I got laid off from my job Tuesday. It was a crummy job, but still. Before that, I had three jobs, putting me in the office about sixty hours a week. Also, I had just finished my first novel and was in the process of signing with a new agent who has good connections in New York. To keep up with the glad-handing and networking/partying, I quit two of the jobs. It was time, anyway. Then, four weeks ago, I found out my father had liver disease. He's not doing well. Then, three weeks ago, I lost my dog. A call to the police department this morning confirmed that there have been coyotes in the area and that about a dozen small dogs and many more cats have gone missing. That would have been fucking good to know. Fuckers. Then two weeks ago, my agent told me there was no interest for the novel, and we parted ways, which was really all him doing the parting. Then this week, I got laid off from my job.

All things considered, I'm well-equipped to bounce back ...


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My name is Trustocity, and I used to hang out at RP. A lot of you kids are new, and I’m glad you run the place now. There are some familiar faces as well, and you guys look great. You are as uncontrollably partisan as I remember, and an apple pie on the window sill could not have welcomed me back better.

The truth is, I was a bastard for a while there. If you want a taste of what I put people through, you can just read some of the recent political forums, where everyone appears to have remained as angry, stubborn and uncensored as I used to be. This must be what it looks like in the board rooms of big businesses, where people hide and discuss the TRUTH of the world before sugar-coating it for their next TV commercial. We need places like this, and I’m glad it’s here. I wounded myself, no one else did it to me, and I needed a break.

And now, I can’t come home again. I’m a different person, in a number of ways. No wiser, no cleaner of mind, just ...


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I just saw Owld_Skipper's post on RP addiction and thought, what the hell, the brain's ticking, let it tick. I am well acquainted with the imprisoning state which follows true liberation on the RP boards, and thought I'd throw in my 147 cents one last time. But as I begin to type, the apprehension wells. I really did not want to come back. And that's not what that is. I just felt like I owed some of you an explanation.

First, the facts: I've been in lurker mode since August 17, but it feels like much, much longer. The withdrawal sickness was very real. You'll think I'm exaggerating for comedic effect, but when I visited the site without logging on, for about three weeks it made me very twitchy and sick. But after all, I needed my RP radio stream. It's the only way I can get work done in the office anymore. So there I have Real Player on the screen, and I'm not spending any time at RP, and I feel like a traitor, or at the least, a tool. I'll keep ...


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I awoke from my slumber last night at 2:14 a.m., the exact moment at which Abraham Lincoln was assassinated, adjusted for inflation. The Red Sox had just lost to the Angels, and lo, my weary soul did weep bitter tears which did smell of Swisher Sweets and pretzel salt. Verily had I loaded up on junk food, stuffing my face as Wakefield appeared to stagger in a slumber of his own upon the fifth inning's bottom. "Smite him, Lord," thus was my prayer, and lo, the Lord did smite him upon the ankle, and from then it got worse, and I did regret mine prayer, and my regret continueth.

Consequently, my slumber was fitted with visions of my tenure as a police cadet, formerly the geeky brother on "Numbers," coupled with a hot blonde cop partner who was completely useless as we weathered a shootout in a convenience store. The bullets flew toward mine corporeal form, and lo, I did see the vapor trails of the bullet and was able to pull back in time to allow them ...


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I've been getting a lot of flak over the "hot as hell, sexy as sin" description of my lunch date friend. I believe two clarifications are in order.

First, she's hot as hell and sexy as sin. She radiates sexual tension like heat from a hot sidewalk. And it's very deliberate, and it's a little bit for show. She's an actress and a singer, and people walk up to her in public and ask for her autograph, especially here in Boston, and she can't exactly throw on sweats and a t-shirt to go to the market, unless it's cut-off sweats and one of those baby doll t-shirts. She's straight out of a magazine, and she knows it. When I talk to her about her looks, we're very frank, and superlatives fly. You have friends like this, right? To whom you can say anything? We've known each other since college, and she's happily married, and it's completely constructive and professional.

Second, I've been accused of being a flirt. This is not entirely true. Sexually ...


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Ankhara, clock me...

Had lunch with my most fabulous best friend ever. She's an aspiring writer, hot as hell, sexy as sin, and when she spouts trashy rehashed liberal talking points, I melt. Not enough to agree with everything she says, but yeah, I'm putty in her hands. Ah, dames.

We disagreed today, A LOT, but we laughed as well. It's so important to grin when you say some of the things a person must say about their beliefs and political mindset, because if you don't grin, then you're a steaming asshole. And online... well, you know this. It's hard to grin.

I've surrounded myself with left-wing friends, and the fact is, I find myself gravitating more and more toward the left wing. It's terrifying for someone who still has so much faith in God to lose so much faith in religion and the church. But you should hear me when I talk to Christians. You guys want to slap me, but they want to string me up. End of your life!!!

