Made me laugh

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A computer hacker himself, Assange, 39, achieved both instant notoriety and adulation when WikiLeaks published batches of damaging US files relating to the Afghan war in July. This fame led him to Stockholm a month later to deliver a lecture entitled: "Truth is the first casualty of war." It was a sellout. One leftwing commentator likened it to "having Mick Jagger in town".

That night – 14 August – Assange stayed with the conference organiser at her flat in Södermalm, a former working class area of the city centre that has become Stockholm's equivalent of London's Islington. Three days later, in keeping with his habit of regularly changing addresses, Assange stayed in Enköping, a town 100 miles from Stockholm, with another woman who had also attended his lecture on the importance of truth in a war zone.

Assange left Sweden on 18 August and the women went together to the police the next day. According to Claes Borgström, their lawyer, the women did not know each other before going to the police. Initially, he said, the women wanted some advice, but the police officer concluded a crime had been committed and contacted the duty public prosecutor.

In court last week Assange was alleged to have had sex with unlawful coercion with a woman who was asleep and to have sexually molested the other by having sex without a condom.

A senior civil servant, who requested anonymity, dismissed allegations of political plotting against Assange, arguing that Swedish culture is often misunderstood. "Swedes do not have an iconoclastic tradition in which you build people up then demolish their reputations. Even when people are celebrities, we accept that they may have questionable private lives. Swedes are capable of seeing the advantages of WikiLeaks while conceding that Assange may have unsavoury morals between the sheets."

Linderborg, though, says there is a widespread sense in Sweden that Assange's rise to fame fuelled his libido and ego.

"Plenty of women are attracted by his underdog status and the supposed danger of spending time with him. He has several women on the go at once. One person told me he screws more often than he eats," Linderborg said

(Story found at Guardian dot com today, got me laughing, as I have so many other parallels with Assange, now this too! )

Kicking

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The part of this story I'm not real public about is I'm kicking weed.

Way back in 1995 when I lived in San Francisco, I started using weed legally as medicine, using it every day, regularly like medicine.

And I do not regret a day of it. To the end of my life, I will give medical marijuana credit for getting me through a truly horrible time in my life. I was in total body pain, crippled weeks on end, and for years doctors had been filling me up with "antidepressants for pain" and all they did was make me fat.

It was medical marijuana that got me to stop crying, and feel good enough to get up and do everything else I had to do, in order to get better.

Now it's fifteen years later and I have to admit, I'm not that sick anymore, but I'm still using the medical marijuana. It is a habit, an addiction, but I don't really need it anymore.

So I'm having to say goodbye to the lovely weed, the miracle drug, the hypnotic flower whose image alone sparks desire for more....

I'm kicking.

I'm safe kicking in Albuquerque, because if things get really bad, Medical Marijuana is legal here. I'd just have to get a New Mexico ID and bring in my records from the L.A. Free Clinic, and get legal here, as PTSD is one of the illnesses that responds well to Med MJ. I'd have to become a New Mexico resident, which I don't want to do.

Next stop on this trip is Illinois, where they are not likely to pass "Compassionate Use" Med MJ laws any time soon. So I want to quit weed while I am here.

But if it becomes critical, I have legal medical weed to fall back on. The timing is perfect, maybe even more angelic intervention.

I want my full lung capacity back. I want my stronger attention span back. And I have to admit, if I'm not that sick anymore, why do I still use the drug. At some point you have to stop medication, just like codeine after surgery. At a certain point you have to put down the drug.

This is not going to be easy, and I timed it so I can taper down, with the little bit of medicine I carried with me on Amtrak to get here. I'm going to totally run out of weed just before Christmas, when there will not likely be a lot of work on my job, so I can stay in bed and take Tylenol PM and get through the first few days.

I've already hooked up by going to one NA meeting in Abq, did not get numbers though, as it does not feel right to connect with people in NA while I still have weed in my bag back at the hotel room. It might cause people at the NA meeting trouble. I'm not an addict, I'm just kicking a medicine. So for now I don't speak at NA meetings.

But I will continue go to open NA meetings and talk more after I totally run out of medicine, go there to hear what I need to hear. Open meetings only, like the cool one I found on Saturdays at noon where they actually spend time in quiet group meditation. I will definitely go back to that meeting a few more times, just to hear what I have to hear.

I'm conflicted about being at an NA meeting and not really being a lifetime addict, but I do need to be there as I am kicking. By mid-January I should be totally clear headed again, first time since about 1994, and who knows how much better City of Angels Blog will be with me totally clean.

It's all part of the story.
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Observation, beginnings of a story

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Humans stuff their bellies behind steering wheels to go from huge wasteful house to sprawling shopping mall or work location. There 3/4 of land is taken up by concrete mass to accommodate the hunks of steel tbese humans carry with them everywhere they go, put-put things that spew poison into the air in astonishing amounts.

These humans are evolving to be round and fat and getting dumber with each generation, very funny and quite pathetic to observe for aliens from space like me.

This is just a phase, humans can survive this era.

In the future, children could ride skateboards up and down abandoned freeways and the McMansions will likely be in ruins, but humanas will survive, if they learn how to live together in cities; i.e., be civilized and let the planet provide and thrive.

Otherwise the planet will survive our stripping of its resources and bound back to life, green and lush, long after humans have consumed themselves into extinction.
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Inspired by Downsize Nation on AlterNet this morning.

More Sounds for a Future Soundtrack, from Sarah McLachlan,

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For the movie to be made someday based on City of Angels Blog:

"Heaven holds a sense of wonder, and I wanted to believe that I'd get colder when the rage in me subsides." from "Delerium Silence"



Song was already on the soundtrack of Brokedown Palace... and this video.