of personal responsibility you have shown for any of this - did I read that you're seeking $20 Million dollars in damages? - and call you outright whores. And here's why: You aren't the only ones who have suffered the loss of someone you love, and what happens to the image of the aftermath ought not to even be on your top 1000 list of sorrows if you had a heart to begin with.
Here's a diary I wrote about the sport I enjoy being a spectator of: NHRA Top Fuel Drag Racing. Before 2008, they used to cover 1320 feet - four football fields - in 4.5 seconds, and the highest recorded speed across the finish line was 337 miles per hour.
That's 430 feet per second.
You'd think these guys would be dropping like flies - and indeed talented men with the best safety that engineering can provide have died. The very first race I ever went to, saw the death of Blaine Johnson in 1996. Darrel Russel was killed in 2004, Eric Medlen was killed in testing in 2007, and I was at the track watching with my own eyes as Scott Kalitta desperately tried to stop his car at 330 miles per hour as an engine fire melted his parachutes and he slammed into a steel pole designed to catch him from running off the track at over 130 miles per hour.
And because of that, they now only race to 1000 feet - a full football field and both endzones shorter - and still manage to reach 310 miles per hour in 4.0 seconds.
And here's where irony meets sickening reality. One of these NHRA top fuel drivers, Doug Herbert - who still pushes these limits a dozen times every weekend for a living - lost both of his sons, the oldest 17 (driving) and the youngest 14, a helpless passenger, in a passenger car on a public highway on their way to McDonalds.
That's right - on their way to McDonalds. Not the kind of situation where one woudld need fire-retardant suits with boots, and gloves, and a head-sock; not the kind of situation where one would need fire extinguishers, a helmet, head and neck restraints, and a safety crew on standby only 50 feet away. The older of the two brothers, a newly licensed driver, tried to pass on a double-yellow line and hit another car head on. Both he and his brother were killed. And do you know what Doug Herbert is doing about it?
He's not filing lawsuits about how traumatized he is over the autopsy photos. He's on the road - promoting a program that he created called "BRAKES" - Be Responsible And Keep Everyone Safe. And you ought to know that my heart aches and I cry every time I watch the interview of him, admitting to the entire TV audience that his own son was reckless, and that is what got him and his brother killed. Amazingly enough in that story, the other driver was not killed either.
So to hear the Catsouras family think the photographs are the issue here pisses me the fuck off.
Here's a quote from another article - and I need some verification on this quote, but if it's accurate, take everything I said in this diary and muliply by 12.
"The bottom line is, teenagers sometimes do stupid things," Lesli Catsouras said.
If that is the "bottom line" in this family, not only do I have utterly no sympathy for any of them, they deserve no mercy. Their indifference to the potential consequences that they were unfathomably fortunate to have avoided is paralyzingly unconscionable.
How can anyone be that indifferent to what took place?
But it gets worse - Leslie, the mother, says,
"The fact is that we will never get rid of the photos anyway," says Lesli, Nikki's mother. "So we have made a decision to make something good come out of this horrible bad."
I'm paralyzed with disbelief that these selfish narcissists think that they're the one's who have suffered here - like the real problem is not that a young girl had a drug problem, an emotional problem, that her parents have so much more money and luxury and comfort that any of us will ever dream of and seem to be indifferent to all of that - but the real tragedy is that they can't live with the image of the girls head split wide open.
The image is what bothers them - not so much how it got that way.
I wish you could watch me seething with rage right now. I am so disgusted.
Who are these people?
Who's fault was it that this girl is dead? (It can't be the Nikki's fault or her parents or any of a dozen other factors in this story, right?)
Who's fault was it that there isn't anyone else dead? (well we don't need to think about that because it didn't happen, so just leave them alone)
But the thing that has you seeking TWENTY MILLION DOLLARS - ONLY because of that - is the wretched autopsy photographs?
No effort to address what caused the accident.
No effort to address prevention and some thought given to all the factors involved.
Just your own personal trauma over the photographs.
Spare me.
Get lost.
Do you know why I'm so pissed at you?