What's going on inside me ...


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I ran across this idea in a previous journal entry: If God exists, and he allows children to be raped, murdered and mutilated, then he is evil or perhaps insane. This is justification to believe there's no God, or if he exists, to assume he has no power over our lives and therefore no place in our thoughts.

Here's the implication: If YOU were God, and YOU could stop a rapist, you'd do it. (To not stop him, when you have the power is to "allow," or sanction, his acts.) But if the rapist were God, maybe he'd look inside your mind and decide you're the sinner because you eat potato chips, or spray your kitchen for bugs, or waste time on video games.

The issue at stake, of course, is Free Will. To protect the child from diseased minds is laudable, and you and I do this every day, but if you are omnipotent, omnipresent and omniscient, and you decide to right all wrongs, you won't stop with just one. EVERY sin is on the chopping block, big and small. We ...


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PattonFever, I'm really glad you brought up the issue of blame. I think it's important that we honestly assess our lives and take ownership of the mistakes we've made which put us where we are. HOWEVER....

I do not believe in guilt. That's like saying, I don't believe in milk, when milk is sitting right there, but if you don't drink the milk, you don't believe in it. And I don't drink guilt.

What good comes from guilt? Nothing I ever saw. If you use it to spur yourself toward right action, then it wasn't such a bad thing, but guilt for guilt's sake? "I suck, I've screwed up, life is shitty." It's not that I hate that, but rather, I don't believe in it. No matter how ugly you've made things for yourself, there's always a way to crawl back up. And if there isn't, then your heart can still be at peace. Guilt is just the worm in the apple. It has no place in a healthy life, and if the life isn't healthy, then guilt must be the first thing to go.

Many ...


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I'm concerned that what I'm about to say will be taken as a dismissal of what appear to be sincerely heartbreaking incidents in the lives of Winter and Xeric. I'd never, ever imply that the tragedies which have shaped your lives are slight or inconsequential. In Winter's case, I'm referring to the very real moment when he decided, quite logically and bravely, that there could not be a God (rather than the fact that he didn't get the girl).

So here's what I have to say: The Bible, human history, and observable circumstances on your block, in your city and around the world are filled with stories which make humankind look at each other and ask, "What kind of a God would allow such a thing?"

Like death. How could God allow death? Why did he create us to die? Personally, I don't believe he did any such thing. He created us to be with him, and that's a promise he fulfills after we kick the bucket.

Everyone dies. You know this. Athiests and Christians ...


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Listen to this:

Been thinking about this a lot since I read it this morning on Associated Press. Bill Frist, Senate majority leader, is a doggedly conservative Republican, and if anyone fights harder than I do against abortion, it's Frist. So anyway, he came out this week and announced that Bush's stance on stem cell research is wrong.



In my heart, I cheered ...


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My best friend and I had no idea who they were in 1989. When we drove down the strip with the radio loud, there was usually an assortment of hair-band idiocy trickling from the busted factory-original speakers in the 1979 Cutlass Classic his dad had rebuilt for him. Ratt, Poison, Mötley Crüe (with or without the umlauts, and come on, did they look German to you???), until they bored us to tears and we listened to the crap you weren't supposed to admit you enjoyed, like the Durans and whatever Don Was had produced that week.

In our crappy little suburb, no one ever told us about The Smiths or anything at all happening in Manchester. Hell, we didn't even know what the Police were up to. It was post-prog Genesis and money-mongering McCartney for us, right next to Steve Winwood and Don Henley, and for two kids in tenth grade, it was the first time around for all these guys as far as we were concerned.

The only kids you considered tough were the crack ...


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I can't believe that any sizeable percentage of RPians agree with Manitou, that I'm a Republican slyly slithering through a liberal-leaning website in order to make my tenets more palettable. For fuck's sake, if any of you have started to find my rantings palettable, PLEASE, let me know. It would be like Kirk and Spock in that mirror world. You know the one I mean. You nerd.

But I'm here for one reason and one reason only: the music. Radio Paradise is friggin' awesome. I'd break three windows a day in my various offices (I split time between about four) without RP playing on my computer. I swear, I'll be about ready to open a can of Dave-Up-Your-Ass when "Arlington" by The Wailin' Jennys comes on, or something from the Flaming Lips. I was close to setting fire to the city of Boston the day I first heard "Earthquake Weather" online, and after that, I went and donated a gallon of blood.

I mean, I don't know what your motives are for hanging around ...


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Wasn't the moon awesome this week?

Well-wishes to my peeps. If you live near San Francisco, meet me at Ghiradelli Chocolate near Fisherman's Wharf at 9:00 p.m. and I'll show you how we roll East Coast style. (bow wow wow, yippee-yo, yippee-yay...)

