Happy October!

I hate my life. Everyday I find the urge to give up increasing. My job has taken away all the joy and desire to do anything other than sleep. I want out.

My class held it's ten-year reunion this weekend. I didn't go, partly because of work and partly because I didn't want to be the loser of the class. That was the hardest truth I've ever had to accept. It pretty much guaranteed that I won't be around for the next one.

Fortunately it's the beginning of autumn so maybe I can find a brief respite from the misery for a few months.

Sky King

  Recently a man my age stole an airliner from Sea-Tac airport, performing a loop-de-loop and other stunts before crashing on an island and killing himself. In his conversations with air traffic controllers he remained calm and seemed he was just tired of life.

  It's a feeling I've become familiar with since gaining full-time employment. People say you have more freedom as an adult but I've found I have less freedom as I became an adult in both the physical sense and the emotional sense. Prior to December 2014 I had a rather active life: I'd run and lift weights on the regular, I'd frequently go hiking at a nearby state park, I'd go to movies sporadically. Then I got a part-time job and the hikes went away. A couple years elapsed until December 2016 when I got a full-time job in addition to the part-time job. It was Hell. In 2017 there was never a week without mandatory overtime. I quit seeing movies because I never had the time and I quit working out because my body couldn't hold up. It got so bad there were a few weekends where I didn't sleep for over 36 hours. Eventually, the same month I started this blog, I quit my part-time job. The overtime only got worse. It peaked a 66 hours one week, but it regularly fluctuated between 50 and 60 hours for the rest of the year.

  A curious thing happened in 2018; I didn't work any overtime from January 1st to July 1st. I was able to start exercising semi-regularly again. I was (somewhat) happy again. But then the 50-hour week hit on the 4th of July with a vengeance. Now 50 hours look to be the norm for the foreseeable future. The only real joy I've had recently is adding piecemeal to a fictional story I've been working on for years. But on Friday I found something I've been missing for two decades: a kindred spirit.

Happy 2018!

I survived another year. My goal for the New Year is to slay my personal demons: desires of food, desires of the flesh and other feel-good hedonism that have become so commonplace in society, to start working out more for the health of my mind and body. My ten-year high school reunion is this year and I don't want to be a total loser. Most people think my teetotalism already makes me a loser but I would rather die than compromise my morals to "fit in" with normal society.

DUI = Terrorism

UPDATE: South Carolina trucker charged with 4th DUI in connection with fiery I-295 crash

A South Carolina truck driver is in prison on his fourth charge of driving under the influence after Sunday morning's crash that destroyed his rig, sparked a massive fire, and snarled traffic for hours in the area around the Interstate 95/Interstate 295 split.

Fifty-five-year-old Jeffery Mosier was hauling construction equipment on 95 northbound at the split around 2:40 a.m. Sunday morning when his tractor-trailer hit a construction impact attenuator, overturned and burst into flames, causing a brush fire that affected parts of the Route 141 overpass, Delaware State Police said.

Interstate 295 was closed between Airport Road and Route 13 northbound for about seven hours

Paramedics took Mosier to Christiana Hospital, where troopers tested his blood alcohol level and found him to be under the influence.

Mosier, who was convicted of DUI in 2010, 2011 and 2014, is being held at the Howard Young Prison, charged with refusing to be tested for DUI and failing to remain in a single lane, in addition to the DUI count.

EDIT: According to this story his 2014 DUI arrest took place in Monona County, Iowa (the other two happened in Texas and Alabama). Just brings it a little bit closer to home.

Tree of Ténéré

An interesting tidbit, per Wikipedia:

The Ténéré Tree (French: L'Arbre du Ténéré) was a solitary acacia, of either Acacia raddiana or Acacia tortilis, that was once considered the most isolated tree on Earth—the only one for over 400 kilometres (250 mi). It was a landmark on caravan routes through the Ténéré region of the Sahara Desert in northeast Niger, so well known that it and the Arbre Perdu or 'Lost Tree' to the north are the only trees to be shown on a map at a scale of 1:4,000,000. The Tree of Ténéré was located near a 40-metre (131 feet)-deep well. It was knocked down in 1973, by an alleged drunk truck driver.

Not even a lonely tree surrounded by 250 miles of empty desert in all directions is safe from the menace of alcohol.

How is it even possible?

From the Twin Cities Pioneer Press:

A driver with a revoked license and convicted 14 times of drunken driving crashed into a cage of propane tanks before being stopped by police, according to charges filed this week in St. Croix County.

The incident Monday led to one count of felony driving with a prohibited alcohol concentration-15th offense and a misdemeanor count of driving with a revoked license against Mark Alan Johnson, 64 of New Richmond. He was also cited for failure to notify police of an accident.

A manager at the BP station on Fourth Street in New Richmond reported at 8:46 a.m. that someone had just driven into a cage containing propane tanks on the side of the building.

Gas station employees approached the man after the crash, and Johnson told them his car’s brakes had failed, the employees told police.

Police then learned that Johnson’s driving privileges had been revoked due to alcohol, he was on probation and that he’d had 14 prior drunken-driving convictions. A probation agent requested that police test Johnson for alcohol since he was prohibited from driving with a concentration greater than 0.02.