Because we still have almost half of this country frantic and hysterical and looking at their own neighbors and family like we're enemies of the state because they have an obsessive fear of terrorism. Terrorism -
Let's take a look at the top causes of death in the United States in the year 2001, the year 2,978 Americans were killed in the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, and the revolt of the passengers of United Flight 93:
NationalVital Statistics Reports,Vol. 52, No.3, September 18, 2003
The 15 leading causes of death in 2001 were as follows:
700,000 - Diseases of heart (heart disease)
550,000 - Malignant neoplasms (cancer)
163,000 - Cerebrovascular diseases (stroke)
120,000 - Chronic lower respiratory diseases (lung disease)
97,700 - Accidents (unintentional injuries)
71,000 - Diabetes mellitus (diabetes)
62,000 - Influenza and pneumonia Alzheimer’s disease
39,000 - Nephritis (kidney disease)
32,000 - Septicemia (infection)
29,000 - Intentional self-harm (suicide)
27,000 - Chronic liver disease and cirrhosis
20,000 - Assault (homicide)
20,000 - Essential (primary) hypertension and hypertensive renal
disease (hypertension)
See terrorism in the top ten?
I don't. I see suicide...that ought to be a sign.
Suicide and Homicide in the top ten, and let's call the 100,000 accidents a form of suicide and homicide. Either the one who caused it lost their life, or the poor unsuspecting victim who couldn't get out of the way in time.
Traffic crashes are the leading cause of death in people of all ages from 2 to 33 years in the US 2000 (Traffic Safety Facts, National Center for Statistics and Analysis, NHTSA, 2003)
Estimated 1.48 people died per 100 million vehicle miles of travel in the US 2003 (Traffic Safety Facts, National Center for Statistics and Analysis, NHTSA, 2003)
Estimated 117 deaths each day were caused by motor vehicle crashes in the US 2003 (Traffic Safety Facts, National Center for Statistics and Analysis, NHTSA, 2003) .
If you want to put that in perspective you can hardly grasp, the average number of people on the most popular airliner in the US, a Boeing 737, is about 120 people.
Do you think we'd be so absurdly indifferent if a planload full of people fell out of the sky and killed everyone aboard - every day of the year?
Stupid, careless, preventable accidents. And we even have libertarians who think it's some kind of salute to patriotism to take their seat belt and helmets off just to thumb their nose at what they see as the "Nanny State".
So we're indifferent to what we can change; what is in our control - and yet we're obsessed with the causes that are at the extremes: The war on drugs: What causes the violence in death, the drugs, or the criminal network because it's still illegal. Almost a hundred years after we gave up on trying to legislate morality with Prohibition of alcohol, we're still at it with everything from prescription drugs to marijuana.
But cars? Hey, we all gotta get somewhere, so it's just a price we think is worth all the misery that comes with it.
We've got people being put in jail left and right for drug offenses, and while these people are bitching about the autopsy photos, I don't see much responsibility being addressed because their daughter had cocaine in her system. For all of us who think that drugs ought to be legal, Nikki Catsouras just gave the drug police another reason to keep arresting people, thanks for that.
So do I think you have a case in recovering "damages" for the showing of the autopsy photos?
No way. You should be paying for those pictures to be blown up to real-life scale, and to be posted in every drug rehab center and high school and college campus in America.
Hey - a lot of us lose people we love in horrific ways. Let's ponder the alternative, Mr. Catsouras - I watched my father drink himself do death after having half his mouth and tongue cut out to remove cancer; But he still kept smoking and drinking. I was forced to watch the slow self-destruction of someone I loved, who in his last eigth years let his own bad habits gradually make his quality of life so unbearable, that he passed up the morphine that the doctor had prescribed, and instead chose to drink himself to death with two half-gallons of gin in a single day.
Was it more traumatic for you to see your photos go public, or for me to have to watch all that in private and listen to those who knew about it tell me there was "nothing I could do"?
Was it less traumatic to watch that with my own eyes over the course of eight years; the last two being so agonizing that the shrinks in town locked me up rather than come and get him, than it is for the Katsuras family to have seen the autopsy photos?
So now we're measuring the value of someone's life by the image of how it ended.
Oh this is going to be ugly indeed.
You can just take your little act and go the fuck home. I am so disgusted, so repulsed, so unsympathetic with your little charade of pitty and lack of remorse, I hope they charge you back for the legal fees of your own case.
How dare you.
How dare you.
You know it is a matter of fractions of an inch that made the difference between your daughter being the only victim in this (I'll admit senseless tragedy) and the possibility of there having been many more victims.