I love RP, I love the give-and-take, the push-and-pull, the yin-up-my-yang. I just got a bit swamped with work this week (ask HoneyGirl, if you must know), and so I haven't been around. However, I did see the athiest string, and thought to myself, I'm not even gonna LOOK until I have a chance to sit down and talk.

Has it ever been more apparent that I'm on the wrong boards?

In the spirit of full disclosure, I am everything you hate about religion. But if it makes you feel any better, the religious people hate me, too. I don't fit in anywhere. I watch R-rated movies, I listen to the Dead Milkmen even when there's no one around to be impressed by it, and I've, well, had sex with women to whom I was not promised.

Some of the things they disapprove of are, in my book, sins (fornicating) and some aren't (flipping off another driver when they nearly sideswipe me). Paul, the Damascus dude to whom Winter referred earlier, said, "All things are ...


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I was shy when I was a kid. And you're thinking, bullshit, but it's true, I was shy when I was a kid. Actually, there was an evolution to it. (Yes, I believe in evolution. Stop smirking.)

As a little kid, I was talkative and outgoing. My parents took me places with lots of people around, and they were well-read, so I had no reason to fear people. Then, junior high, and I had reason to fear people. Humans are cruel when they're trapped and frightened, when the provisions (coolness, respect, attention) are running low, and they turn to cannibalism faster than you can say "moral code."

My decision to return to society was exactly that -- a decision. I found myself surrounded by the nerdiest nerds you've ever seen in your life, and they lived internal lives of quiet self-despotism while the world outside tore the flesh from their bones because they didn't part their hair more evenly. And so one day I woke up and said, "Hey, being treated like shit is not ...


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(hands shaking)

I think I have rage issues. No no, I know what you're thinking. "Trustocity, you seem like a pretty calm guy." But honestly, I see people who live a daily crusade of opportunism and political wrong-headedness, and I think to myself, "Someone should point out wrong-headedness when they see it and call it what it is. These aren't ideas of which we should be tolerant; they are theories that were tested, and failed."

The theory I just got done reading was that the Middle East may have some justification for wanting to strike out at the U.S. and our allies. Now, the person making this statement was very careful to add that they don't condone the violence. But the message was clear -- if we'd never stepped foot in their lands, then everything would be okay.

I don't believe that. Left unchecked, I believe that Islamic extremism would result in exactly the sort of manifest destiny that drove Columbus to the new world, where he pillaged and ...


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I believe abortion is murder. Many of you turn red in the face with anger upon reading this, and it is to you that I wish to appeal this morning. My intention is to employ logic, leaving behind, for the moment, my emotions, personal history, anecdotal evidence, and theology. I invite you to respond in kind.

----------------------------------------------------

In the past, I said the pro-choice viewpoint could not prove abortion wass murder, so therefore, we should stop abortions. At that time, I was told I'd employed the logical fallacy of "Appeal to Ignorance," sometimes known as "Burden of Proof," whereby one declares that because X is not proven, X may be assumed.

The fallacy occurs NOT when someone applies ignorance as a defense for stopping an action. (EX: I may choose to not punch you in the teeth, based on my ignorance of whether or not you kissed my girl; my restraint is justified by my ignorance.)

Rather, the fallacy occurs when one ...


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I can't even seem to confine myself to the music boards without causing an uproar. If I were a megalomaniac, I'd be patting myself on the back, but really, I was just having a little fun and didn't mean to freak anyone out.

My basic point is this: That song, "Gloomy Sunday" by Heather Nova, sucks hose water from a damp beach towel. It's not the worst song on RP, but it's certainly uninspired, unnecessary, and above all, unjustifiable. But the real crime is... I hear it ALL THE FRIGGIN' TIME on RP. Today. Wednesday. Monday. Twice last week. I have to giggle uncontrollably each time I see it.

I'm not trying to comment on how RP is run. There are plenty of 6.0-rated and below songs on the site that I'd miss a lot, and Bill had his hands full just running the damn place. (Bill, can I say "damn?" I know I'm the reason for the new posting guidelines, and you're a mensch not to single me out specifically.) All I was doing was having a little fun. I thought, ...


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Yesterday was hard for me. I have some personal stuff going on in my life (a good friend advised me not to give the “haters” more fodder for the cannon by spilling my guts, so I shan’t). It came to a head, and I stormed off. This is not my Bobby Ewing moment (“Just kidding, it was a dream, I’m back for good”), and I’m not convinced I have a place here on the RP boards, but I at least want the option to return someday. In any case, I’ve encountered so much more good will here than bad that I feel I owe a fonder farewell than the one I subjected you to yesterday.

Some of you will think it all started when I started debating abortion in the forums. What a hellish adventure THAT was. But really, that excursion was exhilirating in a positive way. I meant what I said about appreciating the intense discourse. I’m thoroughly convinced many of you guys lack even the most basic objectivity, but I’m NOT convinced that’s a bad thing. The humans who make ...


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