Johnson told police he’d had a beer for lunch. He blew a 0.036.

There it is. A man with a revoked license and 14 DWIs gets number 15. Expect number 16 in a couple years. Another piece of evidence that alcoholism isn't an addiction but a lifestyle.

The State of Society

Nothing is beyond the reach of the alcohol industry.

The short and simple truth is that the alcohol industry controls society not just through corporate lobbying but through their army of lackeys, especially those in the judicial system. Case number 1: Leonard Little. To quote Wikipedia:

After leaving a birthday party in 1998, Little crashed into and killed Susan Gutweiler in St. Louis, Missouri whose two children were with her in the car. According to the police report, Little was so indifferent at the time of the accident that he said of Susan Gutweiler, "The bitch ran a yellow light and hit me, wrecking my $45,000 [expletive] car." When tested, his blood alcohol level measured 0.19 percent, a level well in excess of the statutory level of intoxication (0.08) in the state of Missouri. Little received four years probation and 1,000 hours of community service.

On April 24, 2004, he was arrested again for driving while intoxicated after being stopped by The Ladue Police Department for driving 78 in a 55 mile-per-hour zone on Interstate 64. At the time he had red eyes, smelled of alcohol and failed three roadside sobriety tests. He later admitted drinking alcohol to the police. After being convicted of misdemeanor speeding but acquitted of DWI, Little was sentenced to two years' probation on May 6, 2005.

So he drove drunk, killed someone, tacitly admitted to running a red light while blaming the victim, and ONLY served four years probation.

And then he did it again. Well almost. This time he didn't kill anyone but you'd think after one DUI manslaughter that a second DUI would land him in jail and you'd be wrong. More probation. Seems the judge didn't want to think about the moral implications of punishing someone for a crime he himself has likely committed and gotten away with at some point in his life. But don't worry, Little says he'll never forget about it and that he has to deal with it for the rest of his life. Poor Leonard Little.

Denial of Responsibility

http://www.kcci.com/article/teen-charged-in-madison-county-bridge-arson-to-use-intoxication-as-defense/11647494

A teenager torches a bridge in Madison County. His excuse is he was drunk and therefore isn't responsible for his actions. After performing an asinine act people often say 'that's not how I normally am, the drugs and/or alcohol made me do it' as i that somehow justifies it. The truth is alcohol doesn't change people, it just helps them be who they really are.

It was always people. They become obnoxious and unbearable when they imbibe. I've always been a loner but alcohol is what pushed me from a simple dislike to an active hatred of people. When I turned 21 while in college, the day before St. Patrick's Day, I learned the hard way that people don't see you as a friend. They see you as a drinking buddy. You exist to reassure them that they're not an alcoholic and if you fail to provide that reassurance then you're lower than a cockroach to them. They'll say to your face that 'they don't care if you don't drink' but you can feel in their voice the contempt they have for you.

The worst part is the denial of responsibility. Whereas seasoned alcoholics will say that the can quit whenever they want to, college kids will say 'I'm too young to be an alcoholic' or 'I only drink socially' or, most annoying of all, 'Don't act like you've never made a mistake'. I've made plenty of mistakes but none of those involved vandalism, assault, arson, breaking into a restaurant and stealing food, or driving drunk and wrecking my car and possibly killing people. And the college circle celebrates this. There are few things I hate more than when people brag about getting arrested for being a drunken douche like it's some accomplishment.

21st birthday

There's a cruel irony in being a teetotaler who turns 21 the day before St. Patrick's Day. I had never been a popular kid (I always hung out on the periphery) but I still figured that people liked me despite my experience in genetics lab. And, in 2010 at least, I had never been coy about my dislike for alcohol. That carried on until March 2011. In a class, I don't remember what the name of the class was, I was set to give a presentation on funeral rituals from around the world. The date was March 11th. When class time rolled around my partner for the presentation didn't. It was just assumed that since he was Japanese he skipped class because he was worried about his family back home. It wasn't anything more than a minor annoyance at the time.

My 21st occurred on the following Wednesday. In the previous months I had seen friends celebrating their 21st birthdays on Facebook, posting pictures with all their friends at some bar. I figured my friends would try to do the same with me or at least make a joke on Facebook. But none of that happened. Whereas most people receive hundreds of 'happy birthday' wishes I got around twenty, mostly from relatives. It hurt deeply. The illusion that anyone liked me was shattered and I needed someone to lean on. For a few months I mostly carried on as if nothing was wrong. Then a female friend took a trip to Costa Rica over the summer.

Must be nice...

Fortunately my 66-hour work week got reduced to a 60-hour work week. How lucky! All of this is gearing up for three 12-hour shifts next week thanks to some numbers that are totally organic and not-at-all made up. This is why it pisses me off to see (mostly) women posting on Facebook about their exotic vacations and daily bar-crawls most likely on their husbands/boyfriends dime while they piss away money on the latest pyramid scheme. How do you avoid going into debt? Do you go into debt and you just don't care? It seems like every month these people are at some new location either within or without the United States. These people still have the gall to complain about their lives. Any "problems" you have are because of your own poor lifestyle choices. Must be nice.