You have the luxury -- yes, the luxury -- of knowing that your daughter merely "clipped" another car, and that the ballistic weapon that was your precious fucking Porche did not destroy the toll booth and who knows how many other people or vehicles.
You should be forced to have that picture printed on a T-Shirt, and be made to wear it while walking through every shopping mall in the country for the next ten years. And show the world that you're not a victim in this story because the photos were leaked; you're the luckiest father in California because his reckless and out of control daughter didn't kill anyone else with his fucking hot-rod Porsche that he bought to show off his wealth and deal with his mid-life crisis.
How dare you.
Go home already. And be grateful for all the headstones you don't have to apologize for, you selfish stupid fools.
I downloaded the photos so that if they get taken down, I can put them up again.
So sue me. To think that any of us have some right to privacy in this day and age is a pretty bizarre fantasy in itself; If I went out and caused such an accident that killed someone else and I had lived; do you think that I would be able to keep the photos private if the family of who I killed wanted to make them example of my reckless behavior?
How can it be anyone can declare the right to keep private an event that happened in full view of those forced to witness it live with their own eyes, and yet a captured photo of that event is an invasion of privacy?
Privacy? This was an event that took place in the open on a public road - where's the privacy?
Do you really want to tell me - I can't even believe you're going to give me the opportunity to write this - do you really want to tell me that somehow the death of your daughter under the given circumstances would be less traumatic, and easier for you to deal with if only it weren't for the photographs?
Are you fucking kidding?
Do something right for once in your life.
Drop the goddamn lawsuit, and call up Doug Herbert. You can google him yourself. I'm sure he would welcome the opportunity to have you to join him in his BRAKES program, and instead of you trying to get rich(er) from the lawsuit over the autopsy photos, why don't you do what you can to make sure that some other kid doesn't use his or her father's car as a loaded weapon??
You still have shown little evidence of how grateful you should be - but don't seem to be - that your daughter is the only one dead in this story.
I cant' believe you have the gall; the unmitigated gall, to think you're a victim in this story.
You could have locked up the goddamn keys, Dad. Like any good father would to keep his kids away from loaded weapons. Then again given the galactic stupidity and shameless bravado of the NRA in this country, I almost expect to see you on tour with them bragging about the freedom to own Porsches without having to use a "trigger lock" mandated by the nanny state government.
Funny how nobody in the conservative movement gets it that a Nanny is only needed when the kids can't behave properly by themselves.
Drop the lawsuit and go home.
I'm sorry for your loss, but you don't seem to be at all.
And that's the story here.
Saturday, May 17, 2008
The story behind the name
I once worked as a computer drafstman (sometimes called a detailer) for a very well known heavy-equipment manufacturer. I have never been known to hide my feelings, and it is my opinion that if someone is deliberately provoking me to get a reaction, I will give them precisely what they were expecting. One of the managers from another nearby department (we'll call him 'Jeff') who I was obligated to deal with from time to time was fond of calling me "Boom Boom": He said that was the sound of the two gunshots when I finally went postal.
One particular day I was already wound up...parking snafu on campus where I was attending class, parking snafu while at work (go figure your employer can't find a place to put your car) and other miscellaneous things were ricocheting around in my head - the kind of stress that we all are burdened with. I had to go into Jeff's department for some reason, and although it was not that I had specifically to deal with this particular antagonist on this occasion, as I approached I could already see I had caught his eye and there was that grin on his face.
Knowing my limitations, and knowing I was near them if not already past, I approached Jeff in complete calm and said in a measured tone, "Today is not the day to get my goat. Please, just let me do my job and I'll go back to my desk."
And of course, confessing that was all the reason he needed to get him started. I don't remember what exactly his point was that day because I only let him go about thirty seconds before I stopped him:
"You know, Jeff, you're right about me. But my original plan when I snapped was to enter the building and spray the entire place indiscriminately with gunfire. Now I've decided I'm going to come right to your fucking desk and start with you."
It was suddenly very quiet throughout the department, and instantly I realized that I was in imminent danger of being escorted out of the building on the spot, probably subject to arrest, and surely committed to some kind of 'institution' until I could prove I was no threat to the community.
Amazingly enough that did not happen, and more amazing still was that Jeff did not tease me again after this encounter. We got along with a professional attitude from there forward and were able to accomplish work-related tasks without any further hostility or confrontation.
So I want you to ponder this situation for a moment, and ask yourself just one question: Is is more outrageous that I would ever dare to say something so unthinkable, or is it more outrageous to realize that it was only once I said something so unconscionably obscene that the he finally took me seriously?
In the years since, I have reduced this to a parable of my own conception to get this point across without involving my personal experience:
If you see a dog - a mangy, angry, growling dog, covered in open wounds, with it's teeth bared and frothing at the mouth, hunkered down in the corner, it's a pretty safe assumption that if you were to charge over there and poke it in the nose, it's going to bite you.
So if you decide to march on over to that dog - who was not coming after you before you approached it - and do just that, and the dog does bite you...
...don't blame the dog. He did exactly what you expected he would. You were the one who gave him the reason he did not have before you poked him in the nose.
Therefore, if you are the type of person who finds it personally amusing to "push people's buttons" just so you get the opportunity to admonish them that they never should have had whatever reaction you feel was inappropriate, may I suggest to you that you got what you asked for. If you don't want a bad reaction, don't deliberately invite one.
Even if you are right that the person you want to condemn never should have done that, once they've already done it it's a bit late to prove your point, don't you think? And you chose to antagonize them and encourage the situation knowing full well where it was headed.
That's not the fault of the dog. Before you came along, he was hunkered down in the corner trying to avoid everyone, wasn't he?
I'll let you leave your comments in answer; the rest of my posts are similar observations about how humans, who are supposed to be the one species with more brain power than all the others, so often deliberately chooses to use so little of it - if any at all.
One particular day I was already wound up...parking snafu on campus where I was attending class, parking snafu while at work (go figure your employer can't find a place to put your car) and other miscellaneous things were ricocheting around in my head - the kind of stress that we all are burdened with. I had to go into Jeff's department for some reason, and although it was not that I had specifically to deal with this particular antagonist on this occasion, as I approached I could already see I had caught his eye and there was that grin on his face.
Knowing my limitations, and knowing I was near them if not already past, I approached Jeff in complete calm and said in a measured tone, "Today is not the day to get my goat. Please, just let me do my job and I'll go back to my desk."
And of course, confessing that was all the reason he needed to get him started. I don't remember what exactly his point was that day because I only let him go about thirty seconds before I stopped him:
"You know, Jeff, you're right about me. But my original plan when I snapped was to enter the building and spray the entire place indiscriminately with gunfire. Now I've decided I'm going to come right to your fucking desk and start with you."
It was suddenly very quiet throughout the department, and instantly I realized that I was in imminent danger of being escorted out of the building on the spot, probably subject to arrest, and surely committed to some kind of 'institution' until I could prove I was no threat to the community.
Amazingly enough that did not happen, and more amazing still was that Jeff did not tease me again after this encounter. We got along with a professional attitude from there forward and were able to accomplish work-related tasks without any further hostility or confrontation.
So I want you to ponder this situation for a moment, and ask yourself just one question: Is is more outrageous that I would ever dare to say something so unthinkable, or is it more outrageous to realize that it was only once I said something so unconscionably obscene that the he finally took me seriously?
In the years since, I have reduced this to a parable of my own conception to get this point across without involving my personal experience:
If you see a dog - a mangy, angry, growling dog, covered in open wounds, with it's teeth bared and frothing at the mouth, hunkered down in the corner, it's a pretty safe assumption that if you were to charge over there and poke it in the nose, it's going to bite you.
So if you decide to march on over to that dog - who was not coming after you before you approached it - and do just that, and the dog does bite you...
...don't blame the dog. He did exactly what you expected he would. You were the one who gave him the reason he did not have before you poked him in the nose.
Therefore, if you are the type of person who finds it personally amusing to "push people's buttons" just so you get the opportunity to admonish them that they never should have had whatever reaction you feel was inappropriate, may I suggest to you that you got what you asked for. If you don't want a bad reaction, don't deliberately invite one.
Even if you are right that the person you want to condemn never should have done that, once they've already done it it's a bit late to prove your point, don't you think? And you chose to antagonize them and encourage the situation knowing full well where it was headed.
That's not the fault of the dog. Before you came along, he was hunkered down in the corner trying to avoid everyone, wasn't he?
I'll let you leave your comments in answer; the rest of my posts are similar observations about how humans, who are supposed to be the one species with more brain power than all the others, so often deliberately chooses to use so little of it - if any at all.
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